And after a while, I started to notice something else. Not only was I testing the limits of language in my relationships, in a way we all were -- all of us homos -- because there's no space for us in mainstream Korean culture. Sure, there are words for gay and lesbian, but we are left out of everyday discourse. Without the possibility of speaking about our desires, we could only enact them. I think this partly accounts for the rigidity of the butch/femme divide: without the freedom to name yourself outside of the hetero matrix, you can only imitate it. At least half of the girls I dated expressed frustration with this binary and the way it constrains you to behaviors and dress codes that don't always feel right. One girl said "My friends say I'm butch, so I have to be butch." She practically sighed with relief when I told her she didn't have to carry my bag.
There are some upsides to this whole subculture thing. You can get away with a lot when you are unspeakable and therefore unthinkable. And there's nothing hotter than a club full of lesbians, except a secret club full of lesbians. But there are also obvious downsides. One girl told me that lesbian high school students, who are too young to get into the clubs, meet in love motels to drink and make out because there's nowhere else for them to go; they allegedly form cliques so fiercely defensive that "if you date a boy, they will beat you up." I started to see a tinge of desperation in the faces at the club as they moved in and out of frenzied drama and hookups and dancing and drinking; it felt like we had to get all our gayness out in that one place, at that one moment, because the minute we stepped out into the real world we would have to act out the straight show all over again. We would re-enter the world that has no words for us.
I often had to remind myself that I had it fairly easy as a non-Korean-speaking American. The vast majority of the Korean lesbians I met are not out to their parents or coworkers because they say they'll get kicked out of the house or lose their job. My female Korean friends, gay and straight, get asked practically every week when they're going to get married, by family members and complete strangers alike. Eun Ji, who I dated longer-term, told her co-workers she had a boyfriend so they would stop trying to set her up on blind dates. She still isn't out to her parents, even though her mom has walked in on her with a girl numerous times. Once, after we had been dating for months and her mom knew we spent every weekend together, her mom asked me "Why doesn't Eun Ji want to get married?" Talk about awkward dinner conversation.