Subject: Column: "Straightening Up"
From: [email-masked] (Tara Marchand)
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1993 19:58:53 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.motss,soc.bi

Here's a column I found in an old issue of _The Liberal Opinion_ that I
ethought some people might find interesting.

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"'Straightening Up' Can Lead to Messy Lies and Lives"
By Deb Price

Straightening up.  We all do it when company's coming.  But in many
households the focus isn't on remembering to put out the guest towels. 
It's on sweeping every sign of gay life under the rug.

Down come the photos that might make the "roommate" seems like more than
just a friend.  Away go the gay books and magazines.  Off comes the layer
of dust that announces the second bedroom is never used.

Within minutes the home that should reflect individuality instead becomes
a mine field of schemes.  The point of the deception, of course, is for
the heterosexual visitor to feel comfy presuming that the hosts are straight.

It's a dangerous game that I played well into my 20s.  My integrity and
first relationship were undermined by it.  As Sir Walter Scott warned in
1805, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!"

The messy hazards of straightening up have reached the big screen in _The
Wedding Banquet_, a winner of the prestigious Golden Bear award at this
year's Berlin film festival.

The movie, playing in 100 artsy theaters around the country, explores the
extraordinary efforts of one gay man, a naturalized US citizen from
Taiwan, to straighten p his life to please his parents.

Wai-Tung and Simon, his lover of five years, go far beyond simply taking
down a few gay posters.  They decide Wai-Tung, under constant pressures
from his parents to wed, should marry a Chinese woman who needs a marriage
license to get a green card.  The in-name-only bride is so desperate to
remain in America that she accepts their proposal.

The nightmarish scheme, mostly played for laughs, naturally starts to
damage the men's life together.

As soon as Wai-Tung's parents fly in from Taiwan for a pre-wedding visit,
Wai-Tung introduces Simon as his landlord.  (Wham!  A sledgehammer hits
the honest underpinnings of their relationship.)  When evening comes,
Wai-Tung and Simon head to separate bedrooms.  (Wham!)  Again and again
Simon is shoved aside to make way for the fraudulent bride.  (Wham, wham,
wham!)

When the lies become too much for Simon, he screams at Wai-Tung over
breakfast.  Wai-Tung's confused mother, who understands no English,
whispers to her husband, "Are we staying over our welcome?...Did Wai-Tung
pay his rent?"

By the final scene, Wai-Tung's parents know that what he didn't pay to
Simon was the respect due a mate.

_The Wedding Banquet_ is loosely based on the tangled life of Nicky, a
30-year-old native of Taiwan drawn here by the 1975 _Time_ magazine cover
story on gay Air Force Sgt. Leonard Matlovich.  In the United States,
Nicky thought, he could avoid marriage and find a rewarding gay life.

For the last decade, Nicky has loved a China scholar named Bob.  Nicky's
friends and co-workers know he's gay.  Unlike Wai-Tung, he's never had a
sham marriage.

But, he told me over dinner, he's spun complicated tales for his parents
about why he lives with Bob.  There was "The Homesitting Story," "The
Renter," "The Tax Break."  His parents, unlike Wai-Tung's, still don't
know the truth.  "That's the biggest irony," Nicky says.

Another irony is that Nicky's childhood pal, straight screenwriter Neil
Peng, is publicly leading the gay movement that _Wedding_ has sparked in
Taiwan.  Nicky and the gays he left behind say they're still too fearful
to be totally out.

But the saddest irony is that, despite his elaborate ruses, Nicky has
failed to please his parents.  Nicky says his father recently told him
that, "I'd been irresponsible all my life.  And his conclusion about why I
didn't want to get married is that I don't want a family responsibility."

Nicky adds, "I told him, 'You're all wrong.'  I couldn't tell him the real
reason."  Through tears, Nicky says he really wants his parents to know
what Bob means to him.

When we try to avoid pain by straightening up, we often just postpone it. 
Life, after all, isn't tidy.  And the cornerstone of any relationship
worth having is honesty.

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Tara
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|        | Tara R. Marchand        | [email-masked] |         |
| ------ | Dept. of Psychology     |    [email-masked] | ------- |
|        | University of CA, Davis | [email-masked] |         |

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