January 1998

Needed a tender touch, the ear of a confidant.
And lo and behold friends from Modesto showed up and kidnapped me from the grill, from George, from Luis, and the many failing relationships I have come to resent.
On New Year's Day I started a new job at Half Day Café- a restaurant in Kentfield.
That morning I had woken up feeling myself again, as if I had misplaced my craziness somewhere inside the Fillmore, within the pot and cigarette smoke, beneath the live music.
On the bus to Half Day I was quiet. Lethargic. The bus pulled into downtown Novato where I looked for Luis even though I had resolved to let go, to give up, to move on. I wanted him there, somehow next to me, with me. But it was an odd hour of the day and I knew that there would be no such run-in. We began to pull away when I noticed a slender figure running alongside the moving bus. The driver stopped. The doors swooshed open. Luis mounted the bus.
We were both surprised to find the other.
He sat next to me. I found out that he had not spent New Year's Eve with Luis II or friends, but alone. He claimed to have fallen asleep to the cassette tape I made him. This time Luis II had gone to Modesto. This made me so, so mad.
'No más miedo. Te amo. Te amo. Te amo,' I proclaimed, letting the words flow through my nerves and out my mouth.
He flashed one of his trademark smiles, a winning smile, rested his elbow on my shoulder, and for a moment at least it felt like the insurmountable gap was finally mended.
Luis was on his way to San Francisco and I to Kentfield. In San Rafael we transferred to different buses. I sat on a number twenty and watched his bus from across the terminal, wished to be with him. For a few heart-wrenching moments I entertained the idea of blowing off my new job just to be with him- a grand and romantic, irresponsible idea. I even started to rise out of my seat but fought the fatuous urge. I had other responsibilities.
I had some time to kill before starting work at the restaurant and sat on a bench, admired the surrounding hills. A man in a beat up old Volvo drove slowly past and cruised me. I smiled at him. He pulled up at a nearby payphone and pretended to make a phone call, fondled himself through his trousers, looked at me, looked away. I checked my watch. There was ample time. We drove up a hill, past some homes, arrived at an empty lot, walked down a few steps away from the road. The man told me he was engaged to be married. He was a very regular-looking guy- a little overweight, bearded, perhaps in his forties, nice enough. He sat himself on a log before me. I unzipped my pants and fed him my penis. He suckled feverishly. I had come feverishly.
One night, out of despair, I confessed to Jackie that I had fallen in love with Luis. She was tender and reassured me that Luis and I could always correspond through letters. I thanked her for listening and being supportive, asked if she was surprised. Surely she must have guessed I am gay. But she said she hadn't, that she does not assume these things. We smiled warmly and headed off to bed, both of us exhausted by our lives.
For someone who has no experience in relationships I feel that loving Luis and letting him go has been the ultimate lesson.
Luis says we should try and enjoy the moment. Our hands are clasped. I admit to him that I have been angry with him for bringing so much chaos into my life, but that I will never forget him; that he will be 'siempre, siempre' in my heart and in my head.
After much resistance, after a fever, I have decided to live.
To love and let go.
To be happy despite my sorrow.
To be intrepid in matters of love- not melodramatic.
Life in phrases continues and a new hue attaches itself to my world. I am surrounded by a glow that was not there before, a new light. Through despair and confusion, anger and mystery I have managed to salvage a glimpse of strength and love. It has been well worthwhile and I am reassured that nothing, no tragedy, no exchange occurs without purpose. There is meaning in every seemingly random event. I search for the connections, painstakingly make the associations. I love life again as naively and wholeheartedly as I did when I was a child. This is my reward for surviving my own craziness, and the voices that tried to make everyone else the criminal. I have survived my own fears, my own hell. I have chosen the truth, the cold hard truth and turned it into warmth… welcoming life into these incomplete pages of my soul.
A day has passed since my return from heaven with Luis. There was no way I could write about it that same night when I cried myself to sleep missing him.
My heart sings his name.
The hotel in which we stayed in San Francisco was old. Our third-floor windows opened onto Market Street. We hung out of them and observed a city that was undulating, exciting. I savored each breath.
We made a conscious attempt to sever ourselves from Luis II, but he remained the ghost in the room, always with us. Each time we saw a small gray car we held our breath. Was he searching for us in the city? And would he find us and punish us?
The lights from the street filled our room. We lay in the huge bed, this soft yellow light falling about us, creating nameless shadows on aging walls. Luis kissed me. I sank into the sheets, flirting, chuckling. We wrestled playfully. Luis fetched a white towel and made a partition in the bed, ordered me to stay on my side. He pushed the towel closer to me, said he needed more space. I traversed the makeshift border and attacked him.
At times we were just still and silent. Two bodies. Breathing. Thinking.
We went to the Mission District and ate Mexican food. Luis played the jukebox and said he was homesick. He spoke tenderly and wistfully of his love for his family, and for Puerto Vallarta.
Earlier in our room he had embraced me from behind, our image swaying slightly in the mirror.
'Don't we look beautiful together?'
He'd agreed.
At Esta Noche, a small Latin dance bar in the Mission, Luis and I danced together for the first time, and what was to be the last. Men smiled at us as we twirled and teased each other playfully around the dance floor.
We returned to our little room sober; intoxicated now by the anticipation we felt for each other. The lobby, the elevator, the old dark corridors, the young Europeans downstairs, everything gained a certain softness and romance as we moved through them with lovers' anticipation.
We kissed for hours. Later, Luis was to say we communicate by kisses.
We made love- erotic, tender love. Lay with our faces together, occasionally and naturally turning to taste each other. I inspected Luis' body, noting a scar, the moles, hair, imperfections, and enjoyed them because they were his.
We wondered if the others knew about us- George, Janet, Juan, Caesar. We did not care. We only looked forward to each other.
Our love is equal.
"Larguísimo beso. Tres minutos," Luis said musically.
Sometimes the tenderness was overwhelmed by desire and we ate each other, squeezed, bit, moved through each other like elements.
I imagined that if someone were to walk in on us they would be struck most by our ceaseless fire and the way it spread like purple ripples along our limbs. One day, waiting for the bus in the cold, I had forgotten my chill because Luis had been with me. I had said to him, 'No soy frío porque tenemos el fuego.'
In the morning we sat in the window and quietly observed a gorgeous San Francisco morning.
Luis showered.
We had sex again.
