December 1996

My biggest wish is for enlightened open-minded parents. Sometimes I'm sure that my life would have been better had my parents been different people. That my life would have been filled with joy and confidence. I resent them for their profound shortcomings. Christians are the most un-Christian people.
It is because of my parents that I refuse God. It is because of God that I refuse my parents. Let me burn, burn, burn infinitely, but I'd rather remain true to myself, to my soul, than to live in the way others think I ought to live.
Mom often becomes playful and calls to me in Farsi, "Beya pesaram." (Come, my son.) But I rage within because I am not hers, she has not fully accepted me. Now I must recover from this tempest of indignation. I must let go. There's a whole life to be lived yet.
Night. Passion is better explored in the imagination. And I am happiest alone. Sex and dating sadden me.
Gary picked me up and we went to his home. We got into his hot tub and messed around. He was a gentleman and I am the one who initiated the kissing, but it made me sad nonetheless. I feel that no one can take away my neurosis, this dysfunctional, maladjusted, insecure way of thinking. On the contrary, I feel that I may hurt Gary.

Mom hasn't spoken to me since I went out with Gary.
From childhood promiscuity to adult execution of fantasies, I feel my life has been a sexual conquest. Yet, I reject sexuality and reproach myself for having it. My fantasies are morbid. I'm not sure that I've ever masturbated thinking of love. I fantasize about male relatives, rape, being kidnapped, having sex in impersonal locales, always something dark, something other than intimacy. As a young boy, perhaps as early as six, I longed to be "held" by men. Sometimes I wonder if there has been an external influence for this early awareness of sexuality, like abuse. But I have no recollection of abuse, none. In fact, I wanted to be abused, or kidnapped. Does this yearning, too, speak of an early sexual history I do not remember?
Then there's the shame and the guilt I always feel before, during, and after most, if not all sexual encounters. What does the shame mean? And this need I have for abstinence, what about that?
I long for change in my outlook regarding, not only myself and sex, but also the world around me. I cannot trust. I cannot believe, and am tempted to withdraw entirely from everyone.
My imagination is my strongest feature and I struggle not to be carried away by this habit of "fiction-living".
I have read that Freud has said that anyone who undertakes autobiography "binds himself to lying, to concealment, and to flummery".
I have also read that both Emily Dickinson and Anais Nin preferred to keep those they loved at a distance and write letters.

I have lost my mother again to her demons. I fight to keep unscathed. I write to fill this blank. I create to transform this reality I cannot stand.
I have a great wish to be smarter, spongier like a child.

"Cabin Fever" misses its mark. Yet, it's too direct, trite. There are things I can say without actually saying them. Some of the dialogue sounds too educational, as if I'm trying to "educate" the audience. Not to mention that the characters say things that they wouldn't. There are moments in the play when it is clear to me that Alfonzo is saying what I would say, not what he would say.
It's true- writers do lay it all out for the public. It's unnerving!

The reality that is black inside me knows mother will never be happy. God is not real enough to give her the miracles she needs and prays for. Not only the miracle to turn me heterosexual, but the light and grace to accept her own life as it has unfolded, her own experiences, losses, and grief. Why do some people struggle like an animal that's been struck but not killed? Poor, poor mother.
It's too early to tell if my friendship with Brandon was real. Was the exchange itself a friendship or were we seeking something more, something else? Not merely sex but power and control. For him the relationship seemed to be an exercise of his egotistical controlling nature, while for me a pageantry of my passions and need for submission. I do not return his call.
I live with a combination of bliss (memory) and resentment (reality.)

Virginia Woolf believed an artist should have an androgynous mind.
If my mind doesn't soon let go of the notion that it is incapable of expressing itself clearly I will break! I must collect myself and write. Anything. Just write. Even if what I write sounds childish and simple.
In trying to mend the reality of my life I have abandoned the veracity of melodrama. In the ruins of my youth I discover I have lost the courage to marvel at the dramatic.
In the summers when we were children my father would take us to the Assyrian village where he grew up, Iryava. I loved it there and have many fond memories of animals, wells of water, dirt roads, cold creeks, butterflies, houses made out of mud, simplicity. I remember an Assyrian boy slightly older than myself pointing at a neighbor girl, a Muslim, and saying in Assyrian, "I'm going to fuck her." I remember noticing after this remark every bull that mounted a cow in the fields. I remember my own sense of wonder, the million questions, and that warm spiraling feeling between my legs. That summer I let the same boy put a leash around my neck and walk me around the village, a woman seeing us and laughing, hiding in the bushes and wishing he would fuck me, too, even then willing to be dominated. As a child I flirted with men. I would wear that leash for a long time, handing the reins to those who would play. I wonder if I will ever break free from the need to be dominated. I am ready to be free.

Life in fantasy reels continues.
Eric, the law student, says he'd love to blow off his responsibilities and become a vagabond like Robert, live for a while in Yosemite like Robert. But I don't know if such a thing is possible. Just as I hadn't been able to shirk my own struggles on the farm. There they were with me by the creek kneeling, in the hayloft masturbating, with the guests riding.

