Because then, if nothing else, I wouldn’t be missing you so badly, even seven years later.

I can remember you, but I can’t remember your voice. The fact of that alone is enough to make me wish that you hadn’t been such a wonderful father.

Because then, if nothing else, I wouldn’t be missing you so badly, even seven years later.

I can remember you, but I can’t remember your voice. The fact of that alone is enough to make me wish that you hadn’t been such a wonderful father.

1) The looks of sheer hostility that bitchy people give to other persons, say for example an old gentlemen, who offer to help them carry their groceries about a hundred yards to where their car is parked, and proceed to loudly bitch about his presumption in offering to assist them. Get a grip, you whiny bints.

2) The fact that having cleared the living-room credenza and the small bookcase of the tomes that were resting upon them, my new bookcase is now completely full, and I still have about three dozen books left to shelve. Jesus. Sell me something with REAL storage space, Argos.

1) The looks of sheer hostility that bitchy people give to other persons, say for example an old gentlemen, who offer to help them carry their groceries about a hundred yards to where their car is parked, and proceed to loudly bitch about his presumption in offering to assist them. Get a grip, you whiny bints.

2) The fact that having cleared the living-room credenza and the small bookcase of the tomes that were resting upon them, my new bookcase is now completely full, and I still have about three dozen books left to shelve. Jesus. Sell me something with REAL storage space, Argos.

But the real pisser is that by the time I think about writing it down, and believe me, I’ve got it all written down in my head in any case, because I keep thinking as though I’m doing the voice-overs for my own life when it comes to these things, and there’s always a soundtrack (generally the last thing I listened to on iTunes) thrumming quietly, just at the edge of earshot; well, by the time I actually sit down to write anything, I’ve forgotten what the hell I was going to write about. And it’s really annoying, because I can remember what a great idea it was, just not WHAT the idea was.

More than anything else, I was amused at the slurring that accompanied that little bit of social commentary. But at the same time, after I left the pub and walked down to the Tube station, I found myself seething a little bit. I didn’t plan to get all Camille Paglia on anyone’s ass, but I realised that I really resented what my friend had said. Not because it was painfully accurate or anything, but because I felt like there was some sort of essential issue being overlooked. I spend my daily existence, running from commuting in the mornings to grocery-shopping in the evenings in the heterosexual sphere. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it doesn’t bother me in the least, mainly because there’s only room for one major player in my head and that’s generally me. But when I do go out, I don’t see the point of going to “straight” clubs and bars, and frequently, I’ll pick a gay area/neighbourhood/venue over a straight one because…well, because I don’t want to be surrounded by straight people. Because when I go out, whether it’s to try and pick up a guy (which, not so much, but occasionally one gets lucky), or just to hang out with friends and dance, I want to do it in my particular sphere, the one that I don’t get regular exposure to, or at the very least, the one to which I feel as though I (ever so marginally) belong.

But the real reason has nothing to do with getting lucky or exposure, to tell you the truth. I’m always hunting for that particular instant. Because sometimes, when I go out, there’s this moment of epiphany. When you’re standing in the middle of the dance floor, and all around you, there are men enjoying and celebrating themselves, it can break your heart a little bit. Easily. When you grow up hiding who you are, or always a little bit convinced that you’re a freak, that there’s something not quite right about you, to see it all normalised…to see other people like you dancing, being themselves, for just a brief moment, it’s worth all the cattiness and the bitchy asides, the retorts, the shallowness, the puerile behaviour and the whole slew of other nasty issues that come bundled with being a gay man. And they’re horrendous issues, they’re abrasive and chip away at you over time if you let them (and I tend to, unfortunately), they run a gamut of emotions from the merely irksome to the outright traumatic. But every so often, there’s that perfect instant when everything seems to slow down to a tenth of its speed, where you just look around and see other people just like you in so many ways, with the same issues and the same insecurities, including the people you’d rather not be, or the ones who show you everything dark about yourself, but it’s fucking beautiful. Because it all makes sense. Just for that one moment, everything snaps into place, it’s all aligned and gorgeous and intricate and beautiful, and it makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time, and sometimes I do, quietly, because it’s overwhelming and you can’t believe that any person is allowed to see that pattern slide smoothly into place in front of your eyes, but you can’t look at it for too long or let yourself get caught up in it, because too much of it might do something unpleasant to you, deaden your heart or your mind, or you might–horror of horrors–get used to it, which is just not the way it should be. Things that lovely are meant to be experienced intermittently I think, just so that when they do happen, you really appreciate them.

Clarity. It’s a phenomenal feeling. I imagine that’s what it must be like to have faith, to believe in a higher power that creates for a purpose and with a reason, even if you don’t know what that reason is. But it’s fucking beautiful nonetheless.

The Hawthorne Inn and Suites probably never saw quite as much action or entertainment as when I moved in for the summer. My habit of insisting that all of my laundry go to the dry-cleaner down the block, in addition to my inability to use the hotel fitness room without lip-syncing to Madonna—well when it was all put together, the hotel staff decided to adopt me as something of a mascot. Unfortunately, with the lack of things to do in Arlington, it’s not as though this adoption really led me anywhere other than to the occasional free drink at the hotel bar (which had some of the best bread I have ever eaten–anywhere). I would be picked up in the morning by some poor sap who had the misfortune to be dragooned by the company’s CEO, get to the office by about 8:00, stay through 5:30 (and hitch yet another ride back with some other sap), return to the hotel, work out, shower and change…and then I’d get online and play around on gay.com, looking desperately for some form of homosexual release (not in that sense, perverts), just anyone else to talk to.

That was also the first time I actually started watching (and following) Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So I guess the summer wasn’t a complete waste; I managed to lose a fair amount of weight and catch up on the antics of the Scooby Gang and Mr. Pointy. I was terribly excited about that, but it led to some pretty insane moments over the summer. Keep in mind, if you will, that there wasn’t exactly much to do in the wonderful town of Arlington, WA at the best of times, and the lack of transportation had pretty much sounded the death-knell for any hopes I harboured relating to an amusing summer.

This only made everything that happened in those 10 weeks even more surprising.

It turned out that one of my co-workers, an individual who looked like a walking tuber (think the sweet yam variety), was/is also gay, and was fairly nice to me at first. He took me to a couple of gay bars/clubs in Seattle proper, as well as to one place which sort of set the tone for my summer in Seattle. It was, ironically enough, a bar called Tracks, in Kent, WA; a small, dingy place with a pool table, a smallish dance floor, lots of 80s music, drag queens, and one blazingly-hot bartender who used to slip me free drinks. And the occasional feel. Woof.

Now, the first time I was at Tracks, I was wandering fairly aimlessly around the dance floor when I was approached by an extraordinarily attractive young man who bore a strong resemblance to Mark McGrath (that’s the guy from Sugar Ray, right?); only shorter, and a brown version. Much to my chagrin, I haven’t the faintest recollection of his name—Chris, perhaps?—but that’s OK, since no one really goes by their real names on this blog anyway. So, Brown Sugar Ray Guy (also known as BSRG), was really cute. Half-Samoan, half-Mexican, and all-lickable.

