Life in Grayscale

Essays | Quotations | Life

[life-in-grayscale]

Are you alright? I say fine But I’m dead in real life But I’m dead in real life

[life-in-grayscale]

Aujourd’hui, papa est morte

Father died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The message from Facebook merely implied something to that effect, which leaves the matter doubtful. He could still be alive.

According to my most easily accessed recollection, he should be in his government-subsidized apartment a couple hundred miles away. I could have gotten in the car and been there well before nightfall after a brief plane ride. I contemplated telling my boss. Obviously, under the circumstances, she would not refuse. Still, it seemed to me that she would be annoyed.

It occurred to me that it mattered not either way. Had he passed, there would be nothing – no mourning, no tidying of the estate – for me to do besides use it as an excuse to remain home for two days and return to life after only the briefest flicker of interruption. Had he not passed, it would have been as if I had never mistakenly read that message and consequently aroused the needless ire of my boss by saying something without thinking.

It was 3:47 PM when I put down my phone. I returned to the task at hand: affixing labels to postcards as the culmination of a Kafkaesque process for their generation. In my silence, I re-contemplated the difference it would have made if he had died yesterday, today, or not at all when – in effect, if not reality – he had died when I last saw him 1,753 days ago.

I packed my belongings early this afternoon. I suppose it was my hurrying – the clang of residual ice in my thermos, the light rattle of chip crumbs in my sandwich container – that made me leave well before my staff did without offering any excuses or apologies. Anyhow, I poured myself a drink in the proximity of my friends despite my pharmacist’s earlier cautions. Asked if I had a long day, I nodded to cut things short. I was not in a mood for talking.

[life-in-grayscale]

Push that joy until it's agony I, I, I'm falling in love with sadness

[life-in-grayscale]

Anchor

Despite supposedly knowing better, it never ceases to surprise me how much my work life affects how I feel in my day-to-day existence.

In November, my boss told me that I should not be in my job in two years because there was “nothing” for me in the position. I disagreed. If there was nothing for me in the job, it was because I was not being used to my full potential. Despite my education, proven record of achievements, and demonstrated willingness to work hard, I felt underutilized. In the fleeting moments of candidness before bed, I felt that I was being taken for granted.

As I explained to my similarly situated coworker in December, there were days when I felt like crying at work. Hearing nothing but criticism made me question my competence and qualifications for being there. Enduring constant scowls from the boss made me think it was somehow my fault that they were in a bad mood. Being unexpectedly frozen out of prior responsibilities and tasks made me think that my role was being minimized in preparation for an eventual firing. No doubt the childhood neuroticism ingrained from my childhood magnified those feelings a tenfold.

My hobbies – most centering around food and video games – stopped giving me any kind of pleasure. I was constantly tired and barely had the energy to do anything but live a clockwork life. I woke up and immediately dreaded the walk on eggshells that was my job. When I would go to the gym, I felt no pleasure in the exercise. Meals that would have normally filled me with excitement – or at least some degree of anticipation – passed almost without register. I would go home, play video games to dull the ennui, and go to sleep to repeat it five days a week.

I seriously considered seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist because I was worried that I was depressed.

Thankfully, in December, there was a massive argument that seemed to turn my boss’ behavior around. I finally began feeling more included, useful, and appreciated at work. I could finally muster the enthusiasm to do the job at the same quality as I had before, my daily existence took on a slightly brighter hue, and I sensed a slight bounce in my step. Unfortunately, my boss has returned to their old behavior, though to a lesser degree.

I guess I have realized that maybe I have been coasting through life for the past few years. I wish I had a more obvious next step like I did immediately after college when graduate school was clearly just over the horizon. Since almost nobody I know has proceeded in a straight line from childhood interest to eventual career, I guess I expected the next opportunity to have presented itself by now. I feel like I have been keeping my eyes open, though maybe I should be seeking them out instead.

At any rate, I have given myself two years. I need to pick up my life a little bit more by saving money for a likely relocation and getting on top of a variety of other adult responsibilities I have been happy to ignore in the relative comfort of being back in Hawaii. I will not predicate my happiness on some goal two years from now, but, based on my experience, having a goal in the first place feels like an anchor that stops me and my emotions from floating wherever the winds – of work, romance, or education – take me.

