prose on asian masculinity vol. I

what the Asian man means to me

For me, the cigarette was the most riveting protagonist of “In The Mood For Love”. The smoke always elicited a sharp and scented ambiance — rapturing my senses the most, even though I was 7 feet, a square black screen and 25 years elapsed away from the scene it depicted. Seeing how it moved changed the experience of the movie.

The smoke would trail into the night every time lead actor Tony Leung took a whiff. His face would be so blank yet so full of emotion, contorted with a muted pain that I’d only ever seen on the faces of other Asian men.

And hidden in the creases of his face would be the edges of longing. I registered it as a felt sense inside me. I have always, for some reason, yearned to keep yearning. But the way I yearn to yearn is in the way of nobility. And he with the raven hair is the only one who I see carries the weight of needing to be that too.

In Asian films, especially like that of Wong Kar Wai’s, your fever dream isn’t intense, a passionate climbing heat that escalates and burns bright into the sky like a fire work. How you love your partner isn’t showy, bold, bright.

In Asian films, fantasy precedes reality. It is more honorable to love quietly, from a distance. To want, but to not speak. To desire, but to not consummate, and keep yourself quiet.

You can always see the protagonists aren’t necessarily building a world together, but they are existing in separate ones that the other sometimes visits. You should not get closer than that.

Every Eastern theme I’ve felt the weight of throughout my life speaks of honor, of piety, of humility. In America, this is a huge mistake to put too much emphasis on. You will get trampled for being submissive, emasculated for being too “feminine” by mainstream culture.

And yet, wasn’t that an antiquated old vision, before changes rocked the 2010’s and representation changed the face of this phenomenon, when bravado was valued less? Where does that leave Asian men? Whom should they fashion themselves after now?

Oh…maybe him?

I don’t have many answers, but this I do know: every time I see cigarette smoke snaking away into the night, I think of how ethereal and fleeting the culmination of my own feelings are. When I opened my mouth as an adolescent, the words would slip out, too fragile to be heard, yet I would see their wisps, feel their weight in my heart, as no one heard me.

The times I heard a voice speak behind me and implore me to turn around and see connection, the times I could speak of pain of being a child who needed to justify to her parents why their sacrifices were worth it, why their choices and pain would be honored with my existence, I would sometimes hear a meek me too resonant in how the Asian men would hear me. They often heard me more than Asian women even did. They would look into my soul and the longing, free of expectation yet so delicate and breathtaking, would make me see a God I thought only I knew reflected in their eyes.

Throughout the years, it’s always been Asian men that I turn to stare at, who gaze back at me, and just like how I feel about Tony Leung’s wordless protagonist, I have no idea what’s going on in his mind. Yet in my soul, something rumbles. My heart always curls.

I’ve even seen this type of gaze, in rare glimpses, in a couple of white men I’ve loved. But it’s too fleeting for me to hang onto, yet always the stuff that makes me pine like crazy. Without this ingredient, my immunity remains.

It’s the ineffability of wanting something you will not allow yourself to have, not until you self flagellate a bit. Not until you feel the burn of self-denial but know that it’s a battle you must reckon with alone.

Asian male protagonists handle their fates quietly. They ponder them, and counsel with a higher power in a way that I’ve felt strike me.

In the States, they often realize they can’t find salvation in their work. They don’t want to climb the ladder and force men to bend the knee to their will. There is a reverence for the god around us that is different than the white religions.

So they find it in something holier, sometimes. It’s not a Judeo-Christian god; it’s a burden of righteousness, some sort of striving for a higher purpose, not one that’s bent on a hero’s journey… but more like, one being able to levitate in place, radiate integrity and nobility simply by being.

---

When I intimately touched these men, I felt like I touched Longing itself, a sort of quiet yet powerful force.

There’s nothing convincing about being poetic, yet often the beauty of extreme loneliness was something no one but Asian men got. They could not even rasp a complaint because the weight of generations of quiet soldiers and samurai and ninjas who weren’t here to speak, but here to embody, will be inside these men at their best.

I tend to burn so bright that men can’t look directly at me, as I am the sun.

And yet, the men who did look directly at me, yet did not see, were not men I wanted to ever be near me.

The men who turned away, yet I knew were doing it to honor my light, were the men I longed for. Because we’d be separated, often by a wall of misunderstandings that we both felt we must keep silent about for the sake of some sort of misplaced nobility. And yet… in the silence itself, I felt I was cherished.

I feel I can only be seen through the lens of fantasy. In reality, I am still a fantasy.

Pursuing me requires an acknowledgment of this. Knowing me requires a trusting of this.

Even if I’m not chosen, I value being Seen and being not chosen in a way that befits my true nature.

I want to go down as a legacy. I want to be swallowed by the forces of the divine. And only the Asian man seems to want to bring me into this liminal space, where they can’t differentiate legend from woman, but this is so congruent with the self view I’ve felt forced into that the pulse of recognition always rings in my ears.

And I have confidence they get more than anything that I am not to be tamed, but to be respected. There’s a lifetimes worth of Confucian sensibility engrained in our DNA, even if you’ve barely set foot int he homeland.

I’ve found that only men who understand the weight of doing life alone, doing it honorably, and learning how to Be in a way where you quietly question and find for your own answers… these men get me in ways I didn’t know I was allowed to be gotten.

Sure, not every Asian man gets this. But every man I’ve met who gets this deeply was Asian.

My dream as a kid, the prince I wanted to sweep me off my feet, could levitate me from across the room. He had the face I later learned dating apps didn’t want. Yet I didn’t look at his physical beauty as much, for I saw the elegance hidden beneath the shy disposition.

The men I loved treat me like I am the smoke, I am the wisp in the night that needs to mix with the air to transform into something different… my next state is kept because of them.

And they’ve hurt me a hell of a lot for this. I’ve paid a hefty price.

But it’s worth it. Why?

Read for Part II next week.