October 1998

I want to live my entire life intoxicated on wine or a good draft beer, on vodka tonics! Only rarely am I able to shut down my overactive mind- usually when I've had too much wine and there are other people around to entertain me into forgetfulness, and finesse. All of us feeling ironic, laughing amidst the rosebushes, at the tail end of an endless summer, under a veil of jazz and sass!
Something darts in my periphery, something small and adroit. A flash, a hallucination. And yet suddenly this shapeless apparition pauses and hovers in place for a long while, fixed at the lone white bloom of a backyard flower. Then it's off again, darting, dodging, shooting through space like a bullet- a graceful, feathery bullet. It is my friend the hummingbird from whom I have struggled to learn to live ceaselessly and buoyantly, moving through a forest of destructive human emotions with equal celerity. Pausing only to gather strength and to feed; otherwise always moving, always searching.
Ironic that in an attempt to become integrated in a world adverse to homosexuality there would have to take place within me a heterosexual marriage of my female and my male counterparts- a graceful union of my anima and animus. For years I have tried to fathom my personal gender-fate- sometimes unconsciously, sometimes deliberately. Am I man or am I woman? But the more I search and the more I observe the world around me I come to accept that I am both, that the two genders live equally and actively within me. I exist and make decisions, form perceptions and opinions not strictly as man or solely as woman, but as an androgynous being. In taste, in temperament, in sexual arousal, and in identifying with and relating to others I am two sexes. This is true not because I am gay, but that I arrive from woman's womb as well as man's. I come from the biological and psychic womb of my father's and my mother's physiological imagination, refusing to betray the many forces that make me who I am just to appease the misogynistic and external pressures that attempt to limit and fetter me.
I am fortunate to have been blessed with this double-vision perspective and identity.
You might say I am preoccupied bridging a Siamese bond the world severed because it viewed my androgyny as freakish and threatening.
I can't help but wonder if man placed a veil on woman's face to mask his own knowledge and the truth that he would be extinct without her…
By accepting all of myself I feel I am coming closer to accepting the people in my life for who and what they are. I feel I am ready to forgive, realizing that I have always demanded unreality from those in my life, superhuman devotion, steadfast humor, perfection. I no longer wish to invite others to live in the perfumed mirage with me. They never survive a dream.
My evening with Shammi in the city was perfect. She received me at the door with that consummate flash in her eye, a light, a joy that belongs to a person who has seen the worst about life but not committed to it. She listens closely, always leaning in, always available. (Any man whose face is that expressive will be my partner for life! A face of lace, diaphanous and intricate, not starched and hard, unmoving.)
I want to make Shammi a more integral part of my life.
While sipping wine and preparing a simple dinner in the small kitchen that was poorly lighted by a fading bulb Shammi expressed her brotherly love for me, said that she was grateful to have me in her life.
Shammi appreciates my sense of art, life, and emotion.
She was stirring the pot when she turned up her head and said, "Emil, I love your intensity." And smiled so warmly, so openly into me that I wanted to hide under the table.
I hoped that I would not tire or bore her with my excessive and romantic talk.
When we sat down to eat she filled me in on all the projects and people she is currently involved with. It seems that Shammi is very much involved in her life, incorporating the Assyrian with the Dyke with the Western in everything she does- film, relationships, family. I sense that her life is not as compartmentalized as my own.
She admitted that she'd like to collaborate with me on a film in the future. "I mean, would that interest you?"
She said that her ultimate dream is to return to Iraq in the summer, to her birthplace, and reclaim her early childhood memories. A million years ago, really. She said she would like to deliver suitcases full of medicine for children who suffer because of the sanctions on Iraq. Her eyes were almost teary.
We share the same dream: to return to our motherlands that were once at war with each other. Strange, isn't that?
We continued our talk fluidly, lazily, and frankly at The Café where I told Shammi about my tumble in the woods with Mike. Shammi said playfully and wistfully that she was envious of us gay men because we are able to carry out our sexual desires and affairs with ease and detachment, while women continue to be emotionally restrained. She confessed that she wishes at times that women were as willing as men, going so far as cruising parks and bars.
"But we just don't do that… as much!"
Is it really that ironic that Shammi should wish for anonymity and promiscuity while I still desire in some ways woman's world of emotional continuity? We seek myths… all of us…
We smoked endless cigarettes and talked, talked, talked. It amazes me how much more insouciant Shammi is than Vivian. Vivian and I laugh a lot, but are generally far more serious and reflective. Shammi is always ready to slip into banter, illicit talk, erotic confessions.
