A sissy works at the beer garden I pass on the way home
By Dr. Diepiriye Kuku
A sissy works at the beer garden I pass on the way home. In Vietnam, these common watering holes are called “Bia Hoi,” and this one sits at the intersection of two major roads, across from one of the city’s largest parks, on a corner adjacent to one edge of a university campus. To say that this place is a sausage fest would be an understatement. Like drinking holes in so many parts of the world, this is a space for men.
Men come here. Me, too. Although I stick out as a visible foreigner, we are all men. In every part of the world I’ve encountered, there’s nothing weird about a guy sitting around, having a beer. Hence, it’s not uncommon for local groups of men to send one over, or invite me to their table for a drink. This has drastically different implications than men in pubs buying drinks for women, especially a woman sitting alone in a drinking hole, which is the LEAST likely thing to see here, despite the number of Bia Hoi’s owned and run by women in Vietnam. The majority here are either men in starched shirts and slacks stepping out, or groups of guys crossing from the park to gather here for a post-match drink. I started coming here years ago with a man I met through work, and stop by every now and again. As compared to other masculinized spaces there’s no competition here, and the primary resource – beer – flows freely.
The sissy wears an apron to serve the food and beer. He ties his apron tightly over the same loose orange T-shirt all the other guys wear to serve. This, of course accentuates his curves. While the others walk around baggy, clothes hanging loosely like a barrel sac, with this apron, the sissy has seriously upgraded the uniform with color, shape and flare. What’s more, his hips switch back-n-forth, too quick to be a pendulum. Naw, he switches like nobody’s business, and you really see this the way the beer garden is set-up with several rows of long tables. This is his cat walk. While the other servers seem to be drudging through the labor, the sissy flutters around like a butterfly. And he always looks at each customer, takes time to chat, and seems to have the patience of Job when it comes to their eventual drunkenness.
The sissy has to march back and forth to serve the orders like a busy bee. It’s hot, so the sissy fans himself with a menu, like it’s a prop, as he prances up-n-down the rows as if it’s his own stage. Everyone else pales in comparison, they’re just there to work. The sissy is there to ‘work’, or as Fergie says: “Make YOU work!” Life’s a stage, they say, and er’body gotta play they part.
The sissy stands at each table like a tea-cup, grinning, weight shifted to one leg, hips leaning to the side, back arched, hand on his hip, holding a pen waiting for the men to call out their food orders. Unlike the other servers who seem to just stand there bluntly, the sissy acts like a host, and actively shows folks their seats, offers that they take a look at the menu, and genuinely makes sure they are all satisfied.
Projecting onto THAT sissy
I used to hate it when people asked me what I did for a living and then say, “Oh, really? You look like a performer, a singer or dancer”. Cain’t I be academic and fly, at the same damn time!?! Of course, I take the compliment. And to be sure, I actually am a trained dancer, and have always also been an academic, all along the way. (Actually, I’ve always assumed that any successful academic had a side hustle). Few ever guess that, though, and I have seen that the reverse is true, too. My presence often shocks students when I first appear in their classrooms. I enter, stand before them, walk amongst them, and see them searching to find which boxes I tick. They can see that I am Black, that I am male, but my name and accent seem to betray one another. I am a very tactile person, and often roam the classroom and address students individually, as well as touch students letting them know I’m real, and that I believe they are, too.
Students often appear relieved when I share information about my background; it puts people at ease. Yet, in and out of the classroom, I often do sense a tinge of racist underestimation; I am not doing what people think a Black sissy should do.
Many people long for tactile communication, yet in so many ways modern culture has made so many folks aware of the normative ways we’ve historically breached individuals’ bodily integrity, that many folks, even those in my profession, shun touch, and therefore abandon tactile communication altogether. Since the appropriateness is most starkly marked across gender, it’s like only old women have carte blanch to touch more freely, and here I imagine the many times I’ve seen my grandmother stretch out her arms to greet a stranger.
