The Affirmation

Mr Right

2012-02-01T17:04:00.001Z

Desperation. It's unseemly, so much we all know. So when Svetlana sat me down next to her on the burgundy velvet sofa of a her opulent 18 century hotel room in Roland Gardens (pupils dilated, somewhat unsteady and voice deliberate with exhaustion) and told me never to despair after men, I knew exactly what she meant. Or, at least, I thought I did.

Youth can be the most powerful of opiates. Though absolute freedom and immortality are intelligibly impossible postulates, one still behaves with the carelessness of a free immortal. Time is cheap, so wasting it is less of a concern. This is no less true when it comes to pursuing romantic relationships. One gets more attached to a feeling, and high, than whether or not the partner in question is a long-term likelihood. One wastes a shocking amount of time with horrible matches, all to be labelled in retrospect as "learning experiences".

But most of us grow older, and realise how much time we've wasted on these lamentable "learning experiences". We hope they've equipped us with the knowledge of what it is we are looking for. We hope that the ship has not yet sailed and that there is room for two more passengers on board. Some of us keep hoping for a long, long time.

I've gotten a bit older. And with my 26^th birthday I suddenly feel an unusual push towards finding a long-term, stable relationship. Not necessarily one that lasts forever, but one that I can benefit from and whose wide, protective leaves I can grow under for at least a few years to come. Haven't you heard? It is no longer about finding the right man – rather, in reality it tends to be when a man finds you during the right time.

Enter Ronald (circa 2 weeks ago), a handsome 30 year-old English corporate lawyer from London. Sophistication drips from the very consonants he enunciates with his received pronunciation. And, despite his Downton Abbey-esque exclamations in the boudoir ("genuinely extraordinary!"), coitus has proved to be a forte. In a lot of ways, he's perfect.

I'm not wildly in love with Ronald. I think he's very attractive and I enjoy the time we spend together. I want more, but I am not obsessing about it or aching for it. That worried me at first, but then I realised, in all my "learning experiences" where I have been insanely head-over-heels and pining for someone it has always come to a crashing end. This is an opportunity to take things slow and see where they go as a mature adult. Maybe in time I will fall in love with him. But that time is not now, and not for a while.

Besides, dating another lawyer already seem a little polygamous. We both fall asleep hugging each other and our blackberries.

New | Beginnings

2011-12-29T11:30:00.000Z

The new year is around the corner. And never has there been a time when a new year was this needed. I have never been the superstitious type – attaching patterns of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to artificial measurements of time (after all, the new year used to start in March, which is why October comes with the greek prefix “octo” or “eight” and December with the greek prefix “deca” or “ten”). That said, I cannot ignore the fact that the past 15 months or so have been the most challenging in my lifetime.

There are two ways to come out of calamity and tragedy. One is to let it eat you up and become a former shadow of who you were. The other is to grab fate by the balls and command it, imposing your own will to live happily and confidently, a phoenix of sorts, more glorious than its previous incarnation.

But where is the fork in the road? What are the qualities that you need to adopt to ensure you fall on the right side of the history that is your life? Does one pursue small, incremental changes or does one dare to jump outside the box altogether and bear the brunt of it all?

I don’t have answers to any of these questions. But I think I need to believe that I will have the ability to make the right choices, even if up until now I have failed so many times. Life may be a box of chocolates, and you may never truly know what you’re going to get, but you can always ensure you go at each piece with hope and faith that milk chocolate praline is only a taste away.

So what of this new year. Quit drinking? Quit drugs? Rather than imposing changes by forcing subtractions from one’s life, maybe it is best to add a new passion to life, one that will drown out the negativity and bad habits. One that will salvage your soul and keep you afloat in the ceaseless storm of survival.

A new passion. A new hobby. A new man. A new job. A new life.

Grains of sand

2011-11-30T15:27:00.003Z

Think of yourself on a beach...

Take your time. Imagine yourself sitting on the warm crunchy sand, a light breeze gently whistling into your ear.

Close your eyes if you need to.

Smell the salt, feel the sun’s rays lighting up your eyelids as they stay closed.

Feel your body free.

On that beach, dig your hands into the soft white sand and extract a handful. Watch as it gently flows through your fingers back to its source. Slowly let go of all of the sand in your hand.

Now open your hand and look at it. I am certain you will find that one grain, one small grain, didn’t make it down with the exodus. Possibly, it is trapped between the gentle ridges that run across your palm. Or beneath a nail. Find it. Concentrate on it.

How many grains of sand do you think you picked up when you dug your hands into the ground? Can you think of a number? How many grains of sand exist on the very beach you are now enjoying? How many grains of sand exist on all the beaches of this planet?

Like that lone rider you discovered on the palm of your hand, a human life is miniscule and irrelevant in a vast incomprehensible ocean of matter and existence. We exist in a body of around 2 meters for what, 80 or 90 rotations of the Earth around the sun? How many rotations do you think the Earth has gone through or will go through? How many rotations has the Sun done its star cluster? The star cluster in the galaxy? The galaxy amongst the estimated 500 billion galaxies?

Yet like that lone rider we are trapped in the lines of an invisible hand. We believe we and our problems are special, different, unique. Our perspective is so limited, we aspire to leave a legacy on this Earth and a mark on those around us. To be remembered.

It is insanely ironic.

Yet on the other hand, perhaps the perceived infiniteness of the universe around us is meant to discourage us from concentrating on it and to see it as the microcosm instead. If the world, as you perceive it, is merely just perception interpreted by your own senses, then perhaps it should not be the focal point of your life, of truth or of gain.

In more direct terms, life is too short and insignificant to be wasted on negativity, worry and ugliness. Place your problems in the perspective of the universe and you will have none. See your life as temporary and fragile and you will truly live it. You will never take yourself seriously again.

It just so happened

2011-11-25T11:58:00.000Z

It just so happened that, four weeks ago to the day at 7.00pm, I realised I had misread the invitation to the Ivy Club and, even though the party was bound to end at 8.00pm, something possessed me to catch a cab and head straight there to enjoy one drink with everyone. It just so happened that, ten minutes later when Trafalgar Square was in gridlock, I jumped out of the cab and decided to walk up St Martin’s Lane anyway, instead of giving up and heading to Soho. When I arrived, you sat right across from me. The world paused. We sat and exchanged puzzled glances and QR codes.

It just so happened that my 9.00am flight to Oslo the next morning was never to be. I showed up at check-in and Expedia had failed to make the booking on my behalf, even though they sent me a confirmation number. I have never heard of this happening to anyone. The flight was overbooked and the ticket counter lady was baffled at the error. It was a beautiful autumn day in London, and I took the express back to the city. We had a weekend of getting to know each other that may have never been.