Last night, when I was drunk I made social appointments I don't want to keep. I screen my calls. I read. I have so many addictions I think I shall chain myself to the headboard.

To accept beauty and sensuality. My own and others'. I have a fantasy in which I live in a college dorm room. I'm lying on my bed fucking myself with a dildo and jerking off. My straight roommate has discovered me but does not let it be known that he's watching. He silently marvels at the anus' ability to accept something so large. Is himself aroused, takes his erection into his hand and begins to jerk his meat. He tugs at his cock watching me push the lubricated dildo deeper into my asshole. He notices that my lips clutch the dildo as I pull on it and it slips out of me. I sense that I am being watched and when I raise my head off my pillow I find he has moved closer, still pulling at his hard-on, smiling. I can tell just by looking at him that he's been drinking. He asks if he can help me with what I'm doing, and before I can answer he is kneeling by my bed, gripping the dildo that's in my ass. He seems fascinated, amused, aroused all at once! He pushes, pushes, pushes as far as the toy will go, I sigh. He twists. I flinch. He pulls, pulls, pushes, pulls. My muscles grip. I am in ecstasy as he fucks me with one hand and jacks off with the other. He teases me by pulling the dildo out entirely. I am aroused, confused, frustrated. I ask him to finish, to put it back in, to fuck me with it. And the next thing I know he has started again. Pushing, pounding, pulling. A rhythm without boundaries. When I open my eyes I am stunned to see that he is not fucking with the dildo any longer, but with his own massive cock. It is his first time inside another man. He says he derives great pleasure from the tightness of the hole, its grip, its warmth and smoothness. He fucks me hard and comes inside me.
The above fantasy is actually inspired by an interview with Tennessee Williams in which he speaks of an exchange he had in college with another boy.
Untamed ideas. How essential they are to my own survival. Everything is a story.

Called Gary because of this need to make more of yet another frivolous encounter. He bored me with inconsequential antics about life and work in a small town.
I feel like I wasted so many years not reading and feel an urgency to catch up. I read obsessively and hurriedly.

I am an escapist. I am addicted to escape even in its most basic form. I cannot resist a friend's invitation to darts and beer. Mom returns from working at the rest home for the weekend and although I have missed her I am cold because I want to punish her for her stunt last week when I went out with Gary. I am cold and hold grudges. I know how to inflict pain with the easiest and smallest of remarks. I have learned it from my own parents. Resentments are great and blinding. They throw me off-track. I ache. I recover. I resolve one more time not to be guided, rather misguided, by them. I will convert her with my own forgiveness, I think to myself. Do you think it'll work? What exactly is the cure for homophobia? Tell me. Tell me.
I have my mother's suspicious nature and my father's sensitivity. In the mirror I find the solace of my own eyes looking warmly back at me. I hide in the lashes. Vivian touches my face at the bus stop and says, "You gay Assyrian boys have the longest, most beautiful lashes. I don't understand it!"
'Lashes are the seductive fans of the soul,' I tell her.

It seems I can achieve satisfaction in sex only in writing. Never in real life. In "Interviews With Tennessee Williams" I read that psychotherapy can possibly halt the creative process. Does desperation inspire a writer? I hate longing. I hate being flushed and affected. And I hate falling. I hate melting.
While Vivian is admiring my lashes, I am playing with her long, black, beautiful, thick hair. It has rained. There are puddles everywhere. A handsome athletic white guy passes. "What's up?" he says with unmoving coolness. He has known same-sex admiration before, I can tell.
I imagine that his cock is thick and pink. A white boy's prick. When hard it bounces with a singular contraction of muscles just before he comes. His tight buttocks tighten further. His hands turn into fists, not with violence, but with passion.
When I was nine years old in Iran one my father's closest friends had a son named Peter who was exactly my age. I didn't quite know what sex was but I wanted Peter to take me. He's the boy who once told me that when a man and a woman had sex a white liquid came out of the man's penis.
'Really?' I had asked with suspicion and wonder. The only thing that had ever come out of my own penis back then was piss.
Being with Peter in the musty shed that was on his father's orchard outside Tehran made my heart pound feverishly. Even with my naiveté I knew that our assignation in the dust was forbidden. Peter placed his hardened little penis where years later adults would have penetrated. With my small hands I spread my hairless self to him. The tip of his prick felt right between my buttocks. With young, curious, and willing nerves my body welcomed him, but we did not know what we were doing. Yet, how did we know to hide ourselves, and to fear our desires?

