How Queer Korean Representation Helped Me Understand Who I Am—and What I Could Lose

We’re parked on the street and my mother is crying, although “crying” is far too mild a word for what she’s doing. “Weeping” doesn’t quite capture the intensity of it, either—she sounds like she’s dying, gnashing her teeth, hyperventilating, like she’s whipped herself into such an emotional frenzy that a blood vessel in her head might burst and she’ll hemorrhage.

She’s trying to climb into the driver’s seat to drive home, and I’m standing on the sidewalk, holding her from behind, bracing myself against the open passenger door. I’m trying to calm her down, trying to tell her it’s okay, it’s okay, but she’s having none of it—in her current state, I doubt she can hear or comprehend anything I’m saying.

A stranger comes up, asks, Is everything okay? Should I call 911? I’m not sure if he’s asking her or me. I can see people across the street pausing in their day to watch; I think someone might even be filming. No, it’s fine, I tell him, as my mother continues to flail and shriek in my arms. I think he thinks she’s in danger from me. I want to explain, I just came out to her, but I don’t.

*

When I think about it now, it’s pretty obvious. As a kid, I never fantasized about or play-acted my wedding, and, as I grew older, I never had two shits to give about boys, except either as annoyances or as friends. I didn’t form crushes on them, didn’t shape daydreams around them, and I marveled at my friends as they fell in and out of love, snuck out on dates, tried to hide hickeys. I watched as they drew hearts in their notebooks, got shy and giggly around the boys they liked. I knew instinctively to mimic their behavior. When pressed, I said I had a crush on one of the more popular boys, because yeah, sure, I could have had a crush on him.

Here, then, is why representation matters. Her very existence made it okay for me to consider my own sexuality. 

With my family, I masked my indifference to boys with studying, using academics and SATs and college applications as reasons I “didn’t have time to date,” and it worked. Most Asian immigrant adults don’t have much to say to an adolescent who’d rather go home and study, who doesn’t sneak out to meet boys, who seems focused on her future and her ambitions.

I wasn’t hiding in the closet then—I was hiding my body because I wasn’t thin, and I was told over and over again that my overweight body was unacceptable and grotesque. I was hiding because I wanted to disappear my body, and that meant blocking off any kind of desire, telling myself I didn’t care about love or companionship.

*

In another situation I might be laughing, because there’s something darkly comical about this—my mother isn’t wailing about how her kid is gay; she’s specifically wailing about her kid being a gay. We’d been driving to the subway station, and I was driving and getting on the freeway when she abruptly asked me, Are you a gay?

My parents and I had an explosive fight a few months prior because I’d referred to myself as a “gay woman” on social media (on Easter Sunday, no less—my timing is impeccable). My mother had taken to her bed, missing the bulk of my conversation with my father, which centered, unsurprisingly, around Christianity.

The Bible says homosexuality’s a sin; would you agree? he asked, assuming that I still believed in the faith in which my parents had raised me, the faith they still practiced and deeply believed. Tired and emotionally stunned by their extreme reaction, even though I had anticipated it, I said that yes, I would agree homosexuality was a sin if I were to ascribe the Bible any kind of authority—and somehow, we managed to leave it at that. We agreed that I would continue figuring out what I believed, and that I would not “act on” my gayness. Beneath all that was his implicit expectation that I would come back to the fold, leave this talk of being gay behind as a moment of confusion, and eventually enter into holy matrimony with a good Christian man.

I don’t know what’s led my mother to bring it up again, months later, on this particular day. I don’t want to lie, so I say, Yes, while her eyes drill holes into the side of my head. But I’m not acting on it! I add hastily, like that would make it okay, my active choice not to be gay or act on my gayness, but, unlike my father, she doesn’t care for such distinctions. I drive while she yells and weeps and despairs, acting the way mothers often did in the Korean dramas I grew up watching.

