I have close friends who are mixed-race-homosexual-couple, Indonesian-Norwegian. I have known the Indonesian guy since high school. He met his Norwegian partner when they were in Copenhagen Business School. They are legally married under Norwegian laws. I do not think it is wise to disclose their real names since they are living and working in Indonesia, therefore I will refer them as Pleasures the Indonesian and Bear the Norwegian.
While I do take pride in being friends with them just because the fact they are homosexual couple (to brag how ‘liberal’ I am), they are amusing individuals and I think our friendship is politically neutral. I would still be friends with them for their personalities even if they are a monocultural heteronormative couple.
Hanging out with them is an acquired taste. They don’t just break the stereotypes of a couple (homosexual couple is an anomaly in heteronormative cultures—obviously), they also break the stereotypes of gay couple.
They are far from apologetic and have zero, if not minus, political correctness—especially Pleasures. They have the audacity to tell the plain cold hard truth with no sarcasm. These make them good friends and counsels. They will tell me things I need to realise, and not what I want to hear.
When I was getting fat, they would say I was getting fat. They do not say it in a mean way, but in a ‘get-your-shit-together’ way. When we were dining together with a friend who was having financial difficulties, Pleasures suggested that she should be exempted to pay because ‘she is poor now.’[1] However, they never said anything with malicious intent. Their brutal words are mostly plain articulations of their capabilities of empathy, or expression of jokes.
They are both masculine. Well, not to the extent as masculine as Gareth Thomas, the Captain of Welsh Rugby Team or Professor Oliver Sacks, neurologist, rider and weightlifter, but I train boxing with Pleasures and Bear is into video games.[2] Their physical features are more manly than me: bigger size, heavier built with facial and body hairs.
They don’t know anything about make-up, hairdressing, manicures-pedicures, They are not into selfies and update their Instagram only sporadically (when they do, it is rarely about themselves). They do not listen to Taylor Swift.[3]
They don’t follow Kendall Jenner or the Kardashians (in fact, we never discuss any subject that is E! Channel material). They do not gossip and never employ sarcasm in communicating. In short, they are not superficial.[4]
I took a comparative analysis on the dynamics of Pleasures and Bear’s relationship with my own heterosexual partnership. They communicate the way men communicate with each other e.g. short sentences, nodding. While in my case, my wife does most of the talking even though we are both extroverted and talkative (except during exercise or when I’m drunk—and I am talkative).[5]
This seem to be evidence in support of the notion that ‘guys do things together, girls talk to each other’. Pleasures has many girl friends (note that the space makes all the difference). It seems he prefer to ‘talk about things’ with his girl friends who are, mostly, single ladies.
When Pleasures was making travel plan for their trip to Mongolia, he wanted to make sure their itineraries are full with activities.[6] He said they are not like me and my wife who can talk to each other all the time when there is nothing to do.
Or perhaps, it’s more because Bear is an introverted individual? I don’t think so. I am an extrovert and I don’t really talk about my feelings in full extent with my male friends. I can open up better to women.
All these facts seem to support the notion that homosexual couple is atypical of heterosexual couple. Nevertheless, they have to deal with the same issues of romantic/sexual relationship. They may communicate differently but they still need to communicate.
As multicultural couple, they also break the cultural stereotype. Indonesian men are stereotypically unreliable in domestic matters such as cooking, cleaning, ironing, and laundering. They are not expected to do ‘women’s work’ and many middle-class households have domestic helpers. Pleasures is better in homemaking. He is an excellent cook (so good that one of the greatest past times in Jakarta for me is the lunch or dinner parties hosted by them) and always keep their home organised.
Once, Pleasures went on a business trip for a week and Bear sustained himself only with awful foods he ordered from a restaurant nearby. He was too lazy to cook, not adventurous enough scour streets of Jakarta for decent food, and/or has not developed sufficient language proficiency to order delivery. It seems paradoxical considering Bear’s Scandinavian cultural background.
