One of the major parts of life and especially confusing on all parts is dating. Now add into that dating an Asian. It doesn't matter if you are Asian yourself or not it is still a mess. There is always the war of the sexes then you add in cultural prejudices, customs, religion sometimes. It quickly becomes a much stranger task.
When I was in high school I was looking for a particular type of guy. Korean FOB (Fresh Off the Boat) who could break dance. Yes I had very strange standards, to be fair I was in high school, into going out clubbing, raves, break dancing and aggressive rollerblading (yes this totally dates myself). Aside from having a particular type I was attracted to for various reasons dating was a weird beast.
Let me explain at least the first part of my "dream boat" guy when I was in high school.
FOB aka Fresh off the Boat, which to my friends automatically meant it was a Korean person who recently came from Korea. I found them fascinating and like a direct link back to my culture. It didn't even matter to me how poor their English was. I think I actually liked their English to be worse so that I could try to learn Korean from them or make up some sort of communication. Some where in my misguided youth I thought that dating a Korean from Korea would help me identify better. Culturally speaking, dating in Korea when I was in high school was very stunted and different then it is now and vastly different from western style dating. That was back in the mid 90's. Anything too sexual or even mentioning premarital sex was offense and banned from Korean public media. Birth control was even still on the hush hush and you would never see any advertisements for anything sex related or overly provocative at all.
Anyways dating back then was very much idealized by dramas and poetry (yes poetry). Korean culture like many Asian cultures is big into poetry which makes things much more romanticized then they are or need to be. This was kind of fascinating to me as a teen. The idea that someone isn't always trying to get you in the sack and will truly "court" or woo you over. It's all just cake (aka a lie).
Moving on I remember how dating was different with a FOB. First there were the language obstacles and this was just when the internet was starting up and e.mail wasn't as accessible and as it is now. Cell phones and pagers were also rare when I was high school. If they were long distance then it was a lot of letter writing back and forth. If they were local we'd usually be hanging out in a big group so someone could help us translate it out. The funniest is just declaring to each write in our native languages and trying to understand each other or getting a friend to translate. I remember the first time I heard the phrase "Gwe mae roo cho goo shipoo" translates to "I want to bite you" I was a little bit frightened. Then I learned it was a term of endearment to mean, you are so sweet I want to bite you like a peach (fruit).
For me dating a FOB was part of my teen identity crisis. I think being an Asian American teen can be much more confusing then your average all American teen. Not only were you going through all the teen angst and puberty of everyone else you questioned your value and your attractiveness to others around you, at least in my case being a minority. I remember later how some guy friends confessed to liking me but never would of dared to ask me out because they thought I would reject them since they weren't Asian which is funny because I felt the same way in reverse. I sought out other Asians to date because in my head that would be easier and less confusing. In reality it wouldn't of mattered at that age, dating is all confusing as a teen no one knows what the hell they are doing.
I'll stop here because that is a lot to chew on and I think I covered most of my bases of early teen Asian American dating. I'll continue with more stories and the college years in some more posts.
Looking back did you find dating or not dating an Asian part of your identity teen angst? Do you think it helped you or hurt you at all if you did? Does it even matter?
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