Boxes

I hate filling out forms. I don’t ever know what box to check

• U.S. Citizen
• Permanent Resident
• Other

I am committing a crime if I pick U.S. citizen even though I should technically be one given I’ve four generations of them in my family. I would pick “permanent resident” but don’t have a green card. Picking “Other” doesn’t tell you that I’m American or that I have spent half of my life here. I don’t have my foot planted firmly anywhere. I feel displaced. I’m like a trans-migrant and that is completely fine. But checking a box won’t tell you all that.

The racial/ethnic box is even more annoying:

• Asian-American
• Pacific Islander / Native Hawaiian

I usually select ‘Other’ or draw my own box and write in “Fiji-Indian.” I definitely don’t identify as Asian-American for multiple reasons. I do embrace Pacific Islander for political purposes but I’m pretty sure the people making the boxes mean someone indigenous to the islands and five generations in Fiji still does not make me indigenous. Funnily, five generations in America makes you a “native” if you are white.

The sex/gender boxes annoy me the most. Virgin America tends to revert back to identifying me as a male as do most of the people who send me hate-ful emails. I’m not sure if that is meant to be a slur.

• Male
• Female

I’m gay in Fiji, transgender in parts of Washington D.C., a genderfuck in San Francisco, a woman loving woman on some days and nights, asexual on others with a straight male satirical misogynist gaze at times, submissive, dominant and everything in-between in bed, and perpetually discovering new repressed sexualities within myself. I like my blue tie and boxers but I love my lacey pink underwear. I just find queer to be an easy label. What exactly am I supposed to select?

/to be continued/