Reconstructing heteronormative mindset and masculinity
Being friends with them required me to undergone a structural change in mindset. Fortunately, all that travelling and reading have taught me that the world is much more complex than the mindset, the concept, or the thought system we have acquired or familiar with. I have learned that our cognitive capability is unable to grasp base reality, simply because it is unnecessary for our survival.[7] Mindset or ‘concept’ is useful for us to process information by filtering and fitting them into a system.[8]
By acknowledging and being aware of a known concept’s limitations, we can adapt, change, and adopt new ones. Concept is analogous to categorisation system. We arbitrarily label something for ease of reference. However, a label is representation of the real thing, but not the real thing.[9] We need to expand our references and be open to different mindsets as well as applying them in context if we want to understand the universe a little bit better.
There is this misunderstanding on homosexual couple, at least in Jakarta, that one of them must be the ‘wife’. The ‘wife’ dude is the maternal one, the effeminate one, the one who express his excitement in high pitch and obsessed with glitters and pastel colours (literally, the gay individual).
I remember an episode of Modern Family when Cam was upset because he was grouped as ‘the mums’ by ‘the dads’ at Lily’s school. The moral of the story: there is no ‘husband/wife’ division in gay couple. They are both ‘husbands’ i.e. men, persons with penis. Trying to fit LGBTQ couple in a heteronormative mindset does not work if we want to understand them.
The term ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ are progressively becoming more gender neutral. In the traditional (misogynistic) values, the husband is earning the money and the wife does everything else. Nowadays, it’s supposed to be about genitalia. Misogynistic values are not just holding back women in reaching their full potential but also hurting men with toxic masculinity expectations e.g. what if the wife is a better and more interested in business and the husband in homemaking? It may seem a reversal of roles, but works in modern society—especially in urban society—do not put men’s physical strength as a competitive advantage.
The stereotyping of homosexuals are not just rooted in heteronormative mindset, but also in the concept of ‘masculinity’ which both sexual orientations are subjected to and adhere, consciously or unconsciously. Under conventional masculinity, men are expected to refrain from expressing their emotions and avoid ‘self-indulgent activities’ (e.g. manicure-pedicure, facial, etc). Homosexual men are not exempted from such expectations. Yet no matter how they satisfy conventional masculinity, they can never be considered as real men because of their sexual preference. Consequently, many homosexual men think they have to choose between the two camps: machismo or gay. Of course, the camps are, again, concepts and labels. They can be a non-binary choice.[10]
Pleasures and Bear also taught me to transcend the concept of monogamy. Pleasures and Bear are the only couple that I am close with that practice open-relationship. They can have sex with other guy, as long as it is casual and disclose it to each other.
Despite Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, polygamy is still a controversial concept for most Indonesians. Monogamous relationship under the romantic concept is still the default psyche and the mainstream approach for couples. Political correctness in Indonesia demand public figures and celebrities not to be openly polygamous, even for dais (Islamic preachers). Under the default traditional moralistic views, open-relationships are deranged. The fact that Pleasures and Bear are homosexual couple seems to reinforce the idea that homosexuals are basically immoral people.[11]
Moralistic point of views aside, I know that long-term monogamous relationships relying on infatuations and expecting ‘happily-ever after’ is not realistic. Nevertheless, I do not think I and my partner can function under open-relationship arrangement. As Alain de Botton aptly put, it is difficult to be a libertine and have a stable emotional relationship.[12] Maybe my need for emotional stability is higher than them.
Pleasures and Bear understand the risks of open-relationship (at least, I think they do). They dive in to the libertine arrangement and reaping the explosive excitements of sexual freedom—even in conservative Jakarta. Bear, being a white guy, exerts competitive advantage in the Jakarta’s dating game.[13] Pleasures may be ‘local’, but being highly educated intellectual with strong financial capacities, he also enjoys the privilege of desirable date. Many times they even join forces and have threesomes or orgies.