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Grant

After Rudy, there was Grant.

He had initially messaged me on Jack’d near the turn of the year. Though he had no face picture, he was at least able to carry a conversation better than most of the other men and seemed to have motivations beyond sex. Through our discussion, I learned that he had briefly returned to Hawaii for the holiday season but would be returning to Los Angeles to finish up graduate school and work before permanently relocating back to Honolulu. Would I be interested in maybe meeting up during that time?

Why not?

I honestly thought the two of us would lose touch, but – to my surprise – we kept chatting for several months. When he finally did return to Honolulu, I took an intense liking to him. He replied to my text messages as though he had been waiting by his phone with nothing else to do all day. There was never a lull in conversation during brunch or dinner. He always had an idea for something to do during the weekend. He also had the rather unusual hobby of being an amateur musician.

Strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin, though.

The ease with which he directed his energies to external activities did not translate to an equal ability to guide them inward. I first noticed this when we played a party game where the two of us took turns answering a variety of thought-provoking, romantically oriented questions designed to help people better understand themselves and others.

“Okay, first question,” he said, pulling a card from the box. “Is it a sign of cynicism or wisdom to tolerate affairs?”

“Hmm…” I began. “I suppose it would depend on the person. For me, I would perceive it as a learning opportunity to examine the ways in which I might have contributed to the person’s reasons for cheating. Have I been neglecting them? Have I not been as attentive to their needs as I should have been?” I paused for a moment, absentmindedly fiddling with my bedsheets. “I would like to think that, at the very least, we could have an adult discussion of the relationship, but I guess I could imagine how other people might have a different reaction.”

“Cool.”

“What about you?”

“Oh, same, I guess. Your turn to pick a card!”

To Grant’s credit, he did not have unrevealing responses to every card we pulled that night, but I came away with the distinct feeling that he either had very little interesting to say or a lot to hide. Before we went to bed that evening, I put on Planet Earth so the two of us could wind down from hours of talking. However, minutes into one of the episodes he was already attempting to engage me in a quiz show-like grilling of every animal and ecosystem flicking on screen.

How many bats do you think live in that cave? Do you think the roaches in there are bigger than the ones in Hawaii? How long does that fish have to live in the cave to get all transparent like that?

I did not have an especially easy time getting to sleep that evening and I had an especially difficult time being around him when his hobby as a musician began to pick up. As soon as that happened, it felt like he took every moment of silence – no matter how tiny – to rehearse, revise, and repeat lyrics to his songs in real time and in any location. I could hear him muttering, mumbling, and murmuring while looking over restaurant menus, during the ten-second moment when we split apart so I could walk to the passenger door, or while placing my coffee order with a barista.

I felt like a new snow globe in a whirlwind. Without even a moment to settle, hanging out with him became a frazzling, disorienting, and exhausting experience. Realizing that my unhappiness would cause me to begin to treat him less correctly than I should and that an open discussion of the subject would be the best way to resolve the issue, I brought it up on a car ride home from brunch one weekend.

“Hey, Grant,” I began. “You know I’m a quiet person, right?”

“I think that is obvious to everybody,” he replied, flicking his turn signal.

“I know your music is very important to you, but do you think maybe – when the two of us are hanging out, at least – it would be possible to tune it down a bit? I feel like I can barely hear myself think half the time.”

Without missing a beat, he answered, “Oh, sure. No problem.” However, he did not say it with the tone of someone who properly understood what I said. Instead, it was the cheery tone one might take when answering in the affirmative to a request to make a brief detour to McDonald’s before a long drive. As I sat in muteness tumbling between uncertainty and disbelief, he resumed his vocals.

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Haunted

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

Growing up, my father would make me watch horror movies with him. Watching Amityville Horror, The Exorcist, and Jeepers Creepers in elementary school was not especially enjoyable for a naturally anxious child, so I coped with the experience by trying to be logical and rational with what was happening on screen. By the time I reached middle school, I realized that films involving residential hauntings – my father’s favorite type of horror film – typically followed a familiar pattern: 1) denial (“Oh, it must be my imagination!”), 2) diminishing (“Well, it doesn’t seem that bad.”), 3) demonstration (“I got pushed down the stairs!”), and 4) dealing (most commonly calling in an exorcist, but occasionally running to another house and realizing “it is not places that are haunted, but people”).