BSRG: *obviously drunk* Hi.
Me: Hello. *lascivious grin*
BSRG: *reeling and bumping into me* I’m sorry.
Me: *grabbing him around the waist to hold him up, all the while leering at him* It’s OK. What’s your name?
BSRG: *mumbling* Grizszhhzz.
Me: *confused* Oh, well, what a nice name.
BSRG: I’m sorry.
Me: You keep apologising, but I’m not really sure what you’re sorry for.
BSRG: I’m drunk, and you’re really handsome.
Me: *taken aback* Oh. Well, thanks! You’re not so bad yourself.
BSRG: Do you like me?
Me: I don’t know you.
BSRG: Well, if you did know me, would you like me?
Me: I’m not drunk enough for this conversation, I’m afraid.
BSRG: *snuggling in deeper, closer to my body* That’s OK. I’m drunk enough for both of us.
Me: *happily tightening the embrace* Oh good. You do realise, don’t you, that you’re practically mounting me here on the dance floor.
BSRG: *interestedly noting the way his right leg seems to have snaked itself around my left hip* Yeah. Do you mind?
Me: Not at all, but I feel as though someone’s going to tell us to get a room.
BSRG: *examining his left leg with extreme concentration* You’re taller than me. You could pick me up, right?
Me: *flummoxed* Well, yes, given that I’m about eight inches taller than you and outweigh you by an easy 50 pounds, it’s a definite possibility.
BSRG: Great! *jumps up on top of me, wraps both legs around my torso, and starts making out*
Me: Mmmph! *pulling away* So, where do you live again?

The Human Tuber drove BSRG and myself back to Arlington, where much debauchery took place in a third-floor suite of the local Hawthorn Inn and Suites. Although BSRG was certainly a small person, if you know what I mean, and I think you do, he compensated for his size with so much energy that at one point, the front desk had to call up and make sure that we were all right.

When I woke up in the morning, eventually, I found him scampering around the kitchen suite, making me breakfast. Which then caught on fire, because I’m a tragic queen and domesticity is a major turn-on, especially when the chef in question is bounding about between the stove and the fridge in nothing but an apron. Although the outfit of choice may well lead to several third-degree burns, scalds, and grease splatters, it was still quite fantastic. Especially because in this case, it didn’t. However, I learned several very interesting things about grapefruit.

I’ll stop now.

The real entertainment, however, began when BSRG realised that he was way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere, and I didn’t have a car, or any way to send him back to where he came from. Despite repeated attempts by me to point out to him that this was hardly classified information, and that I’d tried to share it with him last night before he so rudely interrupted me by sticking his tongue into my mouth, he somehow convinced himself that it was my fault for having led him on and seduced him.

Eventually, this led to hurling of pots and pans, because the young man is a COMPLETE drama queen, and finds nothing sexier than lots of melodrama. I found this out the hard way, when, two days later (still in my hotel room), I came back to find him lying naked in bed, watching “The Young and the Restless”. When I kicked off my shoes (having by this point in time, given up on actually throwing him out or attempting to get him home because it was nice to have my own love-slave waiting on me), and attempted to change the channel, he flung himself off the bed (naked, no less), and yelled “You don’t want me to be happy!”

I responded, quite logically I thought, with the question “I’ve known you for three days, and all I want to do is change the channel. How is this in any way indicative of whether or not I want you to be happy?”

“Don’t yell at me!”

“I’m not yet, but I’m about to start!”

“Fine! I’m leaving!”

With that, he walked into the bathroom and slammed the door, ostensibly to put on some clothes. I went to the kitchen area and poured myself a glass of water, but accidentally dropped the glass. The minute it hit the ground, he was back outside like a shot, glaring at me.

“It’s nothing,” I muttered, looking away from him, trying to find a mop.

“You just broke that glass.”

“Yes, it was an acc…”

“I made you so angry that you just crushed that glass in your hand, didn’t you?”

Observing the light of love, or at least extreme lust, throbbing in his eyes, I hastily amended my sentence. “Yes. Yes I did…it’s just that sometimes, you make me so mad, the idea of losing you…”

“Come here,” he said, undulating across the room to the bed, and taking his half-buttoned shirt off. “I’ll take care of that for you.”

Leaving the shattered remains of my moral code and self-respect along with the remains of the glass on the kitchen floor, I happily skipped over to bed, and proceeded to realise in much detail, exactly how much of a difference tender loving care could make to one’s wounds.

This settled into a three-week pattern, with him only occasionally leaving the hotel to go home every once in a while, generally for a change of clothes. I looked forward to those breaks, because they gave me time to come up with new forms of drama that I could use to get my booty quotient. Phrases leaving my mouth, and being rapidly followed with all manner of interesting nocturnal activities included the following:

“No, I don’t care what you say, Mother, I love him!”
“Fine! Go ahead and disown me, Father, I’ll never leave him!”
“Yeah? Well fine, DON’T pay for college, I’ll make it somehow! You’re my brother, but I can’t give him up for you!”
“I told you, James, it’s over! Over! I have a new love now, and we’ll always be together—you’re not in my life any more!”
“Like hell I’m going to come in on the weekend! I plan to spend time with my lover, and if you fire me, then so be it!”

Luckily, the drama would get him so hot and bothered that he didn’t notice that all my phone calls were being made to one number, repeatedly. Never in my life have I so frequently dialled the AT&T mobile phone customer service centre. To this day, I remember each and every option on that blasted menu.

A fortnight into this, I begged the hotel manager to toss him out. He did, and all of a sudden, my life became MUCH calmer. Until the next time I went to Tracks…

I had a very odd dream last night, involving someone who has always occupied a strange place in my life. He’s drifted in and out, at times closer than I would ever have believed, on other occasions, so completely alien that I doubted he was the same person whom I had befriended; I’ve always known him to be brilliant, highly individualistic, and often utterly maddening.

And at the end of the day, I’ve realised that no matter what, I’ve always known him better than I ever expected to, and that he’s one of the few people in my life who can say the same about me. Even now, with him sitting pretty in San Francisco, becoming a doctor, I have moments when I catch myself saying “God, H.C. would completely understand this, why doesn’t anyone else get it?”

And sometimes—and this WAS a way in which my relationship with him mirrored my connection with Mathias—there’s a sense of revelation. There’s a feeling of being completely saturated, enraptured, a notion that fades as fast as it erupted into the horizon of your mind, an emotional supernova that leaves aftershocks in the strata of your soul. And it vanishes, leaving behind traces of itself like the Cheshire Cat fading away in front of Alice, piece by piece, but sometimes, you’re swept with a consciousness of it, and the intensity of your gratitude (both willing and unwilling) tightens your chest until the lack of oxygen threatens to overwhelm your sensibilities, sweeps through your parasympathetic nervous system, shutting down even your autonomous body functions until you come back to reality with a gasp for oxygen. I’ve never been a religious person, but at moments such as this, I feel the confluence of God and man rushing over me, immersing me in a glorious sense of my own mortality interacting with something that can only, with our weak and limited primate senses, be described as divinity.

It’s a poor way to describe that sensation, ham-handed and melodramatic, I know, but I honestly can’t think of any other way to try and explain it to someone who hasn’t felt it. Words are wonderful, but they too can sometimes fail. My friends, some of my best friends, never understood why I continued to be open to H.C., to put up with what they saw as his flakiness, his inability to commit, his confusion about his own proprioceptive sense of identity, and I would frequently, under the assault of their joint disapproval of my folly, shrink into a defensive ball, whispering “You guys, you just don’t understand.”

How could they? I’m not sure I quite understand it, even now.

I am, oddly enough, not an easy person to get to know. I remember overhearing someone describing me to a newly-admitted freshman during the GLBT social mixer, as “cold and haughty, although presumably, he unbends a bit when conducting human sacrifices at the time of the full moon, as he’s been widely rumoured to do.” A bit of an exaggeration, but largely rooted in fact. I can be astoundingly unpleasant and stand-offish when I decide to be, mostly while at large gatherings, especially when I’m unsure of where I stand in the social Nielsen ratings.

