Something I wrote for the most recent issue of Non Song. Intersections between being Vietnamese-American, second generation, and gay. Enjoy!

Picture Son: How to Love Yourself and Your Gay Vietnamese Children

By Trung Nguyen

I kept watch at the mailbox every day for the first two weeks of May during my Senior year of high school, memorizing the exact window of time the mail carrier approached our home. He would come between three to four in the afternoon, right when I got out of school. I would rush home at a frenetic pace, keeping an anxious eye out for his white truck and blue uniform, a feverish prayer on the tip of my tongue that I wouldn’t miss him. On the days I managed to bolt home before he arrived, I would wait from my living room with a view of our front yard, straining to identify the envelopes and packages that he would unload from his satchel.

I was on the look out for any oversized envelope, larger than most letters with the dimensions of a manila folder but slender enough to fold to the curved half-circle of our mailbox. Each time that the envelope didn’t arrive, I could breathe for a second, being relieved for the day. But it wasn’t for long – I mentally prepped myself for the next day of waiting and anxiety. It had to come soon. And I had to get it before anybody in the family did.

I wasn’t out to my family. Inside the package would be our prom pictures: my then boyfriend and I, two boys, hands clasped and suits matching. My parents wouldn’t be ready to see this picture, especially because one of them was their only son.

My patience paid off. A day later, the photos arrived and I let myself melt after secretly peering into the envelope. When I looked at our photos, all of the anxiety and fear was worth it. I kept them hidden in my room most of the time, only bringing it out whenever I was feeling particularly lonely or needed something to cheer me up.

One day, I got a call from my mom while I was out. “I cleaned your room today. I just wanted to let you know.” Searching for a reason why she would call me for something so simple, I thanked her and let her know I’d be home for dinner.

The realization only came later. My heart stopped. I forgot to put away our prom pictures. I rushed back home.

***

I was my parents’ many firsts. I was their first born (and only) son, the first to be surrounded by an entire family who had spent the last twenty years resettling from Vietnam, the first to graduate high school with a 4.0, and the first to go to a UC school – these were some of the highlights of many other firsts.

While more these firsts than I could count were met with anticipation and celebratory welcoming than with unease and tension, my parents never expected that I would also be their first gay child.

I grew up in East Side San Jose, an immense Vietnamese-American enclave and Southeast Asian refugee haven. It was nearly impossible to be alone as a child: our entire extended family lived within three blocks of one another, my schools offered Vietnamese bilingual education, and my friends didn’t question why I brought out fish sauce instead of soy sauce to the dinner table. I had a strong sense of my history and my heritage. Yet despite being affirmed in my Vietnamese identity, I couldn’t shake off a chronic sense of immense loneliness and crippling fear I had growing up. It was a fear I couldn’t escape, one that I was reminded about day to day: the fear of being who I was and loving who I wanted to love. It was paralyzing.

This same fear propelled me home the night my mom called me. Would my key work or would the locks be changed? If I had five minutes to stuff my belongings into a bag, what would I take? How much of a physical or emotional beating could I take before I made a run back out the door?

I was terrified — mostly, of losing my family. I lingered on the sidewalk of my house, carefully observing the lights in every room, as if staring at the flickering yellow glow would magically show me what everyone was doing. I talked to my then boyfriend and made back-up plan after back-up plan in case I would get kicked out. After assuring me a warm place to sleep and food to eat, I worked up the courage to enter the house.

My keys worked. I stepped inside. It was quiet. My mom was watching TV with my dad. I snuck my way past them, still fearful. As I entered my room, I couldn’t have prepared myself for what I saw.

At the front of my desk was my prom picture, neatly framed in new black wood.

***

We don’t speak of it much but small actions have liberated me over the years. They no longer bother me about girlfriends. They invite my “friend” over for family celebrations. They leave out two plates for breakfast when my boyfriend stays for the night. In the process of letting go of fear and allowing myself to love without fear of losing my family, I have become an active member of both the Vietnamese and LGBT community, working with youth and advocating for a stronger future. I would have never done any of this had I continued to live in fear.