Assyrians! They know how to make yogurt but they don't know how to accept and appreciate their own children! I'm out of patience with my mother who has no sense of the arts and does not know how to support and encourage me. My panic attacks are a sign that I need space, mobility, freedom. And why the fuck should I need a university, a college education to better myself, my life? Who needs polyplacophora? Acoelomate? Platyhelminthes? Framed for failure.
Peter still lives in Iran. Strangely, his family never emigrated. I haven't seen him or spoken to him in thirteen years, though I think our mothers tried to keep in touch through a string of letters, but that too stopped after my parents' divorce. I wonder if I'll ever see him again. Would it be familiar or uncomfortable? Is he straight or is he gay? He was an attractive boy. Our fathers, who'd been best friends in the village where they grew up, would get drunk together, our mothers would sip tea in the kitchen and talk, our older brothers would disappear, and Peter and I would go off to "play" our own games. Just to have Peter to myself and to be alone with him, and the feeling that we were doing something forbidden aroused me deeply. One time, my cousin Robin who'd come up to Tehran to visit, stole away with us. He couldn't have been much more than a year older than us. Robin was a mischievous boy who always got himself into all kinds of scrapes, usually humorous mishaps about which the family always spoke with a certain fondness. And it was Robin who taught me and Peter to spit on our hands and rub our penises to make them more slippery.
My clandestine child-affair with Peter came to an embarrassing halt one school night when his father walked in on Peter stroking me while I lay on my bed with my pants rolled down to my ankles. We'd been quick in moving apart and sitting up, but it was obvious that we'd been found out. The next time I saw Peter I asked him fearfully what his father had said, if anything. Peter had sounded almost sad, regret in his voice. He had explained that his father had not yelled at him or punished him in any way, but forbade him from ever playing such games again. And as I recall we never did…

I know I'm wasting my time in college. But I feel I have no other options. It's what my parents expect of me. Maybe if I had more siblings and wasn't only one of two I would be less conspicuous, able to go off on my own to foreign places and experience distant adventures. But the obligation to please in my family is great. I am lost on my own. Wasn't I unhappy and lost in Chicago? Floating dangerously? No, I wouldn't change my past for the world- I experienced and learned loads- but I suffered. I did not read. I did not write. I did things I didn't want to do- loving my best friend, smoking pot, drinking, and masking my truest dreams. Too much is possible in a city, a twenty-four-hour carnival. Though, here I suffer culturally.
Sometimes I wonder what it is I'm really battling. Could it be life itself?

"What's the most important thing you're going to teach your daughter?"
A moment to consider the question… "Self-respect." Madonna on "The Oprah Winfrey Show".
I wonder if I respect myself.
I wonder if my mother would respect me if I were a medical student and not an artist? I know the answer already, why do I even ask? When did we fall on separate paths? I must've turned my back for a moment.
Vivian inspires me. She is a compassionate and intelligent young Assyrian woman, articulate and passionate. She has bold features, facial expressions so expressive they easily give away her inner intensity. You can practically see the wheels turning, turning, always turning. When she walks her arms swing methodically at her sides, big round movements. I often see her scurrying along in the rain, on campus, in the distance, arms swinging, dark, lush curls bouncing. When someone happens to call her name she jumps, startled no doubt out of some thought about race relations, gender roles, culture, community, a childhood memory perhaps; or maybe the pages of a book she may be reading for one of her brilliant anthropological papers on globalization, bilingualism, religion, ethnicity, women and science, Margaret Mead. I call her 'the absent-minded professor' and she chuckles. Vivian is so raw in so many ways, vulnerable. When she eats she gets food all over herself, crumbs on the front of her shirt, sauce on her sleeves, and the food vanishes. Her eyes may be huge varnished stones, but she is blind. At Diva I hand her a fork and a napkin at the service counter and she thinks me a courteous stranger, and thanks me as such. When she discovers it is me she laughs and says I'm lucky she did not kick me. She's been known to kick strange men, she says.
"I put a dent in the door of the campus maintenance truck one time because they whistled at me," she admits rather proudly.
'You go, girl!' I applaud her.
Vivian is a small young woman with a larger than life presence.
Strangers look at her as though she were a mad woman. I like that about her.
I read some William Blake tonight for the first time and felt myself attracted to him even though I have never seen his face. I wondered why it is we do drugs when literature has the same self-escaping effect. Looking at his ominously dark sketches that are religious I know it is a wonderful thing being of the creative heart, feeling always the infinite yearning for creation, this creative promiscuity, entertaining all ideas on page and in life. Imagination is my lover. I fight and love him. He leaves me always only to return with gifts.

