May 1998

I met Anna at the house on the hill in Mill Valley. I felt like I was in a European village what with the silence in the hills, so many beautiful homes peaking out of a sea of trees. Roads tortuous and narrow. Driveways paved of gravel, plaintive under our feet. This the home of a friend who was in Ireland with her family. Anna was the substitute hostess. Josh- blond, tall, slender, and romantic, boyish, upbeat, American, and sweet- with whom we work at the restaurant arrived with bags filled with groceries.
Anna gave us a tour of this upper-class American home in the hills, shaggy sheepdog included. Huge, heavy pieces of antique furniture filled the house that was otherwise open and painted brightly. I noted that there were many framed black and white photographs hung all about as we descended the staircase into the bedrooms. When I inquired about the photographs Anna informed us the lady of the house was indeed a professional photographer.
I immediately fell in love with a photograph of two Muslim women wearing white veils and black robes, standing on a street corner in San Francisco, their hands clasped. Behind them pedestrians in western clothes remained suspended forever on the sidewalk, in that single moment. The women looked out of place- not that they didn't belong to the scene, just incongruous- and they seemed to be huddled, standing very near each other, striking in their robes, veils commanding respect and fascination.
I beat Anna and Josh at Ping-Pong, which was exhilarating and fun. Our faces were flushed from laughter and motion.
We set about preparing Josh's famous extra-cheesy lasagna accompanied by garlic bread and a simple mixed green salad. Anna got us stoned in the kitchen where the three of us washed, cut, cooked, and talked.
Anna was tender and tactile, gave me a massage. Josh laughed at my silly but perfectly timed jokes. Often he sighed and said, "You're funny, Emil."
I leaned on a kitchen counter and said dramatically, 'You find me funny now because our friendship is fresh. One day you'll grow tired of my humor and won't laugh anymore.'
"You'll always be funny, Emil," Josh said soberly.
And I believed him.
Josh was content remaining in the kitchen because he said cooking reminded him of his only love in life- a certain Emily who taught him how to cook and to love, then broke his heart. Anna and I slipped to the front steps to smoke a cigarette.
"Friends for life," she said while we smoked reflectively in the last of the day's light in the Bay, the surrounding hills looking deeper in color, the homes small and silent, stillness, a peace, an openness. Depth.
"I like you so much, Emil. You're awesome. I can talk to you about things I can't with others," Anna confessed, her eyes sleepy and green. She told me a beautiful story.
On the day of her high school graduation she and a friend stole into the school's rose garden, which was then in full bloom, and proceeded to cut the stems and place them into baskets. When they were finished the garden was naked. That same afternoon, decked in their graduation gowns they stood at the entrance of the auditorium and greeted each girl of their class with a rose. The faculty was suspicious, every girl giddy. Only then did Anna notice that one of her cherished vintage lace gloves was missing. She was suddenly crestfallen.
Some time later that summer, in the same beautiful garden where she strolled with a boy she liked, the young man noticed something unusual sticking out from beneath a rosebush. He bent down and picked it up. It was the lace glove. The garden had held the glove like a grudge, and now returned the glove to the girl. Anna was elated and thanked the rose garden.
Inside, Josh had opened a bottle of wine and was obviously enjoying the beautiful memories of love cooking evoked for him. He listened to jazz- his passion- and said the sound of wineglasses being placed on a tabletop reminded him of his childhood in Marin, of his parents sipping wine, reading, listening to music, conversing, being civilized… unlike my and Anna's parents.
Josh plays the saxophone, student-teaches music in the city. I believe his appreciation and understanding of music allow him romantic glimpses into life. Yet, also this same passion gives him a practical approach to things, as music has a mathematical element. He lives fully, with love, but without destructive or manipulative undertones. He can desperately miss Emily but not resent her, or regret the experience, the relationship. He still remembers the firsts, the smallest details, a word, the moments.
