September 1998

From the sidewalk patio of a brewery in San Rafael I can see cars slowly passing in the sun, and glistening; Latinos on bikes, their skin a deeper brown in the summer; Jeeps with their tops rolled down, music pouring out; Beautiful young women in delicate fabrics.
The street is so close I can touch it with my tongue, lick, and taste its clarity in the September sun.
A small white feather lands gently on the tabletop where I sit sipping a refreshing pint. Just then a handsome man in his early thirties walks out of the brewery, pauses on the sidewalk, removes his shades and smiles at me.
'Hayou doin,' is all I can muster. Disarmed.
He says the same, lingers for a moment, and walks off.
I hold the vagrant feather between my fingers and roll it so that it spins like a white-costumed dancer on a distant stage, elsewhere in the world.
My voodoo feather.
My heart pounds excitedly with a contradiction of feelings as the flirtatious man disappears up 4th St.
Floating feathers. Spotted butterflies. A rolling breeze. Flirtaous men. All things light and sprightly. Carefree.
"You're more intelligent than I am!" Nabeel had spit out that terrible night in San Francisco.
He had then adjusted his eyeglasses, but what he was missing was the vision of purity and sameness, failing to see that we shared the struggle.
I was thinking about Ahimsa, needed his sensitive balsam voice when the telephone rang. It was he!
Ahimsa listens patiently, silently, only interjects with humming "uhm, uhm"s. And before he responds he pauses to collect his thoughts and process what he has been given, offering his perspective with grace, softly, richly.
"You were courageous to have walked away from Nabeel's internalized self-hate. I respect that," he said thoughtfully and proceeded to share his own disheartening experiences in abusive relationships, even rape, and recovery… from alcohol, drugs, poor choices, destructive relationships, and internalized homophobia.
In the end we decided to remain open and intuitive through these experiences that continue to shape and redirect us.
I met Josh and Suzanne at Panama Hotel, a small bed and breakfast in San Rafael. We sat in the dining room amidst the dizzying clutter of antique lamps, statues, and paintings on walls that were painted a deep, rich terracotta. We sipped red wine and conversed lightly. We were each in a light mood and laughed voraciously. After dinner I excused myself from the table and stepped outside to smoke a cigarette on the narrow patio that was overcome by plants and vines. I thought of my conversation with Ahimsa earlier in the day and felt fortunate to know him. He restores my faith in people and enables me to trust a little more in human companionship. I thought of his most moving statement, "You cannot save Nabeel."
Sensuality returns. It catches me off guard. I am suddenly masturbating in the restroom at work. I shoot clear across the toilet bowl where the milky bullets stick like sap, still warm, still living. I masturbate again when I am in bed reading a book I had abandoned months ago. It is a story about an Austrian painter in which Egon Schiel has a homosexual experience with a Gypsy boy who is tongueless!
My hands travel their imperfect body, over places that are soft and baby-like, and across coarse hairy patches. Sensual. Casual. I am always ready for romance. My blue body, sometimes red and flaming, burns cool at temperatures set firmly at sensuality! I would make an exhausting lover. I did not wash after coming so that I could lie in the open window and smell the scent of sex like an exotic oil, a rare perfume from the Cradle of Civilization on my body…
Somehow I know that somewhere my destiny brews, and love, and trust, and communion.
But for now I remain drugged, addicted to my dreams, wishes, always another place, a distant time, slipping constantly through various wonderlands, living on the universal brink…
But when sleep, slender-fingered and coquettish, beckons with feathery touch I surrender happily, lazily, drifting away, away, into, into, other, other worlds, and unconscious play.
Life. Irrational, emotional, uninhibited life.
I listen to Arabic music on the highway home. I am twenty-five, Assyrian, closer to a dream.
Life. Psychological, subtle, unpredictable.
Flirtation with the world, with family, friends, dreams, books, humor, asphalt.
When I stop to take a breath I am in disbelief that I could have been foolish enough to embody so much magic and fantasy, memories of Iran, my cousins there, Luay, a farm in Tennessee, my father, Brandon, prison, churches; carrying all this like wings made of feathers fashioned out of melting steel.
