I want to write
a kick ass work
about a kick ass woman running
an Izakaya in Ithaca,
New York, that is.
She lives in the village
full of butt pirates who pillage
not so modestly
plates of yakitori and sashimi
while making disparaging jokes about "fish"
in a tone rather too queeny
for my tastes
at least
I want to write about anger
forged in a love
galvanized in the veils
of a colored
invisibility
Every plate is her tapestry,
for she is a polite punk Penelope
fighting for every Telemachus
for every person who's tired of being a food
a single, sordid
sorted word
I am not a fucking chicken
korma
I am not the sushi between your chapsticked lips
I am not the slave between your legs.
Xenia? Quit the hospitality
bullshit,
because I am Xena.
Hear me roar as I say
Irasshaimase!
How dare you eat my food,
how dare you drink my ale.
You've overstayed your welcome--
get into those taxis that you hail
When you think "Japan" at least,
I want you to imagine a human,
and not a kimono or your PS3,
and definitely not our goddamn tea
Everyone is beautiful,
and so are you,
for I love you dearly, terribly too
but not the terrible things you often do
Please do not silence
do not eliminate
the beauty of others just as great.
For if my advice
you choose to ignore,
I hope you do adore
the effect of ex-lax green tea ice-cream
working right as you leave this
very
door.
Sorry, we're closed!
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
沈黙に負けないように
For those who read Japanese, the below is the first rough draft of my entry to this year's Speech Contest. Wish me luck :D.
沈黙に負けないため
初めて愛の告白をした時、フランス語で相手からの「さようなら」というメールしか残らなかった。自分の気持ちはとても純粋なものだったので、私はあの返事で完全に潰されて、強烈な恥と罪悪感で１年間のうちにフランス語を口にすることさえできなくなった。私はもう一度、沈黙の深淵に沈んでしまったのだ。
１２歳の時から高校を卒業した時まで、優秀なフランス語の学生だったが、本当は今でもフランス語を喋る自信はなく、いつも喋るときに正しい言葉を探すのも恥ずかしくて、時々ケベックとフランスの人に話すことも恐ろしい。自分が作り出した沈黙で、私は潜在的な友達を失い、不要な距離と孤独で苦しんでいた。
アメリカから引っ越した後、友達に話すことを恐れた時も、大学の教授と話すことを恐れた時も、心底から同様に苦しんでいた。でも同時に最低の臆病者になったと言ってもいい。
去年、日本語の勉強の場合でも同じような事件もあった。ある日、日本語の先生に相談しに行かなければならなかった。彼女は深く尊敬してる人で、失望させることも怖かったので、先生に喋ることは何よりも恐ろしかった。結局、沈黙を抱くことで作文を書く時に同じような間違いを繰り返して、問題になっていた。
彼女の前でストレスで自分の泣きだしたことをいつまでも忘れられない。でも彼女が言った言葉、「どうして日本語を勉強してるの？」という質問を泣くことよりもよく思い出している。そしてその質問は自分の命を変えた。
今は、毎日日本語を習う理由を考えながら二つのことに気づいた。まずは、私は一生、沈黙に支配されたということ。そして日本語でその沈黙を倒す力を求めているということ。
成長しながら、慰安婦問題を引用して、私はよくまわりの台湾と中国の人にもある親戚にも「日本人を憎め」という激しいメッセージに攻められていた。日本を庇う人は一人もいなかった。沈黙しかなかった。
個人的に反対のない会話が凄く疑わしいと思っていた。そして、過去に激しいいじめを経験してきた私はそう簡単に人を恨むことなんて想像さえもできなかった。逆に、私のいわゆる天敵を必死に理解したくて、日本語を勉強に飛び込んだ。その結果、日本人からの沈黙が消えていった。日本人の友達を作ることで、その人の意見を聞くことで、同じ歌を歌う事でも、日本人はシンボルではなくなり人間に生まれ変わった。
言語を勉強するというのは、気持ちを伝える力、心を繋ぐ力、人を思い出す力、そして沈黙を倒す力だ。言葉という奇跡で、一日間のうちに我らは感謝と愛情を伝えたり、人を感動させたり、記憶を作ったり、友達を作ったり、命を変えたりする力を持つ。
逆に、ある人と関係を切って沈黙と距離を作る時、その人や絆や思い出を殺して侮辱することに等しいのだ。
今だけは、様々な沈黙で失ったモノの価値を理解してる。
だから今、ここ戦いに、この沈黙に負けないために、私は勇気を持って、口を開いて、頭を開いて、心を開いて、ここに立って、話してるのだ。
ありがとうございました。
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Bareback Mountain: Porn part 2
Today, I was propositioned on the internet for bareback sex.
Now, as much as I love the movie (and the book) Brokeback Mountain, where the cowboys do each other with pure feelings, without restraint, and most of all, without a condom, there's absolutely nothing that's going to make me give in to having unprotected sex with a stranger... even if both bareback and brokeback end in the same way. And in this case, both may end with tragedy, too.
We all wish for a world without AIDS, without HIV, without fear. Again, there's nothing more I hate than being told "you can't do such and such". I will rebel again and again, until I've taken the helm of the rules and made them to my liking.
But this mad resurgence of gay youth having unprotected sex drives me even more nuts (pardon the poor word choice). The most chilling scene in my head revolves around the sheer idea of a "bug party", a scary parody of reality TV where HIV- "bug chasers" (mostly gay men in their 20s and 30s who can no longer stand the idea of living with the fear of infection) engage in a drug-filled, condom-free orgy. In this mix of 10 or so men, one is HIV positive.