He penetrates me only after he has eaten from me. By now his penis has grown enormous and when he enters me I am initially pained. I always reject him here. But he prevails after a few gentle attempts, pounding into me once inside.
All the while our mouths kissing, kissing, kissing.
We are two boys when this happens.
Just two boys and nothing else.
Simply boys. Natural. Doing what boys do. No parents. No teachers. No God. No shame.
He likes to watch himself fuck. He turns me over for a better view. Sometimes he gets wild and reaches unfathomable speeds. Moans and falls to my side, still inside me.
I laugh when I orgasm.
We checked out of the hotel.
We strolled along Market Street where the homeless slept amidst the pigeons and the fountains. We happened upon a Farmer's Market. Here I bought olive oil and oysters for Jackie, dates for my grandmother. We conversed with friendly strangers.
That morning I walked through the Mission, browsed through small cluttered shops, made purchases, felt the sun on my skin, crossed bustling intersections with a young man I loved and with whom I knew my time was temporary. It was a beautiful day.
Luis' gorgeous smile, his tender voice, his mannerisms, politeness, his small soft hands with which he has touched my life, all remain locked with me here in my diary, preserved in these paper streets, this silly atlas of nameless emotions.
At twenty-four I have finally loved and been loved like never before, not even in my poems, my diary, my most private unrecorded fantasies. I would have never predicted any of this, nor would I have ever wanted it this way, but loving Luis and letting him go has taught me what it might mean to be human, vulnerable, and courageous.
I feel older.
I feel I might know the world a little better.
Encompassed by high-rises and highest of dreams, the smell of fresh herbs and vegetables circling the city air, I turned to Luis and admitted to him for the hundredth time, 'Te amo.'
With Luis I am romantic. Beautiful.
Luis blushed when I told him that I find sex with him deeply erotic and that I know he likes to watch his penis penetrate me.
So many times I wanted to eat him up in public, to turn and steal kisses, to simply draw circles on his thigh with my finger. Abstaining was the most difficult thing…
He sang that morning in the city.
"Yo tambien, Emiliano."
While walking with him, pretending that we had endless hours together, sadness was unimaginable and unnecessary. Only after, when I came home, sat down, did I come to feel gloomy, empty. Alone in the world.
Fresh memories still hot like kisses.
There are no decisions in love.
There are only wishes.
I cannot decide not to miss him, not to want him.
I want to pass through heartbreak with valor even though I feel the contents of my mind dissolving, unable to imagine life normal again, innocent again.
It's always raining, it seems. Wetness always. A drizzling. I need the sun. I want my "virginity" back. My ignorance. My solitude.
I want Luay back and I don't want Rodney to die either!
There is so much to be mad about.
It's all very comical- me in this room, weeping like life is ending, without hope, yet very much hopeful and simultaneously laughing.
This is friendship, the essence of friendship. Isn't it? Desperate calls long-distance. Night confessions to people who know you so well there is no need to explain, or to censor. I have just hung up the telephone and there is perfume in the air- the sweetest aroma of old friends consoling each other.
A glass of wine.
Red.
Warm.
Wine.
Like tears.
It's raining outside. I'm tired of living under an umbrella! Hating the world. Missing Luis. But how can I help it? The hating, the missing. And what can I do about the rain? I am powerless.
Just got off the phone with Josh in Modesto. He and Javier were driving home late one night on foggy Central Valley roads. They were both drunk. Josh fell asleep. Veered off the road. Javier died in the crash. They were best friends.
Joining Mom-Suzie, Jackie, and a Persian friend of the family in the family room, by the fire, eating nuts and drinking tea, listening to the women speak Farsi, seemed to lift me out of the present and rescue me from the horrors of now. We chewed sunflower seeds and enjoyed the warmth of the fireplace. Jackie put on a CD and I remembered that Luay is dead and Luis is leaving, and that I will never see either of them again. I began to cry and promptly excused myself, slipping away into the blue of my room. Wine pouring out my eyes.
I had not been there when Luay was dying. I had assumed that he would pull through.
And yet I can't imagine Luis staying. What would we possibly do? Where would we go? What more could we want? Marriage? I can't imagine him here forever. It is far more enchanted this way. Temporary.
George fired Luis from the grill! It seems Luis II called George and told him that Luis is an illegal immigrant. When George told me this I was stumped. Luis II could not be that malicious, that conniving. I worked a lonely shift without Luis there. Scenes, angry scenes flashed through my mind as I imagined avenging Luis. What else is Luis II capable of?
But hadn't George hired a Nigerian woman knowing well she too was illegal? I confronted him about this and he became immediately defensive and angry. He asked why I was taking Luis' side.
'Because he is my friend!' I retorted bitterly.
I know Janet had her hand in Luis being fired. After all, she has two sisters who need work. I wondered how Luis was doing and what he was thinking… I wished he would call. He did.
He met me outside after work and gave me a small stuffed dog as a joke because I always call him perro. I held up the gift in my hand and said, 'I will name him Luis…'
We began to discuss the day's events, Luis II's and Janet's malevolent partnership.
With nowhere to go and no means of getting there I suggested the unthinkable: going back to Luis' apartment. I wanted to talk with Luis II. I expected Luis to talk me out of this, make up excuses, but he didn't. He quietly conceded.
We walked in silence.
My heart raced. How would Luis II receive me?
We entered the small apartment. It was warm inside. Too warm. We said "bueno" to one of the roommates, but her smile failed to abate my anxiety. Luis' bedroom door was locked and we had to knock. Luis II opened it and looked clearly shocked to see me standing there next to Luis.
Would he become violent?
'Puedo hablar con usted?' I asked evenly.
Luis II shrugged his shoulders, got into bed and under the covers without responding.
I stood in the room where everything I now know was born.
I sat on the opposite bed and began talking, my words vacillating from English to Spanish. My voice danced unevenly between composure and fear.
'I don't hate you. You are a good person.'
"No, no soy," Luis II said solemnly.
'Luis has never spoken poorly of you. He always said you're a good person. He is your friend for life. Why do you hurt him?'
"Soy malo," he said bitterly.
But what did malo mean?
'Que es malo?' I asked Luis, but he stood behind the curtain with his head out the window.
I pulled out my dictionary.
Mal: Evil.
'No, no. You're not.'
Now I sat on the floor, next to his bed.
'You're just sad,' I continued, 'and when people are sad they do desperate things.'
He began to cry and turned away.
The man I had at times hated and feared now wept like a lost child. His entire body shook. Was this the same boy who had lost his parents at a young age?
