Sandy Does Southeast Asia

There are some things I am not good at, such as speaking Italian on command and running long distances. There are other things I am very good at indeed, and one of these is making snap judgements about other people’s sexual orientation. Maybe this comes from living in San Francisco for eight years, where once you adjust for the guys who only date asian women, the ratio of straight single white females to straight single white males is about 278:1.

An English girlfriend of mine here has had it brought to her attention recently that she is a lesbian. This has come as news to her. She argues that she cannot in fact be a lesbian since she very much enjoys having sex with men and does not at all want to have sex with women. But what can she do? It seems a concensus has been reached. I suspect my friend Simeon may be next on the outing list since I have seen him do some pretty gaybo things recently and I can’t have been the only one to have noticed. I tipped him off. He laughed and said he couldn’t be less gay. I told him that of course I believe him but that I’m not sure it matters.

It made me wonder about how we determine the sexual orientation of others, especially when we are in a foreign country or in a community such as this, where there are people from so many different home cultures. I suddenly became aware of the blurred lines all around me, like a totally flamey looking Thai guy who announced to the kitchen staff that he thinks I am very pretty and has taken up flirting with me. If I knew the Thai words for, “Are you sure you’re not gay cuz honey would you ever be a big hit in the Castro,” I would return his compliments with that.

Last week I went to a free buffet put on at a local German restaurant/bar called the Tassadej Cafe in honor of their seven-year anniversary. I went with Simeon, Petra and her friend Frank who is visiting. Petra and Frank are both German. We all jumped on the Meat Extravaganza and spent the next ten minutes eating with great concentration while listening to groovy German techno. The relative silence was broken by Frank who pointed out, “It is really a catastrophe to eat these things without mustard. He has already apologized.” “He” being Karsten, the owner. This is a fine example of culinary honor among Germans, I suppose. They asked if I had met Karsten. I said that I had, briefly, and that he seemed very nice. Then they said he was gay. Out of nowhere, just like that, apropos of nothing in particular. “Really?” I said, “I hadn’t noticed.” They looked at me like I must be missing half my brain and both eyes.

Crap. Have I completely lost my gaydar? What am I going to do if I move back to SF? How will I function? Or is it possible that it’s being jammed by cross-cultural signals?

I thought about something my friend who’s married to a Thai woman said, about how the thing he really appreciates in cross-cultural relationships is that you’re forced to not make assumptions as you would with someone from your own culture. The other person is essentially a mystery and you must learn them as an individual rather than as a collection of pre-determined categories. When I stopped to think about it, I realized that I guess I do this a lot. We all do. Otherwise social relations, and life in general, would be unbearably complex. But these if/then assumptions – if he lives in New York and is 38 and is unmarried and is Jewish, then he must be neurotic with some sort of hangup about his mother – it also drains a lot of the richness of getting to know other people.

I decided I would try to stop making assumptions about other people, especially people whose cultures I did not fully understand. I would let myself discover who other people really are. I would appreciate them as individuals rather than a set of personality attributes. And I would definitely stop trying to figure out if they were gay or not.

On the way home I was feeling quite pleased with myself. Simeon was feeling quite pleased too, after eating his own body weight in almond pastries. “It’s just so nice to have dessert at the same place you have dinner,” he said raising his eyebrows and adding a little sashay to his step. “You just don’t get that here in Thailand.”

And I actually managed to bite my tongue.

Tags: Nong Khai, Thailand

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