The rules are simple: fuck as many people as possible in hopes of being the "lucky" man to walk home with the disease.
I don't hear about these parties too often anymore, but their very existence haunts my memory. This is irresponsibility and hopelessness at its worse, but, to be honest, I can't blame these men really.
Treasure Island Video's bareback series are some of the best sellers at porn shops, and they sell a fantasy with a warning. But who in their right mind wants to be told about nasty diseases when everyone (including the viewer) is having such a good time?
Truth be told, I enjoyed Dawson's 20-load weekend very much. But whenever anyone uses the word "breed" to describe the idea of ejaculation with the intent to potentially infect, I shudder. And sometimes, I start to cry.
I am very lucky to have never had someone close to me die yet. But Death is very close to me, in my heart, in my head, in my fingers, in my blood. I supported my wonderful ex-boyfriend through the death of both parents, and last year, a long-time friend of the man who I will call my "gay godfather" J, died of AIDS.
Grief has transformed J in a relatively short period. Depression has set in, he's gained a few pounds, and he suffers dearly, daily. But he fights to keep a smile and get up in the morning, and to me, that's all what counts. His friends were not irresponsible-- they were not sex-addicts, they were not all-night partiers. They were brothers, they were family.
I have absolutely no right to lecture the "bug-chasers". But I want everyone to consider the suffering of those left behind, the holes left in the soul after death. Because death here is the ultimate consequence of giving completely into fear, letting it win over your body and soul, and it spreads like a cancer into the hearts of those you love.
But again, why waste a life when you can fight to restore one? I cannot, and I do not wish to ban bareback pornography, or the "unsafe-sex education" it presents to youth. It showcases the now-rare intimacy of bodily fluid, lost to us after the emergence AIDS and HIV, and I don't want that taken away. Perhaps it could even be a symbol for resistance, a dream that we can achieve once we find a cure.
Over and out.
....
Hey, Bareback Porn that donates to AIDS charities? It just might work, someday, somewhere.
Now, as much as I love the movie (and the book) Brokeback Mountain, where the cowboys do each other with pure feelings, without restraint, and most of all, without a condom, there's absolutely nothing that's going to make me give in to having unprotected sex with a stranger... even if both bareback and brokeback end in the same way. And in this case, both may end with tragedy, too.
We all wish for a world without AIDS, without HIV, without fear. Again, there's nothing more I hate than being told "you can't do such and such". I will rebel again and again, until I've taken the helm of the rules and made them to my liking.
But this mad resurgence of gay youth having unprotected sex drives me even more nuts (pardon the poor word choice). The most chilling scene in my head revolves around the sheer idea of a "bug party", a scary parody of reality TV where HIV- "bug chasers" (mostly gay men in their 20s and 30s who can no longer stand the idea of living with the fear of infection) engage in a drug-filled, condom-free orgy. In this mix of 10 or so men, one is HIV positive.
The rules are simple: fuck as many people as possible in hopes of being the "lucky" man to walk home with the disease.
I don't hear about these parties too often anymore, but their very existence haunts my memory. This is irresponsibility and hopelessness at its worse, but, to be honest, I can't blame these men really.
Treasure Island Video's bareback series are some of the best sellers at porn shops, and they sell a fantasy with a warning. But who in their right mind wants to be told about nasty diseases when everyone (including the viewer) is having such a good time?
Truth be told, I enjoyed Dawson's 20-load weekend very much. But whenever anyone uses the word "breed" to describe the idea of ejaculation with the intent to potentially infect, I shudder. And sometimes, I start to cry.
I am very lucky to have never had someone close to me die yet. But Death is very close to me, in my heart, in my head, in my fingers, in my blood. I supported my wonderful ex-boyfriend through the death of both parents, and last year, a long-time friend of the man who I will call my "gay godfather" J, died of AIDS.
Grief has transformed J in a relatively short period. Depression has set in, he's gained a few pounds, and he suffers dearly, daily. But he fights to keep a smile and get up in the morning, and to me, that's all what counts. His friends were not irresponsible-- they were not sex-addicts, they were not all-night partiers. They were brothers, they were family.
I have absolutely no right to lecture the "bug-chasers". But I want everyone to consider the suffering of those left behind, the holes left in the soul after death. Because death here is the ultimate consequence of giving completely into fear, letting it win over your body and soul, and it spreads like a cancer into the hearts of those you love.
But again, why waste a life when you can fight to restore one? I cannot, and I do not wish to ban bareback pornography, or the "unsafe-sex education" it presents to youth. It showcases the now-rare intimacy of bodily fluid, lost to us after the emergence AIDS and HIV, and I don't want that taken away. Perhaps it could even be a symbol for resistance, a dream that we can achieve once we find a cure.
Over and out.
....
Hey, Bareback Porn that donates to AIDS charities? It just might work, someday, somewhere.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Intimography, Peopleography, Pornography
Astrology
If you ever catch me reading on the internet for hours on end, I'm probably something about astrology. I never get bored of it. Honestly, I don't think I have the mathematical ability to ever be a full fledged economist, but if I ever were one, I'd love to say something along the lines of "Pluto is square with Mercury, indicating increased corruption in the financial sector during the first quarter. This influence, combined with blahblahblah..something about policy lags in monetary policy... indicates rocky times ahead! " on national television. I'd do it just once though, to save my credibility. Okay, maybe twice.
