August 1998

Discovery.
I am just beginning to understand my own body, its pleasures, the places where eroticism waits for me.
It's just me and the house, a pint of lager, a pack of American Spirits, and music flowing through the open door into the yard where I write, drink, smoke, fall, fall, fall into brass reveries. I seek and create pleasure. I cause pleasure. In life one has to be willing to make pleasure happen, make it memorable, make it last!
In the face of emotional and psychological, even and especially financial strain be jocular, be funny, be free.
My tumultuous marriage to happiness continues on precarious vows.
I called Ahimsa because I am drawn to his will and energy to improve the integrity of his life. He is concerned with health and love, spirituality and creativity. Every day he struggles to accept his painful past, growing up in the Bronx, being queer in a family of tough cops, a community in which there was no space or language for queers.
The night we met we walked to Shammi's apartment where we were to spend the night together. Ahimsa admitted that he intentionally avoids the Castro because he repudiates meaningless living, alcohol, drugs.
Now as we talked on the telephone I confessed to him that I have not written anything outside of my diary since I read at the Middle Eastern gathering, that I've been plagued with a kind of social anxiety regarding my work.
'Do you ever doubt yourself?' I asked Ahimsa painfully.
He thought about this a moment, said that although he feels more secure as a writer who has been published in various periodicals and anthologies over the last year he still struggles with creative doubt.
He was tender and reassuring, so honest that in the end I did not feel dependent, but empowered.
Ahimsa is political, social, active. He balances all this with soulful introspection, creative expression.
He invited me to read at a series he has put together at A Different Light Bookstore on Castro. He calls it "The Dark Shade Of Our Desire: A Monthly Queer People Of Color/Mixed Blood Series."
My orgasms are torrential, almost wistfully painful. They bring up emotions that I feel I am not yet ready to address.
Now, am I drunk or just lonely? Am I contented or crazy? Am I weightless or sinking? Am I a little of everything…
A single moment is filled with all sorts of lifetimes and emotions, cravings and deep, deep desires.
I fill this silent, empty house with the reverberations of my wishes. I hang them about the walls like ethereal paintings of distant places, strange noble portraits, abstracts, dadaist renditions of something, something, something I have not been courageous enough to laugh at…
Wishes.
Dreams. Like etched frames.
Prayers. As dusty as cluttered shelves.
All I've become by the blood and sweat path of each waking, aching breath.
And all that I've yet to become as I wish, wish, dream of ascension, of roots in the boundless, anchors in imagination, permanence in my hope, hope, hope, fleeting hope of home.
A time of acceptance.
Twenty-five. By the sea. On pebbles. Anna at my side. We are camping on the coast for my birthday. The waves arrive with little gusto through the fog. The breeze washes the warmth off our tanned bodies. We are healthy. Young. Immersed in buoyancy. Greeting those we meet, waving at beautiful children that play near our beautiful campsite.
The fantasy always departs and leaves us with the deplorable reality of physical exhaustion and emotional fatigue.
Here the redwoods created an alcove of light and shadows about our campsite. A wooden bridge that traversed a small creek allowed us access to our tent. Anna took charge of the fire, keeping it stoked while we spent hours sitting round it listening to it hiss, watching the sparks trail each other into the smoky air.
We heard critters crawling about in the brush, which was really pretty eerie. Anna made fun of me for being scared almost out of my wits. Just what was it that seemed to be circling us, stepping on fallen branches, letting its ominous presence be known?
As the temperatures began to fall Anna became cold and said she was going to the tent to change out of her shorts. She grabbed a flashlight and a beer.
'Don't you want me to go with you? I mean, aren't you scared?' I asked, already half way out of my camping chair.
Anna chuckled and rolled her eyes playfully.
"Come on…"
I held the flashlight on Anna while she changed. It was then that we heard a most God-awful snarling- something shrill and maniacal.
I turned the light in the direction of the monstrous shriek and felt Anna's hand grip my arm. She was practically half-naked.