I placed my hand on his arm. He continued to weep.
I held him. I placed my head on his chest and repeated, 'Está bien, esta bien.'
I patted his soft, straight, black hair. All the while I feared him. Will he hit me? I felt I was lying with a tranquilized bull.
He said something I did not understand.
I knew then that this was a world out of reach for me, a world I could not impact, change, or be a part of no matter how softly I spoke, no matter how fervently I kissed.
Luis walked me to the bus stop and waited with me in the cold. He was teary-eyed and could barely speak.
He said in Spanish, "Before you said you were sad. Is it because you don't think I love you?"
'No,' I answered, that was not what I had meant. I had been sad because it seemed our love was mutual.
'No tengo la duda,' I assured him.
"Porque te amo, Emiliano," Luis said and began to cry. He buried his face into my coat. When he reemerged he stated that we should not see each other because he was nothing but trouble to me. He wanted to protect me.
'No, necesito el tiempo contigo,' I protested.
We spoke freely. I comforted him, said that once he was home with his family again he would forget all the heartaches that taunt him here.
'You will forget all this,' I said playfully moving my hand over the scene around us.
His home was a mystery to me, but a source of joy to him.
'You are wonderful, Luis. I have loved getting to know you. I wish you love always, and hope you surround yourself with nothing but good things. I wish you happiness.'
I spoke in torrents as if I would never see him again.
'Estas perfecto, Luis. Perfecto.'
"No. No," he differed.
'Si!'
Laughter…
I expected to crash as soon as I got in, but Jackie and I huddled on the cozy sofa by the fireplace and conversed well into the wee hours. It was a taxing talk. Jackie the realist exhausts me with her Assyrian admonitions, offering warnings, advice. She admitted that she feared for my health as a gay man and asked soberly, "Are you sure it's love you feel for Luis? When we're young it's easy to act in haste."
She depressed me with her unromantic perspective of life and love- so typical of my family. The family that has never known romance, frivolity, sex! Always acting out of fear, living cautiously, doing "the right thing".
Jackie said that I had been a mystery to her, giving her only pieces of the puzzle, never the finished product.
'Well, how could I? I was in the closet.'
And when I admitted that I was ready to resume my own life, my solitary existence she accused me of being "extreme".
"Why can't you just be? You either go to the city and get lost for two days, or lock yourself away from the world and write in your room…"
'I don't plan these extremes.'
"Is your homosexuality experimental?" she asked.
'No. I've been gay all my life and knowing this at such a young age always made me a moody child. I knew from the start that the world opposed boys liking boys, and doing girly things, and this knowledge stressed me out a great deal.'
"But I was moody, too," Jackie admitted, "I was never really a child."
'You, too, were serious?'
"Too serious!"
'Maybe you're lesbian,' I quipped.
"Sometimes I think I should be. Women are better to each other anyway."
'Yes, they are. All through history women have banded together, while men warred.'
"Yeah …" she said reflectively.
'I'd be so pleased if you lived a lesbian lifestyle!'
We laughed at the unlikelihood of this.
"You know," Jackie began, "I'd be this stern and skeptical even if you were straight and Luis were a girl."
'Yeah. I know.'
We fell silent for a little while.
Then I confessed, 'Jackie, do you know how many coming-out letters I have written to you over the years? I was always afraid to mail them.'
She looked touched and a little saddened.
In the morning I called George at the grill.
'I'm not coming in anymore.'
"O.K."
'I'm sorry.'
"That's O.K."
'Bye.'
"Bye."
I tucked Richard Bach's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" into the pocket of my favorite coat, the one that's frayed from years and travel, and boarded a bus to San Francisco. Alone.
The book ended but my life continued, and once in the city I glimpsed the places Luis and I had been, the same sidewalks we had treaded, occasionally brushing against each other, the hotel where we'd stayed…
Why is it so painful?
I kept my eyes in my lap, imprisoned them in the folds of my clothes, protected them in the filthy interior of the bus.
Arrived finally at the Castro where I met Vivian, Rodney, and Dahlia- the Assyrian dyke studying to become a mortician. I met Audrey for the first time, another Assyrian dyke from Iran. I hugged my friends with a thirst I had not known was in me, and did not want to let go.
Over dinner Rodney was playful, leaning in to place kisses on my cheek. We laughed like hags. Vivian looked distressed for some reason or another. Dahlia yakked about death and dead bodies while Audrey swore in Farsi and grimaced.
While playing with the noodles on her plate Dahlia talked passionately about her morbid studies, "I know the smell of death now," she bragged. "I can be walking through a forest and I'll recognize the smell. I've seen dead infants in plastic bags. A drowned body smells the worst!"
I listened as I ate, consumed by Dahlia's white skin, long, straight, black hair, black clothes, and dangling jewelry. I was not in the least repulsed by her graphic regurgitations of laboratory dissections of the human carcass.
I am not moved by the reality of physical death as I am by emotional death, spiritual and psychological decay.
Audrey swore in Farsi again, "Koskesh!" And begged us to change the subject.
In a nutshell I recounted to them the story of my affair with Luis. Dahlia cried out, "But how can you let him go, Emil? Isn't there any way to keep him here?"
'I'm not tampering with destiny. He has to go. He wants to go.'
"And you're gonna turn to that seat next to you on the bus and it's going to be empty," Dahlia, the aspiring mortician sighed wistfully.
'You understand…'
I tickled Vivian who seemed way too serious and wore a permanent frown on her beautiful face. I played with her hair, held her hand, tried desperately to reach her but she was elsewhere in the world.
We decided to go dancing. Rodney made me laugh when he extended his arms out and danced like a Persian princess. He was coquettish.
I lost count of the number of boys Rodney kissed that night. Oh, the things he said to them… shameless! We conversed shortly with a man who said he had been in a gay porn as if this were the greatest honor. When we had walked away I turned to Rodney and said, 'The only difference between that guy and us is that he got paid! Now that's scary…'
That night I looked at the Americans and thought: I could never love you, not like I did Luis.
I am still and always will be, in America, a foreigner. The feelings are there, though subtle, they are always there.
Someone tried to dance with me but I did not enjoy his attempts and was a little annoyed. I wanted Luis.
When we touch it is with deep emotion.
There is constantly pressure in our fingertips as they press into the other's flesh.
There will soon be miles between us. We will not able to touch, to kiss, to look into each other.