I have been wondering of late how I might attain independence from religious domination, a Christian upbringing, and still retain a sense of peace, brotherhood, grace, humility, faith, discipline, and spirituality…
This sense of wonder and loneliness grows daily more potent not because I lack romantic love, but that I have misplaced a faith in myself. On days when I move through my life without my own presence, when I look in the mirror searchingly for a hint of an identity I could label my own, when I reach inward for warmth but am denied the reassuring touch, I suffer severe hopelessness. I have to face it- without a semblance of myself present to receive the gifts of my senses all outside sources of comfort and reassurance become painfully and disappointingly ineffectual. Friendships come to feel superficial. Responsibilities pointless. All of life becomes a caricature.
I saw him again- the man who came out of the brewery in San Rafael, removed his sunglasses, and smiled at me. This time at the coffee shop just up the street. He smiled at me again. Occasionally I looked up from my math textbook and smiled at him… because he is handsome and I am horny, lonely.
He certainly did not beat around the bush, and let it be known that he was interested in me in that gay-male-cruising-unabashedly kind of way.
He got up from the table across the café, paused and smiled at me, but I did not follow. When he stepped outside where it was bright and sunny, he turned to look at me once more. I merely smiled. He circled the windows of the café. I watched him and continued to smile. He gestured with his head to go with him. I pointed to my books, shrugged my shoulders, and feigned a disappointed expression.
He came back.
Walked right up to my table and pulled up a chair.
Introduced himself.
His leg brushed against mine.
Immediately I got an erection.
His handshake was firm, decisive…
Again he removed his shades. I could see his piercing eyes traveling my face admiringly.
'I'm doing Algebra. Can you help me?' I asked jokingly.
"Yes!" he said brightly, which surprised me.
And his answer to the problem I was stuck on checked out with the key in the back of the book.
"Let's have a study session later at nine. I have to go to work now at The Nautilus up the street. I'm a personal trainer there. We'll grab a beer, or something," he suggested and I found myself agreeing.
He extended his card and left with a wink and a smile.
Although I am divided I know I will go to meet him.
Night.
4th St. is crowded over by persons attending the farmers' market. I'm indoors at the café awaiting this lascivious appointment, wondering why I continue to subject myself to these ephemeral exchanges that I know will result in disappointment.
Anna, to whom I have admitted my recent bout with loneliness, knows I have come to meet Mike and has assigned me a Cinderella curfew. I'm to be home and in bed by midnight.
He came moving like an American- with the confidence and ease of a man who has lived in one place, his country, and has not had occasion to pick up and flee, to be humbled by the intricate ins and outs of another culture, another language. And when he said he is shy I was almost dumbfounded.
Before we left the café I lay out what I was willing to do with a man I hardly know.
Mike appreciated this and smiled warmly.
We drove a short distance to a hill overlooking San Rafael, walked up a gravel road and settled on a blanket in the grass. Oakland glistened in the distance, across dark waters, and I thought of Ahimsa living his own life there… inside the flickering lights.
We were soon sensual. There were immediate kisses. I felt Mike's soft firm body beneath my lips, tasted him with my mouth, and he groaned with pleasure. He touched me. He kissed me and said I was soft. He lay on top of me and moved his erection, which he had taken out, across my stomach.
He stood before me where I admired his silhouette against distant lights. I could not help but take his penis into my mouth. It was long, firm, and tasted sweet. He moaned. We laughed. Talked intermittently. I wished I could be, inside, as free and as boyish as he.
Twice he said, "This is so erotic."
We lay back in the night, kissing. He rolled onto his elbow and took my nipple into his mouth. I licked his underarm. He nearly came.
Driving home I wished desperately that I could be joyous about what had happened, after all, it had been natural and real. Instead I was neurotic, battling cultural myths and taboos regarding sex and homosexuality.
Came home at midnight, not as Cinderella, but as Don Juan!
Will I take him up and call him again, or will shame and fear force me back into a temporary state of repentance and false saintliness?
Sex is a joy that pounds my head; it is a pleasure that stings my body.
Sat down to study but was distracted by recollections of the night before, by Mike, his body, his kiss, his caress.