The light from our small flashlight fell on a nearby tree. The animal- whatever it was- continued to hiss, growl, shriek.
Anna and I were frozen in our tracks. We did not speak. We did not breathe.
And then it charged.
All we could see were perfectly round red eyes and a gaping toothy mouth. It- whatever it was- came at us from behind the tree, which was only a few steps ahead of us. It seemed at that very moment that Anna lifted me up and placed me directly between herself and the charging animal.
That's when I screamed like I have never screamed before. Not even in my wildest nightmares…
A shriek, really. A sound I have never heard myself make… and hopefully never will again.
But my embarrassing, much emasculating scream seemed in fact to scare this mad Northern Californian wild animal well out of its wits, so that it suddenly turned and disappeared into the dark wood.
But the drama was not finished.
Just then, one more crazed-looking beast of a fuzzy animal scurried noisily up the tree and revealed itself to us. For an instant it paused triumphantly in the yellow hue of the flashlight I held and roared, but it did not charge at us. Instead it too disappeared deep into the night.
I turned to Anna. We looked at each other as if we were going to cry and embraced, breathing heavily, shaking.
Anna's pants remained around her ankles.
'They weren't coming at us. They were fighting to get at our food,' I sighed with sudden realization and relief.
"Yeah. I don't think raccoons are known to attack people. They're afraid of us," Anna said rather smugly as she pulled up her pants.
'Is that so Ms. Jane Goodall wanna-be? Then why did you practically push me into its gaping mouth?' I snapped.
"Because you're the guy!" Anna proclaimed.
'But I'm gay!!!' I argued.
Here we both melded into a fit of laughter, traipsing back to the fire where Anna resumed her task as the fire-maker. We spent the remainder of the night drinking beer and laughing about the incident that now seemed totally ridiculous and unlikely.
Last night after dinner with Anna at a dimly lit restaurant in Mill Valley I did a peculiar thing. I got on the highway and headed south to San Francisco. The need to be among other gay men- talking, drinking, laughing, sharing a similar experience- had struck me like a bolt of electricity and I could not deny it. I crossed Golden Gate Bridge feeling defiant, watching the lights flicker in the city across the bay.
I felt that I was about to meet someone with whom I would have a delightful time.
This individual wasn't Rick who was awkward, whose opening words were insignificant and forced. It wasn't Doug either, who annoyed me with his typical, "Are you Italian?"
'No.'
"Greek?"
'No.'
"What are you?"
'I'm not telling you.'
Doug was nondescript and he knew it. He complained that no one ever approached him, that he was ugly. While Doug talked about a love affair that seemed to me doomed at best I watched a charged young man dance feverishly on the patio to our left. But Doug droned on and on, feeling sorry for himself, complaining, moaning.
Finally I turned to him, 'Look, Doug. Get out of this relationship already. Do us all a favor and get out!'
I gave him a tight hug that I hoped conveyed something small but positive and reassuring to him.
I made my way back to the bar and discovered that the energetic dancing boy was now sitting down at the windows that overlooked Market St. From where I stood I could see drops of sweat trickling down his face.
I approached him, 'One would assume you were on drugs dancing like that.'
He held up his bottle of water and said, "On the contrary I am quite sober."
I sat down.
He asked my name.
"Emil is my brother's name!" He exclaimed. "My name is Nabeel."
'Is that Arab?' I asked.
"Yes," he said. "But I'm Assyrian."
Assyrian! I had not guessed it.
'Shlamalookh!' I said enthusiastically.
Nabeel's blue eyes now widened in equal astonishment.
We talked for a long while. Nabeel explained that he had just moved to San Francisco from Chicago- Devon in fact. I asked if he was out to his family. He said he was but that obviously they weren't pleased about this, and that no one talked about it. I told Nabeel that it was the exact same way in my family.
We continued.
Nabeel said he was deeply disenchanted with his gay Assyrian friends back in Chicago. He described them as "queeny and bitchy". I told him about Shammi and the others here in the Bay Area and promised to introduce him.
