January 1999

In the New Year I want to value my family more on an external and visible level. Inside I already do. Essentially I do. But on an everyday human level my appreciation for them is muffled by conflict, trivialities, resentments, distrust, and by the contradictions we each meet at each step closer.
I am starting to recognize myself amidst all the tension, the characters, the moods, and the personalities. Inside the womb of adventure and spontaneity I fail to predict myself and come to feel guilt in the moments that follow my frivolous actions, the sober moments. And so a cycle forms, a pattern crystallizes. And anger and self-loathing materialize.
I am brave to keep this diary. I must always remember this…
A person needs more than dizzying heights in life and stifling lows. I find that I am exhausted from all this floating and drifting through life and struggle to survive my loneliness, this deafening sense of aimlessness.
Anna becomes more and more human each day and begins to lose her sheen, but I do not fight this natural process that follows every relationship no matter how much I may glorify a person. Desperately clinging to my love for Anna through this dilapidating dream, hoping to find a new wish, a new person, a new day beyond this crumbling of the perfect impression.
I was invited to a New Year's Eve party about an hour away, at the home of a Lebanese-American woman named Heba. I arrived in the night with flowers and wine. Arabic music poured out of the little house in Mountain View as I was greeted and ushered in. Heba was delighted, kissed me on both cheeks, and smiled widely, warmly. She turned to Shammi, "You said he was cute but I didn't imagine anyone could be this cute!" I must have blushed. She reached for my curls. I thought of my childhood in Iran just then. So much fanfare.
There was a lot of laughter and food, music and first-time introductions- English, Assyrian, and Arabic.
We cursed playfully in our respective languages not to be offensive but because the words sounded so quaint as we listened to them escape our lips.
Nadia, the lawyer, took us by the hand and tried to teach us traditional Assyrian line dances that wove through the small house, into the dining room, around furniture, snaking, trailing. The rugs gathered about our merry steps.
As I looked about me I knew this would be a night for me to remember, ringing in the New Year for the first time with other queer middle easterners.
One particular young woman caught my attention and fascinated me the entire night. Her name was Amahl; some called her Amy. I was to learn later that she was the product of a Jordanian father and German mother. She had white milky skin and cropped blond hair. Light eyes. Pink lips. I would never have guessed that she was Arab. She spoke Arabic perfectly, beautifully. And when she walked through Heba's small home Amahl took gigantic, long strides and seemed to traverse space with one gargantuan step.
Much later in the night she would pick up a guitar, sit on the hardwood floor and begin to play. She sang beautifully, hauntingly. Her voice quivering, lilting. But she would forget the words and abruptly stop as if no one else were in the room, and spasm with a very personal frustration, shake her head from side to side, and wrinkle her nose with disdain, stomping the heavy heel of her boot, but whispering, "I can't do this!"
I was mesmerized the entire time, sitting very near her on the edge of my chair, exploring the faces of the others in the room for a reason, a punctuation of sorts. Laura leaned in closer to Amahl, speaking softly, "That's okay. You're doing well. You sound beautiful."
And she did sound beautiful. Vulnerable. Inconceivable.
Shammi had told me earlier that Amahl was a very good poet. And now as I watched her on the floor and listened to her struggle with her demons, so close to me, and so naked, I believed it that she must be a poet.
Although Amahl was chaos in motion, her long limbs flailing through the party in a men's gray suit, in singing she was not a serpent but a consummate angel. And I feared her. She absolutely terrified me. Her intensity disarmed me. Would she break down, toss the guitar well across the room, and howl with despair and sorrow? She was a combination, a contradiction, a sparrow, an undomesticated beast. She was a mute little girl leaping through the air, being born, screaming.
One moment she was strumming the guitar, the next she was reaching for the drum, securing it between her slender thighs, beating her long white hands against the instrument, her head tilted like an animal listening for a rhythm. Poet! Woman! Arab! German!
Although Amahl's intensity and nakedness made me markedly uneasy her jerky eccentricity somehow reassured and welcomed me. Her entire being conveyed that it is indeed alright to be human, creative, bold, contradictory, wild, an animal in a woman's restless body… Passionate. Fragile.
I felt we had more in common than either of us realized.