And so, we met again on the hill, took a narrow path into the trees, into the cool shade, lay down on a blanket and masturbated each other, caressed each other, kissed, talked.
He asked me to tell him an erotic story. I told him about Santi.
To our bodies stuck lips and fallen leaves.
I am attempting to simulate the nimble strokes of the hummingbird, to live naturally again, according to sensual, sexual calling.
I am twenty-five. I am male. I want to connect on that frivolous, carnal level.
At moments, lying amidst the crackling leaves, everything felt right, and I felt strong, free and independent of my stunted preoccupations, obsessions, neurotic ponderings regarding sex, sex, sex, sex.
He lay naked next to me. Oh, but he was wearing running shoes and white socks. He showed me photographs of men he knows from the gym.
I stroked his penis in silk-like lotions.
He smiled.
When he asked for a sip of my water I said that I had brought a bottle just for him. He was pleased and said, "You're boyfriend material." I don't know why, but at moment I almost snapped, 'No, not really.' It was as if I wanted to maintain this level of detachment and distance, to be rid of my own emotional attachment on people, to master anonymity.
Mike is the emperor of casual sex. He has an appetite and a drive I admire, and want for myself. So, I hurl myself into his fire, into the infernal lair, diving for the same scars he wears on the inside like living tattoos. I follow him into the trees, tracking my own fears, seeking them out in the wild where they live.
He asked me to move this way, turn that way, squeeze his erection at the base, stand over him so that he could survey me from where he lay jerking himself. He touched my legs, said my dick looked great from the ground. He instructed me to squat on his cock, a tireless hard-on. And I came on him as he'd wished.
I am afraid of heights, so I throw myself from his tower, not into a safety net, not strapped into a harness, but into limitless air, possibility.
I laughed and was dizzy. Lightheaded from the adrenalin of freefalling.
I want to defy all that I have learned, all the phobias I've acquired on this tortuous, paranoid, paranormal journey into half-manhood.
And yet to him it is all so effortless and second nature. On our trek down the hill, ducking to avoid snakelike branches, slipping on crunching leaves, he talked of so many sexual excursions. Openly. Freely. Guiltlessly.
I want his liberation for my own. Isn't that what calls me to him in the first place, more than his looks, more than my own hormones? Beyond the caresses and the life-giving orgasms?
Standing above him as he fondled my balls and stroked himself, I thought: You are so free, so American. Of course! You're destined to be free. This is all you know. You are so beautiful lying there watching me, unaware that my cultural stigmas are so much larger and older than your limitless freedom.
I smile to myself because we only know each other sexually, not intellectually, spiritually, deeply. I like this. It is refreshing. Fun.
Slowly I melt out of my rigidity, which is far more dangerous than promiscuity. It is in rigidity and ignorance that we revolt the most hastily, act out foolishly.
He said, "It felt comfortable when my leg brushed against yours in the café."
I do not really listen to what he says. I am not here to be charmed, flattered. I am not doing this to restore a lost sense of confidence. That I have. I do not rely on him for my emotional needs. He owes me nothing. This is not about what he says and whether he means it or not. This is really about what I tell myself, how I treat myself, my spirit, my body.
This is a time of courage. Great, deep, wide courage.
Night. When the stars peel my skin, reveal every fragile longing. What is candy to those around me is poison to me. What's so easy to others is laborious to me. Silk sheets to others, a bed of nails to me.
We are naked and what if someone happens upon us?
Certain members of the family note that I have been withdrawn and preoccupied, but I do not defend myself, nor offer them excuses. I am far away traveling the desert stretch of time, memory, and experience back to the enchanted forest.
I don't demand that Mike demand of me romance. I don't hint or wait passively for the flowers. This particular relationship- episode really- is not about expectation, hearts, or sweeping anyone off his feet. Sure, I think of him now and then, but it is without contracts and fine prints that I conjure him. No obligations. No fetters.
Nabeel's not to blame for this- my little personal revolution of sorts. No one is to blame. I am only living out a part of my self that is real and demands expression.
Certain muscles in my body ache as if I have strained them- not with exercise but lust!
