October 2000

A drink of water. Autumn sun on my arm. A leaf flying at the windshield. Jackie's smile. Tariq's voice. Mom's little surprises. A hush. A wish.
In line at the drugstore I scrutinize the cashier. It is evident that she is weary and annoyed. Her hands are small and bony and she wears glasses. There is sorrow in her brown eyes. She has an accent I can't make out. When I'm face to face with her I say something light, encouraging. She smiles. She looks around, leans forward and whispers that she's only got eight more months of this work, that her son will soon graduate college, that she's working only to put him through school. 'I admire you,' I say before the automatic sliding doors swoosh open and we disappear from each other's life.
Tomorrow is the reading for Male Lust at Good Vibrations, the sex toy shop in the Mission. I always get so nervous before reading, but once I'm up in front of people I become very calm, natural.
There's been another attack on Gaza. I worry about Tariq.
I bring a box of donuts to anatomy class, which puts a smile on the early morning faces of classmates.
Things are a mess in the world, not just the Arab world, but right here, and perhaps America is the biggest mess of them all.
This morning I took mom to the farmer's market in the city. Here in the open air market mom came completely to life, seemed totally at home, perhaps as she'd been in similar markets in Iran, as a young mother, picking the perfect pomegranates, the freshest eggplant, haggling. My mother, who changes before my eyes into a hundred women, always a surprise and a mystery.
Night is a swarthy lover with starry eyes gazing into mine. Hypnotic. Wine. Laughter in a violent world. Love in a loveless time. With you...
The date with David? He was an hour late, didn't offer to pay for dinner, gave me a blowjob he did not finish.
Came home to a package from Alyson Books- two crisp shiny copies of Revolutionary Voices!
David e-mails the day after the date. In the e-mail he is sincere and thoughtful.
Wael looks surprised when I show up at his door, joking that he had expected me to cancel. We strolled in the cool Oakland air to a nearby restaurant and for the first time I felt closer to Wael, enjoyed him more, understood him. He, too, seemed more open, talking more freely about himself. He said I looked different but couldn't quite place his finger on it. We talked a little about Tariq, politics, and life in general.
On the drive back to Marin I again felt the severity of solitude- the black highway, multitudinous lights flickering across the bay, lives and deaths intermingling in the near-distance under the pseudonym: San Francisco.
My run in the rain, off the beaten path, was serene and picturesque, and when the clouds let up new colors without names emerged, sunrays falling delicately on the surrounding hills and their dramatic folds.
Nothing about a person you've just met is real. We step up to each other gingerly, in tailored replicas of our real, disheveled selves.
Tariq, I love you.
Everyone I've ever known is somewhere in the world- loving, living, dreaming. Something grand connects us all and I feel them in my own veins as I live every single moment as if it's the second to last, touch everything as if my hands are about to be cut off.
My grandmother tells me to keep growing my hair out so I can wear it up. I look at her funny, 'That's not what an Assyrian grandmother is supposed to say!' We laugh.
At work I overheard more than one table discussing Israel and the Palestinians.
Tariq writes that he's been drunk with a Palestinian friend and I'm glad to know he's not alone, but with a kindred spirit, commiserating.
If I believe that religion is for mad people then why do I find myself praying for peace?
The moon is amazing tonight. I'm in bed and have left my window wide open so that its rust-colored rays may enter my room and softly kiss my naked, changing body, abate the palpitations of my flesh, which longs for hands, lips. I ought to be making love, not sleeping alone, my youth being wasted. I'm bursting with love and energy, my body burning.
It's not clear yet what it is I'm supposed to learn from Tariq. It's hard to believe my sense of trust could be so easily diminished. I'm full of mistrust, have become a wave that retreats, then returns timidly, cautiously, but crashes- drowning in the foaming confusion of my own enthusiasm. Everything exhausts me. Everyone overwhelms me.
It is morning in San Francisco and although I'm supposed to be in anatomy class I am here at Cafe Flore, sitting outside. I just couldn't imagine myself sitting in a sterile room, among sleepy eyes, assaulted by our over-enthusiastic instructor's rantings about nerves- wearing on my own! So, I sped past the Sir Francis Drake exit, continued on 101 with other vehicles, crossed Golden Gate, the city sunny and welcoming.
Bassam's party was lovely and he was the consummate host- serving a new dish at the buffet table, mixing drinks, hugs, smiles, introductions. Moe brought flowers. Wael, a bottle of wine. I gave Bassam a signed copy of Revolutionary Voices.
Heba ran up to me with grapes in her hand sporting a wide, bright-eyed smile, announcing that ever since we first met she'd wanted to feed me grapes because of my deceptively Roman profile. She sat with me a while and for the first time we talked about her love life. I listened with all my senses, absorbing her sentences. Love is a tactile conversation. Tariq's name came up and Heba asked if it was alright to talk about him. 'Of course,' I answered with a smile. She told me about their humorous deep-sea fishing excursion in Santa Barbara recently. Tariq deep-sea fishing? I couldn't picture it. But evidently it had happened.
Laura, slender, looking as though she were from the nineteen-twenties stopped by with a plate of food and for the first time we spoke openly, intimately. I said, 'Only you could dye your hair black from red and still look fiery!' She smiled and explained that she has reached a certain level of peace with the world, attained her master's in theology, and feels closer to God. Her dark eyes emanated warmth, vitality. I broke the surface further with, 'I want you to know that although Shammi and I are close she doesn't talk about the details of your relationship or breakup.' She touched my knee with her free hand and smiled, "It means a lot to me that you said that." Her high cheekbones, her long neck, her warm Lebanese eyes... She asked how I was doing. I said that love changed me, explaining that upon my return from Columbus I quit smoking, began to eat better and started exercising. This really moved her and she actually choked up a bit. In the end we decided that we would remain vulnerable and open to life, sensitive without suffering.
Later in the night everyone gathered round the table of food and cakes and champagne was served. Laura announced that she would like to make a toast and this she did, emotionally and eloquently. She even made a point of turning around and smiling at me.
Moe remained stationary most of the evening because of the pain and painkillers. He was in a terrible car accident that seems to have changed him somehow. He seemed older, more humble. I sat with him, gently rubbing his aching back. He admitted that a year ago he was loud and obnoxious and apologized. "You're sweet, Emil," he said softly.
We talked a little of the accident, which he barely remembers, and of his many nebulous days in the hospital where feeding tubes sustained his battered body. He said the first time he looked at himself in the mirror he had been repulsed by the reflection, how dirty he was, amazed that friends who had kept vigil had touched him, kissed him.
When Wael, Moe, and I left the party Moe began to shiver violently. He regretted having overstayed and tired himself. The persistent shivering made his broken ribs ache more. He winced and moaned in pain. When we were in the car Wael cranked the heat. Moe asked Wael to hold his hand.
The next afternoon I am in the city, on a large empty stage at Harvey Milk Institute, reading from Revolutionary Voices. Alone.
David e-mails.
Yesterday I received a sad e-mail from Tariq asking me for at least one word just to know I am alive and well. I wrote an hour-long response, which in the end I deleted. Loving him from here, from the corners of my life, from the mouth of my heart is something that I cherish and shirk from. Letting him go hurts. Accepting him hurts. So, I exercise- the other extreme of my emotional pain: physical highs!
I vacillate between many contradictions within a single moment. The unease reshapes me.
Wine by the fire with Jackie and grandmother. I miss Tariq like I am the logs burning in the fire, like the wine swirling in the glass, like the blackness of night beyond the windows. But no one needs to know, after all fire is supposed to burn, wine is expected to intoxicate, night is meant for longing.
Mom and I woke up early and drove to San Francisco in the dark, sipping hot coffee out of paper cups with white plastic lids. I listened to music, talking little. Mom smoked and was chipper, but nervous. She clutched the three-dollar bridge toll, which I had asked her to put away, it was too soon.
