E tenebras, lux dormiens

I want to say something here to make it exceedingly clear to everyone who's reading this.

I AM DEAF/HARD-OF-HEARING/HEARING-IMPAIRED.

Yet, I will not give my opinions on such stuff. It is not something of which I can be proud, nor something that I wish was not part of me. It is a unique part of my existence, and I wear that proudly, my experience, my life, my history, my past, every part of me, has been influenced by my hearing, but is not under its control nor controls it.

Therefore, for me to meet someone on the Internet, I am at a loss to explain that though I am deaf, it should not preclude me from meeting someone in real life. Yet, it does. Yet it does.

Note two experiences, both bad, that I have had with meeting someone from online. My faith in myself, life, and the non-superficiality of gay men, twice broken, has left me nothing but to say "SHAME ON YOU!"

The first experience I now relate. It was a boy, AIM: Sharky4150, XY: 4uphoenix, junior in Castro Valley High School, first name Patrick, last name unknown. He lives in Castro Valley of the San Francisco Bay Area. He lives on Stanton Ave. He told me he was working at the Plunge, the swimming pool at Hayward. I decided to meet him, and he me. What transpired was an awkward avoidance.

After that, the Internet is never same. He refused to initiate conversations with me. He refused to participate in conversation with me. He refused to do the things which must be done to further any relationship, such as self-disclosure. After all, communication study states that to further a relationship, it is necessary to reveal an inner part of yourself so that the other person will do the same.

I revealed an area of myself that I am still sensitive about, my deafness. What do I get back for this self-disclosure, ignorance, bigotry, stupidity to the far extreme.

I pressed him to explain why he stopped talking to me. At first he said it was video games taking up his time, then it was his homework. I pressed him harder, longer, and brought up my deafness and the meeting with him.

He typed back to me. "I thought it was weird."

We never spoke again.

---

Witness the second experience. I never met the man. His first name is Jay, he is a student at University of San Francisco. He lives in San Francisco and enjoys driving. His AIM screen name are doikomo and jtboyzzz.

Because of my depression arising from the first online meeting with Sharky, I decided not to tell him about my deafness. I had in effect, endured a bruising to my already blantant insecurity.

I suppose I understand why meeting people from online has such a bad rap. The people you meet expect you to be some perfect person, with all five senses available. That you can whisper to them in the dark, that you can talk without looking at each other, that you can do so many things that deaf people cannot, that you can talk on the phone, and hear the sweet sound of his voice.

I suppose I should initiate conversations, and not let conversations be initiated upon me. For when they do so, they do so with the expectation of perfection. For when I do so, I should expect less, because I will tell them upfront, whosoever answers unto me, that I possess only four and a half out of five senses available to me.

So what happened was that I eventually told him and explained to him about my hearing and how I look. I wear glasses, contact lenses are possibility to my ears. I wear hearing aids, and I am a gifted lip-readers. Say anything to me, and with a face to look at, I will pick up what you say.

He never replied to me again. No matter how many times I try to talk to him, I know he is ignoring me and has put me on the block list. To prove that he did not reply, I signed in with another screenname and initiate a conversation with him quite quickly. That means, he has effectively ignored me.

I want so much to tell you how I grew up. I grew up with speech therapist and patient English teachers to build up my language. I never learned how to sign in the years of my growth, years of my puberty, years of my existence since birth. I have worked so hard to learn English, I have not started learning Sign Language until two years ago.

What have I learned all this English for, worked so hard to communicate with hearing people for, but to get overlooked by men in search of superficial perfection? Indubitably, my good man. That I had to be gay, and deaf, and chinese, and myopic is all the worst to my life when people are looking for someone else. Would not woman be more tolerant than this?

Why, I dream of a society in which a prince would choose to kiss a toad, and view such beauty in it as a princess!