My first crush. My first racist. (Notes from a former ice queen regarding his colonisers)

Burnt Heart-Shaped Toast - Image by The Mollusc Dimension.

Burnt Heart-Shaped Toast - Image by The Mollusc Dimension.

Recently I began wondering, “I’m Asian. Why have I never dated Asians?”
Now I have felt love and I have loved, I can tell you, I wasn't able to feel, I wasn't able to love myself.

Content notes: body image, racism, relationships


My first crush was a little white boy who repeated something racist to me on the school bus in the late 1980s. He was literally afraid that my proximity would TURN HIM Chinese! Which to him would have been a thoroughly negative thing. I'm guessing he had heard it at home.

When I told my dad, his response was, “You should have said this”, and then he went on and on.

My mum on the other hand has ZERO memory of this! I can't remember exactly how old I was but I think I was somewhere between 6 and 8 years old. It was a quiet incident and no one but me knew, but it emotionally wrecked me.

I now know there is a term “uglification”, discovered via Jacq Applebee, an amazing Black writer, researcher and maker.


If I could talk to that boy now, I would love to see his face as I tell him, “I DON'T fancy you anymore and I haven't for years!” And I would love to tell him that I have dated/ seen ELEVEN cishet white men and to my knowledge, I have “turned” none of them Chinese. 


A POC friend (we are not in touch now) once got me thinking about how sometimes... QPOC might be dating white people because we want their resources. True – on some level, I was dating white men because I wanted their privilege. I wanted to walk in a place and not be scrutinised and asked how long I would be staying or mocked in some way, and let's not get started on metoo today. I sought their approval because I sought rebalance. But more than that, I also desperately wanted to take back the self-worth that had been lost in that crappy encounter. 

I wonder what I saw in that small white boy now. Maybe it was because I noticed he was getting told off for being cheeky, or some kind of behaviour that the teachers considered rude. Maybe the famous attraction to “bad boys” is a desire to be bad, to be unruly, to do and say what we want. And or maybe I felt sorry for him. If things had been different, we could have been friends and transgressed together.


Sometimes I also think about the brother of the boy on the bus. His appearance was similar to his brothers (and also to another white boy who was racist to me). He seemed quite shy and didn't really speak to me. But he wasn't mean, and I am trying to lean into more pleasant memories. And then there was a white boy who was actively friendly to me. We joked about books and Slimer from Ghost Busters on the bus. It would be interesting to see if HE's “turned Chinese”. (This is a joke. I do not wonder that).


This is just a drop in the ocean of the story why I dated 11 cishet white men?!

And don’t go thinking I never dated anyone LGBTIQ+. . . My first lover was a black queer person from East London... A story for another time...

What trail shall I share with you next? Maybe... Band boys...

Previously: I'm Asian. So why have I never dated Asians? (prologue)

 
mental health, writing, racismThe Mollusc Dimensionintersectional feminism, relationships