In fact, we were leaving the house too early, but I didn't say anything, knowing this was an important day for mom. I respected her wishes, no matter how neurotic.
We arrived at the INS office, room 45, waiting area A, at seven; her appointment was at eight-forty. We took a seat by the window, beyond which the city was still shrouded in darkness. We were the first two people in the hideous room with no pictures, no plants, no magazines. Only dirty white walls. A door with a peep hole and a combination lock.
I opened my book, crossed my legs, and began to read. Mom asked if she should review her answers. I said no, to just sit back and try to relax; I had tested her some days before and her answers had been, without exaggeration perfect!
Soon the sun was rising as others began to shuffle sheepishly into the spiritless room. I noted that everyone, mom included, was apologetic- as if they had no right to place their dirty foreign feet on sacred American floors. This made me indignant, so I met their eyes, smiled openly at them, laughed with mom in an attempt to dissipate the tension in the air, which made the already oppressive space more intolerable.
I continued reading the anthology Ahimsa had sent me. Poems by Arab writers. Beautiful poems. I read them achingly. I turned occasionally to the one dirty window, stained by last year's rains, and looked out on the surrounding rooftops. This scene seemed to lull me a little. I returned to the book, turned the page, and discovered a poem appropriately titled Rooftops.
Of course mom passed the citizenship test. She came out beaming; not only had she overcome her insecurities, the young officer had been polite, she said, respectful, efficient. We stepped buoyantly out onto the morning street that was now bustling with people, cars, activity. Mom could not stop smiling. She was shining and the exuberance made her skin flush.
Back in Marin we sat on the patio of a restaurant on the water and I silently pondered Home, Happiness, being American, everything mercurial, and wondered what is to become of us contemporary Assyrians...
My grandmother is visibly overworked, so I suggested we go to the farmers' market in the city. We set out in a drizzle, I played a Turkish CD, and my wonderful grandmother danced playfully and comically in the passenger seat. The city was wet and overcast, but bustling and alive. Scents of fresh fruits, vegetables, and fish wafted in the air, along with sounds of cars and people. Flocks of pigeons circled overhead. A young woman tried passing me a flier and asked, "Are you a San Francisco voter?" I answered reflexively, 'No. I can't vote.' She tilted her head to one side, smiled sympathetically, "Oh, that's OK." She chuckled awkwardly. Suddenly I was reminded just how powerless I am and the feeling surged in me all afternoon. By evening I was flat out depressed. I tried to write, as always grappling in the dark for words like backs of chairs, stubbing my toe on nebulous phrases, blindly feeling for textures. I cried for many reasons, for many people, specifically for my queer friends- Martin, Grant, Moe, Tariq, Heba, Bassam, all of whom have been unfairly made to feel inferior in life, when they should have been nurtured, celebrated.
It makes me crazy, and fear I'm nearing a nervous breakdown.
Many lonely places have taken me in over the years, many rainy evenings such as this one have kissed me, many mysteries have baffled me, but none as extreme as now, here. I have the house to myself and look out the window at the wet yard, glistening in the last light. Music fills the entire house, my head, knocking words about. I've fixed myself a gin and tonic, extra lime.
So, here I am living out the best years of my life, a most precious time, sweet years in a comfortable, middle-class American home, with my wonderful family of three zany, strong women. What am I to do with all these memories, this panoply of loving moments? How am I to capture them?
Jackie looked stunning stepping out of the house in a red dress, smiling, radiating. I can't help but feel protective. My grandmother and I played cards, which always puts her in a good mood. Of course she always wins. We play the same game every time, the one she learned many years ago in the village. She insists that the way I shuffle the cards puts them back in the order they were. 'Mom-Suzie, leya!' (That's impossible!) We laugh.
She is an impossibly impatient woman, my grandmother. Years of an abusive marriage and struggle have made her neurotic about action and work. She has a hard time resting, relaxing. A dirty dish cannot sit for long on the table before us. It will drive her crazy. Jackie gets annoyed about this habit and they argue about it. A lot!
I savor everything, every minute detail- stepping in and out spaces, walking, hearing shrill birds in branches, drinking a glass of water, expressions on faces, the slightest flinch. Life is delicious. I eat it slowly, taste every small bite. It's not only life I find amazing, but my health and freedom, that I am able to move about physically, with total access to many simple, even luxurious amenities. I could get dressed now and drive across a bridge into the city, singing, have a drink, make a friend, have an experience of any nature!
This acuteness frightens me. Everything breaks open, splits into many different directions. It is a strange and amazing time. Everything is at risk.
I'll never have a lasting romantic relationship. I feel it. I know it. I'm not made to be with one person. I'll never be happy... like others can be. It's difficult to explain.
I also know that I'll never feel at home here in Marin, or perhaps anywhere. I am the recurring Assyrian guest in the diaspora of earth's borderless imagination. A sigh at night... in blue orchard- this ink, this diary.
Lying on the rug, under the table around which my mother, aunt, and grandmother converse, joke, and laugh. I could remain here, in this commonplace moment forever. Under each everyday occurrence a river of gold flows, taking with it my youth, my freedom, my family. It's hard to imagine that our time here together will pass, and without warning end. I place my lips tenderly against each second, breathing in the passing perfume, the departing music, the temporary warmth.

September 2000

The world is mine.
And yours.
Let life begin.
Every moment counts. Even the dark moments.
Action heals wounds.
Nothing attracts me to my father. He is alive. He is there, I can call and tell him things, but I have no desire to share my life with him. My own father, who I loved and once worshiped, does not know me, does not have access to me.
I'm drinking port wine tonight. The first few sips were shockingly sweet, but after the tongue is coated the sweetness makes itself at home in the mouth... a mouth that has dreamed too much, divulged too much. My mouth doesn't know what a secret is.
I dreamt that I was in Tariq's apartment, but he was long gone. I had the daunting task of packing everything up, going through every room, every closet. Every shoe was missing its match.
My being has its roots in water, not dirt. I am a waterlily.
These days I am thinking less and doing more. No phone calls to disrupt my equilibrium. No friends to infiltrate my peaceful little world. In many ways I'm grateful Tariq is not my love and I'm not bound, distracted. I enjoy being a friend, not a lover. The role of the lover is not comfortable for me.
Well, that's not entirely true. Nothing's entirely true.
Sipping wine, wishing the ceilings would mechanically draw back, revealing the twilight sky, evening clouds splashed in iridescent hues- my heart illuminated by resplendent longings. It is the kind of evening that ought to be explored, shared, but there's no one to share my enthusiasm. Why? Better not ask. Better sip wine and unfurl. Better dance alone and not think of others.
I'm lying on my belly in the yard, in the grass. The sun on my back and in my hair. The wind in the trees and in my mouth. A lone ant crawls across this page, as small as words, as disciplined as my wishes, as diligent as my desires. I don't want happiness. Happiness is fickle. I want productivity, responsibility, dedication, steadfast commitment even as the external world envelopes me, crumbles and decays.
Every evening I turn into an animal that's driven by instinct into imagination, into the wild of coming darkness in search of finer emotions, hunting for poetry amid the pain, the missing, the lingering feelings of loss.
My mother walks by and says I drink too much wine.
I masturbate twice a day. Is that excessive as well?
Music- spinning my body out of the calendar and into deep space...
I've lost twenty pounds.
Evening, fragile light from candles, slow-burning music. Solitude, my closest friend. Still childlike, still wild, still imaginative. It's decided. I'm going to take care of myself, value myself- things I was never taught. I refuse to be another wayward fag- smoking, drinking excessively, drugging, out all hours of the night.
I push myself and demand endurance of character from others. I think of the way light filters softly through the majestic redwoods at Muir Woods and can only hope that the light of beautiful thoughts softens the grotesque face of life.
