December 1999

This is the happiest I have ever been. At least since childhood. I have my home, I have my family, I have my loyal friends, I have romances, and I have moments of artistic inspiration. Although, creatively I feel I could be doing so much more, but sometimes I would rather sit in the family room and converse with my aunt and grandmother, and not read, not write, not e-mail friends, not type out my diary excerpts for All Out There. Jackie encourages me to take these intermissions. I appreciate her concern and undying support of everything I choose to do.
It takes so much energy to write. So many people and characters, so many moments and occurrences to recount.
I met Grant at Cafe Flore and he was sweet like in his e-mails, shy, quiet, a little strange- like a wildflower that looks out of place in a vase. He's like a creature that does not belong to this human society and it will take him some time to acclimate to this planet, where he was dropped off and forgotten. I asked him questions and he answered them with his eyes turned away, in search of words. He was fragile. We weren't alone for too long. Soon others joined us: Wael, Firas, Moe, Ahou, Adessa, Tracy, Paul, Danna, and others.
Grant had to be at his uncle's by eleven so we left before everyone else. On the street he slipped his arm around mine and we moved against the cold wind. I found this a tender gesture and savored it. We made a stop at the ocean that was lit up by the moon. A couple of days later Grant wrote the following:

Dear Emil, I had a very nice time on Wednesday night with you and all those other fabulous queer Middle Easterners. My favorite part was the walk on the beach though. Well, it wasn't really a walk, but it was absolutely spectacular. I've never seen the ocean like that; violent and dark and deep. I wanted to run into it and have it take me away from the world; swallow me. Not because I'm suicidal; I think it's more primal and erotic. I want to merge with something; I want something to submerge me. Do you know what I mean? Sorry, I think I need some sleep. 
When can we meet again? When can we meet all those other people? 
Anyway, shall I tell you what I thought of you? I thought you were a perfect gentleman, and one of the exceptions to the "menarescum" rule. You have nice friends. I loved Paul and Tracy; I thought they were great, and one can usually tell a lot by one's friends. You have a wonderful sense of beauty and mystery that is so lacking in people today. And you looked literally radiant in the moonlight. You're lucky I didn't throw myself at you at the beach. 
Love,
Khata Grant


Grant reminds me so much of myself at that age. I feel in his words a need to seduce me, but that he himself does not know this. He needs to seduce me and overcome me. He wants to be conquered by me, perhaps this is because he is feminine and a virgin. Is this the virginal craving the carnal experience? Our relationship reminds me of Santi and myself. Tracy and Paul asked what it felt like to be a mentor. 'Dangerous,' I answered.
My high school choir instructor, David, writes:

Dear Emil, the reason I have taken so long to write you is that with your first message, which mentioned your diary, I did a search and found them, and started reading them. They aroused so much emotion that I had to let them settle and digest before I knew how to respond. Finally, tonight I revisited them and read the latest entries that you posted. My first reaction is one of feeling stupid, that I knew so little of what was going on. Of course, I knew that you were probably gay, but I'm very inhibited about talking to students about being gay, and I feel bad that I was of no help to you with all those troubles. 
How terrible to be both teenager and gay! And how wonderful too. Of course, I recognize most of the people you write about. 
Mr. Hacker, who is of course gay, and I have been friends, but as he ages he withdraws from most of his life. All he can manage is to play the organ on Sunday. He has terrible health problems now. But what a wonderful, cultured, intelligent man he was, and I'm glad you knew that. As is true of all gay men, he was conditioned by his early life to act a certain way, and his ways seem as strange and quaint as mine must to you. And of course, I knew Jude and Santi were gay, and we felt stirrings of some friendship and solidarity for a while. But since I have had Bob with me for almost 22 years we didn't really socialize much. I wonder what has happened to both of them? Jude, especially, went through some very difficult times. 
What a strange and cruel environment for a gay teenager St. Gregory is! Now that I am gone I see how bad it can be there for some people, and I give thanks often for the good ones who went there and somehow survived and even prospered. I know that there were other gay students in my classes and I wonder how they are doing. 
I have had a strange and wonderful time reading your diaries. At first I felt like a voyeur. But I realize that you want me and others to read them and I have enjoyed watching you grow and change and find out about yourself, even though it was very painful to read at times. You are a good writer already in the entries you have posted. I'd like to read something you've done recently, if you ever would care to send me something. I don't find your diaries shocking. I'm not easily shocked by sexual behavior. I am shocked often by how cruel people can be to each other. I hope that much of the troubles and torment you write about has passed at this stage in your life. It will always be with you of course, just as I am formed by things that happened to me when I was in high school. I feel bad that you had to go through all this shit in your life, and privileged that you want to share it. I hope that life is better now. 


