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Fighting for the right things?

Last weekend I was walking down the hall in one of those places that gets frequented by tweakers, my local bath house. I was approaching guys that I found attractive, and they were reciprocating. I was feeling especially good about myself when Christina A came over the music system singing, "You Are Beautiful," and for a brief and shining moment, we were a tangled knot of sexy, happy men. I expect that if the collective "we" of the gay community could feel that way, "no matter what they say," then speed use, and all it's problems, would float away. If we suppose I'm right, and the problem is increased HIV transmission, then the solution is not about expousing the virtues of bleach and condoms, but about addressing the problems of our ego-destroying community's norms.

Well, it's great to be in a ghetto as a Gay man and as an Asian man but after a while you have to start thinking outside the box. I think my first few years in the ghetto were all about discovering one's self from within. But then the question becomes how do we, as gay people, or as Asian people, relate to the world outside of our skin, outside our ghettos. And I think that becomes an interesting issue for me as a person as I'm growing. I feel like I don't need to explain myself anymore.

Maybe it's all to do with clubbing. Are you in your clubbing phase or in your post-clubbing phase? I've clubbed and I'm happy I've done it. But then you say to yourself, "after clubbing, what is there?" That's a big question for the gay community because it's not like a village or place where people have some sense of longevity. It's basically clubs, bars, sex establishments and you can only enter at eighteen because they serve alcohol and drugs. Is there a correlation between the gay community and addiction? And what is this about wanting acceptance? My lens has changed. It's leaving that little boy who wanted to go to clubs in NYC for someone who says, "I've done that. Now what am I to do? How am I a part of the world?" It's still a negotiation because it's complicated.

There's a whole set of challenges and hurdles. There's so much work to be done. I don't think our work with AIDS is done. I don't think our effort to lower the number of teen suicides is working. I don't think we are still accepting of each other. I used to have this image of the gay community as "Come brother, you are one of us." Kind of Mennonite in that way. But I'm interested in what the future is going to bring aside from the simplicities of gay life which offers us freedom. Great, those drag queens fought for us in '69, so we can be ourselves. But what are we going to give to the people of 2069? That's a big-ass question.

Phil Hsiao
(if you have any comments or idea on my article, please email me at [email protected] )