I want to touch and change the world... as writer, poet, diarist, man. It's vainglorious of me, I know.
Fuck it all. Fuck it hard. Fuck it fast. Fuck it well.
I sunbathed in the yard in the nude until it got too hot, and I got horny. Came inside and masturbated. There's so much sexual energy in me. So much life. So much hope.
In chemistry lab I feel rebellious and walk out. I go directly to the registration office and drop the class. I come home and crawl into bed, close my eyes, but my head flickers like an old neon sign. I weigh myself and find I've lost another five pounds. I now weigh 165.
There's always the bridge, the welcoming concrete sea.
One afternoon I decide I've had enough of routine, shower, dress, and set out for the city. I feel beautiful in my new body. I feel more myself thinner, lighter, more flexible, younger. This is me. But I have no plans, am meeting no friend. I'll just wing it. I go to the Castro, to a bar I haven't been to in years. Guys are watching me, but I don't meet their glances; I do not want to cruise or be cruised.
I order a drink. The bartender is young, easy-going. There's a different energy about the city tonight. What is it? The bartender says there's a festival going on in the city. I wouldn't know.
Someone comes up to the bartender and hands him a DVD, says he found it. 'Is it porn?' I ask, perking up playfully. The bartender opens the nondescript case, "Sex and the City"! 'Naturally.' We laugh.
The patron who's found the DVD draws closer to me, sits down. 'That was nice of you,' I say. He shrugs. I take a sip of my drink. His friend says he'll be on the dance floor. He says he'll stay at the bar, and the conversation that ensues for the next two hours is wonderfully serious, but also funny, lighthearted. He is interesting, charming, polite, unafraid to touch me.
Turns out David is Puerto Rican, thirty-four, handsome, trim, intelligent.
In the end we hug. He kisses me, which takes me aback a bit. We exchange phone numbers and e-mail addresses. A couple days later I e-mail him, tell him it was nice meeting him. He writes back something charming. It makes me smile.
David has a confidence that I like.
Today I worked a twelve-hour shift managing the restaurant. Lea came up to me in the midst of the bustle looking distraught, she'd just found out a friend had lost a seventeen-year battle with AIDS, and wept on my shoulder. We arranged it so she could leave.
Customers complemented my new posture.
In the late afternoon my grandmother and I picked figs from one of her trees in the yard. It was one of those gorgeous Northern California evenings, the light fading quickly, flashing its colorful feathers across uninterrupted skies. I felt a strong bond with my grandmother and said, 'I feel like we're back in the village.' She agreed as she tied string around a rogue branch like a doctor placing a sling on a broken arm. We laughed wondering how an older Assyrian woman, born in a village in Iran, ends up running her own business in Novato, California. She is a true maverick!
A glimmer of hope always. A death always. Always an even exchange in my heart. In my little world.
David's sister has MS too.

August 2000

A customer comes back into the restaurant and says his wife didn't leave enough money for my tip, he's friendly and not afraid to touch my arm, forcing more money into my apron. "You're a beautiful man," he says. I am profoundly touched.
Kerwin Kay forwards me a curious e-mail that was sent to the Male Lust website, asking to be put in touch with the "author Emil Keliane". It's the first time anyone has called me an author.
Tariq's inability to commit is no longer a concern. I stand apart from it.
Two of my car tires have been slashed in the night but I have no reaction. It is life. People are silly.
A package arrives for my birthday from Tariq. I have yet to open it.
I've been to the ocean many times since returning from Columbus. I don't go there to think, but to let the waves pummel me. A seal swims nearby.
I'm now twenty-seven.
It's clear I have to return to the diary- this garden of color and expression; to wade in the fountain itself. Otherwise life is stark.
Not facing your sorrow prolongs sorrow. I've been mourning Tariq again. He distracts me in the shower, in the car, in the classroom, but not in the flesh. No one knows this- I don't talk about it.
In the daytime I play a game, pretending to belong, to understand, moving through, opening books, closing books, waiting in lines, driving on empty avenues, turning into quiet sunny neighborhoods.
I run more, eat less.
My heart closes like a strange sea creature clinging to the rocks, swaying in the deep cold currents. But I will emerge unscathed.
A new side of myself emerges that has no shape, face, color, skill, limit, experience and it orbits this space for many days. It has no words, no punctuation, no origin, no ending. The days turned into a month that ate itself, a heart that beat itself. I was all emotion and bad poetry, a chemical mix of recollections in a college laboratory among nameless pupils, placid plastic models, faded science posters, doused in scientific terminology and stark white lighting. I've been running more and more, eating less and less, and have lost ten pounds. Reinvention.
Jackie e-mails, invites me to talk to her, admits that she's worried by my silence. I am heavy doors that no longer swing wide open.
The owner of Half Day Cafe calls me into her loft office above the restaurant and breaks the news that our beloved manager has disappeared with thirty-thousand dollars worth of deposits. Nedrea, who always preached strength, generosity, and courage is a thief!
I chuckle. What next? Is my mother a serial killer? My grandmother a man? Is nothing what it seems?
Who will fall from my heart next? I hold my breath.
Tariq left a message on the answering machine. I listened to it three times. He's in Santa Barbara. "I can feel you up the coast."
Jackie says she regrets it every moment of the day that she confided her illness to me. I turn to her, raise my voice, 'No!' Thank her again for having let me in- the only one in the family.
The yard loses the last of its light and a gentle wind blows through the trees. Where is beauty? Generosity? Grace? Honesty? Integrity? Authentic love? The world is a grim place. Life is mean. I do not seek sympathy but strength.
Nedrea called last night, but I didn't let on that I knew about her crime, though I wanted so much to ask how it was that she could betray so many of us so effortlessly. I extricated myself from the awkward conversation and hope she never calls again.
I put on my running shoes and step out under salmon-colored clouds, carrying every detail in my mind; never a blank moment blanketed by sheer thoughtlessness.
Jackie places fresh red roses from the garden in a delicate glass vase next to my bed.
It's raining Whys, but I have vowed never to lose sight of kindness, love, honesty. I feel myself slowly returning to life. I have sent my wings out to be repaired so that once again I can soar above the pettiness.
God, what darkness I just traversed, where everything I knew failed to make sense or hold any spiritual value. A place where no amount of hope was sufficient. A mood that did not allow laughter. I imagined throwing myself from the bridge. But I can't possibly be that selfish; I would be taking others to the ocean floor with me.
My body changes. I have lost fifteen pounds this month alone. The path that I once ran in forty minutes I now run in twenty. I feel empowered. Physically and emotionally. I eat very little. Jackie suspects that I seek discipline. The transformation I seek is born out of a need to love those I know with a strong heart, not a defeated bitter heart.
I look up at the stars just to feel minuscule.

July 2000

The bathroom window is missing a screen and we leave it open all the time; I'm certain my equilibrium flew out this window.
I could not sleep last night, my mind was racing with meaningless images, fragmented sentences, half-faces. I got up and e-mailed friends.
Georgie called and talked excitedly about Pride.
I hate gay men!
How will I free myself of this trap I'm caught in, in this forest, dragging along the snare that possesses me?
Love is terrible. I think Tariq knows this better than I.
Why did I come? Why did I willingly allow the dream to become real, when reality is devoid of color, texture, life? I'm the flamboyant painter who recklessly stepped into his masterpiece and unwittingly became one-dimensional.
I should go before I hurt him. Have I hurt him already? I should ask.
Tariq playfully calls me a sex maniac, belittling my voracious need to express the deep emotions I feel for him.
I suppose I should come to terms with the undeniable fact that Tariq and I will have beautiful days when we are close, tender and erotic, and days that force us to opposite poles of the earth. Today is the latter.
