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."