By Nathan Ramos-Park
I grew up in small town Ohio running through the woods, catching frogs and crayfish at Hinckley Lake, All-American Boy stuff. But because I wasn’t like the other boys (gay) but also literally not like the other boys (Filipino/Korean, cleft lip and palate, existential depression disguised as precocious behavior) I have constantly been searching for where I fit. It’s not that I didn’t have friends, or connection, but where were the people where I didn’t have to start out with ‘well in 1981 my Filipino army father was stationed in South Korea post the Korean War where America was continuing their stronghold of imperialism in Asia.’
I just wanted to look at someone and nod in familiarity. A knowing wink. An imperceptible nod. So I waited. “If I just finish elementary school, middle school would be better”. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t. “If I just finish high school, and go off to college, I’ll find my tribe. There has to be people that have felt what I’ve felt.” But I always felt slightly out of focus, a blurry image of a fully fleshed human being. I just didn’t fit.
I told my manager while living in NYC as an actor that I didn’t want to do any white savior narratives – no Miss Saigon. No King and I. And she said then I’ll never be able to make a living. So I quit. I loved quitting things. I never felt more free than releasing myself from places where I never felt incongruence, anyway.
But by this time, I felt like there was this gnawing feeling inside of me that I couldn’t ignore. I lived on a cultural island. There wasn’t enough resources to sustain myself. I was on life support. Patients with dementia will sometimes experience terminal lucidity. Right before they die, they return to mental clarity for a moment.
I was at that moment. I realized I felt so out of focus, because I was never given focus. So I did the sensible thing, I became a playwright (lol). I was so poor that I didn’t have a computer. I got an iPad mini and opened a google doc. I pecked away (literally, girl, that touchscreen was wild), revealing the soft belly of my experience as a queer Asian boy who felt unseen (don’t worry, it was a COMEDY!). And it ended up winning a National Writing Competition. And after its World Premiere at East West Players, I finally felt my hazy edges snap into focus.
The amount of people who reached out to me saying that they finally felt seen seeing my play. That they didn’t know others felt the way that they felt – it healed this near death by a thousand cuts.
I was wanting so badly for someone to turn around one day and see me, that I didn’t know that in claiming myself, in seeing myself, just like the moon, I could reflect an entire universe to others in that sweet velvety darkness.
And then it happened. I moved to LA and ran into another Korean gaysian with a cleft lip and palate also named Nathan from the midwest. No one ever told me that feeling of soul healing when you meet someone who could look at you with one look, and understands your whole entire existence.
My parents came here for a better life, but I don’t know my grandparents’ names, I don’t know what it took for generations for me to happen to exist. I didn’t know that before colonization, the Philippines had queer gods. That even the god of death and the moon were gay lovers. I still don’t know a lot of things.
Growing up, my culture started and ended on the plate. Kimchi jjigae, pancit, adobo, japchae. And now, my culture gets to live on the page. It gets to breathe within the margins, and on the lips of actors. Maybe I don’t fit anywhere, but maybe that’s the point, that we’re all these disparate puzzle pieces, a mosaic of something greater than the sum of its parts.
To follow more of Nathan Ramos-Park and his storytelling, find him here on Instagram or his website here!