The Kavanaugh nomination has been in the news – and on my mind – a lot lately. Though I think about it for all the usual reasons a left-leaning person might, it has also been a near-daily reminder of my own assault during the time I poisoned myself at Mercury.

In the moment, I denied that it was happening. After all, he had been a friend seemingly different from the toxic people at Mercury. Why would he do something like this? In the immediate aftermath, I diminished what happened because it had not been “successful” even though I ran into the hotel hallway barely clothed. It could have been so much worse and, if it could have been worse, I should be grateful that it was not. This bit of trickery worked so well that I kept the memory bottled up and untouched for half a decade until I finally decided that I should deal with my time at Mercury. However, just as home renovations rouse incorporeal entities in horror movies into action, the true effect of contemplation was to realize how traumatizing the event had been. When I thought I was finally ready to be open about it – or at least open enough to share the experience through an essay – my attacker added me on Facebook and derailed what tiny amount of emotional steadiness I thought I had summoned.

Though I have shared the experience with a few people in DC since that time, it was all too easy to flee to Hawaii and let the memory remain undisturbed for fear of reliving the ordeal. Unfortunately, just like movies, relocation offers only momentary respite at best. My attacker has lurked in the periphery of my vision – an apparition. He has swiped right on me on Tinder. He has appeared on Grindr and Jack’d when I still had those apps on my phone. His posts have appeared in my Instagram feed as a recommended account to follow. And, in an eerie imitation of real life, his station in life has grown considerably despite his nearly unspeakable deeds.

However, just as apparitions disappear when looked at directly, so, too, does my will to stomach a confrontation vanish when presented with the opportunity. I want to speak with an exorcist of the mind but have limited resources to be able to do so. I want to confront him directly but need to be intensely vigilant about jeopardizing my own standing. I want to do something, but I am not sure what.

Keeping it inside me and doing nothing – out of shame, embarrassment, guilt, anxiety, fear – has not worked in the near decade since it happened, but I am tired of being haunted. I do not know where I will go from here, but this essay seems like a good place to start.

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Rudy

After Andrew, there was Rudy.

I initially walked past the man sitting by the front desk. I had a lot of work to do, but he was not there when I had left for the restroom several minutes earlier. Furthermore, it was not clear that anyone had helped him since the front desk staff was nowhere to be seen. At least the very least, helping him would be an opportunity to take in the boyish charm I glimpsed during my hurried return.

I spun around and asked, “Has anyone helped you?”

“Oh yeah,” he replied. “I’m here for an interview. The woman at the front just left to grab everyone.”

He was there to replace me since, by that time in the year, I decided to return to politics. Just as the wave of endorphins began to recede, I sat down at my desk and received a notification from Tinder that someone new had liked me. It was the man with the boyish charm.

I did not immediately act on the swipe because it seemed inappropriate. Though I was not involved with the interview process, I did not want to inadvertently bias the interviewers or pass along information that would make him seem like a better candidate than he was. At around 8 o’clock that night, though, the temptation proved too great.

We had a lot in common: mutual friends, similar undergraduate and graduate educations, and unusually parallel career paths. However, in pursuing Rudy – as we shall call him – I made two things unambiguous. First, that I would remain silent about the job and his interview prospects. Second, still regretting the way I treated Andrew and feeling that it would facilitate the previous point, I wanted clear communication between the two of us.

We eventually met for dinner where we had amicable, though not especially revealing, conversation, which was surprising since he was much more willing to be open when we exchanged text messages. Perhaps our similarity meant that there was not much mystery to reveal in the first place. Either that or my social awkwardness is contagious. In either case, I was open to a second date and happy to spend a few minutes making out in his truck.

My old workplace eventually offered Rudy the job, but he was also entertaining offers from elsewhere that would have offered better pay and more day-to-day excitement in exchange for less job security. It was the typical risk-stability balancing act that many people will face at some point in their careers. To my solicited sensibilities, I felt that the potential downside to a risk only increases with age and accumulated responsibilities. He agreed, but still hesitated.