It's raining. I went for a run just to get out of his way. I came home to a note that began with "Emil", not "Darling Emil". It ended with "Tariq", not "Love, Tariq". My heart sank and I wondered if I'm being weak and hypersensitive, or am I being slighted?
It's mad, but when he's talking to his small nephew on the phone I wish I were the nephew. I wish I were the very hair on his body so that I could touch him all the time, be with him all the time. I'm laughing as I write this, it's all so silly.
We have sex and are now in the bathroom getting ready to leave the apartment. Tariq approaches me from behind, unbuttons my shorts, runs his hands up my chest, finds my nipples. I'm leaning on the small sink. He places his penis forcibly between my buttocks. It is an erotic moment. I catch a glimpse of us in the mirror- my brow is furrowed with desire. He kisses my neck, fondles me, whispers, "I wish you had a pussy."
When he looks at other men I am suddenly jealous and simultaneously aroused. His eyes wander to a passing figure, I expect to see a handsome man and am relieved to find a sweet old woman. It makes my heart flutter to acknowledge his many desires, his fantasies, his possibilities- some of which have nothing to do with me. After all, I have the same.
Now he is distant, preoccupied. I know he's about to leave the apartment without me. My heart is empty. I'm more than willing to let him go, but am also feeling less human- I am a body of desire. I lock myself in the bathroom and run the water so that when he leaves I am not facing him, my disappointment splashed across my face. I feign normalcy from behind the latch and white door- warm, summer tile under my bare feet.
No ceiling above. No floor. No walls. No doors. No skin. I am a million adjectives spray-painted on a public wall. Not a beautiful mural.
My love for Tariq is a combination of mist, fire, and dirt. It's elemental. But it's also universal and not extraordinary. I'm sure this is happening in a million places to millions of other people. I'm not alone in this empty apartment. My song harmonizes with similar songs around the world...
Even my penmanship is off because I'm not in my body. I am soaring.
I'm in the kitchen. My diary is propped on the stove, burning with ecstasy. Even the pain is delicious. Tariq is wonderful. Come to think of it, it is never he who is the source of my anguish, but the work it takes to love, human psychology, moods, and real life.
One morning after a delicious breakfast, during which I watch him eat with great satisfaction, he ties me up with our belts so that I can't seduce him, as I love to. Instead, he places tender kisses on my neck, ears, face. He asks if I'm comfortable and although the belts cut into my skin I say yes.
"You trust me?"
I nod.
"That's beautiful."
Bound and helpless. How symbolic of my love for him.
What I see, the things I feel turn out to be true. Tariq admits to withdrawing. He says I have a talent for seeing his moods accurately, respond to them intuitively, when he'd rather remain invisible.
Night. Dark room. We are lying side by side. My throat is barricaded by a barrage of information that travels to my nameless senses by air, by contagion. I am too sensitive to my surroundings. The emotional dilemma becomes a physical war.
It's Independence Day and we can hear fireworks in the distance. I've waited all day for him to give me a sign that it's all right to touch him, but the permission never arrives. Kisses without visa, smuggled through the borders of my imagination.
I miss him, am dying to touch him, be held by him, hold him. Now? Now? Now?
It has been days since I've felt desired, desirable. My sexual confidence is not invested in Tariq, or is it?
When will he unlock the door? Why won't he take down the glass wall?
His voice is beautiful, though he says, "I feel like every time you touch me you want to have sex." I stand up and leave the room.
Days before he'd held my hand in his long fingers, observing my fingers, caressing them, "You have such sweet hands. I never noticed how beautiful they are."
When I return he is sitting on the edge of bed, his head in his hands. Darkness. Silhouettes. I hold him. He apologizes for hurting me. He says that the pain we have felt in our lives follows us wherever we go, with whomever we travel. His words, the facts, the reminder that there has been great loss in life, make me weep. We cradle each other.
He asks if I prefer he were more committal. I shake my head, 'It would be like wishing you were someone else.'
"You know you're going to be OK, don't you?"
'Yes, I know. I'm OK even now.'
I make a circle in the darkness with my hands and continue, 'We're just a small planet together, this makeshift life of ours, and around this planet is a whole universe we have yet to experience. Dreams, people, places. I'm crying because life is so beautiful.'
"You're amazing," he says and buries his face in my neck.
"My friends are going to think I'm crazy for letting you go."
'Then your friends don't know you.'
Earlier Tariq came into the living room and pushed me into the sofa and laid on top of me. He took pictures of me.
I think his desire is confused. The legs with which he approaches me are broken.
I look into his eyes, 'I hate that I've made myself so available to you because people are fucked up and never want what they have. I will lose, Tariq.'
He doesn't claim to understand any of this either and admits to not knowing himself.
No one will ever know the beauty and pain of loving Tariq.
"I want you to be happy."
He asks, "Do you regret having met me?"
'Yes,' I admit, 'But I regret everyone.'
I resolve to always pass through every relationship in life with beauty, not blame. No enemies. No victims.
He urges me never to lose my contradictions.
Now my love for him is brotherly.
Yesterday I wanted to disappear, to squeeze my entire being into a corner, into the cracks in the wall so that I would be out of his way. I feel like a great burden.
"What's wrong?" he asks.
'I'm just homesick.'
"What did I do?"
'I feel so stupid! I have nothing here, but you, and we've already developed this pattern where you distance yourself, then become tender to make up for it. That scares me. I don't want us to be like that. It's stupid.'
He says that it's always been this way with him and that he's never been capable of demonstrative affection, that this is how it was with Pran for eight years. "When we'd go to parties together we wouldn't see each other for hours."
'I don't want that... I'm not as strong or mature as I thought I was, Tariq. I think I should leave early. This rhythm we've established, I can't dance to it anymore. I still love you, always will, but I'm tired and confused. For me it's downhill from here. I'm not leaving to hurt you or teach you a lesson. But I have to go.'
"I don't want you to go, but I won't make you stay."
'I dread your sister's arrival tomorrow. Her presence is going to make you withdraw more and that's going to break my heart further.'
It hits me that Tariq and I are cramming five years of relationship into a few summer weeks.
For someone who does not believe in the institution of marriage I think he acts like the consummate absent husband.
Our words create the illusion of fraternity, but when silence settles we are each orbiting round our personal demons, in disparate universes.
I know I won't love again for some time. There is both comfort and dread in this beautiful desert stretch where I always hover just inches above the hot sand, pumping water out of the depths of my imagination, fashioning shade out of hope. And I'm more than willing to sacrifice pride to salvage some semblance of beauty, even while waking from the original dream.
This is a survival tactic I learned being a gay son of homophobic parents- the original disenchantment!
This morning Tariq leaned over me and placed a soft stubbled kiss on my cheek before leaving for work. But he need not try anymore. We are better at being intimate friends than tormented lovers.
Always beauty above anger. After all, Tariq and I are still the two amazing men we were in May!
Why must we wake from every perfect dream with imperfect recollections?
Tariq's riveting accounts of broken lives of Palestinian people in the diaspora bring me back to reality, and make me feel small for having naively expected laughter and love. He tenderly reminds me that I have been self-centered in relation to his needs. I'm horrified that I have been so selfish. All afternoon at the zoo I ponder this. The lone lion lounging in the sun stirs sympathy in me.
I go dancing with Tariq's friend Donald. We have a wonderful time. When I come home at two in the morning I shower then crawl quietly into bed. I stretch my arms above my head hoping he will stir, turn to me, and allow me to hold him. It's only after I have drifted that I find he has snuggled up to me, his arm stretched across my chest. I lie awake in the darkness for a while. Occasionally a car passes and its headlights cast moving shapes on the ceiling, across walls, and onto the floor. I wonder who drives past, unwittingly creating living shadows in our small room where we have laughed, made love, and cried. We go about our lives, driving alone, unaware that our efforts, our passing through, our most mundane actions may somehow touch someone else's life.