He talked of these reflectively as he rested from his duties in the kitchen, surrendering his creation to the oven. He sat down, crossed his legs, recalled the time Emily uttered his full name, Joshua, and how validated he had felt, that she had received him for who he was as a total of a young man, not just a lover, not half-heartedly.
When we had eaten, drunk, smoked, and discussed love, life, loss, fear, and hope we found we were exhausted and sleepy, and had been for some hours now, but the dialogue had sustained us well into the wee hours of morning, distracting us from our fatigue and intoxication. Anna had long crashed, her already sleepy eyes shut softly, her lengthy healthy body curled on the plush sofa, breathing inaudibly, dreaming, unmoving.
Josh and I retired downstairs to our appointed quarters and bid each other good night from our beds.
'Good night, Josh. Thanks for the wonderful conversation.'
"Good night, Emil. Thanks for listening."
I fell asleep that night in the home of a photographer and mother who was thousands of miles away on another continent vacationing with her husband and only child, their cat settling on my chest, myself feeling adrift, rippling upon the magic and wonder of being in my twenties, a handsome young man who loves, who learns daily what it might mean to be human but doesn't dare, who changes constantly because in change he finds he is in accord with the moments that pass with a celerity too final and frightening to fathom from a place of shiftlessness, among loving friends, in the hills, underneath a canopy of trees.
In the morning I woke up as the twenty-four-year-old Assyrian man who reads Anais Nin diaries on the bus, pauses to take notes, forgets he is creative, talented, intelligent, and succumbs to feelings of insecurity, of dread, grief, doubt; but continues to traverse the darkness of prosaic moments with coloring pencils, writing his path through the colorless ruins; sketching his way to the peaks that inevitably give way and swallow him, bringing him back to his life, his family, work, money, school, war, hunger; the one who builds himself a vagrant's home inside conversations, pitches a tent within the bond that will end… it always does…
In a letter to Vivian: As an Assyrian, a foreigner, a "Resident Alien", I have an uncanny ability to acclimate spontaneously to any given setting and situation, quickly, sometimes even gracefully. The transient has no home but lives everywhere- be it a barroom, the embrace of a lover, the passenger seat of someone else's car, America, Iran, imagination. It is a talent to belong.
One night at the restaurant we host a small high school reunion. The partygoers are men and women in their mid-thirties. I tend the wine bar, standing erect as they do in the movies, speaking very little as if I am just an extra, smiling. A gorgeous young couple approaches the makeshift bar and the wife asks, "What's for dinner?"
For a moment I am taken aback as though this is a pop quiz. I only answer, 'Chicken.'
"Say it like you're selling it," the wife advises me flirtatiously.
'Chicken,' I say again, this time sensually, hoarsely, my eyes half-closed.
The couple chuckles and walks away.
Later in the night the same woman corners me, obviously a little intoxicated, a glass of red wine tilting precariously in her manicured hand. Her dress is beautiful, the fabric shines and is given shape by her curves, movements. She says she's from Panama and talks, talks, talks. I can't get a word in. I see in my periphery that Geoff, my co-worker, watches me and laughs. Finally, Jennifer, another loving co-worker, rescues me. Later, she tells me that the woman's own husband had sent her over to unhinge the Panamanian from me.
"It must be your haircut," Jennifer had joked.
It seems that in no time the entire party is drunk, and to entertain ourselves we the staff soberly mock them from across the room. Someone complains loudly that she has lost her purse. It takes everything in me not to roll my eyes when I suggest she look on the patio where she'd been last with her own bottle of tequila. She returns moments later with the abandoned purse pressed to her chest, and tips me twenty-dollars, which I place into the community tip jar.
From the bar I continue to watch the party and am suddenly reminded of my own experience in high school, and how harrowing it was at times. Even now, as adults, the reunited high schoolers seem to be forming cliques all about the restaurant. There are the popular ones and the not so popular ones, the token gay, no blacks. When the class football star arrives everyone flocks around him. I overhear he is the lauded coach of the UCLA team and has recently been on television.
