I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (15 page)

Plastic surgery with an Inquisition-style edge of violence—surely in violation of Amnesty International regulations, but since the unfortunate victims pay for the pleasure themselves these are high crimes that will go unpunished because they are self-inflicted—is practiced daily as a means to invisibility by adhering to the idealized standard of beauty, which, you guessed it, is invisibility: impossible frailty, lack of presence, lack of substance, afraid of challenge, no fight left—these are a few of their favorite things. Skin is pulled back off the skull to
grind the jawbone down to reduce identity, the space one burdens others with, the nerve of having a face. Few Korean women are significantly overweight, so liposuction isn't an option, the fat just isn't there to vacuum out. But Botox can be injected right into the muscle, so that the muscle will atrophy, and, for all practical purposes,
die
. The offensive shrinks away.

If only something could be done about the size of bones. They have a bone to pick with those darn bones. I'm sure a new treatment is in the works to remove the entire skin and have that fat skeleton filed down with a deck sander. Blow away the excess, and there you have it, finally, a streamlined skeleton! But not everyone has the time or money to spend on these surgical disappearing acts, so most opt for straight-up starvation.

My cousin, a girl that my aunt wanted to be
so
invisible that she named her Crystal, you could see right through her. It's as if she never existed, because she's never acknowledged and so she's never there. She has two brothers, beautiful and big-eyed, crushily handsome boys that were men already before their teens, for everything that came from their minds, their hearts, their mouths was loudly publicized and celebrated, and so they grew tall like trees with thick trunks and impenetrable bark made of self-assuredness and pride. They are the family's greatest treasures, their claim to middle-class fame. The elder heads a boomingly successful accounting firm in Japan, with an invisible wife and perfect children, the boy growing brighter and stronger every day. I haven't been privy to any information about the girl, but numerous photographs of the boy have been circulating on the
Internet, which I never download because they're always of him, and I know what he looks like. The younger son works in international banking, trading money back and forth, the very thing that turns the earth on its axis—terribly important, if I understand correctly, or if I even gave a shit.

I never even knew my aunt had a daughter because Crystal was less a girl and more a ghost, watching as her family laughed and loved, lived and thrived around her, and she just hovered above, unseen and unheard, merely a cold spot in the middle of a warm room. Crystal lived beneath the family living quarters, on the main floor of their massive modern home in Seoul, less like a family member and more like an indentured servant. She bore no family resemblance, besides the anorexic thinness most of the women of my tribe suffer from, which is odd, since her parents seem the type to have sex for the sole purpose of procreation only, so if my invisible cousin was a "love child" she probably would never have been born at all.

I never saw her bedroom, nor did I ever see inside her heart, since she wasn't supposed to be there. It was all part of the agreement made with the family, with society. Crystal-clear on her invisibility, she remained stealthy for as long as she could. Then, when she started to appear, it was uncontrollable, unstoppable, uncontainable . . . and it wasn't pretty.

There were numerous suicide attempts, too many to mention, but, then, if you aren't there, anyway, who are you killing? Crystal is forty now, no longer a ghost, but considered a ghoul, and she can't be left alone for a second or she'll slit her wrists, plunge a knife into herself,
plunge a knife into you, do anything, everything—to show you that she bleeds red, not clear. Her blood is real, as is her insanity, and her unfathomable rage that is the result of the conspiratorial embrace between family and society and the idealized woman that they wanted her to be. She avenges her enforced invisibility with visibility. You can't take your eyes off her. She's all real, all there, and righteously unforgiving. Her family must acknowledge her now; they must pay for ignoring their daughter for so long that they let society dole out the love owed to all children. Keeping their daughter in the red constantly, leaving a bright child without proof of her own existence, an inexplicable poverty of being.

Crystal's revenge is not sweet; it's bitter and awful. She only wanted to be seen, and now she is, but nobody enjoys it. They have tried to cloak the entire family with invisibility, damning their sons' achievements, making their great success null and void. I never hear anything about them these days. It's as if they have disappeared off the face of the earth.

FAMILY VALUES

"a government that would deny a gay man the right to a bridal registry is a fascist state."

—notorious c.h.o
.

N
o matter who you are
or what you feel about homosexuality—if you are gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual, bi-curious, metrosexual, heterosexual, celibate, hermaphrodite, a satyr, a succubus, a fucking human being—and especially if you are a fucking human being, and really want to live in a country where all people are equal—not separate, not "civil-unionized," not lied to about your rights—realize that same sex-marriage will not harm you. It will not make gay people more "gay." It will not make you gay unless you already are. It will not make your children gay unless they already are. It will not change your life in the least, unless you are gay and want to marry your partner. Then it will transform your life, because it will change your status from second-class citizen to first-, where we should be.

I am sickened by the number of people who turned out to vote against gay marriage during the election. It was less that they wanted to vote for Bush and more that they just hated gays so much; having
Bush as a president was worth it if they could be sure of a ban on gay marriage. While it seems hopeless, and at times like an uphill battle in four-inch heels, we can't run away from it. Then we might just fall. Ever tried to run in heels?

