I Still Love My Former Baby Gay Self
And so does Lesbian Jesus
On the first night of Pride Month, I patted myself on the back for outgrowing all that corny gay pride stuff. On the second night of Pride Month, I lost my voice shouting “GIRLS LIKE GIRLS LIKE BOYS DO” at a lesbian concert.
When I first came out at the age of twenty-two, I was so excited to finally “be gay.” Someone joked that the reason thirty-something-year-old gays act like we’re teenagers is because we’re born again when we come out (pun inevitable).
I felt a sense of urgency to catch up on everything I had missed out on when I was in the closet. I bleached half my hair and dyed it purple, which washed out to neon pink. I did the snapback thing. I attended Pride Parades religiously, the way I used to attend church on Easter.
I gorged myself on lesbian content, especially on YouTube: Rose and Rosie, UnsolicitedProject (a.k.a. TheGayWomenChannel), Hayden Royalty, SooNotSue. I watched Carmilla about three times, and the first few months of dating a woman after coming out was, in part, a lesbian movie marathon: “Spider Lilies,” “Bound,” “Saving Face,” “Fingersmith,” “I Can’t Think Straight.” Most of it was awful and cheesy, but that was exactly the point. Watching other queer women pining over someone unattainable really hit the spot. Even after finding a miraculous partner who later became my wife, this sappy sapphic content gave voice to feelings I had harbored for so long in silence.
Just around then, a song went viral on YouTube. The title was so on-the-nose it was almost cheesy: “Girls Like Girls.” I couldn’t help but click, because the last name of the singer was Kiyoko. It sounded like this Haley person was Japanese.
Growing up, I knew that statistically speaking I couldn’t be the only queer Asian girl in the world, yet I never saw anyone like myself. The Asian girls I suspected were also queer were squarely in the closet. The masc tomboys who dressed in collared shirts, tastefully rolled up at the sleeves. The girl who drunkenly kissed another girl. The girls who co-authored erotica. The girls in college who reportedly were caught in bed together topless. Yes, those last two eventually came out. In hindsight, it’s insane any of us gave them a benefit of a doubt. But we did, because that’s how foreign the idea of queer Asian women was to any of us.
For some reason there were a lot of gay men in my grad school. One was German, blue-eyed and blonde. Another was American, also blue-eyed and blonde. They were the superstar geniuses, fashionable, and reportedly popular on Grindr. Though they were civil, they had an air about them. They were unapproachable. The unbothered cool kids in an fishbowl of downtrodden and harried grad students.
When I signed up for OkCupid, I found myself using the “Asian” filter a lot. It wasn’t just personal preference. I sent out messages to just about everyone on the app, because I was so eager to connect.
But I spent extra time and attention on the Asians. I just couldn’t believe we existed.
We had similar stories: No, we hadn’t come out to our parents. We weren’t interested in being disowned, or worse, disappointing the people we loved. We’d told our siblings, who were supportive but also worried about how to break the news to our parents. We all had jobs and lives outside of being queer. And we were all little islands, searching for connection.
My wife was one of those people I shared stories with. We celebrated our wedding this past July, just one month after the Haley Kiyoko concert. A friend wore a rainbow dress for the occasion.
I didn’t think it’d be a big deal when we saw Haley Kiyoko in June. My wife had already seen her once. Though I had been bummed at the time that I couldn’t join her, ten years after “Girls Like Girls” came out, I felt a lot more Zen.
Having been out for ten years, I still value queerness as part of my identity, but without the pressure and subsequent relief, it just doesn’t have that same grip on my life anymore. It’s freed up a capacity to think about other things, like my writing career, or when the hell I’m gonna book our next international vacation.
But I lost my mind when I saw Haley Kiyoko.
It started as soon as we hopped out of our Lyft. There was a line of eager lesbians coalescing around the entrance. The air was electric with a giant marquee and honking cars.
Inside, it was a fire hazard. The theater was packed with a bunch of dorky lesbians with their colored hair and nose rings. There were butches with fades and dudes just being allies for their drunk queer friends.
Then, Haley Kiyoko started singing, then dancing. She’s like a K-pop act for gleefully angsty lesbians. During her ballads, she crooned over a crowd that knew the lyrics by heart. And during “Girls Like Girls,” the show-topper, she brought out three giant flags — the pride flag, the trans flag, and the lesbian flag — and waved them side to side to the beat.
I was buzzing all the way home. What a great start to Pride Month.
Thankfully no one disowned me when I came out. No one even left me. My cousin was so nonchalant about it I thought she didn’t hear me correctly. I sent a follow-up text to thank her for being so chill about it, to which she responded, “Of course! There’s no reason I wouldn’t be.”
I’ve been so fortunate, so privileged, so blessed that my coming out story was so utterly anticlimactic. I got the Jennifer-Lawrence-from-“Love, Simon”-perfect responses.
A weight has been lifted from my chest, but with it, some of the awareness of why that weight was there in the first place. Growing up, debating when or even if I should come out, I saw videos of queer teenagers being abused. I know people who were borderline-disowned, and heard about one Korean church that split in two when one of their members came out.
In interviews, Kiyoko shares what prompted her to write the song. Her songwriting collaborator, Lily Mae Young, asked her, “What is something you’ve never told anyone else?” Kiyoko responded, “Well, I’ve never told any of my writing partners this, but I’m gay.” She’s gone on to say the reason she felt the need to write her story is because, “I didn’t really have that growing up.” Especially when it comes to Asian teens, “I hope that my music can help the younger generation gain confidence earlier on, so that they can enjoy their lives more.”
Watching Haley Kiyoko was a lovely reminder of how far I’ve come. It gave me a chance to once again comfort the part of me that used to be scared, while taking pride in how much I’ve grown.
