Growing Old With Style
by Aldrich Tan
Leslie Cheung's dark, slanted Chinese eyes gazed back at my own. He stood with dignity, wearing full black Chinese garb and with one hand behind his back. I looked into his eyes and saw that they were just like mine. His hair, too, was jet black like my own.
And he also liked men, just like me.
I was standing face to face with Cheung at Madame Tussands' Wax Museum in Hong Kong, which I had visited earlier this year while on Spring Break. As my tour group took a tram up Victoria's Peak to get a better view of the city at night, I noticed that the wax museum at the top of the peak had a memorial exhibit dedicated to HK pop singer Leslie Cheung.
I didn't know much about Cheung except for an article in Noodle Magazine. Lovingly nickname "Ge-Ge" (big brother) by his fans, Leslie Cheung was a famous actor and singer in Hong Kong. He played a gay man in the international hit, 'Farewell My Concubine'. After tabloids caught him holding hands with his manager Daffy Tong, Leslie came out as bisexual. Cheung battled a gradually failing career and depression. On April 1, 2003, he leapt off the balcony of his hotel room in the Mandarin Oriental and died instantly.
On impulse, I forked over the extra HK$100 and breezed through most of the museum, which featured famous American celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and famous Asian celebrities like Jet Li. I reached the 'Leslie' exhibit, which was organized by his partner Daffy as a tribute to his career and memory. It was located between the US presidents and Brad Pitt, and white garlands surrounded it, similar to those that fans laid out at the Mandarin Oriental and at Cheung's house following his suicide. A montage of Leslie's famous movies played in the background.
Other visitors came, mostly female fans who giggled as they leaned lovingly into Leslie's stone cold body. I felt pangs of burning jealousy. Get your hands off my man! It angered me that China is a society where the tongzhi face is still invisible.
After looking at the memorial for a while, I drew the strength within me to step up on the platform and have my picture taken with Leslie's statue. I walked up and placed my own male arms around Leslie and held his wax hands. A few people looked in semi-shock at this young gay Chinese guy who had the audacity to embrace Leslie in the same way that the girl fans did. But it felt right and I have no regrets doing it. In Leslie's eyes, I could see my own struggles as a gay Asian American man and the struggles that are yet to come for gay Asians living in both America and Asia. Later that day, I picked up a gay Chinese magazine from the nearby magazine stand. The magazine featured a letter from a frustrated closeted gay Chinese man entitled, 'I Hate Leslie Cheung!'
"He was proud, rude and daring," the letter starts. "His death shattered the dreams of our youth, wiped out our dreams of 'being old with style'. Hate him, hate his leap of faith". The words appear again, large and bold and white. Even looking at those words now brings tears to my eyes.
Asian American faces still remain invisible in the American mainstream, and in the growing gay media, they are relegated to background characters. He's the gay Japanese male prostitute who is trying to get a few dollars from Peter Paige on 'Queer as Folk'. She's the soft-butch dyke who gets brushed off by Mia Kirschner in a five-second spot on 'The L-Word'. America doesn't have any queer Asian icons, but Hong Kong had Leslie. For gay men and women in Asia, beacons of light like out celebrity Leslie Cheung were starting to open doors. But his suicide closed them again. Leslie became one of those typical tragic heroes in gay films who ends up killing themselves for the so-called purity of society. Without Leslie, how will queer Asians and Asian Americans, as the letter says, become "old with style?"
The same question lies in America: What is it like to age gay gracefully? In a new book called 'The Tragedy of Today's Gays', queer activist Larry Kramer writes that the AIDS epidemic and unprotected sex wiped out an early generation of queer men. As a result, the new generation of queer Americans living in the U.S. does not have role models to show them how to age gracefully.
In a movement consisting of both sex-positivity and homosexual monogamy, the same-sex marriage ceremonies in San Francisco seem alien to me. How can I comprehend the idea that two men or two women can legally marry each other when my queer brothers and sisters at UC Davis' Asian Pacific Islander Queers cannot come out to their own relatives? Traveling to Asia made me realize that I'm not Asian, nor American. Instead, I am a product of two different cultures and two different queer histories. Stonewall on one side and Leslie on the other.
But there is one privilege that I do have. I am
like Leslie because I am an openly gay Chinese-Filipino American.
I carry the burden and benefit of being out to my parents. Even
with a conservative president in power, there are still loopholes
that enable queer people to live lives that will give them the
opportunity to grow 'old with style' in the United States.
Angry queer men, like the one who wrote the scathing letter, will
transform Leslie's memory into their quest of growing old, out
and proud, in Asia.
That night, I went with my mom and sister to
the Avenue of the Stars (think of the Hollywood Walk of Fame with
famous Chinese actors and directors). Leslie Cheung's star was
installed one year after his death so he didn't get to place his
handprints on it. I stood on Leslie's star and looked out across
the vast ocean to see the bright neon lights of the city's tall
skyscrapers in luminous rainbow colors.
As I gazed at Hong Kong's skyline, I envisioned myself standing
on Leslie's star and holding hands with my partner. Two gay Asian
men in love, like Daffy and Leslie, and not afraid of expressing
that love because we can.
from 'Pop and Politics' -
October 24, 2005
many thanks to Eunike for this article, which is one of my favourites