I went to the new Barnes & Noble here in town. All those books, glossy and colorful. Lucy, a chunky and adorable salesgirl assisted me. In line I let others pass because I wanted Lucy to ring up my sales. I might have misled her because she got ecstatic about the whole thing. Oh well, it made her day, and mine. I took the beautiful country road home. The sun shone on the orchards that were bare, whose rows of trees played tricks on the eye as one passed on the paved road.
I made the mistake of accompanying mother to the mall. I'm always ready to pounce at her throat at every little thing she does wrong, or to express my dissatisfaction passively, to punish her. I know I'm being unfair to mother but my insides tear with indignation. Can't I shut that part of me off that hates, that is angry, that punishes?
On one of his sketches Blake signs his name, then writes, "One who is very much delighted with being in good company." Also, "Born 28 Nov 1757 in London and has died several times since."
And maybe Tennyson isn't meant to be rushed. I didn't enjoy him. I've never really liked poetry much.
As a toddler Maria Callas was struck by a car and dragged for twenty-five feet. She has said, "To live is to suffer, and whoever tells children this is not so is dishonest- cruel… If you live, you struggle. It is the same for all of us. What is different are the weapons you have and the weapons that are used against you. That is the combination of personality and circumstance. That is fate."
I ask mom if she knows of Maria Callas. Proudly she says in Assyrian, "Of course! We loved her in Iran."

I'm in shorts and a red and white-checkered shirt that looks like something Julie Andrews would have sown out of a tablecloth! I'm in the yard. It is a simple unattended yard. But it's very pretty. The sky is a cool blue. The sun thinks it's summer and little feisty birds dive into the lawn for food and suddenly disappear over the fence. My Assyrian friends are to come over later.
Last night I fell asleep to the sound of drums, tambourines, and various eastern instruments amalgamating to create an Indian dance in my dreams. Our Indian neighbor Cashmere must've had a party!
If my diary sounds a bit pedantic of late it's because I'm making use of the pages to utilize new words I've learned, practice new styles of writing, find my voice.
Now let's talk men. Could it be I don't like them? And if I don't know how to love men and I am a homosexual, what then? Even as a youth, much younger than I am today, I always walked away from every sexual or romantic experience whether with men or with women if not scarred, unfulfilled. So if not men and if not women? What? Animals? It's clear that I must wait until I am older to share my life with another human being.
I miss my friends in Chicago more than I knew. Such wonderful individuals. Melisa's healing. Lisa's creative talents. Brandon's confidence, if not ego. Tom's youth. Marcelo's intelligence. Nikki's loyalty. Kelly's incessant chatter. Everyone's unconditional acceptance of me. Total comfort. No, not Eden, just a secret city garden.

It's best that I stay clear of people for a while. I've tried to make friends for a year-and-a-half now to no avail. Everyone makes me unhappy. Like sex, I walk away from them unappeased. Maryam is a homophobe. She exhausts me. Rodney is superficial and materialistic. I thought I had a friend in him with whom I could be Assyrian and gay, but he makes me sick. He got drunk too fast last night and became touchy-feely. I asked him to stop and he said, "That's fucked up." It took a lot of self-control not to kick him out and remain calm. He threw up in the bathroom but would not admit it. He had gone in for a long time, came out pasty and pale, but adamantly denied that he'd vomited. I hope he feels foolish today for drinking so much and popping all that Vicodin. He's also enraged me for letting people swallow him when they suck him off. How could he? This is why I distrust men and sex!
Life without friends… Is this merely temporary, or a foreshadowing of what's to be all my life?
Maria Callas was a hard working operatic singer who amazingly could learn a part in just five days, and yet she needed constant reassurance that she was indeed a great performer. She played every role with such conviction. "I had striven for years to create a sickly quality in the voice of Violetta; after all, she is a sick woman. It's all a question of breath, and you need a very clear throat to sustain this tired way of talking or singing. And what did they say? 'Callas is tired. The voice is tired.' But that is precisely the impression I was trying to create. How could Violetta be in her condition and sing in big, high, round tones? It would be ridiculous."
By this point Callas had shed an impressive amount of weight and undergone a breathtaking transformation. I personally love people who are in control, though Callas herself never felt that she was. "Even when people look at me with obvious affection, that makes me twice as angry. You think, 'these people are looking at you in admiration- why should they? I don't deserve it.'… Only on very rare occasions do I feel I have given a really marvelous performance. Here is one of the things that nearly drives me out of my mind. I can never tell absolutely when I have given a great performance. For this is the paradox. What an audience feels is a great performance does not necessarily mean the same thing to me. It sometimes happens that I think I have not been doing justice to a role. And yet after just such an evening, people come crowding in to congratulate me, and all complements embarrass me. Then at other times, when I feel I have really given my best, the audience's reaction is not the same. So the mystery remains. It haunts me."
It seems that after one of Callas' performances the audience threw radishes on stage instead of flowers, but Callas diplomatically accepted these and only cried once she was off the stage. A true artist.

I'm a creep. I got drunk with Jeff by the light of the Christmas tree, which was pleasant. But going to Antonio's out in the middle of nowhere was drastic. Lydia, one of the dancers, flirted with me and asked for my number. Outside I puked, stooped as low as Rodney.
Melisa called from Chicago today. She gave birth to a baby girl! It's still sinking in.
"Always a fight- that's been the trouble with my career, I've always had to fight. And I don't like it. I don't like fights and I don't like quarrels. I hate the nervous mental condition they engender. But if I have to fight, I'll fight. Up to now I have generally won, but never with any feeling of elation. They are bleak triumphs, simply because it was necessary to fight in the first place."
"I don't want to be bullied by anybody. My own convictions and inner feelings tell me what I should do. Maybe those feelings are right or maybe they are wrong, but I stand up, and have the courage to do so."
Maria Callas was envied, resented, and harassed. She once came home to find her house was smeared with dung!