In any case, one day I was looking through a particularly interesting "kinky astrology" website. Complete with its yahoo! geocities address and midi format background music (how 1994!) it was decidedly amateurish. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it greatly. Especially that part about Libran men being porn addicts, with their curious minds that think about sex a lot but don't spend half the time actually doing anything about it.
Now I'll also openly admit to a love of pornography. Aside from astrological analyses, it's the other thing that'll get me spending hours on end surfing the internetz. Thankfully I definitely haven't hit "guru" or "addict" status, but I do know where to get my daily stash.
You could say that I'm part of the "internet generation" of gays.
At age seven, with my father's instruction, I was writing easy programs in Qbasic. (Truth be told, I wanted to be like Natalya Siminova from Goldeneye. She was damn cool, and she was the first Bond girl I saw that had some real brains. And she had a cool Russian accent). I got my first America Online account in 1997. Oh and how my fascination with the world grew.
I was around 9 when the 4th grade girls in my elementary school in Plano, TX got the opportunity to see the now-infamous "pancake video". All the boys were sent outside for a second recess lasting about 45 minutes, and we were told that we weren't "mature" enough to see the video. I fumed for almost all of the 45 minutes, saying "Hey, I'm pretty mature!".
And indeed I was. At the time I was lucky enough to have overcome the (first) bulk of the racism and the elementary-school bullying I recieved when I first moved to Texas. I was fairly well-liked by my classmates, and I was happy. I quietly did my homework right when I came home, performed well in class, and I was my homeroom teacher's favorite.
Being told that I wasn't "mature" enough thus started a long-standing rebellion against the "prohibition of access". I never relented, instead using my powers of gossip and small-talk (still worthy weapons today) to wheedle the information out all the girls. By age 12, I was well prepared to watch our version of the video. And so began a life-long love of information, dirty words and drawings of the male body.
Suddenly a part of my body that had been mostly ignored (except on trips to the washroom) became the subject of study, of fascination, of mystery. Eventually internet searches on "puberty" became searches on "penises", "penises" became "masturbation", "masturbation" became "jacking off". Eventually I hit up on things like homosexuality. And then, I moved on to full-fledged hardcore pornography. Though at the time I honestly think I was just fascinated by my own body rather than the bodies of others, these experiences played a pivotal role in my sexual development.
_____________________________________________________
Pornography
I'll venture to say that the majority of gay men of the internet generation grew up in a very similar way.
Gay Porn was like the fire of Prometheus, exposing us to carnal, manly, man-oriented knowledge, to beauty beyond our wildest dreams. It was like looking at a dance that we too were destined to eventually dance when we came of age and became part of "the tribe". This dance of flesh, moaning and strange embraces was a delight to watch, but having never belonged to the tribe of "real men", it was at the same time excruciatingly painful, even while we masturbated for the sake of own own bodily pleasures. For with the knowledge of this dance came the sagacity of solitude and the wisdom of waiting.
Pornography and pop-culture has stolen the place of the Greek Gods. No longer do we worship and exemplify faraway, impossibly perfect marble statues of Hercules and Achilles, nor do we partake in the simple fun of schadenfreude when a foolish mortal woman falls to the ruses of Zeus or Pan. Instead, we have taken to creating gods out of humans through the power of media and mob psychology. We have a long-list of porn stars from sites like Randy Blue along with new workouts that promise us the affection and adoration of thousands. And as for schadenfreude, we have Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
As for me, there are days when I worry that I have embraced an artificial sexuality, one that is even more intensely ugly just because it is the manufactured imitation of something natural.
For a very long time, Pornography formed the basis of my attraction to men as well as the ideals that I strived for. For a short time during my early teenage years, I succumed to bulimia and manoxeria, losing a total of 50 pounds in a period of 3 months. All I wanted was to be loved.
I said, "If not for my brains, my charms, my smile, my kindness, oh please god, let me be loved for my beautiful body. And sometimes, my life would become a porn shoot.
There are still days when I pose in front of the mirror, checking and critiquing. First I will criticize my hair, then my face, then my butt, then my stomach, then my chest. I'll yell at myself, saying that all the muscle boys have all the fun. And then I'll just feel empty, realizing that I can never live up to the "white standard" of gay sexuality in its current state. That even if I work out every day of the week and have the most perfect body with the most beautiful dick, there will still be men with personal ads that say "No Fats, No Fems, no Asians".
"NO FATS, NO FEMS, NO ASIANS" is a double whammy for me, akin to the likes of "NO CHINESE AND DOGS ALLOWED" or "WE ARE NOT JAPS" signs in 1940s San Francisco Chinatown. I have two major qualms about this specific "motto" that at in 2000, gained notoriety in Australian newspapers due to its overwhelming presence in the personal section one freely distributed gay weekly. In one specific issue, an entire half-page of personals had this same motto at the end of every ad.
(Now, I don't think anyone in the world today could get away with "No Blacks and No Jews", but apparently many gay men think it's perfectly fine to say "No Asians" if they say "Sorry, it's just a preference". To an Asian-American, this kind of behavior is akin to burning someone's parents alive and turning them into meat chili, serving it to them, and then saying "Gotcha!". Or, on a less brutal note, it's exactly like when a bully punches you and says "Just kidding!" or "stop hurting yourself!")
In any case, as someone with a love of poetry and a knowledge of computer science in his heart, my first qualm is the mathematical formulas that erupt from the particular word ordering of this mantra. The first equation is (Fat=Ugly) = (Effeminacy = Ugly) = (Asian = Ugly). The second equation is that (Fat = Effeminacy) = (Effeminacy = Asian).