It just so happened that the one night we could escape the eyes of our friends and consummate the brimming attraction was the night before mass demonstrations in London. I didn’t need to go to work next day. We spent the day walking around, having brunch, afternoon tea and dinner. It was your last day in London. Your parents were waiting for you in Paris.

It just so happened that, a few heart-wrenching days later, work sent me to Paris on a Friday to spend the weekend. Away from the eyes of London we built a cocoon out of pure bliss. It just so happened that your childhood friends from Paris were some of the most wonderful people I’d met in a long time, who went out of their way to make sure I was included in every event.

But it also just so happens that you live in Beirut.

I feel like I have beaten all the odds, except the most important one. One error in the perfect timing all of this plot followed could have meant an altogether different outcome. And yet, it doesn't even matter in the end.

Love is a frightful thing.

Still frames

2011-11-21T10:12:00.000Z

If I could freeze time, I’d probably freeze it at 5.25 pm CET last night. The sky lit up into an almost crimson red as the sun set behind the Musée D’Orsay. The air was perfectly still, the weather was docile. I sat alone on a stone bench wrapped in my black trench coat on the right bank of the Seine watching as the city’s lights began to overtake the sun’s rays. The track lighting at the top of the Tour Eiffel started beaming across the city, like a lighthouse guiding lost, sea-faring souls back to the joys of this world. Back to the beauty of what it is to be human.

If I could freeze time, I’d probably freeze it when I was finally alone with you, at 3.25 am CET last Saturday. I’d freeze it just as your hands engulfed the sides of my face and you leaned in to kiss me. I’d freeze it just as the feeling of euphoria travelled through my spine and as my arms wrapped themselves around your waist.

If I could freeze time, I’d freeze it at my high school graduation. The sense of extra-ordinary achievement, of knowing no limits to the life ahead, of being surrounded by all those I love and all those I’d spent my formative years seeing, squabbling and laughing with all the same, day in and day out. I’d freeze it just as I released my cap into the air of the giant auditorium in front of a thousand gleaming faces, my hand outstretched in mid-air and body lifted off the ground.

Or maybe, if I could freeze time, I’d freeze to before I first felt real pain. I’d freeze it to when I was foetal in my mother’s womb. Silent, unaware, warm, without flaw.

But I cannot freeze time, try as I might to hold on to fleeting moments or protect myself from heartache and tragedy. Still frames are perfect, but they are also dead. Death is a part of life and it will come in time. Until then, the best I can do in this life is to accumulate these glimpses of joy such that one day, near the very end, I can take comfort in the still frames and celebrate a life well lived, a life well conquered.

On love, actually

2011-11-08T11:19:00.002Z

Intimate relationships are a cornerstone of modern civilisation. You are expected to engage in them to procreate, to create a nuclear building block to society, and to stimulate an economy. On a very fundamental level it is about the survival of our species. Socially, it’s about finding acceptance and harmony in world where couples are the norm and where we each find the need for a personal life-long support structure. Cynically, it’s about pumping money into weddings, anniversaries, children and the constant stream of tax income that will ensue from all the above.

But personally, most of us believe intimate relationships are about finding the right person to spend the rest (or a significant portion of the rest) of our lives with.

Herein lies the problem. In the terms described above, the intimate relationships of gay men and women around the world are hardly more beneficial to society, the economy or the survival of the human species than any good friendship. Adoption is still rare, and social acceptance and harmony for gay couples has almost always been an uphill climb. Childless and without the usual dependency in male/female relationships, we spend just as much money single as we do in pairs.

Still, we crave the life-long support structure, and our presence in a generally heterosexual society means that we are constantly bombarded subtly and overtly with the culture of marriage. You cannot buy a mop or a chocolate bar without images happy families, loving partners or (for the less subtle of brands) pure lust. Naturally, with time, we begin to believe we are entitled to this lifestyle that everyone else around us seems to enjoy. We start wanting to be no different than them.

Do not misunderstand. I do not believe we are defined by our sexuality. There is an infinitely wide range of aspirations for each human being and it would be ridiculous if we allowed the gender of our ideal partner to overshadow the remaining kaleidoscope of features of a man or a woman. That said, working on knowing who we are as homosexuals means that we can target exactly what it is we want out of a relationship and love without the added baggage we inherit from the world around us.

I had my heart crushed recently. After a whirlwind romance with someone my heart led me to believe I can love very quickly and cherish for years to come, I discover any hope of a relationship is doomed by the fact that he lives 3000 miles away and that he has a boyfriend waiting for him. Experiencing that kind of intense pleasure, where your chest can only do so much to contain your soul from exploding through it with joy, only to be confronted with necessary retreat and surrender, puts love and relationships in a perspective so harsh it compels you to question why you even invested so much so quickly for so little. After all, this love story is hardly anything but a cliché these days. But you are told to “put yourself out there” and believe that it’s “better to have loved and lost then never loved at all” – and to what result?

No, I am not so sure I want to readily accept what this world has presented as the ideal for happiness and fulfilling life going forward when the reality falls so far short of that ideal. There are no happily-ever-afters or monogamous, pure relationships, despite how many Disney or Hollywood movies try to convince you otherwise. In relationships there is only emotional strife, interrupted occasionally with fleeting moments of serenity. The more you manage your expectations and satisfy yourself with the possibility that you may not find a life-long partner, the more you will focus on the more important things life: to have fun when you can, and to build strong friendships and fulfilling life in every other way possible. That is the only true life-long support structure any of us can hope to have.

To Hell and Back

2011-11-07T10:43:00.002Z

Dear Imaginary Reader, dear Moses of 20 years ahead

If you were to glance through the last few posts you may notice the several-month-wide gap between the last post in 2010 and the first in 2011. Forgive me for skipping the record for so long, and resuming only with my first frivolous exaltations in March and boy-crush in May. It was not the best of times.

My journey began towards the end of October, when my father’s ill health meant that he had to be transferred here to London for treatment. The poor soul was in such bad shape that he needed 24 hour attention, and I eventually had to move into his hospital room, leaving behind my job and life. Mind you the decision to move both him and me full time into the hospital came after weeks of blood spattering disease and escalation of an already horrible metastasis. I became hardened like a boulder in the face of crippling gale force winds, but even the mightiest of rocks erodes in the face of nature. I began to exhibit the first signs of trouble.

In early November, I had my first anxiety attack. It was a horrible experience, matched only by the horror of not understanding what was happening to me; why I could not breathe and why my body was going into convulsions. I was prescribed some mild beta blockers and hope that it was a freak occurrence that was probably due to stress.