The man who is disfigured and possesses only one ear, and the short unattractive woman who put the whole thing together, remain on the outside of every merry circle. They try their hardest to break through and join in the merrymaking, as they probably had as teenagers, but are successfully kept on the margins, looking almost foolish, sheepish, smiling awkwardly, artificially.
I can observe the uneven flow of the party, its distinct social hierarchy, because it is all so well defined and flagrant.
More than once I notice that someone hands the disfigured man their camera and asks him to take a shot of the giggling group. At no point is he included in the portraits.
Never invited. Never initiated.
I continue to empathize with the outcasts and to notice these unjust nuances because I know exclusion so well. I can recognize it from a mile away. Perhaps not just as a homosexual, but also as the foreign child who did not speak the language, did not wear the latest fashions, did not know how to play sports, was fat, sensitive, different, despicable.
The vital moments…
Winter and summer. Anything else is a mere wish for temperance, for moderation, for normalcy. In this story there are no middles, no in-betweens. This is the story of a young man, an everyday person caught in the season of extremes. I do not know spring, autumn. I can only dream of them, listen to others' accounts of them. I suppose that's youth; one is constantly faced with his own philosophical mortality in a milieu of sensational conditions, torn between strength and weakness, vapid sobriety or near-death intoxication, innocence and desire for the perverse, shiftlessness or compulsive activity, marriage or vagrancy, heterosexuality or… well, you'll see…
Who's right? Who's wrong? In familial matters all are victims, all are culprits. All succumb to sordid, twisted perceptions of one another. Reaction is just as much to blame as provocation. And when silence settles the minutes reveal the overreactions, the unmeant accusations, the irony and futility of blame and battling. The insanity. The anger. The ruthless guilt of hurting those we love. And the deepest secrets are revealed… about others and more profoundly about ourselves.
This afternoon I found out that twice my mother tried to kill herself when she was newly married to my father. My hope for freedom from the desire to die seemed to come to a numb, soundless, colorless, unfeeling standstill as I received this news from my grandmother as one more prophetic seal of my own damnation.
So this is what happens to women who were "given away" in marriage? This is where they end up? Is insanity what awaits her when she has moved to the States and divorced, when suddenly she comes face to face with herself for the first time since childhood? Her children have grown and she finds she has no other skills, no education, no roots, no purpose. What is she to do now? Remarry? Return to that hopeless hell? And what about the anger, the indignation she feels? Where is she to focus that? So, she turns on those who love her because thirty years ago they "gave her away"…
Oh mother, I understand. I understand! How desperately I want to pull you out of the fire, drag you out of the muddy water, shelter you from the senseless storm, save you from the wreckage of your life. Maybe if I can change you I can alter the course of the legacy that runs through my own veins. And how can I say any of this to you? How do we talk about these things that are so deeply a part of our lives like the very organs in our bodies, cells we possess but cannot see with the naked eye? How do we talk of possible cures for a disease we share, but for which we have no name? How will we know when we are only mother and son, and not doctors and scientists?
She asks, "Do you think I can make it on my own?"
'What if I say no? What if a hundred, a thousand people say no, you can't? What does it matter? What do you believe?'
She thinks about this for a moment, her head hung low, her demitasse cup of Turkish coffee half empty.
"Yeah…" she whispers reflectively. And breaks my heart once more.
What I wish more than anything in this world is for her to find her strength and become liberated from her silly fears and destructive doubts. Silly fears and doubts we share by blood. The same forebodings, the same inhibitions. I love her as my own child because so often our roles are so completely reversed.
She cannot bear to be in this house that is not her own. She dallies in the garden for hours, smoking, thinking too much, talking to herself.