We left the bar together and once on the street we decided to procure some pot and viola, there was Pebbles.
Sex is a machine without an owner's manual. How do you operate it? Or does it operate us?
I feel pensive. Who is he really? I don't know him. I feel slightly foolish having given myself to an experience with a stranger simply because Nabeel is Assyrian.
Even now I can hear his voice. His speech is distinctly Assyrian, the music of it, a deepness. At moments in the day I could even taste him. Shocked.
He's not the one. I know it.
I can taste him…
When I rubbed his back he cried out, a muffled groan. Naked.
When I bit his earlobes he shivered. Passion.
When I ran my fingers through his chest hair it was familiar like that of my father's when I was little and worshipped him. Instinct.
When I kissed his nipple it hardened. Immediacy.
When he kept my lips locked in his teeth I thought I would cry. Out.
When he pressed his body against mine and held me under him I thought for a moment that I was much, much smaller than he. Illusion.
He possesses a straight Assyrian's detachment.
Will I fail myself again by making excuses for him, refusing to listen to my heart, dismissing every telltale sign of a young man who is destructive, rallying intently for a more attractive, smoother image of him? Or am I beyond all that now?
Once or twice my heart even fluttered at the thought of him…
In the morning he lay in bed while I dressed, and was not tender. I thought it peculiar that he did not get up, offer coffee, touch me, walk me out. I felt like a prostitute showing herself out.
Anyway, I myself tend to be withdrawn after sex. Who am I to talk? I suppose everyone needs room to breathe.
As I dressed I suddenly felt as if I were slipping on a costume, last night's costume. Exhausted. Half present.
Nabeel lifted his head from the pillow and sleepily asked, "Do you want my number?"
I laughed and spoke as if he were entirely daft. 'Of course I want you number. Give it to me.'
I found an old bus transfer and pen atop his dresser and took down his number which he dictated to me… never getting out of his bed…
He made me show the tattered piece of paper to him to make sure I had taken down the right numbers. Lack of trust.
And I showed myself out.
On the street- Market near Castro- I was ruffled and felt shy. Turned my collar up and headed toward my car.
Alone at the house again. Only silence. A sailing breeze outside in the yard.
Another breeze, cool and calm, passes through the empty caverns of my heart. My soul is alright.
Still processing Nabeel. Uncertain as to what it is I want and should expect.
Last night at a party thrown by one of Anna's friends I grew exceedingly sensual and lost sense of time in reveries of Nabeel. I'm sure the alcohol had a hand in my subtle departure from the get-together. Secretly I slipped out, slipped back, slipped into the recent past where he pushed me down to his erection, the head of which was rounded and fat, where I suckled with effort- my mouth barely able to encompass him. When I looked up at him I saw half-open eyes watching, surveying me with satisfaction. I asked him to get on top of me and fuck my mouth. He did. He took my entire face into his hands, rubbed my hair, my face, my mouth, which he fucked. In his bed there was nowhere to go but to each other. It seemed to arouse him to kiss the mouth that tasted of him. I surrendered my lips, my mouth, my tongue, my teeth. I surrendered my self, my boundaries, my resolutions, and my convictions. To a dream. To a scene. To an unknown. The unplanned. I traded in my balance for a night of vertigo.
Crossing the bridge back to Marin had felt like leaving behind a self, like shedding skin, undressing, or changing my color.
Late the next morning I had sat with my mother in the sun drinking Turkish coffee, lazily sipping from our cups.
I'm hoping that all I know from experience will prove invalid.
Shammi called. I told her about Nabeel. She said he must be thrilled to have met another queer Assyrian in San Francisco. Shammi encouraged me to remain open and said we're always better off courageous, not closed up, pent up, unavailable.
'How do you do it, Sham? How do you just hand yourself over to the unknown?'
She said it's always a frightening thing for her to place her trust in another person and simultaneously remain loyal to her true self. She admitted struggling with this, but that this struggle is what we do as humans, and that for queer folk there are no models, no rules.
