I guess I was a bit "odd" (?) even from high school. I was a Mormon... for a very long time. My parents were not Mormon. I was the only one in the family. (My brother got baptized right after me and joined the church, but that was about it. He was never really active.) There were only about 40,000 Mormon members in Korea (with the entire population: 40,000,000), of which I would say approximately 10,000 were active. Yes, that's right that I was not your average Korean. When my friends took a trip to Paris and Harvard with Penthouse Girl Sunny Leone, I visited Salt Lake City and BYU.
Being a Mormon in Korea was a big social boundary. Upon my baptism, immediately I had to get involved in many church meetings. While many of my high school friends who went to college were having fun with drinking, smoking, going to dance clubs, dating girls, etc., I was given strict church rules instead that kept me from doing what the most fresh-out-of-high-school guys (gals) were enjoying. No coffee! No alcohol! No smoking! No red tea! No shopping on Sundays! No dating non-church members! That was pretty much my life... the life of many no's.
Actually I survived well. I was pretty happy for a little while. I was well received by the bishop and other church members. People really looked upto me. I was a "righteous", bright, and promising "chung-nyun" (young man). I hardly got accepted elsewhere, so it meant a lot to me. I really tried to fit in!
But as my life is never easy, there was a problem. I only had very few options for girls since I was not allowed to date any other non-church members. I didn't like any of them. And believe me... I had pretty much low standards, but Mormon girls that I knew were just so ugly. I wouldn't go to bed with them even after I would get drunk, yet they told me not to drink. On the other hand, young elders looked good to me with well-ironed suits, ties, and neatly-trimmed hair. Maybe that's how I developed physical attraction toward such neat men.
In the end, I left the church as I realized that I was more attracted to men than women. My sexuality did not fit heterosexual norms of the church. (In my opinion, LDS is the most heterosexual Christianity. I mean, what other church that you know tells you that you should get married in order to become a God?) I felt very alone beause the Teens For Cash Sex community was everything to me and I lost it. I did not have any other friends. So, I decided to leave the country (because there was not much left for me anyway) and immigrate to the U.S. in summer 2000. I told to myself, "I will have a new life. I will find acceptance."
Now it's summer 2004. Four years have passed.
Contrary to all my hopes and dreams that I originally had when I put my first step on the Land of Freedom, I am still single. I am still lonely from time to time. I have only few friends. I'm no righteous, bright, young man. I became a guy who is only an eroticized, fetishized, and othered Asian boy far from the mainstream beauty of White gay men. This reality is hurtful.
I wish I were Mormon again, living in a twicked reality. This new reality of being a racial minority in the world of the sexually marginalized isn't any better. But I guess it's impossible to go back now. The pandora's box is open. Until I find my happiness, I dwell in my last resort of beinging the Orientalized Other.
posted by frank @ 6:21 PM
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