If we are not absolutely insistent, unflinching, strident about lifting the ban on same-sex marriage, then we might as well forfeit the Constitution, cross out all the Amendments, knock down the Statue of Liberty (it was a gift from France, anyway—those peace lovers: who needs 'em?), reverse
Roe
v.
Wade
, pretend Stonewall never happened, reinstate Prohibition, deny women the vote, derail the Underground Railroad, bring back slavery, retrieve all the tea bags from Boston Harbor (actually, let them steep—gay marriage is still legal in Massachusetts, for now), give Patrick Henry death instead of liberty (he's fucking dead now, anyway), knock Paul Revere off his horse, realize that George Washington lied, albeit posthumously (besides, all those dudes had slaves anyway), get back on the
Mayflower
and go back to England. The only problem would be, trying to bring the Native Americans back to life and restore their nations that we so cavalierly destroyed in our own pursuit of religious "freedom."

Without the reality of same-sex marriage, there is no freedom. This is not an argument about homosexuality, or God, or what is in the Bible, or what your moral value system is or what you feel is ethical. It is a no-argument zone. No spins here, not in the least. It is about upholding the idea that America is the representation of freedom in the world. That to be an American is to be free. Unless we have same-sex marriage recognized and legalized by every state, then
we are not free. We are hypocrites, for we are according freedoms to a certain group in our population while denying those same rights to others. It is discrimination, and that is that.

I have many, many, many gay friends who are raising families, who are struggling to hang on to their kids, who stay home at night holed up with the boxed set of
Sex and the City
because there is nothing else for them out there in the scene anymore. They have grown up and have babies and are living the lives that they have always wanted to live. They are loving each other and that is enough, just like it is enough for countless families all over the world.

Why are they going on and on about the unraveling of the moral fiber of this nation due to the rampant acceptance of homosexuality? Why is this so incredibly scary to these people? How is this worse than our country waging war at the whim of the president and not for any real reason; the military committing atrocities in our name; the constant breach of privacy in the never-ending pseudo–War on Terror; the elevating and lowering of threat levels to keep us in a state of panic so we have no time to actually judge what is going on? How can anyone say that gays and lesbians getting married is worse than that? What is so bad about it? THEY ARE STARTING FAMILIES!!!!!!! So that is their cause for concern?

But the problem isn't actually as simple as homophobic religious beliefs or just plain social conservatism. Republicans as a whole do not have a particular opinion about homosexuality, other than the odd grumbling about not wanting government-funded programs for AIDS education or research. Gays and lesbians don't matter much
to the Republican Party, unless they can be used to bait hard-core "Christians" into working for them. Republicans know that there is a massive population of people who would normally be too stupid to vote, and that no one in his or her right mind would want this constituency anyway, except perhaps David Duke. But the GOP will take all the help it can get.

Republicans know that they may not be able to sway anyone with their ideas on domestic and foreign policy, or their views on the economy, but they do know that hatred and bigotry are great motivators. They get the ear of the leaders of these so-called family groups and Christian media watchdogs, and warn them of the impending storm of gay "legitimization," and they get them all riled up by telling them that gays are going to get married and move into their neighborhoods. As if a newly married gay couple would ever choose to live in a trailer park. They get these Bible-thumping, cousin-humping genetic mistakes and pump them up with propaganda and send them into a mullet fantasia of pink triangles and rainbow flags, convinced that their tax dollars will be used to foot the bill for Elton John and George Michael's wedding.

Hatred is a powerful motivator, and these Christian soldiers will fight tooth and nail to "protect" marriage, marching onward under a banner that reads: "You'll get this bouquet when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers." Although the Republican Party doesn't openly endorse prejudice, no one is complaining if it gets more votes.

It really is genius, harnessing hatred in order to further your own political party. We might wish that Democrats would have thought of
it first, but even if they had, the plan to introduce prejudice as an enlistment strategy doesn't jibe with the ethical ideals of the party. Compassion really does block the way to power.

What is deeply distressing is the incredible number of people who are vehemently opposed to equality, and the need for them to deny gays rights simply because they cannot bear the thought of gays having rights. It isn't like anyone who is against marriage equality would be directly affected by its existence. Not unless it's the wedding industry, and then they could reserve the right to refuse service anyway. More likely, they would welcome the extra revenue. It is doubtful anyone would turn away cold, hard cash. Greed, remarkably, has no bias. This is evidenced in the way that Republicans will pander to this creepy Christ crowd, and allow the asinine, the atrociously unfit and the morally repugnant to swell their ranks because it means more votes and money for them, and more is where it's at.

B
ut there is an optimistic side to the whole mess. We know how many people hate gays, and want to create laws and legislate against them. We know that they will vote for a president that they may not agree with otherwise, that it is worth the possibility of the destruction of the planet as we know it, that it is worth the superrich getting superricher at the expense of everyone else, so long as Bush will still make sure marriage remains only for straight people. But we don't know how many people hate those homophobes right back. It is an exciting prospect, because there has as yet been no census taken.
There are huge numbers of potential voters who haven't exercised their right because, until now, there has been no pressing need to. Even though there was a tremendous push for liberals to go out and vote, and make sure their votes counted, there were many more who felt hopeless and didn't bother—or that didn't get fired up enough. For them, there may have been no cataclysmic threat looming large enough overhead. What if we are a sleeping giant, alarm set to the nick of time? I hope so. We need ourselves now more than ever. And we can still turn things around . . . there's always hope. We could be Al-Gayda, the sleeper cell you do not want to wake up! I'm more than happy to help set up an Al-Gayda training camp—don't worry, it would offer Pilates.