I met Anita - another queer Assyrian and her South African husband, Frederick. Anita was a pale-skinned, plump, young woman with short brown hair, and a mind that works in ways that are both intellectual and street smart! Frederick was "colored", gentle, shy, polite, handsome as can be. All night I was smitten by the way Frederick and Anita took tender care of each other, respectfully, lovingly. Perhaps this was not an entirely erotic love, but I sensed that it was all other love, essential love, lasting love.
Anita boasted that it was she who proposed marriage to Frederick. Frederick and I looked at each other and chuckled. Although instantly I had a thousand petty questions to ask about Frederick and Anita's arrangement, none seemed worthwhile in the presence of love.
I know how dangerous it is to become stuck in life, to preach love, then place a thousand and one conditions and restrictions upon it. I struggle every day to steer clear from this. Even I can have a great and deep-seated tendency to be judgmental and traditional in my expectations of how a marriage should be conducted, and what love ought to look like. But I try to remember that there's more to life than what I believe and what I think. That we as human beings are meant for so much more than our own cultures, customs, art, religion, history, and experience. And that we can always improve upon these.
When midnight arrived everyone kissed, no one was spared or forgotten. Kisses were warm and plenty.
What a night! There were drums and tambourines, poets and a mortician, lawyers and lawlessness, Assyrians and Arabs, dykes and fags, lovers and revolutionaries.
Last night I dreamt that I possessed a vagina, which was hypersensitive. It was warm and wet, and it brought me immense pleasure that ultimately made me cry.
Sometimes I daydream that my brother has come to visit us and we can actually converse maturely, evenly, about so many things, sharing ideas, soberly agreeing to disagree. But ours is a silent, broken family. Each of us lives separately. It's as though we are completely unrelated. I wonder if even in my childhood we were each just automatic as father, mother, brothers, routinely living out our disparate roles through the endless days and nights of a loveless marriage in Iran. Never sitting down together to converse in depth about anything. The times I do recall my parents being in the same room were usually tense, the mood was always oppressive, their tone invariably jocular, sardonic, as each coolly listed the other's domestic crimes, emotional shortcomings, teasing, taunting, shaking in their own skin as they calmly destroyed each other.
Playing as a child with cheap plastic toys on Persian rugs I could almost smell the acrid smell of the venom of lovelessness in our home.
Lovelessness.
My only model.
So, now, twenty-something I wonder if I can ever feel love in any adult relationship when in my upbringing love did not grow in our house, but remained merely a barter of sorts, a lousy deal, a perfunctory exchange of subtle insults. And will my rebellion against this kind of marriage take up so much space, so much energy, so much effort that my emotional growth will remain forever hindered?
I wander the streets like a runaway, a vagabond, an addict, loveless, aware that in my heart a one-winged crane tries desperately to take flight.
It is a busy brunch shift at Half Day. I am serving twelve tables. In the midst of all the noise and bustle of the morning I notice that the occupants of a newly seated table look distinctly Assyrian. The couple is in its sixties perhaps, they have deep-set dark eyes, thick dark hair, the lines on their aging faces are familiar and telling. But I dismiss my hunch because this is Marin where it is unlikely to run into other Assyrians. They must be Italian!
Obviously they possess the same hunch about me because I can feel their searching eyes penetrating my face as I take down their order. They must notice my thick black eyebrows, the dark half moons under my eyes, the waves in my hair. I see recognition in their faces and chuckle inside.
The couple speaks perfect English without an accent. They can't contain themselves anymore and smile, "Where are you from?"
I smile back, 'I am Assyrian.'
Their dark eyes promptly light up. They seem to straighten in their chairs, sitting up with delight.
"We are Assyrian, too!"
Here we switch from English to Assyrian- our heart's tongue. Nearby tables turn to us at the sound of this uncommon and strange language.
The Assyrians tell me they were born in the States, that their parents came to America many years ago, long before it was fashionable to emigrate from the Middle East.
Apparently theirs was one of a handful of Assyrian families that settled in Turlock some seventy years ago.
My coworker Vanessa, who was sober for two years, recently relapsed. She has been drinking and smoking again. She has been restless and asked me to go to the city with her. Although I felt awkward about the prospect of drinking with her, seemingly supporting the relapse, I also felt anxious to be social with Vanessa, whom I adore.