This is where the hideous, second face of gay pornography and gay culture rears its head. This is my second qualm--through the same weapons of ignoring and invisibility tactics that were launched against homosexuality throughout most of modern history, the mainstream gay media has perpetrated a cycle of violence through silence, and this time racial minorities and the other "uglies" are the unfortunate whipping boys.
Where are my mainstream Indian-American and Asian-American Gay porn stars and underwear models, where are my portly but handsome gay movie stars? Where are my sexy, limp-wristed boys with hearts of gold who are as seductive as they are fierce?
The sad truth is that these things are not popping up in the "primary sexual education" that young gay men are currently recieving through pornography. I personally believe that if we are to solve the problem of gay sexual racism and body discrimination we can either revolutionize gay sexual education in its public, official forms (which doesn't even really exist, and is highly unlikely anytime soon), or we can change the way sexual imagery and gay pornography is done today.
________________________________________________________
Fight the Male State! Our Secret Weapon: Activist Porn
As for critical analysis of my outrage as well as solutions to the problem, I now turn to the work of Richard Fung, the Carribean-Chinese video artist whose groundbreaking "Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn" blew my mind and made me seriously think about what I was downloading every week.
(Side note: I might even be related/have family friends that know this guy, since he's Carribean Chinese like me. Strange!).
What I most strongly remember from this particular piece are the scenes he describes of a certain 1994 video (whose name I don't remember, but is mentioned in the article), which I will describe as "Martial Arts Manlove and Dojo Dick Drilling Gone Wrong". Oh how I do want to see this, though.
The movie starts out in a dojo, where the all-white cast is in full karate gear, just finishing their practice. Fast forward, and you enter the beginnings of an orgy scene. Johnny, the main character of this movie, is having his dick sucked by another white guy. Soon, Johnny puts on a white hachimaki headband with the Imperial Japanese Sun (think Ryu from Street Fighter, or the Karate kid if you wish), and before you can say "presto!", a cloud of smoke appears and he turns into an Asian man! Johnny, now imbued "the spirit of Asia" is now plundered up the ass and services his white comrades, all without getting much attention down there for himself. Once he takes off the hachimaki, however, he reverts to being white and fucks another guy on the dojo floor.
All throughout the movie, Johnny is never allowed to transgress this barrier between submissive, feminine Asian and dominant, masculine European in a some kind of gay porn version of Orientalism and the Opium War. The sad thing is that despite the age of this video, things really haven't changed in the land of gay porn, gay media, gay advertising, or Hollywood for that matter.
________________________________________________________
The overwhelming result of this continuing trend in porn however, is that people are actually buying into this false, almost manichean binary as a result of this "Bad Education". Too many gay men still believe that the average Asian penis is 4 inches (2 inches below average), that we all are hungry bottoms, and that while we are young, we make very happy houseboys.
I strongly believe that our "erotic vocabulary" is developed in youth. If we do not grow up with real-life exposure to other ethnicities, for example, we can jump to three extremes when we eroticize them:
1) We can turn them into exotic objects of beauty (the worst kind of Rice Queens)
2) We can lump them into a whole and disregard them (the kind of person that says NO ASIANS)
3) We can rely completely on pornography to develop our sexual understanding of another race (which is just completely ridiculous, but still happens anyways)
All three extremes showed up in the first month I came to Montreal and went to the village.
-I got a strange invitation on the street on the first day I went there.
"Tu es Japonais? Tu veux manger du sushi avec moi? Je payerai tout."
-The first time I went to Unity, I thought someone was cute and I smiled. Instead, I got a bitchy glare along with a "stop sign hand" straight out of a Diana Ross Song, along with "Pas d'asiatiques, no small dick for me, Sorry".
-And one time in a bar, I had the "pleasure" of an older, rather piggish man whispering into my ear "I want to stick my sushi roll up your ass".
I couldn't help but think that pornography had to do something with this, so I looked to Richard Fung for some answers. And indeed, he suggested the idea of "minority-directed porn, based on the recent trends of feminist straight and lesbian porn".
______________________________________________________________
Indeed, I have a history of looking to women warriors as my inspiration. Characters and people like Geum-Ja from Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Amelie Poulain from Amelie and my professor, Adrienne Carey Hurley all remind me of the power of a "nuturing revolution". For me, they are my Judy Garlands, beacons of hope that keep me fighting with smiles and acts of love for the sake of getting over the current "rainbow" and making it my own damn rainbow, too.
The silly dream is that:
One day, I will participate in my own self-directed, self-acted pornography with a multi-ethnic casts young and old, transfolk and all, with human, not homosexual or heterosexual intimacy as its centerpiece. Actors will be real-life lovers with real bodies, and much fun will be had. We will make enough money to at least take everyone out for a wonderful dinner, and watchers will feel "Wow, the variety of the world is wonderful". It will become a cult classic, and everyone will get photoshoot model contracts for that gay adult empire Priape, and finally, finally someone who's not white will become a Priape gay pinup model.
It's a dream, but it's not impossible. Hell, the great thing about internet pornography is that it's close to perfect competition! Low barriers to entry, low start-up costs. Extremely difficult to get your product out in the long run, but you can get your message out. And maybe that's all that counts.
Alright, I'm a little bit tuckered out right now, but I'll have my conclusion out sometime soon. Stay Tuned for more ramblings.
If you ever catch me reading on the internet for hours on end, I'm probably something about astrology. I never get bored of it. Honestly, I don't think I have the mathematical ability to ever be a full fledged economist, but if I ever were one, I'd love to say something along the lines of "Pluto is square with Mercury, indicating increased corruption in the financial sector during the first quarter. This influence, combined with blahblahblah..something about policy lags in monetary policy... indicates rocky times ahead! " on national television. I'd do it just once though, to save my credibility. Okay, maybe twice.