At a barbeque Josh cautions me to beware of feelings that may develop should I continue to meet Mike for these lascivious trysts in the woods. He says that I am too sensitive and romantic not to fall for Mike. I assure Josh that developing amorous feelings for Mike is virtually impossible since we both seek something bigger than substance and depth, something more ethereal- freedom!
Mike is not to fall in love with. He is the passionate companion with whom I may seek the injured spirit who dares face his faceless demons- demons I myself have harbored and dignified by allowing others to tell me what is so wrong about the desires inside of me.
I walk barefoot on hot coals, swim in a river of broken glass, kiss the ghost on the other side.
And I am empowered as I reemerge unscathed, not because I consider myself to be superhuman, but because I am coming to trust my own fate; not the fate others tried to shove down my throat.
Damn it, being gay does not have to mean being damned or damaged, diseased or doomed.
I map out my own hopes, desires, lessons, and life.
Expansion.
Anna writes in a card: Baby love, I just want you to know how much I have come to love and respect you. Finding you was a true score! I hope we have a long and eventful friendship. Anything you need or want just ask, honey, I would do it for you. Please remember you are in my heart and mind always.
In another card Josh writes: Emil, here's a belated card for your birthday. Thank you my friend for all the joy you have brought to my life. Your words of honesty and love have helped me through so much. I will always love you…
I look about me at the still blue walls, the many notebooks, I look at my clothes hanging patiently in the closet, I look at my books which make me feel nostalgic, the quiet hills, the blond children, and think: How can passion destroy? How can sex kill? But I know that I cannot tune out the whisper of biology, of nature, of sexuality.
Friends invite me out but I'd rather feel Mike's breath against my collarbone.
Mike seeks out the tender districts of my body, is concerned with the erogenous areas, the erotic, sensitive longitudes of my body. He kisses like an explorer where desire is global, cross-cultural, all-inclusive, universal. Larger than our inhibitions.
The limbs of the apple tree in the yard where I write are heavy, weighed down by the end of summer, the forgotten banana peel blackens on the bench seat, the wooden fence enclosing the yard cracks, the matches expire, light fades, shadows fall to the ground and flatten- all because my hunger, my desire is so deep, so real it depletes and drains, it breathes deeply from the space all around me. Even a vase of flowers seems to fly off a tabletop at the restaurant because it is rendered inferior next to the reverberations and rhythms of my body, its constant arousal. My sexual energy causes material suicides!
Since my spirit discovered its light the objects surrounding it have lost their inanimateness and gained mobility, life, character, personality.
But the light in which my spirit revels is not a soothing, tranquil yellow light, a light of repose, but a red belligerent beacon. A laser. Disorder prevails. Commotion. A domino effect of lust, hope for love, a necessity for meaning, intense dreaming, insatiability.
Volatile. Mercurial. Tidal. Cyclical.
He wants me to go to a sex club in the city with him. A theater where dancing boys dance completely naked and for a small fee will let you watch them shower after their number. But I'm afraid. I'm afraid that it will upset me to see him enjoying other boys, watching them dance, bathe, fondling them. Unfortunately jealousy is as natural and normal as desire itself, as the desire for liberty.
Exploration.
Pliancy. Creativity.
Self-love.
Stepping beyond.
I am the concubine the emperor of casual sex prefers most- or so I'd like to think. But I know better. When he sinks into my vagina he descends into a hundred vaginas simultaneously. He does not distinguish my flavor, my own particular texture, does not recognize the reverberations characteristic of my womb, my vulva. That I am lucky if he, with his eyes closed in ecstasy and self-love, recognizes the touch of my hair from that of the mane of his most prized Arabian!
I want to understand man, but in order to do so I must join him on his hunts, his lascivious expeditions into self and other, because it is on such safaris into every city that he is at his most brutally honest self. When he is in a mood of conquest. Domination. Here he postures, shows off, dances, vies. I must become his partner so that he will not act with me, dance for me, play a role with me as he does with his lover for whom he must put on airs to impress, to charm. I want him to be himself with he, his unpainted self.
Mike with all his zeal and extremes is an ideal partner with whom to explore my untapped self.
All I need are condoms and detachment.
Reprimanding myself for being who I am, inculcating myself for not being smarter, a better son, and the perfect person is like beating a horse for being a horse, executing a woman for being a woman. It is a psychological crime for me to talk to myself as others have all my life.
