Eighteen years ago I visited Manhattan for the first time with a group of exchange students from my native country Taiwan. I was 15 then. I didn’t understand homosexuality. But I was a natural flame. I kissed a boy who was my roommate. He was surprised. He didn’t say no.
In a balmy Wednesday afternoon we made a trip to the forever jammed Metropolitan Museum. The regal institution—those dramatic vaults and majestic Grecian columns and niftily crafted indoor landscape—intensified my never well-hidden femininity. I wandered and meandered through different halls of history, feeling like May Welland from The Age of Innocence: coyly curious and perhaps demurely coquettish.
The cascading brightness from ceilings felt so effortlessly natural. I glanced the passing images of myself from the reflection of different paintings’ glass surfaces. I couldn’t tell who I really was. I only felt light. I was too young to know any dark reality lurking around.
I didn’t care much to learn anything from our overly zealous geek guide. I was too happy enjoying my inner femaleness from the book characters by either Edith Wharton or Henry James. I was unconsciously swaying my hands to dust off those invisible frills from my non-existent trailing skirt gently caressing hard wood floors.
At some point I lost my fellow tour mates when spending too much time appreciating some exquisitely ornate antiques and jewelries. I was alone and daydreaming. A guy stood across the other side of glass display box. I sensed his ogle without too much hesitation.
He had salt and pepper hair and scruffy chins. A handsome daddy type. He dressed like a photographer with casual easiness. He slightly leaned against the box and his face was lit assortedly from the box’s inside lighting fixture. I could see those gentle lines carved softly around his cheeks. I couldn’t see how intense his desire was from those dark eye sockets.
I stepped back a bit, unsure of this atmospheric transformation from polished delicacy to somewhat raw hunt. I decided to lift my imaginary hoop skirt and strutted away. He followed; inadverdently orbited around every artwork I stopped by.
I wasn’t afraid. Stalking was something I never experienced before. I felt a little reckless in thought but couldn’t stop getting excited at such hide and seek, catch and release. No longer a restrained lady corseted in the19th century, I morphed into a freewheeling young boy who first visited a gay venue (the Metropolitan Museum!). Skittish, awkward, I was one man’s center of attention and that felt peculiarly satisfied.
His burning gazes set fire every nook, scorched every ground beneath me in the Metropolitan’s universe. Hall after hall, exhibition after exhibition, civilization collapsed, arts and intelligence were destroyed, and we the only two creatures led and followed on that barren earth composed of fumingly burnt mass of visitors. Though my penis was solid as a totemic rock pointing at the perpetual direction of East, my face could only sprinkle few drops of rain smiles. Flirtation and frivolity grew nothing. He didn’t dare to approach me. I was Tadzio to his Gustav; Dorian to Lord Henry; Lolita to Humbert.
Then he disappeared, in the grand hall featuring a gigantic gate with iron bars. He was gone like a poignant line of ghost, left me standing in a human sea of flesh ebbs. Suddenly I felt a strong sting of loneliness. My excitement lapsed. My physical erection withered. Although I didn’t develop a feeling for this guy but I knew something changed forever. My desire for same sex started to come into some shape.
From that moment on I had to wait another 10 years (after I moved to New York for good, after another salt and pepper guy with whom I met at another gay venue, after he gave me physical and emotional fulfillment) to understand a bit better about myself as a homosexual. Those years spent on visits and discoveries weren’t effortlessly natural.
