The Male Asian Experience

Transitioning into high school was a nerve wracking time. Here I was a little Chinese kid ready to experience the big leagues. I grew up in the western suburbs of Melbourne in a suburb called Keilor Downs which hosted a diverse array of nationalities from Asians, Arabs, Europeans, Australians, Blacks, Indians and more.

Not realising the full impact at the time but the randomisation of you being placed with certain personalities will play a significant role for the next few years of your schooling. Having had virtually none of my close friends from primary school join me at my high school, I felt it was in my best interested to make friends with some fellow male peers pronto or this could be one of my worst nightmares being played out. That the big league would be a big lonely place. You see as humans we are innately tribal and have a strong yearning to be apart of a tribe. I crossed my fingers and slung my Caribee bag over my shoulder and walked into the unknown.

The home group I was placed in was 7i and the class was full of mainly Europeans from the Balkan region and myself being the only Asian. Very quickly I grew to like my fellow male class mates. I would say they were somewhat of the jocks of our year level, popular, significantly bigger, funny, athletic, confident - something that I struggled to embody. They in my eyes were ‘cool’. Overtime I felt part of the group, they had accepted me into the pack. I could drop my bags where they did, I felt seen.

My friends had even given me the nickname ‘Kinez’ which in Slavic/Greek means Chinese. I didn’t love the translation as it was a constant reminder of where I was from, though I did love the nickname as it sounded unique which formed some sort of new identity, plus it has a Z in it. I even managed to pick up some of their language with more interest and use than my own. ‘Pucaj jebote’ which means ‘Fucking Shoot’ when we would play soccer on the hard court. Or ‘daj mi’ which means ‘give me’ when you would ask your friends to spare you some of their hot chips from the canteen. ‘Jason’ started to fade away and the only time I would really hear that was at home or out of a teachers mouth.

Asians have a stereotype of being nerdy, and yes this is somewhat true, as within Asian culture children are expected to excel academically and end up with a credible title and well payed like a doctor, engineer or lawyer. This would break the cycle so the family wouldn’t be poor like previous generations. For this reason I noticed Asians hung out with mainly Asians and that most of them didn’t bother too much about fitting in, keeping to themselves and not losing sight of the mission to get good grades so mum and dad could be proud. This result made them easy targets to get picked on as it was rare for them to retaliate rather more accept where they stand in the social hierarchy.

Since I cared so much of what people thought and didn’t want to be viewed in this nerdy spotlight. I cared little about my grades and more what mischievous shit am I going to do next to make my friends laugh. Both my brothers ended up doing well in school getting accepted to Melbourne High known for its academic reputation. Though I was not interested in the slightest and didn’t even sit the test, plus I didn’t like the fact that it was an all boys school. I had built a good thing that was going on here and was not going to take the chance and get washed up in with the crowd.

My Bosnian Buddy and I in home economics, one of many haircuts

It’s at this age where the testosterone was in no shortage and when I started really becoming interested in the opposite sex. Being popular with women also helped increased ones coolness. A journey that felt like a rights of passage in itself to obtain. This initiation felt like I was set off at a disadvantage from the get go and let me explain my reality.

Let me ask you a question if you are a non Asian female, how many Asian guys have you hooked up with? And how many have you slept with? Chances are that it could be zero. Where would us Asians be on the pecking order as a partner? Maybe at the bottom. It’s like when you pick players to make a team and you're the last pick, that felt like I as an Asian male in the mating world. Even my own partner Eva said to me that she didn’t expect to be in a relationship with an Asian man as they never were in her field, see bubba we aren’t that bad.

Whilst in high school it was a time that there were very few mixed relationships going on, especially the Asian male/White female dynamic. It was a time where cultures were slowly starting to intertwine with society. There is a term called ‘Yellow fever’, and no this isn’t something contracted from a mosquito. It’s a phrase where men would have a desire for Asian Women. A shift in probably what they are normally accustom to in terms of partners.

The Asian woman, usually petite, small waist, soft skin could be considered exotic for some and were hot property. If all these Asian women were being taken, that’s going to leave a whole lot of us Asian Males with no suitable mate. That even women from our own culture were disinterested in us. 


There is a saying that you always want what you can’t have, this was the case for me. My ego desperately wanted to be validated by particularly white women and sent me on a mission to defend my whole race, to prove that we are worthy just like everyone else. The thing is I did find some success with these women, though there was never going to be enough to keep me satisfied, it was forever going to be a mission that would never end well.



It didn’t stop there. It was in that time that I started watching a fair bit of porn. I convinced my parents that me getting a computer was going to be good for my grades. Turns out it was better for gaming and a great wank station. Now where the hell are the Asian Men in porn? Plenty of Asian women with an entire category dedicated for them though not a man to be seen.

This left me super insecure, could it be the size of our penis’s which everybody seems to tease us about. That ‘I’ out of the box may not have the tools to please a woman like these studs I’ve been watching, that ‘I’ was last on most women’s desired list, that ‘I’ wasn’t even on an even playing field in the male kingdom. That ‘I’ Jason Wee-Siang Lim was not enough. Why oh why God? I soon became the victim of my very birthright wishing at times that I was anybody but me. This was some heavy stuff for a fifteen year old kid to make sense of.

There were times I would even get comments like ‘but you’re not like those other Asians, you're a cool Asian’. Which would appear as a compliment but after being dissected has a little backhand at the end of it further confirming the box we were put in. I guess I was different, I’m Kinez right? I rolled with that and drifted further away from my people and culture picking up extra insecurities along the way.

It has been a mixture of emotions unpacking the High School years time of my life. So many new experiences for a teenager. I would have days my stomach would hurt from laughing so hard and at the same time feeling like there a constant cloud of anxiety in the air. What a fun and weird time it was andtruly an era that shaped a lot of my patterns and conditioning.

If you know anyone that may resonate with this, please do share this with them. I just know that these words would have helped me through some dark times. You are not alone my friend, not in the slightest.

Til the next years, 
Much Love

Kinez

skoolies

a close friend junx and my rat tail

Graduation 2006