Mother, this is the biggest challenge of your life, to accept my homosexuality.
I whispered obscenities as I took my Zoology exam.
Cory's the sweetest decline I've ever had. I love him.
I was laughing to myself at the funniest memories today.
My bedroom is androgynous.
God, who are you? Do I write to the God inside me? Is it selfish to modify you to satisfy my own needs? Everything's in the mind. Faith and love are just in the mind. Confusion…

I love the fog here, which gets so thick in the Central Valley, as they call these parts, that you can't even see the house across the street. Needless to say this makes for dangerous road conditions. Pileups are a regular occurrence here in the winters when the fog is thickest. People die.

I am socially inept with my own people. Awkward. Assyrians are so judgmental. Rodney's mother has been rude to Vivian because Vivian doesn't speak Assyrian and is vegetarian. I find this disheartening and vow again to stay away from the Assyrian community in every way imaginable.
"I don't want to sing anymore. I want to live, just like a normal woman, with children, a home, a dog," Callas once confessed. I suppose this is why gay men identify so readily with female performers, with divas. Our plight is similar in that we seek a rest from performance and share a futile attempt at living normal lives.
I retreat to my sanctuary and read.

Last night Cory and I left the bar because we weren't in the mood for fake people and went to grab something to eat. It was exactly what I needed, what I've desired for so long. Someone to connect with spiritually. We talked about obsessive behavior, addictions to chemicals and people, plays. He said that one of the scenes from "Cabin Fever" had seemed to be talking to him one afternoon in class when it was read aloud. He had felt exposed. Cory is straight!
The guy behind the counter at the convenience store downtown seemed to undress me with his eyes as I bought cigarettes from him. I fantasized that I returned later to him, this big, swarthy young man who takes me into the stockroom where he pushes me onto a crate, unzips his pants, pulls out his cock, which is fat and brown, and shakes it before me. It is fleshy. I can smell it already, it is musky. I take it into my mouth where it grows larger, thicker, stiffening in my saliva. The head is soft, bulbous, its hole gives me subtle salty tastes of him. He holds my head in his palms, steadies my face, and pushes deeper into my mouth, curving into my throat. He keeps thrusting and does not care that I gag. For giving is not always a comfortable thing, it is hard to breathe when one is giving a blowjob, or love, or one's heart to others. I allow myself to write my sexual fantasies in my journal because I have learned that in my mind they are safe, on paper they are fiction, but that in real life they are degrading and hurtful.
Rodney called and apologized yesterday. I was of course open, forgiving, and gracious.

Now that it's late and I've loosened with a few beers I think back on the day and wonder what it is about Gary that stresses me so much. He arrived with a box of chocolates and a tender willing smile. We had Turkish coffee and talked about our friends. I got teary when he spoke of friends he's lost to "the monster", wonderful personalities gone before their time. He said that he'd like to take a day trip somewhere on Monday. I was reluctant to commit. I know I hide the answer to my great questions somewhere behind a thin vale, just out of reach. I'm almost there, the light falls on me though it's dim, but I'm too far gone into a fantasy of what relationships should be to realize the reality. All those silly poems about imagined "husbands". I don't know. I don't know.
One night I found the courage and the humor to say to mom, 'I really wonder what atrocious fantasies you've worked up in your mind about me. If you only talked to me things would not get so out of control in your head.' She only broke into a smile and said nothing. I know she thinks I'm out there fucking my brains out.
The rain has let up and the streets have drained. Gary will go to Reno tomorrow for a few days. Mom will return from Marin. Dad will drive that horrible taxi that I hate, hate, hate. God will remain a blur. Rodney will be partying hard in San Francisco. Bell will continue to baffle me though he is my only brother. Iran will dangle, faint and misty, in the distance. Everyone a dream.
It feels like our life as a family lasted for only a moment. Our beginning in Iran a flash, a glimpse, a bright and blinding bulb. And I adore it. I cherish it. I know now that everything is temporary, everything. I have lived. I'm not hungry for anything tonight. I will be insecure. I will be poor. But damn it, I will write! I will use my talents. And I will live.

At fifty-three, "I have nothing. What am I going to do?" And at fifty-three Maria Callas dies.
Cory gives me "Siddhartha" to read.
Gary's in Reno. Thoughts of him circle the perimeters of my affection.

Christmas Eve. We are having cheese, crackers, and wine. Sade is on, her voice raw and the melodies sweet. Hugs, kisses, and Christmas wishes of joy. Long distance conversations with friends and family. This is my favorite Christmas ever! I hope everyone I know is at peace tonight, free from all their sorrows.

