Day 35 of 66 Days of No Sex
Mood: Torn
Happy Chinese New Year! It’s the year of the Rooster, but the only dick pic I received last weekend was this bedazzled cock from my mom:
I’m pretty in touch with my Asian-ness. To ring in new beginnings (again), I attended a family-style dinner in Chinatown last Saturday with an Asian professionals group I found in Boston. Afterward, I grabbed drinks with college friends I met through Asian-interest Greek life.
Had I not grown up in rural Kansas, maybe I wouldn’t have joined an Asian-interest sorority. At 18, it was the first time in my life I could walk into a room and look like everyone else. It was a major culture shock to transition from a hometown that was 0.6% Asian to a university that was 25% Asian.
While I finally blended in with my peers, my taste in guys didn’t transition as smoothly. I grew up liking white guys by default—there were really no other choices.
My high school boyfriend was Crest Whitestrips white. We shared many of the same foundational values, but we were from two different worlds. I thought I was destined for city life, one diploma away from leaving my hometown and never turning back. He was president of the Agriculture Club and wore cowboy boots out of practicality, not style. I toured his family’s farm and, for fun, he taught me how to pitch hay. He also let me pet his goats, and that’s not an innuendo. It was like a gimmicky episode of The Bachelor where they attempt to do cute activities together but really they’re just making out in random places like barns in Kansas.
We got along, loved each other even, but we both knew it wasn’t long-term. Neither of us could provide the lifestyle the other wanted. The only lasting thing from that relationship was my inclination toward white guys.
I barely knew any Asian guys before college. Aside from two guys from my online Chinese class in high school and a handful I met at a summer leadership camp at Stanford, pretty much all the other Asian guys I encountered were family. Because of that, I felt a sense of kinship when I did see Asian strangers, and expected cordial interactions because of our “shared blood.”
I maintained this mindset from childhood through high school graduation. By the time I actually met Asian guys in college, it felt incestuous to pursue any of those relationships romantically.
After a house party my first week of college, a brother of one of the Asian frats walked me back to my dorm. It was a sexually confusing time where I found him attractive, yet I also felt related to him. Ignorant and overly transparent me decided to tell him, “I’m not into Asian guys.” I thanked him for walking me home, and spent the next few months fawning over one of the only white guys in his fraternity.
Fast-forward a semester to a less racist me: I started hanging out with an Asian guy who friends said had a good reputation on campus. Guys and girls alike deemed him handsome. I wasn’t initially attracted to him, but I fell prey to the peculiar physical magnetism that transpires from enjoying someone’s personality.
I liked him so much, my tastes changed to suit him. On the whole, I was still more physically attracted to white guys, but he was the major exception, my special case.
We started dating and I brought home to meet my parents a year later. My mom and I waited for him at the airport in Kansas City. He stepped off a plane from New York in a clean black jacket, dark jeans, and studious glasses.
I hugged him and introduced him to my mom, whom he called, “ah yi” or a respectful title used for an older woman or aunt-like figure. They continued to speak in fluent Mandarin.
I had never brought someone home—friend or more—who could fully communicate with either of my parents without my translation.
We went to Ruby Tuesday’s for steaks afterward and he spoke openly with her about his flight, his family, his food—my mind was blown. I had one ongoing conversation with both of them, without breaks to explain phrases or mime out words I couldn’t translate. Everyone was on the same page. It felt easy.
Dating changed drastically for me after that relationship. He and I never explicitly talked about it, but our cultural similarities served as a lubricant for our already compatible personalities. There were unspoken norms, such as intense academic devotion, the binding obligation to care and provide for our parents when they grew older, and balls-to-the-walls aggression when fighting for the check at dinner.
These singular examples were only a snapshot of our upbringings and the countless experiences we shared before we even met.
For those who have never played the original Sims, there was an option to toggle your character’s personality traits. You had a set number of points you could distribute to qualities like Neat, Outgoing, Nice, etc. If you made your character very Neat, it would compromise how Outgoing were, and so on.
I subconsciously judge my dating prospects in this way. I have lower standards of physical attraction for Asian guys because I know there’s a cultural compatibility that better looking non-Asians are unlikely to have. I think we all weigh our options in this give-and-take way. The best relationships happen when both parties understand which personality points are most important to them.
For me: If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my Asian parents.
After college, I tried dating a handful of half-white and half-Asian guys to balance my physical and cultural needs. But none of them spoke Mandarin, so I may as well have dated a hot white dude. After my third failed “relationship” with a halfie, I threw up my hands and resigned to a steamy case of Jungle Fever. Contrary to popular belief, you can actually return from going black—it’s really a matter of preference, but you do you.
Korean/Irish Daniel Henney, for research purposes.
It’s hard for me to explain, but compatibility goes beyond speaking Chinese to my parents. It’s not to say I can’t find all the same qualities in a non-Asian. It’s a matter of convenience and the likelihood of finding these traits in a person. It’s small stuff that doesn’t make or break a relationship.
In the simplest sentiment: I want to be with someone whose life movie has the same background music as mine.
Currently, I’m living a silent movie. Things are black and white. There’s not even a sex scene (still going strong!), so it’s pretty much a dud at the box office. I hear music, but it’s not my soundtrack. All the same, I’m simultaneously mouthing the words to a song as a lead and watching myself as moviegoer, wondering if in the next scene my solo could turn into a duet.