We went to the End Up. Here Vanessa disappeared for a short while, popping up some time later with a young African-American man. They were arm in arm, obviously having a wonderful time. Vanessa whispered in my ear that we were going back to his place, and if this was alright with me. I said it was.
I knew exactly why we were headed to this stranger's home and was deeply titillated.
Upstairs, inside the small San Francisco apartment, Ken put on music while Vanessa and I settled in. I excused myself to the restroom and when I returned there was a pile of cocaine on the coffee table. Vanessa smiled and motioned for me to help myself. I did.
There was a sexual energy in the room that was all-inclusive. When Vanessa went to the restroom Ken and I did a couple more lines. I spoke without inhibition.
'I really want to suck your cock,' I said to Ken frankly, matter-of-factly.
He just kind of shrugged and said, "That's alright. But I don't suck dick, just so you know."
'That's fine.'
And before I knew it the three of us were naked in Ken's bed. Vanessa and I looked at each other and giggled at the unlikelihood of us simultaneously performing oral sex on one man. Ken's dark erection glistened in what little light was on in the room.
Every few minutes one of us got up for another snort from the coffee table.
At one point I sat back and watched Vanessa suck Ken off, but Ken motioned with his head for me to resume sucking him. I took him deep into my throat. Vanessa's eyes widened. We laughed.
I watched as Ken put on a condom and penetrated Vanessa. His testicles bounced against her perfect ass.
Moments later I was performing oral sex on Vanessa. I was amazed at how beautiful her pussy was. I flicked at the piercing that dangled from her clitoral hood.
Here I was exploring the pussy of a woman I found attractive, smart, somewhat lost and heartbreaking. There is always something about Vanessa that begs to be saved, or at least adored.
Vanessa moved to the sofa. I sat on the floor. Ken stood over me. He brandished his hard-on in my face. I opened my mouth. He teased me, holding his cock still, then turning it away from my lips. Vanessa watched with fascination. Her blond hair mussed, naked on the sofa. Ken finally fed me his dick. I swallowed it deep into my throat, my lips resting on his pubis. I felt him flexing in my throat. He sighed.
It excited him most when Vanessa and I kissed while he fucked her. And this is how he came.
Some nights later Vanessa and I went out again- this time to The Stud. Vanessa immediately heard a song she liked and was climbing the platform where she danced with a handful of friendly gay boys! I on the other hand sought a cooler, calmer corner and stationed myself there. But I was not to be just a lone observer for long; soon there was a handful of Latin young men encompassing me, dancing up to me, bumping up against me, smiling, winking, flirting. I smiled and playfully rolled my eyes, feigned aloofness. The whole scene was more comical than it was flattering. They were sweet young men. What I enjoyed most about them was their eagerness that shined in their big dark eyes, which drank me intermittently. Sometimes their bodies brushed against me, but it was the queeniest of them all who reached over and deliberately grabbed my balls, cupping them, pursing his lips!
I was tickled and offended, wondering again as I do every so often what it is about being gay that seems to permit others to help themselves without pausing, thinking, using discretion.
I think the assumptions we make about each other and ourselves as gay men are far more detrimental than those made by a heterosexist society…
Occasionally Vanessa stopped by with an ephemeral partner beside her who was beaming with delight, swept by Vanessa's charm and Cameron Diaz good looks.
She acted jealous and attempted to pull me away from my admirers, but I chose to remain at the bar and watch the goings-on around me. The Latin boys sensed her jealousy and remarked about it, but I defended Vanessa, 'She's just looking out for me, that's all.'
It is night. There are voices emerging from the family room and I immerse myself in blue- blue walls, blue sheets, blue ink- because blue is my favorite emotion, place. It is the first opinion I ever consciously formed!
And I return to blue to find the child waiting there. I seek him because the child did not smoke, did not get drunk, did not wish for death and change, did not have to fight for his rights.
Beauty.
As far as reading goes I burn through the pages of Bell Hooks' "Bone Black" while Krishnamurti's "On Love And Loneliness" remains unfinished on the floor next to my bed.