By the end of November the doctors were doing all they could to put my father back on a plane to Cairo so that he could die peacefully with his family. My family were incapable of visiting London as my sister’s ex-husband had filed a abduction case in London and Paris claiming she took the child to Cairo against his will. Her visit would have meant police, court and further delays.

And so one day towards the beginning of December my father and I concealed his battered body in his now baggy clothes and I pushed his wheelchair as nonchalantly as I could across Heathrow to the door of the airplane bound for Cairo. We hoped nobody would realise how ill he was, as in such cases the airline traditionally recoils at undue responsibility forbids you to board. The charade was no easy task. There were bags of blood and urine strapped to his leg that needed to be emptied on an hourly basis. There were chills and sweats that hit him regularly as he lay prostrate throughout the five-hour flight. Somehow, we landed in Cairo without event and we delivered him to his new hospital room. I was spent. I returned to London two days later, assuming that the alleviation of responsibility would give me some peace.

It didn’t. Whilst before I had a 24-hour endeavour, a project, to keep my mind off of how I was really feeling, now I had to go back to my normal life and I found it impossible. My health deteriorated. I was not able to get out of bed for days. I needed powerful medication to sleep. Worst of all, I was beginning to have dreams and day-dreams about blood, about my blood, about razor blades and wrists. One weekend, my psychiatrist and psychologist tried intervene and send a team to my apartment to get me to move into a retreat.

By now it was the end of January, and just as I was considering the offer to go into full-time treatment the revolution began in Cairo. My father had so far survived in Cairo, but public services, even the airport at times, were suspended for at least a week. It was becoming increasingly impossible to keep him in care there, and my sister risked everything and boarded a plane with him back to London. She was arrested at the airport and her passport confiscated. I moved him into the intensive care unit at the London Clinic, the doctors there were sure he would not survive more than a couple of days. He slipped in and out of consciousness only enough to glance at us through his tired, filmy and deteriorated eyes.

I forgot about my treatment and went back into autopilot. I watched as my country descended into chaos and bravery, uncertainty and faith. I wanted every part of it, and yet all I could do was sit beside this hospital bed and stare blankly into the images of Tahrir Square on the television screen, my finger resting nervously on the court documents from my sister’s case, which was to be heard only in a few days.

In vague parallel to the revolution, we lost the first case in court, but won the appeal. It was added pressure at a harrowing time. When my father became slightly more aware of his surroundings, my sister had been exonerated, Mubarak had stepped down and the country was in a state of shock and celebration. I often wondered how he felt about that, if it mattered to his feeble mind at the time.

As ever he survived the episode in London, and we arranged the documents for an air ambulance to escort him to Cairo. My sister, now free of her chains, sat with him on the plane while I stayed behind in London. He lasted until the 3rd of May. My illness, though not entirely gone, lasted will into mid-July.

Mother Teresa once said that she knew God would never put her through something her soul could not bear, but that she also wished He didn’t trust her so much. I have never understood that thought more than I do today. But I made it through, so much is an affirmation. I experienced hell in the true sense of the word as God intended, not some fiery inferno the simpletons will have you believe but a true darkness of the mind and soul. And I climbed out of it.

It has taken a long time for me to be able to share this, but I believe this is necessary for me to move on. I believe I have seen the worst of times and I have been assured of my power to outlive. I may have lost the two anchors of my life, my parents, but if anything the events of these past 13 months have taught me is that we all need to build more anchors, surround ourselves by unconditional love and invest in those around us equally.

We have nothing if we do not have each other.

The Circus

2011-06-01T10:43:00.002+01:00

Following on from my last post – I finally figured out how to "get a grip" and take the pressure (and the expectations) off the unassuming 23 year old charmer: date another guy at the same time. Although 'juggling' sounds somewhat unseemly, the more I delved into both relationships simultaneously the more I was amazed at how much sense it made.

Let me rewind briefly. Only hours before the date I had with Assad, I had met at a friend's BBQ a Russian guy, George. George had playfully asked when we'd go on our first date and, having felt a slight attraction to him ab initio we exchanged numbers and set the date for Friday. It was only then that I hurried into a cab back home to start preparing dinner for Assad.

After swooning for 5 days over Assad, I eventually mustered the will to go out with George, not expecting at all to end up having any fun. In truth, we had a fantastically entertaining evening at my favourite brasserie and took a walk to wild jazz club tucked away in Belgravia to finish it off. I was still all over Assad, but George's company and energy was unmistakably positive. After saying good night, we arranged a date for mimosas at my place the next morning which he attended punctually.

Over the next few days I came to realise that I was incredibly comfortable with George. Although I find Assad probably more along the lines of what I tend to be interested in physically, George seems both interesting and interested. And just as balance of power between those two started to shift towards George, Assad jumped back into the picture with a vengeance. We spent another couple of days together and, though we had an excellent time and I enjoyed his company very thoroughly, I was much more relaxed and in perspective when I dropped him off at the station.

Tango for three may not be the easiest logistically, but you certainly get the best practice and the most flavour. Now I have two pretty amazing people in my life that I'm not hurling concern, doubt or teenage infatuation towards just because they balance each other off pretty well. Of course, at some point I may have to make a choice. But by then, I will have settled into a comfortable spot with whomever it turns out to be and it won't matter.

Peace

Under the Mauve Fantastic

2011-05-19T15:25:00.002+01:00

When I ran into Assad at around 2 a.m. at London's new 'it' club last Thursday, a quarter of a bottle of Belvedere + four Champagne glasses into the evening and in line for a bathroom stall, I couldn't help but think out loud – why haven't we gotten to know each other more? I've seen him a handful of times over the past couple of years, most recently at my last birthday party, but for one reason or another (and as is the case when you're surrounded by too many people) I had simply overlooked him.

It certainly wasn't due to lack of appeal. He has a distinct attractiveness to him – pale blue eyes, large golden hair that he styles back like a lion's mane, a reserved demeanour and, of course, that characteristic nose that you either love or hate. Still it took the dressing-room type light bulbs in that bathroom in Room Service for his features to glow. I asked him for his number and he was kind to provide it.

Our date was Sunday night. I'd originally suggested a neutral 'coffee' somewhere around 'town' but he responded with a very specific request for me to cook on Sunday evening. Delighted to have finally come across someone with a solid pair, I happily obliged, but as we sat outside on my terrace having our first real conversation and as the sky dimmed and the candlelight shown brighter and brighter, I realised I felt something that I hadn't felt on a date in a long time – nervous!