I finally get my hysterical mother home, and my father comes home early from work. My mother tells me to get out and takes to her bed again, now quietly sobbing. I ask my father if I should leave, and he asks me where I would go. I say I can put my stuff in storage and crash with my best friend while I figure things out.

I can’t overstate the relief I feel, knowing that at least I have somewhere to go, people who’ll take me in and make sure I don’t wind up homeless or alone or abandoned; make sure I don’t become a statistic, another gay kid of conservative Christian parents who internalizes all that homophobia and turns it inward, potentially leading to self-harm.

*

I have a type, and the woman I’ve loved since 2016 is exactly it. She is tall and thin, with high cheekbones and a great smile and enviable bone structure—which is my long way of saying she’s a model-type, though she doesn’t seem to fuss much over her appearance. She’s androgynous, softly butch, and she rocks her short hair and the tattoos she’s got up and down her arms. A chef who runs her own kitchens, she seems secure in who she is and what she can do, and I’ve no doubt she could take charge were we ever to cross paths. I’ve loved this woman since 2016, but we’re strangers. We’ve never met. She is the woman who finally made me admit to myself that, hey, I’m gay, who’d have thought?

I’ve had crushes on girls my whole life, “girl crushes” I thought were normal—because didn’t girls have crushes on other girls? And weren’t these crushes innocent and sweet and, again, normal? For years, I could rattle off what I found beautiful and lovely in women, and I couldn’t tell you the first thing I was drawn to in men except for musical genius, when present. Even then, what I desired wasn’t the men themselves, but proximity to their genius. I’d ignored the fact that my crushes on female celebrities burned brighter and stronger over time, while my crushes on male celebrities flared out after a few months.

And here, then, is why representation matters. Growing up in a conservative Korean Christian community, I didn’t know anyone who was gay. I didn’t know anyone who even thought they might be gay. Being gay wasn’t a thing anyone was; there was one way to be, and that was heterosexual.

Not only that, but there was also really only one way to be that one way to be: If you were a girl, you went to college, yes, but your primary aim was to meet a good, godly man, get married early, have a lot of children, and stay home and care for your family. If you were a boy, you went to college, got a good job that paid well and left you with plenty of free time to serve at your church, met a good, godly woman, got married early, had a lot of kids, and worked your well-paying job and served at your church and sat at the head of your household as the spiritual leader of your family. Premarital sex was obviously condemned, and girls were to protect their “purity.” I don’t know what boys were taught about purity, because I wasn’t a boy and, of course, we were usually segregated by gender, though I do acknowledge that my church was much less rigid about maintaining gender lines than other churches and denominations could be (and still are).

None of the dialogue around dating or boys or sex seemed to apply to me. Unlike the other girls in my peer group, I didn’t express any interest in dating; I was too busy studying. My studiousness had nothing to do with wanting to stay “pure,” though. I was being told that my overweight body was unacceptable, that I needed to lose weight if I wanted to be loved or reach my potential. All throughout high school and far into my twenties, this was the message that was drilled into me by all the first-generation Korean adults in my life, both explicitly and not: that I couldn’t date until I was thin, because no boy would be interested unless I was thin. That meant I didn’t force myself to like boys or try to date boys, but it also led me to believe I was a sad, sexless human being until my late twenties.

In a way, it was a huge relief to realize, a few years ago, that there was nothing wrong with me—to understand finally why I’d never had any interest in boys: I liked women. And here was this woman who made that very clear.

It was a total fucking relief to say it out loud: Of course, I’m totally gay.

I’ve always been a daydreamer, and I’ve always had an overactive imagination, but what I feel for her feels different. Her existence, her public presence, means something more to me. I knew, cognitively, that there were other gay Asian Americans out there, but I couldn’t really think of many, much less a lesbian Asian American, until I saw her. Her very existence made it okay for me to consider my own sexuality. There she was, an openly gay, successful, celebrated Asian American. And if I wanted to indulge in the fantasy of being with her, then I’d have to dispel my false identity as a heterosexual woman.