Disenchantment with Anna has begun. It always does. Every relationships slips from the shelf and falls to the floor, cracking. But I struggle to side with love always, with understanding, resolving to accept others' shortcomings as much as I expect them to accept and forgive mine.
A regular at the restaurant approaches me feebly. She says she wishes her husband were still alive because he would have enjoyed me greatly. She smiles, pats me softly on the arm, and slowly slips away leaving me deeply touched…
Another customer asks me how I "slipped into this place"?
'What do you mean?' I inquire.
She shifts in her seat slightly, leans in, and says, "Well, you're the only one in here with any personality."
I am gracious and thank her for the complement, although I am slightly offended on behalf of my friends and coworkers.
A complement is not flattering when it cheats others.
The owners of Las Camellias, a Mexican restaurant in San Rafael, are also regulars at Half Day. They catch me off-guard one morning with a proposition to come work for them. I tell them I will think about it.
While driving I reach for pen and paper and scribble notes. I know it's not safe, but the highway is nearly empty. The feeling that here in the States we have a tendency to live very much inside labels and categories suddenly overwhelms me. Although I know it can be comforting to pigeonhole oneself within one such community, to identify with a movement, and to be accepted by it while striving for a common goal, I also feel that amidst the manifold and discrete uprisings and bold self-promoting we forget the subtle subplots and nuances, the undeniably binding hues of humanity and sameness that attempt to daily and globally unite us.
I know in my heart that it is not blood and patriotism, sexuality and ethnicity that distinguishes and divides us; even deeper, even more profound, more integral and perhaps less concrete is our sentience that makes us so fragilely same. Fear, loneliness, indignation, need for sustenance, and birthright to an equal share of land and resources makes us same animal. We may look different. We may speak a different language. We may grow a different spice and wave a different flag. But we are, as billions of humans at large, a single entity. One animal. One being, but struggling in different directions.
I may be unjustly simplifying a very complex global dynamic, but what if our leaders and governments are in fact complicating an otherwise simple and straightforward, totally functioning condition set off by a greed for power? What if?
I close my eyes but I still see. I see phosphenes, shapes moving in space, patterns pulsating in semi-darkness. Can't you?
I masturbate driving home on a dark desolate freeway that snakes through the sleeping hills.
Wistfully I look out windows. Dreamily I live. No moment is wasted sober, trembling that life may prove too difficult and unforgiving in the end.
Laughter is a ghost shepherd herding the diaphanous minutes away.
One afternoon when the rain encompassed my car, and the world was further blurred by mist on the windshield, I felt the presence of something familiar but half-forgotten. Was it the ghost of eroticism itself; a younger wish for love that has long been overwhelmed and buried by the reality of fear of intimacy? Or was it just the heavy-handed wind lifting the axles of the car, giving the impression of lightness and motion through time?
Last night I dreamt that a pregnant coworker was singing karaoke, but she did not sing well. She cried all the while. Today I hear that the she has given birth to a baby girl that was tardy!
Blue imagination fails any definitive prediction pertaining to my own fate and future.
So I retreat to Sleep Café where someone reads poetry in a language that has not been invented.
Jackie has an Assyrian admirer. He is flying back from Egypt where he is presently stationed by an American company. She comes into my room long after I have shut off the light, sits on the edge of my bed, and we proceed to have a long half-serious discussion about love, marriage, practicality. Although Jackie is not physically attracted to this particular suitor she is deeply drawn to his character and the idea of being married to "the right man".
'I always imagined you with someone more charming, less "adult", someone with whom you may be silly,' I say having sat up in my bed.
Jackie buries her face into my down comforter and giggles like a teenager. And although we talk for a long while, theoretically about the pitfalls and possibilities of love and romance within the Assyrian milieu, we arrive at no solid conclusion- perhaps because there is no such thing in life.
I've resolved not to drink for a while. Last night's nightmarish drunken dispute with Anna marred my day with Ahimsa in Oakland. I was only half-present. The rest of me was tottering, falling, then scattering. I found myself repulsed suddenly by everything; even by Ahimsa himself- his nails, which needed to be trimmed, his scant facial hair that was wiry, and his long, thin, stringy hair. I struggled to return to the striking beauty of his bountiful green eyes.
