Making small talks on New Year‘s morning, I mentioned various distant relatives, among whom a handsome ping-pong playing cousin of mine.
He was with hair and glasses, short shorts and 60′s-looking.
He later was married with kids before got sent to re-education camp.
While he was away, his wife had an affair and made him feel ashamed upon his return and reintegration.
Those external stresses at first glance drove him to suicide.
My hostess cousin overheard my conversation, rushed out of the kitchen where she was cutting the sticky bean cake by straw strings and said “ cousin T was gay!”
“He had been pressured to maintaining a modeled family.”
Mystery unveiled for me after all these years.
The stigma (of being gay at a time and in a place where it was unacceptable) was followed by shame (even his “modeled” family couldn’t hold waters).
The agony of shame and stigma must have eaten up the man from the inside.
If memory served me right, I , up until yesterday, couldn’t conceive his family as cover-up conspirators.
His father showed my mom where to find housing and apply for a teaching job.
My birth certificate still bears witness to their kindness to relatives fleeing Southward during the partition (North-South).
In all appearances, with his father also a teacher, which used to be ranked first (Si, Nong, Cong, Thuong – Mandarin, Farmer, Factory worker, Merchant), and rest of family high achievers until the last shoe dropped.
I felt for cousin T.
Perhaps taking his own life was the only way to resolve his inner conflicts.
If he had lived in this time, or emigrated to a certain State in the US, or EU,
he could have carried on happily not to mention found social acceptability.
He ended life to stay true to his nature.
When Francoise Sagan released her bombshell publication “Bonjour Tristesse“, a lot of young people committed suicide in France. Existential loneliness.
Our own Nguyen Anh Chin also composed his “Buon oi, ta xin chao mi” (Bonjour Tristesse) after a time living in France.
Every society finds ways to explain outliers and outcasts.
We put much spotlight on how many lives Bill Gates has saved (good for him), but we have yet done inventory of what’s in our closet. Instead, we ignore what we can’t explain, or doesn’t fit into the mold: a handicapped child, a gay cousin, an interracial nephew or an unmarried niece.
Society is judged by how well it protects its weakest link, yet it often labeled it as “dysfunctional”.
With 7 Billion and counting gene pools, the chance of outliers and outcasts will only increase. Consequently, the burden is on us to overcome fear, to be a good Samaritan. When you do to the least of these, you have done unto me.
Where is the “Bill Gates” in each of us? The good Samaritan who stands up to shame and social stigma? The funny thing about Social Proof (they all do it) is it changes just as quickly if given the right catalyst and back wind. Be that force of change. He ain’t heavy, he is my brother.
R.I.P. cousin T.