Knowing that our relationship is temporary and not entirely our own is a hellish luxury.
Real love is that which makes me break my own rules. This is how I know that what I feel for Luis is real.
We went to Muir Woods, arriving late in the evening when the forest was darkening and mysterious, enchanted. We were swallowed up whole by the redwoods and in their midst we no longer feared being discovered by George and Janet, Luis II, and little gray cars! I was so overcome by the beauty of the woods, the silence, and the unconditional way the park seemed to accept and envelop us that I began to cry. Luis held me and kissed my hot tears tenderly. But my eyes could not be stopped.
When we parted I wondered what he would go home to.
To rage?
To guilt?
To silence?
What happens whenever we disconnect and he disappears around corners and bends?
The next morning Luis came over and we ate a big breakfast, which I had prepared. Afterward, we slept in each other's arms. We were weary. Hours later when we opened our eyes we were immediately passionate. I placed my hand into his pants to feel him moving. He penetrated me.
In me.
Behind me.
I placed my hands where I could feel him entering my body.
How strange and scintillating this ritual, I thought to myself, smiling into the sheets.
We came three times! Each time there was laughter, of course.
I'm living in heaven, in anticipation: my home.
Kim arrived the next morning. I made coffee. It rained. We were outwardly tranquil as we chatted and sipped our coffee. But I was on the brink of racing out the door to pick up Luis, be with Luis, see him.
But when we got there he said he had another appointment- a job painting a mural at a local taqueria. I could have strangled him. My heart fell. He wanted to be with us, even walked to the payphone to reschedule the appointment, but was not successful.
He left us.
"I'm sorry," Kim said as soon as I got back into her car where she was waiting. My clothes smelled of dampness from the rain. The streets looked gray and obscure beyond the windows.
But I was fine. Not angry, not shattered. I did not resent Luis, nor tried to incriminate him. I trusted.
We hit happy hour at one of the bars in the Castro where we befriended other friendly patrons- talking, flirting, laughing. No one thrilled me as much as Luis does, but I remained at peace with the day and with my feelings. Inside I held my breath and waited for emotionalism to strike, for the disenchantment to arrive. It never did…
We arrived at Shammi's apartment where her roommate offered me a glass pipe with green fluffy herb in it. I accepted.
Over Vietnamese, though stoned, I was able to remain entirely grounded and secure. Shammi inquired about my personal life and I found myself talking about Luis, though I had not planned on it. Shammi found the entire scenario romantic and fantastic. Her beautiful black eyes, like ancient caves, widened and swallowed any hint of melancholy.
In fact, Shammi's company soothes me. With Shammi always somewhere in my life, in my heart, I am no longer freakish and alone. I feel the greatest bond with her. Together we are proudly Assyrian and queer.
Shammi admitted that one recent morning she had broken down into tears on the street at the reoccurring realization that she has no relationship with her father.
"It's not like he abandoned us. He was there the entire time. But there's nothing between us. Nothing!"
I placed my hand on top of hers.
It's funny how much Shammi's perspective on her family differs from Vivian's. Vivian fosters a more romantic, idealistic impression.
Shammi, the burgeoning filmmaker, had another appointment so we parted. Kim and I stepped into the cool wet streets, into the lights, the cars, the noise, the many people. We were crossing a rather wide intersection when suddenly I felt a pair of familiar hands grab me from behind, throwing my stride, turning me, holding me. It was Luis!
Wet streets, too many cars, buses, electricity crackling on the cables above our heads, colors, reflections. I was standing still inside a dream.
I embraced him, touching his face to confirm his presence. Had he really gotten onto a bus in Novato, come to the city, made his way to the Castro, searched for us, actually hoped to find us?
He said he had searched for three hours. Gone into each bar. He was cold. I made him wear my coat.
Now Luis was next to me. Now I was looking at him. I could touch him whenever I wanted. I laughed inside magic lights, lived temporarily within romance, and San Francisco!
In the car we kissed. Our kisses still revolutionary. New. Unfamiliar. Sensations without names. We will never become bored or commonplace. We will not have that opportunity.
Magic.
How can I stop myself from feeling as if I am moving, breathing, speaking, and living in a fantastic story? Life won't allow me.
Estas perfecto, Luis.
It rains but I don't weep.
Last night I said to Jackie, 'So, I'm back. Did you notice?'
She smiled, "I did. Welcome."
Now as I walked through downtown San Rafael by myself I thought of what Shammi had said, "I know Luis is leaving and you'll be sad. But you will love again." She had spoken with irony, phrasing herself playfully, "God loves everyone, doesn't he? He's not monogamous and we're made in his image, aren't we?" We had laughed uproariously.
As I strolled the musty isles of an old bookstore, making small discoveries, skimming through yellowed pages of forgotten books, I became certain that being miserable about my own life, or hopeful, is entirely up to me. And yet, I am not totally in charge of my feelings. It's really fate that decides my moods. I'm just struck by how easily I vacillate from one sentiment to the next, and that they are all as valid as any. How is one to know what is right and what is wrong when it comes to feelings? Is there such a clear distinction in emotions? I don't know. I'd like to believe that my own fate is to be positive, hopeful, loving. I know that at any given moment I could just as easily decide that my life as it unfolds is the biggest mistake I've ever made…
It scares me that in a moment of sheer emotional exhaustion I could falter and choose pessimism.
In a world in which tragedy is as natural and unpredictable as the weather, a prodigious force against which we remain defenseless, it is deeply empowering to know we have a right over our own attitude.
I am lucky. So very lucky. I feel at last safe from even death. Nothing frightens me. I attach my self, my happiness, my well being to no one thing, person, or personal conviction. I am entirely free from loss as long as I remember that nothing in this world is permanent or guaranteed.
In the aftermath there is only smoke, fog, and hope. I suppose I won't know the meaning of my experiences until some time has passed. I need time to make sense, to connect the dots, make the connections. To understand. What is most important is that I am truly proud of myself for living, for trying my best though my best falls far short of perfection. I trust now that disaster is not where I am most comfortable.
The responsibility of love sobers a person. I feel older knowing that one cannot remain entirely intoxicated through love; there must be serious moments, doubts, questions, uncertainty.
No longer childlike, errant, whirling in space, dreaming of love in limbo.
I have not seen a light. I have seen a hundred lights in loving Luis.
I have learned never to forget myself, misplace myself, or stay too long.
Luis is a human being, has his own desires, freedom. I have no intention of claiming him, controlling him, marrying him. I am not a prison. My love is not a warden.