Ahimsa gave me two tangible presents: a moving quote by Nelson Mandela and "Mizna", an Arab-American journal containing a published poem of his. (Mizna in Arabic means: the soothing cloud that shades the desert traveler.)
He asked if I knew of any contemporary published Assyrian writers. I said I didn't, especially not queer Assyrian writers. We laughed excitedly about the possibility of me being the first!
Ahimsa said that he found only historical books by Assyrian academics, nothing fiction, nothing poetic, nothing erotic, nothing sensual…
Assyrians being erotic and sensual? Unheard of!
I discover suspicious stains in my car, on the seat. It would be truthful if I testified that these are from the night before when I was drunk, when I was angry about life and the missing, and I sought pacific kisses from a stranger much older than myself, who enjoyed sucking on my tongue, and asked nothing more of me; another writer, a journalist who pointed to the magnificent house across the street and said it belonged to the man who wrote Harvey Milk's speeches!
When I forget I am handsome, desirable, and amazing I seek a glimpse of this in the pleasure that is reflected in the eyes of a total stranger.
It's a typical story.
Still music takes me.
I sit on the floor, near my Grandmother who tells me delightful, dramatic stories about a past in a village in Iran. Sermons. Parables.
I am a different person with everyone, to everyone, including myself. It is not intentional.
Driving home through hills that embody living impressions of light and shadow, like changing expressions on a nameless face, I lower the window to the chill and wind of the Bay, Swing Out Sister's music lifting me well off the road, transforming my reality. And I wonder if this youthful joy will someday leave me entirely because I assume that after a certain age, and a number of sobering experiences, joy departs or assumes a new identity.
Or will I always be able to tap into this lightness of emotion, this intangible celebration within, a holiday amidst the deaths and the voids?
After a successful year of effortless friendship with Anna I find we have finally arrived at an inevitable understanding of each other that is more realistic and human, less romantic and flawless.
Why continue to hope for heaven after death when there's so much light and love in the here and now?
Santa Barbara:
I drove down here with Bungany- a South African friend of Frederick- after picking him up in Berkeley. He spoke fondly about his intense friendship with Frederick while we drove in the sun, talking, listening to music, getting along remarkably easily though we'd never met before, laughing, opening up readily.
Bungany enlightened me on apartheid and his personal experiences as a colored boy brought up under such racist conditions. His stories were indeed moving and immensely human. He spoke so evenly and articulately about the daily injustices he encountered in his own country that I was left simply marveling at his acceptance and maturity, his responsible anger…
Here we are: Anita, Frederick, Bungany, and I. It rains ceaselessly but we're all in agreement that the rain does not feel oppressive, but auspicious, signaling new beginnings, birth, an apt cleansing of streets and soul.
Disturbing though that amidst all this warmth and closeness I should continue to feel isolated. Will homophobia forever reign over my personal fate in all relationships, marring my every step toward happiness, destroying my every chance of living an emotionally rich life?
Bungany says that it was Frederick who taught him to cry, and that before their three-month relationship in Amsterdam he had never cried, or known how to. He said that in Amsterdam Frederick would be so overcome by his memories of loss, as well as his love for Bungany that he would embrace Bungany right there in the street, kiss him, and weep.
"But I have never told Frederick this," Bungany reveals softly.
And Frederick? Do I desire him? Anita has alluded to Frederick's attraction for me, his small attempts to reach me, picking up the telephone, starting to call, but not going through with it. But how can I desire Frederick with good intentions when I have not been taught how to love, really love? How can I enter any romantic situation when romance and love were never demonstrated in our home as a child?
Sex?
Love?
I cannot blame America for my inexperience. I cannot justly blame my Assyrian upbringing in a home that lacked any mention or gesture of true love, desire, romance, flirtation, laughter. And yet, I cannot inculcate myself for it…
So, how do I overcome?
Living alone.
Living alone.
Bungany is just delightful, full of life, brimming with energy and zeal. He possesses an appetite for knowledge and experience that is larger than life. Always this outward thirst and hunger, this exhilarating and infectious eagerness to move to the next thing. Even his body is streamlined and aerodynamic, seems built for motion, taut, muscular, small. Even sleeping in the same bed with Bungany, side by side like children, the sleep became a dance of sorts, shifting constantly, dreaming of motion I'm sure.
