“Dear Lord, please don’t let me die of AIDS and please make me straight. Amen,” I whispered these familiar words under my sheets while keeping the Bible, which I read mostly every night, close by.
I was in middle school then. I didn’t know what it was, but somehow the notion of being gay and dieing of AIDS was imbedded in my mind. Ever since the third grade, when I first heard of the disease, I was paranoid about it. After watching a television show called “Signs of God,” showcasing clips of the Virgin Mary crying tears of blood, stigmata, and a woman who witnessed the image of the Virgin Mary miraculously appear on her floor as she mopped it, I was convinced—being Christian was the answer. I turned to God because it was easy. It seemed like the practical approach—believe in Jesus, repent for my sins, and I will be forgiven. Believing in God, really gave me a comfort and security I needed. I couldn’t turn to friends. I couldn’t turn to my parents.
I awoke every morning facing the day alone. In the eighth grade I realized nothing had changed when I couldn’t stop starring at the boy who sat in front of me during third period social studies. The bell buzzed after third period and automatically a time sensitive road map would unfold in my mind. I went on my way, walking ever so slowly and sometimes hurriedly to avoid running into him. Time stood still during 4th period Language Arts. There was only the ticking of the clock.  I sat and took it in silence—look at all his pimples, he smiles too much, he’s so gay. Some days, my seat was empty. I was in the nurse’s office complaining of a stomachache; it was an easy ticket home. I told my mother the pain came from the microwave pizza she gave me for breakfast, when the pain really came from my bully.
I had pushed my first grade memories of ever wearing my mother’s black leather heels and red lipstick into the darkest crevice of my mind then. Then I had lied to myself just to be accepted by the world—and my world was middle school. Then I had turned to masculinity because it was easy—because being straight meant acceptance, a real family, being one of them; meant spreading my legs while my baggy jeans remained tucked in to show off my sixty dollar Nike shoes, meant using meaningless insults when insulted, meant pretending like I had no emotions, meant oppression, meant denial.
I thought I was happy when really I was a breathing, walking, talking contradiction. I knew I was gay, but I knew I also wanted to be normal. I wanted a wife and a family because it was all a part of being normal. It was also indirectly set up by my parents. I had asked God to grant me that family many nights. Though I knew I was gay, there was always that hope—may be I was bisexual and may be I can live my entire life denying my gayness, denying my identity to a point where I can simply forget ever having feelings toward guys.
Suddenly I was talking like them, suddenly I was walking like them, and suddenly I wore yellow sweatshirts, black baggy jeans, white shoes, and China Town belts just like they did. So I fell deeper and deeper and my grades fell faster and faster and I did become one of them. The year before I had gotten mostly A’s and Student of the Month awards from 7 of the 9 months. Come eighth grade I had nothing, I had failed my first class, and my status at the National Junior Honor Society was at stake. My principal called me into his office. He said I wouldn’t graduate if I failed Algebra I honors. I ended up receiving a D after doing some make-up work. But my academic standing didn’t worry me. I had friends now. We were riding around on bicycles around the city now. I was cooler than other people now.
When summer came and as I entered the ninth grade, I allowed some of the superficial middle school mildew to wash off. God washed away along with it. For the first week or so of high school I clung on to those people from middle school. Eventually I detached myself from them and found a wider circle of people and teachers who were more open-minded. On Halloween day I officially had my first boyfriend. Even so, coming out was a slow process. I came out to a girl in my English class as well as a girl who I’ve known since seventh grade. It wasn’t until that summer when I experienced true emotional growth.
The summer of my freshman year I met someone who invited me to a get-together. He came from the Internet. I was introduced to the gay community for the first time. They wanted me to march with them in something called Pride. They told me, “It would be fun. There’s nothing like it. Come on.” I wasn’t sure because I was still trying to figure me out. Wasn’t the gay world only filled with wild, flamboyant, cross-dressing people everyone hated? But I said say anyway because I was itching with curiosity.
We spent the night together in a house in Santa Monica. They were all a part of a group called the Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team who were all there to prepare for the big parade the next morning.  I typed up a permission slip and made it look as official as possible and had my mom sign it. I told her I was spending the night on the campus of UCLA.  It was the only way I would be allowed to spend the night. These people, even though I knew they were all gay, were not as intimidating as I had expected. It felt like a family and I felt like I belonged even though they were all older. They weren’t all flamboyant drag queens as I had so stereotyped gay people to be. Many of them went to prestigious universities—UCLA, USC.
I remember when morning came, there was the texture of black asphalt against the soles of my shoes and the rhythmic beating of Taiko drums. On that day, there was a sea of colorful faces on both sides of San Vicente Boulevard in West Hollywood. I witnessed for the first time a community who were unafraid—men and women happily holding onto their partners, gay couples with their children, and unforgettably triumphant faces. That very moment as I marched, dragged the Taiko drum, and waved at the sea of colorful faces that waved at me, I felt like they were cheering me on—like they were proud of me for taking that big step and marching. I knew on that day I began to accept myself for the first time.
I returned the next year and walked the same path—San Vicente Boulevard. The year after that, I wore a scarlet red t-shirt “Pride Volunteer.” Each time I return, I see the colorful faces that lifted me up and pushed me toward my first steps of acceptance.
I fearlessly continue to give back to the gay community because it is not a throng of wild, flamboyant, cross-dressing folks, but it is a family—my own. Now as I senior, I’ve managed to juggle a double life that are both a true part of me—my life as the oldest son and my life elsewhere.
My parents came from the Guangdong province of China in 1981. My father had two hundred dollars in his pocket and business suits bought from Hong Kong along with hopes of making it big as a businessman. He ended up working as a busboy whose pompous manager always called “Mao Zedong’s communist boy,” in the city of Davis, becoming a cook in Los Angeles, and finally working with my mother in our family restaurant. My mother worked as a seamstress for 6 years before I was born. She then worked with my father as the cashier of our restaurant where she is today.
. Last year I told my parents I was going on a school field trip when I was really going on a three-day mountain-bike expedition to Catalina Island with Bike Out, an organization with the mission to built self-esteem, health, and leadership in LGBT youth. In October of 2005 I told my parents I was visiting a college campus, when I did more than that. I led the workshop, “What it Means to be Young, Queer, and Asian Pacific Islander” at the Models of Pride XIII Conference at Occidental College. Though it pains me each time I lie to my parents because they have worked extremely laboriously to get our family the way it is today, I realize that it is what I have to do in order to lead the kind of life I want to have. They are the people I live with, the people I love, and the people who will have the most difficulty understanding. I can only continue on with the hope that one day they will be able to be proud of me for my endeavors and accept me for me.
During my first two years of high school the Gay and Proud Supporters club was dieing. There was about six members my freshman year and four my sophomore year because there was a stigma at my school about the club that you had to be gay to be a member. I became president my junior year determined to bring the club alive. At first I asked my friends to join and slowly, but surely, additional members began to trickle in. It grew to about a strong fifth-teen members. Now we are a group of over forty diverse members—truly gay and proud allies. Now more than ever we have done community outreach projects for events such as World AIDS Day and Coming Out Week.
No longer do I conceal myself behind a mask of straightness so I can satisfy the insecurities of others—so I can be accepted by them. No longer do I see the gay world as a throng of wild, flamboyant, cross-dressing folks doomed to die of AIDS. No longer do I deny myself my own identity. I walk my own path instead of the one others had paved for me. I am a leader, an activist, an artist, an individual. . I embrace being gay, Asian, and different. I embrace acceptance. I embrace simply being me.