Nor do I care to imprison myself.
It's pouring rain in San Francisco. My trousers are sopped and the sky is an oppressive low gray. On the street you'd see me smiling under my umbrella. My journal is with me. I am sitting above the street at Metro, surrounded by glass beyond which homes crowd the surrounding hills. Shops slant up the avenue. I am able to celebrate from up here, adoring many people, many places, moments, and hues.
I note so much frivolity and humor in the American culture. Sitcoms, standup comics, cartoons, etc. In contrast to all this I feel we Assyrians are so serious. Sometimes I am so aware that I come from a struggling people without a country, without a home, and that we live under the falling shadow of a fading language, harboring undying memories of revolutions, of war, and constant immigration. I feel I will never be free of the Assyrian responsibility to preserve our "way" no matter how long I live in the States, how immaculate my English, how Americanized I may become. I feel the tugging of every antiquated string from which I remain suspended in the Assyrian Diaspora.
There is a constant, still, and deep river that separates me from my surroundings, my American friends. A river in which my family and I are perpetually dunked, contained, reminded, and baptized, but never permitted to cross. I may have occasion to touch the banks of the river, even stroll them, sunbathe there, but inevitably I have to return to the other side to breathe, to remember, to be who I cannot escape being… Assyrian.
One should always break away from home. Even if for a little while. It is essential.
Luis. You become a dream, a mystery, a longing when we are apart. But as soon as we're together and I've touched you I lose my fanaticism and you become real. Hot like Mexico against my lips!
I live among strangers- rich, white Marinites! My love for Luis is not rich, nor white. My love does not even speak English. It possesses only knowledge of Mexico, the sun, blue water, and sand. My love is a native, a son, not a blundering tourist…
There is no perfection in romantic matters no matter how flawlessly I may feel the love. Feelings get trampled. The heart stops its music, operates on a different scale, another time zone.
Can I be passionate and loving without losing my vision, my senses, and my self? Is someone always to blame, to incriminate? Are regret and anger unavoidable in love?
Phillip, the mad bus driver, rants about the government, the Palestinian plight, Clinton, and cusses. He is loud. I wonder if the old woman sitting opposite me is offended. He amuses me greatly when he says, "When I build my house I will install two toilets in each bathroom. One for excrement, the other for all the bullshit they print in the newspapers!"
A kiss Jackie places unexpectedly, spontaneously, and rather devilishly on my neck has made me giddy and left me deeply touched. I am not considered a "dirty homosexual" after all. She loves me as she did when I was a child, when she covered me in incessant kisses I could not escape!
My imagination remains expansive, explosive. I cannot decipher what of life's events are real or made-up. I cannot tell what is love, what is play or sex. How can I when all I see are colors, shifting shapes, moving shadows, living brushstrokes, and not dead-end facts, inanimate objects, materials, borders, or shiftless obstacles? There are no rules by which to measure reality. My entire life teeters and depends on edges, brinks, anticipation, and thrilling precipices.
Not convention.
Was it love?
How will I ever know if I have never seen love between two men?
Luis, don't leave without calling. My illusions depend on it.
I realize that for years I've been preoccupied with perfection, with achieving superhuman grace in otherwise ungraceful and awkward matters. What demigod have I been aspiring to emulate? At my age I'm bound to falter, to suffer, to feel and be human.
Perfect endings are a fantasy. Aren't they?
I accept the adventure of disappointment.
I haven't quite understood love, grasped my own place and purpose in it…
Is romance natural? Or do we dream it up? Is monogamy even realistic?
Luis. Luis. Luis. Luis. Luis. Luis.
Bastante! Bastante!
Shammi invited me to the city to shoot our scene for her film "East"- a celluloid collage of queer Middle Eastern men and women living in the Bay Area.
When I arrived at Jacques and Sebastian's apartment I was greeted with warmth and kisses on both cheeks. Someone took my wet coat, another my umbrella. Shammi was there with a huge proud smile. My Assyrian sister!
I looked about me at the charming apartment and was surprised to find many traditional Arab touches- an ornate hookah on the mantle, hand-woven rugs on walls, decorative picture frames, the Koran resting on an end table, rustic looking charms and bracelets, a pair of shoes whose pointed toes curved to a bell. Already I knew I was home.
Jacques is Armenian and Moroccan. He was the consummate host turning up the Arabic music and fetching me a glass of Araq on ice. The Araq was clear, smooth, and enlivening. I was immediately buzzed by it. Jacques was endearing, had huge round eyes, brown skin, a shaved head, a wide nose, buxom lips. He looked West African, I suppose. He was round, supple.
Sebastian was also handsome but in a different manner. Tall, lanky, charming, and affected. He wore clothes that looked expensive and stylish, dark polished shoes in which he moved like an aristocrat. A diplomat. He had dark curly hair. In fact he reminded me of my eccentric maternal grandfather Nathan who lives in Tehran. He spoke with ishtav, appetite, rubbing his hands together as he talked, saying something smart, clapping, again rubbing his long hands together.
Whenever I looked over at Jacques he was eyeing me, looking into me with his massive eyes, drinking me like the Araq, smiling as if he knew something I did not.
Elias was soft-spoken, proper, feminine. His eyes looked sleepy, the long black lashes sweeping downward. He talked and walked like he was in a dream, on opium. He was a little girl whose immense eyes filled the room with a different kind of music. I knew we would never be friends. And he belonged to Sebastian.
Each man was bluntly interwoven- Jacques, Sebastian, Elias.
There was a fourth man there- a Jordanian whose name I cannot recall but whose deep, thick voice is embedded in my head. His masculine manner of speaking was in such contrast to his gesticulations that were airy and soft. He had snowy skin, reddish hair, blue eyes. I watched everyone with a fascination I could not keep to myself, and worried that they would misinterpret my enthusiasm for attraction.
We talked in imperfect, accidental circles about being gay and Arab in America. Foreign twofold!
Although I felt in some ways like an outsider among them, in a more buried, silent way I felt perfectly connected.
Shammi set up her filming equipment while the rest of us chatted. There was no need for rehearsal as "East" is a whimsical depiction of our gestures, features, our genetic diversity, a moving illustration of what queer Africa and Asia might look like in the Diaspora.
We were filmed as we are, unchoreographed, spontaneous, without costumes, without makeup or sets.