In the morning Tariq says he wishes we could change the view out the bedroom windows. I have been thinking the same thing! But I don't tell him.
It's strange and wonderful to be home, near mountains, the ocean. I've intentionally not written for a week. I've grown tired of living each day twice. I'm in San Francisco, wearing the metal cock ring Tariq gave me, wondering how it is that people seek love. What about pain and loss appeals to them?
I have been running every day, not smoking, not sending e-mails, not calling anyone. Life requires that I care less, dwell less, think and feel less. It's just impossible to live the rest of my life this way- this open, this vulnerable. It's unnatural. There's no use in all this beauty, in seeing all this beauty. I must protect myself as others do. Why has it taken me so long to figure this out? Hardening, resolving to cease looking too deeply for meaning, seeking symbolism.
And yet symbolism is everywhere. While in the yard a crab apple falls from my grandmother's tree and rolls straight toward my feet, but just before reaching me it hits a pebble and rolls in another direction!
Tariq admits he is sad again, misses me, is in love with me. He says he is disappointed in himself, had envisioned building a home together, but feels he's not himself built for relationships. I attempt to console him.
"Why am I such a freak?" he sighs.
'Don't torture yourself.'
Everything is uncertain and perfect. I feel sexy even as the world falls from space. Let my father drink himself to death. Let Tariq withdraw from my heart. Let everyone suffer. There's sun in my days.
Do not doubt yourself, whoever you are!
I try to harden but fail. Inside I'm still idealistic. Outside, cautious, older, unapologetic.
Saturday after work I found myself passing the exit home, drove until I reached Bodega Bay. I walked on the beach, cradled by the dense fog. A flock of pelicans flew past, just inches above the water's surface.
Yesterday, Jorge, a busser with whom I've worked for nearly three years, came up to me while I was placing an order into the computer and rubbed my back, "You've changed. You act different." I looked at him, taken by surprise, 'Love has changed me.' He smiled before rushing back to work.
I look forward to the rest of my life.


  

June 2000

When will these days pass, taking with them my worry, all my anxiety? My life, for the most part, does not belong to me as long as my arrest and citizenship are not dealt with. The years feel borrowed.
What wild, undomesticated emotions!
I have been here for three days and am sitting in a cafe, for the first time alone. It is raining. The Midwestern sky, familiar, flashes blue-white overhead, then regains composure as if nothing dramatic had occurred. Victorian Village is a beautiful neighborhood with two-story homes with charming front porches, antiquated front doors, stained glass windows, and quiet gardens. There is a haunted quality about them at night that is not apparent by day.
I've described the sky and the neighborhood, but have neglected to present a picture of Tariq and myself. I am feeling inarticulate about us. How do you depict insanity with language anyway?
For three days I have been cloudy, out of sync. My head feels stuffed with feathers. I've been dizzy, teetering physically and emotionally.
I have met some of his friends. They are foreign, academic, eccentric. I like them all.
At night we hold each other. I find this slightly disappointing as I desire him completely. Tariq would rather be held. I hold him, but my heart sinks with a feeling of rejection. By morning I feel no resentment.
Furthermore, I'm behaving somewhat like a guest- polite, formal, unwilling to inconvenience my host, my lover.
One day we drove to Cleveland, a monotonous two-hour flat stretch, so that Tariq could pick up some of his belongings from his parents' home. I don't know what I expected but was quite taken aback by the typical American middle-class neighborhood.
Tariq was sarcastic that day and it hurt my feelings to see him in such a different light. Perhaps I was still bitter from two nights of anti-climactic tumbling. Actually, Tariq had had his pleasure but hadn't taken the time to bring me to mine.
Also, I have no idea how to handle sarcasm. Sarcasm is idle talk to fill silences. I prefer silences. I did not know how to ask my love to stop his derisive mood.
While I knew I would not meet Tariq's parents who are out of the country, I looked forward to meeting his two sisters who are privy to his sexual proclivity. But they were not home. While Tariq gathered a surplus of papers and books I looked through his collection of publications on Islam, feminism, politics. This cluttered office was the very space from which Tariq had fashioned all those intoxicating e-mails that had brought me so close to him, but now in the emptiness and silence of the old house love and poetry were notably absent.
'Let's make out!' I suggested playfully, but Tariq evaded the hot kisses that were bursting to be let out of my mouth. He said it would be strange, even inappropriate to kiss me in his parents' home. "I don't even drink alcohol in this house," he said seriously. I was crushed.
I am finding that our drives exist on different planes, in mismatched gears.
That night Tariq turned me over, pulled my shorts off, stroked me to climax. He nipped my nipples, caressed my ass, kissed me. When I came I almost wept. My voice reached like arms for the lighted white ceiling. I laughed. What I felt for him overwhelmed me. It was the first time in my life that I felt so much for a man in bed.
The next day we cried together. I had sensed his aloofness and made him talk about it, wanted to know that it was not just my wild imagination. He said he was merely preoccupied planning for the summer session. I said, 'Maybe I shouldn't have come so early. I should have waited until you'd gotten settled.' He said he felt alone in the world and this offended me- how could my love feel so alone when I am so unconditionally here?
I turned away from him. He asked me to look at him. 'I can't. I don't want you to see the disappointment in my face. I don't want to make you feel bad.'
Again, more excuses. But they only frustrated me more. There's nothing more unattractive than a grown man and his excuses.
He came to me and lay on top of me, whispered in my ear, tried to kiss me. "I'm sorry I hurt you." I now saw Tariq as a petulant child, not the dependable man I thought I had known. Now I feared him. 'I have shut down, Tariq. I need time.' I asked him to leave me for a while. He respected this. I heard him leave the apartment.
I laid in bed and pulled the covers over myself, indignant that Tariq should have been able to predict the intensity of his return to Columbus after many months.
When he came back I asked him to go outside with me. We sat on the stoop and smoked together. He began to speak, "Last year when I came back from Gaza..." but his voice cracked and he began to cry. I held him, cried with him.
I said that we both obviously had our own struggles, but needed to overcome them independently, even privately, if we had to. In the end we agreed that in this manner we are in fact alone in the world and no one can magically transform us out of our pain, but that we have a network of friends, family, and lovers to help make the process less traumatic.
Once more I felt liberated from Tariq... and closer. I hugged him, 'We just made it through a big one. Congratulations.' Something had changed. I now felt pure love for Tariq, the man as well as the child, understood him more, myself more. I did not begrudge him his weaknesses.
Everything I learn about Tariq living here with him is a lesson about myself. There are many reflections. Our differences are contiguous. We exist individually but together.
We spend hours lounging on the futon. Afternoons are languid and playful. We roll over each other. We kiss. I bite him. He slaps me playfully. All the while the sound of traffic on the busy street outside reminds us of greater cities we've been to- Cairo, Tehran, Chicago, New York...
My love is at the computer. I am sitting here smoking, writing in my diary. No, not my diary. Diary of the world. It is not mine.
We have just come home from dinner at Febe and Buhack's, friends of Tariq. Both are gracious and intelligent. Febe is of Egyptian descent, Buhack of Turkish. Looking at their pictures of a recent trip to Turkey made me envious, and I long to see other countries, talk to other people, intermingle for months with Arabs, Turks, Christians, Muslims all around the world.
Now Tariq is checking his e-mail and I am missing his touch, his silliness. I want him here in bed with me. I am so immature and insatiable.
In the beginning, when Tariq was aloof and drowning in his own mind, I secretly planned to return to California. I thought, What am I doing here with him? What was I thinking? But now I am only weighed down by love for him. Even as I look about the room at his belongings- crates full of files, an open suitcase of his clothing, his keys and loose change on the table- I am overcome with sadness for him. I want life to be easy for him, good to him. I want all his pain to burn away in the summer sun. I want his tears to vanish in a typical Midwestern storm. I want only joy and fulfillment for him. Even thinking about his parents and their loss makes me sad.