An e-mail from Shammi: 


Khouni (my brother,) Your sister's in Cairo already and after only a day-and-a-half is having the time of her life. I love this city. Iraq was cool, eye-opening, but rough as fuck. Things are hard for everyone there and I was forced to be a lot more dependent than I'm used to being. There's been an increase in crime there since the embargo and I never left the house unless accompanied by someone else, which was hard for me. I am sending out a group e-mail about the specifics of Iraq today, so I won't get into detail. 
Thanks for your beautiful poem, and as always your work allows my spirit to take flight. You set me free sometimes without even knowing it. Also, your other message saying that you envy my courage and passion couldn't have come at a better time. That day was my toughest day so far on this trip. It was my first day of truly traveling alone and I just freaked out and got really scared and started wondering what the fuck I was doing. Your e-mail gave me strength, khouni. 
I'm so much better now and feel alive, motivated, and excited about being alive. There's about a million things I want to do. I'm staying with my friend Sahar- an Egyptian singer/dancer- which is awesome and gives me that experience in Cairo that you just can't get from staying on the beaten path. Her life is wild, and that's an understatement. 
Please keep the poetry coming and anything else that comes out of that perpetually intoxicated and spiritually soaring brain of yours. I love it. 


Ahou wanted to introduce me to an Iranian boy she met and I resisted the idea at first. Being set up just did not appeal to me. But I gave in. We went out in the city and I spoke Farsi with him. He was sweet. There was laughter. I drank too much. He said I ought to spend the night. I did. We had sex. He said sweet things. I did not. I knew they were temporary things, misty things. I kept quiet, but smiling in the dark. A light came through the window. The city fell apart around me.
He made plans. He made promises I did not demand. He cancelled. I felt deep disappointment then, even anger. Why do men make promises they do not intend to keep? Why can't they just be quiet and enjoy me? I'm already in their bed, why try and woo me?
Tariq was the one who liked me at Wael's. We've been exchanging e-mails. I don't know why I feel I can be comfortable with him, romantic, literary, funny.

Tariq, friend, brother, thanks for your sweet note. I have learned that it's not the size of the e-mail that counts, but its content. Yours tickled me... I'm always in awe of people who have a natural reserve of energy. I'm just not like that. I easily fatigue and am in general mellow. Like you. Upon first impression you're like a pillar in an empty church, a strong presence, but without being intrusive. Your voice is like the music of an opium den. Soothing, indolent, low, humming- not boring, no. 
I find that in letters and in my diary, unlike in real life, I can reach beyond the everyday and become poetic, indulgent. But in normal conversation to be this way sounds ridiculous, unreal, even pretentious. I love correspondence and speaking through the written word. I think if I ever marry I will intentionally live far apart from my husband so that our bond will be profound, creative, filled with longing and music, and never hackneyed. 


