fuck you jake

ugh where do i start...
so there was this guy.

i met him two summers ago, that crazy summer where juliana had a crisis and stayed in san francisco for a while, and i worked at naia and ended up doing lots of drugs and going buck wild.
his name is jake b. he was an industrial design student at cca in potrero hill, the school where my dad was offered a job to teach. i thought he was the coolest guy. i only met him once that summer, and we hung out at his house and watched movies in bed together. what really got me about him was that he we were the same kind of weird. you know how there are a lot of different kinds of weird? well he was my kind of weird. quirky. he liked punk rock too, and had all these cool books and gadgets and crap that i would totally buy at a garage sale if id had the chance or seen it first.
anyways, when i chilled with him that day, we took a nap together. he was so cute to me, a little older, but like half-bear half just whatever. he liked to go fishing at tahoe and told me about doing shrooms and sucking on a lime for hours because thats the type of shit you do when you're fucked up. i thought it was an endearing story. we ended up getting pizza at goat hill and then coffee, and i told him i wanted to see him again soon.

i remember after that day i hung out with aundy and her dad. we were going to some storage space to grab some shit for their house, and the whole ride there i just couldn't stop talking about him. i just felt like we clicked, and i was just really excited that there was some other dude out there who was like me- or like me enough that i liked him a lot. plus, i thought he was hot, and remember thinking, why the fuck would this dude want to have anything to do with me? i guess i was that enamored.

i remember it was a week before i had to go back to school. for some reason i told aundy's dad of all people that i didn't even wanna go back to school. i just wanted to move in with this dude id just met and never go back to that fucked up college again. of course, he talked me out of it, which wasn't too hard because im not that impulsive anyway.

the next summer i came back home and called jake. he told me he couldnt hang out because he was in a relationship with some girl. i was kinda bummed, but decided whatever, that i guess it was good what we had and that i should just move on.

this summer, he contacts me and we start talking again. he said he wanted to hang out, and i was game.

so i got to see him today. i was kinda nervous about going, but i really wanted to. he showed up in a cab outside his house, i guess he didnt wanna keep me waiting. we watched this movie called moon, where this guy who's consigned to monitor resource-gathering equipment in space for three years only eats beans and has a machine friend kinda like HAL on 2001 space odddysy, goes apeshit and sees naked girls everywhere, and finds out there are hella clones of himself up there incubating. it was weird.

so we fucked around, and took a nap. then we got vietnamese food, which was bomb. there, he talked to me about relatinoships. turns out, the girl he dated was a tranny, and he just got all bitter all of the sudden. he told me he's been in hella relatinoships, but basically when it came down to commitment time, he ran away. i could see that i guess. at one point he said, "im 32 and still havent figured out this shit. i just need someone who likes assholes. if theres someone who likes a grumpy old fuck, then id be like, hey! thats me!" i didnt know what to say to that, i just thought that yeah, basically you're telling me that we cant be in a relatinoship, which isn't really what i was looking for anyway. but i didnt think he was an asshole. i liked him. at least, i did then.

so after that we went to his neighborhood bar called "parkside." it was pretty empty. but there was a photobooth there, and i asked him if he wanted to take a picture. so we did, and when they came out, he took one look at them and went: "you look like an immigrant"

i was so shocked that all i could muster was a "thats fucked up." all he said was "yup," and that was that. the rest of the time, he just chatted up the bartender and some CCA student, and i just sat there, staring at the football game, thinking about how lame he was. i cant believe i didn't say anything to that- i just felt so paralyzed, and almost even guilty for thinking that way, as if i were overreacting or something, which is definitely dangerous territory. like kathleen h says, whatever you feel is alright alright alright alright. i should've never second guessed myself.

so he hugged me good bye and just peaced out. on the bus, i just felt so numb. i cant believe i thought he was a cool dude. and not even just that, i thought he was the coolest dude ever. and then he just pulled this racist bullshit out od his ass like it was nothing. like i was nothing. im disappointed in myself for actually having faith in this guy.

after that i just ended up chainsmoking cigarettes and shaking my head on the corner of market and church, while all of these white people walked by totally oblivious. i felt so silent and insignificant. i shouldve fucking said something. but the words were just lodged in my throat, ready to leap, but just... didn't.

he totally was an asshole. i totally realized why the fuck this dude wanted anything to do with me. because he's a fucking asshole. i thought about how many relationships he's been in, or at least he's said he's been in, and thought wow. people are shallow as fuck. they probably only dated him because he's hot. and he was the one to break it off. its hard to swallow the fact that this asshole is gonna get more ass than me because of his looks. not even his personality. he might even be rewarded for his assholeness with more ass. what the fuck dude.

im so fucking done with these loser fucktards

why is this considered OKAY

(see full interview here->) http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=37818

is anyone else bothered by this? this white asshole is getting rich on employing tired racial stereotypes and over-exaggerating mysticism to further orientalize Asians. does anyone else realize that he's SELLING a RACE, and not only that, but a fake, exaggerated, constructed one?? he uses the fact that he was a MARTIAL ARTIST to validate his usage of this fucked up, imagined, orientlized, constructed culture. as if there were some MAGICAL link between asians and martial arts??? like he was channeling my ancestors who gave him the O-K or some shit. FUCK THAT.

also, if its so groundbreaking that asian-americans took center stage in this film, why arent THEY being interviewed? why go to the white guy? cuz it was HIS great idea to have asians not just be extras on M.A.S.H., but actually have legitimate roles? and how fucking GROUNDBREAKING is it to have asians play MARTIAL ARTS. thats real progressive you fucking prick.