Until one day, Pleasures met a talented fashion photographer. I will call him Argonaut. He is Chinese Indonesian. Pleasures is infatuated with him, and their feelings are mutual. He overstepped the boundaries. His relationship with Argonaut is more than casual. Consequently, Pleasures and Bear went into a spiral. They decided to separate and Pleasures move out from their cohabitation flat.
After series of emotional breakdowns, therapy sessions, Pleasures decided to leave Argonaut. Strangely, Pleasures and Bear met with Argonaut. They all drank together and talked. One thing led to another, infused by alcohol, they ended up having a three way. Bear also found emotional connection with Argonaut.
Now they are having a love triangle but with no one excluded for another. A polyamorous relationship. Can I call them a ‘triple’? I remember once I told them that if they would be the ultimate diversity couple if they adopt an East Asian or African child. Seeing them together, it seems that the concept of ‘modern [nuclear] family’, where interracial same sex couple adopting ethic minority child, is not progressive enough in diversity initiative programme.
I jokingly told Pleasures that he is a true Muslim man. A successful polygamist who is able to bring together his ‘wives’. It may seem that Pleasures hit the jackpot. Nevertheless, I imagine his mental bandwith must be exhausted. He once complained that there are two snoring guys sharing his bed. He also admits that he is not optimistic on the sustainability as a triple.
I am grateful for my friendship with
Pleasures and Bear. Their life stories are amusing. Most importantly, I can
observe specimens of contemporary love up close and personal. This is a rare
opportunity for someone who was born and lived in Jakarta for most of his life.
Orthodoxy is the majority view here (not even conservatism). Therefore, my
default moral matrix is not liberal. I had to educate myself to be culturally
liberal. We learn the most from the people closest to us. Pleasures and Bear
provide both the emotional connection and the intellectual stimulation, the
heart and mind approach, to understand identities and relationships of
homosexual men.
[1] Being the more diplomatic one, I corrected him: ‘she’s broke.’
[2] I know it’s not the 90s anymore when contact sports and video games are associated as the past time for men, but still they are still male dominated pursuits.
[3] I do. As Detective Jacob Peralta aptly said, ‘she makes me feel things!’ See Brooklyn Nine-nine, ‘Unsolvable’ (S1:E21).
[4] In Indonesia, gay people are often assumed to be ‘superficial’. Pleasures thinks the stereotype is not entirely wrong. Most of the homosexuals he met in Jakarta are superficial. Nevertheless, he added, many heterosexual men and women in Jakarta are also superficial. I think superficiality also subscribes to gender division, i.e. the ‘basic bros’ and the ‘basic bitches’. Gay superficiality is represented by men who act as ‘basic bitches’. The combination makes a juxtaposed double cringe and, therefore, superimpose the superficiality.
[5] I scored 90% for Extraversion in Myers-Briggs personality test. My wife 98%.
[6] My Indonesian friend is the dominant one in the relationship, he seems makes most of the decisions. This is also contrary to the stereotype that Asians are more submissive compared to Western people.
[7] S Adams, Win Bigly (Penguin, 2017).
[8] Concept is analogous to software in computer, while our body and corporeal senses are the hardware. We do not see with our eyes, but with our mind. See Invisibilia podcast Emotions.
[9] NN Thaleb, The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable (Penguin, 2018)
[10] M Humphries, “Gay machismo” in A Metclaf and M Humphries (eds), the Sexuality of Men (Pluto Press, 1985) 70-85.
[11] Of course, many homosexual couples are strictly monogamous. Additionally, there are heterosexual couples who are under open relationship. I just imagine it must have been easier for the woman since she wield all, if not most of, the powers of sexual tension. After all, men will be happy just to ‘get some’.
[12] A Botton, Course of Love (Hamish Hamilton, 2016)
The Ultimate Diversity Couple [13] Most Jakartans, and Indonesians, still struggle to be free from the Dutch colonial era eugenics psyche. Pleasures, half-jokingly, referred this competitive advantage in dating as ‘white supremacy’.