I got bored with my life and with the faces that danced before my eyes, distracting me, making me tired. I even resented friends because I felt so much energy was spent on loving them, thinking of them, wanting the best for them. I escaped the voices and the images because so often love turns into hate and this transmutation occurs without having noticed. So, I drove to Modesto. I blew a tire. It was twilight in Livermore. Cars passed without pausing. Then, without a second thought one car stopped upon seeing me. It was a tidy man in his forties. When he got out of his car I shook his hand, 'Thanks for stopping. I just blew a tire. I have a spare but not a jack.' He was good-natured. 'I hope this doesn't keep you from any plans or engagements.' He said, "Oh no, I'm retired. I have no place to be." We conversed casually. He guided me as I changed the tire. He was fatherly, but youthful and must have retired young. He said he was born in Japan, and I saw traces of Japanese qualities in his face. He must have been a product of American and Japanese parents. He said he moved to South America when he was nine and asked where I am from. I said I am Assyrian from Iran. "Do you have a wife and children?" 'No, I'm not doing that lifestyle.' With the spare now installed he advised me to keep under fifty miles an hour, and offered to follow me all the way to Modesto to make sure I arrived safely, but I thanked him profusely for his kindness and said that I could manage. I shook his hand again, though it seemed that he wanted to talk further, so we conversed a bit more. What a nice man.
Modesto was great, and it was good to see some old friends.
The other night in San Francisco, at El Rio, Amahl and I moved away from everyone and found a seat on the back patio. We talked solemnly in the darkness. She said she was lonely. 'Why are we so fantastic and so without love?' I asked, losing myself in the smoke I had just exhaled. Amahl was like a tall boy who hunched over, looking beautiful and defeated- a German boy and an Arab boy. There were many friends nearby but to them I would not have said, 'I am disenchanted with men.' "Maybe you should not sleep with them right away," she advised. How does she know, I thought to myself, and does she assume this because gay men are known to be promiscuous? I never asked. Instead I said, 'But what am I to do, Amahl? Bribe them with sex? Hold myself like a carrot in front of a horse? Is that real?' She gently argued that with time and with feeling sex would come naturally and would be even better. I argued that all people are integrally the same, that we already know one another upon meeting, and why must we betray each other, why must sex seem like a mistake? We found no solution, no proper explanation, maybe because there aren't any. Without words we decided to wait and see what would unfold. That night I drove home with a heavy heart and cried, got lost among mansions and at dead-end streets. I decided to remain alone forever.
Amahl e-mails:

Never never give up your sensitivity.
It is part of you like your eyes, like your heart.


You suffer not simply because you are homosexual, but because you are human. 


Today on the bus I had the heaviest feeling.
Like life was one eternal day... one eternal night.
Like we had only imagined it in pieces. 


Surely as the sun was shining on my face in San Francisco, it had shone on my face in Jordan as I walked through the orchard.
On a day like this one, before I knew you... 


Expect nothing because someone is from your "culture".
In the end, it means almost nothing. 
Expect nothing from that line called man or woman.
You will go, you will come back.
You will be disappointed. 


Look for human. 
As for promises, they break, we change. 
We grow, we move. 
These are the cycles of us. 


Weeping is not for women. 
You suffer because you are human. 


Withdraw if you want to. 
Sometimes I feel like that's all I want to do. 
I feel censored by the world. 
Like I'll always be new here. 
The protocol of interaction works for us and against us. 


I feel so in the closet about my fag stuff, Emil. 
Today I bought these Tom of Finland postcards and was so turned on by them. 
A lot of lesbians don't get it, I struggle with myself. 
"Are you bisexual?" 
Dysphorically so at times. 


We are complex. 
Weeping is not just for women. 
You drive into a deep dark night, into dead end streets, mansions lurking and you feel the weight of darkness. 
And you write to me. 
And I know it. 


Who is my lover? 
Who is yours? 
There is no lover, only love of life reflected... in a beautiful dance, a sitting by the sea, a woman's laughter, an intimate moment with someone you think you know. 
The illusion of permanence, of absolute truth, the myth of purity... 


Your diary is like a lantern in my night, Emil. 
Write Emil, write... 