Rudy eventually turned down my old job, but still wanted to explore his options, though this time in the political circles in which I ran. Rudy texted me every day for a more than a fortnight. He agonized over job interviews, desperately seeking to explore the comparative advantages of each and looking for someone to talk to about his challenges. After a second dinner where we talked about his prospects, I leaned in for a kiss and he hesitated.

It was not the sort of coy hesitation that someone might bashfully overcome, but almost a recoil similar to opening a new bag of pre-shredded cheese and discovering a thriving fungal colony. To be sure, he had no obligation to kiss me, but our conversations seemed to have been going well enough that it felt reasonable to assume that I would be more appealing than a bag of expired dairy product.

I did not receive a text from him the following day even though he had another interview and it was customary for him to unload his anxieties after such events. Remembering the promise of clear communication that I asked for, I send him a message the subsequent day asking whether he was interested. I got the feeling from his replies that he was not actually interested in me – and likely never was – but did not want to say so. If he could not be forthcoming, then I would.

“I feel like that was a lot of words to avoid having to say that you aren’t interested,” I replied while pushing my shopping cart through Sam’s Club.

He never quite admitted that I was correct, but nonetheless said that he still wanted to be friends. I knew better. Having written about it before and having practiced the art myself, the offer of friendship was little more than a fig leaf asking me to take the hint. To his credit, he put in the effort to maintain a minimal degree of conversation to make it seem like he was serious about the effort, but it all vanished the instant we made eye contact when I walked past him on a date at the mall.

I was initially inclined to be upset, but I suppose I had no right to be considering how his actions with me were not so different from how I treated Andrew.

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Tides

He sat on the edge of my bed, putting on his underwear while I stood in front of him on my phone. “You know,” he began, “you’re actually in pretty good shape.”

In the dim light of my bedroom, he ran his hand from my vague v-cut, up across the tiniest contours of my abs, and to my face before leaning in for a kiss. As we cast shadows on the walls for a second time, I tried to figure out whether he was just trying to be seductive or whether it was a genuine compliment. No matter the case, it was the first time someone had commented on their perception of me as allegedly being in “good shape”. 

If I am being honest, I liked it.

In May, I started working out several times a week because I had put on an eye-popping amount of weight in the year since my surgery. Since my return to politics, 飲み会 – for lack of a better word – has become a huge part of my life. Hardly a week passes by where there is not an expectation of at least one night of after-hours drinking. In addition, as followers of my Instagram know, my love of food has grown to grotesque proportions to fill the vacuum left by the other parts of my dissatisfying life. Drinking my duty and eating my ennui every week eventually turned into being definitively overweight after a year.

As I have written about numerous times both here (here, here, here, and here) and on my previous account, gay men often have a challenging relationship with what their bodies look like. I think it would be fair to state that many men I met have had their lives negatively impacted – if not outright ruined – by their or the community’s attitudes regarding what a gay man should look like. Though concern with my weight began with its health implications, I can feel it mutating into worrying forms as health becomes a receding worry.

Initially, as part of getting a sense of my caloric intake, I kept track of every meal and every snack. This information was rather revealing and helped me better understand the comparative healthiness of the various things that comprised my typical meals. However, after a month, I started noticing that the ritual was beginning to move away from informative and become obsessive. If the meal did not exist in the database, I would spend as much time as necessary – no matter the situation – to input the information. Estimates of amounts and approximations of ingredients became increasingly irritating.

I eventually stopped tracking my calories because I could sense that it was becoming more hurtful than helpful. It had served its purpose in encouraging me to be mindful of what I eat. However, I am not able to discard exercise so easily if I must continue to perform my unofficial job duties and maintain acceptable levels of gluttony during my free time. Put simply, exercise must become part of my lifestyle rather than a seasonal fad like it was in college.

How many more swipes will I get on Tinder? How many more encounters will happen because I more closely conform to conventional ideas of attractiveness? Will my physique inflate to fill the undeniable gaps in my psychological fulfillment? How will I change as a result?

As weight becomes a receding worry, I wonder what else the tide might take with it.

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Andrew

After Julian, there was Andrew.

Although he had just finished college and was therefore younger than the typical person I find attractive, we nonetheless matched on Tinder. His pictures and profile contained an uncommon degree of earnestness. He made no secret of the fact that he worked part-time at Starbucks, lived at home with his parents, and did not know where he wanted to go next. However, he seemed to be putting in the effort necessary to integrate his Mandarin skills with his next job. In my mind, that counted for something.

