Good Asian Drivers

Not many of you know this, but I used to drive around this big gay jeep with lots of political stickers all over the bumper and sides of my car.

My friends lovingly named it the “Dyke Mobile.”

Her name was Betty and I loved her so much. I bought her to acclimate myself to snow driving and well, be bigger than I was, of course.

Then one day I found out that it had been completely vandalized. Baseball batted to break off the side mirror and had all the lights smashed in. I was really scared after that and had to be escorted home by the campus police every time I came back to school.

That really sucked but I thought that it wasn’t likely to happen again in my adult life in the city.

A few days ago though, I came back to my car which was parked in the South End, to find that it had been keyed a bunch of times and spit on. The spit actually froze onto my car. Gross. I don’t have forty bumper stickers on my car any more. Just one thin, well-placed rainbow strip.

You would think that in the South End rainbow stickers would be so common that they no longer draw any attention to you, but this was not the case. My first thought was ok, maybe this gay sticker thing is really not working out for me, but then I remember why I have them.

I remember when I was first coming out that I would look for the stickers everywhere. In Hawaii, Boston, Chicago, Canada, wherever I was I looked for the bumper stickers. I looked for rainbows, HRC signs, any sign that my community was present. Seeing these stickers made me feel safe, welcomed, and hopeful that I could live my life just as “out” as they did. Having a rainbow on your car is not as easy as you would think. Psychologically and physically it could be dangerous.

So now that I’ve thought about it, no fucking way will I de-rainbow my car. In fact it might be time to add a couple more for the cross country tour.

-Kit