I grew up in battle. Aside from the Iran/Iraq war there existed my parents' loveless marriage- a union of disparate goals, needs, and wishes. Nineteen years of this. I grew up sensing the absence of kisses, of tenderness. There was never romance. Romance was considered frivolous, western. It was not for us! And I learned belligerence from them. I used their own tactics against them when I was old enough to resent them for the wars. The battles. So I know about anger, about quarrels. I know them well. I know them intimately.
And I don't want this kind of knowledge to rule me, to guide me, to influence me in life. I am first and foremost tender, then I am violent.
While talking to Shammi on the phone about the dramas here at home not only do I come to feel better and less alone, but I also come to feel that I am steering and manipulating Shammi's responses, controlling the course of the conversation by withholding some of the truth, disclosing only that which I am intuitively certain will paint me in a complementary light.
Still no plan, no direction, no formula, nothing visible. I just write. Just flow. I do not plan, do not strangle the creative process with wishes, with hopes, with structure. I listen to the whispers that hold the next sentence, the coming ideas, a paragraph, a twist, and page. I listen, but I don't sit in silence and wait for a sign. I remain active, moving, living, constantly stimulated, exposing myself to the elements, and the elemental! It is in action and reaction that a simple verse, a poetic phrase, a living character flowers. In struggle and entanglements I find my words. As long as the diary is filled, has reason to exist, and grows I will never run out of reasons to live.
Out of ashes and destruction a ray of light, an echo, a murmur of hope. Yesterday, at her checkup, mother mentioned to the doctor that she thinks she might be suffering from depression, and asked if he could prescribe her some medication to help balance her moods. The doctor was sympathetic and did so, but first he had her fill out a form, a questionnaire. After reviewing this he had agreed, "Yes, you do show symptoms of depression." On the drive home mother admitted this to me laughingly, "And I lied on the questionnaire. If I had been totally honest they would have locked me up!"
At a traffic standstill, under a bridge, I found the courage to say to my mother, 'Life will always oppose us. It is our own reaction that decides our fate…' She seemed to agree and understand.
Anger and blame.
Excuses and blindness.
Blindness…
Blindness…
The diabetic man, the one who is tall and thin as a tree, whom I always meet at the bus stop, whose vision has been deteriorating for some time now, tells me that it is about three hundred steps from his home to the bus stop. I don't say this, but I am blind too, and this diary is my own way of counting steps- keeping track of the occurrences that have led me to the present. I am in search of the formula.
I have to know. Always. Even when I pee I count in my head the number of beverages that I have consumed, the drinks that have led me to the toilet! Neurotic? Yes. Human? Yes.
Blindness…
Blindness…
There is another man in my neighborhood who cannot see. I help him cross the street that is wide and sunny. We walk arm and arm like lovers. Who says I do not have love affairs? Just unique, short ones…
Connection, clairvoyance, symbolic exchanges. Not money, not math, not formal education, not real life. No, I'm not escaping life. But building my own life, feeling life, receiving it as a poet, a soul, a spirit.
Today I had the opportunity to play into a self-induced drama, but did not. I broke a pattern.
When night falls I dream of a kiss that tastes of the street when it has rained…
Dream: I cut a gash into my penis. It bleeds profusely. I wash myself and bandage the wound meticulously.
There is a force beyond my own understanding and control that insists I touch the world, communicate to the world, establish a poetic bond that is otherwise missing in real life. The separation I feel so desperately with those around me in my waking life remains my challenge and creative goal. I long for reunion. I feel that once I was a part of the world but that somewhere in time, along the irrational course of life and living, this changed, and changed drastically.
My respect and fear of the moment engender me with receptivity, an inherent creativity that continues to steer my soul through the vertiginous streets of unmapped emotions and perilous relationships.
The artistic life is like grapefruit- not always tasty but healthy for the soul.
It's like language. When I lived in Iran I learned Farsi. When I was thrown among Americans I learned English. When I believe I am an artist, a writer, I live, breathe, make decisions, and write more readily and creatively. All I have to do is believe. But when I believe I am only insane I begin to doubt my talents, my faith, and live destructively.