He was well spoken, eloquent, very well mannered and gentle. He laughed effortlessly and his features were accentuated by the evening glow. I realise now that was when I'd fallen for him. So complete and utter was my infatuation that when he suggested we go upstairs and watch a movie in bed I didn't even attempt to try and slow things down, and when he said he was 23 years old I didn't shudder or freak out.

Tending to my usual neuroses, I cleaned up downstairs while he jumped into bed with the wine bottle and two glasses. We watched, played, and watched. He fell asleep and I struggled to do the same with my heart beating out of control. In the morning, I left him half asleep in bed and went to work, all the time taking full satisfaction in knowing he is still in my space, in my bed.

Experience has taught me that this kind of infatuation rarely ends well. Communication throughout the week has been patchy, and some time on Wednesday I realised to my horror that I may have met my match when it comes to the overplayed charm and getting what I want only to discard it later. I may only be 2 years older than he is, but I see a lot of myself in him, and that scares me, because I was a good player for a while.

That said, my spirituality edges me on and asks me to release the negativity and anxiety and enjoy the moment so that it may last forever. Making these value judgments and having these fears after one date is not only premature, its destructive. I may end up ruining what would have otherwise been something very positive and much needed given my recent bereavement.

Belle de (tous les) Jour (Qindblogazine.com)

2011-03-17T15:18:00.003Z

Svetlana moves through a room with grace and almost shy charisma worthy of a young princess. Her features are chiselled and developed; she is a strong woman, but a smile broadens her face with a delicate softness that washes away any hint of menace.

You won’t be fooled, however, when you stand for a minute and look into her eyes. It’s those piercing orbs, which light up with menacing excitement against the lasers beaming through a club at 4am, that arouse the indecent tendencies within you.

Svetlana has been described as “the Queen”, but no word can really encapsulate who she is and what she does. The former remains a mystery to most, the latter an obsession. Her true passion and friends, gay men in Europe and around the world, gained her her notoriety from Barcelona to Mykonos, London to Milan. She is the 5am shepherd, the queen of high(er) brow sex parties and London’s intrepid party scene.

Social stigma seems often to be a foreign concept to Svetlana. Beyond the reasonableness of self-preservation, she wastes no time with stigma or with those who espouse it. Watching her operate, limitless and always with the excitement of a teenage girl, is liberating.

My first encounter with Svetlana was at a mansion in central London that she had rented out one evening to host a private party for a select number of gay men. The space was sprawling, the champagne flowing, and with 40+ men anxious for the grand 2am finale (that is, when our hostess kindly instructs us to remove our clothing and join her in the lower den of iniquity) it was electric. And when the hour of reckoning arrived, no build-up could have really done the climax any justice.

Skin on skin, limbs in every direction, intertwined, tanned, glistening against the soft lights and amidst the locked lips and moaning. Personalities, faces, names were not important. You delved into the web of torsos, cocks, and fingers and gorged so indiscriminately, it was truly sex for the sake of sex alone. In that I found immense pleasure, not because how many times I ejaculated or how many men I enjoyed, but because it was, for once, all about me. It was about what I wanted, with no compromises or awkward conversations. No commitment or pseudo infatuation.

Perhaps the only thing more intriguing than the sexual activity in these parties is the voyeurism exhibited by the hostess. She thrives on watching masculinity rip itself apart, the shifts of power from top to bottom, master to slave, and man to boy. Perhaps the reason Svetlana reigns the gay underworld is because of the lack of inhibition it allows her, and the lack of judgment in the eyes of these men (both for each other and for her). Perhaps it’s the thrill of anticipation, as often times a gentlemen steps out of the tangled mass of flesh and decides to penetrate her body instead.

Svetlana was married once upon a time, and lived in many capitals around the world. She’s generous, funny and outgoing. It’s easy for the prudish around us to judge her life and choices – she leaves a trail of lustful, spent and intoxicated men in her absence – but before the monotheisms of the world instilled their values into our cultures, in the times of Rome and Babylon, she would have not been anything out of the ordinary.

Scorpio 1–Back to the basics

2010-10-17T23:02:00.002+01:00

It was a beautifully warm and sunny Sunday morning when my sister called to tell me that my father’s health was deteriorating fast and that it was time for me to come home to Cairo and spend some time with him. The seriousness of her tone and the alarm in her words carved a hole through my insides.

I was in bed, with the glare of the sun bleaching my sheets, burning at my face and neck. Wrapped around my torso was Thor, a charming and attractive Norwegian who was in town for the weekend from Oslo. He sensed the weirdness in my voice and sat up somewhat intently. When I was done with my phone call, I sat quietly for a moment before trying to explain. It was an odd situation, trying to spell out a sore emotional spot to someone I’d just met. On a strange level, I was grateful he was there. I needed someone to listen, even if to the few chopped sentences I put together, and I needed a warm body close to mine, even if his interest in me was not very developed in nature.

The next 48 hours were a mad rush to find a spot on an airplane, to retrieve my passport from the Italian embassy that has been holding it hostage, and to get paperwork and work done to allow me a few days of personal time. Eventually, I touched down in Cairo and made it home to evaluate the circumstances for myself.

It’s difficult, seeing someone who has always been so active and full of energy bed-ridden and gasping for air. Though incredibly weak, his situation was more stable than I imagined, and that brought some relief.

The strangeness of being in Cairo on an unannounced, unplanned and family-focused visit resulted in some incredible sensations. For one reason or another, I felt like I was back in my mid teens- an innocent, awkward kid in high school hiding out at his parent’s place. The bed I slept in every night is the same bed I had slept in so long ago, and each night as my head hit the soft pillow my mind would race with memories of childhood dreams. Like every teenager I dreamt and fantasized so often, and they were always dreams of a life I was so anxious to start. A life where I would feel accepted and special; where I would fall in love with a handsome, caring man; where I would achieve the pinnacle of my profession; and where I would leave the confines of this oppressive city and be unashamedly me. I would lie there for hours, staring into the dark ceiling, my very core inspired by the freedom, the love that I knew I would have one day very soon…very soon.

I cannot help thinking that I’ve lost touch with that 15 year old boy. Yes, perhaps he was naïve at times, but his values were simple, his dreams clear and attainable. Never in a million years would I have thought that the true challenge facing me now nearly ten years later is the lack of understanding of what it is that I want. Was I always complex in my needs or have I been confused by my new surroundings? I’m not sure it matters. The truth is life has given me several chances to settle down with someone and be happy, but my indecision and pettiness often got the better of me. My ever-rising standards with my every dwindling tolerance. Where does that leave me?

