On Queer Child

on Addams Family, Coming Out & The Question of Parental Love

So, a longtime friend shared with me the following journal prompt and encouraged me to give it a try:

What did I have to do or become in order to be loved and/or validated growing up?

Growing up I don’t think I have ever seen my parents talk, hug, touch, or just being in present with one another. To say “love” in my mother tongue in Cantonese is cringe-inducing much less risk of being shamed for even mentioning the concept.

Childhood was much of a reticent reality built on built-up anger, misdirected attention disguised as validation, and silence in the name of care. I wish I can be a little more forgiving but please do not get me wrong — it’s not that bad but at the same time, it’s not that good considering our family was more preoccupied with “who’s gonna bring dinner tonight.”

As a child, I was so immensely drawn to the “Addams Family” — a seemingly morbid and dysfunctional family that somehow just “works”. The sensual, mysterious, dark patriarch and matriarch of the family Gomez and Morticia Adams so publicly expressing their love to one another. They danced; they relished each other company; they were great parents nonetheless (even encouraging the sibling torture on which my sister and I modeled after). Somehow Wednesday Addams (played by Christina Ricci) nonchalant cruel personality and her deadpan delivery seems more fitting to how we were raised as kids.

Growing up, there was inherently so much shame about speaking your truth and admitting your feelings. Talking about your feelings isn’t a manly thing to do. Talking about your feelings isn’t a Chinese thing to do. Talking about your feelings is just not what our family does. For our family, lovelessness and love disappear through the daily maintaining of the family itself when our parents are working their way to support the family leaving my sister and I spending our school days afternoon watching That’s So Raven. Like bell hooks in All About Love, lovelessness as a cultural phenomenon is a global one that has complicated ties with hetero-patriarchal, sexist, class, race issues. My father particularly was very proud of providing us a lassiez-faire environment (“just let the kids do their thing”) but I once poked fun of him for being a lazy parent.

How dare you being so selfish asking for love when I work so much?

The truth is, rather than discussing what I have to do or become in order to be loved and/or validated growing up — I felt, as a young queer boy figuring out the world, that my parents couldn’t provide me the example of love I needed. I counted the times my father laughed at flamboyant characters in the TV knowing that we are one step further away from one another. Ocean Vuong describes what queerness means to him:

"Being queer saved my life. Often we see queerness as deprivation. But when I look at my life, I saw that queerness demanded an alternative innovation from me. I had to make alternative routes, it made me curious, it made me ask this is not enough for me"

As a gay kid, I knew to stop dwelling on expecting love from my father and instead tend myself to others (like my sister). Throughout college, I have taken on new life experiences, making friends, doing odd and poorly-paid jobs in order to survive, and shaping a new life that was not bounded within my family. I am grateful for the mentors that have shown me about care, community, and “love” through reading and writing. It is through writing I was able to give shape to myself.

I came out to my mother one day through a hand-written letter. In the letter, I told her that “I am different from the other boys at school”. I don’t remember using the word “gay” but I figured she would take the hint (Mums always know). I left the letter underneath her pillow and spent the entire day trembling at school. The empty home screen of my flip phone indicated there were no incoming messages. I raced home expecting to be scolded out of the house but I saw Mum cooking in the kitchen trying to hold her body together without giving out. When she came out of the kitchen, I gathered all the strength and what was left of me to look at her. She was trying to avoid me but she knew she had to respond in some way. She was holding in tears. As I opened my arms trying to force some embrace out of her, it looked like I was trying to comfort her.

I don’t think I was ever explicitly loved as a child — maybe my parents did not know how to; maybe they hated me; maybe because they could not accept a gay son; maybe they were not happy with themselves, or maybe there were not shown love as well. But whatever picture I would like to paint about my parents and the love that was given, I am grateful for the things my sister and I have enjoyed — the Sunday hikes, the occasional Sunday dim sums, living under a roof, counting good versus bad homecooking (Mum’s versus Dad’s) and family movie viewings.

From Adele’s latest album titled “30,” her song “My Little Love” contains recordings of herself and her nine-year-old son, Angelo, discussing her feelings about her breakup with Simon Konecki, Angelo's father. (The singer filed for divorce from Konecki in 2019 after eight years together, including three years of marriage.) Between soothing verses and refrains, we hear snippets of Adele and Angelo's vulnerable and heartfelt conversations about their love for each other and the singer's confusion post-divorce. Like:

Mummy's been having a lot of big feelings recently
(Like how?)
Just, like, hang on lemme-, my fingers are trappedLike, um, I feel a bit confused
(Why?)
I don't know
And I feel like I don't really know what I'm doing
(Oh, at all?)At all
And that would make me go

As much as 30 is about Adele sharing her experiences in her divorce and her journey of rediscovery, it's also a way for her to try to communicate to her son what she was going through in this trying period of her life. “I can’t make that make sense to a nine-year-old,” she told Vogue. During her interview with Oprah, she added, “I just wanted him to hear me talking madly deeply about who I am and how I feel, like you know, and I don’t know if I’d ever be able to have that conversation with him in real life.”

The question of parental love tasks us to look into a history that is beyond ourselves, the patterns that have conditioned our very present. So much so to take inventory of the present of the haves and have-nots (and trying to process it without being distracted by jealousy and resentment), to have a more realized and loving life perhaps begin by speaking into ourselves and learning how and what to articulate.

Four years ago, I came out to my mother for the third time. It was a week before I had to leave Hong Kong for Canada.

“Do you like guys or girls now?”

“I like men…but I don’t know, I don’t like the gender I like the person” (the punchline should’ve been: “especially if he has it big d*ck” but this would destroy her)

I told her I wanted to be happy.

“I would be lying if I tell you I don’t care what you think about who I like. Yes, I do care about what you think, but honestly very little. It is my life that I am living.”

That was the tone that I established for my departure. I remember the concern on her face but she accepted my sentiment as she smiled in relief. I think she heard me.

Returning to the question, being an Asian gay boy has taught me new ways to look at love (parental love, love between male friends, romantic relationships between males, interracial love, etc.). Our modern understanding of love tends to be curdled and understood through hierarchies, power dynamics, difference, reciprocation, so much so it should be about flexibility, vulnerability, language, mutuality, and forgoing the ego within. As Joni Mitchell writes in her song Both Sides Now:

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

The mature narrator has looked at clouds for so long. She saw both sides from all directions and positions, but she is not deluded by her own inhibitions. She understands the constant changing around her and admits her innocence to the subject that she is so dearly close to. Perhaps we can become better lovers if we learn to watch clouds.

---