Which makes it all the more odd that in my second month on campus, right at the beginning of freshman year, I saw H.C. in New South, one of the campus cafeterias, and promised myself that I would get to know him, no matter what. I’ll admit to being shallow; I thought he was one of the most stunning men I’d ever seen. As I later discovered, he’s half-Filipino, a quarter Spanish, and a quarter Chinese, all the traits of each group combining to create this broad-shouldered, sloe-eyed being who just exuded sexiness, even when I later realised the depths of emotion that had contributed towards its contribution. At the time though, I almost took a nosedive into the crouton bowl at the salad bar, and was only a friend’s steadying arm away from an embarrassing Caesar salad dressing facial.

H.C., if you’re reading this, I know exactly what you’re doing right now. You’ve got a slightly twisted half-smile on your face, and you’re not sure if you should laugh, or if the seriousness of my actually writing about all of this, putting what we shared—and we shared much—into cold text, reducing it to words and punctuation, warrants a more serious response. Knowing you, at the end of the last sentence, you probably laughed quietly, maybe a little nervously, and now you’re settling in, making yourself a little bit more comfortable, because even though you’re not sure if you want to read the rest of this, you wouldn’t be able to sleep comfortably until you finished devouring every word on the screen. And now you’re debating closing this window, just to prove me wrong, but you won’t, because we’re beyond that sort of bullshit.

Aren’t we?

We talked for most of freshman year, engaging in this strange dance that I didn’t recognise at the time, even when, one night, driven to sheer stubbornness, I decided to tell him of my strange fancy, sitting on the edge of the silenced fountain in Dahlgren Quad, the chapel doors in front of us seeming to be a heavy-handed allegory more intimidating than any Chapel Perilous ever entered by a seeker of the Grail. He stammered, started speaking, stopped, not sure what to say. I got up and left, went to a friend’s room, where one look at my face prompted my friend to rush me down to Au Pied de Couchon, the dingy French watering hole on Wisconsin Avenue, and ply me with bottle after bottle of cheap red wine, all the while assuring the French proprietor that we were of legal drinking age.

That was the first alcoholic drink I ever had. I’d forgotten that.

Things were strained for the next few months, while my father passed away and I struggled to hold my family together, to restrain them from saying and doing things they’d hate. I was barely nineteen, but I felt so old, and no one understood. He did, I think, in his own way, but we’d already trodden on each others’ toes during the waltz; there was too much trepidation.

And oddly enough, sophomore year, we were roommates. He was dating a slightly insane senior, never spending time in the room. In a passive-aggressive act totally uncharacteristic of me, I left him a note wondering if I could take over his bed and form a double bed, since he had no use for it. Angry notes were left on each other’s laptops, a debate fuelled for no reason other than sheer contrariness. There was some nebulous ground that neither was willing to relinquish; we may not have known what we were fighting for or about, but the fact of the battle itself was enough to keep us going. There were awkward silences, glow-in-the-dark stars glued to the ceilings, books amassed aplenty in a regressive fort-building exercise that clearly delineated the borders within our room. I even applied, and got into a year-long program of study in Italy, so badly did I want to get out of there. I spent more and more time in Manhattan that year, trying to get away from the feelings that made me recoil mornings when I’d wake up and see his bed unslept in, or mine for that matter, because I’d have been up all night, roaming DC and falling asleep in friends’ rooms. He told me, a year later, that sometimes, he’d lie awake in the middle of the night, listening to me breathe, hoping I’d come across to his bed. He’d come to my bedside and watch me sleep; what would have happened is something we never brought up. Not then.

Was that what you said, H.C.? Or am I glossing over memories, changing them into what I want them to be, rather than what they were?

Junior year, I was a wreck. Cutting myself, failing classes, taking care of my brother’s wedding. I didn’t talk to H.C. much, if at all; he was dating a freshman (or was she a sophomore?), and that didn’t endear him to me. Then, one night, in the courtyard of my dorm, he came up to me silently, while I was smoking. He’d had sex with a guy, a freshman, he said. He didn’t really know why, but the guy’d been after him, and he’d decided to do it. He was confused, he didn’t know how he felt about it, he didn’t know why he was telling me about it, but he was.

I got up, and without a word, ignoring his calls to come back and talk to him, went to my room.

We didn’t talk for a few weeks, until, the night before I was going to fly back to Karachi for the wedding, I ran into him on the street. We exchanged pleasantries, polite conversation ensued, and then there was silence. My foot traced convoluted arabesques on the pavement. We looked anywhere but at each other, starting to speak, interrupting each other and then stopping. Laughed nervously, awkwardly. I wanted to go back and start all over, but I didn’t know how. A few minutes of uncomfortable silence, and I started to say goodbye, when he wrapped his arms around me, and with only the slightest hesitation, kissed me.

We walked away from each other, turning away wordlessly. I didn’t dare to look back at him, didn’t know what I’d say or do if I did, knowing that the smart thing to do was to pretend it had never happened, the right thing to do was to ignore it completely. He has a girlfriend, I repeated to myself as a mantra. He has a girlfriend, and this is just lunacy, it won’t work, it’ll never work, he doesn’t know what I want, he doesn’t know what he wants, and he and I both know that, but in all our knowledge, why are we both so fucked up and helpless to do anything? I listened for his footsteps, hearing him receding into the distance, not daring to turn around, because I didn’t know what would be worse, to see him looking back at me, or to see him walking away. My heart urged the footsteps to become louder, more hurried, racing towards me. My head urged my heart to shut the fuck up.

What would have happened if we’d turned around, H.C.? Did you turn around? I was too scared to.

I came back on academic probation, Prozac-saturated, trying desperately to prove that I was worth the $40,000 that the university received annually on my behalf. I threw myself into my work, writing paper after paper, doing extra-credit work, attending class with a diligence that bordered on mania. There was no time in my life for anyone or anything else, and I decided that I’d imagined what had happened. Glimpses of each other across the main campus square, but nothing more than a perfunctory wave, the occasional hug when we crossed too close to one another to gracefully spin away and carry on with our lives.

Senior year came and went in a brief flash. I buried myself in my life, in figuring out what to do, trying to pass my Biology classes with a minimum of work, chain-smoking my way through a senior thesis, driving myself insane with worry about my brother after September 11th, being attacked on the street and only narrowly-averting physical harm because of a passing group of students who knew me and stood up for me. Waiting for my nephew to be born, and sobbing in inconsolable grief as I held him for the first time and saw my father’s features, his hands and eyes, being watched by a silent infant whose gaze gripped me in a melancholy that was palpable enough to make my brother excuse himself from the room, the rawness of my feelings discomfiting him, he who had never seen me cry in all my life, not even at our father’s funeral.

We graduated. I moved into my friend’s summer townhouse, right next to campus and blew the cash I’d been given as a graduation present, waiting for my work-permit to arrive, playing Final Fantasy X and partying like a madman. H.C. was on campus too. One night, we decided to get dinner, an uneasy truce declared itself, unspoken and unheard, but felt. Shall we invite him home? he asked me over the appetizers, indicating with his fork our waiter at the Cheesecake Factory. I snorted into my wine and chuckled indulgently, hoping for a sudden coronary or a stroke to incapacitate me and end the evening because I didn’t know what else to do.

The living room of the townhouse. Everyone’s out for the night, we’re sitting cross-legged on the floor, with a bottle of Absolut Citron between us, taking shots out of the bottle, a last-ditch effort to postpone and perhaps justify? Timidly: Will you spend the night here? You’re too drunk to drive. A slug from the bottle, his lips wiped with the back of his hand, still glistening, pupils dilated but focus present in an intensity that’s almost embarrassing. Angry with myself, I snatch the bottle back. It’s only a few blocks. A last-ditch effort: You’re sure? OK.