In any case, one day I was looking through a particularly interesting "kinky astrology" website. Complete with its yahoo! geocities address and midi format background music (how 1994!) it was decidedly amateurish. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it greatly. Especially that part about Libran men being porn addicts, with their curious minds that think about sex a lot but don't spend half the time actually doing anything about it.
Now I'll also openly admit to a love of pornography. Aside from astrological analyses, it's the other thing that'll get me spending hours on end surfing the internetz. Thankfully I definitely haven't hit "guru" or "addict" status, but I do know where to get my daily stash.
You could say that I'm part of the "internet generation" of gays.
At age seven, with my father's instruction, I was writing easy programs in Qbasic. (Truth be told, I wanted to be like Natalya Siminova from Goldeneye. She was damn cool, and she was the first Bond girl I saw that had some real brains. And she had a cool Russian accent). I got my first America Online account in 1997. Oh and how my fascination with the world grew.
I was around 9 when the 4th grade girls in my elementary school in Plano, TX got the opportunity to see the now-infamous "pancake video". All the boys were sent outside for a second recess lasting about 45 minutes, and we were told that we weren't "mature" enough to see the video. I fumed for almost all of the 45 minutes, saying "Hey, I'm pretty mature!".
And indeed I was. At the time I was lucky enough to have overcome the (first) bulk of the racism and the elementary-school bullying I recieved when I first moved to Texas. I was fairly well-liked by my classmates, and I was happy. I quietly did my homework right when I came home, performed well in class, and I was my homeroom teacher's favorite.
Being told that I wasn't "mature" enough thus started a long-standing rebellion against the "prohibition of access". I never relented, instead using my powers of gossip and small-talk (still worthy weapons today) to wheedle the information out all the girls. By age 12, I was well prepared to watch our version of the video. And so began a life-long love of information, dirty words and drawings of the male body.
Suddenly a part of my body that had been mostly ignored (except on trips to the washroom) became the subject of study, of fascination, of mystery. Eventually internet searches on "puberty" became searches on "penises", "penises" became "masturbation", "masturbation" became "jacking off". Eventually I hit up on things like homosexuality. And then, I moved on to full-fledged hardcore pornography. Though at the time I honestly think I was just fascinated by my own body rather than the bodies of others, these experiences played a pivotal role in my sexual development.
_____________________________________________________
Pornography
I'll venture to say that the majority of gay men of the internet generation grew up in a very similar way.
Gay Porn was like the fire of Prometheus, exposing us to carnal, manly, man-oriented knowledge, to beauty beyond our wildest dreams. It was like looking at a dance that we too were destined to eventually dance when we came of age and became part of "the tribe". This dance of flesh, moaning and strange embraces was a delight to watch, but having never belonged to the tribe of "real men", it was at the same time excruciatingly painful, even while we masturbated for the sake of own own bodily pleasures. For with the knowledge of this dance came the sagacity of solitude and the wisdom of waiting.
Pornography and pop-culture has stolen the place of the Greek Gods. No longer do we worship and exemplify faraway, impossibly perfect marble statues of Hercules and Achilles, nor do we partake in the simple fun of schadenfreude when a foolish mortal woman falls to the ruses of Zeus or Pan. Instead, we have taken to creating gods out of humans through the power of media and mob psychology. We have a long-list of porn stars from sites like Randy Blue along with new workouts that promise us the affection and adoration of thousands. And as for schadenfreude, we have Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
As for me, there are days when I worry that I have embraced an artificial sexuality, one that is even more intensely ugly just because it is the manufactured imitation of something natural.
For a very long time, Pornography formed the basis of my attraction to men as well as the ideals that I strived for. For a short time during my early teenage years, I succumed to bulimia and manoxeria, losing a total of 50 pounds in a period of 3 months. All I wanted was to be loved.
I said, "If not for my brains, my charms, my smile, my kindness, oh please god, let me be loved for my beautiful body. And sometimes, my life would become a porn shoot.
There are still days when I pose in front of the mirror, checking and critiquing. First I will criticize my hair, then my face, then my butt, then my stomach, then my chest. I'll yell at myself, saying that all the muscle boys have all the fun. And then I'll just feel empty, realizing that I can never live up to the "white standard" of gay sexuality in its current state. That even if I work out every day of the week and have the most perfect body with the most beautiful dick, there will still be men with personal ads that say "No Fats, No Fems, no Asians".
"NO FATS, NO FEMS, NO ASIANS" is a double whammy for me, akin to the likes of "NO CHINESE AND DOGS ALLOWED" or "WE ARE NOT JAPS" signs in 1940s San Francisco Chinatown. I have two major qualms about this specific "motto" that at in 2000, gained notoriety in Australian newspapers due to its overwhelming presence in the personal section one freely distributed gay weekly. In one specific issue, an entire half-page of personals had this same motto at the end of every ad.
(Now, I don't think anyone in the world today could get away with "No Blacks and No Jews", but apparently many gay men think it's perfectly fine to say "No Asians" if they say "Sorry, it's just a preference". To an Asian-American, this kind of behavior is akin to burning someone's parents alive and turning them into meat chili, serving it to them, and then saying "Gotcha!". Or, on a less brutal note, it's exactly like when a bully punches you and says "Just kidding!" or "stop hurting yourself!")