Sissies have the advantage of crisscrossing those lines. Sure, in intimate spaces I’ve been touched by men as men touch other men – fraternally, paternally, platonically. I am also a spiritual person, and have prayed with men of many different faiths, often which involves a variety of forms of intimacy and touch, so I’ve touched men religiously, too. Yet, as an MSM, I have been ‘touched’ by men, i.e., erotically, romantically, sexually, longingly. I have also been in love, and so experienced how those different forms of touch can blend into one another. What’s more, I’ve also experienced sisterhood with women. I have seen, or perhaps just looked more deeply into the many ways people use touch, marked starkly across gender.
I was 7 years old when I decided 100% that I would not shrink my dreams into hairdressing! And yet hairdressing was all I’d ever seen a Black sissy do. The iconic movie, Fame, had come out in 1980, but it was 1984, when the film Revenge of the Nerds was released that sealed the deal. Fame’s Leroy, as we all know, warrants his own treatise, but suffice it to say that I eventually did study dance at the local high school for the arts, just like in the movie. In ROTN, however, there was an explicit Black sissy, Lamar, who was the butt of all jokes despite being so fly, and effectively saving the day. Yet, fitting with the narrative of the film – again, despite the normative racist stereotyping – Lamar was incorporated into the band of misfits. This culminated in the nerds’ stage performance that won them the fraternity competition. Dressed in a sleeveless red zipper jacket like Michael Jackson in his iconic “Beat It” video, Lamar raps, break dances with the nerdy kid, and introduces each member, and himself with “A lil ole rap by me, Lamar.”
Each misfit contributed their unique talents to create a harmonious show that dazzled the audience. Again, the whole performance was fraught with racist undertones, relying on Black music to signal the coolness factor, dressing the (stereotypical) Japanese exchange students a Native American, and having him bang a gong. Sure, all the white characters have their idiosyncrasies, but they are not explicitly tied to race. Or, they are, of course, implicitly tied to race - whiteness. Central to the story, we have the white jocks and the white cheerleaders full of dumb, white blonds. You see your preppy whites, your geeky whites, your skater whites, your rich whites, your middle-class whites, and so on. But this is all, of course the backdrop. They are all individuals, whereas the ‘others’ represent some group. Let’s not even get started on the symbolic uses of the Black fraternity in this film.
Hairdressing. Making the other character look good, experience their inner beauty, while holding oneself back, shrinking into the cocoon of your own salon. That’s all I ever saw a Black sissy do. So few of my steps have been easy precisely because of the differing identity politics I (choose to) face all around the world. I choose to travel and therefore open myself to be confronted by these differing realities, for it’d be no different at home where my identities are regularly contested, culturally, but certainly and consistently on ballots - on balance. Yet, looking at this sissy strut up-n-down these rows, macking these men like they’re all his hoes, I too imagine that he will suddenly burst into song as his walk is already a dance. Has he had to shrink his life, I wonder? And what are the terms of this box he now inhabits? Is beer-serving his only gig? Is he as happy as the joy he spreads? I often see him laughing hysterically with customers, but are these sometimes tears of a clown?
This sissy has mad flavor, even in this part of his career - of which I know nothing – save for what I’ve seen of him serving beer in a local Bia Hoi. He makes such a flutter when he moves around, just doing his job, that I too, see him on stage, among peers, not drowning in this mundanity. I almost wish he would bring some Hot Lunch from Fame, for those hips are already singing the body electric. Those shoulders practically shimmering as he walks friskily across the pavement, arms stretched open, elbows squeezed, holding a beer in each hand – swish, swish, swish. I can see the musical notes floating around him as he makes his way, doing his job dutifully, albeit with Glee. “Just do it,” I want to say to the sissy. Free us from these seats.
Dr. Diepiriye Kuku (he/him) is a Black, queer, Buddhist, writer, model, dancer, choreographer, activist, global educationalist, spoken-word artist and empath from Louisville, KY. He’s lived, studied, and worked in Mali, South Korea, Thailand, Germany, India, and is currently a lecturer in International Business in the UK, currently based in Hanoi.