Fadochem,
Amahl




Tariq, friend, diary. I'm excited about this new phase of my writing. You see, for almost ten years I have handwritten my diary in notebooks of various sizes and colors- some spiral and ordinary, others hardcover, fancy. Then I purchased a computer and decided to keep my diary on it. Writing by hand remains one of the most fulfilling moments in life and one day I will return to the notebook because so much can be gathered from what is said by the curvatures and drastic turns of words written in ink. In penmanship there is vulnerability, moods, a giving away of emotion. But you're a new phase of my diary. I don't know how long I will do this or how truthfully I can write to a person. I don't know what I will censor and to what I will admit, but that is the thrill and the challenge of it, isn't it? 
Why do I want to write to you? Because you remind me of my diary- you're gentle like my diary, which has been a place whose door is always wide open for me to wander into. Because I needed a new incentive in this ten-year-old refuge, a new mood, a new intention. Because writing to you will force me to explain things in more detail, to expound. What writer does not need an exercise? And maybe there are other reasons to which I am not yet privy, and won't be until some time. Perhaps I had grown to feel unheard and you're human. 
You spoke of film and how difficult it would be to devote yourself to that passion. Half of my each and every day is spent being anxious that I will be lost in this market, this sea of mainstream writers, but not only this; that I am fooling myself to believe that one day I will have a willing audience and make a living as a writer. 
I think it's grand that you're immersed in your studies, no matter how colorless they may seem at times. You must have a passion for history or you would not have lasted this long. Or maybe you're just a good Palestinian son doing his duty, and what's wrong with duty? You'll have the security I never will. My every moment is spent on a glass tightrope. I have renounced so many of the expectations that were aimed at me. I have dodged those bullets, but the pressures of being an Assyrian fugitive are great. I am gay. I am an artist. I am not going to marry a woman. I am not going to have children. I am not going to school. I am not. I am not. I am. 
One day you will make films. You will find a way to do this. It will not leave you alone until you have given it a face, a name, an expression. I heard talk about a film you have already made. 
You say you have no copyright issues. I like that!
You speak of home, of land, of ownership. A haven where you can study, rest, strengthen your love, and entertain. I do not dream of this. I am to wander still and fall prey not just to others' false promises but my own habits and cravings, unhealthy fixations. I am far far away from settling down and independence. 
If it were not for my grandmother and aunt I would not be living in Marin. I am blessed but handicapped. 
I hope you achieve your A-frame dreams...
Do you ever think about how homophobia has disrupted your life? I wonder if I'm behind in life because I am gay, because others are homophobic; that I'm missing out on life's many successes because I could not cope. 


Tariq, How much longer will you be fasting? Although I lived in Iran I know very little about Ramadan. Feel free to enlighten me. It amazes me that so many of my new queer Muslim friends and acquaintances are partaking in the tradition. I would think they would have renounced such religious convictions by now. I asked someone why he was fasting and he said that it gave him a sense of belonging, that it made him feel closer to his family. This I found beautiful, and sad because I know his family does not invest as much in him as he does in them; that they do not ask about him, his lifestyle, acknowledge it, as he does their spiritual month. 


Tariq, I enjoy and require change, and try to make it happen as often as I can bear it. I can't even drive on the same streets too often. They bore and frustrate me. I try to find new routes to old destinations. Routine deteriorates me from within. Are you the same? 
I have a friend that dreads change and gives her great anxiety, and I judged her, even tried to change her. But looking back I understand that this was her nature. Normalcy is what most people desire. The ordinary and the steadfast is what we strive to attain. These are conditions I myself crave at times and would even make great sacrifices for. But to remain in one place? At my age? Isn't it human to become easily bored and restless? Wouldn't things that were once highly prized eventually lose their sheen and become mere objects, places, and relationships to resent? 
Is it even natural to be married? Is marriage even a realistic option for us gay men? 
I would like to think I am strong enough, enlightened enough, reasonable enough to allow my partner to grow beyond the walls of our garden, to live fully and thrive beyond my love for him, which I'm sure would be to some extent insecure, demanding, and possessive. I don't think I'm that mature. I assume that I will be hurt- although I will let him go gracefully. The need to know others in intimate ways is natural- the urge to experience, the necessity to experiment and put to sleep the demons of curiosity and satiate the ghosts of infidelity. I almost feel that I would not have any respect for a man who did not desire wandering, slipping away into his own identity and world. 
I don't know what a relationship between two men entails. I have had no role models, no childhood story books, no lessons. I only have my imagination that has not been tarnished by expectations, rules, and specifications. Some sense of direction would be good, though. I will not know what to do or how to feel with another man. 
Saying 'I am gay' was child's play. We thought we were revolutionary when we stood before a mirror and whispered these words to a reflection that did not perish or get struck by lightening. Defining 'I' is an entirely new struggle. Defining 'am' and 'gay' are world wars; miracles that have yet to happen, unrecognized wonders of the world. 


