On Metal, Bigotry, and Desire
The old man Pete likes to call everyone a bigot: so-and-so and so-and-so, bigots, a whole town of them; only he is immune. Only he knows better.
*
On my thirty-fifth birthday, my brother calls me and small talk leads to more small talk—because the inane has become his forte.
*
He is not ignorant.
*
“Harry and I want to get married,” my brother tells me months back. “We want to drive to New Mexico.”
This is the first time my brother has acknowledged his sexuality to me in a forthright way. Before, it was a silent understanding, a cruel complicity.
“Cool,” I say.
Gay marriage is not yet legal.
“Next week,” he says.
I begin the process of cleaning because I don’t need his judgment of my barely bourgeois life-style.
*
When the old man walks, his lungs stop and constrict. He has been a smoker for
decades—of cigarettes and weed—and now he has to quit it all. He was a grump before, and now he is simply an asshole.
“Yesterday,” he says, “I met a guy from South Carolina and I ask him if he’s figured out the cultural differences yet.”
Although it is still winter, the desert sun pounds down on us, even in the shade.
“We got a lot of gays and bisexuals here.” And then he adds, “It’s the bisexuals who are the real problem: pick a side already.”
“You’re disgusting,” I tell him, “calling everyone else a bigot.”
*
“Do you know what the difference is between your silverware and mine?” my brother asks me.
Turning thirty-five feels monumental, officially adult, because legality is only a suggestion I often fail to follow. For weeks, I have been fretting. I tell Dorothy, “It takes too much time to toil.” My toiling is inconvenient: I can’t leave the house after ten in the morning; nights I go hungry; for a week, I have been unable to open my laptop. Without work, I lack identity.
“My silverware is silver, and yours is metal. Do you know the difference between silver and metal?”
*
After spending a week of wonder with Rikki Ducornet, I spend a day in Seattle. It’s Gay Pride Day, and gay marriage has just been legalized. I get weed delivery and go down to the parade. All around me, people hug and kiss and express camaraderie, and I am all alone, sitting on the curb, glowing with self-pity.
The rainbow flag swings by.
There is an unoccupied corner, and feeling sudden empowerment, I join the parade. The flag is huge, and every couple of minutes, we pause, lift the flag high, and people run underneath it like parachute day in elementary school. Everyone is laughing and I am suddenly included. In this moment, I am giving joy.
*
Generation 1.5 versus second generation: I don’t need to prove how American I am. I don’t need brand names. I worry I am becoming too weird. Unlike my brother and dead sister, I value heritage and a homeland so distant I have only seen it once. It was not at all how I imagined; the real breaking against the fairy tales my parents used to tell me of lands far, far away.
*
The truth of it is: I am ashamed of my heterosexuality. I am convinced it makes me less feminist.
*
After the parade is over, a glittery queer boy follows me around. He tells me he’s new to the area and eager to make friends. We walk some more, and I ask if he’s disappointed to be leaving Pride with a girl.
I still consider myself a girl.
“Oh,” he says, “I’m straight. I’m not disappointed at all.”
I feel angry, like I’ve been deceived, like I belonged there, too.Hoang 4
*
“Those gays are always hitting on me. The bisexuals are even worse.”
I close my laptop, begin packing up.
“What?” he demands.
*
Louis luggage and Prada shoes.
I cast judgment as if I don’t have my own, too.
*
Jackie insists that desire can be taught.
*
Nice stuff is not only success; it signals belonging.
The alienation my brother must feel, like, all the time.
*
For most of my life, I have pendulumed between needing to be unobtrusive and wanting to be recognized as different, as weird, as special. I fake it until I am—and now a whole level of strangeness.
*
The immigrant generation—the boat people—tells me I am fat, which I internalize as undesirable. I fuck my way through Europe to prove how I can still be wanted.
Validation through sex.
*
“I know I’m a good looking guy,” the old man says.
Fear generates bigotry. Or is it the other way around?
Tautology makes me dizzy.
*
Because I am single, I need a constellation of powerful men to validate me. I scale their genius against mine and only keep the ones who outweigh me. My insecurity enhances insomnia because I will never be good enough.
*
“Unless women hit on you every day,” I say, “I promise you no queer man is hitting on you.”
“Who’s the bigot now?”
He used to call me Oriental.
When I get angry, logic falls away, like when I try to explain white privilege and fail.
*
Sometimes, I confuse rejection and want—because I can only understand my body as undesirable.
*
“Just pick a side already!”
*
This body of mine; other bodies against my body of otherness; without beauty, too.
*
When I was still married, a very cute lesbian left flowers on my bicycle. My husband accused me of flirting, that I was to blame, and so I must want women. And so we are both convinced.
*
“Asshole,” I say—and leave.
When?
*
I do not want, though, I want to be.
*
After I hang up the phone with my brother, I start weeping.
The old man Pete likes to call everyone a bigot: so-and-so and so-and-so, bigots, a whole town of them; only he is immune. Only he knows better.
*
On my thirty-fifth birthday, my brother calls me and small talk leads to more small talk—because the inane has become his forte.