Last night I got ready- wore no underwear- and went to Anna's before I was to meet Mike for our escape into the city, to the sex club. But when I called him at the gym to confirm our date he cancelled. He said he had double booked and was scheduled to train a client. I was inclined to think otherwise, that he was to fuck someone else. And yet, I was somewhat relieved.
I hung up the telephone with him, held up his card, and made a motion to tear it in half when Anna intervened, "No! You may need that later…"
She wore a mischievous smirk on her face.
So, we remained in Anna's peaceful white room, listening to classical radio, studying. We were quiet and serene. On her walls hung photographs of friends and loved ones in dainty frames, head wreaths of flowers and ribbons, precious mementos. So much softness. A girl's room. A ballerina's retreat. The lighting soulful.
I felt grateful for Anna's healing company in my life, especially in that moment, and when I rubbed her tired feet she read Native American poetry out loud to us. Melancholic verses…
Although Mike does not call I feel I have retained the essence of my life, my worth, my potential, my love. I feel unscathed, safe. My flow remains uninterrupted.
Nothing invested, nothing lost.
I feel I am finally growing into my male sexuality.
Free of feminine fetters.
Now I am truly androgynous!
But let us not speak in haste…
I still require steadfast attention, trust, fidelity, delicacy, emotional connection, and tenderness, tenderness, tenderness!
For a while I just wanted to see if I could do it- if I could manage to stay indifferent no matter what.
I wanted to betray romance because it betrayed me!
I know I am not alone in this. Tonight I feel most connected to the world, to human frailty and stamina, to our common desires and psychological shortcomings, to the countless unsung hearts still reeling in a limbo of unrequited love and foolhardiness. Tonight I feel most human.
Here and breathing.
Living.
Moving.
Thinking.
And most importantly- feeling.
Funny that in my search for my masculine sexual self I would come to identify more acutely with woman, because I suspect she too feels out of place in her amorous pursuits, and must constantly redefine herself against the ladylike role her society has imposed upon her.
Homosexuality is first and foremost associated with the same-sex act as executed by depraved individuals. But is it only sexuality that makes me gay? Is it my attraction for men that defines me as gay? Is it that I have sex with men?
One of the worst things someone can say to me is, "It's no one's business what a person does in the privacy of his bedroom."
Is it the bedroom, and what unimaginable acts of human indecency, which supposedly take place there that makes me gay?
What if I want to love on the streets, hold hands with my lover, husband, trick, date, fuck-of-the-moment, companion and friend? What if my life- my emotional and sensual, loving life- is actually someone else's business? Like my family, friends, community, the law which does not protect or recognize me…
Who I am is not just centered around homosexuality.
But homomentality.
Homoemotionality.
Homovitality.
Homosanctity.
I am not going to keep my homototality fragmented and disenfranchised in the bedroom. Hidden. Freakish. Stifled.
It is not humanly possible.
No one could survive this kind of flagrant cruelty. No one should have to.
Today my mother astounded me when she asked why we do not know the names of any Assyrian philosophers.
'Maybe there aren't any…' I blurted without thinking.
Perhaps we were more concerned with telling one another how to live, what to do, what to say.
Twenty-five has thrown me into an unexpected journey of desire, sexual expansion, and emotional development. A Ferris wheel of experience. May I spend this time being awed at the carnival of lyrical enchantment, not clamorous, dissonant derailment.
Do I dream of love and of marriage? Of course!
Do I crave quietude and constancy? Yes!
Do I want to see Mike, even if it means being shaken, tantalized, reawakened in ways I may not be prepared for? I don't know. I really don't know…
Why do fidelity and monogamy feel unrealistic and uncomfortable?
And yet, why do I continue to seek and see love's single outline, its decisive silhouette etched within the crashing halls of my expansive dream for unity?
I feel love in the near future, but I do not believe it is coming for me.
Only flashes of him now and then. His mere scent as he passes me on a street in the world. The brush of his hand in a crowded setting. His voice- calling to someone else.
Will it be millennia before (gay) man evolves into a more committed, faithful, romantic being?
