Jonas | 25 | Tibetan Plateua, China (orignally from the USA) | English Teacher
I didn’t really know that I was gay until the winter of 2012, or at the very least I didn’t accept it before that time. I might have understood my sexuality earlier, or felt something subconsciously, but I didn’t have any conscious knowledge of it until just before coming out. One exception, however, stands out in my mind – a time in high school, when randomly and without forethought I brought up the topic with my father.
“How do you know if you’re straight or gay?” I asked.
“Well”, he said, “most people are attracted to some guys as well as women. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not straight.”
“What if I was gay?”
“You would probably be attracted to more guys, but it’s OK to be attracted to some guys. All guys are attracted to some men as well as women, but that doesn’t mean you’re gay.”
The conversation ended there, and for the foreseeable future everything was settled. I was a guy who, like other straight guys, was attracted to women – and also, on the side, some other men; all was perfectly normal.
“How do you know if you’re straight or gay?” I asked.
“Well”, he said, “most people are attracted to some guys as well as women. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not straight.”
“What if I was gay?”
“You would probably be attracted to more guys, but it’s OK to be attracted to some guys. All guys are attracted to some men as well as women, but that doesn’t mean you’re gay.”
The conversation ended there, and for the foreseeable future everything was settled. I was a guy who, like other straight guys, was attracted to women – and also, on the side, some other men; all was perfectly normal.
|
"I’m not sure why it took me so long to figure out the truth of my own sexuality." I never felt worried about gaining acceptance among my friends or immediate family after coming out. I grew up in Philadelphia amidst a loving family and a very open-minded and progressive community. The community center of my neighborhood, which had been taken over by a diverse band of grown-up hippies in the 1970’s, was the co-op grocery store, which was next to the gay-focused bookstore and Buddhist center. "My family’s Jewish community has a lesbian rabbi. Several classmates in high school were out. I knew that coming out would be little trouble; it was just that I was having trouble coming out to myself." I attended Bowdoin College, where I ran varsity track and cross-country and led backcountry trips for the outing club. I spent my summers guiding ice-climbing in Alaska – where, at one point, I was surprised to find myself defending gay marriage in a bar. Surprisingly to me, all of these places had current or former out gay athletes and guides, and I began thinking about what being gay actually meant. Throughout high school and college, I had been unable to form any long-term relationships with women. |
I felt unsatisfied, and nothing would ever work out. I wasn’t yet beginning to question my sexuality, but something was going on in my subconscious. At one point, a traveling photo exhibition of out gay athletes was displayed in my college’s field house. While working at the monitor’s desk, I scanned the photos and read the profiles. “How does being gay affect their lives?” I thought. “What does this mean for them and for their teammates?”
I was just starting to consciously question my sexuality as I left college and moved to western China to teach English and work at a local NGO. My first year, I lived in a remote city on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, where there was a small community of foreigners. One of the foreigners was obviously interested in me; she would invite herself over to my apartment for the night, and I would continuously rebuff her advances. I couldn’t figure out why; she was smart, pretty and had a good sense of humor (and, on an unrelated note, I was living by myself and hadn’t had any sex since arriving in China). But I just couldn’t do it. After several tries, she became angry and we stopped talking for awhile.
After a year, I moved to a small town for a job teaching at an intensive-English program for top-level high school students from the surrounding farming and nomadic herding areas. The region, which is predominantly Tibetan, is quite traditional; I live next to a large monastery, and many of my students live in tents. My colleague and I were the only two foreigners within a 200-kilometer radius. This was not the place to come to figure out my sexuality. However, my work life seemed, at the moment, to make up for it. The teaching was intensive but unbelievably fulfilling due to the mind-blowingly fantastic students. I couldn’t get over my luck – I was only 24 and already had the best job in the world.
I was just starting to consciously question my sexuality as I left college and moved to western China to teach English and work at a local NGO. My first year, I lived in a remote city on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, where there was a small community of foreigners. One of the foreigners was obviously interested in me; she would invite herself over to my apartment for the night, and I would continuously rebuff her advances. I couldn’t figure out why; she was smart, pretty and had a good sense of humor (and, on an unrelated note, I was living by myself and hadn’t had any sex since arriving in China). But I just couldn’t do it. After several tries, she became angry and we stopped talking for awhile.
After a year, I moved to a small town for a job teaching at an intensive-English program for top-level high school students from the surrounding farming and nomadic herding areas. The region, which is predominantly Tibetan, is quite traditional; I live next to a large monastery, and many of my students live in tents. My colleague and I were the only two foreigners within a 200-kilometer radius. This was not the place to come to figure out my sexuality. However, my work life seemed, at the moment, to make up for it. The teaching was intensive but unbelievably fulfilling due to the mind-blowingly fantastic students. I couldn’t get over my luck – I was only 24 and already had the best job in the world.
