EPISODE 34: HERE’S TO LOVE IN ALL WAYS
SHOW NOTES
Love is love. It’s what I’ve aimed to teach my daughter — it doesn’t matter how you identify. Be a good human. Be kind. Be respectful. Today’s episode shares how I had a crush on my gay director at Neutrogena, how I am grateful for all the people who have fought internal and external stereotypes to become precisely who they are meant to be. Let’s embrace love in all ways.
We also talk about:
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the F*ck Saving Face podcast. I'm your host, Judy Tsuei, and together we'll explore mental and emotional health for Asian Americans, especially breaking through any taboo topics. Like may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Let's make your story beautiful today.
This upcoming weeks episodes are going to be celebrating pride month, as well as simply bringing on more Asian American men to share what their experience has been in the U S and internationally.
I feel like there are a lot of people who reach out to me with feedback from the podcast and the writing that I put out there in the world. And I'm always surprised that. A big demographic who reaches out to me are Asian American men, because I never think that I'm writing a recording for them. I always think I'm writing for women.
So I'm really grateful for that. And I was speaking to a business consultant recently who said that, that demonstrates that the content that I'm sharing is speaking about the human experience that we all have. And so I hope that in this upcoming week, I can create a form and space for someone to share their experiences for a highly underrepresented and often invisible demographic.
But for today, I am going to be sharing an essay about. Pride. I had a huge crush on my gay director, a Neutrogena. When I first started working as a content marketing consultant with them, I was brought on to launch their first ever direct to consumer product. Their boutique agency within the company liked me so much that they brought me over to meet the director of internet marketing, Steve, who then hired me on to revamp all of Neutrogena's corporate websites.
I sat outside his office in a cubicle with a wall dividing the space between us, but we had this corporate, I am, so we would send each other messages throughout the day. Once during a meeting he was having with my previous account team, he sent me a message and I started laughing. I responded and he started laughing.
Are you texting Judy right now? The account manager Bobby asked? No, no. I could hear him say we became fast friends going to happy hours together, challenging each other and Nike plus workouts, where once I thought I was going to win when I checked our scoreboard at 9:00 PM, but then woke up the next morning to find out that he had beat me.
How'd you do that? I asked mock frustrated in his office. I was running up and down the stairs in my house late at night. Steven thought I was crazy. Steve's husband's name was also Steven. They once lived in a house featured in architectural digest. Then another one in west Hollywood, that was just as beautiful.
The inside decor looked like I had stepped into a magazine, Steve and I bought tickets to see David Sedaris at UCLA one evening. But he coming back late from a business trip, couldn't make it. I had to walk into the auditorium alone, feeling a little, like I was on a date where I was stood up. The best time I ever had in a nightclub was also in west Hollywood where my friend Nathan took me to a gay club.
The room was filled with gorgeous men who were incredibly complimentary telling me how beautiful I looked, how much they love my style. I never felt so celebrated. And unthreatened it. Wasn't like this at other clubs in LA at other clubs. When men came up to me, I felt like I had to be on defense. My parents were reluctant to talk about anything sexual and definitely did not support the idea of me dating anyone.
Didn't give me any tips or tools or pointers on how to navigate the opposite sex. When Steve opened up to me about how he met his husband, I was shocked. It came in a moment of trauma. He was leaving a previously unhealthy relationship. I love seeing him with his husband. I wanted that kind of adoration in my partner's eyes, but I didn't have one.
I noticed something from my friends who I met, who had come out. I noticed that they seemed freer, that they had to battle through personal challenges and external influences to openly declare who they were. I admired them. I wanted to be like that to be that free, to be that confident in who I am. I wanted to know that the struggles to find my identity would be worthwhile somehow that ultimately in the end, I would love the person I was born to be.
Recently my daughter and I went to visit our friends Deirdre and Emmie who she calls her . They picked us up for dinner at a burger joint in Austin, then took us to get dairy free desserts while we were waiting at a stoplight. My daughter beside me in the backseat, Deirdre said to Emmy, babe, look at that.
And the, my daughter turned to me, her eyes wide. When Deirdre and Emmie first met Wilder. She was about two years old. Now she was six. She had gone and lived in another country in another state, since we first lived with Deirdre and Emmy for a couple of months, when we arrived in Austin, Texas for our camper van adventure, babe Wilder whispered to me by now, her parents were divorced.
Her parents were both seeing other people. She knew a little bit more about relationships, about boyfriends and girlfriends about marriage. Yes. Love. I said, matter of factly Deirdre and Emmie married. Oh, she said she smiled, we got ice cream and then they dropped us off at the w hotel where we were staying with our friend Deborah later that night, I said to Wilder, babe, you know, that women can get married to women and men can get married to men.
It's all. Okay. It's a way to express love. Oh, she said like, okay, no big deal. It is no big deal. It's no big deal. Indeed. However you find love. I celebrate you. Happy pride month. I hope you'll tune in on Wednesday. When I interview who hosts a queer Asian podcast called Asian provocation. He is a performer and a producer, a poet, and a musician he's worked throughout the U S and is currently living in Germany.
But I think one of the things that was so compelling about his interview is how much studying that he's done about. Racial equity and about the Asian experience. And especially because he's lived both in the US and abroad, he has a very unique lens around that and about the LGBTQ space. So I am excited to bring his interview to you.
And as always, please do email us@helloatfucksavingface.com. Share your feedback or consider supporting the podcast. Any donation really truly does help. So whether that's a dollar $5 or $500, it's all good. All of it goes to the podcast and bringing all of this content out into the world. Have a beautiful day.
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