"You just have to go through it, Emil. You can't avoid life."
To a caged bird flight and freedom are detrimental… Every time I get out I crash into glass, the unforeseen past.
Luay, sometimes I see in Nabeel glimpses of the lover of my dreams simply because he is new, untainted, interesting. At moments I actually surrender foolishly and entirely to the idea- that I need him, desire him. But as always I know better and see the other side of the bejeweled dream. The sharper edge of the diamond wish for love and same-gender romanticism cuts my glass dream and I shatter into myriad pieces with the hope, the unattainable, the fantastic images. But Luay, I am always willing to suffer the explosion because the more I continue to dream, to crave, to anticipate, and to expect perfection from fate the more I grow and change, emerging from disenchantment always more empowered. I live as intelligently as I can for an otherwise naïve person. Childlike vision sustains me, Luay. This same pure perspective keeps you alive, Luay.
Josh calls and together we laughingly recount the various hazy and comical occurrences of the previous night.
Now it's evening and a certain mellow coolness situates itself tenderly within the neighborhood welcoming jazzlike twilight.
Am I only good enough for one frivolous tumble and nothing more? More sacred, more profound, more lasting?
But do I really want Nabeel?
I live my life, I enjoy the calmness of it, I build the days lazily and calmly in uniform patterns I can keep track of and write down, until something like "romance" storms the well-kept patterns and knocks them asunder. A mess!
But I will not close myself down this time, nor control my desire for emotion, for sensual contact. I will continue naturally.
While mother and I sip aromatic tea in the yard and smoke I notice imperfect reflections vibrating beneath the steam that plumes out of my glass teacup, and I am overcome by the urge to seek him out in the city, kiss him, cradle him, stifle him, enmesh him into my own being. I am two men. One who relishes his freedom and believes in his individualism, in autonomy, and another who longs for deep, long, lush, and textured possession- to possess and be possessed!
Give me time… a lifetime.
Nabeel called last night. Again he talked about his last relationship, which he defines as abusive, and all that he learned from it, giving me further glimpses into who he might be. He spoke richly, deeply from the length and depth of the conduits that tried to connect us. Wires, waves, satellites. I am going into the city to see him.
An exhausting night. From the moment I met Nabeel in the Castro I could tell he was in a cantankerous mood, and wore his neurosis on his sleeve. Within those first few minutes, walking together, Nabeel ceased being a dream and became a monster. He was defensive, combative.
But Nabeel was coming from a place of self-hate and inferiority. From an abusive relationship. He was ready to explode, waiting for me to say the wrong thing, which I ultimately did when I tried to make him laugh but offended him. Immediately he became agitated.
We paused in front of a shop window where he proceeded to tell me off, made a rough speech of every deplorable offense I could have possibly made by simply existing. My reaction was one of disbelief. I lighted a cigarette and merely listened, trying to remain open and understanding amidst my shock.
He finally paused and looked at me expectantly, as if he wanted me to fight, to spit back ugly accusations, profanities.
I only said, 'Look, I'm sorry that I offended you. I have nothing more to say to you because obviously whatever I say you'll twist to incriminate me and justify your anger. I will be your friend, so call me in the morning or however long it takes you to see how unjust you're being.'
I turned and headed to my car. A deep feeling of disappointment then crept up my being and flushed me.
Nabeel ran up behind me and called my name.
My ultimate mistake? Stopping.
He apologized. Reluctantly I accepted and we went to eat.
At the restaurant we sat across from each other. I watched Nabeel who seemed completely preoccupied with straightening his silverware, lining up the plates and the napkins, looking down the whole time.
Only when the food had arrived did he begin again- the paranoid accusations. He called me self-righteous- said, "Just because you're more intelligent than I am, just because you're Adonis, it doesn't mean you have the right to belittle me."
Inside I knew he was talking to his former lover. Did not see me.