In any case, as someone with a love of poetry and a knowledge of computer science in his heart, my first qualm is the mathematical formulas that erupt from the particular word ordering of this mantra. The first equation is (Fat=Ugly) = (Effeminacy = Ugly) = (Asian = Ugly). The second equation is that (Fat = Effeminacy) = (Effeminacy = Asian).
This is where the hideous, second face of gay pornography and gay culture rears its head. This is my second qualm--through the same weapons of ignoring and invisibility tactics that were launched against homosexuality throughout most of modern history, the mainstream gay media has perpetrated a cycle of violence through silence, and this time racial minorities and the other "uglies" are the unfortunate whipping boys.
Where are my mainstream Indian-American and Asian-American Gay porn stars and underwear models, where are my portly but handsome gay movie stars? Where are my sexy, limp-wristed boys with hearts of gold who are as seductive as they are fierce?
The sad truth is that these things are not popping up in the "primary sexual education" that young gay men are currently recieving through pornography. I personally believe that if we are to solve the problem of gay sexual racism and body discrimination we can either revolutionize gay sexual education in its public, official forms (which doesn't even really exist, and is highly unlikely anytime soon), or we can change the way sexual imagery and gay pornography is done today.
________________________________________________________
Fight the Male State! Our Secret Weapon: Activist Porn
As for critical analysis of my outrage as well as solutions to the problem, I now turn to the work of Richard Fung, the Carribean-Chinese video artist whose groundbreaking "Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn" blew my mind and made me seriously think about what I was downloading every week.
(Side note: I might even be related/have family friends that know this guy, since he's Carribean Chinese like me. Strange!).
What I most strongly remember from this particular piece are the scenes he describes of a certain 1994 video (whose name I don't remember, but is mentioned in the article), which I will describe as "Martial Arts Manlove and Dojo Dick Drilling Gone Wrong". Oh how I do want to see this, though.
The movie starts out in a dojo, where the all-white cast is in full karate gear, just finishing their practice. Fast forward, and you enter the beginnings of an orgy scene. Johnny, the main character of this movie, is having his dick sucked by another white guy. Soon, Johnny puts on a white hachimaki headband with the Imperial Japanese Sun (think Ryu from Street Fighter, or the Karate kid if you wish), and before you can say "presto!", a cloud of smoke appears and he turns into an Asian man! Johnny, now imbued "the spirit of Asia" is now plundered up the ass and services his white comrades, all without getting much attention down there for himself. Once he takes off the hachimaki, however, he reverts to being white and fucks another guy on the dojo floor.
All throughout the movie, Johnny is never allowed to transgress this barrier between submissive, feminine Asian and dominant, masculine European in a some kind of gay porn version of Orientalism and the Opium War. The sad thing is that despite the age of this video, things really haven't changed in the land of gay porn, gay media, gay advertising, or Hollywood for that matter.
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The overwhelming result of this continuing trend in porn however, is that people are actually buying into this false, almost manichean binary as a result of this "Bad Education". Too many gay men still believe that the average Asian penis is 4 inches (2 inches below average), that we all are hungry bottoms, and that while we are young, we make very happy houseboys.
I strongly believe that our "erotic vocabulary" is developed in youth. If we do not grow up with real-life exposure to other ethnicities, for example, we can jump to three extremes when we eroticize them:
1) We can turn them into exotic objects of beauty (the worst kind of Rice Queens)
2) We can lump them into a whole and disregard them (the kind of person that says NO ASIANS)
3) We can rely completely on pornography to develop our sexual understanding of another race (which is just completely ridiculous, but still happens anyways)
All three extremes showed up in the first month I came to Montreal and went to the village.
-I got a strange invitation on the street on the first day I went there.
"Tu es Japonais? Tu veux manger du sushi avec moi? Je payerai tout."
-The first time I went to Unity, I thought someone was cute and I smiled. Instead, I got a bitchy glare along with a "stop sign hand" straight out of a Diana Ross Song, along with "Pas d'asiatiques, no small dick for me, Sorry".
-And one time in a bar, I had the "pleasure" of an older, rather piggish man whispering into my ear "I want to stick my sushi roll up your ass".
I couldn't help but think that pornography had to do something with this, so I looked to Richard Fung for some answers. And indeed, he suggested the idea of "minority-directed porn, based on the recent trends of feminist straight and lesbian porn".
______________________________________________________________
Indeed, I have a history of looking to women warriors as my inspiration. Characters and people like Geum-Ja from Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Amelie Poulain from Amelie and my professor, Adrienne Carey Hurley all remind me of the power of a "nuturing revolution". For me, they are my Judy Garlands, beacons of hope that keep me fighting with smiles and acts of love for the sake of getting over the current "rainbow" and making it my own damn rainbow, too.
The silly dream is that:
One day, I will participate in my own self-directed, self-acted pornography with a multi-ethnic casts young and old, transfolk and all, with human, not homosexual or heterosexual intimacy as its centerpiece. Actors will be real-life lovers with real bodies, and much fun will be had. We will make enough money to at least take everyone out for a wonderful dinner, and watchers will feel "Wow, the variety of the world is wonderful". It will become a cult classic, and everyone will get photoshoot model contracts for that gay adult empire Priape, and finally, finally someone who's not white will become a Priape gay pinup model.
It's a dream, but it's not impossible. Hell, the great thing about internet pornography is that it's close to perfect competition! Low barriers to entry, low start-up costs. Extremely difficult to get your product out in the long run, but you can get your message out. And maybe that's all that counts.
Alright, I'm a little bit tuckered out right now, but I'll have my conclusion out sometime soon. Stay Tuned for more ramblings.
