Hi.
I am Gen.
Gen means a lot of things. Gen also doesn't mean a thing. It's just a name.
Gen.
But there is more to Gen than just a name.
Gen, in this context, is a five (5) foot, six (6) inches person. Female by official gender, a hundred and fifty (150) over pounds by weight. I have a few facial moles around my left cheek and lip. Chinese or oriental by descent, although I am told that I possess mixed blood in me. My grandfather (of my father's side) came from a mixed blood background, and was born in the Portuguese settlement of Malacca in Malaysia.
I possess black, straight, longish hair that tips slight below my shoulders; my shoulders, I am told are broad and manly, which has made me feel flattered, and I am fairly built although I try to keep myself as athletically framed as possible. This I do, though a fair amount of exercise, and against Western medical advice, I train on the treadmill at my local gym, with a bit of weight-training for the frame. I have quite a button nose, much typical of a Chinese trait, but my fairly wide eyes, hairy brows and bodily hair give me the disposition that I am not purely oriental. In fact, I have received various comments that I am hairy like an Indian, another comment which I welcome thoroughly. My skin is light brown, but turn my arms upwards and it becomes a dark yellow-caramel colour.
I dress androgynously. In fact, I practise androgyny. Being one and the other or neither confuses people, and I like not being labelled. It restricts things and me from being free with myself. I already find myself growing more restrictive with myself and life as I grow older. So the art of balancing my restrictiveness with the freedom of viewpoints is something I do in life.
Life is about balance after all.
In that sense, I wear my trousers, shirts, jackets, vests and suits. I love colour, and tend to dress myself a little more by adding as much colour as I can to my wardrobe. I have hairy legs, more hairy than my father and grandfather put together. They had absolutely no hair on their forearms and legs; I used to think that God saved all that hair for me and took it from them. I do not however, keep butchy appearances or short crew cut hairstyles or wear over-sized shirts. Shoulders are meant to be shown off. Besides, I am not uncultured that way. Even my godson, Danny boy, a thirty one (31) year old Nigerian, who makes little money from his day work as a carer, dresses very well for himself. At least, he keeps himself neat. Lately, my hair is dyed brownish copper. Yes, I am vain.
I have come to realise that I tend to carry myself off like a gay or bisexual man. I do have transexual tendencies, and have come to embrace myself as one. My yearnings to be a husband and father to my wife and my children are examples of my tendencies.
However, in postmodern terms, I called a pomosexual. One who does not like to be named.
Gen, also is one person who does not like spending time, talking or writing unimportant details such as hair colour or weight to people.
I like people getting to know me for who I am. Not how tall or big I am.
I am a twenty seven (27) year old person, currently working as a lawyer, living on her own in a state outside the main city of Kuala Lumpur. I decided to become a lawyer, having pursued an international career outside of my homeland right after my studies, and being forced out of the big boys world for not "belonging". People tell you all sort of things when your time is up. When I was told by the international world that my time there was up, I retreated to machoism to prove that I was going to hold my head up high, even when my girly instincts provoked tears of hurt and disappointment inside. It was amazing how alone I was, packing my things and going. And their slightly sympathetic but detached faces made me feel more aware of my solitude as I left.
I had already known for a while that being a lawyer might suit me for a while. I felt inept, as an international legal professional, with clean hands in court room battle as I was bulldozed into the world of the rich and famous. A young twenty five (25) year old lady meets CEOs and presidents of worldwide investment companies. I felt so small and little before them. Yet I knew that I would be just like one of them one day, and that meant going back to practice to get myself dirty in Kuala Lumpur. So as despondent as I felt initially about leaving the international world and Hong Kong, I happily set myself off for a new-old horizon ahead: home.
Not many people told me how home sick I would be when I arrived home. It took me almost a year to get over my home sickness. I got depressed, locked myself in my own world, spend many times talking and fantasizing nothing but the international world and the life I built during my time there. For that time period, everything ugly, boring, cold, clammy, stupid about my life internationally felt like something a whole lot better than being back in KL. I complained and whined about my life in KL a lot too. And I whined and complained about the people more to the people around me.
It did not help that most of my friends and myself had outgrown each other. I, at many times, felt that I had no one to talk to. Even my best friend, felt like a stranger to me at times. I had no partner, boyfriend or girlfriend to keep me company too. Had I known then that that was a good thing, would have helped the displacement period a lot.
When I left KL for the UK five (5) years prior, I left as a person very much afraid and who did not know her own self. After five (5) years, a few skeletons and closets, I was a very different person. I knew that my own sister did not have the courage to do what I was about to do: live back with the parents. Live back in Malaysia.
It is not like my parents are monsters and Malaysia is this huge grim of a reality. But in truth,
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