My Dad knows I am Gay

I don’t know how to speak the Japanese language but I can tell you what it’s like to grow up with a Japanese father whose parents moved to the United States in 1914 and ran a laundry business in Oakland during the 1930s and 1940s when they lost it all to the World War II. I spent my childhood in a nice middle-class suburb of Boston before we move further to Massachusetts. By then, I knew my only Asian dad because I knew no one else, not a soul that was Japanese, or Chinese, or any Asian, for that matter.

My mother was a white Anglo-Saxon protestant who married an Asian guy in 1950, who looked very white. My dad taught me how to behave well, how to do my taxes, how to be well organized and above all, how to save every scrap of paper, recycle boxes, bags, and clothes. Moreover, he taught me an Asian thing on how to bath every night before bed where “brush-brush-wash-wash” was his child-like chant. I learnt that, I was never to shout at any adult, never to look at any body directly in the eye, and never to draw any negative attention to any member of our family.

By the age of sixteen, I had started reading all about gays. But accidentally I left a book titled young gay and proud on top off my mother’s washing machine. She was so aggressive to me and warned me about it but surprisingly to my dad, he had little to say about my personal arena. He knows very well that I am a gay but does not take it to the point of harassing me. My dad puts less efforts in trying to stop me do what seem to be my personal issues. When I started smoking when I was 18, he said less, when he saw my tattoo when I was 30, he said nothing. And now about being gay, he has really never said anything.

Unlike my mother, my father has never been furious about my sexual orientation. My mother was the one who agreed to get married to an outcast and for that virtue, my dad, however, grew up being an outcast. It is not in him to comment on my sexual orientation, but let it come to school work, saving money and getting well organized; he would do any thing to ensure that I stick to that. I even for once drag him to meet some of my Asian gay friends in Castro while we had dinner.

Kenfil's Postive Life - Chapter 1 Love Hate Christmas

1990, Christmas, Hong Kong. At sixteen years old, Kenneth Cheng had his first gay cruising experience. He was taking the Metro home in the late evening. There was Tony, standing only a few meters away from him. They were staring at each other but Kenneth was too innocent and shy. He didn't how to react. While in the train, Tony made the first move and striked a conversation. Everything happened so quickly and before Kenneth knew it, he had his first sexual experience with a man in a public restroom. A week past and they met up again. This time, Kenneth lost his virginity.

He had no idea this is only the beginning of his long journey to be the first AIDS patient who stood up for his rights and co-found Hong Kong Rainbow, the first LGBT center in Hong Kong.

Read Kenneth Cheng's real life story - 'Kenfil's Postive Life' - Chapter 1 Love Hate Christmas