I wanted to be filmed outside, walking with my diary in my arms up the ascending San Francisco sidewalk. In the rain. Someone held an umbrella over Shammi and her camera.
And that was it. Nothing more. No plumage, no plot.
After everyone was filmed we raised our glasses in celebration and drank more Araq.
Luay's name came up. The first time I had met Jacques and Luay was at an Arabic restaurant in San Francisco where Jacques had played the bongo in the band, and belly danced for us in his traditional rippling costume, which he had peeled off in detachable yards of flowing fabric, quivering, shaking to the music, revealing his brown skin in tasteful glimpses, upon quick turns, through dizzying loops and spins.
Now we drank, ate pistachio nuts, and smoked.
After dinner Shammi and Elias cleared the table and washed the dishes like our mothers did in our countries of origin.
Jacques and I smoked in one corner, sitting on divans, talking about gay love and the importance of independence and individuality in this kind of love. Luis came up in this conversation and suddenly I missed him like I hadn't in some time.
But the Araq was strong and unassuming. It got us all suddenly drunk. Sebastian fell laughing in a corner, no longer the dignified diplomat, but a carefree teenager. He made us all laugh.
Shammi said she was feeling silly.
And I? I'm always in a dream, Araq or no Araq. Swimming in liquid moments between many points and ports of entry and escape, drifting in memories and my history, the voices, Iran, Chicago, a farm somewhere in a fantasy, galloping on the back of a winged horse through pages, pages, pages, back to the shapes, and the circles that spell my name… whatever that might be…
Shammi and I sat on a chaise lounge where I read her relevant passages from my diary. She seemed to enjoy them and said they were beautiful. At times her eyes widened and she sighed, "Wow, Emil."
When I closed the notebook we agreed that we both felt the beginnings of a queer Assyrian renaissance.
Whenever Jacques entered the room and asked us if we needed anything Shammi looked at me devilishly, whispering upon his departure, "Isn't he cute?" Clearly she was matchmaking without a license!
The condom broke! But my physiological worries are nothing in comparison to my emotional regrets in regard to sleeping with Jacques that night. I feel empty again as though I have acted not out of passion but pattern.
Yes, the sex was erotic. Jacques was effortlessly aroused. His brown penis fat and always erect, pumped with blood, standing on heels of electricity in a room lighted and scented by many candles, moving shadows against coco walls. The bed pushed against the wall. Like my convictions.
He penetrated me gently, carefully. Once inside he pulled and pushed rhythmically, then easily, a little more forcefully. He would thrust, then pull out entirely. Push in again. Pull out again. His condomed erection bouncing in the soft light, shining with lubrication.
Earlier we had talked about gay Middle Eastern relationships and the flagrance of one man playing the husband while the other copied the wife. We had wondered if this heterosexist model was what we were doomed to simulate for the rest of our lives, whether we liked it or not…
Now he was fucking me like the straight-faced husband, the serious Arab husband. His face stern with satisfaction, quiet, towering, penetrating the hole, the whole.
He handled me methodically, moving me into various positions that pleased the both of us, without talking, turning me this way and that, fucking me in… San Francisco? Morocco? Jordan? Mars?
The Araq had made me so pliable I felt I could have been shaped into anything he wanted. He lifted me to my knees and entered me from behind. Although I don't mind being fucked, I do deeply abhor being made servile, and even in this compromising position gained equality by moving my own body against his penis in a pace to my own liking. Now it was not he thrusting, but I moving my ass against his cock, onto it, in circles, left, left, left, right, in, out, right, and so on. My body felt charged, my anus mine, not his. He moaned.
He spoke for the first time, asked me to sit on him. He lay on his back, his belly so brown and full, the way I like it. Not flat and uninviting, white, hard, lifeless.
"Ride me," he commanded.
I bounced. I came!
And like always wanted nothing more than to escape, to be left alone, to sleep, and begin to forget. I slept against the wall.
Slept and had two nightmares.
Nightmares inspired by the repulsion I always feel for the men I sleep with. Repulsion I did not feel with Luis.
In one dream the man who slept next to me was my brother Bell, who now tried to stab me in the knees with a very large blade. I ran to my father, my brother chasing all the while with a huge knife shining in his hand.
In the other I stood before a mirror and was nauseated because my nipples were so swollen they began to burst and bleed.
I awoke in the middle of the night to Jacques masturbating next to me. I did not make it known that I had awakened and lay still until I fell asleep again against the wall.
In the morning we fucked again. Jacques instructed me to kneel at the edge of the bed where he fucked me while standing. He opened my buttocks to watch himself penetrate my anus.
I came but I did not laugh as I did with Luis…
After Jacques had showered and gotten dressed for work at the courthouse we met in the kitchen where I hid behind cigarettes and the act of drinking coffee.
I was honest and explained my distance to him, apologized for it. After all, before I had entered his room, his arms, I had explained that our night together would be a one-night stand, a solely sexual encounter.
When I set foot on the sidewalk, a little hung over, the air cool and invigorating, I felt my mistake palpable all around me and wondered why I did not possess the "marriage" of Sebastian and Elias, the same luxury.
Or, is being in a relationship a luxury?
For days afterward I concentrated on the futility of sex. I compared my one night with Jacques to the many nights with Luis, fucking, laughing.
I hate, distrust, and dream men!
Two days later I called Jacques and thanked him and Sebastian for their hospitality. I felt foolish and imagined them, the boys, laughing at me.
Now San Rafael is totally black. Only artificial light remains.
I'm in America, but I don't think I ever truly arrived when I left Iran. I'm somewhere in the middle, still en route. Dangling between my life as a child in Iran and the one here as the adult. Am I still in Marseilles acquiring a Visa?
There's a hole in my life through which I fall perpetually. Something's missing. And it's not Luis. It has to do more with me, my vision, my purpose, my path.
Why don't I seek out Luis? It is too intense, too dangerous for me to enter their territory, their relationship ever again. I don't feel right about it. Especially now that Luis has fallen off the face of the earth.
Where are you?
When the bus passes the Taqueria where the Luises work I close my eyes, keep them closed, a hand over them, until I feel the bus turning, which means it is safe to look now.
Maybe this is why I continue to fall through the bottomless hole- for how can I see it and step around it if my eyes are kept locked from the memories, the voices, the very face of our experience?
And how can I open them? For to see, to feel, to recall would mean bitterness and hatred, confusion, pandemonium of emotions in retaliation, panic, helplessness.
