jean-baptiste phou

Jean-Baptiste Phou The Colour of Desire

The Colour of Desire By Jean-Baptiste Phou

Growing up, I was addicted to sitcoms. When Gérard appeared in “Les filles d’à côté”, one of my favourite shows during the 90’s, I was in shock. It the first time I saw a gay character on TV. However, he was a comical character without much complexity, ridiculously effeminate and I didn’t totally relate to him. On top of it, all the people around me made fun of him: “Homo!” “Faggot!” “Freak!”

I understood from a very young age that homosexuality was considered a perversion, so I decided not to tell anyone and felt terribly isolated. In the Parisian suburbs where I grew up, there were no other boys like me out in the open. As a teenager, I was convinced that I would end up alone, that my case was unique and hopeless. I wondered if this miserable and marginalized life that I was foreseeing, was even worth it.

Only a few kilometres from where I lived, I heard of an idyllic neighbourhood in the centre of Paris called “Le Marais”, where handsome men would walk hand in hand and even kiss in broad daylight. It gave me a glimmer of hope.

Not yet eighteen and in fear, I went to the bars of the French capital. I obviously didn’t fit in among the big buff guys, dressed in tight and trendy clothes, dancing to techno music. As a spotty teenager with complex issues, I was hugging the wall, completely invisible. To be honest I didn’t pay much attention to my appearance, to my skinny body or my geeky style.

But this wasn’t the reason why I was rejected. No matter whom I met and how I met them, this was uttered over and over again: “Sorry, I am not into Asians”. That’s all I was to these people: “Asian” and apparently, this removed all possibilities for me to be desirable.

Soon after, with dating websites, this was even written in the headline profiles: “No Asians, No Fems”. It was almost as widely spread as “No pic, no reply”. The gay scene seemed to worship a certain idea of masculinity, with big muscles, with chests, big “tools” and despise anything that wouldn’t supposedly conform to it.

I thought I would find a community where I would be accepted and bloom. Instead, I discovered a cruel and excluding environment.

Then I found out about men who were only into Asians, whom I could meet at certain parties and on specific websites. I felt so excited! During the few dates that I had with these “Asian fans”, the conversations were all oddly similar: “Where are you from? Oh wait! … don’t tell me, let me guess … you don’t look like Japanese or Korean … hum … Vietnamese … that’s it, you look just like a Vietnamese!”

“You were born in France? … So you’re a banana… yes a banana, yellow outside, white inside!”

“Oh, you are Cambodian! How great, I just came back from Laos! People there are so poor but so happy!”

“I looooooooove Asians!!”

I thought that being desired for my ethnic background would be flattering. Instead, I felt diminished and turned into an interchangeable commodity. My first contacts with the gay scene were full of disappointment. The belief that I would be alone forever grew in me. But I couldn’t give up so easily, so early. There had to be other ways than the ones I had experienced so far. So I came up with a new strategy. I realised that it was “White” people who had elaborated this domination system to place themselves on top of it, that they turned all other “racial” groups into objects and refused to see us as people. So, from that moment on, I was determined to conquer the humanity that had been denied to me and to others by only dating the victims and outcasts of this system: non-White people.

I still hadn’t reached the age of majority and I had already stopped considering relationships as just relationships, but instead as political acts and my body turned into my weapon. Nevertheless, I was careful not to reproduce the clumsy and awkward approaches others tried on me: to categorize or fetishize. That’s how I met my first boyfriends. They were important people I had been in love with, before being from the West Indies, West Africa or Latin America.

These first years of my sentimental exploration were also the exploration of different types of body shapes, skin tones and hairiness. Yet there was a group who seemed to be totally out of reach: other Asians. Whenever I was trying to approach one of them, be they originally from China, Cambodia or Vietnam, I was hitting a wall. The way they expressed their rejection threw me off: “I would never

go out with another Asian: it would be like sleeping with my sister”. “But I am not a lesbian!” “Only White men can satisfy me!”