Something holds me back always. Something present, familiar, but diaphanous. I ache in every respect, not as a victim, but as a human being. This is so familiar. I feel like I'm falling as in a dream in which you have no control over things. I just want the ideal between mother and me.
I love this journal, it is a balm when I haven't won mother over, when my body fails me, when I haven't been able to replace the past. Here I can get a hold of an invisible redemption. Here I step out. I step in. The sea swells. The sea swallows.

While I listen to Callas I realize that her voice is a force she has tamed, trained, something fierce and tender. I wonder how it feels to have such a voice explode out of one's head?
It is not sex that makes a man a homosexual. There are many straight men that have sex with other men. It is loving another man, having emotional attachments to other men, being committed to the cause and the movement that makes a man gay.
I cannot mingle my creative life with my family life. They differ greatly. I really should have been born into a family of artists. Another miss. But I know that nothing will pass in vain. I will write. I will rape and expose life as it has me.
I enjoy the threshold, the perimeter. I do not commit to plans. I tell others to call back and lie on my bed reading, harboring this strange expectant sensation. I create a world in which I wait, I suffer impatience, I celebrate, I grow. Reality is unknown to me. I hold no fears in my hand. No duties. Only illusion.

It takes talent to live. It takes talent and patience to live and tell.
I have to constantly remind myself that I came to Modesto to read, to write, and to heal, not to combat personalities. I will say it again, Assyrians are difficult people. I discover that I'm still fragile after everything that's happened to toughen me up. I am bendable, even breakable, like revelations, or a love for flowers, drunk thoughts, words like music, pages like scores, a maestro of depth, the Callas of literature, and love always, this disclosure of the self, the psychology of desire, polarity, candor.

There aren't enough hours in a day. Is that what age does? Take away time? Things are fast as always. Ebbing along. I am swept away by personalities and spirits, smiles and caution. The past few months have been bliss because I can sense my writing changing, growing, filling that lifelong hole of incompleteness. I skim over the many recent events. Danced. Smoked. Ran. Wrote. Laughed. Laughed. Laughed. Talked. Masturbated. Dreamt. Journaled. Kissed my great-grandmother who complained that she is old and ugly, and felt myself become human again. Love should not be forced, but felt.
Got a card and a check in the mail from my father, and was deeply touched. It made me think of his alcoholism, his love, our arguments, the distance, and recovery. The card is even written in his own handwriting, not Lena's or Bell's. I feel his spirit in the paper. There is nothing I can ever say to him or give to him that will fully express the love I feel for him. The love shall remain forever inside me, as a burden and a light. His every hardship and sacrifice, all his pain and loss are as well mine. He'll never know just how much I share with him. I am nothing compared to everything he's seen, lived, and been through in his lifetime. What do I know? I am nothing.

I ask God to take my parents, who have all their life loved and worshipped Him, into His care. I simply ask Him to be there, be there whether in Iran or in America. Be there, be there. I ask this knowing that they fight me exactly because of their love for Him. It's always been either Him or me. So, I ask Him to prove to me that He loves them, to cradle them. Forget me, burn me in eternal fire, but embrace them in Your heavenly comfort for they, with all their faults, have earned it!

I am still in bed. Vivian just called upset. I guess I said something insensitive last night that affected her deeply. Though, Vivian is always affected deeply. She said she went home and cried for two hours and went for a long walk this morning, considered breaking off our friendship. I listened patiently, still half-asleep, baffled. I would never have intentionally belittled her. I apologized and Vivian thanked me for having listened without interrupting. Naturally, I appreciate that she has confronted me. She reminded me that I myself had said in the beginning of our friendship that we will do and say things to accidentally hurt each other, and that we will need to remain open, forgiving. Yet another friendship survives its own idiosyncrasies.
Afternoon. Our cultural differences burn and are very much alive. I am not my mother's son. She is my noose. She is the pain in my strained throat from which angry words are spit out, hitting their mark, then dropping to the floor from their own weight, into the rift, the gap where my longing for a connection dances in the flames, in the distance in our relationship. I wish for an alternate lineage. She is the iceberg my boat crashes against. I sink in her home and find no lifesaver in my phonebook. Friends are thousands of miles away. I drown in my own thoughts and desires for independence, for freedom from family. I am stubborn. Ironically, only distance will save this mother-son relationship. We both flail in the same frozen sea. Reading is my last hope.
She has the power to rip me into a myriad shreds, toss me to the wind, and twist the blade further with maternal care and tenderness. I hate that! What's the point in painting a nude only to place a screen before the masterpiece? We are vulnerable but strained. We try to hide our truth, break our truce. We are in the same struggle but fighting each other, when we ought to be advocates for each other. Mother, give me all of it! All your approval, not some. Not an impression or a semblance of your love. All of it!
We have company and I've just gone out there and partaken in traditional kisses on both cheeks, handshakes, and talk of how outrageous prices have gotten in Iran. After a few minutes I sneak away and seek refuge once more in the pages, the pages, the pages.
From Anais Nin's "Ladders To Fire": "Sabina appeared as the woman with gold hair, and then later as the woman with black hair, and it was equally impossible to keep a consistent image of whom she had loved, betrayed, escaped from, lived with, married, lied to, forgotten, deserted." Saxophone lines all throughout!