We spent the next month or so hanging out at least once a week, typically over dinner. Between ramen, donburi, and yakitori we managed to find time for Netflix and trips to the mall to feed his addiction to clothes. On one particularly humid day, he decided to wear an unusually thick-looking black blazer.

“You look hot in that,” I mentioned as we left the car.

“Thanks.”

“No,” I replied after a chuckle, “I mean temperature hot. I meant the other thing too, but we’ve gone three steps and you’re already sweating.”

I have no idea why the mall was so busy that day, but between Zara, Nordstrom, and Macy’s, I barely managed to avoid running into an ex, a former friend, and an elected. I felt a small degree of petty smugness that my ex was still working retail even though he was in his early thirties, a small degree of sadness that a similar fate befell the former friend, and a small degree of hope that the official had not recognized me in public. Those were emotions as small as the suit Andrew needed to buy from the children’s section of Macy’s I later joked with him, though the lattermost feeling was not as fleeting as it first seemed.

Andrew drove a brown ‘90s Toyota with numerous scrapes along the doors and a front bumper held to the body with zip ties. It was no source of shame to him and I certainly would never turn down someone else’s offer to drive. However, on the drive home that day, the zip ties caught the attention of two fools who pulled up next to us at a traffic light and asked Andrew if he would let them fix his bumper.

“We’re good,” he replied. “Thanks.”

“Is that your boyfriend?” they suddenly asked Andrew in the teasing, faux-effeminate voice one would expect from middle schoolers rather than middle-aged men driving a car held together with duct tape and prayers. I rolled my eyes and successfully restrained the temptation to throw a sun-warmed iced coffee through the window, but nonetheless shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat.

Andrew, inexplicably, kept engaging them, seemingly oblivious to their taunting tone and the inappropriateness of their behavior. I would have liked to think he was just playing it cool, but, based on later conversations, it seemed to have never occurred to him that the two men might have been at least slightly homophobic.

This incident bothered me for three reasons. First, as mild as it was compared to things that still happen in many parts of the country, it was the first time that I had experienced – as an adult – blatant homophobia specifically directed at me or someone I was with. Second, I found it astonishing that Andrew came away from it unruffled not because he let it roll off his back, but because he had not considered the possibility that there was something to be bothered about in the first place. Third, and the part worth expanding upon for this essay, this was about the time when I had to consider leaving my job as a lobbyist to go back to politics.

Prior to the encounter, I explored my apprehension with Andrew. If I took the job, I would need to be much more mindful of my personal life. As recent events repeatedly demonstrate, staff only make the news or become the subject of gossip for bad reasons. Though I am confident that most of the people I interact with daily would not care that I like men, it is frustrating to know that many powerful people – the people I most depend on for my success – casually share their homophobia. To be reduced to “that gay guy in so-and-so’s office” would be a stake through the heart.

If I was not willing to be out at work and deal with its consequences, then it did not seem fair either to force Andrew to change who he was to avoid it from happening or to blame him when it eventually would. Unfortunately, without the ability to articulate these thoughts, I instead gave Andrew a generic, cowardly excuse about not feeling the same as he did.

In the previous essay I linked, I asked what I was willing to sacrifice for the sake of my career and the degree to which I was willing to let dating be a calculation. It seems that my own timidity – or, less generously, spinelessness or perhaps even internalized homophobia – meant that I was willing to sacrifice Andrew. In reflection, I do not feel like I fell short of my ideals so much as I have faceplanted short of them.

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Escapism

Shen will be visiting Hawaii in a couple weeks. Though he has never been especially organized, I easily – happily – make up for it with detailed spreadsheets, daily itineraries, and comprehensive research. We are thousands of miles apart, but the planning comes as naturally as if he were next to me and we were reliving the fantasy of soon departing for Iceland or Toronto.

If I am honest, I think I am looking forward to his visit because dating in Hawaii must be one of the nine circles of hell. I have no illusions that we will get back together or presumptions of romance, but it will be nice to spend a few days in wistful reverie. The real tragedy is that it will end all too soon and I will return to my unsatisfying existence.

