August 1999

I am out of touch…
Last week, after a long night of debauchery, I lost control of my car and crashed into a median in San Rafael. I was only fortunate not to have harmed myself or anyone else. I consider this a fair warning from some higher force that was witness to my living carelessly like a teenager who still believes he is invincible. Somehow, within, spiritually, I am grateful. I am awakened to the horrible possibilities that lurk at every involuntary turn of the road, at every drunken fork.
I got what was coming to me. I was out of control- for ten years, not just for the last few months. I lived like an immortal. Scratch that. I lived like a hoodlum.
Everything falls into place with a faint whisper of a resolution to sober up and shape up, step out of the protective womb of the fantasy and step into the light of active living, breathing now the intermingled air of the open marketplace where the fisherman and the florist work peacefully side by side.
Twenty-six today!
Accompanied mom to the office of a local cosmetic surgeon, as she has been quite dissatisfied with the state of her sagging eyelids for some time. She says she feels guilty for wanting and pursuing this when there are so many other more impending causes she could be investing in. I suspect I am included in this rather serious category. But I assuage her concerns. I tell her I'm proud of her and that she should go through with it.
The doctor himself was swarthy, smooth-skinned, effeminate in ways that were handsome and endearing. Slender. Self-certain. I could hardly make eye contact with him and when I did it felt like a battle of wills. I was completely thrown. I wished I had fixed my hair and dressed better.
He had perfect hands.
I watched him as he fumbled with a digital camera he said was brand new. He manipulated mom's image on a laptop computer to give her an idea of the benefits of the procedure. He had a child's pliable body and squeezed himself next to us, his legs crossed.
Because of my online diary I have met Ashur, a queer Assyrian in Canada. He called this afternoon and this may sound strange, but I can always recognize his voice, liken it to that of my cousins. There is something distinctly Assyrian about it. There is a familiarity in and around it. I can't describe it, but it's a little nasal, a little unmistakable.
Each time we talk we open up a little more. He told me about a wild party he went to with a gay co-worker, an event held in a Toronto warehouse, attended by two-thousand men in leather. He said the music was pumping and exhilarating from start to finish, and that it never waned. He danced for hours like he hasn't in years. (He is twenty-eight.) Throughout the duration of the festivities an artist spray-painted a mural of men in an orgy. Each time Ashur looked up more of the scene was revealed beyond the smoke and the haze.
On stage two men who were dressed in hospital scrubs made out. One bent the other over, ripped his bottoms off and began to finger him. After some minutes he reached well into the loosened anus and proceeded to actually pull something out of it. Ashur said everyone gasped and screamed when a purple Teletubbie was extricated from the anus of the man!
We laughed wildly about this… after I verified that Ashur was in fact telling the truth.
We plan on meeting in person in Chicago in the near future.
Folding the laundry fresh out of the dryer is heaven. The mere act of sorting and folding lulls me, the warmth soothes me, the silence of the garage, a moment alone, without any hesitations, calms me. I want to sleep standing.
It is in such small daily events that streams of reflection and meaning flow into lakes of meditative ideas, and I fall in love with life again; and it does not matter that other loves were violently destroyed, annihilated by my angers and resentments, by guilt, by sadness, by boredom, and impatience.
I wandered the oblique streets of my desire, which were frayed and tattered, knocked on every door, on every heart of every stranger that passed and only the lonely men responded simply because my own state of disconnection was a magnet. We did not dance but fell like dead leaves to our knees, kissing without passion. With addiction.
I drank until the lights flickered and the scene danced unevenly. I giggled. But futile are cynical chuckles. My body led but my heart did not follow.
The flowers in the yard attempted to console me. Nature failed. For the first time I forgot all the inspiration that had rendered my life graceful. Bitterness prevailed.
Addiction.
Mom and I walked through these calm residential streets, traversing the cracks in the pavement, the silence broken by a wind that asked, "Whooo?" But I found I had no answer or explanation for the atmosphere except, 'Every one of us.' Lawns lay still, submissive as I recalled too many uncertain embraces of too many men. Mom commented on the magnificence of wispy clouds that were painted by the setting sun. Twilight tapestry.
Each silent home we passed possessed windows so darkened, so empty that it was as though all of Novato were deserted. But I knew that behind every curtain private lives took place, love happened, abuse, longing, divorce, hope. Addictions.
We fought the wind to the doorstep of our borrowed home wondering who would win the sixty-million-dollar lottery…
One evening, at a friend's house on the mountain, when the temperature was just right and the light seductive, the music engaging, I happened upon a white feather boa, and modeled it. I felt close to the world that contained the woods that in turn contained the small house. Trees looked through every window. I felt the intoxication, the laughter, posing in the bathroom mirror while Anna peed. We giggled like children, with no one to reprimand us for displaying our bodies, shamelessly, innocently.
These are the moments I take with me into the dark, holding them up like a protective flame.
I fear nothing anymore. I resolve to live this imperfect life according to its rules and not against them.
Summer passes swiftly, laughingly. We hum with pleasure, small against the night sky.
I have another serpent dream. I am in a small cell with glass walls and doors. I am being detained by authorities for being a foreigner. In this cell there are large tropical plants, a desk, a chair, and the snake, which is long, fat. This is a familiar place. It is not the first time I have been held here. There is a tray of food on the desk. The snake and I meet here, we are face to face. The snake yawns, opening its mouth wide, its jaw unhinged. This frightens me and my reaction in turn startles the snake. It quickly slithers away, knocking the tray of food off the table. I am left with nothing. Just this dysfunctional existence in a cell with the serpent...