Emil, habibi, you have my full permission to write to me anytime. You had it already, without me saying it. I'm going to cook zucchini and yellow squash with tomato sauce and garlic, then pour it over toasted bits of pita bread. A simple peasant (fellahi) dish my great-great-grandmother Nazha used to love. I will imagine you and she are sharing it with me. 
Tariq


Shammi e-mails:

I hate to repeat myself, but your writing is so moving. Thank you for the last three messages. Thank you for your love. You sustain me. 
By the way, I would never try to talk you out of approaching the world and love in any other way than the way you have chosen. You are truly on your own path in this life and I respect this so much about you. 
I'm glad you met Tariq. The man is real, mature, and deep with a lot to say about the world around him. You have a lot to teach each other. 
I'm still very content in Cairo, Emil. Something in me is not at war and not refusing my surroundings the way I was there. I just miss all of you. 
Still in self-exile,
Shammi


Christmas came and went and Jackie insisted I go with her and Mom-Suzie to the Assyrian church in San Jose- a town I dislike for its sprawl and lack of charm and character. Inside the church I was surrounded by my own people in a way that is rare. Everyone looked like me. Here I was not different and exotic, and actually cherished this. I tried to listen and grasp what the priest said, and while I understood the language  my interest soon faded, my attention wavered against his high-pitched ramblings and uninteresting regurgitation. I learned nothing new. I felt I was deep in the presence of hypocrites. The message was to think of the poor and the needy, to love all our brothers, except homosexuals? I started to daydream and decided that I would never again set foot inside a church- not for a sermon. An empty church has far more spiritual value than one with homophobic people and their politics, their empty hopes, false faith.
After the service I fled the crowds that gathered outside to shake hands, kiss on both cheeks, offer Christmas greetings, and gossip. I felt resentful and awkward. I fled not these people in particular, but the past and my grim associations with Assyrians. I fled to Jackie's car in the parking lot, rested against it, the sun warmed my back, and I felt free. I saw someone I knew from my childhood, but turned away. What ordinary and artificial things would we have said to each other? How do you answer perfunctory questions from relatives and acquaintances when all you want to say to them is, 'I am suffering because my brothers and sisters are suffering and I am doing nothing but posting my diary from the safety and anonymity of my room, which I have painted a bluish-gray color because it inspires my pretentious literary side.'
I had tried to understand my relationship with God and what His purpose in my life might be. Why was I born Christian and Assyrian and queer and what does this mean? What is my destiny? Is it to continually question my upbringing and struggle to redefine my self to myself as a perpetual stranger? Always changing faces, juggling beliefs, trading Assyrian ways for American and American for Iranian and so on and so forth. I remembered my street experiences in San Francisco and the men there, and thought, God took me there... No, I took God there. Hand-me-down ideas just don't work for me anymore, my Assyrianism. My childhood and teen years were difficult because I was living for others; my twenties are painful because I am trying to begin living for myself, and this is confusing, there is darkness... and danger. Deep guilt. I am trying to liberate myself, as human being, but also as an Assyrian and a part of two societies. I have to live openly, though their expectations will always be in the back of my mind, looming invisibly but persistently- like God himself.
But if He insists on being ubiquitous and force Himself into my psyche and spirituality then He must endure my pain, my life, and my mistakes, my revelations, my dishonesty and my glories. I'm feeling quite lost and uncertain, but this is not the first time, nor the last. I will stay afloat. I will live. And maybe one day I will find the comfort and the life I am trying to build up to, and maybe I won't. For now I will live this imperfect life because it is mine and I must be proud of it as if I am its parent.
I have begun to feel weary of a world I have been desperately trying to paint a lighter shade, but which is actually made of darker pigments. I can't keep up.