Thor keeps crossing my mind. We’d only spent 3 nights together, but he already made quite an impression. “Perhaps the brevity of his visit had something to do with the intensity of what we shared,” I say to myself, but just as I try and rationalize and demystify that beautiful weekend I wonder to myself – would 15 year old Moses destroy the chance of a meaningful relationship because he was doubtful if the amazing feelings he had for this person were real? Would the fact that this man lives in Oslo have mattered? I don’t think so. He would have laughed at the idea of feelings being fabricated because of a flight schedule or at the 1.5 hour plane ride between London and Oslo as a serious impediment.

This is what I need to do to every negative or doubtful thought- instill the hopeful, dreamy child within. Back to the basics, people. Back to the basics.

Scorpio–Prelude

2010-10-12T23:46:00.002+01:00

“I hope you are all ready,” he looked into his copy of the Zohar before looking back up again at the curious faces, his grin even wider. “Expect it all this month; turbulence, emotional turbulence of to shake the very ground your feet stand on; internal conflict that will tear your insides apart and bring to the surfaced a raw, exposed you, ready to begin anew and rise from the ashes of Scorpio.

“For in this month you will become one of two things: this very phoenix that rises from the ashes and soars into the sky, a glorious powerful being to behold, or a scorpion- laden with poison, treading the endless desert that is your emotional abyss.”

At the time I did not pay much attention beyond what would have been reasonably polite in the circumstances. I was used to grand declarations being made during Shabbat. Drama was part of the show, and only naturally so: the centre catered to wealthy divorcées and flamboyant gay men, with the odd Jew thrown in for good measure.

But it only took a few hours for Marcus’ words to cast their spell.

And further to my last rant on gay marriage

2010-08-13T10:36:00.001+01:00

(Slightly outdated news but) Looks like someone in the US finally saw my point! Though he hasn't argued the demotion of marriage, he states clearly that religious establishments are only granted the ability to preform marriage by the state.

READ THIS ARTICLE

Civil Partnership Bells?

2010-08-12T13:48:00.001+01:00

Rony and I share respectful friendship based on mutual admiration. Ever since I’ve been out-posted to a bank in London’s financial district, the City, we’ve made a conscious effort to meet up for lunch once every month or so and catch up about all that life has thrown at us.

With my return 3 miles east to the Canary Wharf imminent, we decided to have one last City lunch yesterday. As I’ve been attempting to fast for Ramadan, it was really Rony who was lunching, with me doing more than my usual share of talking.

Our conversations are usually very general. We do not know each other that well, after all, having met through mutual friends and found common ground through the industry we work in. So I was very surprised when Rony reached into his suit pocket and produced an invitation to his wedding. Rony and Vladimir have been together for many years, and I was ecstatic that they were finally tying the knot. In my profuse congratulations I noticed that Rony was visibly nervous about the whole ordeal.

After he’d eaten, we decided to take a short walk through the Royal Exchange. He was in charge of buying the wedding rings, after all, so we started our trek at Cartier. An older, German lady stood behind the impeccable counter and eyed us inquisitively as we walked in. We were shown a rather limited selection of male wedding bands, but Rony decided there was one he wanted to try on. As he slipped the gleaming titanium onto his ring finger, I could see his eyes examine his hand with confusion, almost bewilderment.

“That looks wonderful,” she exclaimed (with the amount of exclamation one would expect from an older German lady).

Rony looked at me, still confused, and said in Arabic, “It looks a little strange, doesn’t it?”

I looked at the lady and quickly said, “Maybe something a little more matte?” Looking at Rony I could see the most endearing look on his face. A little bit of disbelief, a lot of excitement, and just a hint of lovesickness.

“The shine will wear off within a few weeks,” Frau Boring stated, “but perhaps you can return with the young lady and get her opinion as well?”

Rony looked at her, looked down again and muttered “Yes” under his breath. I suppose in his position I wouldn’t have bothered correcting the woman, but I was amazed that at this day an age in central London people are still confident in making the assumption that a man walking in to buy his wedding band would be eloping with a ‘young lady’. My Peter Tatchell moment aside, Rony had clearly lost interest in Cartier and we walked across the atrium to Tiffany’s.

The selection at Tiffany’s was wider, and the more Rony tried on rings, the more at ease he seemed with the idea of a ring. Again, the sales lady made the assumption that a ‘young lady’ would be involved, but after the third ring Rony politely stated: “Actually, it’s a civil partnership, so I will definitely bring him along tomorrow around 4.30 to see which one he prefers as well.”

The sales lady, this time American, repeated her congratulations and invited him and his partner to a private champagne shopping afternoon so that they could spend as much time deciding as they’d like. But as she rambled on I was surprised at how offended I was at the term ‘civil-partnership’.

Yes, in England gay ‘marriage’ is not technically marriage but a civil-partnership. Though most people have done away with the distinction on a social level, legally and semantically the difference remains. Sure, equal rights are afforded under both marriage and civil-partnership, and civil-partnership is open to straight couples as much as it is to gay ones, but I felt that in some way we were still being separated. And as we all know, separate is not equal.

But what defines marriage? Spain, Holland, Canada and Argentina are just some of the countries that have removed the barrier to marriage between members of the same sex, but on a practical level, what does this mean? Marriage is a term as much laden with religious stigma as it is with social expectations. So is that why Rony had to demote his big day to a ‘civil-partnership’? Is marriage an elevation of any sort?

This point has been hashed and rehashed ad nauseum in far too many fora, and I’m not about to delve into it on this semi-serious online rag of mine. But on reflection I feel like I should give my 2 cents worth – why is ‘marriage’ propped up and supported by secular governments? It seems absurd that a mainly religious ceremony and religious contract (even though for the most part people leave God out of it) holds so much weight in everything from how much tax you pay to who has the right to sign your mortgage documents.

To all the glorious crazies on Capitol Hill and in San Francisco, to Boris Johnson who stood up at Gay Pride London and demanded that same-sex couples be allowed to marry – you’re missing the point! What should actually be taking place, what we should be fighting for, is a demotion of ‘marriage’ as an institution recognized by the law. The partnership status of a citizen under a secular government should only be considered in light of any civil union. If Joe and Jane want to have a big church wedding, let them and god bless, but in no way should that have any legal value or weight. Their agreement should be sealed in a civil partnership, and it is purely that civil agreement that should allow them next of kin rights, tax allowances, and healthcare benefits. In theory, the United States’ elusive separation of church and state should have cooked this one up a while ago. But they can’t even get the word “God” off their money.