Eask
Sweet November:
with your ending
that's always bitter.
Your smile beckons gray
skies like a melody.
Oh sleeted, slated hours,
I recall the ashen rain.
Hollow coffee and sugared pain.
here in that space called Imagination--
I chipped cups with sad anticipation.
Staring.
Silent November,
you are much more to me
than a man,
than a month--
Kismet? Kiss me?
or Kill Me.
I only want purity
in these feelings that seem to swerve
in the food that you daily serve.
To love is
To melt the glacial distance
between counter and table
street to blue sky fabled
I'd become the winter mud,
if only to remember
the flowers of your spring.
with your ending
that's always bitter.
Your smile beckons gray
skies like a melody.
Oh sleeted, slated hours,
I recall the ashen rain.
Hollow coffee and sugared pain.
here in that space called Imagination--
I chipped cups with sad anticipation.
Staring.
Silent November,
you are much more to me
than a man,
than a month--
Kismet? Kiss me?
or Kill Me.
I only want purity
in these feelings that seem to swerve
in the food that you daily serve.
To love is
To melt the glacial distance
between counter and table
street to blue sky fabled
I'd become the winter mud,
if only to remember
the flowers of your spring.
Snake
How do I withdraw the venom
seeping in sordid silence
that courses in virgin veins
and makes every breath
a searing, tender pain?
I saw your smile in a mirror--
Now you love another reflection.
How do I pick up the bloodied pieces
of years of dodging and deception?
To love quietly is to be sorely bitten
to love alone is to be smite and smitten
feeling the silken pleasure of poison--
falling from too noxious a vertigo
once you've discovered
where the heart has to go
Scream, expand
expend
until the seams of teared tears
begin to rend
I loved you, I love you
dear, so beautiful,
friend.
seeping in sordid silence
that courses in virgin veins
and makes every breath
a searing, tender pain?
I saw your smile in a mirror--
Now you love another reflection.
How do I pick up the bloodied pieces
of years of dodging and deception?
To love quietly is to be sorely bitten
to love alone is to be smite and smitten
feeling the silken pleasure of poison--
falling from too noxious a vertigo
once you've discovered
where the heart has to go
Scream, expand
expend
until the seams of teared tears
begin to rend
I loved you, I love you
dear, so beautiful,
friend.
Virgo
Late September and the warm rain has fallen
three hours since we first kissed.
35 minutes since you've left,
and three years now I remember right
Me, alone on an evergreen lawn
here in a wet T-shirt at a breaking dawn
Incredible, indelible fragile me,
remembers every heartbeat's hurt,
the ripples of your tongue immediately
broke the silence of my neon chains,
and all that remains are sudden refrains
a glowing ember of glitter,
so unseatingly, sparking in pain
Emphatically unsubversive
is the shape of our hearts,
Remember! We're not yet
quite as traditional as those old farts,
but still I remember
Sinewed, solid arms refusing to release,
I remember Love:
unreasonable, unrebellious,
unbelievable U--
men were built to fight, but boy
I'd wage war if Love dared to be true
But today is Sunday in September.
the rain now cold, and the earth went wet--
I breathe in the fecundity of slippery soil,
and my heart can't help but hope.
three hours since we first kissed.
35 minutes since you've left,
and three years now I remember right
Me, alone on an evergreen lawn
here in a wet T-shirt at a breaking dawn
Incredible, indelible fragile me,
remembers every heartbeat's hurt,
the ripples of your tongue immediately
broke the silence of my neon chains,
and all that remains are sudden refrains
a glowing ember of glitter,
so unseatingly, sparking in pain
Emphatically unsubversive
is the shape of our hearts,
Remember! We're not yet
quite as traditional as those old farts,
but still I remember
Sinewed, solid arms refusing to release,
I remember Love:
unreasonable, unrebellious,
unbelievable U--
men were built to fight, but boy
I'd wage war if Love dared to be true
But today is Sunday in September.
the rain now cold, and the earth went wet--
I breathe in the fecundity of slippery soil,
and my heart can't help but hope.
Last Night at the Meet Market
Grey skies this morning at the meet market,
and I've become the cruelest of butchers
the most savage of peddlers
the most seductive of merchants.
Give me a face: I'll give you a price
that's all I let you become:
pretty wrapping paper and stickers.
Thank you, I'm sorry. and
Cha-ching. 4.25 for Stew Beef, aged 21.
Bells.
Evening Vespers,
Nightly whispers.
I wished for change,
and now I've got it.
not necessarily what I meant, but
it's more than enough to buy the cement
to seal myself off from your tears
as you leave this sterile store
wanting more, more and more.
When did we let our hearts get so heavy?
I feel my teeth chewing on your tender tendons
and I remember that your strain
becomes my scarring pain,
not the pleasure I sought
last night in my flight to label
this boyish, bovine fable.
This is my beef.
and I've become the cruelest of butchers
the most savage of peddlers
the most seductive of merchants.
Give me a face: I'll give you a price
that's all I let you become:
pretty wrapping paper and stickers.
Thank you, I'm sorry. and
Cha-ching. 4.25 for Stew Beef, aged 21.
Bells.
Evening Vespers,
Nightly whispers.
I wished for change,
and now I've got it.
not necessarily what I meant, but
it's more than enough to buy the cement
to seal myself off from your tears
as you leave this sterile store
wanting more, more and more.
When did we let our hearts get so heavy?
