Source: Javanese Lives: Women and Men in Modern Indonesian Society by Walter L. Williams, Rutgers University Press, 1990
Hong was a schoolteacher in Java and later the principal of a school. In Java, as in America, most people’s real names consist of two or more names. But Hong was this man’s real, full name.
All the interviews in Walter Williams’ classic anthropological study of Java appeared anonymously. Hong’s chapter was titled A Homosexual Principal. In discussing this case, Williams assured SOL Research of Hong’s permission to use his real name, saying, “When I sent him the transcribed interview [for Williams’ book] … he was so pleased with it that he had copies made and bound in a little cardboard cover ’The Life of Hong’ and he distributed them out as gifts to all the guests who came to his house.”
Williams added, “He was the happiest old man I had ever met, and I have since then used him as a model for how to live my own life.”
In recounting his life, Hong talked briefly about sexual experience in his youth.
Hong: “I do not recall the Catholics ever mentioning homosexuality. They were very repressed about anything sexual. Yet, when I was twelve years old I realized that I was sexually attracted to boys. One day a friend of mine, he was a Chinese man about twenty years old, opened his trousers and let me enjoy myself. I felt this was very nice. He appreciated it, and it was enjoyable for me, so I visited him often.
One of my uncles, who was divorced from his wife, was attractive to me. I would visit him and cautiously began to touch his body. When he did not object I got bolder; though I was only fourteen, I was quite assertive. But later, he tried to have anal intercourse, and I did not like that, so I stopped visiting him. I wanted to be the active one.”