Contrast

2010-08-07T04:20:00.001+01:00

I’m watching my second parent’s health deteriorate, and in many ways it is an all too expected déjà vu. Even though it’s been almost 9 years now, i remember quite clearly the stages i went through as a child, watching my mother slowly lose every faculty she ever maintained. It was not easy, but I think to get through it I had to foster a sort of coldness and blandness, only so I could think past the emotion and do what was expected and what was right. I was too successful in that endeavor- now as I watch my father go through the same, I can barely muster enough sadness for a tear. I watch his deterioration, and I shut down, knowing full well what is to come. I’ve gone through the motions, and I will have to go through them again. I expect nothing less.

But what’s interesting, at least to me, is how going through these experiences has enhanced my life. I see diminishing abilities and weak souls and the contrast of life is ever more apparent. The colours around me are brighter, the sounds more beautiful, my youth more glorious. I dance and indulge, for life has only taught me that such pleasure and joys do not last for long, and soon heartache comes knocking.

We spend so much time worrying about things – love, friends, money - and never notice how much we have. Health is the most valuable of them all, and if you possess it, you will regret not enjoying it in the future.

I am unbelievably lucky, I have more than most people on this planet would ever dream of. In theory, there is never a reason for me to be sad. My experiences are hardly novel or unusual. But I refuse to be sucked in by grief and dismay, death highlights the mystery and beauty of life. And for such perspective I am grateful.

Ménage au... quoi?

2010-06-14T10:34:00.000+01:00

For one reason or another, I’ve found myself in the past few months being approached by several couples in respectable parties inquiring as to whether I would be interested in a little partage. In a semi-intoxicated state, I agreed the first time around to play, but, waking up in bed that next morning on the upper-east side sandwiched between two men (and though both were gorgeous) was not an experience that I thought I wanted to repeat any time soon. The guys were clearly completely in love with one another, and I felt like an accessory or Liza Minnelli in her Sex and the City 2 cameo – fabulous but utterly superfluous.

No regrets, after all, because trying is how we learn what it is we want in life, and I’m grateful for that experience.

Last Saturday/Sunday would hold yet another challenge, this time of a somewhat different variety. It started pretty tame – just a few guys relaxing under the sun in Hyde Park - but as the evening progressed the situation grew more and more interesting. Naturally, I blame the mojitos at the Soho Hotel, which we downed with some haste before heading to the Shadow Lounge till 1am. It was then that I got a call from fabulous Roxanne (one of the city’s most infamous cougars) inviting us to her glorious demi-mansion for frolic. Since we were relatively well dressed, we agreed and made our way there.

Roxanne’s parties always have a guest-list that throws you slightly off-balance. I walked in and tried to blend into the background of designers and members of middle-eastern royal families. I recognized a designer (lets call him Max), though, and my love for his work drove me to break the unspoken rule that exists when you are in the presence of celebrities (i.e. no sucking up or any fan-like behaviour) and I went up to show him his cuff links that I happened to be wearing. Max was pleasant, but it wasn’t long before his boyfriend (Luciano) arrived at the scene and showed his utter delight at my conversation. Max did not seem to be impressed by his partner’s very obvious advances, and I was glad that was the case, because there was no way in hell I was going to have another threesome.

Luciano’s overt passes continued through the night. We moved onto party #2 at 3am, and party #3 and 5am, and more or less the same group of people was present. At some point Luciano managed to corner me on the way to the bathroom and tell me that he really wanted us to play that night. I told him that he had a boyfriend that I couldn’t possibly go through with anything of that sort. He said his boyfriend was ‘very okay’ with it and that it I should reconsider. To appease him (and to get to the bathroom), I gave him my number and said we could all get together soon for dinner or something. Clearly BS, but I was desperate to pee.

I got home at around 7am and crashed for a few hours. When I got up, naturally I felt like doing nothing but ordering food and watching a movie. Ironically, A Good Woman was playing on BBC iPlayer that day, and I watched Helen Hunt thrive as Mrs Erlynne, the home-wrecking leech mistress to the rich and famous.

Half-way through the movie I got a call from an unknown number. The country code was French, so I picked up. It was Luciano.

“I’m in Paris, had to leave after the party, how are you?” He began. I said I was fine, and thanked him for his hospitality that morning (party #3 was at his loft). He said I was welcome and that he would really like to see me when he got back from his trip. I had no energy to rebut him, so I said we would speak when he returned from Paris. He was pleased I was at least giving it some thought, and I was pleased that I could get back to my movie without event.

He’s not asking for a threesome, and Max is not a friend of mine, but that’s not why I have no desire for this. Luciano is attractive, but I cannot be approached or viewed as the “mistress” as it were. People will start hiding their husbands around me, and just like Mrs Erlynne was cast out from New York I would say good-bye to the portion of my social life that involves decent individuals. Not only that, I am actually trying to start going on regular, human dates that have real prospects.

I am tired of wasting myself away at this crap.

Change

2010-05-24T10:45:00.000+01:00

One of the most memorable scenes from one of the most amazing television series ever made, Angels in America, is when the delusional Mormon girl Harper sits in front of a the plastic figure of the Mormon Mother, and asks her:

“In your experience of the world, how do people change?”

The Mormon Mother comes to life and responds: “Well it has something to do with God, so it's not very nice… God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching."

Harper: “And then up you get. And walk around.”

Mormon Mother: “Just mangled guts pretending.”

Harper: “That's how people change."

Is that how people change? It must be, because in my experience, people rarely do change. If they do, it is because something terrible, something unspeakable has ‘mangled’ their insides.

It terrifies me to think of this, every time I say to myself I need to make a fundamental change in my life. The truth is, there are a lot of things I’d like to change. I’d like to be less dependent on alcohol et al, I’d like to stop wanting to control everything and everyone around me, I want to be more appreciative of simplicity, and cut out from my life everyone who only robs me of positive energy.

Yes, there are a lot of things that I want, but do I have the willpower to go through a process that will inevitably be excruciating and whose results are unforeseeable? It is very comfortable staying in this bubble of mine, but something is pushing for more- more value out of every-day life, less dependency. But what does heeding this call mean? How/where do I start?

I’ve tried getting out of the country for a while, to see if I can get into a good swing of things and return on a positive note (eat well, sleep well, exercise, avoid human contact beyond family). That didn’t work for very long. Back from NY, Saturday I ended up going to some the most pretentious, obnoxious and indulgent cocktail parties I’ve ever been to, in a row. Newtonian physics had their way again: my attempt to rid myself of something bounced back at me with equal force in the opposite direction.

Escaping the country does not solve any problems because that in of itself is a bubble. The battle needs to be fought at the frontier, London. But what do I do? Stop speaking to my ‘friends’? Try and make new ones? Both very difficult propositions, and no guarantee that I won’t just attract the same kind of people again.