He comes up to my bedroom, the smallest, filled with boxes on one side, and my single bed on the other. My laptop blinks intermittently, a small green glow on the wall distracting me. Avoiding his glance, I shrug my way out of my clothes, clad in underwear that’s entirely too flimsy and revealing, emotionally and physically. The down comforter, in the middle of DC’s sweltering summer heat, is yanked over my body with an almost unseemly celerity, his lips curl up in that half-smile that still floats into my mind on a lonely night, and he climbs in next to me, wrapping his arms around me.

We kiss, and the darkness envelops us, as he curls around me, and four years come together in a tapestry that I didn’t even realise was being woven. There’s fumbling, hungry kisses, a pulling-away, boundaries set, broken, reset, shattered again.

He leaves in the morning, climbing over me with a degree of grace and consideration that is entirely unwarranted because I haven’t been able to sleep all night, waking up every few minutes to reassure myself of his comforting warmth, of his chest next to me, rising and falling, my arm under his head, one hand in his hair, the other cradling his genitals because even now, I can’t, I don’t believe that this is happening. Has happened.

It’ll happen again at my new house in Woodley Park. It’ll happen a year later, when he drives in from Maryland to see my new house in Adams-Morgan, while my foster brother’s little brother sleeps in our living-room, on the couch and unaware that just twenty feet of drywall, granite countertop and stainless steel kitchen separate him from two people who should know better, but one of them at least, just doesn’t give a shit, and will take what’s given when it’s given. When it’s there, and while it’s still all right to so do.

All of that came back in my dream last night, H.C. and I, human spiders with limbs intertwined, my head on his clavicle, his legs thrown over and under and around mine, all at the same time, the sheets of the bed spiralling around us in a twist of fate that I knew would eventually come, but which, now, is an impossibility, ineffable and inevitable in its own warped way. His warmth and bulk are reassuring, comforting, and terrifying, all at once. It’s not meant to be like this. Is it?

No, it’s not like this. It’ll never be like this, will it, H.C.? I’m not challenging what may be, just wondering, out loud, engaging in pointless rhetorical exercises. It’s all right, it’s over now, most of it, anyway. The important bits? I’ll look back in a couple of years and let you know. Life is, after all, mostly an illusion, and Fate a magician. It’s all done with mirrors.

Break the mirrors.

I’ll see you on the flip side, eh?

Thinking back upon it, I realised that the signs of incipient homosexuality were upon me from an early age. How early?

Pretty far back. Here’s a timeline.

1980: Birth. I was a Caesarean, and a few weeks early. This, I have discovered, may be attributed to the fact that I just wanted to get the hell out of my mother’s stomach before I was entering vaginal regions. I was so committed to being a big homo that I didn’t want my birth to be tainted with another shattering reminder of heterodoxy. It happened once, for conception, and I was determined to not let it happen again.

1982: Air bubble. Seeing my mother trying to feed me with a bottle, the teat of which put me in mind of the female breast and nipple, I freaked out and decided that I would rather commit suicide than be oppressed by mammary gynocracy. I held my breath until I went blue in the face, but an unfortunate inability to control my bodily functions caused me to issue forth something between a burp and a hiccough, and I almost choked to death on an air bubble. I went straight to drinking out of glasses from then onwards. Funnily enough, my favourite glasses were always the ones shaped like wine goblets.

1983: Coherent sentences. Although I was a silent child for the first couple of years of my life, Year 3 brought with it a sudden loquacity that startled everyone. Perhaps the most disquieting part of my verbosity was the construction of sentences such as “That’s ugly” (with reference to a pair of shoes), “Thank you, it’s boo-ful!” (upon being given a nice silk shirt), and my personal favourite, which occurred when someone tried to give me a glass of tap water: “No bubbles?” *quizzical look from host* “You know…fizzy? Bubbles? *exasperated sigh* “Perrier? Champagne? Like dat…fizzy!”

1984: Grooming advice. My mother used to have hair that ran all the way down her back, almost to her ankles. Since she would have to contort herself in all sorts of strange ways to brush its whole length, I assumed grooming duties, reaching as high as I could on my pudgy little toes to complete each brushstroke. Not only did I insist on the hairbrush with the mother-of-pearl handle, I also pointed out to my mother on several occasions that she was not conditioning her hair appropriately for the climate of Karachi, and that she needed to trim her hair because it was getting “all broken at the bottom”.

1985: Decoration. Upon their return from a family dinner to which I had not been invited because I was unwell, my parents found me sitting amongst the ruins of no less than four china patterns, each of which had failed to meet my critical aesthetic standards. Questioned as to why I had engaged in such wanton destruction of my mother’s carefully-collected bone china, I pointed out its utter incompatibility with any of her current place settings, silverware, or table linens. I believe I pouted and cried when my mother, baffled by my behaviour, actually attempted to show me that her Wedgewood Country Homes collection matched the silk tablecloth she had purchased from China. I didn’t buy it.

1986: Clothing. Chronically precocious (read “bratty”), I changed schools about as frequently as I did clothing. Eventually, my parents gave up and forced me to go to a “private” school that my brother also attended. Heartened by the prospect of going to this particular school, where I would have (I assumed) an ally in high places, I was terribly excited until I saw the school uniform, which made me look like a beached whale, what with the white shirt and little grey shorts, grey knee-high socks and black shoes. Not only did I refuse to wear the shorts, because I was convinced that they made me look fat, I also insisted that all of my clothing be made of natural fibres only, since artificial cloth gave me rashes.

1987: First crush. My local video store suggested “Supergirl” as an appropriate movie for me to watch. Big mistake. Not only did I watch the film every single afternoon, I also insisted on having a little cape like Supergirl, and hoped desperately that I too would have a hot shirtless gardener fall in love with me. Along with coveting the red cape, boots, and little skirt, I proceeded to harass each and every one of the gardeners hired by my mother to tend our lawns, a trend which would continue well into my twelfth year.

1988: Ice-cream and baking. When depressed, I realised that the only thing that made me really happy was watching soap operas, producing (and consuming) baked goods—especially those containing chocolate—in vast quantities, and polishing off entire tubs of ice-cream. Further evidence of my gaiety came in the form of temporary anorexia, right after a depressive binge; during these phases I would refuse to eat anything other than salads and continuously pinch my hips, complaining to all and sundry within earshot about my (non-existent) love handles.

1989: Madonna. I listened to Madonna, and only Madonna for six months at a stretch. Enough said.

1990: Baywatch. Satellite television came to Pakistan, and along with it, Baywatch. When my friends, in the throes of puberty, would stand around and talk about “how HOT those Baywatch people are!”, I’d smile and nod to myself, overcome with visions of some hottie twink lifeguard giving me mouth-to-mouth, and a little extra besides. Only later did I realise that they were croaking their admiration for Pamela Anderson’s bodacious tatas, whereas I was working on deciphering the contents of Any Random Lifeguard’s package.

1991: Gardener. At the age of 11, having already been through puberty, I began noticing that our gardener was kind of hot (please refer to 1987). Luckily for me, I didn’t really look particularly underage, and he was only 16, so after many incidents during which I “mistakenly” turned the garden hose on him, and “accidentally” slipped and fell onto him while “playing in the garden”, he and I started to do the dirty on a regular basis. That lasted for about a year or so, until he went away on vacation.

1992: Gardener’s family. Luckily for me, the gardener’s replacement was his cousin, who was equally gay, and had a nicer body. Woof.

After I was done with the gardener and his assorted relatives, I took a hiatus from sexual activity and general homosexuality for a couple of years, until the point in time when I came out to my brother. But that’s a story for another day, involving as it does antique furniture and cascades of orchids.

And then my jaw dropped as I saw, on national TV, a drag queen hosting a talk show.