Apparently, two Asian men together were considered something horrific, depraved, and inconceivable. I was staggered by this intraethnic racism and internalized racism. How did we reach this point of self-hatred? Being constantly cast aside, I too had started to hate this yellow (ish) complexion that represented the colour of disgust.

At the age of 24, I went to Spain for my studies before finding a job there. It was also when I started to loosen my criteria. I stopped boycotting White men, telling myself that not all of them were racist oppressors. Well … the truth is, I wanted to allow myself all sorts of new pleasures. Sexy Spanish men … here I come!

Ironically, when I worked in Barcelona, I met a White man from … France! A few months after we started dating, I received a job offer in Singapore and we decided to begin this next adventure together.

Being Asian dating a White man, I was considered a Potato Queen, whereas my partner was perceived as a Rice Queen. Asians together were called Sticky Rice, while the term for White with White was Mashed Potato. Singapore being a diverse island, there were all sorts of dishes: Curry Queen for Indians fans, Satay Queen for Malays and Indonesian fans.

These labels less bothered me than the different treatments my partner and I were getting. Whenever we would go out, doors were opened before him, people only talked to him, handed the bill systematically to him whereas they made me feel like his escort, when I wasn’t just ignored.

In my social life, I always encountered the same unpleasant comments: - Your boyfriend found a job here and you followed him right? - No, it’s actually the opposite. - Oh ok. Well, he will have all the guys he wants here and he will leave you.

The few times we went out together to gay bars, boys literally threw themselves at him, and some even pushed past me to talk to him. I experienced these micro aggressions with great violence. As for my partner, he didn’t always notice them or worst, he would deny them and that would create tensions between us.

The day that he told me that he had had a “moment of weakness”

with a Singaporean man, something in me broke. He cheated on me, with another Asian. This hurt and obsessed me more than the cheating itself. Had I lost my sense of value? Our relationship that was already in bad shape fell apart soon after this episode. A few weeks later, we broke up.

Along with the end of this love chapter, I resigned from my finance job and left Singapore. I am now in Cambodia. It is a new country, a new career, and a new life. In the past dozen years I had been living on and off in my parents’ motherland, I noticed a huge evolution in the relationships between men.

During my first trips, the gay scene was very discreet. Most of the time, it was something taboo and hidden. There were only a few bars and obvious prostitution targeting foreigners. Then, with the rise of a youth more assuming, a new middle class, the spread of dating apps and images of attractive Asian men on the Internet and popular culture, relationships started to find another balance and Cambodians are now more interested in locals than in foreign sugar daddies.

It was also in Cambodia that I lived brand new experiences. In the eyes of the men I met, I saw myself differently. I wasn’t perceived as “Asian” anymore and I no longer had to perform that role. I could be whatever I wanted, be myself, and even try new versions of myself. For the first time, I had the feeling that the racial issue didn’t invite itself into the bedroom.

However, I don’t idealize these relationships. Being Cambodian from abroad, having light skin, entering another age category … there must have been other factors that played their part but that didn’t affect me anymore.

It took this entire journey to get rid of the weight and limitation linked to my skin colour, be they real or imaginary, external or internalized. Along this quest of emancipation, I also stopped rejecting like I had been rejected. I give the benefit of the doubt even if I could be mistaken. I have often been disappointed, sometimes surprised.

Thus, love came into my life once again, with a man I wouldn’t have let in if I had maintained my previous positions. A man I feel happy with, in peace, complete, despite our ethnic differences.

The racial issue sometimes interferes in our personal and social

lives, but becomes a secondary issue that we have learnt to handle together, each of us taking our part. Most of the time we are simply living our everyday lives, with the joy and hardship of any couple.

So, to this lonely, gloomy, angry teenager that I used to be, to this teenager in despair with dark thoughts … I would like to tell him that he would be seen, he will be desired, and he will be loved for everything that he is.