*

When I finally realized I was gay, I was thirty-one. My first foray into dating was a literary speed dating event. I put on my bright spring dress because it was early summer, and I put on my favorite red lipstick, and I sat there feeling so self-conscious, wondering if my arms looked too big, if my lipstick were too bright, if this, if that, goddamn, why was I doing this again? All these other women were so dynamic, beautiful, full of life, and there I was—big and frumpy and dull.

I didn’t have many hopes for this speed dating event, though I was proud of myself for getting there. I had a glass of wine. I talked to a good number of women, made note of a few of them, and wondered if I’d really email the event organizers with their code names when I got back to my apartment. Normally, I don’t think I would have. I’d had a good night, though, enjoyed the ease of talking to other bookish women; so I sent an email before I went to bed, expecting nothing of it.

The next morning, I received an email from the organizers, congratulating me for matching with a few and sharing names and contact information. I waited, wondering if any of the women might email me. I waited, not wanting to be the one to take that first step. Someone emailed, and we started texting. She was proper, polite, bookish in her emails and texts, but I didn’t exactly remember who she was—we’d been assigned code names at the event, and I’d already forgotten which code names went with which faces.

We went to dinner at this cute Italian place in the West Village, and she was polite, proper, and bookish in person, too. We talked more, drank wine, ate pasta, shared a slice of olive oil cake for dessert. We walked to the Union Square subway together afterwards and made plans to see each other again. She didn’t fall into my physical type, was more femme than the women I’m usually drawn to, but she was sweet. I wanted her to kiss me, but she never did; not on that date, and not on the one that followed. We lost touch soon after.

*

It’s the day after my mother’s meltdown in the car. The woman I’ve loved since 2016 is doing an event in Los Angeles, so naturally I make plans to go see her. My mother has reached a place of peaceful denial, or so it seems. I tell her my plans and she says, Isn’t she a gay?

You Googled her? I ask, almost amused.

Of course. She’s a gay.

She’s also this and that, I say, and I suppose that appeases her because my mother doesn’t say much else, and we go to bed.

Hilariously, my mother had been the first person to suggest the possibility of queerness to me; one night, years ago, when I was in college and we were driving home, she’d asked me out of nowhere, Are you a lesbian? I don’t think she was serious in that moment; I believe she intended it as a sarcastic comment on my total lack of dating and non-mention of boys. Still, that moment stuck with me, though I wouldn’t think about it seriously until much later. After I saw that first photo of this woman, after I finally started dealing with the insidious effects of body shaming and began healing and claiming who I really was, it was a total fucking relief to say it out loud: Well, duh. Of course, I’m totally gay.

I’m nervous in the morning, my brain spinning cotton-candy fantasies of meet-cutes. I go to see her, and she’s exactly as I’ve built her up in my head. She’s tall and thin, and she’s wearing all black, her hair parted on the side and gelled into place, the side of her head shaved. She sounds exactly as expected: voice on the lower register, slightly nasal, slightly throaty. And then there are all the things that don’t come across in photographs or interviews—the way she fidgets and shifts in her seat constantly; the way her eyes flit around the room, unable to rest in one place, on one person.

I run away once the event ends, not staying for the meet-and-greet, and join my parents for an early dinner. We’ve struck a truce since my mother’s meltdown—an uneasy truce on my end. My mother has been mollified by the idea that I was just “confused” because I’ve never dated boys, and had somehow deluded myself into believing that I was “a gay” due to their lack of attention and interest. She thinks that all I need to do is “meet a nice boy.” My father, maybe, suspects that it is not that simple, but hopes it is.

I am too tired, too raw and bruised, to want to fight about this anymore; not when I now know that I’m living in a ticking clock and this, all of this—dinners with my parents, quiet family gatherings, peaceful conversations—will likely be gone one day. Because I am a gay Korean kid with conservative Christian Korean parents, and I will lose my family by being fully who I am.

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