In South Africa and in Amsterdam Bungany is a well-known political activist, he tells me without boasting. He even shows me faded magazines and articles with his photographs. I am almost speechless at his courage and level of awareness that my mouth remains agape for some time. I turn to look at him proudly. 'This is wonderful, Bungany!'
He smiles and looks embarrassed by my enthusiastic response.
Bungany, being hyperactive in some ways, naturally enjoys his sports and says he won a gold medal in the 1998 Gay Games.
"I even started a gay and lesbian church in Johannesburg where I am considered a minister," Bungany reveals one dark rainy afternoon. When I ask him how that was received he proceeds to tell disturbing stories of resistance and homophobia, of families being torn apart in an already broken society.
Today he pursues a PhD in Theology at Berkeley.
It seems that so many prodigious things have happened because of Bungany and yet he himself, his physical self remains so small I could lose him in my embrace- as my grandmother used to lose her sewing needles between her fingers as a seamstress in Chicago.
We both agree that if God were to come for us we would willingly surrender because we have lived fully, though differently. Bungany's achievements remain external and palpable, while I have nothing to show for mine- nothing, no congregation, no college degree, no magazine articles.
My achievements are personal, small and subtle, hidden within the closing pages, pushed against each word like homes built of mud.
Will I ever explode out into the human world?
In Frederick and Anita's humble little home the four of us share our fears and hopes in an informal circle, fearlessly because we are certain no one will use our confessions against us, hurtfully, maliciously.
Bungany says, "Assyrian women are just like African women. They are selfless and hospitable." He says that when he met Anita's mother in Modesto she scurried about her guests insisting they eat more, never sitting down at the table.
Anita is in distress- understandably- because an aunt of hers is detained in Thailand along with her husband and terrified children until they can come up with an impossible twenty-thousand-dollar bribe of sorts. All this because they were forced to flee Iraq due to the recent bombings by the U.S.
I retreat into the guestroom often to close my eyes, rest my heart, and write intermittently. Being here has been so unexpectedly emotional for me. Somewhat emotionally confusing even.
When I dare look into the tarnished window, the mystical mirror that hangs precariously in my soul, I see a child's face. She looks peaceful.
I tell Bungany that it feels as though I always stand, live, breathe, love, and walk with one foot traversing the ominous divide, while the other does not follow.
"Do you think you're the only one who feels this way?" he asks compassionately.
It is the child that carries the man; the child is stronger. The child did not smoke, did not get drunk, did not yet have the urge and the need to destroy the unreachable element known as the Self. The child is stronger. What I cannot fathom, accomplish, and accept the child embraces fearlessly. What I do not trust in humanity the child embraces faithfully. Is it because the child in me continues to rev with the power of an inexhaustible engine, the heart and beat of which continue to pump with imagination? What I cannot forgive the child celebrates because his imagination is something like pure love; love before the concept of borders and differences.
I have come to associate sex with intoxication, an altered consciousness, with alcohol, drugs, a fog of streets, bars, crowds and cowardice… and struggle to dispel my own misconceptions, and decipher the mirage… so that I might share my findings with the world…
Bungany was fourteen when he lay eyes on the city in which his mother worked as a maid, the city from which he was banned due to the apartheid. It was here, on this day on which he had penetrated the city without a pass that he saw white people up close for the first time. He looked upon them with real fascination as he did the big buildings, the paved streets, the architecture, the storefronts. He wanted to reach out his hand to the whites he passed on the street and touch their light fine hair, feel for himself the texture of their fair skin, and white myth. But he was arrested before long, thrown into the back of a patrol wagon by guards who towered over him and showed him no mercy at so young an age. His mother had witnessed Bungany's arrest, dropped her bags, and pleaded with the armed men in uniform who were colored.
"But they just shoved her back so violently she fell down," Bungany recalled somberly, his eyes dark and glistening, his skin a deep brown, the air around us mournful.
Nelson Mandela
1994 Inaugural Speech:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
I return to my corner of the world a little changed. The time I have spent with Bungany, Frederick and Anita has triggered new images, new ideas, a subtle shift in my thinking and perception of the world. If three days in Santa Barbara are able to do this to me imagine what a single day in Africa or the Middle East would do!