i dont know why

so theres this transdude acquaintance who goes to my school who pisses me off more than other SLC students, which is kind of hard to do at this point in my slc jadedness. but its not only him, its a lot of others around my age who have, or feign to have, a deep understanding of identity politics/gender and sexuality issues, and in attending sarah lawrence, have been granted privileged and exclusive access to the terminology of queer/gender scholars, i.e. "genderqueer-identified," constructed distinctions between presentation, identity and etc., and in general, the existence of rhetorical identifiers that exist beyond the heteronormative paradigm. when they use these terms, it erks me. in this entry, im trying to explore why this is so.

first off, lets establish a name for these users:
People who use terms such as "queer" and "genderfucked" and "GNC" = QUEEFS

off the bat, its important to state that i am not exempt from this privileged demographic. i was raised comfortably middle-class, attend the same elite university, and have taken queer and gender studies courses. i acknowledge my access to such studies and rhetorical devices. its just that, for some reason, whenever i hear these terms, i.e. "genderfuck" and even "queer" used, whether it be in the hallways, or formal classroom settings, etc., i cannot help but equate such utterances with two things:

1. a sense that QUEEFS may be establishing territory by tapping into this inaccessible vocabulary (HIPSTERS)
2. a sense that QUEEFS are trying to cultivate a sense of self-value that is legitimized by the use and possession of such precious and exclusive terms (HIPSTERS)

perhaps it is because most people i've met who use these terms are hip, but according to my subjective experience, most QUEEFS i meet are HIPSTERS.

i have an example that equates the behavior of QUEEFS with that of the HIPSTER-
so i was having a beer in a lower west side gay bar. i was sitting next to these three guys, two of which were involved in some contrived meta-conversation about queerness. they looked about my age, and from one of the guy's sweatshirts, i assumed he went to NYU. so then, the other guy, who had been staying more or less quiet throughout the conversation, bust in to ask, "what is genderqueer?" and instead of offering a definition, both of the guys stopped and said, "you don't know?"

this reminds me of gunnar myrdal's the american dilemma. myrdal talks about the blatant discrepancies between founding american civic ideals and the reality of america, which, at the time, had clearly not even come close to realizing these upheld creedences (im going to omit the fact that despite traditional historical depictions of myrdal, he was a total bigot who didn't directly address blacks in this particular work because thats a whole different can of worms).

similarly, it is my understanding that the term "queer" itself, and all the respective pronouns that follow it, were necessitated and thus created because heteronormative terminology was thought to be insufficient in "covering" all identities that may exist across the wide spectrum of human gender and sexuality. therefore, it was thought to actually expand, instead of stagnate or shrink collective understandings of gender and sexuality.

even though this is only one situation, why the fuck wouldn't someone just tell the dude what genderqueer means? this is the territorial aspect i'd touched on earlier- what the fuck is everyone's problem with relaying this information? isnt that part of the pioneering vision for creating the vocabulary in the first place? expansion? i dunno. ill continue this later, im feeling kinda sick.



oh but before i leave, there was another thing that bothered me, but also, i was bothered by the fact that i was even bothered about it (is that coherent?)- it also has to do with limited accessibility to such vocabulary. going back to the transdude at SLC, i remember there was a time when he got pissed at this girl he had just met for calling him a "her." i understand that this can be a legal issue. i understand that in NY if you persistently call someone the wrong pronoun, or ask them to use the wrong bathroom, you can be sued. which rules. and i also understand- or sympathize, as much as i can at least, that it must be annoying to keep having to tell people over and over again what you are. i have some semblance of an idea from people asking me over and over "where are you REALLY from," because i am Chinese.

then again, one cannot deny the fact that this is a privileged vocabulary. this reminds me of something my professor, komozi woodard said, which is, that for ethnic minority communities in america, even upward mobility comes with a cost: through affirmative action, a black student from an impoverished background may have the opportunity to attend a university, but when he returns, it may be the case that he is unable to relay what he has learned to his family or community members, because of the inaccessibility of the new university rhetoric he's adopted. according to komozi, when he came back from UPENN to his family in New Ark, NJ, they didn't know what he was talking about.

if we apply this idea to QUEEF rhetoric, i sincerely doubt that a member of an impoverished community would be picky with his/her use of pronouns. if there were a transsexual man/woman who was a part of a racial minority community as well, (which im sure there is), he/she may be more preoccupied with homophobia within their community- for some reason, maybe its because i haven't yet met someone like this, i cannot imagine that they would throw a hissy fit over someone calling them a woman if they were a man, and telling the....

you know what? never mind. i CAN imagine that. that was a fucked up point.

what i think i was trying to get at, is that QUEEF terminology is a privilege. it annoys me that someone like this transdude at my school can be reputed on campus as the resident politically-correct radical queer, when there are others, others even who may be the ones mistakenly calling him a her, that do not possess the privilege of that terminology. these others may not even have the privilege of understanding how they could potentially be upset at such a political/taxonomical issue because they might not have the tools to reach these understandings/conclusions. thus to me, whenever i hear QUEEF talk, i can't help but think how selfish it is. how it is like neo-hipsterdom, image-oriented to a fault, and in many cases may be more about taking hip polaroids with others who have access to QUEEF rhetoric and look hip, and getting pissed and slapping a political stamp on it to ward the quietly confused off, rather than helping others gain access, or taking this understanding and expressing it internally.

QUEEF is about the other person, which is weird. shouldn't it be about you? maybe im separating what can't be separated. but getting mad about other people calling you a HER when you're a HE, is more about them isn't it? not what you know you are.