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Showing My Age

By Dredge Byung’chu Kang

I had a professor, Fatima Jackson, who always said, “There’s no free lunch in evolution.” She used this to mean that evolution was not about progress, but becoming better suited for one temporal set of environmental circumstances and often less suitable for another. I was taking this class after returning to college after a 17-semester break (you can do the math). I also moved back home with the parents.

Among other things, living with your parents as an adult is a humbling experience. My mother still reminds me not to stay out too late, and occasionally stays up until I come in. Since returning home, I have wondered about how I learned my values, how my life experiences rectified or dissipated family traditions, and how my memories selectively recreated the past to meet my present needs. I still look young, but my age is really showing.

My nephew, Alex, who is in middle school, had explored my bedroom. Among other things he found Powertools and other classic gay porn on a bookshelf. He e-mailed me, saying that he knew what my “secret” was and that he would tell his mother (my sister) unless he was bribed. Blackmail at such an early age is an ugly thing. Unfortunately for him, I told him that I didn’t have any secrets. I replied to his e-mail without any sense of fear. He could tell whomever he wanted. He wrote back with a softer tone, noting that he discussed it with his mother, and that she had said that it was an old issue, one with which his father (my brother-in-law) used to have lots of problems. I felt vindicated.

I have never asked for the tapes back. I figured he threw them away. Besides, the idea of uncle coming home and asking “So can I have my porno tapes back?” is unsettling, even for me.

There are conveniences to living with your old Korean parents. Food is never a problem. The house is always clean. And I can leave queer objects everywhere without them being noticed. My friends think it’s funny that The Korea Times sits next to the Washington Blade on the coffee table.

About every other week, my mother “conveniently” forgets that I’m gay. I told her over a decade ago, but it’s a memory she suppresses. So occasionally I have to remind her. She always responds with a noise that sounds like she’s about to spit.

My mother consistently asks me whether I will live with her and my father in their old age. From a very young age, she has told me that the worst thing I could do to my parents is put them in a nursing home. So I’ve always told her that I would take care of them.

This has always been something I was open to. Recently, my mother revealed to me that the oracle books prophesize that my parents will live with me in their old age. Once she said that and giggled, it was fated to be true. Even if I didn’t want to live w&Mac253;th my parents, how could I change fate? In any case, these particularities reveal a more universal issue about queer Asian Pacific Americans. I am pulled in one direction by my family and in another by my desires. If I really didn’t have any family, I’d be much more of a hedonist than I am. But I would also have less security.

Since I am the only child in the family who does not have children, my siblings look to me to provide support for my parents. The idea is that since they have to take care of their kids, I should take care of the parents. It seems fair enough. Unfortunately, I am also the nonprofit child hoping to get a Ph.D., which means that Social Security and I aren’t going to be enough to support them. Money was never very important in my life — I just wanted to be comfortable and to have a little fun. But lately I’ve felt the grip of money hunger that I’ve often criticized in my siblings. This seems to come from my desire to take care of my parents.

Moving back into their house and seeing how they live and work on a day-to-day basis has also revealed their age. My parents are now really old. My mother has a very difficult time climbing the stairs. She hasn’t driven in more than 20 years. For the first time in my life, I know that I am stronger than my father. The other day I saw him struggling to lift a box, so I assumed it was heavy. But when I grabbed it, the box just jumped into the air.

My parents, like many Korean Americans, run a small business. They leave the house every morning around 9 a.m. and come home every night around 9:30 p.m. They get two days of vacation a year: Thanksgiving and Christmas. My parents’ current business has been in the same mall for about 20 years. It is questionable how much longer the mall will continue to operate. I promised that if the mall closed, I would make sure that they could retire. The main reason that my parents continue to keep working is that they have not paid off their house. It will take about two or three more years if they work, longer if it’s up to me alone. But I also know that I can also enlist the efforts of my sister and brother.

Gay men have a different life cycle, one that in more recent times in the U.S. has been structured outside of the family. Without familial relationships, people are freed from responsibility, but they can also expect less support from others. Without children, we can act like we just graduated from college forever.

There hasn’t really been an APA model for gay aging, one based on a continuing relationship with the family. And now, my age is showing. Not in the physical sense, but in the sense that my obligations to reciprocate are growing.