February 1998

When I was a little boy I fervently believed that Heaven was above us, and Hell below. But Jackie, herself a young girl then, asserted that both Heaven and Hell existed above us. "Up there!" at the ceiling she pointed. What a revolutionary idea this was, and how easily I adopted it because I worshipped her.
Now? Now I just think that "up there" means the Mind.
I want someone to read these pages, to be privy, to know. I want someone else to share the burden. I want the person sitting next to me on the bus to read over my shoulder and be enough moved to ask, "Who wrote that?" so that I may answer, 'A friend of mine. He died and left me his dreams.'
Morning. The sky is naked, its skin blue. Gray coat finally shed. I can see clearly that intuition vies with imagination.
My sensitivity cancels out reality, the facts, people's true nature and needs, makes me require little gestures from others, trinkets, letters, phone calls to remind me that I am loved and that I matter, I matter, I matter. Silently I ask for these psychic affirmations and without words offer ultimatums.
Brandon calls from Chicago and tells me the wonderful news that he has proposed to his girlfriend Laura who cried and said yes! He wants me to be best man.
'You know you're making me feel old by getting married,' I joke.
These days it seems the only downfall in being homosexual remains finding one's perfect match, handsome and exotic, in a department store only to discover the "perfect match" is one's own reflection in a mirror!
Remember, if you spend too much time making wishes you won't have any time left to make friends…
Jackie wishes she were in some way artistically inclined. She does not know what she wishes for.
One night in Berkeley, in Vivian's surrealistic dorm room, Rodney broke down and cried. He was drunk and in a foul mood. He had said hurtful things to Vivian that made her shut down. I had tried to become the buffer, but failed. For the first time since we've known Rodney he cried openly, showed his sorrow. His voice streamed out in a broken howl of remonstrative tears. I held him. He said he was embarrassed. Vivian was silent, distant. He pulled away from me. Wiped his face, which was contorted and pale. The bouquet of flowers he had given Vivian earlier in the evening ceased to exist. All the color drained from the room. He said he hated life, that he has never been happy. He cried for Luay, and said he was next to die. There was nothing I could say. I had no consolations. There are no consolations. I knew it even as I opened my mouth again and again, feeling more and more useless, foolish, small, powerless.
Without magic.
Without poetry.
Vivian fell away into sleep, wrapped in her skirts.
Rodney was wounded and restless. We made our way outside where we tried to recover, laughed at ourselves, were childish and silly, forgetful of our wounds, hiding the stinging we have known all our lives underneath brightly colored Band-Aids.
If I were ever to test positive for HIV I would not confide in Rodney. He would be pleased to hear it.
In the morning while I watched Rodney apply makeup and pluck stray eyebrows, he looked at me in the mirror and said matter-of-factly, "Vivian likes you more."
He is bitter, torturing Vivian to test my devotion.
I spent that day with him at his friend's apartment in the city. Here Rodney was the perfect host and put on Persian music, applied moisturizer to my eyes while I played on the computer, exfoliated my blackheads, and served me tea. Jocularly I called him Ginadeh- a traditional female Assyrian name, one I associate with fat older women!
In the kitchen I thanked him for his hospitality, 'You've been good to me.'
"I'm good to all my friends," he asserted.
When his friend Tony came home and Rodney introduced us he asked, "Aren't you the conservative one?"
I suppose compared to Rodney even a porn star would seem conservative!
We went out that night with two of Tony's friends. At The Café I felt at ease with myself, did not want to be desired, nor did I desire others. I could tell that Tony's friends liked me, but I played along with their "conservative" misconception of me. When Bobby bought us all shots I playfully refused to take the drink at first, saying, 'I couldn't.' But did.
A cute little dark boy stopped me. He screamed, "I know you! You're from Modesto."
He did not look remotely familiar to me, but I asked, 'From The Brave Bull?'
"Yes!" he shrieked.
'It's nice of you to say hi,' I said and we chatted only for a short while.
San Francisco!
Tony turned to me at one point and said flirtatiously, "Rodney tells me you have a thick dick…"
'How would he know?' I joked. But I did not capitalize on Tony's coquetry.