I should not drink so little wine; it only makes me melancholic and dramatic. I should drink so much wine that it makes me giddy, then sleepy.
Home alone. An hour to myself. Diana Ross accompanies this entry. Tariq's face changes before me at the speed of light! Now he's my perfect lover, now my dear friend, now a distant relative, now my child. The changing currents now throw me at his feet; now drag me by the hair away from him. And I'm not certain of anything- only that I am safe through all the joy and all the pain I feel with him.
There are times when I stare out the window, lying on top of the covers, and feel only heartache knowing our time together is temporary and I say things I don't mean. 'When I get back to California I want us to stop talking. No more phone calls. Nothing. I want you out of my system.'
He tortures me. But I cannot blame him for being who he is simply because my affection for him runs so deep.
We both want freedom from the many nooses of tradition, convention.
Ultimately I know that I will live this life all on my own.
Something annoys me. It is morning. Neither of us expresses himself lucidly. We are snappy. I refrain from saying all the nasty things that are dying to pour out of my twisted mouth. He goes to work. I walk in the sun to the cafe where I read and smoke for two hours. During this time I try to find my head, my self. I am certain I cannot give myself entirely to a man who is indecisive, tormented, and so so wonderful.
And so, for six weeks I will live in a shattering dream.
I have never been so certain of myself. Of my heart. Imagination. Love. Experience. Innocence. Respect. All these things guide me through this unmapped capital city of my soul- Tariq!
We make our own rules. We depend on no particular ideology. We only have ourselves. Not even each other.
I feel everything. Deep sorrow and unending joy. I want to remain here forever and take the next flight out. Beneath me no ground. Above, no clouds.
Part of me wants to resent Tariq for not being more present, but that would be a perilous game. I will not revert to my past. Only the present contains the truth. The past is far away. It belongs now to someone else. He buries his face in my chest, "It's so easy to love you."
I miss my brother, of all people. I want to go to Chicago, which feels so close to here. I want to be people with him, not brothers. I want to be myself with him.
Tariq says I am resilient.
I say I want reasons, not excuses.
I can't comprehend all of it. Glimpses, yes, but not the entire canvas.
The things we say to each other drum in my veins like distant memories, not certain recollection. It is like trying to conjure details of a nebulous dream. Days later, maybe hours- I have no real concept of time here- the words arrive at my ear, altered, battered. Tariq distances himself and admits to resorting to self-protective tactics. There is a push and a pull I fail to surf. I pretend to be good at shifting with his moods. Inside I am exhausted, overwhelmed, hurt.
The sarcasm continues. I resolve to leave here sooner than planned, but would I be running away, giving up? The more I give the farther he drifts.
I feel silly sometimes, foolish, ridiculous! Then I feel like a burden. Now, the ideal lover.
My heart knows best. I know I love him. I know I must go, but with love and with forgiveness.
He sits across the table from me as I write this, but I don't fear him reading what I've written. He may know my feelings.
He opens a book and plops down on the sofa in the barren living room. I fry potatoes in the kitchen, listening to music. He comes in, says something, kisses me on the neck. When the potatoes are crispy I take a plate to him. His eyes brighten and he thanks me. Back in the kitchen Cyndie Lauper's Time After Time comes on and for the first time the song makes me cry. I pray Tariq does not come in now. I am crying because for the first time the words make so much sense, they seem to be plucking meaning straight from my own heart. Also, I cry because life is beautiful, but continues to baffle, entertain, surprise me. I am so happy...
Ironic that I should think of my mother so much while here; that my homosexual love for Tariq should remind me so much of my homophobic mother. For the first time I understand fully how she might have felt taking care of us children in a loveless marriage. We simply took and took and took from the moment of conception.
We agree that the intensity of our love for each other changes- he has crawled into bed with me now and is wrapped around my leg- that we can't seem to synchronize.
I went to lunch, a movie, and cocktails with Tariq's longtime friend Douglas, a youthful black man of forty-one. Over grilled cheese sandwiches I summed up my love for Tariq. Douglas smiled, "I know you love him." He said he wished he had the same kind of love in his life. I thought to myself, But do you know the pain of it?
Life is a battle. Love should not be.
I don't think Tariq is ready to receive my love. My love is better than Tariq. If I understand this, if I accept this, then I am able to salvage my heart. Funny, Tariq is the errant lover I wished for all my life, the one with other plans, other dreams, the one always on the verge of flight.
When I leave it will be with an open heart, with love. Not with resentment. Tariq has done nothing wrong. He is who he is.
I sit on the closed lid of the toilet smoking a cigarette while Tariq trims his beard. We talk, we laugh. I watch with great interest. I feel so much freedom!
The days have wings, an engine, an impatient pilot. He flies away into the horizon and I choke on the smoke of my own desire.
Last night, out of jocular rebellion, I was bitingly sarcastic. Tariq playfully called me a bitch. I felt liberated from my usual polite, formal self, and from my past. I was no longer benign, but malignant! In a sense I think Tariq rather enjoyed this side of me. I felt, This is who I am now. No longer soft, delicate, obviously and ceremoniously graceful. I will place myself high on a shelf where it will be difficult for life and cruelty to reach me. And from my station I will daydream fiercely, love intensely, surrender fully to vulnerability. I will be all the things I already am!
We made dinner together. We were tender and lighthearted. I tell him my feelings, touch him indecently, swallow him with voracious kisses. 'I am having the time of my life,' I tell him.
Each day my love for Tariq solidifies more and it feels as though I am erecting a monument in his honor, in my heart. And it doesn't matter if he loves me as much as I love him. I am thrilled just knowing I am capable of surrendering, giving. I pick the herbs from the wild and incorporate them into this experience that converges with my blood, streaming through my thoughts.
I am not the bottom. He may not know it but I penetrate him through his eyes, on our sides, facing each other. I stare into his heavy-lidded, long-lashed, light brown eyes. It is as though I am speaking to him, reaching him like words never do. He asks, "Shoo?" (What?) So I kiss him.
"How will you go back?" he asks at the cafe, looking concerned, worried that I will suffer.
'Tariq, on July 25th I have to go. It will hurt and I'll cry, but I will recover. For the time being I have chosen to open my heart and feel fiercely for you. Let's enjoy it.'
"I feel responsible. I don't want to hurt you by not being an ideal and totally available love."
Tariq, you are not to blame. You've done nothing wrong. You've been honest from the start, I think to myself.
I am wearing his underwear.
This morning I washed our clothes at a laundromat. I felt like a feminist, a little indignant, a little satisfied.
Regarding my diary he says, "You will change my name, won't you?" 'If you wish.' "People we know will guess our identities anyway..." he mutters reflectively.
My father called in a panic. Apparently he received a crank call. "Emil is dead!" they had said and hung up. I suspect it was someone who has read my dairy on All Out There.
I had a dream in which I am walking up a trail on Mount Tamalpais in Marin. A young woman urges me to climb to the summit with her. I hear my name being called. I look around. It is my family. I go with them.
It is night. We are in bed. A million things have happened, but perhaps only one point has gotten across. Is it he who creates this air of uncertainty or I? Or life? Who's to blame? Who's to be punished or what's to be rewarded? It is night. I am only certain of this. The darkness is my own. What am I doing here? Powerless, without friends, without an ounce of something my own...
I have intuitions about Tariq I cannot bring myself to face, to write about. I am not sure I ever will. I close my eyes and see the path I run back in Marin- the evening sun pathetic and beautiful, the small creatures, the pastures, flowers, warmth, dreams of Tariq before I knew him.
I am not unhappy.
But why do I feel the need to sleep elsewhere?
