The makings of a queer corporate sellout

The things we do for money

Photo by Paul Felberbauer on Unsplash

I wasn’t supposed to turn out gay.

I had just told my parents that I like girls, and I could see the future shatter in their eyes. They exchanged exasperated gazes, unsure how to even react. I was their daughter, born and raised in a sunny, community-centric, religious and homophobic Indonesia. A tropical paradise, if you will.

My mother stormed out. Later that night, she screamed at my father from the bedroom. I heard her wails from the living room couch, where I slept that night. How could they have failed at parenting so badly?

They were incredibly worried, if not terrified. In the local TV channels, gay scenes were censored out of American shows. My parents used to warn me to stay away from anyone who is gay or trans, thinking it’s a contagious disease. Plus, Indonesians gossip a lot. Being any sort of queer could really jeopardize your career.

If I was headed toward a future without familial support, I had to swap my idyllic dreams for a grown up, adult job. I can’t possibly pay rent by writing study guides for my classmates, writing Girls’ Generation fanfiction or posting Miley Cyrus covers on YouTube. My father’s corporate job allowed him to afford a Hong Kong higher education for me, so maybe I should consider a white-collar desk job, too.

The Incident happened two weeks before my final year of university. My father told me he considered pulling me out and chucking me into therapy, but no kid of his would be a school drop-out. Years later, I still find it funny. Between being homophobic and Chinese, he was first and foremost an Asian parent.

What he didn’t know was that even if he decided not to pay my tuition fees, I would have been fine. Before I came out to them, I had assembled a rolodex of people I could call in my back pocket - mentors, former bosses and professors that were irrationally supportive of my future. I would reach out to them, borrow small chunks of money and slowly pay them back once I graduated.

In Sapiens, historian Yuval Noah Harari wrote that before the industrial revolution, your livelihood depended on your biological family and even your neighborhood. They were the insurance system, the safety system, the welfare system and more. If they find a reason to not like you and subsequently banish you, you’re pretty much screwed.

It felt like that in Indonesia. “Homosexuality is contagious” - what century was that even from?

My worst fear is moving back into my parents’ house, relying on them and having their opinion matter. It would lead to my uneventful death, first spiritually, and then literally. Every decision I made after The Coming Out was to make sure I won’t ever be in that predicament.

Thankfully, I got a job in modern, individualist and capitalist Hong Kong upon graduation. In the absence of a biological family as my security blanket, I have come to rely on trading my skills, knowledge, energy and time for a universal good: money. I can use said money in transactions that will in turn afford me with medicine when I fall sick, new clothes if I have worn them out, and a place to live in the local gayborhood.

I ran in the opposite direction of my fluffy dreams. I toiled hard as a finance reporter, meeting sources for draft beers late after my shift and publishing scoops before my editors even realized there was something worth digging. The first chance I got, I moved to a bigger publication for better hours and higher pay. Barely three years later, I switched gears again to work for an investment bank - the ultimate corporate sellout move. It’s the furthest job from ‘art’ and ‘authentic’ in the most common sense.

In recent years, multinational corporations have put ‘diversity, equality and inclusion’ in the forefront of their recruitment adverts. I could hardly believe it. I enrolled my girlfriend in my company’s domestic partnership scheme, which is what big-name corporations in Hong Kong offer since same sex marriage is not recognized here. She now receives private medical coverage as my dependent. Insurance system, check.

My new desk job is also a lot more stable than that of a reporter’s. The hours are predictable, which means my weekends are open and I can now spend quality time with my girlfriend. We visit exhibitions about queer Asian mythologies during the day and sing Hayley Kiyoko songs at overnight karaoke rooms. We binge ‘The L Word’ with our lesbian friends and hold hands around the city with little-to-no fear of being heckled at. Safety system, check.

Every day, my partner and I go home to a fridge full of kimchi and tempe, paid for by our monthly salaries. I’ll never need to ask my biological family for financial support ever again. Welfare system, check.

I’ve surprisingly been able to find time for my passions, too. At work, I plan Pride workshops for my colleagues and mentor queer students, which led to my being recognized as one of the top 100 global LGBT+ future leaders per Yahoo! Finance. At home, I write late into the night, pouring my feelings on a virtual page. During the weekends, I capture Hong Kong’s public spaces in my pocket-sized sketchbooks and upload them to YouTube.

Working for corporations started as my way of securing a future after I came out. I honestly thought I’d have to ‘sell my soul’ in the process – and it would have been worth it. Instead, I found that having my basic needs covered meant I could focus on the more important areas of my life.

In the breathing room that a corporate job gives me, my most authentic self is thriving.