Men look at me all the time, make an effort to make contact with me, but I am not flattered nor moved. I wait for a soul-connection. A deeper confluence…
We moved on to another club. Men without shirts, smoke, sweat, beauty, surfaces, and surface emphasis. Jason and I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette.
"I can't have meaningless sex. I need to be in love," he said as he blew the smoke out, looking unattractive in the blunt light of the back patio. He was overweight and we both knew that the "community" in which we both frolicked would never cruise or desire him; that his statement was not a choice, but a grave prophecy.
Was he trying to appeal to me because he had heard I was a "conservative gay"?
Fled the city on a bus, landed blocks from home feeling nauseated, suffocating in a space much too large to fit my most petty prejudices concerning both the homo and the heterosexual milieus.
And yet hours later I run into the "straight" man with whom I had oral sex some weeks ago in an empty lot atop a hill in Fairfax. We are again amidst the trees, inside the shrubs, where this father of a twelve-year-old girl sucks my cock. Am I rebelling? And if so, against whom? Myself? My good self? My frigid self? My "conservative" self? Is nature stronger than my moral will? Is it a despicable extravagance to want a chance to find out on my own, for myself, and to define my own ethics? Rewrite my soul…
How this man who suckles on my dick saddens me. Even the Emil who gets into his Volvo station wagon knowing the man is a father, someone's fiancé, saddens me. Who am I trying to be when he is kneeling before me, circling the head of my penis with his tongue? What endless boundaries of the self and the ideal am I attempting to traverse? Is it Rodney I want to be able to identify with more? To understand more?
Just as animals have an innate instinct to mate, migrate, hunt, compete, and breathe so too shall I be burdened with desire and sexuality beyond my own comprehension.
We realize the awesome power of our own nature and fear it!
This is where I am. In a primitive state. Fearful. Natural. Superstitious. Religious!
The homosexual's greatest challenge remains his promiscuity, his lust. Like salmon we swim by instinct to our demise. What else can we do?
I feel like a capon.
I want to understand my truest undercurrents of desire and repulsion. I want to change; to control my dangerous urges but remain natural, not contrived in matters of romance, not fearful, Catholic. I want to be sexually intelligent and wild.
How many times in the aftermath of same-gender sex have I sworn, 'This is it! No more…'
I don't know anything about celibacy, but I feel the need to abstain from sex for some time until I see a different light, receive a more uplifting message from the conduits of the sexual universe, and find a purpose in sex other than this war of instincts- this dual of expansive contradictions. I want to experience sex comfortably, gracefully… for once.
Rodney says Dephna, Vivian's Turkish friend from U.C. Berkeley, likes me.
'How do you know?' I ask him.
"When you were talking to Vivian trying to make her feel better about her bad tripping experience last month Dephna was looking at you like she was mesmerized."
I know there have been too many reasons to be pessimistic in life, too many battles fought against the world rather than for the world. I know how easy it is to fear, to resent, and to hate life, but I want nothing more than to move beyond this great grudge I have for life. I accept that there will always be challenges in living, obstacles in being human, that there will be conditions I'll have to endure against my will, but I want to continue to live despite all this, to feel emotions, to have a chance if anything.
I want to be saturated in experience, drowned in feelings. I do not want to lose my heart, my light, this sensitivity of my soul.
I reject the notion of Happiness, its bubblegum connotations, the futility of the mere idea of Happiness. I prefer to aim for the attainable- strength, security, art, deeper friendships. I do not ever want to strive to be Happy. I am a human being. I will never know what it is to be Happy. Happiness is for the man whose greatest horizon are the barbed wire borders of his own limitations. I want Life, moments in the world beyond my imagination and reach, wine, friends despite their flaws, heart, connection, spiritual intoxication, and constant dialogue with life. Not sobriety and composure, safety. How can I truly live in this world and experience it fully if I am constantly preoccupied with achieving Happiness?
There is so much to question in life, so much to redefine, to relearn. It would take a thousand lifetimes to live this life I am just beginning to realize. Twenty-four years already lost. No, no losses. Nothing has been a loss.