From "Cabin Fever"- Alfonzo: He is beautiful. Not demigod beautiful. Imperfect, exotic beautiful. His nose is long and prominent. Eyes are mysteriously set and black. Hair an upheaval of waves. He always reads in the chair by the window. His spectacles slide slightly off and he pauses to fix them- finds me watching him. We've known each other for a long time but we are not bored with each other. He stands. I think he is coming to me, but stops at the curtains. It's gotten suddenly dark and begins to rain. He loves the rain more than anything. He chooses the rain instead of me. In an instant he has changed and gone. But I wait. I like the wait. It gives me a particular sensation in the abdomen that tingles downward into my pelvis with every thought. Or is it emotion? The rain pelts the window. I imagine him- handsome in juxtaposition to the gray and the concrete. Oil running on the pavement, creating haphazard rainbows. I relish the time waiting in the darkened room. Instead of having me he lets the rain have him. But I am not resentful. I am flattered as a pomegranate that is savored. I notice his wingtips by the chair at the window. By now the anticipation has reduced me to a pesky child. I abandon all self-restraint. After all, I am alone and no one will know. Anything is possible. I crawl to the wingtips. I have undressed. I smell the leather that is tinged with a slight scent of his body. I kiss them as a sudden act of submission and return quickly to the bed. There is a pang in my heart for the secret he'll never know. I have given myself to him in his absence as he gives himself to the rain and the street in ways I will never claim to fathom. These are my own erotic secrets as when I think of him while eating something delicious, and become aroused. He thinks it's the basil and garlic that make me sigh. But it is he. His flesh, his touch, his absence and his return. And before I am able to complete the phrases in my mind he is back. He does not look like the same man. Not civilized and reserved by the window, reading. This man arrives from elsewhere, violently traversing the boundaries of the self. Desire always alters his face. He looks like another. I taste scotch on his breath and am not confused. I know him… well.
Alfonzo speaks of trust here, something I do not possess. But the things I long for in real life I can attain in imagination, in writing.
Kyle reveals something quite different: One night in college we were bored, so a bunch of us drunk assholes piled into an old beater and drove fifty miles to The Anvil, a gay bar we'd heard of. Richard Sullivan, a sheriff's son was driving. He told me about a buddy of his who had beat up some fags in Seattle and how exhilarating it had been. They were doing the right thing. The filthy homosexuals deserved it. Anyway, the plan was that when we got to the vicinity of the bar we'd pull up to other cars and ask them for directions to The Anvil. If the person were gay he'd help us out. Well, it wasn't long before we got one. The poor bastard. I could see the reservation on his face, at first, but he dismissed it assuming we were new to the gay scene, or something. He was really nice about it, too. Attractive as I recall. He said that he was headed that way and to follow him, the bar was just up the road. Bingo! The others were ducked down in the back and once we got there we jumped him in the parking lot. We took turns pelting him with stones, kicking him to the ground, someone had a baseball bat. I kicked him too. I even spit on him, called him names. I remember he tried to scream, but all that came out was the sound of blood gurgling.
What is life but an unfinished tower of unappeased promises? Full of tomorrows. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Half moons. I want more. More than a darkness half lighted. Alfonzo: I'm an angry person inside.
I don't think of penises or pussies, I think of touch. I think of laughter. All my life I have loved the impossible. Even as a child I clung on, I knew. I knew. Brandon, you will never know how hard I fought to give you up. I had to move! But you weren't the only addiction I tried to leave behind. I know how a woman feels and suffers.

But what is so wrong with a woman that as a man I should fear feeling her plight? My body is male but my interior is both male and female. I am a scale. I am a coin. I am heaven and earth. I am better and worse. I am a land and there is no map. I can improvise in love and in living, in art and in creativity, in the many ambiguities of life. With all this magic in life we imprison ourselves in the roles. In duties. In hate. In doubt. I think of my parents and how much they have suffered within their roles, their duties, their doubts. Mother struggled so much, she scratched at life, fought like a de-clawed cat against a rabid dog. But all the while dad was far more delicate than she. Sensitive. Less desperate. Male versus female. Again. In me. Flirting. Someone left the gates open tonight and the wind blows hard. The perfume is too lovely tonight. But I must sleep.

From "Ladders To Fire": "She had lost herself somewhere along the frontier between her inventions, her stories, her fantasies, and her true self. The boundaries had become effaced, the tracks lost, she had walked into pure chaos, and not a chaos which carried her like the wild galloping of romantic riders in operas and legends, but a cavalcade which suddenly revealed the stage prop: a papier-mâché horse."

