So I am in Lima on a potentially career changing assignment with my company and trying to decide should I stay or should I go.
In many ways the few months I have been here already has been a time to really grow and mature. It seems odd to talk about "maturing" at my age, I just turned 36, but nonetheless it makes sense. I lead a fairly self indulgent life in LA, from shopping to sex, so being in a place where I am not sure what the norms of behavior are has made me rethink what I want and how I want to live.
In Lima things are just different in many ways. Not better, not worse, just different. For example, I arrived from LA with a bit of a cough that I picked up in the plane. In LA, I would go to my local Taget, hit the cough syrup aisle and pick from the 842 options. Here, I had to go the the pharmacy (not like a Walgreens, literally just a stand alone pharmacy), describe to the person working there my symptoms and then she gave me the one product that would help. It tasted like putrid honey, but the cough was gone in a couple of days. This experience caused me to think about these differences. The system here is just different, again not better or worse, but just different. So why was I bothered by having to interact with someone? Is it just habit? If that is the case does that mean I could get used to things here fairly easily? If what I like to do is just habit, then it would stand to reason that I could drop one habit for another.
Thinking about this has caused me to wonder what I really want as my next act. I have log believed that things are never the way they are always going to be and that everything gets you ready for what's next. So what is this experience getting me ready for? I never expected to move to LA, but it happened and I love it. I never expected to be in Lima and here I am. I don't know anything about the mining industry, but I am working on what may be a $1 billion mining project. So is next more international work? Is next staying in Lima and making it work here long term? Is next a flight back to LA and a stop at Micky's in WeHo? Or is this experience meant to get me outside my comfort zone so I do something all together different? I have sometimes thought I wasn't the best fit for an engineering consulting company, but it has been over 5 years now and I can't really complain. I am also not sure what I would do if I were to do something different.
So, is my hestitation around staying in Lima really about the assignment and the fear of being gay in Lima or is it really about something else, about wanting to do something else? If it is about something else, how do I decide what that something else is? There are a million things I would like to try, but none of them seem like things I would want to do for a job. Dressing windows at Barneys. Yes, it would be kick-ass to do one, maybe a few, but if that was my full time job I would rapidly get bored. Same thing with implementing that cool new retail concept I have in my head or getting my English PhD and becoming an academic. All this prompts me to think if I am in this job just be default and if I were do do something else what would that be?
Sometimes being here has felt like a "call" for me, that something it pulling me to this place at this time. Exploring what that is has been interesting. And will be the subject of my next post.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
So its a brand new bag
So, up until recently, I was a gay man living in the Los Angeles area and pretty much loving it. Yes, you can say what you can say about LA, but there are few places in the world where the "Gay Best Friend" is de rigeur and just works. So, I have recently taken a professional assignment in Peru and have been offered a multi-year extension.
Lima, while a large city is on the conservative side and the transition has been interesting to say the least. How comfortable can you feel in a country where one of the two candidates for president has "purge the homosexuals" on his official political platform. How do you balance being yourself with being safe and how do you deal with a multitude of well meaning family for whom matchmaking is practically sport. They don't sell the Advocate at the bookstore, but everyone knows that the best salon in town is "Encounters" where they have "those boys" cutting hair. It really is a place of contrast, of hiding in the shadows and living what can be a very full life. Was the winter white overcoat too much for the office? Is that cute guy I make eye contact with every morning jogging around the golf course actually interested? Was that guy that followed me for a couple of blocks the other day cruising or a mugger? Will the cab driver actually take me to the gay bar or somewhere else? Should my mom and I not say in public that I pick out her outfits?
Lima is certainly not LA, but here on an engineer's salary I can have someone to cook, clean, do the laundry and then leave when I want my privacy. There is no recession here, no fear of a "double dip" in housing prices. It is like Manhattan in the 80's, you can smell the money in the air. Career-wise this is a plumb assignment, contact with all the right execs in the company, a large interesting project and potentially a suite of expat perks that will make my bank account smile. But then again how do you date if you are afraid of the kiss goodbye on the doorstep? How do live an honest life if you feel you have to dodge the "your right hand ring is going to make the girls think your married" comments. Certainly being gay is not the single thing that defines me as person just as being straight is not the single thing that defines non-gay people, but it is something I kept hidden for too long and not something I want to put away again. What's the right balance?
The scientist in me wants a formula I can program to give me the answer, but the romantic knows there are too many intangibles to make that work. Going back to LA means giving up what can be a career making assignment, while staying hear means re-learning what it means to live as a gay man in 2011. I'll miss Gay Pride, but I won't miss doing my laundry every week. I'll miss the local kareoke gay bar in town, but I won't miss driving in LA traffic since I walk to work here. I'll miss the shopping in LA, but the food here is so much better.
Still not sure what the decision is going to be, but it has been a growth experience just having to think about it. But I'll save that for the next post.
Lima, while a large city is on the conservative side and the transition has been interesting to say the least. How comfortable can you feel in a country where one of the two candidates for president has "purge the homosexuals" on his official political platform. How do you balance being yourself with being safe and how do you deal with a multitude of well meaning family for whom matchmaking is practically sport. They don't sell the Advocate at the bookstore, but everyone knows that the best salon in town is "Encounters" where they have "those boys" cutting hair. It really is a place of contrast, of hiding in the shadows and living what can be a very full life. Was the winter white overcoat too much for the office? Is that cute guy I make eye contact with every morning jogging around the golf course actually interested? Was that guy that followed me for a couple of blocks the other day cruising or a mugger? Will the cab driver actually take me to the gay bar or somewhere else? Should my mom and I not say in public that I pick out her outfits?
Lima is certainly not LA, but here on an engineer's salary I can have someone to cook, clean, do the laundry and then leave when I want my privacy. There is no recession here, no fear of a "double dip" in housing prices. It is like Manhattan in the 80's, you can smell the money in the air. Career-wise this is a plumb assignment, contact with all the right execs in the company, a large interesting project and potentially a suite of expat perks that will make my bank account smile. But then again how do you date if you are afraid of the kiss goodbye on the doorstep? How do live an honest life if you feel you have to dodge the "your right hand ring is going to make the girls think your married" comments. Certainly being gay is not the single thing that defines me as person just as being straight is not the single thing that defines non-gay people, but it is something I kept hidden for too long and not something I want to put away again. What's the right balance?
The scientist in me wants a formula I can program to give me the answer, but the romantic knows there are too many intangibles to make that work. Going back to LA means giving up what can be a career making assignment, while staying hear means re-learning what it means to live as a gay man in 2011. I'll miss Gay Pride, but I won't miss doing my laundry every week. I'll miss the local kareoke gay bar in town, but I won't miss driving in LA traffic since I walk to work here. I'll miss the shopping in LA, but the food here is so much better.
Still not sure what the decision is going to be, but it has been a growth experience just having to think about it. But I'll save that for the next post.
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