Tariq, I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to break things and break free. Not because I'm miserable, but because I am a happy young man whose joy sees things far more subtle and nuanced than my sadness could. And it is my joy and love for life that weep so hopelessly. 
What does my joy see that I, the person, can't? It sees that I cannot find my home- not in Iran, not in America, and if there were an Assyria, not there either. 
Where do I belong? In Assyrian circles I feel American. In Iranian circles I feel unsuccessful. In American circles I feel misunderstood. I stand out. In straight circles I feel like an oddity. In gay men's circles I feel desired or resented. Where then do I go? 
I am a person who needs attention- to give it and to receive it. But I fear that as I grow older I grow less social, less tolerant, and more cautious. 
Today I cried. I cried because my joy ran out of excuses and patience. It got tired of sustaining me through the days when I am a waiter and my future seems uncertain and unlikely. My dreams are weighing on me like mountains, dramatic and beautiful mountain ranges that belong in the vistas of all our lives, but not on our backs. I feel so small and ineffectual, so cowardly even as I question my upbringing and God. There is pain in living in oppression and pain in attempting to liberate my spirit. And guilt. So, I falter. I make an ass of myself. I weep like a child. 
I just feel such power and beauty in life- a power beyond my comprehension and my grasp. And yet, this light is within me. A 'me' that is yet locked away with the light and the power. And THIS me is left helpless in the dark. I hate it! 
Joy should not have to face such regular tests and challenges. It should just be. It is not life that's cruel but the people who occupy it. 
I have resolved not to let my mistrust guide me, anger build me. I want to remain honest and naive, wild-eyed and enthusiastic. 
I do not begrudge humanity its crassness, insensitivity, criminality. I only blame myself for being weak and unwilling to accept the reality. 


Tariq, I figured it out! I wanted you to be my diary because of my need to feel as one with another human being. I think unconsciously I wanted to surmount this great gap that I cannot otherwise overcome between myself and other human beings- specifically with other men. You became the subconscious subject of my diary because you made such a dear impression on me and were so meek- not weak- and accepting. I ran to you and I don't think it's appropriate or realistic. It's unfair to you that I should come to you with such intimate feelings. I think I am in need of a relationship with a man on a profound level and making you my diary was voicing this desire for intimacy that has always been lacking in my world. Tariq, forgive me. I apologize. Please know that I am a just person and would never try to harm or manipulate you. 
See the effects of homophobia in action in me? Do you see how it has sabotaged the child so that he grew to always struggle in his adult life with other gay men... in relationships, in eroticism, and in brotherhood? 


Shammi, life of mine. As I read your last e-mail I felt vivified with images of Arab dykes and ancient pyramids, celebrations in a place where I imagined you reeling amid brown people with black hair, a place where you and I both belong. 
I'm glad that you're feeling more and more settled in and are moving into your own apartment. It makes me extremely happy, because as you know I live vicariously through you. I am there in your shoes, and when you go barefoot my feet burn in the hot sand. I am not in bland and correct Marin. 
Here? There are good things, moody things, amazing, funny, and dramatic things. You know, Emil things. 
You said you no longer felt resistant to your environment. Wow! What's that like? I want to feel that which you are building for yourself. Building. Feeling. Living. I forget why our parents struggled to bring us here and I forget why as a child I prayed to be allowed to come to America. But we did, and we were let in, and I entered apologetically and politely, like a sacrificial subject, and am now struggling to break free, but of what? Of being Assyrian? My Americanization? The Christian God? What I thought being gay meant? My dreams that hang from my tongue like a weight strung from chains?