Whenever man makes a promise by candlelight, whisperingly, looking desirous and sluggish, I have come to learn this is my cue to prepare not for materialization of his elaborate and fanciful inventions, but for my own departure…
One night in San Francisco, walking back to my car after a few of drinks at a bar, I was forced to relieve myself by the side of a nondescript building, in the shadows. As I stood pissing a man wearing a cynical smile paused as he walked by in the night, turned, and approached me. He took my penis into his hand and began to caress it. He reached into my underwear and dug out my testicles. I was unafraid and amused, became hard. But soon I put away my erection, zipped up, looked up at the stranger, and laughingly said goodbye.
It's as if I am inclined to take my sexuality to the streets and to the woods because I was raised not to contain it in my own body and mind, my own home.
So, I remain in this half-dream of a life where I may have secret assignations with my instincts.
Today I found a kiss escaping my lips and landing on a co-worker's neck, near the ear, because I adore her so much, too much! She laughed and hugged me.
I'm convinced that mothers lose their hearing when they give birth, that the pressure from so much trauma on her body not only dilates her uterus but shatters her eardrums, because I don't think my mother has ever heard me tell her, 'You can. You can!'
I avoid math as I dive headfirst into emotional equations.
4<9.
5>3.
Love=Hate.
Tonight I fight sleep's soft invitation as if there's something I will miss if I close the diary and shut my eyes. I'm always crouching; awaiting the unannounced arrival of phantom adventures, though I know there's nothing out there but night, stillness, an encroaching autumn. The weather starts to change. Colors begin to mutate. Warmth departs. Memories are stirred. At any moment I might run into Luis in the mist that wafts through these pages, obscuring words, revealing only a prefix here, a suffix there, telling a story altogether different than my own! How I would take his dark slender face into my hands and place painful kisses there, my saliva, my DNA. Hurriedly we would take each other before passion were to catch up to us and make us want to stay forever in the mist, hidden, isolated, suffocating.
I fasten my heart. Fall is coming. I prepare for a new season, new ideas, a new, crisp self.
George Sand's "Letters D'un Voyageur" is amusing and brilliant. Sand is sharp-witted, intelligent, and dramatic, romantic.
Time to sleep. Time to surrender. Time to relinquish this tantalizing restlessness, this tenuous hope for adventure, and decide once and for all to end this blessed day, that there's nothing more to experience, to live out, to write down. Time to exhale, sigh, and drift into dreams on a vaporous ledge up high where the gargoyles fraternize with our most sordid wishes, drinking and drunk from a rainstorm of secret longings.
Came home straight to my diary, a grown man!
I have always been criticized, by friends and family alike, for being too dramatic, too emotional, and I learned to keep my personality, my light hidden, stowed away in an attempt to please others, protect others. But I found a solution, somehow I found a way, a secret outlet for the expression of my most emotional outbursts and sentiments. A secret haven where I could begin to be myself, be feminine, be immature, be imaginative. This diary is where I learned to celebrate myself, gather my hidden pieces and attempt to put them together, even if in a cluster. Defiantly I hurried in the night to scavenge my most brilliant, blue, red, black, neon, flagrant, flamboyant features for which I was admonished and punished because on the exterior I happened to be male, I happened to be Assyrian, I happened to be in Iran, I happened to be in America. And I smuggled my colors into the much cooler, blander, colorless atmosphere of standardized existence. When I wrote I bridged the myriad gaps, fashioned a crossing out of words between my world and theirs- haphazardly, desperately, diligently, without compromising my God-given sense of dramatics…
Here pain becomes a word- visible, tangible. Here otherwise complex, nameless, emotional burdens are given syllables, sounds, shape. Wings.
Outside of my diary I am limited by the sex of my own body, by the very gravity of religion, family, tradition, my deepest, most sacred fears to live somewhat one-dimensionally. But inside, here, I can be woman, child, mood, color, spirit, a phrase, even amorphous. Here I am able to evolve without shame. Move about freely.
As man,
woman,
animal,
angel,
whore,
Christian,
Agnostic,
fatalist,
pacifist,
student,
lover,
brother,
sister,
friend,
father,
derelict,
architect!