せーの、よっしゃー! real life social networking (その②)
so a few weeks ago i unloaded my anxiety on here about going to a ジェンダーフリー / “gender free” party in Tokyo. well, it’s been a few days since the party and after a huge rant like that, you all deserve an update. plus i met another ace today and you’ll never guess what happened.
i’m happy to say that the party went well! i failed miserably at meeting new ppl because srsly, do you have any idea how daunting it is to approach ppl when you don’t speak their language natively? plus it’s like 1am and you’re exhausted and only have a fraction of your usual language ability? yeah, no, i spent the night hanging out with my gaijin friends lol. that aside, the night was a success, i think.
there were around 70ish(?) people there, including a couple of other gaijin, which i was surprised to see. the atmosphere was really casual and for the most part not ‘sexually charged’ at all, which was something i’d been anxious about. the music was good, so that helped make the night more enjoyable, and it seemed like most ppl pretty much just hung out with the people they came there with or already knew.
even though i didn’t do much other than take in the atmosphere, enjoy the music and talk about stuff with my friends, i’m really glad i went and didn’t go alone. even though i didn’t meet anyone new, it was great to be around 70ish people who all came to the same place under the context of “gender? whatever! let’s have fun!” especially in Japan where, as i’ve mentioned, most LGBTQIA events and spaces are gendered. there’s even a story related to that about why this particular event was created to begin with, but i’ll save that for another time.
anyway, i may or may not go to the event again. i don’t know. being stuck in a club from 11pm ~ 5am because public transportation isn’t running so you can’t really go anywhere else even if you wanted to is rouuugghhh, i don’t care who you are lol…
changing topics! today i went to a small hanami / cherry blossom viewing party that a friend hosted in Tokyo. it was great, got to meet a lot of new people, including a few i’ve known online but had never met face to face. real life social networking with fellow gaijin is so much easier than trying to do the same with Japanese people….. i could so easily stay in my little LGBTQIA gaijin bubble forever, but i don’t want to! GAH! ;((
anyway, moving on.
i randomly met another ace! again! this keeps happening! i swear, Kanto is full of gaijin aces and i keep meeting them without trying? yay for LGBT spaces, even if they don’t explicitly include aces because i still find aces there.
i showed this new (to me) ace, who i’m going to refer to as F, photos of myself and some other aces at Tokyo Pride from years past and she said that she recognized one of the people in the photos…. because apparently an ace friend that used to live in the same town as me and another ace (that’s right, 3 gaijin aces in one town), just moved to Tokyo and just so happened to move into a sharehouse with her….
an ace i know just so happened to move into a house with an ace that i just met. how insane is that??? i swear, gaijin aces are somehow magnetically attracted to each other in Japan lmao.
anyway, i digress.
i was talking with F about her experiences with being ace in LGBTQIA spaces. like 5 minutes later, another person shows up to the party while we’re now talking about some other ace related stuff. the person who just showed up comments offhandedly about how it’s weird that aces are in the LGBTQIA community.
obviously at this point us two aces stop our convo as we (and others) turn our attention to this new person.
the person goes on to say stuff like “but i mean, obviously there are aces who experience same gendered attraction, so they’re alright, but heteroromantics? aromantics? straight people have no place in the community.”
…and i’m just sitting there thinking to myself, oh my fucking god. here i am, in a beautiful park with cherry blossoms over my head, birds singing in the trees and Dominos pizza on a plate in front of me and i’m still being confronted with Tumblr ‘discourse’?? srsly???
so i’m sitting there trying to restrain myself from saying anything, and for the most part i did a good job of it. i mostly just observed as the other ace present, as well as some of my other friends who thankfully are more understanding and supportive than the person in question, responded to this person’s comments. the conversation didn’t last long because it was 4 people vs 1 person and that one person obviously became uncomfortable with what was being said, so the topic was dropped, but yeah…. the fact that current Tumblr ‘discourse’ was brought up at a real life party caught me totally by surprise.
that particular conversation aside, it was a great day. even that conversation wasn’t exactly bad, really. it felt nice to just sit back and let others field such commentary rather than feeling forced to deal with it myself. plus, seeing my friends deal with such commentary is a great way to see where they stand on the issue without me having to actually ask them about it. filing that information away for future reference lol.
anyway, great hanami was great. great hanami was queer. wooooo.
this coming Saturday i’ll be going to another great, queer hanami in Tokyo and then i’ve been invited to a hole-in-the-wall ミックスバー / non-gendered bar in ni chome. we’ll see how that goes.
really 頑張ってing with this real life social networking thing. it’s going well so far.