Now there’s a certain amount of cross-dressing-as-a-source-of-amusement in Pakistani culture (I blame it on the British), and it’s not completely uncommon to see a man dressed in a woman’s clothes in a TV show or while doing a stand-up routine. But that sort of man is generally dressed to make it glaringly obvious to even the most unperceptive person that it’s a man wearing women’s clothing; the make-up will be completely absent, there’re no wigs and plenty of facial hair, and the extent of an “performativity” as one of my professors would call it, is limited to a half-hearted attempt to mimic the feminine vocal register. Normally that means that the guy just squeaks or gets as high-pitched as he normally can, and for some reason this provides countless hours of quality entertainment to everyone.

When I went over to Opiate’s house that night, she got a phone call that sent her into hysterics. When I asked what was so funny, she put the call onto speakerphone and rolled about on the ground, flailing her arms in an effort to maintain control of the hilarity, knocking over a number of ash-trays and empty bottles. I didn’t even notice, because the voice issuing from the speaker had all my rapt attention.

“[Opiate] darling, you never come to my parties na, you totally absolutely must have to, yeah? I mean, it’s my big night and you’ve not even been on my show yet, and wait till you see the jora [trans. “outfit”] I’ve had made for it, ufff it’s to TOTALLY fabulous yaar [trans. “buddy/dude/friend”] and I swear to you, it’s all sequined, so much that those two Reema and Meera bhenchod dekh kay mar jaaein gi! [trans. “sister-fuckers will die when they see it”], so you MUST be there haan, OK, it’s like my coming-out party na, and if you don’t come I’ll just DIE.”

“We aren’t seriously going to this are we?” I asked Opiate. “And who the hell was that anyway?”

“You don’t know?” she asked, looking at me strangely. “Seriously, you don’t know at all or are you just fucking with me?”

“I’m clueless,” I told her with disarming honesty. “So who is it?”

She just grinned at me. “You’ll see. In a few days. When we go to the party.”

And then I got distracted by the brigade of queens who rolled up (the fashionistas) to the house and proceeded to talk about how the Paris Hilton perfume launch in Karachi was just fabulous, and how Paris Hilton is (and I quote) “a true American cultural icon”. My suggestion that the only iconic standing she has is rooted in her quasi-mystical ability to give people who even think about her some form of venereal disease was greeted with haughty sniffs. Opiate just looked at me and rolled her eyes in sympathy.

A few nights later, I walked into Opiate’s house to find her hosting a “dance practice” for a friend’s wedding. And by “hosting”, I mean she stood on the side with a glass of whiskey and a cigarette, critically evaluating everyone in silence while Hindi film song remixes blared. After an hour of trying to keep up with some absurdly complex choreography, I gave up the ghost and threw myself down on a nearby pillow. That was my error. Seeing me prostrate, Opiate swooped down and before I knew it, I was driving us to a local shopping mall of sorts, where I walked in to find “Begum Nawazish Ali” wearing a sari and beaming proudly, thanking everyone for having shown up to his/her party and then breaking down into a sobfest complete with heaving (false) bosoms, tissue after tissue dabbing at his/her face with enough force to look realistic but not so much as to ruin the makeup.

“Oh my God,” I whispered to Opiate, watching the histrionic fit escalating to previously unreached heights. “Is this for real?”

“Apparently,” she whispered back, “his show is unbelievable popular. He’s a massive hit with everyone.”

“I know him,” I hissed. “That’s…”

“Yes it is,” said a third voice, belonging to our mutual friend the Sapphic (former) Supermodel, who had walked over and was regarding the wailing of the sari-clad banshee with barely-disguised contempt. “It’s him all right, and what he IS, is an incredibly tacky queen.”

“Well of course he is,” I said, shaking my head in wonder at her ire.

“There’s tacky and then there’s THIS,” she sniffed. “Do you realise that my MOTHER, the homophobe turned around to me today and said “You know, I don’t have any sympathy for the gays but this one must embarrass even them.” Of course she threw in more curses as well, but that was the gist of it.”

As one, all three of us turned around together to witness Begum Ali losing her shit with happiness and practically swooning from the adulation of the twelve-odd people standing around her who were obviously there for the chance to get on TV. She was giddy with the love of the masses, vertiginous with the appreciation she was getting, and for a minute, I was torn between applauding her madly for finessing deviancy into a money-maker, and slapping her silly for being an embarrassment to self-respecting homosexuals all over Pakistan who would have to deal with everyone thinking that all gay men are drag queens prone to hysteria at the drop of a stiletto.

I still don’t know how I feel about it. I mean, the perspective on what “gay” is in Pakistan is so skewed anyway, with 90 per cent of the populace thinking that being gay means that you’re either (a) a hermaphrodite, (b) a eunuch, (c) a tranny, or (d) just plain ol’ fucked-up. It just seems that reinforcing any one of those typisms is a foolish thing to do, but then again, what do I know? I just wish someone (like “Begum Ali”) had thought about this before doing it. I’m tired of “Will and Grace” Syndrome, in which the gays are paraded about for their entertainment value, and while I’m glad that to an extent it’s mainstream viewing, I also think that it’s a weak sop to gay people…I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: what sort of self-respecting gay man doesn’t get laid in like eight seasons? All they do is pander to and reiterate the worst stereotypes. I mean, we’re not like everyone else, sure…but does that mean that those differences have to be exploited for entertainment? If you’re going to do that, then take the whole fucking parcel, including the things that you only pay lip service to. Don’t just cut and paste the pieces that make for good viewing, at least not if you want to dare try to claim that “this is a great step forward for gay rights”, which is what one of the people at “Begum Ali’s” little performance piece was admiringly saying.

Idiot.

So the only redeeming feature of Qatar Airways is its incredibly hot cabin crew. I mean, wow.

I got to the airport well in advance of my flight, hoping that my punctuality would give me plenty of time to browse through the Heathrow duty-free, only to discover that my free upgrade to First Class had been revoked because “the flight is so full that we’re pushing all travellers without fully-paid tickets to Economy, sorry”. In and of itself, this wouldn’t be an issue, except for the fact that I’d packed my suitcase as though I’d be flying First, and hence was ten kilograms over the allowed weight-limit.

Like the optimistic fool that I am, I’d packed all of my law textbooks and study materials to bring to Karachi with me, foolishly assuming that I’d somehow find the time to sit down and do some revision. The last set of exams was gruelling enough for me to realise that I need to start working even harder if I want to pass with a commendation or a distinction, and I figured that with the lack of things to do in Karachi, I could use the time to study. Obviously, four months away from here had induced some form of near-terminal amnesia regarding what Karachi is like during December.

So, I’m over the weight allowance. Substantially. Which means that out go my favourite pairs of shoes, which were being brought back to be re-soled, binders full of notes and casebooks get shunted into my carry-on bag, which all of a sudden is heavy enough to give even Atlas pause, and is—I’m convinced of this—responsible for all future spine-related ailments from which I may suffer, and a hefty number of the presents I was supposed to bring back. I was still about five kilos over the limit, so I had to dish out an extra £100 to cover that, and goodbye duty-free shopping. By the time I’d checked in and wandered about, covetously eyeing the Harrods counter, it was time to head for the departure lounge, where I ran into a friend’s younger brother, who turned out to be a harbinger of bad news.

“What do you MEAN, we have a seven-hour stopover in Doha?” I sputtered, looking around immediately for the nearest bar, and realising that the sleeping pills I had bought for the flight would be rendered useless were I to follow my baser instincts and pour the better part of a bottle of Belvedere down my throat.