"But something wasn’t quite right. Why did I feel awkward when people asked me about my girlfriend, or if I would find a Tibetan wife? Why was I simply not interested in women?" I continued questioning, but the answer only popped into my head when yet another girl – a good friend who had been traveling with me for the previous ten days – tried to force herself on me at a dance party. Again, I wasn’t interested, and – to her anger – told her so. My friend, who had been looking on, asked me why – and I simply broke down and told him what I was thinking. He was extremely supportive, and buoyed by his support I told the girl the next day that I was questioning my sexuality and wasn’t sure what was going on inside of me. She apologized profusely, saying that she felt awful that she had been so forceful and had no idea about my sexual confusion; that whenever I figured things out, she would be there for me. |
|
A few days later, I returned to the US for a month-long holiday. This is where things really started to click; I had my first experiences with guys and, finally, everything felt right! But I wasn’t ready to tell my parents until the next month. With protests and political unrest throughout the region, my colleague and I were put under effective house arrest, giving me a lot of time alone to think. One evening, while doing my house-arrest exercise routine on my concrete floor, I came to the realization that it was time: I now knew I was gay, and until I told people this essential truth about myself would be an unimaginably great weight upon my shoulders.
I immediately called my parents on Skype. The connection was awful; parts of each sentence were dropped, and I felt like I wanted to cry because I was so ready to tell them the truth about myself – a truth I had taken so long to figure out on my own – but was being pushed away and blocked by technology. Finally, I just came out and said it. They were shocked. It wasn’t quite the “I love you no matter what” reaction that I had been expecting; the dominant emotions, instead, seemed to be confusion, bewilderment, surprise, even a touch of sadness. Then I said that I wanted to send an email to some of my friends, and to post on my blog, and they became upset. Did I really want to put myself out there already? Was I sure? Did I want this kind of information about myself on the internet, where it would last forever? What would future employers think?
I immediately called my parents on Skype. The connection was awful; parts of each sentence were dropped, and I felt like I wanted to cry because I was so ready to tell them the truth about myself – a truth I had taken so long to figure out on my own – but was being pushed away and blocked by technology. Finally, I just came out and said it. They were shocked. It wasn’t quite the “I love you no matter what” reaction that I had been expecting; the dominant emotions, instead, seemed to be confusion, bewilderment, surprise, even a touch of sadness. Then I said that I wanted to send an email to some of my friends, and to post on my blog, and they became upset. Did I really want to put myself out there already? Was I sure? Did I want this kind of information about myself on the internet, where it would last forever? What would future employers think?
"I was frustrated. This was not at all how I expected it would go. I knew that they were having difficulty accepting the news, that it was something they accepted unquestioningly in others but were having trouble accepting in their own son."
|
This was fine with me; I knew it would take them time. Instead, I was frustrated because I wanted to shout my news from the mountaintop, to tell everyone I knew, but it felt like they wanted to stop me, to make me keep the news private, internal, closeted. Upset, I called my sister, who was unbelievably supportive, and soon decided to call up a few close friends and send out an email to others. All night long, I stayed up as messages of support flowed into my inbox. Friends from across the world told me that they didn’t care, or that they were proud, or that they were ashamed of not supporting me so that I would have come out earlier, and as I read these messages I surreptitiously started to smile, then laugh. As the sun rose in shimmering yellows and smoke scented of smell of juniper and yak butter floated past my window, I laughed unstoppably, for all was right with the world. |
Soon after telling my foreign colleagues in China, I wrote a blog post about coming to terms with my sexuality. My parents were upset, but understood that I am not good with personal secrets and simply wanted – no, needed, for my own peace of mind - to be open about myself.
"Things have gotten immeasurably better since coming out. While I am on the far outskirts of the gay world, I feel more centered and at peace with myself."
However, I still haven’t told any locals in the rural, traditional town where I live. Most painful for me, I haven’t told my beloved students - and, unless things change dramatically, I never will. Tibetan society (not to mention rural Chinese society) is just too traditional; coming out would put at risk not only my reputation in town, but also the program at which I teach. This is incredibly frustrating to me, and is one of the main reasons that, after three years living in this amazing region and working with fantastic people, I am planning to move back to the US at the conclusion of this academic year.
Even if I’ve been unable to fully explore what it means to be gay while living in rural western China, I finally feel like I know who I am – some random gay guy on the Tibetan Plateau with whom I’m completely comfortable. And this self-comfort and assurance and sense of truth, more than anything, make all the difference.
Jonas has a blog which you can visit here - jcrimm.wordpress.com
HTML Comment Box is loading comments...