'Do you really think you look like that silly ceramic frog, Nabeel?' I whispered across the table emphatically, referring to my stupid remark, which had precipitated this whole mess in the first place.
He mocked me.
"You're confident!" he spit out disgustedly as if being confident were equal to murder.
'Look. I have worked hard to get to where I am and have every right to be confident.'
In a restaurant full of people I felt completely isolated and threatened, alone with Nabeel and his escalating rage.
I got up from the table, my food untouched, and approached the counter where I paid the bill and walked out of the restaurant.
Nabeel followed behind me. I could feel him.
I continued to walk.
He muttered insults under his breath. I did not look back. He belched. I rolled my eyes. Other men passed me and smiled at me flirtatiously. But they were a continent away.
Earlier in the night I had seen Pebbles at the corner of Castro and Market selling her usual array of buttons and t-shirts. I had promised her a cup of coffee, which I picked up at a nearby coffee shop and delivered to her. By now Nabeel had ceased following me.
I walked back to my car but it was nowhere to be found! I stood where I could have sworn I had parked only an hour ago, my hands trembling from the cold and nerves. Where was my car?
I felt suddenly overwhelmed and empty, lonely and dispossessed. I called the police from a nearby payphone, 'I'd like to report a stolen vehicle… No, I did not see them do it… I'm there now on the corner of Castro and 19th… I just left it an hour ago… Thank you…'
I wanted to cry but didn't, kept myself together.
I called Josh in Marin, woke him up. When I told him what had happened he exclaimed, "You're kidding me! Oh, no Emil. Stay put. I'm coming to get you."
While I waited on the street for the police and for Josh I felt nothing but repulsion for the city, for men, for my own nearsightedness.
Two sullen police officers arrived, took down information, which I gave to them calmly, and left. I felt better knowing Josh was on his way. Dear, dependable Josh.
I traced the cracks in the sidewalk where I stood smoking with my head bowed down and thought of far away places, other countries, tropical islands, interesting, trustworthy people.
Just then Nabeel walked by with a repulsive-looking kid whose cavernous dent of a face and bulging eyes, drugged expression and unkempt hair, soiled clothes and filthy paint-chipped fingernails reminded me of things lost or deliberately forgotten.
Nabeel looked sheepish, stopped and asked me what was the matter. I told him my car had been stolen.
The boy said then, "Oh. Is this your date?"
I turned to Nabeel and looked at him inquisitively.
Nabeel seemed sorrowful and answered the boy shamefully, "Nooo…"
The boy shrugged his shoulders and said to Nabeel that he was going to cut out. I turned to the street and lighted another cigarette, heard Nabeel say, "I'm gonna stay here because I feel bad."
When we were alone again Nabeel would not look at me. He muttered awkwardly, "After everything I put you through…"
Maybe this was Nabeel's way of apologizing, his pitiful amends. But I was impervious and we parted promptly. There was nothing more to say, nothing more to hear.
Josh arrived just as Nabeel scurried away into the streets that were now empty and quiet.
The music inside Josh's car was soulful and comforting. Immediately I felt better, safe. Josh was fully awake and charged, asked questions, wanted to know what had happened exactly.
"I did eighty all the way and ran every red light on Van Ness to get here, tell me everything! Are you alright?"
'Yeah. Yeah. Now that you're here…'
I began recounting the bizarre details of my disastrous date with Nabeel, retracing my steps, trying to listen in my own voice for an explanation, a reason, tiny cracks in the story in which I could retain some semblance of sanity, hope, reassurance.
'And then when he apologized I made the mistake of going to dinner with him. I should have just left, Josh. But no, I have to be Mr. Forgiving and Altruistic just because this asshole is Assyrian and gay! So, we got in my car and we… Oh my God!!! I moved my car tonight. I know where my car is, Josh!!!' I said triumphantly, my voice breaking with relief. 'Pull over! Turn around!'