New Year's Eve. I love the San Francisco Bay Area. It's raining hard and everything is gray. The hills are shy behind white mist. I belong here. I can easily visualize myself writing and living here in the mountains. Often, what I envision manifests in time. Everything. Didn't I wish myself out of youth's insanity? Leaving Modesto was like leaving a tunnel. There were mountains, an ocean, the bridges of the bay. But I have sworn to remain patient in Modesto. After all, my confidence as a writer has grown there.
Maybe it is because of my father's flushed expression, heavy eyelids, and faltering little steps that I am here. Or maybe I am in charge of myself. Maybe I am the captain of this ship. The pilot of my own destiny. When crashing I am always forewarned and parachute to the safety of an unexpected and new destination. But safe nonetheless.
Buckets of water are thrown at me and I am helpless and wet from others' suggestions and ideas of how I should live my life, what I should study in school, who I should love. Soaked in insinuations of what "success" means. And my only retaliation is a meager little squirt gun!
It rains. I sip mango tea. I'm reminded of how long it's been since I've dreamt of romance and a partner. The urge to create grows in my womb. To paint. To build something. To preoccupy myself. I will find a way. But why should I feel like I'm running out of time? Or that it's already too late?
A handsome, mature, Assyrian couple has just left us and I am drenched. Mom and the wife had their own conversation on one side of the table and the husband sought me to torture. Cold, salty buckets. I shiver even in the aftermath. Talk of God and Christianity. Christian faith and being Assyrian. As if there is only a single definition for being Assyrian! I feel outnumbered and uneasy. Behind the warmth tonight, underneath the grace, through the incense and stained glass came a light that was conditional and asphyxiating. Man, natural and naked, was made to lurk with his instincts and feel shame for his perfect desires. Christianity is the false adornment of the inner monstrosities of men. Homophobic, destructive men. A hindrance to the evolution of our children, of me. Obdurate faith is not faith at all. But fear, illusion. I'm tired of blue-eyed Jesuses! Myth versus enlightened progress. Celestial discrimination impedes spiritual enlightenment. The divine gavel is fast to condemn. I choose to feel this pain and guilt no longer. Christianity has ruined any hope for reconciliation between my parents and me. They are swept away from me every day by the very fears and intolerances that the church has instilled in them for hundreds of years to come. Inexorable fears.
When I pause to survey the rips and tears that shred the very fabric of my bond with my family I see that the break has not been tidy at all. The tears are imperfect, violent, obviously made by a dull blade. An ancient instrument. A sharpened stone. The abortion was performed by potions. A bitter rejection. A massive bleeding of broken homes and memories. Lifelong conflicts. Survival. I want love, faith, light, belief in something loving, honesty, strength. I believe in liberation and cannot hate my parents. I must live among and with them. I must love them for who they are made. I must be "creative" again. Creatively leap over the rips and gaps to them. Force wings to grow out of my shoulder blades. Fake dexterity. Move among them as if unfettered until I have again found my home and my place in this universe.
From Anais Nin's "Children Of The Albatross": "They persisted in living on familiar terms only with the surface of their personalities, and what she reached lay deeper where they could not see it. They felt at ease among their falsities, and the nakedness of her insight seemed like forcing open underworlds whose entrance was tacitly barred in everyday intercourse. They would accuse her of living in a world of illusion while they lived in reality. Their falsities had such an air of solidity, entirely supported by the palpable. But she felt that on the contrary, she had contact with their secret desires, secret fears, secret intents. And she had faith in what she saw."
Mom and I made cream puffs. Vivian called from San Francisco. She said that Rodney had seven beers in the morning before their train ride. What is the pain he feels? This unspoken pain that is so common in Assyrian households. This shield of silence I've been trying to break since childhood in our own family, always encouraging dialogue, some expression of feelings. But anyway, Vivian said that although she, Rodney, and Maryam walked the same streets she and I once had they failed to notice and appreciate the details of the city, the murals, the facades, the very elements that make a city out of confusion, and art out of a city. I only felt that I was missing out for a moment because I was more satisfied with my decision to stay at Casa De Maria with mom and keep her company. Soon mom and I will make dinner, some rare and exciting dish, maybe Assyrian or Iranian.
America feels free tonight, free from concern and bondage, responsibility.
Chicago has just rung in the New Year, and I imagine that friends are shouting in ecstatic intoxication, kissing, holding each other. Outside, their breaths will be exhaled in visible vapors of laughter, celebration, and finally exhaustion. I wish every single one of them a year of emotional and financial success. I wish them health. I had forgotten what missing Chicago felt like. Meanwhile, here at the rest home, in this room in which mom and I remain close to the residents who have long retired to their beds, I entertain frightening questions without words about the future. Blurry images floating and flashing. Then passing. And I wonder if my plays, my writing will give me the approval I need to exist. To live. But I know that the reassurance I seek can only come from within.
Midnight. Happy New Year!