You Can Sit With Us, But Don’t Say Too Much

I charge five dollars to talk about my race and ethnicity.

It started as a bar joke. Got a laugh every time. People thought it was clever. I thought it was survival. Deep down, I meant it. I was tired. Tired of strangers framing my face like a puzzle. Tired of being everyone’s exotic conversation starter. My mother is Korean. My father is white. I live in the space between their histories. Most people don’t know what to do with that.

If you want the full story now, it costs more. Sliding scale. Pay wall.

I’ve spent most of my life explaining myself before I even get a chance to introduce who I am. Racially. Sexually. Socially. I’m queer. I’m femme. I’m mixed. I live in a body that doesn’t come with easy answers. During Pride, that tension feels louder. Queerness becomes a spectacle. Visibility turns into currency. And if you don’t fit the template, it’s easy to get mistaken for someone who wandered in by accident.

Queer spaces pride themselves on being inclusive, but the welcome mat sometimes stops at the surface. I’ve arrived at Pride events and felt more like a ghost than a guest. The music is loud; the crowd is glittering, but the air feels choreographed. Masc bodies gleam under disco lights. Conversations swirl like practiced scripts. No one makes eye contact. It’s a catwalk disguised as a sidewalk. Everyone knows their part. If you don’t, you learn to shrink.

Some of the coldest silences I’ve ever felt in queer spaces came not from strangers, but from people I thought might understand. Especially queer men, who hold their own center of gravity in the community. Their safety rarely extends to those outside their orbit. As a femme, you learn quickly that protection is not guaranteed. Discomfort is yours to hold alone. Quiet pain has no audience for “drama.”

On paper, femme identity is celebrated. But in the room, it’s often sidelined. Softness becomes misread. What I wear gets noticed. Who I am gets ignored.  And if you’re racially ambiguous, as I am, the doubt doubles. I’ve been told I don’t “look Korean.” I’ve been told I don’t “look queer.” I’ve had people try to connect through their favorite K-dramas or skincare routines, not realizing they’re speaking to a surface they’ve projected onto. It always felt like they were scanning for something familiar, not someone real.

So I watch. I always have. I sit at the edge of the room and collect details others miss. My writing comes from that quiet place. Years of being overlooked have made me a sharper observer. I have a photographic memory and a long archive of moments where I’ve been present but not included. I remember everything.

It’s not just queer spaces where I float in between. I move through San Francisco’s high society too. I’ve sat at candlelit tables, worn gowns I chose myself, made small talk over caviar. And yet, when queer people hear that, they’re quick to scoff. “They don’t see you. They don’t care about people like us.” But here’s what no one seems to admit. The queer parties and the galas, the underground clubs and the marble foyers, they all leave me feeling the same kind of invisible. Both sides love to call each other out, but neither one really knows how to hold someone like me. Between the two, I’ve learned how to take up space without permission. If I’m going to be overlooked, I may as well choose the room and the shoes.

Still, I go. To the parties. To the parades. To the rooms I wasn’t exactly invited into but feel compelled to enter anyway. I take my time getting dressed. Not to prove anything. Just to feel more like myself. There’s a TikTok sound going around that says femmes are closer to drag queens than to cis women, and honestly, I feel that. We build ourselves out of gesture. We sculpt our presence from intention. It’s the same ritual, the same reverence, even if no one names it that way. I know what to expect. I’ll be passed over, talked through, or more likely, treated like a canvas for other people’s longing, envy, and invention. And yet, there is still something quietly radical about arriving. Because even if the room doesn’t notice me, it’s still mine to walk into.

And now, as a queer journalist, people ask me what Pride feels like. They want my perspective. They want me to explain something I’ve never been fully welcomed into. I used to think no one saw me. Now everyone wants to know what I’ve seen.

That’s a strange kind of visibility.

I don’t go to Pride to be seen. I go because I have always been here. I belong, even in their silence.

What used to be my nightlife has quietly become my life. These rooms, these glances, these tensions, they’re not passing moments anymore. They’re material. They’re memory. And now, somehow, they’re my responsibility. I’ve become the person others turn to for the story. The narrator. The lens. The explainer of a space that rarely explained itself to me.

Funny how that works. The one who was never let all the way in is now asked to explain the way through.

And I do it. Not because I owe anyone clarity. But because I know what it’s like to look for yourself in a space and find nothing but noise.