June 1997

Chicago has always inspired sex and poetry. I am sexually and poetically titillated again. My orgasms are pleasurable and come with force. I am happy.

I have mastered nowness. Is it that I know being in Chicago is temporary that I am able to be so in the moment?

I am only able to surrender wholly to being here because it is temporary. No contract. No commitment. Speechless amidst the beautiful old churches and the architecture I miss.
In the morning I called Novato to see how mom was doing. My grandmother answered. Her voice was exhausted, her volume spent. It was evident even long distance that she was deeply troubled by something. In my heart I knew it had to be mother. It didn't take long before Mom-Suzie broke down. As resilient as my grandmother has been through the years and as much as she has overcome and achieved, emotional and physical exhaustion always catch up with her. Sometimes we forget that she's human and has weaknesses of her own.
Mom-Suzie complained about my mother being impossible to talk to, that when she brings up the subject of us moving up to Marin County, where mother could help out at the rest home and have an income all her own, she becomes defensive and agitated.
Understandably my mother does not want to make the move for her own reasons: her friends live in Modesto where she has a community there that is Assyrian and her own. In Marin, on the other hand, there are so few Assyrians. Also, mother has convinced herself that she could never live with her sister and mother. She resents them because she depends on them.
I consoled my grandmother with what little energy I had in the morning, and felt superficial in trying to muster up the compassion, but tried as hard as I could.
Mom-Suzie said that she had no reservations about me living with them, that I am "polite", a "good yalah" (Boy.)
She asked that I speak with mother who was there.
My mother sounded immediately defensive, curt, and distant. My heart raced as it always does when I have to confront her- my own mother whose heart is weak, lashing out like something wild and solitary.
"What do you know?" she asked coldly when I attempted to reassure her that moving would be best for all of us.
I took a deep breath, spoke with as much evenness as I could muster, 'Mom, I know what's going on. I'm not stupid. I know about your anger with your family, how you blame them for having ruined your life, but they haven't. You have so much ahead of you. Your life is not over like you say it is.'
I continued, stumbling through the words that rose out of my heart, unprepared for a task well out of my league. Everything I said felt like the wrong thing to say.
She could hardly speak she was so choked up. Beginning to weep now, silently into the telephone.
'Everything is so sad for you,' I continued, 'Things aren't as bad as you think.'
It kills me to know how much my mother battles her perception, drowning between what is actually real and what she believes to be real.
I urge her to start her life. I pray for her. I think of her in everything I do, everywhere I am, because it seems that so much of my own well-being rides on my parents' happiness. I wonder if I'll ever be free. I suppose I am the one who can decide that for myself.

I have been reading my diary from high school. Was I really that insecure? That dependent? That moody? That insensitive?
I think dad may have had a drink tonight. The energy in the apartment is not right. Something is wrong. Lena just showed me a photograph of a transsexual, sent from Iran. She is a lovely older woman, married even to a loving husband. I am more than surprised about this. But I am hopeful, proud. How wonderful that she is accepted by those around her. In Iran! I knew it- acceptance does break through all cultural taboos, any religious fetters. It's at moments like these that I can no longer excuse my own family for their unwillingness and intolerance.

In his car, in afternoon traffic, listening to music, Brandon asked, "Why do you have to live so far away?"
Summers in Chicago are beautiful. Everyone seems to be in a perpetual state of utter appreciation. I believe I am this content because I know being here is temporary. Permanence repels me, frightens and depresses me. Change and mobility inspire me. Cocktails with old friends are enchanting. The streets flow by while we become intoxicated, laughing. My friendship with Brandon is safe again. I am no longer hopeless around him. I feel independent, unattached. This has been my biggest worry, though I did not admit to its seriousness. When one denies having fallen in love with a straight best friend one denies having fallen out. We seem to have a new system that works for the both of us. It's funny how powerless I used to feel around him, yet all the while I was the one who was in charge of the entire plot and theme of our friendship. I was delusional. And romantic.

Simon's is a small neighborhood bar in Andersonville. Maggie looked the same, her gestures the same, expressions the same. I found it difficult to be with her. She kept distant by acting cool, name-dropping, talking only about her favorite local bands, nothing real or intimate.