He jokes in the morning, "Am I driving you mad?"
It is still early and I am groggy. I snap. Why is he testing me? Is my love abusive? Is it his intention to make me mad? Is it the lover's burden to know every hidden, indecent aspect of his love no one else sees?
I miss my solitude, my loneliness. It was far more effortless to feel alone when alone than alone with Tariq.
God. I feel terrible. Just terrible.
Is it impossible- love between two people without traditional fetters? Can two men live together as equals? We may both be water, but we are never simultaneously the surface or the depth. One dives deep into the darkness, the other bobs haplessly at the top. It is animal, natural, wildly confusing. It is beautiful and romantic, ruined by petty dynamics.
Afraid of him.
What's wrong with me?

May 2000

The morning is overcast. The trees have leaves again. I am at College of Marin waiting for class to begin. I have finally returned to the handcrafted diary- I missed it, the art of writing by hand, in ink. I feel more as one with the words. It is like driving stick shift.
Now I'm home from having spent the day with Jackie. Our relationship is as solid and comfortable as ever. Jackie encourages and supports me. I find strength in being loved by her. I think she lives vicariously through me.
So much has happened. I am not the same. Yet I've not changed. My core remains in tact, original. I am the same wholesome child, shy, trusting, loving.
I do not have the same anxieties, or as many.
I am being loved. Tariq is the prince I wrote poems about when I was a petulant teenager, just out, new to the gay dream, eager. He is the person I have been waiting so impatiently for- though I trust Tariq more than the perfect lover of my fantasies.
We have not been writing to each other as much because we have been talking by phone. Our conversations are just as wistful as our e-mail. Perhaps more. The immediacy of our voices makes us long for each other's body, expressions, gestures. Sometimes I'm certain it would be better if we stuck to writing.
He is expressive, passionate. It amazes me how whimsical he still is at thirty-five. But he hints that he tempers his enthusiasm, his love for me, because he fears scaring me away.
We talk about everything. Every desire, every dream, every wish.
For years he has challenged and redefined the traditions of loving. Now he says he will return to the ideal of monogamy if I want it. I say I do not feel comfortable making such demands. He says he is mine.
We are, for the time being, monogamous.
How can I possibly describe every beautiful word, every delicate whisper, each loving moment? There have been countless sentiments.
We are both very grateful.
We trust each other. We are essentially the same, and yet what is different in and between us is not an imbalance, but a kind of compensation of what is lacking in the other.
We are sober in a world that is drunk.
I am no longer single.
I am feeling things I have never felt before. Unimaginable sensations. A protectiveness.
We are both surprised how effortlessly we surrendered to each other when we had resolved to live alone.
We give ourselves.
To each other.
Our lives are better this way.
One evening, while on the phone, drinking his voice, he confesses he's been sad. He blurts out, "I miss you so much!" His vulnerability, his honest confession makes me levitate. The floor slips under my physical body.
Everything new. Faith restored.
I say, 'I want to make sure I'm ready for the responsibility of my words, of loving you, Tariq.'
He gives me time, does not make hasty demands, pressure me.
We sigh.
When I think of him it does not hurt. I am not obsessive. I love him truly, knowing he is just a human being.
"Will it frighten you if I tell you I fantasize about us living in the same city?" He asks.
'No. Have I given you the impression that I abhor commitment?'
Sometimes I feel dread, but try to overcome my doubts, reservations. They are insecurities, demons, outdated fears.
We've been talking of two homes, two spaces, instead of forcing ourselves into a single destructive life.
He tells me of a conversation he had with Patrice, adamantly refusing to allow a dog inside his home, asserting that as a Muslim the idea is unclean. Patrice insists that a dog is a part of the family and should be treated as such. Tariq does not waver. "What if Emil wanted a dog in the house?" she asks. Tariq had been caught off guard. "Emil can have anything he wants..." Tears had welled in his dark eyes at having faced, once and for all, his immense love for me.
I find I am more confident, stronger.
He plans on coming to California in June, but when a job offer to teach a summer course in Ohio arrives in an e-mail he calls me before making a decision.
'Of course you should take it. It's a job. You need the money to build your house.'
He thanks me for being supportive. 'There is no other way.'
I am not here on earth to hold anyone back, to possess or control Tariq.
It has taken a great deal of courage to have surrendered so thoroughly to each other. It has taken trust, love. A love that is still being defined.
Tariq- my first love.
Spent another hour weaving my soul in and out of the web of his voice, which is lush, tender. I won't lie and say that it is a heavenly hour. It is not. I suffer through every moment, within every syllable and each eternal pause. I feel too intensely the longing within myself that is fueled by a flagrant longing in his words, his expressions which I cannot see, but do imagine. Maybe it is this that drains me: imagination. We have talked so much of so many things, plans, the future, options, alternatives, revisions.
It is night and a tenacious strip of light enters my room, as do the voices of my grandmother, Jackie, and their Persian guests. Sure I feel guilty for not joining them, but after serving seventy-five tables it is a struggle to speak, move, even be pleasant. A glass of red wine accompanies me to bed. Great anxiety follows me into dreams.
Everything is up in the air. Everything!
I'm torn. I tell Tariq that I cannot continue our long talks well into the night, long distance. They make me wistful, anxious. He is understanding.
Last night he called me at Anna's. I was drunk. Stoned. He said he had something to tell me. I could taste the excitement in his voice. I braced myself for the wonderful news. "I got my nipple pierced!" he exclaimed. Something inside me, an organ, a feeling, fell to the ground and broke. At that moment I filled up with dread as love drained out of me. He suddenly sounded so immature to me, so petulant. He sensed my unease and asked me to share my feelings. I breathed in deeply. 'I feel you're so spontaneous that one day you'll change your mind about us.'
I tried to brush off the awkward moment, 'Don't listen to me, I'm just drunk.'
"I did this because of you," he began to explain. "I've wanted to do this for a long time, but I always put it off, and now I feel stronger, happier, more confident because of you."
Suddenly I mistrusted him like I never have!
All night I felt terrible and my sleep was broken, uncomfortable. All day at work I thought of him and was impatient to call him and tell him that I had been stupid, and when the hectic day was over I rushed home and called him.
"I'm so glad you called."
'I'm so sorry, Tariq, about last night.'
"But do you think there was truth to your anxiety?"
'I don't know. Maybe.'
"I want to kiss you."
He says I have brought great joy into his life and deep fear. He fears losing me and being devastated. "It's not that I doubt you. It's that I don't trust the world." His voice touched my skin like diaphanous fabric.
We make plans again. Monday he leaves for New York. Two weeks later he flies to Columbus to establish us a residence so that I may go stay with him for a month. There we will live out a dream. I call it our honeymoon. We laugh. He is not intimidated by my romantic expressions.
I suppose I could go on forever about sweet sweet Tariq, but I won't.
I relish every moment, every nuance, every thing and person. There is something deeply sexy in having completely surrendered my defenses.
Vulnerability has made me a better person. I enjoy myself in love.
I came home from another hectic Mother's Day shift at the restaurant, hungry, torn, and sat down to study for a math test. The silence was broken by Jackie and Mom Suzie's laughter as they walked into the house. My grandmother came into the room and asked how I was. My head fell into my hands and I wept. She said something tender and graciously closed my bedroom door, leaving me with my tears of ablution. I felt I had given so much of myself that day, but to complete strangers, and not as an accomplished artist but a mere waiter. I felt stripped, but not naked and free. I had given so completely that one customer wrote me a beautiful poem and drew an impressive flower in two different colors of ink on a napkin.
At the end of the day I threw the beautiful gift away because I resented it for reminding me of my depleted spirit.
I tried fantasizing about a classmate but failed. Thoughts of Tariq intercepted the very beginnings of each attempt. Tariq is both front and center and the periphery. He is everywhere!
