connections, human meaning, and tragedy

Tonight I met up with this woman introduced by another Shanghainese dyke I know from Boston QAPA, and had a deeper conversation with her than I've had in a long time. She studied in the U.S. for 6 years and plans on going back, and I found a lot of commonality with and interesting characteristics about her. After a group of us had dinner, she invited me back to her place, and we sat on the floor drinking tea listening to music and talking about really personal stuff for a long time. She wrote her Master's on social factors that influence Chinese women's likelihood of compliance with the One-Child policy - I'm totally a fool for academic feminist stuff. Plus she's quite pretty. Then I found out she's married. But she still has this ambiguous relationship with the girlfriend she met in college, 11 years ago. And I thought, there's potential, she's not the overly monogamous type. But then I'm reminded that, even though I don't care, other people still keeps seeing me as a young kid. She kept talking about memories of what she was like when she "was my age"... Ay. However, unlike most other people, she was kind enough to grant that, maybe I'm more mature than she was at my age.

We both had an early-on experience with a passionate, crazy, life-consuming love that ended very badly, but with very different effects. The funny thing is, for her, she says the relationship with that girlfriend was so traumatic that it pushed her towards the straighter end - now she's about 70% straight and 30% lesbian. Her current husband knows about everything, and is actually almost friends with her (ex)girlfriend. When they have a fight, he gets online (from the U.S.) and this girlfriend (from Shanghai) comforts him. I think it's her independent nature that makes them so peaceful. This kind of person makes others feel like, you can't own her, she's so hard to hold on to that if you don't accept the other person in her life, you'd completely lose her. She's been married for 2 years and has spent one of those 2 years living a solitary life in Shanghai. I identify with her so much when she describes how it gets lonely once in a while, but she still likes it better this way. And maybe, we both don't really want/need to be in love head over heels with anybody, anymore, because we've had it and had enough (at least for a while). I borrowed a great book from her, we both like to move cities/countries a lot, don't want kids, and ordered the same thing at dinner, etc.

I also learned a lot about the dyke I know from Boston, who introduced her to me as someone who can help me get to know people in the LaLa (Chinese: lesbian) circle. Well, Sophie (the woman tonight) is not really a lesian or active in the circle. Instead, I realized that my Boston friend contacted Sophie because they once had something and she (the Boston one)'s not over it. It's funny, this dyke from Boston will visit Shanghai soon. Then the three of us can get together, and I can watch some interesting dynamics.

The couple we had dinner together with has been together for 6 years. Apparently, they're married to this gay couple. How hilarious and ingenius! This way, the parents and family are satisfied, and if they have a child in the future, it won't be legally illegitimate.



On a sad note, XA's girlfriend has decided to get married. I don't know how XA is handling this so well; it'd be worse than just getting dumped for me, it'd be like a punch to the stomach, like losing the personal/political war. They had a fight the other night, and XA called me to ask if she can stay at my place for a few nights. I met her up for dinner (Hot Pot, yum, filled with huge pork bones to chew clean. It comes complete with plastic gloves so you can really get your hands into it, and a tiny straw to help you suck the sweet marrow out of the bones). She drank bottle after bottle of beer and complained to me. I'm happy and honored that she'd share these things with me. But at the same time, I don't really know how to advise her. It seems that Chinese people usually try to encourage peace and discourage splits. I tend to default on not advising people explicitly: that'd be applying my own values to other people with different preferences, and I don't want to be responsible for messing up others' lives. Otherwise, I'm pretty ready to advice splits too. Well, XA went home out of convenience and went straight to bed drunk. But she stayed over on Friday night. We did fun, good-friend things like watching movies in bed, shopping for rabbit food, and talking about sex toys. We would've went shopping for sex toys too if we could've found a shop close enough. By the end of the day, my god, I had shown her my strap-on and small collection of dyke porn. The movies were only upon her request. I've never watched non-laughable porn with somebody else before, but it turned out to be quite platonic, and funny, cuz sex is a pretty strange thing if you watch it from an objective point of view. XA leisurely smoked a couple of cigarettes and fast-forwarded thru a lot of parts, and decided in the end that she didn't like them enough to borrow them -- too un-aesthetic, and too hard, she says.

Well, eventually, she went home to her girlfriend, uncertain of what her girlfriend is going to decide. They haven't formally broken-up, but there's no future for sure, since her girlfriend is planning to find some guy and get married. Family pressure. I can't fully sympathize with how tragic this is, because this is not my life, not my circumstances. I can't really imagine it, because I'm so lucky that I have so little emotional attachment to my parents, and I don't ever have to do anything because of them. The worrisome thing is, my mother's been calling and talking to me about feminism/gender expression lately. The week that I spent with my sister (and mother, unfortunately) in Fujian meant that my mother got a glimpse of what I'm like now, and I don't know why I entertained her enough to actually debate a little about gender oppression with her. This hits way too close to home - as in, stuff I care about, stuff too personal to let her criticize me with. Anyways, I thought that XA's girlfriend's family was supportive of them, because her girlfriend's mother likes XA and often came over to their apartment to visit, cook, and take trips together. But I was wrong. The mother only knows XA as a really really good friend living with her daughter. If the actual relationship was spoken out loud, it'd be very different... So since they are having problems already, XA's girlfriend is just going to get married.

It's not all this bad. XA's family knows. Even though they are against it, there's nothing they can do about it. There's this other lala couple I met. They've never spoken out loud the nature of their relationship to their family, but her mother says:" When you two buy a house together, I'll come live with you and help you with the chores (a normal, caring thing for mothers to do for young married couples). It's okay if you don't get married; as long as you have somebody to be your companion and take care you for the rest of your life, then I'm not worried anymore." Just rewriting this has gotten me moved. I agree with them - they don't need to ever say out loud in words what their relationship is. Their parents can't accept the label and the concept, if you name it. But they do tacitly approve, in reality, in action, if you just allow them to stay in their knowing denial.

Plus, there're no hate crimes based on sexual orientation. I don't have statistics or proof, but I'm pretty confident of this fact so far. Gay bashing does not exist here. And that counts for a lot.