I traveled in the rain to meet Lisa at Ennui where we rehashed common antics from a tempestuous past and youth. We laughed at our dysfunction, romances, the betrayals and triumphs of then. All the while buxom bodies in paintings on the walls around us twisted in impossible forms. The ceiling fans oscillated and hummed mournfully. The rain stopped. Lisa and I had slipped into the dumbwaiter that had returned us to the darkness and doubt, the guilt and anger of remembering, of recollecting our mistakes, making amends without actually apologizing. But this was no sad occasion, mind you. We were merely licking each other's wounds, confirming each other's losses, running our fingers over the brail narrative of having survived ourselves, youth, sex, depression.
I had brought a copy of "Third Rail" and was irrationally and inwardly insecure as we read it, desperate for Lisa's approval- one thing that has not changed at all. She loved it and said she could not believe I had written such a fine one-act. We laughed at this bratty underhanded complement.
Lena and I have our own jokes. We talk, we laugh. Occasionally, for no particular gain I approach her and kiss her on the cheek as if to rescue her from the perfunctory company of the other men in the household. I use big Assyrian words that I have picked up in Modesto just to hear her laugh out loud, a fine warm sound.
Alone again in the room where I slept as a teenager, wondering when exactly I stopped feeling a part of the world. Reading the earliest entries from my diary I am inclined to say: when I came out to others and began to identify as gay. As if the day one says the words the rift begins. But thinking about it more I realize that I never was a part of anything. I was never a part of the heterosexual institution. And any time I came even close to feeling or being one with my straight contemporaries was when I mimicked their behavior. But these were merely external alterations, not emotional and psychological realities for me. This grave difference gave me the illusion and task of being the victim, adopting a constant feeling of worthlessness, when really I am not a victim; I am not worthless for being queer. It is not all about me all the time! But this rift has been growing and shifting since. I want to find confidence and strength with which to educate others, not admonish them for their misinformation. I want to remain a part of every culture, the human society. Not counter-attack it or feel superior to it. We all belong. And maybe the issue isn't that I want to be embraced by my fellow human beings, but to be able to embrace them!

Strolling through The Old Town Art Fair with Chuck, Tom, and Donna, laughing together and conversing like adults, with reason, comfortably, I sensed all that is missing with my own parents. Here the divide between my relationship with my American family and my relationship with my Assyrian family of origin became once again flagrant. I tried to lose myself in my admiration for artists who have the ability to manipulate matter into aesthetic near-perfection- carvings, pottery, photographs, paintings, jewelry. The weather was flawless and a cool, cool breeze swept away the trepidation I smuggle with me everywhere I go.
Came home to the usual disenchantment. The very air about my father seemed to be brimming with resentment and grief. I could tell he was drunk. How vividly I had flashbacks of our many rows, now distant and familiar. My father is emotionally and intellectually deformed by this stealth chemical that swallows him as he swallows it. My own rage and reason vie for release in his presence when he is drunk, but I should know by now that it's useless to try to rage or reason with him. Tonight I abandon my need and this self-imposed duty to reform him. We are of separate realms and ideologies. I accept. I accept. I accept. But how do I actually cope? It is terrifying for me to contemplate at the most unsuspecting moments my own part in my relationships here in Chicago.

On the 'L' I got to thinking about my diary and writing. Even here within these ordinary pages I find it challenging to express my thoughts clearly, fully, to satisfaction. Thoughts are so complex, so abstract that to bring them to paper would produce not words, but shapes. Therefore I must begin experimenting with shapes in writing, with color, be more organic, offer myself in rhythms, reveal emotions through lines, circles, frank illustrations. I want to expose the invisible strings that are colorfully woven between all of us.

Yesterday, out of nowhere, Brandon pulled his new car over and let me drive it. For his sake I overplayed my enthusiasm. Life requires that I act most of the time. When I look back I know that a lot of the time I've had to act just to survive, and to be liked.
Smoking on his back porch I asked Brandon to tell me one negative thing about me.
"You're over-dramatic sometimes," he said without even having to think about it.
Lena looked baffled when she said to me, "I hope you don't think that I was lying to you when I said that your father has not been drinking." Dad had just gotten up from the sofa and awkwardly staggered to the bedroom, muttering some words we could not hear or understand.
"It's only since you've been here that he's started to drink again," she said mournfully, her forehead wrinkled, her eyes sagging.
And for a moment I became panicked in the dust of guilt and fear that had been roused by mere words. Is it me? I wondered to myself. Is it my fault that he drinks? A feeling of erosion inside, a clouded meadow.