*
He is not ignorant.
*
“Harry and I want to get married,” my brother tells me months back. “We want to drive to New Mexico.”
This is the first time my brother has acknowledged his sexuality to me in a forthright way. Before, it was a silent understanding, a cruel complicity.
“Cool,” I say.
Gay marriage is not yet legal.
“Next week,” he says.
I begin the process of cleaning because I don’t need his judgment of my barely bourgeois life-style.
*
When the old man walks, his lungs stop and constrict. He has been a smoker for
decades—of cigarettes and weed—and now he has to quit it all. He was a grump before, and now he is simply an asshole.
“Yesterday,” he says, “I met a guy from South Carolina and I ask him if he’s figured out the cultural differences yet.”
Although it is still winter, the desert sun pounds down on us, even in the shade.
“We got a lot of gays and bisexuals here.” And then he adds, “It’s the bisexuals who are the real problem: pick a side already.”
“You’re disgusting,” I tell him, “calling everyone else a bigot.”
*
“Do you know what the difference is between your silverware and mine?” my brother asks me.
Turning thirty-five feels monumental, officially adult, because legality is only a suggestion I often fail to follow. For weeks, I have been fretting. I tell Dorothy, “It takes too much time to toil.” My toiling is inconvenient: I can’t leave the house after ten in the morning; nights I go hungry; for a week, I have been unable to open my laptop. Without work, I lack identity.
“My silverware is silver, and yours is metal. Do you know the difference between silver and metal?”
*
After spending a week of wonder with Rikki Ducornet, I spend a day in Seattle. It’s Gay Pride Day, and gay marriage has just been legalized. I get weed delivery and go down to the parade. All around me, people hug and kiss and express camaraderie, and I am all alone, sitting on the curb, glowing with self-pity.
The rainbow flag swings by.
There is an unoccupied corner, and feeling sudden empowerment, I join the parade. The flag is huge, and every couple of minutes, we pause, lift the flag high, and people run underneath it like parachute day in elementary school. Everyone is laughing and I am suddenly included. In this moment, I am giving joy.
*
Generation 1.5 versus second generation: I don’t need to prove how American I am. I don’t need brand names. I worry I am becoming too weird. Unlike my brother and dead sister, I value heritage and a homeland so distant I have only seen it once. It was not at all how I imagined; the real breaking against the fairy tales my parents used to tell me of lands far, far away.
*
The truth of it is: I am ashamed of my heterosexuality. I am convinced it makes me less feminist.
*
After the parade is over, a glittery queer boy follows me around. He tells me he’s new to the area and eager to make friends. We walk some more, and I ask if he’s disappointed to be leaving Pride with a girl.
I still consider myself a girl.
“Oh,” he says, “I’m straight. I’m not disappointed at all.”
I feel angry, like I’ve been deceived, like I belonged there, too.Hoang 4
*
“Those gays are always hitting on me. The bisexuals are even worse.”
I close my laptop, begin packing up.
“What?” he demands.
*
Louis luggage and Prada shoes.
I cast judgment as if I don’t have my own, too.
*
Jackie insists that desire can be taught.
*
Nice stuff is not only success; it signals belonging.
The alienation my brother must feel, like, all the time.
*
For most of my life, I have pendulumed between needing to be unobtrusive and wanting to be recognized as different, as weird, as special. I fake it until I am—and now a whole level of strangeness.
*
The immigrant generation—the boat people—tells me I am fat, which I internalize as undesirable. I fuck my way through Europe to prove how I can still be wanted.
Validation through sex.
*
“I know I’m a good looking guy,” the old man says.
Fear generates bigotry. Or is it the other way around?
Tautology makes me dizzy.
*
Because I am single, I need a constellation of powerful men to validate me. I scale their genius against mine and only keep the ones who outweigh me. My insecurity enhances insomnia because I will never be good enough.
*
“Unless women hit on you every day,” I say, “I promise you no queer man is hitting on you.”
“Who’s the bigot now?”
He used to call me Oriental.
When I get angry, logic falls away, like when I try to explain white privilege and fail.
*
Sometimes, I confuse rejection and want—because I can only understand my body as undesirable.
*
“Just pick a side already!”
*
This body of mine; other bodies against my body of otherness; without beauty, too.
*
When I was still married, a very cute lesbian left flowers on my bicycle. My husband accused me of flirting, that I was to blame, and so I must want women. And so we are both convinced.
*
“Asshole,” I say—and leave.
When?
*
I do not want, though, I want to be.
*
After I hang up the phone with my brother, I start weeping.
Lily Hoang is the author of five books, including A Bestiary (winner of the inaugural Cleveland State University Poetry Center's Nonfiction Contest) and Changeling (recipient of the PEN Open Books Award). With Joshua Marie Wilkinson, she edited the anthology The Force of What's Possible: Writers on Accessibility and the Avant-Garde. She is Director of the MFA program at New Mexico State University. She serves as Prose Editor at Puerto del Sol and Editor for Jaded Ibis Press.