I realize that in comparison to Shammi I am still in a state of spiritual and emotional self-discovery at a sophomore level, while Shammi walks ahead. This makes me wonder… Just who am I with Shammi? I have preserved such an idealized impression of her in my heart that I am always a bit star struck around her, a little unsure of myself. On my best behavior. I have to admit, I strive to impress her, constantly veiling my inconsistencies, not lying but revealing only my best.
I want to be myself with her, with everyone. I want to be genuine, present. But I question my authenticity. Fortunately, my love and respect for Shammi are greater and warmer than my insecurity. I know that ultimately love and friendship will thaw my frigid need to act, to win over, to impress.
I strive for a consummate connection with the world. I am desperate for this true connection. It is what I seek. It is what gets me into trouble, and closer to bliss. Everywhere I search for the flash and glimpse of the annihilation of strangeness and unfamiliarity. I wander the Diaspora looking about for others who may understand. My senses wide open, vulnerable. I wait for eye contact, a smile, a nod, a certain gesture of recognition. I want to defy this sense of isolation, this intercultural insistence on anonymity, this fixation with the human misconception of "other", "they", "stranger". I want to reclaim the spiritual affinity which I sense in my being, and yet I want to be free of my own desire for this impossible freedom. This desire which keeps me hanging for too long, loitering in the margins, in the aftermath, between the lines, the blood draining from my head until I am dizzy and collapsing into the diary that catches me, holds me, rejuvenates me, sending me back… out… for more…
I want to transfer hope and receive new images in exchange. I want to transcend the mediocrity I have known.
But I find that America does not understand me. I find that after fifteen years of acclimating, adopting, adapting, picture perfect simulating I am each day more and more the foreigner! I find America impersonal… cool.
But knowing me, I would think that life in the heart of an active volcano was… cool. It's never enough.
But I believe that as long as I am not touching others' lives on a creative level, through art, I will remain detrimentally wistful and uneasy. Isolated even in a rush-hour mad traffic of a million and one cars!
I'm on a journey… to discover my true voice here and out there, my personal style in writing and in living…
Ahimsa sends out the announcement for "The Dark Shade Of Our Desire", the reading series I'm scheduled to read for next month. Such exotic, beautiful names- Mira Amiras Castro-Kimkhi, Ahimsa himself, Loolwa Zhazzoom, Rinat Abastado, Jan Attia, and yours truly, ahem…
Jackie asks how Ahimsa has gone about getting so much of his writings published. I shrug and say I don't know. This almost appalls Jackie. Her eyes widen as she says with great astonishment, "You haven't asked him?"
'No,' I answer casually. 'I just haven't. I guess I'm not yet ready to get published, or to submit my work. That's all.'
His name is Matthew Shepherd. He was only twenty-one. He was brutally beaten and tied to a fence where he was left to suffer for sixteen hours, and die. He was gay.
There is a high border in my relationship with my parents that I have to continuously scale if I want even a glimpse and single hope of connection with them. There is a living wall.
A border.
A wall.
A pattern.
A theme that I take into every relationship everywhere. A struggle that has come to seem normal and natural in all my human relationships. My failure with my parents has resulted in this obsession to win over everyone's love and approval. A tall order for all involved…
Friends, other family members, co-workers, even anonymous sexual partners.
And why does the day have to be so beautiful? And so untouchable, illusive, ineffable. It's like a precious thing I covet but cannot have, hold, own. Like everything else, I have to let the day go, let the day flow.
Went to the ocean to read over the typed excerpts of my diary, which I have chosen for "The Dark Shade Of Our Desire". The words felt right beneath the sound and roar of the waves, Golden Gate to my right, stretching silently across the water. Sand beneath my feet, sun on the page. Everyone around me overcome by the same indolence, lounging, swaying, moving in slow motion.
Whenever I walk away from an assignation with Mike in the woods I take with me some evidence, an obscure reminder, a token- blood on my trousers from having scraped skin against stones and branches, underwear in my pocket, dents in my knees because I was taken from behind with verve, the unique taste and scent of him on my own skin and in my mouth so that I have to stop at a gas station for bottled water and gargle him out!
He tells me he wants to fulfill a rape fantasy with me and a friend of his. I say I am not yet ready. He asks me to talk about my erotic memories, to disclose the images that are conjured when I think of him in private. But I refuse for fear of sounding forced and trite. The erotic talk only begins when we are deep in some dizzying act. Only then does it come easily, spontaneously, even imaginatively. I am so overcome by this dizziness that I can't help but embellish with white lies about my own brother fucking me when I was little, his friends forcing me to perform oral sex on them. Stories from the unconscious really, that sex amongst young men was natural in Iran. I construct my fibs from already existing myths about men and homoerotic conduct in the Middle East.
