SATC: queer calculus
Attention SATC readers! This week’s article is a special feature piece written by MJ Lee! If you are interested in writing a feature piece or helping us expand the scope of SATC just comment below or fill out the SATC survey! - Gemma
I sip from a red Solo cup and push my way through the crowd, trying to follow my friends who have quickly dispersed throughout the apartment. Loud music pounds my eardrums and I grip my cup a little tighter, growing ever more protective. I come into a slightly more open space by the wall and sit down on a chair. I look around and see all the signs of heterosexual courtship of hormonal young adults at the party: girls touching guys’ arms, followed by the guy leaning into the girl’s ear and whispering some suggestion, and the girl nodding and grabbing the guy’s wrist. I watch another girl lean against a guy’s chest. I look to my right and there sits a girl, her face soft in the light and her eyes glimmering as she glances around, her eyes catching mine. An urge to speak to her envelops me for a moment, but the moment fades away as quickly as it came as she turns away.
Later that night, I reconvene with my friends, who are telling me all about their adventures with boys. I’d sworn off girls this semester, partially for my mental health and partially for other personal reasons I don’t want to share on the Internet, but every time we go out, I can’t help but think about all the extra calculations I’d have to do if I wanted to find a girl at the party.
I’ve always had a little trouble with figuring people out ever since I was younger. Middle school hit like a brick, and now, over eight years later, I’m still trying to figure it all out. I poured my energy into my schoolwork, hoping that in college, there would be more people like me whose social education was a lot slower than my academic education. Shit, it was and still is easier for me to do mathematical calculus than to do the mental calculus of a social situation, and it’s ever more enhanced when I’m in a situation regarding sexuality.
Everyone does social calculus of some sort, figuring out how to interact in the manner that would most avoid conflict, in the manner that society expects them to. But there’s always an extra step when you’re queer, and especially if you’re looking for romantic prospects. We don’t have good models for love, for relationships, and especially not the kinds of flings that are so commonly portrayed in media. One of the reasons I was so interested in coming to Brown was because I knew that a good portion of the student body was queer, and I wanted a community that I could turn to.
But the mental and emotional work that comes with the possibility of romance is often times not worth it. Here’s a scenario to consider: my friends take me to a party. I wonder, are there any girls who are interested in girls here? Are they closeted? Are they out? Some of them might be obviously straight, but many of them don’t give off obviously queer vibes, and I don’t want to play into stereotypes, but I wonder if any of them are flagging as queer. Are any of them also looking for a girl? Are any of them emotionally available? What about that girl that’s standing in the corner there, the one with the bright smile? She’s got overalls on, with a very neutral shirt. But her shoelaces are rainbow. What does it mean?
Suppose that she is also interested in women. Does she know that I’m also interested in women? Am I flagging enough? I’m wearing a polo shirt and wearing rather gender neutral clothing. Maybe I should have worn my pride shirt. Maybe I should have worn more masculine clothing. Maybe I should have dyed my hair a more “gay” color, something that stands out more. Why don’t I have a gay necklace? Should I mention my exes who are all women to flag? Maybe I should cut my hair shorter, get an undercut.
To even get to this point she would’ve had to have seen me. She would’ve had to notice my existence as a human being, and she would herself have to be looking for someone. Maybe she’s not. Even if she noticed, maybe she wasn’t interested, or maybe I wasn’t even flagging enough. Maybe she thought I was straight because I’m Asian and maybe she’s been taught to assume that most Asian people are straight because of the shitty stereotypes about Asian people and both the internalized and externalized racism that’s been embedded into her and the worst part is you can’t even blame her because you think about how your parents didn’t ever talk about gay people unless it was to express disgust and your parents remind you that Korean people aren’t supposed to be gay and they ignore your lack of attraction to men and keep hoping that you’ll just end up with a man someday.
And so what if she realizes that I am queer? Either she or I would have to enact upon any of our desires. One of us would have to walk up to the other and start a conversation. And how would I know if she was actually queer? How would I know if she knew I was also queer? How would she know I knew she was queer? How would I know if she knew that I knew that she was queer? How would she know if I knew that she knew that I was queer? If the conversation started, how would we get past that layer of uncertainty without explicitness? And directly asking “Are you gay” is for some reason extremely unacceptable and I don’t really want to make someone out themselves to someone they literally just met. I don’t want that to be the first thing I say to her.
What if I did ask, after observing her behavior and taking a gamble? And what if I had judged wrong? What if she was actually straight despite my careful analysis and she somehow got offended that I thought she was queer? And what if I had made a move, assuming that she was queer, and she wasn’t? I’d be seen as predatory, perhaps, as a creep, as a woman who is not to be trusted around other women. What if she’s thinking the exact same thing, so neither of us make a single move? What if we keep the conversation very very surface level because we’re afraid of the possibility that we judged wrong? And in this long process, in this giant integral of a social interaction, there were so many places where it could’ve gone wrong: one variable unaccounted for, one constant misread, one single sign that I missed.
If I had put the energy into finding a queer space, then the queer calculus gets reduced to arithmetic, and brings me to just wondering if girls would even be into me. If I put effort into going to the gay frat, I wouldn’t have to do the queer calculus; the place is made for queer people, by queer people, and it would be quite unfortunate if I couldn’t find solace from this computational process in a place specifically made for people who find themselves in situations like myself. If I’m not actively on some dating app with specified settings, there’s little way to get into a romantic situation. I’d have to go into actively queer spaces, such as Zete, clubs for queer folk, teams that focus on marginalized voices, and gender and sexuality studies classes. I don’t have the privilege of getting to go to a party and “see what happens,” because frankly, the chances of that kind of chemistry happening are so slim. Two gay molecules are so unlikely to interact when surrounded by a bunch of straight molecules in a solution created with the intention of being mostly straight.
So I don’t. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, and certainly not myself.
“MJ, anything interesting happen tonight?” my friend asks after sharing her adventures during the party, winking a little.
I smile sheepishly and take a sip of water. “Girlless semester, remember?”
“Right.”
“Right.”