I feel my teeth chewing on your tender tendons
and I remember that your strain
becomes my scarring pain,
not the pleasure I sought
last night in my flight to label
this boyish, bovine fable.
This is my beef.
Poems
Just to flesh out more content for the blog, I'm going ahead and importing some of the poems I've written in the past year. Some I still edit and touch up from time to time, but I'll go ahead and post the ones I feel more confident about.
On Manhood, for Nicholas Ahrens Townsend
Stand.
You will have proven
That you may run
to the barren ends of cities unknown
to the edges of loneliness uncharted.
And you will be stronger--
more dense than wilting hearts
more giving than the turbulent tide
of those silent, icy nights
so many moons ago.
Embody, engulf
that growing flame of freedom
that sparkles in your moonlit eyes
that surges in tensed veins
now unprovoked
Will is the strongest of woods.
Sever your own branch
from cruel patriarch beguiling,
from his gnarled tree
of destitution, inspid silence
You are your own prophet
for you map your morality,
the amorphous shape of destiny,
in palms of a love brightened
by the ages of a darkness once cherished.
I am proud of you.
On Manhood, for Nicholas Ahrens Townsend
Stand.
You will have proven
That you may run
to the barren ends of cities unknown
to the edges of loneliness uncharted.
And you will be stronger--
more dense than wilting hearts
more giving than the turbulent tide
of those silent, icy nights
so many moons ago.
Embody, engulf
that growing flame of freedom
that sparkles in your moonlit eyes
that surges in tensed veins
now unprovoked
Will is the strongest of woods.
Sever your own branch
from cruel patriarch beguiling,
from his gnarled tree
of destitution, inspid silence
You are your own prophet
for you map your morality,
the amorphous shape of destiny,
in palms of a love brightened
by the ages of a darkness once cherished.
I am proud of you.
Interest Rates
This is my fifth year of Economics study. I can't say that I'm the best of Economics students, but I can indeed say that I fascinated by the way an economics background can make you view the world. Like Physics professors draw connections between high-level quantum mechanics theory to philosophy, the inner poet in me wants to discover for myself the lessons that basic economic theory can teach us about everyday, human interactions. But most of all, I want to talk about love- that wonderful emotion that rules so much of our lives, that one precious thing that money can't buy. It exists right outside of the market, cannot be auctioned off, and for the lucky couples of this world, does not exhibit diminishing marginal utility.
But true, lasting Love is rare. One of the first multiple choice questions on a microeconomics exam almost always is to define scarcity. It's that very real concept of pitting unlimited wants versus limited resources, a million little holes in our hearts versus a very small amount of prince charmings and knights in white armor. Love in that respect, is very much like Money.
In a way, I like to imagine that Love is like a Monetary supply diagram. We can alter the levels of love in a relationship, making it more valuable or less valuable in a certain period of time, but the one difference here is that there is no "bank account" when it comes to loving people. The nominal interest rate (the value of love) when we love less may be higher, but there's no way to save up love, to store it away for a rainy day, a recession, a break-up.
The lesson here is thus to love daily, not to "love for a rainy day" with lavish gifts or money to make up for lack of attention (like parents who don't have time to see their children often do). Every day should be the time to tell your friends the nice compliments they deserve to hear, and now is the time to tell the person you love that you love them.
The above is what I'm trying to teach myself. In the past, I have banked and relied on big favors in the past, on gifts to others, all the while expecting large returns. I ended up getting nothing from people I considered my friends. The bubble burst. I've also made the mistake of loving people not enough, relying on the emotional support that I had given in the past to "make-up" for the lack of love that I was giving while the relationship was slowly dying.
My New Year's Resolution is thus to spend less on frivolous things, but to spend big amounts of love. The best thing is that it's almost free :D.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
For Mari Keiko
After much abuse of the Facebook Notes function, I have decided to try to make another blog to vent my creative jottings (and ventings) and also to spare my friends from constant floods of their Facebook updatelogs.
I dedicate the spirit of this blog to the characters of Mari Keiko Yonekawa and the female Zainichi Korean Author in Hoshino Tomoyuki's 2005 novel Saigo no Toiki (The Last Sigh, which I am in the middle of translating). In the novel, she cries in mourning for the death of a 2nd generation Zainichi Korean author who extinguishes her life in a mad dance of of written expression she can't quite control. The author simply couldn't help but write herself to death, despite having a restorative form of "dance" to which she devoted herself.
I still don't quite understand the two characters completely, and this is why they're always on my mind. Writing for me is almost always a restorative process. Unless I release the feelings on paper, I simply can't silence the inner storms that keep my mind churning and I can't see things with perspective. And I grow exponentially with the insight I gain. This is why I write, and this is also why I pray that I never "write myself out" by releasing myself at the rate that I'm growing as a person.
I dedicate the spirit of this blog to the characters of Mari Keiko Yonekawa and the female Zainichi Korean Author in Hoshino Tomoyuki's 2005 novel Saigo no Toiki (The Last Sigh, which I am in the middle of translating). In the novel, she cries in mourning for the death of a 2nd generation Zainichi Korean author who extinguishes her life in a mad dance of of written expression she can't quite control. The author simply couldn't help but write herself to death, despite having a restorative form of "dance" to which she devoted herself.
I still don't quite understand the two characters completely, and this is why they're always on my mind. Writing for me is almost always a restorative process. Unless I release the feelings on paper, I simply can't silence the inner storms that keep my mind churning and I can't see things with perspective. And I grow exponentially with the insight I gain. This is why I write, and this is also why I pray that I never "write myself out" by releasing myself at the rate that I'm growing as a person.
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