I could erupt at any moment. I could commit a thousand crimes. I could explode into infinite pieces and it would all be natural and o.k.
I've decided to write a more honest journal, to be more candid. Not censor myself. I don't care anymore if I'm liked or not- not even by myself.
I stand by Rodney solely to choke his hate with love. I know I am better than he and the love I show him is only to establish again and again my own sense of superiority. Isn't that the payback of all charitable work? To feel better than?
In reality I am no better than Rodney. I am not doing him any favors. He's better than all of us put together! He's angry and bitter and he shows it. At least he's honest.
The goodness in myself is such a charade. When I'm nice it's to gain. Gain friends. Gain allies. Gain praise. Gain respect. Gain power over others. Generosity is the most selfish thing!
I am charming and winning and have an innocence about me that is misleading- even to myself- the darling face of a mere boy. But these are my guises and costumes, feathers, dyes, glitter…
What do you think of me now?
Am I any better or any worse than you?
I am angry because as a child I was loved, cradled, kissed, lavished with caresses and showered in praise. Did they know the child was queer when they fondled his perfect curls? Could they have imagined all those lazy afternoons after tea in Tehran? "Look at the way he carries himself. So noble. He will be someone important someday," they said. An exceptional child. They would fight over me, sit me down on their laps and kiss my supple white cheeks because this made them feel righteous and meant they were capable of abundant love!
But the child has to grow, his otherwise endearing features come to seem awkward, the lingering softness and baby fat make him look effeminate, he talks like a girl… The exceptional child plays with dolls. He'll outgrow these girlish tendencies. It's normal. It's just a phase.
They don't look at him the same way anymore. Of course he notices this great shift; it's the first thing he sees in their faces every morning. Adoration turned to fascination- a cold, distant, odd fascination.
Now the homosexual adolescent- once crowned and praised, lauded and prized- is surrendered by his lugubrious protectors to the very fringes of his community, to assault and hate crimes, to disease and isolation.
But their greatest betrayal remains the deliberate withdrawal of their affection.
In the absence of trust I gained an explosive imagination.
I live under a dictatorship of dreams.
Dreams. Staunch, steadfast dreams.
Dream deluge.
Dream delirium.
Fantasy frenzy.
Dreams are real. It is reality that remains nebulous.
I called Vivian and reassured her that she was justified in feeling animosity toward Rodney who'd been cruel that night in Berkeley.
"I can't afford to have him in my life anymore. I have enough struggles as it is," she sighed into the phone.
'I think that's a healthy resolution. I, on the other hand, have decided to tough him out. Give him another chance.'
I did not say that I am inclined to want to revolutionize him, reform him, always taking on the impossible task.
"I'm so glad you were here that night," Vivian began. "We would've killed each other otherwise. And you were so good about it. You didn't side with me, which would have made him worse."
I smiled, 'I think I learned that kind of neutrality during my parents' long drawn-out divorce.'
"I'm sorry we put you through that."
'Oh no, it's a very comfortable place for me to be.'
Dahlia is also disenchanted with Rodney who was a difficult houseguest one recent weekend. She had to ask him to leave.
When I called she sounded relieved, "Oh honey, I'm so glad you called. I didn't know if you would be mad at me for asking Rodney to leave."
'Mad at you? What happened between you and Rodney has nothing to do with me. I'm just sorry there's a rift between you guys now. We're supposed to be united. Brothers and sisters.'
Dahlia proceeded to explain how rude Rodney had been when he'd come home drunk with a trick. Sloppy. He'd been loud and hurtful but had agreed to leave with his trick only to return at some ungodly hour wet from the rain. Dahlia had asked him why he'd returned, again with the trick. Rodney had spit out, "We couldn't get a cab so we fucked in your parking garage!"
"Rodney, have some respect," she told him.
"I care nothing about your friendship," he'd snapped.
There was underwear dangling out of his coat pocket.
That disastrous night in Berkeley Vivian had asked Rodney not to say things he would later regret.
His retort had been, "I mean everything I say. Especially when I'm drunk. That's when all the truth- everything I think and feel- comes out."
These days when I think of love I no longer imagine the fabled knight in shining armor. The love I imagine will come only when I've fought and won my own battles. And healed.
