The Unholy Son
As a child, I associated the Christian life with a cold monotony permeated by an inexpressible aesthetic bliss. Maybe it was just suburban life. I grew up in Diamond Bar, about thirty miles east of Los Angeles, in a house with popcorn ceilings, a display case of ceramic angel figurines, and a woven tapestry by Thomas Kinkade over the fireplace that read, "As for me and my house, We will serve the Lord. My father and mother, both immigrants from Hong Kong, were religious. We went to the Chinese Alliance Church in Glendale, and I dreaded the forty-minute drive there as much as I dreaded the sermon. As we drove through Industry City, billboards for the Spearmint Rhino Strip Club spoke of a forbidden world: flying in the wind. Blondes with flowing hair and bright, shiny eyeshadow. I imagined round tables with white tablecloths and a smoking room inside. I didn't care about women. When I went to church in Laguna Beach, I saw school children playing volleyball in the air and licking their bare chests with salt. My gaze followed the teasing line of her arms as they hit the ball as if in punishment.
Our church hosts two services every Sunday: a large service in Chinese attended by expats like my parents, and a smaller service in English for second-generation churchgoers like me. A few times a year, especially at Easter and Christmas, we combined the two and held a joint service. Priests took turns giving line-by-line sermons in English and Chinese that stretched into the morning as I imagined Pokémon in the forest.
Congregational worship means that the congregation sings hymns together. I felt a sense of anticipation as the pianist began and we stood up. We sang 19th century hymns like “How Big You Are,” my father’s favorite song. At Christmas we sang “O Holy Night,” which I love for its big, long notes. My father began with patient, reserved reverence, if not entirely relaxed, and developed into an energetic, fiery tenor. His pulse was gentle, with rhythmic tones. A nine-year-old boy auditioning for China's prestigious Shanghai Music Conservatory failed almost all tests (he couldn't read music or play an instrument) but was accepted based on his voice alone. . There he learned to play the piano. After leaving the country with his older brother to be with his father, he leads a brass band at a school in Macau. One of his three sisters who remained in China joined the Red Guards; His mother died a few years ago. He experienced heartbreak, exile and family separation, which led to a love of music that led him to God. In church it was rude to look at him with half-closed eyes and head raised, ready to receive him.
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My father felt a call to ministry during his first year in America, where he immigrated to study engineering. “When the time comes, prepare me and I will serve you, O Lord,” he prayed. In 2003, he gave up his career in mobile technology to attend Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in the Bay Area. I asked, “Does this mean I’m going to the PC?”, which meant “priest’s son.” I was fifteen at the time and I didn't want to be the son of a priest.
My father sat in the pulpit at Mandarin Baptist University where he preached to hundreds of people with the righteous anger of King David: some believed he was the eternal victim. He condemned same-sex marriage as “moral corruption.” He preached that same-sex relationships were an “abomination.” God did not create humans to be born with homosexual desires. They have “chosen” an evil life and will be punished if they do not renounce their “wickedness”.
I knew I was gay. I blamed myself, not God, even though it was beyond my control. I prayed and got angry. At a men-only religious retreat in a log cabin, I joined my teenage brothers in Christ and admitted that I struggled with lust, but always for girls. When I was baptized at the age of sixteen, I promised God that I would live a solitary life and profess myself to be a Christian before the church.
I associated my teenage angst with music, which I associated with dark hair and eyeliner. When it came time to choose a college, I chose UC Davis because it was closer – a six-hour drive – from home. My freshman year, I hosted a show on college radio. At four in the morning, beginner time, I cycled to the train station to play the role of three insomniacs getting hot on the deserted country roads. As I browsed the station's library display, I discovered genres I had never heard of. Were they really true? “Trip Hop” sounds like it was written by a stoned college student. “Shoegaze” was a far cry from “Like Honey.” I tried to impress high school DJs who smoked weed, had loud sex, and recited Rimbaud. “My girlfriend thinks you’re beautiful,” one of them told me at the party, pointing to a tall man with a blonde beard. I never thought he would try to trick us.
Signs soon appeared on lawns reading "Vote Yes on Proposition 8," a bill banning same-sex marriage after an earlier ban, Proposition 22, was declared unconstitutional by the California Supreme Court. At home, my father was inspired. He believed he was defending the sanctity of marriage against the tide of “liberalism.” He held a rally in Monterey Park where members of his community spoke and held signs. They printed T-shirts and baseball caps with the words “Marriage = Man + Woman.” He kept these hats in the garage. I saw her on my visits home and wondered if her hatred was because she was denying what she suspected of me, but she refused to confront it.
My father voted yes. Motion 8 was accepted.
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When I moved to New York in 2011, same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide. I started telling people that I was an atheist. It's less about God and more about the belief that if I follow my father's religion I'll never grow up.
I thought I would find in New York another country or my own version of the exotic cultural communities I read about in Edmund White's autobiographical trilogy. I met a lot of people in the Queer Club through my friend Garrett, with whom I worked on an online publication. They gave readings in converted strip clubs, posed naked for erotic magazines and walked catwalks. We went to illegal warehouse parties in Bushwick, and when those parties were closed, we went to Spectrum, an after-hours dive club. My friend Ben chewed pink bubble gum under a disco ball and bubbled as the beat faded. On the early morning drive home, we felt the morning breeze on our collarbones and saw truck drivers in the window of Tina's restaurant leaning over burnt coffee before their shift.
My job gave me free tickets to events like the Museum of Modern Art Gun Party. That's when I first heard about Venus X, the DJ with the long green hair who is both alien and animated. I listened to his dark speech and sakar for an hour and was convinced that I had seen the future. High vocals are cut up and dissolved into a cloud of reverberation that falls apart into pieces. It's broken. Venus X introduced me to the deconstructed club scene, an overtly queer, non-white DJ style. In contrast to the smooth transitions of minimal techno, this music became famous for its sudden genre changes. Venus can fly from a jersey club to reggaeton and gabber to Madonna's beam of light. My friends went to his GHE20G0TH1K party, where gay black DJs like Ashland Mines were on the decks and the nerdy kids from Hood By Air were all the rage. I was looking forward to a change that would allow me to change my dance moves from a techno stomp to a bastard version in an instant. I could be a butcher, a woman or something in between.
Three years later, the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all fifty states. When the verdict was announced, my friends were not impressed. Garrett said he doesn't think anything has changed: Same-sex marriage is now legal in New York, and it's time for the rest of the country to catch up. Ben said that marriage is systemic and homosexuality is inherently transgressive. I was secretly thrilled and thought that the victory had poisoned my father's precious "holiness," even though I felt like I had failed at homosexuality. I never had a boyfriend, I was never close to finding someone to marry, and I spent my time on dark, anonymous dates at the backstage banquets of sex wizards in Chelsea or Berlin.
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When I was twenty-nine, I confessed to my father. In a quick email from New York, I made it clear that I had saved enough money to start my own business and would be taking some time off. I then deleted the email from my outbox. When the father replied, I deleted his reply without reading it.