We are both afraid of our inebriating need for each other. He even dominates these pages. I must sober up!
Tariq is in New York. I awake from sleep feeling anxious- that I need to call it off, that I am not capable of having a lover. Am I willing to share him with the world?
I have not tried to call him, enjoying the distance, the silence, the absence of his rich voice, which triggers longing. I have enjoyed this like a woman enjoys circumcision!
One morning I finally pick up the phone. The line is busy. I am both relieved and disappointed.
I hate saying it, but I love him.
I fall out of myself when I admit this.
I take my grandmother to the doctor and in the waiting room a toddler, barely able to walk, makes his way to me. He leans on chairs and steps to me sideways, laughing. His smile opens up my own face. An old woman watches with warm watery eyes. The child arrives and places his small hot palms on my leg. His round little face looks up at me as if he recognizes me. He shrieks. I am in love with him, his perfect innocence, his total trust. But I am also sad for the child, for the world.
Leaving the doctor's office I am certain I miss Tariq and give myself permission to love him once more and to be loved by him.
I am crazy.
I really am.
I accept that.
Scrambling to get my life in order, to get my citizenship, which Nadia is certain I already have because my father naturalized when I was only seventeen. Running around with my hopes floating up with the clouds, and my heart sinking like lost treasure.
I am two men. Loving. Hating. Opening. Closing. Living. Dying.
Will I go to prison?
I drink.
Maybe I resent him a little for having awakened in me these silly needs, these poetic wishes I thought I had outgrown.
It's a beautiful day here in San Rafael. The cafe is cool and the music is low. A young mother breastfeeds her infant child. A squeaky bathroom door opens and shuts intermittently. Men survey women with guilty surreptitious glances.
My life is a gorgeous nightmare.
I don't tell my feelings to Jackie and if I do confide in her it is with words that lack brilliance, a tone of voice that is cautious. I worry that she will judge me. After all, she is Assyrian!
In the car, outside a drugstore, I look through an envelope of newly developed photographs. Each picture is a surprise as I had forgotten about the roll of film for months. Mitra, Stephanie, Anna, Mariah, Jason, Molly, Patrice, myself, and in one picture- Tariq! My heart leaps when I see his beautiful, thoughtful face. His eyes turned down, away from the camera. Long sensual lashes lapping at his cheeks.
And you expect me not to resent him for feeling so much from such distance, such empty vastness.
Georgie calls from Chicago. He says he misses me and jokes that he wants to have sex with me. Ashur calls from Canada. He too says we have to have sex just to get it out of the way. I desire them too, but in a superficial way. Tariq I desire seriously, with my soul, not just my body.
I would like to think I am committed, but it's hard to believe it from so much distance where the promises, the words, and lovers have no face. My words fall into the wire and are taken from me, echoing into a dark intangible place.
But still, I believe that Tariq and I can do this, that we can maintain and nurture our bond.
I still have not talked to him, not by phone, terrible telephone.
There are always moments when I want to break it off with him, but these are lazy, insecure seconds in time. I recover from them and feel wide emotions for him.
The struggle to fit in the world and to feel present persists. I actually hate the world. I despise people- selfish, irrational, violent, territorial people. I weep again. Alone at home. And want to be destructive because my inability to accept and to conform is debilitating, not yet liberating. I want to break something.
Everything seems so ridiculous. Education, government, money. I feel only resistance. My being thrashes about like a fish caught in a net. Feelings are unwieldy. I stagger through life, through the fiercely beautiful days and begin to understand for the first time why people are so flagrantly unhappy; their faces devoid of color, of light, of love. As a child I wondered why anyone would choose misery. I was naive, of course.
One afternoon while studying for a math exam I get a call. The voice on the far end is of a woman with a British accent. It is Mary- a young Assyrian lesbian living in London. We talk for two hours as she lights one cigarette after another, telling me a fantastic love story that keeps me on the edge of my seat. A story of love and intrigue, a woman with swarthy skin, long black hair, a Brazilian accent, a drug addiction, a Masters in Business, unattainable. Mary's deep precocious voice pulsates and swells, rises and falls, turns corners and halts in dramatic pauses. It echoes in my head for many many days before it finally falls to a hush. We seem to be living parallel lives, experiencing the same reactions to life, exploding in the same vibrant colors, comforting each other. We are both restless but full of love. She says her family is from Palestine and that she speaks Arabic but has not, regretfully, learned the Assyrian language. Her laugh is from the center of the earth, erupting from the heart.
Finally class ends, but before I am liberated I must endure the anxiety of separation. But first, the final exam. We all hang our head, fidgeting nervously in our seats, penciling in our answers. Everyone finishes at different times and gets up to leave. There is no warm goodbye, only impersonal departure. After months of spending five mornings a week under the same roof I am shocked that others are able to traipse away so effortlessly, turning in their tests to the instructor without so much as a simple "thanks". So much anonymity everywhere around me in this "white" culture. It wasn't so in Iran. There people connected. I remember it.
I have been busy collecting the paperwork Nadia has requested for my citizenship. Lastly, I needed proof of my parents' divorce. Mom said there was a white shirt box somewhere on a shelf in the garage that contained all her papers from the years. One afternoon, when I was home alone, I set out for this ominous white box. Thumbing through the pile I happened on an unmarked folder. I spent an hour smoking cigarettes and reading through the file. It was a painful afternoon. There was so much about the actual dissolution process of my parents' nineteen-year marriage I did not know. I had only been privy to the disgust on their faces for each other, the violent shouting, threatening. Now, at twenty-six, a new heaviness embraced me, dragging me back to those terrible memories. I felt incredible pain for my mother and father and wept. So many black and white pages, bills from attorneys, letters, things I did not understand, but my heart could painfully fathom.
Drying my tears I collected files I thought would be helpful, closed the box up, returned it to its dusty shelf, and a few mornings later set out for the Santa Rosa Courthouse.
I leave my cigarettes behind, start the car, turn on music, and take Highway 101 north into Sonoma County. On the two-lane highway I take in the rich green hills, horses grazing in open pastures, wild flowers waving in the breeze. I am feeling inexplicably joyful, irrespective of my uncertain future. I am even laughing out loud, singing, dancing in my seat. I have a right to this moment. I have a right to feel alive and happy despite all the horrors of life.
But as I near my destination the sky turns strangely and suddenly dark. Clouds shield the once champion sun. As I walk up to the courthouse great discomfort comes over me. I am no longer confident, untouchable. I observe a woman crying as she exits the doors I am about to enter, assisted by a quiet man.
Young men in ill-fitting wrinkled dress shirts and mismatched neckties pass me.
I follow the signs on the grey walls, the small black arrows, the numbered doors, the near-empty hallways. I pass through an open courtyard. I note two young women with dated hairstyles and faded denim jeans. A tall man with extreme and dark features, extreme and dark hair looks out of place here. But why does he look familiar? I do not know him. Is he a character out of my own imagination? Nevermind.
I arrive at room 108 and go in. I am nervous that everyone can see through me, that they know my criminal past, can tell just by looking at me. I steady myself. Before me is a mother whose young daughter stares up at me from her stroller. She stares with garishly big blue eyes and tries to get my attention by screaming at me. I greet her, smile and wave at her, but children break my heart, I suppose because childhood is so short-lived.
I approach the homely looking clerk who smiles at me from behind the high counter and tells me she'll be right with me. I smile back and thank her. She disappears with a stack of papers- again papers everywhere, the highs and lows of our lives yellowing in stamped and sealed files. The child in the stroller still stares and smiles at me. Stop breaking my heart!
The clerk returns and much to my relief is affable, going so far as making copies, stamping, notarizing, and signing the essential forms free of charge. She dramatically places a finger on her lips and whispers, "I won't charge any of the general fees. We only ask that you fill out a comment card about our service."