When I try to take him from behind I fail and lose my erection because I am not accustomed to and comfortable with the role of the aggressor. It is foreign to me. The pressure to act causes temporary impotence. So he instructs me to bend before him on the incline with my elbows planted into the fallen leaves, the crinkling sounds of which I don't hear because I am breathing, breathing deeply. I only hear myself breathing. I am concentrating to relax my essential muscles because they are inclined to tighten and to refuse him entry. Could it be I am frigid?
Mike pushes against this blockade of my shame, persists despite this impasse, beyond my unwillingness. A slipping in, a falling into, a traversal of barriers, and if only this would occur emotionally, spiritually.
He lives always by the hunger and the appetite. The erection and the willing desire. Open. Wild. The active maleness. Mike can fuck and be fucked without effort, without shame.
But not I.
When he has succeeded and is inside of me, moving, slamming against my buttocks, I feel a triumph of my own. When the painful friction and the unease have departed, when the last obstinate breath is exhaled, and we slide against each other, when I feel I am providing pleasure, that is when I feel most natural.
He pounds me.
I turn my head slightly to glimpse him. His arms are stretched out to his sides. He is supported only by his drive and rhythm. I am impressed that even though we are on uneven ground he does not lose balance. He is adroit at sex. This is his art.
But not mine.
When the sound of his pelvis slapping against my buttocks ceases I am suddenly overcome by a nameless shame. I feel strangely like an animal, without worth, and ironically he says he enjoys sex in the woods because it is "animalistic".
A half-hour later that same morning, when I am sitting under fluorescent light in class I am shocked to discover just how distant my recollections of that very morning seem and feel. But I have a secret and secretly relish these carnal recollections of a spirit somewhat liberated from the rusted anchors of its physical body.
I leave a get-together in Mill Valley because it's been taxing once again to be at my best- charming, a good listener, social. I head into San Rafael and suddenly think to call Mike. I am a little drunk, a little hopeful, and turn up a one-way street the wrong way. It's dark and the streets are empty. I chuckle at my folly, symbolically moving against the arrows.
I turn the car around and park. I cross the deserted street to a payphone. I place the receiver to my ear and fish for Mike's number in my wallet. I dial the numbers. He answers the phone almost immediately.
"Where are you?" he asks.
I answer him in a voice that is languid, desirous.
"I'll be there in five minutes," he says and arrives promptly in a car that is old and dented.
But I don't care about these things- his material successes or financial defeats.
I remain where I am standing so that he has to turn off the engine and walk to me. When he remarks about this I explain, 'I wanted to watch you walk up to me.'
He grins, "That's hot. I just got a hard on."
We go up to the hill again. It is a clear night. We can see the lights for miles. Highway 101 ebbs and sparkles. I have him in my mouth. I feel adventurous and imaginative, and handle him in new ways. He moans pleasurably. Just then a lone figure emerges from the dark trees and startles both of us. But he does not bother with us. His head remains hanging as he wanders the dark trails further into the woods.
"The homeless come up here to sleep," Mike explains.
The lights flash and sparkle in the dark distance.
Again he begins to talk of other men who arouse him. Although I am usually content listening to his experiences with, and desire for others, tonight I feel differently.
'I don't want to hear about other men, Mike. When I'm with you I want to be strictly with you. Not them.'
He accepts this.
When it comes up that I'm going to Los Angeles for the weekend he says, "Why didn't you tell me?"
I chuckle, 'Because we never talk about these things.'
We become silent again, enjoying the presence of the other body.
At times I feel I am picking up his loneliness on the air, something personal about him on the wind- some private information that might linger diaphanously in the dark and pass quickly, like a subtle scent of something familiar and universal. And I'm left with a strange look on my face, my eyebrows furrowed as if I'm trying to remember a name or place a face.
But soon Mike has come and lies back in the tall grass, sighing. And I resent him inwardly because he does not help me do the same. I always take longer. And since I do not know how to be properly angry I come to feel embarrassed about my tardiness.
My anger reveals itself in the form of embarrassment because I do not know how to be angry.
Los Angeles. So much has happened and I am dying to reenter these blue surrogate walls of my diary to tell of the strangest things, but I am only human and have human obligations, a reality outside of this place- my diary…
I suppose the safest and smartest thing to do is to start with the most recent events.