Here in trim and manicured suburbia I feel out of place. I am sometimes sure that I belong instead to open-air markets, dusty Tabriz streets, passing awe-inspiring mosques in Esfahan.
I took mother out to eat in an attempt to distract her, pacify her inherent trepidation. She looked at me from across the table, surveyed me for a moment, and said, "You look like a handsome Arab."
I lie, lie, lie when I say I am not open to romance, to men, to sex. This is only a wish, a promise that's made out of fear, constructed out of winged words that always migrate, flying into distant horizons because the seasons of my soul change so abruptly.
Ulrike is a German exchange student. She is lanky, tall. Her complexion is dark and her hair black and straight, like that of an Indian woman. She never wears makeup and is spectacular.
I asked Ulrike to accompany me to the city for Jacques' belly dancing performance at an Arab restaurant and she gladly accepted.
We drove south on 101 conversing about the autobahn, people in Germany, Americans, things. When we emerged from Waldo Tunnel I could see the awe-inspiring peaks of Golden Gate Bridge, as well as San Francisco itself looking stark white in the distance. I was immediately filled with a great sense of anticipation. Like a rock climber my hands reached up, felt for solid grip on the excitement, and pulled me up, up, upward. All weekend I hung precariously from this feeling.
This is California- breathtaking, shimmering, expansive.
Once in the city, rolling upon streets that arched and sank like a thrilling ride in an asphalt carnival, we met up with Ulrike's French-Canadian friends- three young, charming, and beautiful nannies living and working in the Bay Area. Immediately the ladies and I were talking openly and feely over dinner and drinks. I was drunk fast, more on my companions than the cocktails, feeling brave.
Laesianne, Marguerite, Julie. Their personalities were as engaging as their French inflections. Laesianne spoke the weakest English and was funny without meaning to be, speaking in a sultry, cavernous voice, reaching into the air for the right words, laughing at herself, then referring to Marguerite for translation. She had a swan's soft, white neck, short messy hair, beautifully arched eyebrows.
I could tell right away that Laesianne was the disastrous one. Later I was to hear about her misadventures as a nanny well out of her element in the hills of Marin.
One time, Laesianne told us, she stepped outside to smoke a cigarette while the children slept alone in the house, and when she stamped out her cigarette she discovered she had locked herself out of the house. Panic-stricken and worried about the slumbering children Laesianne took out a screen and climbed in through a window, tripping noisily into the house. She laughed and said she broke a very expensive vase that night and expected to get fired.
On another occasion she'd left the water running in the kitchen sink while she ate chips with the children in the living room. She had spent hours soaking up the water off the hardwood floor.
"With beach towels," Laesianne stammered, "because they are… they are…"
I chimed in, 'Thicker? More absorbent?'
"Yes! Yes!"
I kissed her on the cheek because she delighted me so much.
After dinner we went to a friend's apartment that happened to be only a couple blocks from The Grape Leaf where Jacques was to perform.
When Ulrike accidentally broke a beer bottle on the front steps where we smoked and I helped her clean it up, Laesianne said wistfully, 'Why do you have to be gay? You are so cute and so sweet."
Marguerite broke in, "It's always like that…" And she proceeded to tell us about her wonderful gay friends in Montreal and the gay bars she loves so much.
When I told them about my mother and how unbelievably beautiful she was in her wedding pictures, yet unsmiling, expressing my deepest desire that she find her peace in life, every girl had teary eyes. Julie said I was a good storyteller and would make a wonderful writer.
Laesianne and I decided to take a walk down the hill to The Grape Leaf and see if anyone I knew had arrived. Laesianne walked beside me with a glass of wine in hand, which I had insisted she bring, her black purse dangling on her arm, a cigarette between her lips. A gorgeous mouth. Walking this way down the hill, slowly, smoking, Laesianne talked with much effort about her deep love of fine clothes and not being able to afford them having been brought up poor. Occasionally she came up with a word in English I had not expected her to know and we laughed, both of us surprised.
She said she did not desire money in life, but love, romance, good friends.
