This afternoon a friend of mine checked to make sure that I was aware that a new friend that had been hanging out with us last week was homosexual. I showed my surprise.
The friend clueing me in, wondered at my cluelessness. I can admittedly be quite oblivious at times. The added dimension of a second language and culture didn’t help at all. There are some things straight Thai guys do, that no straight American guy would dream of doing. For example, holding hands with another guy.
I tried to explain the difficulty of reading another culture’s signals to my friend. He didn’t buy it. He said if someone from my country came and acted the way this other guy had acted, he wouldn’t need to understand a word he said to know he was gay. Well, yeah! If he acted the same way a gay Thai guy acts. But he wouldn’t. He’d act like a gay American guy.
Nothing like working to learn another language and culture for over a year to begin to realize the depth and intricacies inherent in these things we take for granted.
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