Eli chuckles and notes that I often speak in metaphors. The wind picks up and disturbs our blanket. The sun makes the sand glisten.
'Here we are in Los Angeles now,' I say wistfully. 'A long way from St. Gregory High School on Bryn Maur…'
The ocean reflects the light all around us. Behind us an endless conduit of highways- the arteries of Southern California. The Los Angeles myth rings true. People are hurried and their glances are incredulous, not welcoming. The cars seem catapulted by something mechanical, not human. The haze mars the counties. I could never live here. Only my sense of instinct for survival is titillated here. I drive with lunacy in my cells and sinews.
But Los Angeles also arouses a sense of anticipation in me, as if around every intersection I might encounter an unlikely person or experience.
Eli and Jim have befriended a young neighbor, Andy. He is Chinese-American and has written a six hundred-page manuscript. He is smart and attractive, easy to get along with. We talked about the trials and tribulations of writing, the uncertainties of living true to our talent.
He even went to China for the first time as an adult to reclaim that portion of himself, which he had denied growing up. There he spent long hours with his grandfather, interviewing him about his experiences, taking notes, writing at night… in English.
I have noticed while here that I try to attribute soul to every setting, to every moment. I am desperate to annihilate anonymity, indifference, discord. I search for meaning and purpose in the things I see around me. I note that our shadows fall onto walls and sidewalks, then pass like our most shameful desires. Our shadows reveal so much about us- things we are desperate to hide, our darker selves.
Back in Marin. Back to me. Back to discord. Mom has fled to Modesto. Jackie attacks my emotionalism, accuses me of being childish and selfish. I feel a sense of death of trust and grieve, waiting for that moment of rebirth between us. Words are not meant to be thrown like daggers, but spoken with grace and love.
Off to Chicago tonight.
Airport. Bar, of course.
Trying to make sense of Jackie's eruption and all that was lost in the exchange. Why is she so angry? Why is she so unhappy? So much was pulled by bloody hands out of our guts to the surface. The very bowels of our family dramas lay gasping on the carpet, in the fading lights of that day, that bloody day.
Chicago. I'm upstairs at Chuck, Donna, and Tom's. Brandon and Laura are also here. I can hear everyone talking excitedly in preparation for Donna's 50th birthday celebration for which they flew me out. It's incredible to be suddenly amidst the physical memory of my youth in Chicago. I feel older. A dash more secure.
Laura says, "I can't believe you're here! Is it weird for you?"
I see a different side of Brandon. He is tender, respectful, gracious. I feel our bond has set in silver. Laura is hospitable. She makes me coffee in the morning and brings it to me. We walk arm in arm. She tells me that I am her favorite of Brandon's friends.
I look all about me at the city where this diary was born. I see brick, trash, pedestrians, street signs. Materials. Not the emotional projections of my youth. I feel myself real in juxtaposition to Chicago and the people I came to love here in my teens.
I do not smoke pot with others.
For the most part we have been sober…
Except for last night when I got drunk, too drunk, childishly drunk, and a heavy wavelike emotion settled upon me. My head fell forward in the dark yard where I smoked and I knew that one day I would simply snap and go insane. And when my head found reason and strength to bounce back I knew I had one defense: to write.
Write.
Write.
Drunk in the yard I cried and trembled.
Tomorrow I fly again, take to the sky, rise above all realities only to land again, but never quite in the same place.
My father and brother do not even know I am here. I did not tell them. I am not yet ready to see them. That is a looking glass I am not yet ready to confront.
There is a painful division inside me, I notice. It is a rift that comes to light amidst the celebrations and music here. The fusion has yet to occur. Is it immaturity? Is it addiction? Is it mental illness? I see an old anguish within me that startles me. Is this rift larger than I ever knew? Will it someday swallow me whole? So I search for greater faith, greater love, greater patience. Deeper action!
I've been here five nights and am exhausted, emotionally. Just look at my handwriting. It clearly shows my fatigue and lack of grace, loss of composure. I want to go home, wherever that might be… I feel wistful and wish I had written a more inspiring entry. I feel mad, restless, rebellious, agitated. I feel again that age-old need to be someone else, someone careless, reckless, liberated, less thinking, less anxious. Someone unfeeling.
Ironically, this page has come literally unhinged from the notebook!
I'm in the sky, writing. I trust only this place, this notebook-friend. There is a difference between the dream and poetry. Dreams are half-alive, wistful, passive. Poetry is proactive! Art is action!