Then I thought, maybe I need a boyfriend… The truth is, I really don’t want one, but it may be the case that having someone demand so much of my attention on a weekly basis could ground me more, give me something to focus on. But it’s hard, because my heart/mind are just not there yet. I’ve tried, I’ve been on a lot of dates, but not one has made a lasting impression. Where do you go from here?

Then, of course, there’s the obvious option that I’ve also exhausted a few times. A therapist. But why would it work this time?

Frustrated,

M

Notes

2010-04-15T15:55:00.000+01:00

Notes scribbled on yellow post-its. If he dies tomorrow, he knows those will be the most valuable traces he has left of his life on this earth. Simple, honest, joyous expressions of love, jotted on transient pieces of paper. He usually used a black pen, but sometimes it was blue. His handwriting was bold, with long curves and playful strokes for all his capital letters, their lower-cased counterparts stitched together in eager cursive. Sometimes it was one word, his lover’s name with an exclamation point, as if through the post-it his lover could experience how his heart had called out for him at that moment. Sometimes it was a small phrase, or even just a doodle. It didn’t matter, it wasn’t what was on those post-its that mattered.

It was where and when they were found that made all the difference. In the beginning, he would hide them all over his lover’s apartment, in places he knew he would see them, but only eventually, after they’d parted for the week on Monday. Sometimes he would leave one under a pillow, to say goodnight. Sometimes in a shoe, to wish him a beautiful day. Notes scribbled on yellow post-its turned into a way of managing long-distance affection and yearning.

But alas, the years went by, and one day they parted ways for good. It isn’t sad. Their friendship, the most important part of their relationship, remained. But now and again a folder would come loose, or the contents of a drawer would shift a certain way, and one of those yellow post-its would suddenly surface, like a relic from another age. He would pick up it up, fold it neatly and file it with all the photos and all the cards, and the hundreds of yellow post-it notes in his wardrobe.

The Test

2010-03-29T21:41:00.002+01:00

When I was a fifth-grader, I sat in Ms Jill’s science class laughing hysterically one day. She had just brought up a topic I’d never even heard of before. HIV. What a silly disease it sounded like when I was 10. I laughed at the idea of people sharing dirty syringes at hospitals, or being stupid enough to put two open wounds in contact. HIV was for idiots, I thought. And it wasn’t just me, all of us little know-it-all fifth-graders walked out of our science class joking about how so and so was HIV+ for scraping their knee playing basketball and using the someone else’s shower.

Of course, at the time, Ms Jill wasn’t at liberty to say that people could get it by loving one another.

That information came later on, from multiple sources. I remember, when I lived in Egypt, how I thought it was a foreign disease, affecting those poor African people south of the Sahara, and those reckless homosexuals in Europe and North America.

Boy was I wrong. By the age of 18 I’d already had two near misses. One Egyptian guy, and one Lebanese. With the former, I’d taken him and his friend home with me one night after a long party, and the three of us fucked like rabbits till 9am. I’d run out rubber, but that wasn’t going to stop the mad teenager within. With the latter, I’d dated him for 3 months, and we’d only fucked without a condom once. In both cases I was extremely lucky (if you can call yourself that for sleeping with someone who’s HIV+ without a condom) – they contacted me roughly 3 months after we’d done the deed and told me they were positive. I was lucky in the sense that they told me after any incubation period for the virus (6 weeks) had lapsed, which meant I could go get an HIV test right away and the results would cover the period when we’d slept together. Had they told me any sooner I would have been in the horrible situation of having to wait for my sentencing until the 6 weeks were over. I was lucky in another sense – in both cases I came out negative.

Since then I’ve been getting regular check ups, roughly every 6 months. It is probably one of the most terrifying things on my bi-annual calendar. Your mind races through the faces, the bodies, the nights you’ve spent, the mistakes you’ve made. You wonder why God punishes man’s most basic and primal instinct. In your mind you see all the faces of all those children in sub-Saharan Africa who were born with it, and you wonder if you will have something in common with them after all. But worst of all you think about those people you know who have it, and what their lives have become. Drug addiction, recklessness, super-infection. A fist-full of pills every morning, a face both tired and pulled from the medication. Wandering eyes looking around at all the forbidden fruit. Self-loathing.

Of course, not everyone reacts to it that way. There have been people who have refused to let it dominate their life, their identity and have been leading extraordinary and fulfilling lives. But that takes strength of character, and you don’t get that very often in gay men.

So when my sexual health clinic texted me my blood report this morning with an all-clear, I said a silent prayer for all those that haven’t been so lucky, may the Creator be with them in every step and comfort their broken hearts.

How to get the partner of your dreams (but only if you care to look)

2010-03-18T16:49:00.001Z

What makes irony so amusing is the symmetry it produces. We see something as ironic when we realize that, in its subtleties, the truth has somehow reflected itself to produce 2 sides of the same coin.

Take, for instance, modern individualism. Today it’s all about me. And you. And him, and her. Separate islands with few bridges. We have literally fought wars and sprung revolutions for the sake of individuality and personal liberty. Yet, when you look at the entirety of our civilizations as they stand today, no fact is more apparent than our helpless Dependency. On finding the right person, on the ideology that without such person life is meaningless or unfulfilled.

Consider the countless books, poems, blogs (like this one), movies, songs ad infinitum all geared to play on your Dependency. Billboards and banners surround us in every direction designed to speak only to your genitalia, and you can’t even buy a coffee maker without George Clooney’s face beaming at you from behind it. Despite our delusions of self-grandeur and our millennia of philosophy and civilization, we are predictable and dull creatures.

As much as I struggle with the thought, and despite many an attempt by a bed-mate to convince me otherwise, I am human. I am, therefore, by default, predictable and dull. I want to find the right partner, but lately I feel like this is more what I am expected to want than the reality. Nevertheless, with this apathy I’ve gained perspective, and my experience and beliefs have provided me with a lesson that I might as well try and share:

How to find Mr/Ms Right

1. Know what you want

Nothing is more tragic then seeing people running around like headless chickens latching on to the first half-decent thing that gets thrown their way. I’ve had my fair share of relationship “hunter-gatherer” days, scavenging bars, dating websites, and even the occasional cooking class for Prince Charming. Not my most glorious moments.

If you remember from your history books, hunter-gatherers ended their volatile, nomadic lifestyle with the agricultural revolution. Instead of scavenging like a pack of hyenas, man (having discovered the purpose of a seed) began to settle down and decide on what it was they wished to grow. Their land brought many returns and the fruit was always bountiful. Subsistence farming cradles all human civilization. So what can we learn from that?