But even through the worst of it I remain positive, enjoying living, and the adventure.
Don't let me forget that.
Don't let me judge the entire course of my life with this presently morbid vision. I'm not clear enough to survey my life, pinpoint its purpose, realize its blessings and meaning.
My eyes are closed. I live by sensation. The bus is turning, now it seems to be ascending, we've stopped. Where? Why? Ah, we're moving again…
Braille.
Midnight, when love is stronger than insecurity. Tomorrow I will seek Luis despite my fears and I will prove to him I love him. Just to see him… My heart may race, my arms may shake, my voice may quiver but I will see him before he goes.
He sought me in San Francisco and found me. Now it's my turn.
I will express to him the force of my heart's love with all my youth, history, experience, and imagination!
Listening to the cassette Luay dubbed for me. Arabic music renders a cold house vibrant. Now there's the merry sound of clapping and drums, bells, cheering.
Mother peels a grapefruit exposing the ruby flesh. Citric scent permeates the air about her.
I'm somewhat drunk from beer I've consumed in celebration. I'm celebrating not only my afternoon reunion with Luis but the lesson I learned in his room for the last time: To gain control over my imagination which often sends me the wrong message, signals irrational cues, blurs the right thing.
You might say imagination alone and unattended is not a virtue. Imagination and sobriety, objectivity, is!
What I imagine and what actually transpires continue to be at odds. I went up to the apartment and he was home. He received me with a welcoming smile that melted away my ice sculpture demons. Luis, to see you smile at me, take me into your room, hold my face and kiss it.
"Smoking?" he asked, flashing me a disapproving look.
'Yes,' I chuckled.
Yes. Yes. Yes, I love you. You are perfect, sweet, human.
On the way to Luis' there had been a battle: No, I will not seek him. I've got a head start on forgetting, on letting go. I will not torture myself.
Would I go?
And suddenly I was on the sidewalk to his apartment complex. Walking to his room. You're actually going, aren't you?
He explained that he had waited for me last Thursday, but I had been an hour or so late, so he'd finally decided to get something to eat by himself. There you have it. This is why we'd missed each other- a very ordinary, mediocre reason; nothing excessively complicated or tragic.
Not at all as I had imagined it.
God, what is real? I cannot tell.
Is everyone's life so damn ambiguous!
Our kiss was unsynchronized. Unfamiliar. I was nervous again. Angry at my imagination.
'I missed you,' I repeated.
He had to go to work. I walked him. We made plans for tomorrow. We parted. I turned back to see him looking back at me.
I will not try to be the mathematician of love or life. Calculating. I'm no good at equations, numbers, formulas. Who knows what are lies and what is truth? I cannot calculate the essence of desire and infidelity. All I can decipher is the moment in which Luis and I may enjoy our last kisses.
Today I sat next to Luis on his bed, in that room, while he pointed to the bite marks here, the small lacerations there, scars from the night before. Violence. Remnants of Luis II's rage, or was it passion? I do not understand.
Luis' account of the previous night's mishap reached me in broken images, delicate fragments, through a fog of words I could not make out. I guess what I got from Luis' story was that Luis II had wanted sexo and had become violent when Luis refused him. A lover's row had ensued. The roommates had knocked on their bedroom door. And the more Luis revealed to me the broken pieces of their dysfunctional union, half-beautiful shards of their sordid marriage, the more withdrawn and distant I grew. The fewer my kisses on his bare belly, nipples. This was someone else's battered wife I was courting, not a lover my own…
Not mine.
I became silent and still. The room pressed its walls and contents into my skin. I felt my bones popping beneath the crush.
I lay next to him and only listened.
As soon as my head hit the pillow the bedroom door swung open. Luis II stood in the doorway. He had not expected me to be there, in bed with Luis. I saw my own presence register in his mind and on his face. There was surprise, incomprehension, the obstinate formulation of inaccurate conclusions, and inevitably rage. All this became terrifyingly mapped on Luis II's hopelessly handsome face.
With great repulsion he said something in Spanish and turned methodically to the closet and out of a row of many belts selected a thick brown one, folded it, gripped it, and moved closer to us.
With the skill of a trained athlete he swung the belt violently at Luis. I felt the wind of this lashing on my skin. Luis put his arms up in self-defense.
Now Luis II swung the folded belt at me with equal if not greater force. I did not even feel the burning contact. I only heard it. A whip-thump of force and hatred! Punishment Luis and I deserved according to Luis II.
There's no possible way out of this, I thought to myself. Luis and I were now sitting up on the bed. Luis II looked crazed and betrayed.
I felt complete defenselessness.
All I could do was scream in a whisper, 'No, Luis!'
He had moved to swing again, but stopped.
Amazing, I thought.
I stood up, moved closer to him, ready to receive whatever blow he should deliver. Bravado made my blood race, my bones swell.
'Luis and I are friends,' I explained in English, uncertain if he would understand, desperate for any diversion.
Simultaneously Luis spoke at him in Spanish.
'Look, I even have my clothes on,' I muttered fearfully.
I moved closer to Luis and traced his wounds, 'Why would you do this to him?'
My own anger now seemed to swell from a well deep inside my gut.
'Fuck this!' I grabbed for my shoes. 'I'm finished with you. No mas! You're both crazy. This is crazy.'
I looked at Luis II, 'I'm finished with you!' I then pointed at my Luis, 'And with you!'
Luis seemed to encourage my resolution with his eyes. He looked at me lovingly.
Now? Now I know I was half-serious, half-ingenuous.
And? And I'm not tattered or destroyed. It's clear now. It must end. I do not suffer.
I feel oppressed, imprisoned by busses, in these damn hills, school, work, home. Routine.
I lack heartfelt connection.
I feel lonely in these extraordinary experiences and insights.
I want to burst again, burst, explode, vomit, scream, convulse. Electrify!
It is six a.m. A new day begins, which I hope to donate to the building of a high-spirited character in which others might find a steadfast friend, son, nephew, and companion. I will cherish the present no matter how intolerable the present may feel so that I may appreciate the past, and pave, design, build, and construct a secure future…
Night. I've just had a Samuel Adams and feel quite up to sleeping, forgetting all images, and dreaming up nebulous representations, innocuous symbols, oblique memories.
No harrowing actualities.
I loved you, Luis. Now I wrap you in the most tender of embraces, the truest of kisses, and give you up to the past, to memory, and Luis II. To Mexico! Not to be recalled or rehashed for some time. But truth remains that you will be siempre aqui y aqui… in my heart and in my head.