Josh and I laughed as he pulled up to my car. I apologized profusely for the inconvenience. Josh simply looked at me and said, "Look, you've had a rough night. Don't worry about it. It's what friends do. I'm just glad you and your car are alright. Go home, Emil." He sounded gentle and soft. I hugged him and got out of the car.
When I called the police again to report my car "unstolen" the same two sullen police officers showed up. "Don't worry about it," they said. "It happens all the time…"
My drive home was ethereal as Golden Gate Bridge was insulated in a cloud of dense fog. The lights on the bridge created soft yellow patches where one could see the fog swirling, moving, breathing. The empty lanes on Highway 101 guided me back home, gently coaxed me deep into Marin, out of the fog of San Francisco Bay and into sleepy familiarity. The night seemed to smile wickedly having played tricks on me, taking me on a crazy roller coaster ride, stealing my crush on Nabeel and my car, testing my patience, my grace, my strength, even my friendships, then giving my car back as if to say, Go home, kid. This dating business isn't really for you…
Jackie tells me Nabeel has called. We are both shocked at his nerve. Of course I am avoiding him entirely.
Josh's roommate Suzanne speculates that both Jackie and Anna made me feel at fault for the whole Nabeel fiasco because as women they are apt to believe that it is our own fault for initiating the madness, willing the abuse in our lives, and that we somehow deserve it.
I feel like a failure when it comes to my relationships with other Assyrian men- Rodney, Nabeel, and Luay, the nurturing one… who died.
Tears in the morning. What a way to begin the day. During our shift at the restaurant Anna gave me a spontaneous hug that seemed to say: You'll be alright, child. I understand.
I'm overwhelmed by anger and frustration, and am feeling weary. But a new dream burgeons. It takes shape and crystallizes in the conduits of my imagination.
Tell me- will I find fidelity and love?
Is consistency simply unavailable in emotional bonds?
In my imaginative world I belong to many places, but to one man.
Is this intuition, or one more ephemeral, diaphanous wish?
I had shown him a tenderness that had been authentic. I had asked even while he'd chewed me out on the sidewalk, 'You've been hurt badly, haven't you?' But the more I had tried to connect the harder he'd pushed.
Why are we so temperamental, so unkind to each other?
To say Nabeel does not matter is the easy way out. It is uncharacteristic of me. But I should walk away, shouldn't I?
I had said, 'I'm not here to make you feel beautiful, or ugly. And I don't expect the same from you. We have to come to that on our own.'
When I am at work hustling, carrying heavy dirty dishes that are stacked precariously up my arm, and my hand shakes and the platters rattle, when I am hot and the sweat drips down my forehead into my eye, and I am agitated because thirteen tables are tugging at me, I have a realization: There has to be something more out there for me than unskilled labor.
But destiny needs a hand, doesn't it? Just as the tide rises and recedes due to the moon…
I do not like giving up. I have stood on the very brink of suicide and self-destruction many times, and each small daily defeat is a reminder that I have to continue moving forward. No matter what…
I do not like giving up. I can't say I have lived just because I breathed. I can't say I have experienced jazz because I tapped my foot. I did not celebrate when I laughed. I did not see the world when I moved from one place to a thousand others. I want to live, really live. I want to celebrate, really celebrate. To travel. To grow. This can only happen if I don't settle for vapid, destructive relationships simply because I might be lonely and horny.
In a life lived richly, I must remember, there are no destinations. I pray that I never arrive at my happy ending.
I imagine a humming bird is never bored, or idle. And although it is small and fragile it remains agile and adroit, resourceful and shiftless. Sure, it has to struggle like any living creature to survive, but it survives sprightly, with great verve, enthusiasm, energy. Humming birds seem as though they are eternally optimistic…
This is my own aim- to always hold my natural sense of optimism at an active scale, and search with every living breath for that place of hope and nourishment, life and purpose.
I can survive anything. Haven't I already survived so many wars? That of Iran and Iraq, that of my father and my mother, a sexual war, depression, the daily war of not sinking beneath the iron waves of disenchantment with people?