“We CAN’T have a lay-over that long in Doha!” I screamed at the hapless flight crew, turning into that which I hate most: the shrewish harpy passenger who vents ire on ground staff.

“The airport’s duty-free isn’t big enough to keep me busy that long!” I shrieked, doing everything but throwing myself to the floor and drumming my heels on the ground in the greatest tantrum witnessed by mankind since my elder nephew was told that he couldn’t have the £500 Thomas the Tank Engine model railroad (Collector’s Edition, no less!) on display at Hamley’s.

“There isn’t even a BAR THERE!” I wailed despondently, sobbing through the crack of my knees as I curled up on the departure lounge “seating” (taken from a torture chamber in Darfur undoubtedly) in the foetal position.

“Qatar is a shitty little country with a crappy little airport!” I snapped, drying my tears on the handkerchief a kindly elder British gentleman who was obviously driven to distraction by my distraught appearance had donated to the cause.

Surprisingly enough though, the flight to Doha from London went by relatively uneventfully. I eyed Senior Cabin Crew Member Hadi lasciviously, realising that rarely had an Arab man carried off a starched white shirt with such élan, read Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend in about an hour and a half, and watched a few episodes of Frasier. Then we landed in Doha, and I honestly don’t know what I did for the six hours I spent in the lounge, because the bloody airport is so tiny that if more than three flights come in at the same time, there’s no room for anyone to be seated. Most of my wait was, I suspect, spent in hurdling prostrate tourists and backpackers who had fallen asleep on their duffel bags and knapsacks on the floor.

But when we boarded the flight from Doha to Karachi, my heart skipped several beats. In line in front of me was a vision of adorkable perfection, the geek-who-grew-hot-but-doesn’t-know-it; since he was a friend of my friend’s little brother, introductions were made and a brief conversation struck up as we boarded the plane. And by “conversation”, I mean that he talked while I made non-committal noises and undressed him in my head, starting with the thick black Prada glasses and working my way down to the delightfully snug blue corduroy trousers that he wore like a second skin. Then I added the glasses again, and my imagination sat back well-satisfied with the result.

And then the shit hit the fan.

I shuddered and turned away from him as much as I could.

There’s nothing quite as horrific as the flight segment from a Middle Eastern country to a South Asian one. This one proved to be no exception to that rule as the dickhead next to me proceeded to affect the world’s most atrocious faux-American accent and began yelling at the flight staff. He was one of those people who feels that every comment of his must be aired at maximum volume, so as to not deprive the world of his pearls of wisdom, and after about ten minutes of oratory I found myself ready to garrotte him with his seatbelt. It didn’t help that the Pakistani harridans were absolutely traumatised by the fact that the ground staff hadn’t been able to give their families of a dozen or more adjacent seats, and began to weep copiously at the thought of their wee offspring (devil-spawn one and all) having to be separated from the heaving maternal bosoms by the massive distance of one entire row. Beating their breasts and tearing at their hair, they ululated cries of distress into the confines of the cabin, loudly making sure that the Qatar Airways staff were aware that should their children vanish, be abducted or disappear, Allah would curse them, aye verily, unto the hundredth generation. I admired the restraint of the cabin crew member assigned to their particular section, who with far gentler mien than I would have been able to muster, pointed out that the flight would only be for two hours, and would take place in a sealed environment, muttering quietly to herself in Afrikaans that the only way for a child to be lost would be if it took after the mother in brain capacity and accidentally flushed itself down the toilet.

I chuckled quietly to myself, delighted by her sentiment, until I realised that we were half-an-hour late for departure, because a fracas had broken out between another cabin attendant and some raging bitch-whore from Hell who had had the good fortune to secure an exit-row seat and was busily arranging her sixteen larvae, all under the age of twelve, so that they could sit in the same row as her. Apparently, the flight attendant (that bitch, that shameless slut!) had pointed out that children couldn’t sit in an exit-row because they weren’t mature enough to handle the egresses in case of an emergency. I agreed with her sentiment, but that seething cow of a maternal figure had cocked up the entire cabin’s seating arrangement by somehow managing to convince 15 different people to alter their seating arrangements in order to accommodate the maggots brought forth from her devilish loins.

“Hey baby,” bellowed the candidate for retroactive abortion sitting next to me, trying to suck in his gut so that he could get the seat-belt on, “why don’t you come sit in my lap and leave that lady alone, huh? It’ll be the best ride you’ll get on this plane!” Overcome by his scintillating wit, he guffawed loudly, leaving me to add chronic halitosis to the already-lengthy list of his many failings as a human being.

“Hi,” I smiled at him, turning in my seat—as far as I could before his love handles, spilling over the armrest arrested my movement—to look at his sweaty visage. “I realise that we may have got off on the wrong foot, but I was just wondering, could you possibly shut the fuck up?”

“What did you say?” he asked me, jowls purpling from what I hoped would be a fatal apoplectic fit.

“I’ll try that again,” I beamed as sunnily as I could. “Your wife is sitting behind you, and while she’s obviously brain-damaged for having borne your children, you could at least have some sense of personal dignity or respect for her, and not shout crude shit at the cabin crew, who are trying their best to get us off the ground and into the air.”

“You can’t…you can’t talk to me like that,” he stammered. “Do you know what I can do to you?”

“There’s nothing you can do to me,” I snarled, “that your obnoxious presence hasn’t already managed to accomplish, so seriously, shut your pie-hole and let this plane get off the ground okay? And don’t fucking talk to me again, I don’t have the patience for this bullshit. Also? I’m a lawyer [OK a little white lie], and if you even THINK about trying to raise a hand to me, I will sue you so badly that your great-grandchildren will be paying off damages for their natural life-spans.”

The cabin crew smiled at me as they went by, and returned a few minutes later with a small bottle of champagne. But I had eyes only for the vision of mortal perfection who handed me the bottle with his absurdly graceful, long, dextrous fingers, a young man whose name-tag identified him as “Christiaan”. What that man was doing walking the aisles of a plane instead of the catwalks of Milan I will never understand, but he was breathtakingly handsome, with just enough of a catch in his features to make them arresting instead of plastic, and I simply could not stop staring at his crotch which hovered tantalisingly in front of me, bare inches from my face. It was with the greatest effort that I thanked him for the champagne, only letting go of the hand with which he handed it to me when I realised that he was starting to pull it away with increasing force. Dark-brown hair, turquoise eyes, and an ass that undoubtedly could have moonlighted (hah!) as a walnut-cracker.

I quite literally spent the next two hours craning my neck to watch him walk past. His compatriot poured me heavy drink after heavy drink, leading me to start chatting with her in broken German (close enough to Afrikaans), a conversation that led to the discovery that Christiaan too hailed from South Africa (Johannesburg), had been working as a flight attendant for a fortnight (and this was his first flight to Karachi), was single (and would be in Karachi for 24 hours), and to the best of her *wink, wink* knowledge, wasn’t inclined towards the ladies.

Half an hour later, as I emerged from the galley with stubble-burn on my face, I could definitely vouch for the veracity of the last statement.

I didn’t bother exchanging numbers, knowing full-well that I’d not have time to call him before he flew out again, but I did give him my e-mail address. Floating down the corridors of the arrivals area in a haze of barely-fulfilled lust, I realised that the Hot Nerd was talking to me.

“So, are you from London originally?”

“No,” I replied, struggling to bring my mind back from visions of Christiaan in his boxer-shorts. “I’m from Karachi—went to school in the US, moved back a few years ago and studying in London now. How about you?”

“Oh, well, I taught at the [local art college] here, but I’m doing my Masters degree in London now, in Contemporary Art History.”