Like many Vietnamese families, there wasn’t much my family could offer by way of support, but what they did have was their love. But this was all I could have asked for and this is what I ask of all my readers: continue loving your sons, daughters, little brothers and sisters even if they love somebody of the same sex. You have the power to transform and empower a life and I urge you to use it for the better.   

There are photos of my family at church which are older than I am. Looking through the albums, the church book-ends one era to another for my family: my parents in front of the church that sponsored them here, my middle sister’s baptism ceremony, my oldest sister’s confirmation ceremony, my own baptism, marriages of my uncles and aunties. There are even a couple of photos of me dozing off in the pews when I was four that my dad thought would be particularly funny.

Looking at the pattern of images taken of my older sisters and relatives, I watched them grow up as they were documented during their first baptism, eucharist, confirmation, marriage, funerals and the cycle begins again but with their own children.

There are lapses as time passes, however. One nephew wouldn’t have a baptism, another aunt wouldn’t have a marriage. Eventually, examining my own memories in front of me, I realize I don’t have a confirmation memorialized. 

It was no coincidence though; I left the faith a long time ago when I realized I was gay. The contradiction in my parent’s faith and my sexuality was only the cherry of the reason; the bulk of it built up from years of understanding my own sense of existed. I always hated being given instructions.

There were fights. There were long nights and dreadful car rides. Yet I was stubborn and fiercely committed to what I believed was right. I remember my dad telling me he left monastery training as a teenager to be with the woman he loved — my mom — and I’m essentially doing the same. Eventually, they gave up. I haven’t been inside of a church since early high school. 

Though looking through the album again, I see there are less photos of these life events in general (aside from my own) even though I know there are more little nieces and nephews who go through them. Hell, there are less family photos altogether. These eras are lost.

Perhaps they no longer felt it was significant to document every precious moment and the novelty of comfortable luxury of the United States in comparison to their war-torn Vietnam had worn off. New realities were terrifying though exhilarating at first but soon became tomorrow’s drudgery. However, even if it was partially that, I also realized my parents haven’t gone to church in the last four years. When I used to come home for Christmas, they would tell me, “Meet you at Midnight Mass, we are going to go first to get seats and you can catch up” and I would intentionally disappoint their expectations. But now, not even that happens.

I didn’t notice for the longest time. As I’ve gotten older, however, I begun to wonder why they stopped going. I stopped going because I lost my faith and I know why. But I wonder what they lost to make them stop. For once, I felt uneasy about the situation.

Knowing that something they did for over 50+ years, across war, violence, devastation, oceans, continents, jungles, trauma, resettlement, life, and death was suddenly stopped worries me. It must have been something quite catastrophic and lately, I’ve noticed my family crumble apart particle by particle from the inside out. The rooms are cold. The walls echo. Things are dead here. We’re hollow.

I’m starting to see this, and I’m starting to mourn it.

I can’t lie. Looking at the photos, I felt a familiar warmth emanating from them that was long extinguished and its comforting glow reignited what I hadn’t noticed was even missing in the first place. I remember seeing my first Nativity scene and the excitement that came with it, I remember watching my first Lion Dance show and my eagerness whenever January came to an end, I remember sitting in envy as my older sisters got to take part in the Eucharist alongside my parents and awaiting the day I no longer served to save their seats.

How will I hold on to these feelings when they’re gone? When they’re gone, will they be comforted? Or will they thrash through everything in a journey of fear until the very end?

The second scenario terrifies me. The only thing terrifying than experiencing their loss is experiencing their loss without having the warmth that we had in those photos.

Was it my leaving the church that my parents stopped going as well? Or what was it which made them stop?

Sometimes, I begin to think I should believe again, if only for the comforting fact to know that my family will be taken care of with just as much love as they took care of me. Then, perhaps, I could not fear loss as much as I do now.