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?