Somewhere in the deepest recesses of my mind, a bell began clanging, trying to overpower the remembered endearments whispered into my ear in Afrikaans as lunch trays rattled and crashed to the galley floor and a safety demonstration oxygen mask demonstrated its potential for violence.

“What area are you focusing on?” I asked him politely, moving my messenger bag in a vain effort to hide a growing tumescence.

“Well, actually I’m doing performance theory? I don’t know if you’re familiar with it…”

“Like what Sedgwick and Butler postulate?” I shot back, sirens in my head getting louder and visions of South African scorchingness dwindling rapidly.

“Yeah, actually” he said, looking at me slightly strangely. “I’m doing…umm…queer theory, you know, notions of…”

“Nation as narration, performance of identity as drag, cultural politics, that sort of thing? Bhabha, Anderson, Myers?” I stared at him openly, with no small measure of disbelief.

“Wow, you’re pretty grounded in the theorists, huh?” he smiled back, slightly nervous.

“I did my honours thesis and my dissertation proposals on those,” I responded. “It’s refreshing to talk to someone else from Karachi who knows about these things.”

“Well, if you get a moment, we should meet up and talk about them. It’d be great to bounce some ideas I have off someone else who understand what I’m doing.”

The only thing you’ll be doing is me if I have my way I thought to myself.

It’s the end of another year now, the start of a new one, and I wish I had something deeply profound and meaningful to write but the truth of the matter is, I don’t. A year has gone by, life is fundamentally the same as it was a decade or so ago, with minor addenda, and for yet another New Year’s Eve, I’m sitting here in Karachi on my own, wondering if it’s better to go out to a party and get sloshed on champagne and caviar, or if I should just not bother with it and go to bed.

One day is pretty much the same as another, after all.

Best line of the last few days:

Uberhomme: *being followed down the street by a persistent beggar* (in Urdu): “Nahin, mu’af karo, jao, jao” [trans. “No, forgive me, go, go!]. *getting into car and popping head out of the window* (in English at last) “And stop yelling at me!!”

This is disjointed, I know. But what to do? So many things, so little time to write about all of them, the flesh is willing but the spirit is weak. No, a lot of the time, it’s not the other way around.

“What do you mean?” I asked her, nominally distracted from the antics of the manic Edwina and Patsy.

“I mean,” she said, indicating my flat with a broad sweep of her arm, “that for example, you’re a student living in a place that most people twice your age can’t afford and would envy you.”

I got to thinking about that tonight. She’s right. In a lot of ways, many more than I generally ever stop to recognise, I’ve been absurdly lucky. I got to Karachi at the end of 2003 and met the Opiate, who is now such an integral part of my life that I miss her company and her perspicacity (not to mention neuroses) on an almost daily basis. I got to London where I’ve finally started managing to heal the strange breach between my brother and myself, a rift that has to the best of my knowledge, existed for close to a decade if not more. When I came out in Karachi at the age of 11, I did so to friends who were not just willing to keep my secret, but supportive of me and let me assure you that for barely post-pubescent Pakistani males, that’s no small feat. When I went to college in the US, I had fucked around so much in my last two years of high school that I didn’t expect to get in anywhere, but I managed to ace the standardised tests and get admitted into a school that many people would kill to attend. Hell, even when I was cowering with depression and failing classes, I still graduated with a very respectable CGPA and a slew of academic awards in my field.

Coming back to Karachi, I got rocketed to a high position in my industry of choice with very little effort on my part, and little-to-no rationale for such occurrence other than my happening to be in the right place at the right time. And at the end of the day, I’m a lucky sonofabitch for being financially viable enough to actually take a year away from working and get a degree that most people sweat blood and tears for three years to attain.

It’s not really odd that we don’t recognise how wonderful things are; rather it’s amusing how often we forget. Amusing and a little bit sad, but mostly just entertaining.

I don’t know why I’m thinking of all this now. Maybe it’s because for the first time in many years, I’m happy to be in Karachi this winter; my flight back to London leaves in just over 24 hours, and for once, I’m genuinely sad about it. This city is, for better or worse, my home, and no matter how much I struggle to convince myself otherwise, those invisible umbilical cords of birth and identity are never really severed. If I were to be forced into living in Karachi for the rest of my life, I’d probably rant and rail against it, but truth be told, it’d probably be an instinctive reaction predicated on how I think I should behave rather than on how I actually feel about it.

When I’m in London, I can’t imagine living in Karachi. Not being able to nip down to the local pub, or throw down my books, don a spiffy outfit and run off to Soho, or go to play with my nephews, all of that vanishing through a quirk of geology (not to mention theology really), is inconceivable. But when I’m in Karachi, so much of that pales in comparison to my life here, to the people I know, the things I do, the places I see.

Watching your parents grow old is hard. Watching them age is nowhere nearly as bad as watching them become slowly helpless or limited though. Intellectually, I realise that I can’t care for my mother and aunt forever, or even for a little while, that basing my entire future on what I can do for them in the short-term jeopardises a significant number of my long-term prospects. But the heart is an uneasy thing at the best of times, and frequently tells my brain to fuck off and gain some perspective, to take advantage of the years that I do have left with them instead of selfishly indulging myself elsewhere. I finally understand my brother’s admonishments when he insists that I spend a great deal of time with my mother and aunt when they’re in town or when I’m around them, because that time goes by so fast that it’s difficult to even catch its traces in hindsight, never mind that hindsight is perfect. But once again, that battle between the heart, the mind and its confluences engages me, making me think, rethink, guess and second-guess everything that just a few months ago seemed to be carved indelibly in stone.

At moments like this, I wish I were straight. I honestly don’t understand why people like my brother or my cousins, none of whom are fraught with the perils of an essential deviance react so negatively to the idea of moving back home. For me, the greatest fear of being here is not that I’ll miss career opportunities, or the chance to make something of myself—it’s that by being here, I’ll commit myself to a lifetime of loneliness, that my chances of finding the person with whom I want to spend my life will dwindle rapidly, and that while I may live contentedly ever after, happiness may not be an option. Even more than that, I find the idea of having to suppress who I am and what I am terrifying in the extreme; I don’t want to have to find a corner to hide in on New Year’s Eve when I’m at a party and the clock strikes twelve, just so I can kiss the man I’m with. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life welcoming the advent of another year in a city that I can’t truly call home, or in a place where I’ll always be an outsider.

I may be an outsider in Karachi in some ways, but in others I’m more a part of this world than I ever thought I would be.

I’ll probably change my mind in a few weeks. But for now, I’m glad that my options post-law-degree are fairly limited. I’ll either get a job in London and put in a few years there, or I’ll graduate and come back to Karachi to work here. The payoffs, as Uberhomme pointed out to me, are time-delayed over here, but they do accrue, and they’re not insignificant. They may not be quite as substantial as they would be elsewhere in the world, but given their context, they have no small degree of authority. I’m fortunate to be adaptable by nature; I’m sure that I could make myself happy over here if I had no other option, but then there would always be the “what if” factor kicking in. That exists outside of Karachi as well, especially given the ages of my family members and the simple fact that the very thought of their growing old alone and without their children around is something with which I empathise immensely, to the point where it has clouded my judgement on many accounts. It’s hard to walk away from easing the pain of a future you know will most likely be your own. There’s perhaps nothing quite as awful in the gamut of human experience as being lonely, powerless and (even from a particular perspective, admittedly) forgotten.

If I don’t remember them in the here and now, who will remember me in the future? And even if no one is there for me, does that validate what is in effect an abandonment? Where does the line exist between being true to those who have sacrificed much for you, and following the dictates of what you know will be right for you?

Happy New Year.