I have not been writing much, mostly because the last thing I want to do after drafting regulatory comments, doing legal research, and attending hours-long meetings is to come home and write more. However, as I mentioned numerous times, writing is critical to organizing my thoughts and I am not particularly enjoying sailing through a vague fog of unhappiness. Furthermore, I feel like I need to be more honest with myself and the ways I contributed to the failure of some romantic prospects. To avoid writing would be to avoid the truth of my flaws.

Let me just have one more moment of escapism first.

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I wanna leave, I wanna run Gimme a reason, something to run from Don't want any story, I want a new chance Gimme a reason, a reason to run

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Yen

When I visited Japan in late December, I saw Shen for the first time since leaving DC. It was nice to traipse through Tokyo together, visiting every temple we came across, realizing I was allergic to fugu at a $300 dinner, and confusing service workers with my fluent-sounding Japanese and total inability to respond to their rapid follow-up questions containing unfamiliar vocabulary. When he left Shinjuku Station to head back to the airport, I tried not to cry.

However, Shen’s presence – and its pleasantness, especially – served only to create a sense of loneliness for the remaining week I had in Tokyo. So, naturally, I just buckled down and resolved to enjoy my time nonetheless. Kidding. I redownloaded both Grindr and Jack’d, opened up Tinder, and saw who was available.

There was Andrew, the Filipino engineer for Honda with whom I drank four Strong Zeroes in my hotel room. It was fascinating to hear about his experiences with Japanese work culture, the challenges of being openly bisexual in Japan, and the misunderstandings that come from being an expat. The only stain on the night – besides the one on the bed sheets – was the fact that he strenuously denied that anybody had ever landed on the Moon.

Then there was Blaine, the long-time Chinese-Canadian expat working as a graphic artist. It was a tremendous addition to be able to visit the back alleys of Tokyo that Shen and I had ignored while passing through only days earlier. He had the sensitive demeanor, deep concern about abstract concepts, and detailed memory that one would expect of someone for whom those qualities would be a benefit to their career. Alas, the closest I got was feeling the warmth of his hand brush against mine as we walked the quiet, frosty residential streets talking about the time he burst his appendix at work.

Thirdly, there was Teddy, the half-Korean and half-white man taking a break from his job teaching English in central China. He had many fascinating tales about the trials associated with living in such a remote part of China and its concomitant privations. I thought he sat close to me on the train to SkyTree and stood even closer on the mall’s escalators, but I had no complaints when we got back to my hotel.

Finally, there was Kazuma, the similarly aged Japanese man with whom I did most of my shopping in the concluding days of my stay. We shared enough English to have functional conversations, but that was more than enough for both of us. I think we both enjoyed the silence of walking around the empty Shinjuku streets in the nights after New Year’s Day. I wonder if Kazuma felt something like what I felt with Shen when he saw me off at the station.

I am not sure why I felt compelled to write down these vignettes. I suspect that it has something to do with the tremendous dissatisfaction I feel regarding the state of my current existence. I suppose reminiscing about Tokyo is an opportunity to ignore how much I now loathe work, how much fatter I have gotten since my surgery last year, and how empty I feel in my personal life. Vacations, I suppose, are a chance to set aside one’s daily worries and experience a life that is as free of problems as it is short.

I suppose I just yen for a day-to-day existence as carefree and free-spirited as my December in Tokyo.

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Write something!

Damn. Has it already been three months since I wrote anything?

I’ll post something soon.

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With the lights out Hanging on, hanging on With the lights out Almost alone if it wasn't for the neon

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64

The graph indicated that there were 64 suicides in 2015.

Even though I was supposed to be there to monitor the committee, seeing that number on the slide pulled me out of my task and made me think of my grandmother. If life had gone differently, it could have been 63 instead.

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Do you think if you weren't gay and Asian you would have led a different life? Where do you think you would be now?

That is an intriguing question, but I do not think I cando it justice by answering them as presented. If you will indulge me, I canexplain what I think I might miss about being gay and Asian.

Let me preface my comments on being gay by acknowledgingthat I feel like I have had an unconventional experience with my sexuality. Ihave never struggled with acknowledging that I am gay. I have never wished Icould be straight. I have never worried about what my friends or family mightthink (though I do fret about how it might affect my relationshipswith coworkers).

