The other day, Irish Coffee told me something over the phone in a drunken slur (he's terribly cute when he's drunk - or should I say cuter?!) that struck me for the first time in any real way: "I know you're Indian, and you identify yourself more as Indian than with Americans, but after getting your PhD and all that, you're going to live here... you're going to be an American. So you might as well get used to that!"
Was I naive before, or am I naive still? I'm not sure. Suddenly, all those academic readings on diaspora etc make scary sense to me. I'm not sure what I was thinking of earlier - a good degree, a great job, back to Bombay? back to Chicago? - and I'm still not exactly sure. I'm so used to thinking of myself as a Gay Indian in the Midwest, that frankly, it's scary to think of myself as a Gay... Indian-American (there, I said it!)... or even a green card holder... Because frankly, there's a lot of stuff I don't like about gay life in the Americas... give me Bombay any day, closet and all...!
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