It was like any other normal work day. I got to the office early to print off the handouts for my classes and sat in my office prepping the material I would be teaching in a few minutes. Jay knocks on my door and asks if I can meet with him and the manager after work. I joke out loud and ask if I’ve done something wrong. He assures me it has nothing to do with my performance. I sit back in my seat wondering what it could possibly be. I decided they must want to sit down with me and make sure that the first two weeks of work and life in Korea has been an easy transition.
As always I let my mind worry about the worst case scenario. Maybe one of my students thinks I’m too mean, or ugly. Even worse, they think I am a talent-less hack of a teacher. My last class was finally over and I grabbed my bag, threw on my coat and walked into the manager’s office. Jay stepped in a few minutes later and closed the door behind him. The mood of the room was somber. I instantly felt anxious. This was not a pep talk, it couldn’t be. Jay stares down at the table and says, “I don’t even know how to say this.” My Adam’s Apple burns and I can’t breath for a few moments. I then slur, “whatever it is just say it.” He stumbles and says, “it’s about you being gay.” I was taken entirely off guard. This was going in a direction I had not even considered. I was in total shock so just sat there and spent the next twenty minutes taking “it all in.”
I should start by mentioning I don’t feel the need to declare my sexuality from the roof tops (although I do love singing and dancing on a sturdy roof). My sexuality doesn’t define who I am and it is just one part of me which I am proud of and very comfortable with talking about. I had only told one person I was gay since I had started work. My friend Stacey is incredibly lovely and liberal and her best friend Shareen is a bisexual with an infectious laugh and a need for quality shopping and dance moments. The three of us clicked immediately. So I found it shocking that I was sitting at my place of work in this rather ridiculous meeting.
It all started with the receptionist. I am now fully aware of how much of a bitch this woman is. She likes to stir the pot, so to speak. She asked Jay if I was gay and he responded, “ya of course” as he didn’t see anything wrong with it. She then takes the owner of the school aside and tells him I am gay. I imagine this conversation takes place in a darkly lit room in some sort of dungeon. Jay first apologizes for ever telling her. I feel bad for him because I know he feels horrible having to even be in this meeting as he tells me he thinks it is wrong. The owner talked to the manager and Jay and told them they were to sit me down and tell me, that I was not to tell anyone that I was gay. Jay then explained how the owner was scared that his business could suffer if parents found out that their kids were being taught at a school with a gay teacher. Slowly everything became very awkward and silent. I asked, “so what do you want me to do?” Jay said, “ah, nothing.” I was told all about the competitive nature of Korean business. How one owner of a business will deliberately try and trash talk another business to steal their customers. It happens a lot and it is actually encouraged. If it “got out” that I was gay it was feared that many Conservative Korean parents would take their children out of my school and enroll them in another Hogwan.
So I sat there and responded. I told them that I understood that they had to talk to me. I tried to be as diplomatic as possible. I could sense that Jay felt horrible about the whole meeting and simply said, “I appreciate your meeting with me.” I asked questions about gay culture in Korea. Which simply does not exist. There are three gay bars in Seoul but society here doesn’t talk about it. Similarly young unmarried couples have sex at Love Motel’s but people would rather not recognize this behavior. A society where people feel perfectly comfortable walking around surrounded in hypocrisy. I felt actually worse for Korean gay men and woman as they don’t fit into the Confucianist social structure. There is no place for them. All of the gay Korean’s that head to the bars to go dancing on weekends aren’t actually openly gay with their families and during their normal daily lives. I find the thought suffocating.
So I sat and listened to a short Readers Digest version of Korean conservatives. I walked out of the room and said goodnight still in a bit of a daze. I felt rather empty, realizing what I had just experienced, back home is illegal. Talk about blatant discrimination. I stood alone in the elevator thinking, the Straightification has begun. I walked home and lay in bed wide awake. I felt my first, sudden surge of homesickness. I missed my gay friends back home. I missed my straight friends back home. I missed feeling equal. I missed the feeling of liberty, equity and equality.
I went to work the next day and tried to tip toe into my classroom. The manager saw me and knocked on my classroom door. He came in and closed the door and with his broken Korean/English he said sorry and asked me if I was alright. I said, “no, don’t feel bad I understand.” I told Shareen and Stacey as soon as possible. When you move away from your social network at home you have to develop one abroad in order to remain sane.