This meant that, growing up, I never worried too muchabout the typical teenage worries of whether I was attractive, if I would findsomeone to date, or when I would lose my virginity. Those concerns were so faroutside the realm of being reasonably addressed in high school that they werehardly worth thinking about. Of course, those issues hit me hard and fast in college,but being able to ignore it in high school freed up a lot of emotionalbandwidth to deal with all the other things about me that were different, weird, and troublesome – especially as it relatedto my family.

I think if I were straight, I would not be as functionalof an adult that I am now. In a weird way, being gay – and, doubtlessly, beingable to pass as straight to most people – distributed the burden of issues insuch a way that I avoided being crushed by them all at once.

As to my ethnic identity, it is a lot harder to speculatebecause I am much less familiar with my white half or what it would be like togrow up on the continent.

I feel like growing up identifying primarily as Asianwhile also being half white is a lot easier – especially in Hawaii – than thereverse would have been. Being half-Asian somewhere like Nebraska while beingraised by my white mother would have probably been an unpleasant experience.

In that scenario, I suspect I would be more acutely awareof, and probably engaged with, my Asian heritage. As an adult, I have no realcultural practices or rituals. Mid-Autumn Festival and Setsubun pass by withouteven registering. Part of it is related to living in Hawaii where lines betweencultures are muddied at best, but part of it also – I suspect – deals withwhether one would be shamed or embarrassed for doing those things and thesubsequent reaction against that. I will confess to some degree or envy towardpeople who are very involved with and observe those practices.

I think it would also be fair to say that I would likewhite guys as much as I like Asian guys now. A lot of what one finds attractiveseems to depend on what one is surrounded with growing up and I doubt therewould be a whole lot of Asian people in Nebraska. Not sure how fair it would beto extrapolate beyond that, though, and prognosticate how that might affect myexperience as a gay man.

In total, I think I rather enjoy being a gay Asian man. Nomatter the challenges, I appreciate the perspective on life that it offers and,in a weird way, I feel like not needing to deal with some of the typicalteenage troubles or with racism made my circumstances easier to endure.

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Proof

I think I mentioned this in a previous essay, but I feel a constant pressure to “prove” things to myself through my career. Applying for that undergraduate internship that sent me to Congress was a way to prove that I had not ruined my future with the poor decisions of my first year in college. Applying to top ten graduate schools was a way to prove that I truly possessed the potential that my professors insisted I had. Now, I have taken a job in politics that – to my sensibilities, at least – nobody at my age should have and I wonder what I am trying to prove to myself this time.

What people tell me should be reassuring. They offered the position to me before they even began considering anybody else, which should speak to their faith in my ability to do the job competently. I now earn what friends fifteen years into their careers make, which means I will be able to live a reasonably comfortable life. I am, by far, also the youngest person ever to hold the position, which should presage good things for the trajectory of my career.

However, what I tell myself is anything but reassuring. In many respects, I feel unqualified. I have never had to manage other people, but now an integral part of my job requires me to manage staff within the office and to handle relationships with politicians. I need to be able to spit out answers to questions on demand, but even phone calls strain my capacity to think on my feet. I have worked almost continuously since I was sixteen, but it has not even been a year since I earned my MPH and I feel like I do not have enough work experience to be even remotely qualified.

It also draws more sharply into focus the question of the sacrifices I am willing to make for the sake of my career. In my most recent past job, I looked forward to spending more of my free time serving in the community, getting more involved with advocacy, and working on campaigns. However, my participation in those things now has the potential to “say” something. Worst of all, it has tremendously complicated my dating life. All my power, especially considering my age, comes from people taking me seriously, which means that my choice of partner – to say nothing of people finding out that I am gay in the first place – seems like it can no longer arise out of a purely organic process.

In some ways, it is almost like my life is no longer quite mine to live.

Maybe I am just hand wringing over nothing and I should just shut up and deal with it. Worrying about the pinnacle of Maslow’s hierarchy when I should be grateful that I am not losing sleep over an eroding base seems like such a first-world problem. On the other hand, I now live my life under a constant hum arising from these unaddressed insecurities and unanswered questions about my career and who I want to be. I thought I had this reasonably sorted out at my previous job, but I still took the new job. To what end?