I regret nothing. Who do you blame for growing?
Rain…
I'm always in search of recognition and approval. All the while this desperate search draws meaning away from the greatest experience of all- everyday life.
Dad was tender yesterday. He came into my room, into warm light, to give me money when all I want is free acceptance. He walked away. I asked him to return and give me a kiss. I recall his deep red face close to mine, his scent, his breath. Our hair waving bravely. Torn and meeting inside these fleeting encounters.
I welcome change as long as I've been the god who willed it.
I feel multi-dimensional.
And when I've been drinking I feel I can mingle with relatives, converse politely, graciously.

I want to give my father's struggle worth by learning from his errors in life. I want to be strong and fight the self-destruction which he's exemplified for me, and which I have easily adopted. I think of this in the most average moments in the day.

I caught dad drinking, gulping from a vodka bottle in the kitchen. I have proof now. I burn inside with rage and disappointment. Tears swell in my eyes. But I forgive him. I let him go. To his addiction. To his fate.
Today I found out that we are in fact moving to Marin County. So begin the disagreements, the sacrifices and the compromises. The new tears.
Marin is picturesque, closer to San Francisco, just across Golden Gate Bridge. I am thrilled about the move.

Eric Hoffer in "True Believer; Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movement" writes: "Poverty when coupled with creativeness is usually free of frustration. This is true of the poor artisan skilled in his trade and of the poor writer, artist and scientist in the full possession of creative powers. Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create; to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in, day out."

Spent the day on the phone with colleges trying to transfer transcripts from one to the other. Had a long conversation with Jackie concerning our future life together and mother. Jackie is stressed out by mom's uncooperativeness and worse yet, her desperation and retaliations. This is why I must be there with mom through this, to be on her side psychologically, to calm her, to sooth her. Although I doubt these miracles that I write about will happen I possess some hope. I fear I will slip into a familiar role of the little boy who fights back, losses composure and becomes equally disagreeable. But I have some faith.
The calm, cool interior of my present satisfaction with life is disrupted by white, laser flashes of uncertainty.

Spent the day at the Pride Parade reeling in the light and revelations. The inferiority I once harbored seems to have been set free, free to fly away with the confetti and the balloons. Wandering off with the drag queens who were colorful and coquettish.
I come back to my father's home, to my old neighborhood off of Devon where swarthy raven-haired children run about shrieking. Indian, Pakistani, Assyrian children. Women in Saris wrapped in gleaming fabric, men at windows smoking and fanning themselves in the humidity. The evening slowly cooling.
I'm exhausted. Walking. Senses overwhelmed.
Mother calls and tells me that I have received a scholarship because of my high grade point average. She sounds proud and perhaps I should be delighted, but I'm not. I'm more concerned with other feats, deeper successes, personal, emotional successes. I dream of equality, of a time and place where "them" or "they" shall be replaced by "us" and "we". Do I ask for too much?

Finished reading my early diaries and now I know that some of my relationships became a game for me, out of insecurity and weakness. I was petty in my search for power and control within my friendships and romances. Now I question myself. Why not accept things and people as they are and move forward?
Regarding my bond with Brandon I realize that it was I who manipulated the flow and mood, not he. I was the one who challenged his insensitivities. I was the one who flirted with his heterosexuality. I was the one who decided to advise him, listen to him, and guide him- like a wife, or a shadow. I am not the victim! I refuse to feel the need to be reimbursed for my efforts and sacrifices. After all, I enjoyed myself, didn't I? Perhaps this moment itself is the biggest gift Brandon could ever give me…
These slight shadows and subtle discolorations in my ties with people tell me that I am ready to let go.
Even as I read those early entries I become keenly aware of this permanent urge in myself for visibility and recognition. Everything I do, everywhere I go I desire a companion and an audience. A need to capture what is happening around me, to control, to break the wild horse that is experience and life. It is a rather selfish thing, but maybe without this kind self-centeredness I would not flourish artistically.
Now Lena calls my name.