Half way down the sloping street we stopped and faced each other in the dark, the night surprisingly clear and starry.
'Laesianne, if I had money I would give you everything you wanted,' I said to her and she smiled and handed me her wine to sip.
We continued walking as she told me about her life back in Quebec and her intense relationship with her brother. A relationship she said was not normal, and from which she wanted a break.
"We love each other too much, depend on each other for everything…"
The Grape Leaf was jam-packed. It was like being suddenly in a different world. There was live music, fiery Arabs, dark handsome men, tapestries on walls, undulation, sweat, hands waving, turning in the air, shoulders heaving, shaking, bells, drums, my friends scattered all about the crowded room- Rodney, Dephna, Dahlia, Elias, Sebastian, Halil, Shammi. We called Ulrike and the girls who soon joined us. Laesianne set her purse down and danced beautifully, looking at the others and mimicking their gestures with grace.
Audrey, the Assyrian dyke from San Jose, came up to me and asked who that gorgeous girl was. She cussed when she found out Laesianne was straight. Ulrike was fascinated with the lesbian Arab girls. She danced with them.
I wore blue. Men looked at me. I invited them to drown in me, sink in my blue.
Rodney's friend Tony came over to us and began speaking French to Laesianne, said he had lived and studied in Paris. Dephna, the Turkish gal too chimed in French. Laesianne's eyes widened with delight.
Then the dance floor was cleared and suddenly Jacques came out spinning in layers of light flowing fabrics. His wide hips gyrated in spasmodic ecstasy. He wore a coquettish expression as he spun about the room, weaving in and out of the crowd that cheered and screamed. Others whistled, said things in Arabic I did not understand. Wily things I'm sure.
As I watched Jacques I thought of our night together and felt no attraction, no regret.
In the men's room upstairs I found myself conversing with a drunk Arab about the Middle East, our passion. Soon a circle of men gathered around and there were playful outbursts, merriment. Everyone shook hands when we parted, wished the other peace and good fortune.
Throughout the night I watched Rodney from a distance. Whenever I looked over in his direction he was hanging drunkenly off of someone, whispering in their ear, touching them inappropriately. The other would be polite, trying discreetly to withstand Rodney's advances, at first pulling slightly away, but finally walking off looking unsettled. Rodney would teeter in place looking confused and dismayed.
When I went over to see how he was doing he complained about Shammi having portrayed him as the stereotypical gay boy in her film, smoking a cigarette while drinking a beer.
I interrupted him, 'Rodney, don't! You are that boy. You drink excessively and you smoke. Not to mention pop pills. It's who you are. Shammi didn't make you do anything you did not want to.'
He shut up, looked crestfallen.
'Rodney, I love you. You're my friend. I will never tell you what you want to hear. I have to be honest with you.'
Moments later we were kissing and hugging.
A bunch of us ended up at Tony's apartment. Some of us slept, some of us stayed up talking until the sun came up. Rodney farted in his sleep and made us laugh into our hands. Audrey, boyish and sexy, continued to desire Laesianne who crashed on the black loveseat. Ulrike seemed fascinated by Audrey's lesbianism, and even vied for her attention, but could not distract her from Laesianne. There was such closeness, comfort. Laughter. No pretenses.
I slept next to Tony in his bed where he played with my penis.
In the morning I opened my eyes to slumbering bodies on the floor, the loveseat, a chair. I opened the curtains to an airy, open San Francisco morning. Dephna's tummy hurt so I made her tea with honey. Rodney ate the Harissa my mother had made for him. When he mentioned that he was low on funds I slipped him a twenty-dollar bill. And while Laesianne connected with others in a French Internet chatroom she let out a sudden but audible fart, and said cutely, "Oops! Excuse me…" Of course we laughed.
Once we were washed up we piled into the Mercedes Ulrike had borrowed from the family she nannies and headed into the Castro. The sun fell upon us and warmed us. I had brought the one beer that was left over from the night before and Rodney and I passed it back and forth as we strolled the Castro arm in arm. Everything looked so vibrant. We took pictures and felt awake, alert. I turned to Rodney, 'Now tell me if Shammi portrayed you in the wrong light!'