Five years ago, I was supposed to go on a study-abroad programme, a notion that was axed by my family who wanted to know “how much further abroad” did I want to go, since I was already studying in the US and not in Pakistan. This decision was taken at the end of the summer vacation, which meant that I had to cancel my enrolment on the trip three days before I was scheduled to fly out, then had to figure out where the fuck I’d be living, since I’d passed up on university-offered housing. That took a few months in and of itself; I commuted into DC from as far away as Manhattan occasionally, leaving my textbooks on the inside window-ledge of my friends’ ground-floor apartments, running to class and groping around windowsills frantically, trying to find Economic Theory texts while double-checking to make sure I’d actually remembered to bring my homework along instead of leaving it in a cousin’s house or friend-who-lived-on-the-other-side-of-campus’ apartment.

Good times.

And when I had finally managed to move into a dorm room on-campus, and things looked like they were starting to settle down a bit, I met a guy. Of course. We’ll just call him Juice for now (long story), but the short version is that we started chatting online, and then met up at his house in College Park, MD, where he was a student. I thought he was attractive; he definitely had a personality and was fun to be around, but after spending the night at his place and attempting to hang out with him for a bit, it became abundantly clear that he (a) wasn’t interested in anything more than a quick fuck, and (b) wasn’t looking for a boyfriend or even someone to date for a bit. A month later, he was dating someone I knew from the bar/club scene, who ironically enough, looked a great deal like me. And that really hit home because it made me feel as though there was something wrong with me as a person; that something about me made him think it was OK to treat me badly or lead me on.

And then I got sick, and had to sort out all sorts of family drama and the winters were awful and I hated my classes and couldn’t get myself out of bed in the mornings, and it only gets worse and worse the more you put it off, but I had no energy and the treatment I was on only made me worse for months and months, until I wound up sitting on the corridor outside my room and idly cutting myself. Nothing deep, nothing attention-seeking, there was a little alcove that no one ever went into, where I’d tease out drops of blood on my skin, not because I wanted to kill myself, but because I was so sick and tired of always being sick and tired and of not being able to feel anything but a dull throb of, I don’t know. Anger? Sadness? Frustration? All I remember from that time is being perpetually exhausted and those occasional bouts of slipping an edge into my skin made me, just for a second, feel something—even if it was only a sting of pain.

At the end of the semester, when the Redheaded Wench and Regine Chocolat realised how badly off I was, they dragged me to the counselling centre, which turned out to be a complete waste of time in all ways but one: the counsellors sent me for a full physical, which revealed that I was trying to function with an aggravated case of mono. Neatly clinching the loop, I had got it from Juice, who was the only person with whom I’d slept that semester. The exhaustion, combined with my (admittedly unreasonable) plunge into “romance” with Juice and his subsequent behaviour had plunged me into full-on seasonal affective disorder as well, so by the time I got all the results and diagnoses back, I sat there staring at the physician (who I’m sure was convinced that I was planning unpleasant scenarios involving him, a syringe and the hot pink stethoscope he kept fiddling with), wondering what the fuck I was going to do.

As you can well imagine, I was not a happy camper that year.
And now, the cycle’s kicking in again. For some fucking stupid reason, I liked Ozzie, and it’s only been a week or ten days since we hooked up, but I find it immensely depressing that he won’t respond to one or two text messages that I’ve sent him, or answer his phone, despite the fact that I’ve tried to make it clear that I enjoy his company, not just his body. That’s the most horrific thing about rejection; when you have someone who doesn’t even want to be friends/acquaintances with you, no matter what their own personal issues may be, you always wind up feeling a little bit guilty. What is it about me? Was I too eager? Did he not want to see me at all? Did I bore him? Am I just an unpleasant person? It’s made worse when you’re offering your company and friendship, because it makes you feel somewhat worthless, or at least incompetent in some sort of fundamental way. Making friends in London is difficult enough, but outright rejection of your presence is even more awkward, because it makes you (or at least me) wonder if the only thing that you’re (I’m) good for is a one-night stand, if that’s all you (I) should expect from anyone in terms of treatment, and if it is, then what’s the fucking point of just going out and meeting anyone because obviously you’re (I’m) only worth a fuck and the chances of meeting anyone are pretty much non-existent.

It’s a nasty spiral, and logically the perspective is riddled with more holes than a particularly perforated Swiss cheese, but knowing that on a rational or intellectual basis doesn’t make things any easier on an emotional or intuitive basis.

London’s winters make me feel like shit; everything is grey to begin with, and when sunset occurs at four in the afternoon, for someone who’s used to enormous amounts of natural light on a near-daily basis, that’s not good. My coursework is exhausting me easily, to the extent where I can’t face the thought of getting out of bed to go on-campus for lectures anymore, preferring instead to “study” at home. I’m enjoying certain parts of the law course, but not enough to motivate me into spending another year or two qualifying as a lawyer in order to work here in London, and my family’s starting to turn the screws by “suggesting” that I may be happier working as a sales/equity person at one of the larger investment banks (an idea that I’m not actually entirely averse to, since it seems at this point to basically involve socialising with people for pay).

But the deal-breaker (or so it seems) is that I have to find a new place to live. My current flat, which I love, was owned by a friend of my brother’s; he left the city and asked my brother if he’d be interested in taking over the mortgage. My brother agreed, and seeing how aggravated I was with the process of finding a liveable space in London, offered to let me rent the flat at about half its normal price (he actually didn’t ask me for rent at all initially, but I felt exceedingly guilty about that, so we agreed that I would pay as much as I could reasonably afford to within my budget, and to be honest, for what I’m paying I’ve got a fantastic deal (two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a full kitchen, hardwood floors, track lighting, a concierge and a gym in the building, next-door to a huge supermarket, easy access to shopping and public transport…you get the picture).

And then it turns out that having lived here for barely ten weeks, I have to find a new home. My brother just received the mortgage paperwork recently, and it turns out that his friend got the worst financing deal in the history of mankind—the mortgage payments on the flat cost about £700 more than had been originally assumed. Translation: that my living here means that instead of breaking even on the mortgage payments until I leave, my brother’s basically paying in the extra £700 pounds to cover my ass. It’s a sum that can pretty easily be made up for if the flat is rented out at its fair market price—if indeed such a thing exists in London—and because of this annoying “conscience” thing, I don’t want to live here longer than I have to. I mean, I want to but I know I shouldn’t, and wouldn’t want to put my brother in the position of having to ask me to move out/come up with the shortfall, because we’d both feel crappy about the exchange. Money’s not tight or anything, but given how he already paid for my college education, I don’t want to take anything more from him. So add flat-hunting to the equation now.

On the grand scale of things, none of this is really particularly crucial or a ball-breaker, a fact of which I’m painfully aware. But it is disturbing, it is distressing, and I find myself waking up in the middle of the night (or not sleeping at all), wondering what the fuck I’m going to do if the rest of this plays out the way it did five years ago. For now, the light treatments are helping, as is the fact that I have until mid-January to find a new place (and perhaps if the mortgage is restructured, I won’t have to move out at all), but this whole “career” thing is a bitch. Admittedly, I’m sick and tired of living hand-to-mouth; I hate the corporate world, but I like having the ability to walk into Harvey Nichols to buy a jacket that I want without having to worry about how many meals I’ll have to replace with cans of soup or Ramen. And giving up on law after finishing the basic coursework for it also makes me wonder what the point of all this was in the first place. If I was going to end up corporate anyway, why didn’t I just go straight on to complete my PhD, just so I could hear everyone refer to me as “Doctor”? Minor complaint, but it’s really irksome now.

One step at a time, I suppose. That’s the only way to take it.

In other news, I came across a blog today that I (for the first time in a LONG while) enjoyed immensely. It’s been added to the links, but go see The Accidental New Yorker if you haven’t already