An Imperfect Definition of Pride
The last time I came out as bisexual, I was in my sophomore English class, watching a film version of Macbeth shot with poor camera quality and even poorer acting quality. The actress playing Lady Macbeth was acting so cringeworthy I offhandedly remarked, “Wow, that was so ugly it just made me one hundred percent straight.” One of my friends awkwardly asked me if I was bisexual. I stammered, and I said yes, and I said things that I’m not exactly proud of.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t really matter.” It does matter.
“It’s actually kind of stupid.” It is not stupid. Why did I say it was stupid?
But it wasn’t wrong. Because I’m the stupid bisexual. The stupid bisexual that doesn’t know how to properly come out, the stupid bisexual that should know better than to come out in a dark room to some friends. Not really friends. Friends of proximity, the friends that you make when you’re assigned in a certain seat, the friends whose names you’ll forget over summer.
That’s how it was the last time I came out semi-publicly, too. As a joke. As an afterthought. As a crumb of my existence instead of a whole loaf of bread. I guess I never learned how to come out. I guess my parents never taught me how.
My parents had the perfect Vietnamese immigrant heterosexual love story, if that was a thing that existed. They had gone to the same college, met on a camping trip with mutual friends, were each other’s first loves and true loves. No dating, no college experimentation. To this day, I’m still not sure if they know what dating is.
While other teenage girls were getting the “birds and the bees” talk from their moms or the “I’m going to kill any boy who walks through the door” talk from their dads, I got nothing. There was nothing to talk about. My parents were Vietnamese Americans, immigrants from a place that didn’t talk about sex or dating or anything at all. I learned about sex and romance and the LGBT community from bad fanfiction and Degrassi commercials. I never learned how to talk about a boy, let alone a girl. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. How are you supposed to come out in a serious way, when love was never seemed like a serious option to begin with?
I’m seventeen now, and I still can’t remember a time when I was sat down and talked to about dating. I’m seventeen and the only times I’ve ever come out semi-seriously were online, where I can be spared facial expressions and awkward reactions. At this point, I don’t think I’ll ever come out. I’m pretty sure the day my parents find out that I’m bisexual is when they get an invitation to my symbolic polyamorous wedding to Diego Luna and Park Junghwa.
Sometimes I wish I could come out like the real LGBT kids do, because I don’t feel real yet. I see my friends going to Pride Parades and having fun, and I don’t know how to do that. To do to pride, you need a ride, and to get a ride, you need either your dad’s car or your mom’s approval to ride with a friend. And you can’t exactly get either unless you explain where you’re going. And every time you try to explain, you change the subject to something random before the word “bisexual” every has a chance of breaking free.
I’ve had crushes on boys, all kind of boys. I’ve had crushes on girls, real and unreal, close to home and far away in celebrity-land. I’m bisexual. I know I’m bisexual. But I don’t feel like a real bisexual. I don’t feel like I’ve earned the Bisexual Identification Card yet. And I’m scared that I’ll never be real enough to feel what I’m supposed to feel whenever Pride comes around. I’m scared that pride doesn’t exist for people like me, people that don’t feel real, people that don’t have all their i’s dotted and t’s crossed, people who are already alienated because of how much the Pride movement focuses on white people.
For now, I’ll have to create my own definition of pride. A Pride that means sitting at home, watching Netflix, and wondering why the hell Flaca and Maritza haven’t declared their undying love for each other yet. A Pride that means sitting quiet at family dinners, because you’re a good little Asian daughter, and you don’t talk when the other adults are talking Trump and Pence and marriage and politics. A Pride that means painting your soul, just not your face. A Pride that is soft, and safe, and quiet. A Pride that, like the evaporation of water or the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates, is something you can’t see. A Pride that is just barely exists, even if it’s just inside my head.