I sleep tonight with a smile etched on my lips.
The writer's most brilliant sentence remains his life, his best poetry his choices. Do I will drama or does it simply exist independently? Surely I did not choose my father's alcoholism, mom's weaknesses, my own cycles.
It begins to rain. I hear it. Now I go into it.
I feel free again. No more wires, charged wires connected to clandestine plans, erotic dreams, stolen kisses with Luis.
I don't want to be possessed by anyone, nor do I care to possess others. I break from Chicago, Brandon, my father, drugs, cigarettes, and institutions. I'm better left alone.
An older gentleman carrying a guitar case starts up a conversation with me at the bus stop. He tells me that he's journeying into the city for the first time in years; he's not had occasion to leave the perfect town of Fairfax because everything he could ever need and want is there. But today is special. He's setting out to City Lights Bookstore where a seventy-year-old Japanese friend is going to be reading poetry from a book he's just published! "He is my mentor," the man with the guitar tells me. I listen. Amidst the hills.
The streets fresh after rain.
Torrential rain in the night.
The kind that wraps on your bedroom window and wakes you from your already forgotten dreams.
"He was the one who took me to see The Sierras. I wrote a song about that experience. I'm going to sing it to him today."
The man who has suffered three strokes joins me on a bench one morning. By now we know each other fairly well. We connect, talking lightly about the rainstorms that have recently passed leaving behind a massive blue sky, huge white clouds. We note that the clouds pass lightly despite their size, swiftly. We sound almost envious because we are not that light, that insouciant, that quick. We are human, heavy, awkward, both of us recovering from our respective afflictions. Convalescing from our experiences as men in a world in which we are no better than ants on a city sidewalk. I breathe in the day like I am breathing in a miracle, a cure. I breathe in the lowly sedative of nuances after rain, the cologne of wet pavement, the surrounding hills that drink, drink, drink themselves into green oblivion…
Green!
A lively and talkative woman tells me she once had a "Persian" boyfriend, and feels immediately close to me because I am Middle Eastern. Now she's with a new boyfriend. About him she whispers, "He's so uncultured. It's driving me nuts. He just needs to be taught. Oh, but he's too old."
I look over her shoulder at the man in the background, 'At least he's handsome.'
"Yeah, he is. But I'm seeing another guy," she confesses easily, proudly.
'Really?' I play along.
"Yeah. It's funny. I move to Marin and suddenly I'm dating two guys!" She seems tickled by the unexpected turns of her own love life.
'There's no reason why you shouldn't be allowed to date two men,' I say sincerely. After all, men have tyrannized and swindled women for centuries.
"Until one of them walks me down the isle," she adds.
And what sort of a marriage would that be? I think to myself.
This is how it goes.
When children wave at me I wave back.
I observe two men howling on a bench. A bottle between them. I am positive now that it is better to destroy and to build in sobriety than to destroy and to build in drunkenness. I have observed this in nature. She is never drunk even while she is in a destructive mood. Her intoxication is organic, pure, wild, and somehow forgivable.
A customer at the restaurant tells me, "You're contagious. You shine and light flows out of you. Others can see it!" I am speechless.
In the morning the yard is covered in a luminescent mist, dewdrops sprinkle the entire setting. Is that garland of sparkling white a string that has fallen from the sky onto the rosebushes, stretching to the apple tree, and over the fence into the neighbor's yard? Did a child lose his kite? Upon closer inspection the luminescent thread proves to be something far more amazing: the craft of an industrious spider!
My great love of the moments preceding all events, and not the events themselves, scares me. I live and reel in the days before a trip, not the trip itself. My greatest highs occur while dressing, fixing my hair, listening to music, sipping wine, before the doors open onto the ball revealing a scene far inferior to the lights and sounds in my mind. Will I live my entire life in the waiting room, relishing the butterflies in my tummy?
At a coffee shop in downtown San Rafael, between destinations when I am alone and most contented, I overhear two men at a nearby table discuss the politics of heterosexual relationships. "It's a fucked up game. Women are forced to be manipulative because men were bad to them!" One man sputters out to the other over steaming cups of coffee.
Music- the gypsy host in the company of whom I am certain that I am better on my own than with a lover. Composure is my lover. Solitude. Iran. Memories that can no longer hurt me are my lover. Alone, but never entirely. My imagination watches me, its constant narration reassures me. He levitates somewhere up on the ceiling and tells the story. Always. Everywhere.
In my mind I have begun writing the love letters to Mexico…
Life strangles the narcissist before a wardrobe mirror so that he may see himself die from all angles!
Sundays are for dreaming of Buddhist monks, silent courtyards, India's Bengal tigers, Japan's charged streets.
Only tea and sugar-sprinkled ginger treats with Jackie and Mom-Suzie can lull my restlessness and desire to be somewhere else, someone else. The rain ceases, the sky suddenly clears, but the earth remains wet.
Assyrian men, generally, are too egoistical and judgmental to notice, acknowledge, and accept other men, to befriend and love those who may be different from them. I abhor this quality in my own family and count my blessings that I have been granted the gift of loving so many different people who continue to enrich my experience on this planet…
Jackie said she was glad I chose to stay home today and we laughed so much about so many things. Jackie's patience with her mother is uncanny. I envy it so much. It is so religious, so noble. It mystifies me. They speak to each other with such calm, love, like old friends, like close sisters. Not like mother and daughter. Something I will never have with my own mother. I am far too impatient.
Life strangled him before the mirror so he could see. His last vision was of his life's hands wrapped firmly about his beautiful neck, lifting him off his feet, then pressing him to the sparkling floor. He was so struck by the loving expression on his life's face as it choked him that he forgot he was dying…
I know I am neurotic.
Bewitching are recollections of him.
How lucky I have been… Turning, spinning, inside lights, within sound, through color, Luis smiling at me having just fallen out of the sky of my imagination into my eternal embrace. You'll find me smiling too these days, a young man- confident, surefooted. He has transformed me.
There's a storm tonight. The electricity went out for a few minutes. The weather is trying to keep up with me, the velocity of my spirit!
Memories are fine contraptions we build, monuments, statues, graceful, still images, white! There is no death as long as there are young men and women in the world dreaming of love, of possibilities, of lives beyond our wildest imaginings… in a room painted blue.
Art is a secret carnival in my head.
I wonder if a love carved out in the trunk of a tree is a destructive love…