By now everyone at work knows I’m gay. So the slick, pressed suit, owner outed me when my intention was to make my sexuality a minor detail over here. Whenever I see the owner standing in the lobby I bow as low as possible and feel entirely idiotic. I imagine he’s thinking in his head, “he must be like Elton John and sing Barbara Streisand hits every night before bed.”
The Straightificiation continued when I sat in my classroom a few days later with Jay and he choked and sputtered as he had to relay more interesting news from the owner. I was told I could no longer wear my jeans to work. Apparently the manager had received many complaints from parents about what I was wearing to work. I felt I was dressing as conservatively as possible without wearing a suit. Everyone at work wears jeans but my jeans aren’t straight enough apparently. I was told I cannot wear jeans that are, “tight around the ankle.” Good Lord, give me a break already. I was told to find “normal jeans.” Now I need to normalize my appearance, fun.
Jay explains that I shouldn’t be angry at the kids. They go home and tell their parents “my teacher is so cool he dresses like a pop star and movie star.” (I kid you not, the kids actually tell their parents that I dress like a celebrity). For the record black leather loafers, navy Diesel Thanaz skinny jeans, white and black striped Club Monaco dress shirt, black cashmere v neck by Giovani Rabichi and Dolce and Gabbana belt are the cornerstone items needed in your closet to properly dress like a celebrity. After the parents hear that their children are being taught by some teacher who looks like a pop star they wig out and call the school. I don’t fit their cookie cutter image of boring conservative dress.
So I ran over to Stacey’s room and told her my newest gay work episode. She laughs and tells me we would go shopping on the weekend for non gay clothing. We spent Saturday at COEX mall. Asia’s largest underground shopping mall. I felt entirely depressed after the first few shops I walked into. I recalled old memories of wearing khakis dress slacks that puffed out at my hip like an air balloon. I whined, “I could fit an entire farm in these pants! I was swimming in all of them! I decided to buy “normal non gay slacks” rather than “normal non gay jeans” as I didn’t’ have any slacks and couldn’t imagine wearing non gay jeans outside of work. We were entirely stumped, I was getting anxious. Stacey called Jay and told him that I was at my wits end and needed help on what he wanted me to buy. I was told he said, “you know, normal jeans, that guys wear, that aren’t tight.” I rolled my eyes and continued eyeing the various straight clothing shops.
We walked into a store called Dressed to Kill which would end up providing the perfect work pants. I stood in front of the pant wall with Stacey staring at a poster board which described all of the different cuts and styles of their pants. Low and behold the perfect pant would turn out to be called, “Standard Straight.” We hysterically laughed in the corner of the store after realizing even the name of these pants were as conservative as you could possibly imagine.
I was happy with the purchase as they fit me nicely and weren’t entirely horrific. They were also $14.00 each which is always worth jumping for joy over.
So now, I am the token gay at work. A role I fit perfectly. Everyone is entirely accepting and I am frequently joked about as the “suffragette, abolitionist, social rights crusader.” I spent one week of my life having to think a lot about how splendid Canada is. All of the lovely rights we are afforded back home. For the first time in my life I felt entirely aghast about my sexuality. Now that this week of Straightification has ended I am up for the challenge. I’ve learned, anything hard or irritating in life has a funny way of enriching our souls and making us more understanding and happy people.
The Korean flag is called taegeukgi. The design symbolizes the principles of the ying and yang in Asian philosophy. The circle in the center of the flag is divided into two equal parts. The red half represents the proactive cosmic forces of the yang. Conversely, the blue half represents the responsive cosmic forces of the yin. The two forces together embody the concepts of continual movement, balance and harmony that characterize the sphere of infinity. The circle is surrounded by a trigram in each corner. Each trigram symbolizes one of the four universal elements: heaven, earth, fire and water.
Whenever I see a Korean flag blowing in the wind as I walk down the street I immediately stare at the circle of harmony in the middle of the flag and wonder how harmonious a culture can be when it excludes, turns a blind eye and refuses to acknowledge a minority exists.
