October 1999

Mitra took me to a party that was held at a motel in the city. There were DJs and people dancing around the pool. We got a room and took Ecstasy. I am now trying to piece the fragments and the moments that were lost in the haze together. There were beautiful men there with whom I bonded because of the drug, but not sexually, although I would have liked that. We danced for hours around the pool, everyone smiling, all of us together, no violence, no fights, no jerks. The night passed in a tunnel and the earth shook, the scene where my eyes fell quivered...
Even now, two days later, I want to return.
A handsome young man in shades who looked vaguely familiar approached me through the moving bodies, and he said, "You work at Half Day Cafe. You were my waiter." He confessed that he had always hated waiters in Marin because they were oftentimes snobby and indifferent, but that I had been gregarious and friendly. "You were on top of things. You changed my perspective."
Boredom and dissatisfaction arise from not having the creative life I desire. I am not the person I wanted to be by this age. I am not living my dreams. Each moment passes with a gaping hole in the center of it and the days are prosaic and long.
There are things in life I want desperately, things I'm not fighting for because my energies are centered on one thing: writing. I'd like to believe that I am improving, and if not improving, at least learning to accept my limitations. Each night I run my hands along the rough walls of this act and occasionally I happen upon a soft poetic part, a hole perhaps, through which I can see a future in writing; not as a best-seller, mainstream artist, but as a man who is at peace with being sensitive, gay, Middle Eastern, etc.
But if nothing comes of it life will go on, won't it? I'll live... as a teacher, a nurse, a waiter, or another nondescript body moving through the expressionless masses, failing, existing, mechanically functioning. But I should pray not, hope not, work hard not to fill the gap that would be filled by this churlish twin.
I want my own distinctive position in life, a special place, a creative and productive place. I want to be heard, known, appreciated. Mind you, not glorified or worshipped- to me these things are not flattering or intriguing. I just want to be a good writer, someone who writes from the heart with words that are felt with each pulse, spoken out with the voice of the soul, poetry sprinkled upon the page like spring blossoms, ideas that float like bubbles blown by a child, but explosive and bursting with insinuations, possibility.
I want eroticism.
But I want health.
I want romanticism.
But I want to express the pain that is life itself.
Isn't pain a supplement, an incentive, a motivation, a force to be heeded?
I want beauty. I want all that I feel to be made eternal, not because I am extraordinary and what I have to say is more important than anyone else, but because we are all extraordinary and I would be contributing to the creative and spiritual movement.
Tonight must remain with me through all nights that I may sigh and toss the pen and paper aside, because I may feel I have failed and want to quit. I want tonight to remind me in the future that I had a purpose beyond perfection and expectation, money, fame. I want poetry to cultivate itself in me despite my reservations and humanness.
A young Assyrian born in Lebanon and living in Chicago e-mails me and tells about his struggles coming out and not wanting to hurt his mother, his family.
Grant, a gay Assyrian-American studying at the University of California, Santa Cruz, also writes. He says he read my diary entries and could relate to much of it. He was grateful.
Ramina writes that she is straight and Assyrian but applauds us.
Allen, also Assyrian and straight writes that he happened upon the site and cried when he read my diary. He felt angry that our community is so homophobic. He writes, "Emil, atin evit akhooni." (Emil, you are my brother.)
I e-mail everyone back.
Ashur came for a visit and we had a lovely time. He left this morning and now? Now begins the mystery of how I feel about him. What do I want? How will I know what it is? Will I recognize if it's attraction or love? Was what I felt for Luis even love? How do people decipher such elusive emotions as love? How do people recognize such poetic emotions so easily, see them, touch them? To me they happen in symbols, as flashes of lightening. Still, what would we do with love once we establish that it is love? Ashur lives in Canada.
I fear that I will hurt him, not he me. I feel safe from that. I am too complex at times, while Ashur seems to know what it is he wants. He is a natural romantic and he surrenders to it like fish to water. There is no hesitation. But I am not so. I am cautious. Not logical.
I am happy and this happiness I must share with others. I cannot keep it hidden!