And when I know I am loved I move through the day smiling inwardly, churning with reveries of a white dove.
And what about this crap about gay men being promiscuous! How many times in a day do I see straight men practically undressing women- mothers, twelve-year-olds, black, blond, overweight or famished? Given half the chance a straight man would be more than happy and willing to fuck ten women in one day! I'm willing to bet my diary on it that eight out of those ten women would either be unwilling or underage. Look, truth is everyone likes to fuck! Let's not kid ourselves. It's just that in the heterosexual milieu there's a gender disproportion regarding sexual discretion and appetite. Infidelity and divorce is not a sign of a religious or moral downfall, but an inevitable sexual uprising!
After work Anna busted out her one-hitter and we got high. In San Rafael I got off the bus to go write at one of my favorite coffee houses and happened upon a street fair on 4th Street. There were people everywhere in the sun, antique cars on display, a stage and live music. I got a beer and walked around by myself, observed the colors and the sounds, the rolling of skates on pavement, laughter, names being called out, bells, men huddled about shiny cars, peering into open hoods, shuffling, grinning, sipping beers out plastic cups and saying things like, "You gotta understand, America wasn't ready for these models then. They were into spaceships." The man who makes this out-of-this-world statement wears his hair long behind his ears, has on a baseball cap, a fuchsia t-shirt, and neon pink suede shoes. This scene, being in the very midst of it, makes me suddenly hyper conscious of the moment, and the realization that I am in the States, fraternizing with the possibility that I might be fitting in, beer in hand, gel in hair, able to speak the language, understand the humor, comprehend the popular references. But I know better. This does not make me American, or a citizen. Being emotionally involved with my setting does not grant me the same privileges. I have to remember this no matter how disheartening the reality. I know that writing, thinking, and formulating ideas in English do not change where I come from and who I am…
At the coffee shop I see Sheila, the regular who looks so much like Virginia Woolf. From our past exchanges I surmise that Sheila has pulled through an addiction to alcohol. She is a friendly and warm woman.
People. So many people.
The actor Sean Penn comes into the restaurant regularly for breakfast, sometimes with a male associate, sometimes with his wife Robyn. He is strikingly handsome, rough around the edges, gets up in the middle of his meals and steps outside to smoke a cigarette. Seems shy.
Notes and scenes, words and phrases make reality palatable, manageable. I've built my life around writing. Everything I do is unplanned with the child in mind, the art.
The wind rips through the neighborhood. A falling leaf attacked me today…
I wonder if those who read incessantly become books in the next realm, or paper; those who dwell, monuments, fountains, or benches; those who escape, clocks; politicians, dents in cars; the abused, fire; the mute, song…
A rather attractive bus driver stops me as I move to get off at the San Rafael hub. "Will you be taking another bus?" he asks holding out a transfer. I'm a little confused because he issued me a transfer when I got on. I do not answer him immediately. He asks me the same question again. Obviously he wants me to take the piece of paper from him. 'Thanks,' I take the folded transfer and get off. I turn and smile at the young driver with beautiful blue eyes, gelled hair, thick sideburns. It isn't until I am situated on another bus that I take the transfer out of my coat pocket and unfold it. Inside there is another piece of paper. It reads: I just wanted to tell you- you're beautiful! Frank (phone number) If I offended you I'm sorry (smiley face). I smile to myself, a little flattered, a little tickled. How novel, I think to myself.
I doubt I will ever call.
My father has had a stroke and slurred his words on the phone. He was impatient to get off the line. I suppose it was just too difficult for him.
I confuse myself with desire, desire, flagrant desire!
Desire for the ideal parent, for perfect inspiration and first novel, for a limitless wardrobe, for money, time, love and romance. Desire! For constant balance. Desire! For the impossible.
So I fold the constant battle of torrential wanting into this notebook and begin my day.