Like the first farmers, the first step is always knowing what it is you want. No, don’t pull out that pencil and paper and make a checklist for your perfect man. (“Dear Diary, My Prince Charming will be blonde, 6ft 3, with a French accent and a flower tattooed on his right butt-cheek”) You are limiting your world that way and setting yourself up for failure. Instead, as you fall asleep one night, close your eyes and imagine what it is that you may look for in someone that will make you feel secure, loved, and wanting to be the best version of your own self for them. Make a mental note of that feeling, of that desire, and of the kind of person that is going to share with you all that.

Dating without knowing what it is you want is like trying to buy a bottle of “red wine” in Napa. Sure, you will derive random and inconsistent benefits from winging it and just picking the first winery on the hill, but if you know before hand that nothing enlivens your taste-buds like a Cabernet-Merlot from Clos Pegase then that’s where true satisfaction lies.

Once you know what it is you are looking for, and believe you me it is harder than you think , you will be ready for (the final) stage:

2. Know that you will get what you want

This is the most difficult, yet in some ways the most obvious. Man’s biggest error is in thinking that his circumstances are beyond his control. “Oh if only I was thinner/smarter/richer/hotter, I would get what I want sooo easily,” wistfully sighs the single being. What’s wrong with this sentence? One thing – doubt. For example:

A) If you aspire to be thinner/smarter/richer/hotter, then you have to realize that what separates you from achieving your goal is the doubt that you ever will get there. On some level you doubt your ability to succeed, to make the right sacrifices, to push forward and have what you want. For if you know and, and I mean you really are certain, that you will be thinner/smarter/richer/hotter, almost as if it is your god-given right, then your energy will align itself and your ambition will match what it is that your subconscious mind has planted into the world.

B) No amount of fat, stupidity, nor poverty at this point in time can stop you from meeting the “right person” that you have imagined. If you doubt this for a second think of all the times you’ve run into the most bizarre creatures, only to discover they are dating someone that can slow down the pace of time with one bat from their irresistible eye-lashes. What has this bizarre creature done to deserve this fountain of beauty? I’m sure there are multiple layers to any such relationship, but fundamentally, he or she has inner confidence and strength, certainty in their ability to succeed and thinking of “happily ever after” as a question of “when” not “if”.

***

I am aware that all the above takes quite a bit of philosophical fortitude. The lesson above needs to be internalized, not just read. If you believe in the lesson, then you will believe in the outcomes it promises. Did I ever mention that “M” stands for Moses?

Well, Moses can’t get past level 1 at the moment. His experience with relationships and lovers has confused him– what is he looking for in someone? But just because Moses is lagging behind doesn’t mean you have to, too. Run ahead, my younglings, and carpe diem.

Happy farming.

Poem from the Underground

2010-03-10T22:28:00.002Z

Earth in beauty dressed
Awaits returning spring.
All true love must die,
Alter the best
Into some lesser thing.
Prove that I lie.

Such body lovers have,
Such exacting breath,
That they touch or sigh.
Every touch they give,
Love is nearer death.
Prove that I lie.

W.B. Yeats

Porcelain

2010-03-04T23:35:00.001Z

“Thank you for coming to meet me, baby.” JS looked at me and his eyes were dancing with tears.

I had just gotten into the car, the rush hour bustle of Sloane Square and the icy wind still evident in my demeanor. I put my phone and umbrella to one side and looked at him, calming down, “You’re welcome honey, you know I’d do anything for you,” I hinted. It didn’t work. After a few second of him avoiding eye contact, I finally asked, “What’s wrong? I left work an hour early just to see you before you have to go to your dinner.”

He looked at me again and the twinkling tears now formed steady streams. My heart stung. JS was emotional but this was a lot even for him. I put one hand on his cheek and wiped off some of the moisture. “What’s wrong honey?”

His big, brown eyes looked at me with anguish. “I’m moving to Chicago in a month.” The words came out of his mouth slowly, as if each letter coming out of his mouth were carrying an unfathomable burden.

I felt my eyes blur for a millisecond as my thoughts registered. “You found a job? Honey, that's GREAT!”

Yes, this was the emotion I was supposed to feel, joy. His long and treacherous 14 months of unemployment have taken their toll on him, on me, on everyone in our vicinity. But now here we are, a month away from the day he puts his days in London behind him. Puts me behind him.

The strangeness of the situation must be commented on. JS and I are not together. We haven’t been for almost 2 years. Yet we know that in the 3 years we spent with one another the bond we formed was unusual. He knows me like no one else, and I like to think the opposite is true. In the time we’ve spent apart we’ve both dated, with varying degrees of success, and given other people a real opportunity to make their own marks on our lives. But on those nights when we sit in front of the TV with a bottle of wine, our tongues would betray our pride and admit to one another that nobody has even come close to what we had.

“I’m so happy for you,” I said, honestly, but my voice was overcome with confusion. I couldn’t imagine him not living down the street from me. I couldn’t imagine church on Saturday, or my favorite restaurant, the River Café, without him. He is part of the very fabric of my life here.

Luckily, I’m not blessed with the gift of tears, or emotional manifestations in general, so I looked him right in the eye as he softly whimpered. “You should be happy.”

“I am. I just can’t imagine leaving you behind,” he stammered. That makes two of us. Maybe it was the healthiest thing. I sat in the passenger seat, immobile and waited him out, wiping his tears with my thumb every few seconds. “Come on, I’ll take you home,” he said.

The car moved smoothly through Holbein Place, down to Pimlico Square and up Buckingham Palace Road. He held on to my hand the whole way. I looked out the window but saw nothing but my faint reflection in the glass.

Outside my building door, his grip tightened around my hand. I looked at him and he’d stopped crying. There was a new determination in his face. He leaned over and put his head against my shoulder. I rested my head against the chair and closed my eyes.

Seconds later he lifted his head and, in slow motion, moved his lips to my ears. He whispered something softly. A smile slowly formed on my face as the words kept flowing. Nothing ever made more sense. I looked at him and held his beautiful face between my palms. “Of course.”

Six Acre Meadow

2010-03-01T22:31:00.003Z

Ophelia – John Millais

When the Pre-Raphaelites, including Millais, brought their revolution to the world of 19 century art, their message appeared desperate:

Enough with the broad brushes; rid us of the bold strokes, the clean lines and the sanitized art that Raphael forced upon the European Renaissance. The masterpiece is evidenced in its flaws… inconsistency breeds realism… and the world is nothing but the assembly of countless minute brush strokes.

Sometimes it's difficult to contain such grand philosophy to painting technique and not let it run free in our minds.

Seratonin

2010-02-28T23:02:00.002Z

Beyond all wrong-doing
and all right-doing
is a field.
I will meet you there.

- Jalaludin Al-Rumi

What is “sin” for a mystic like Rumi? For anyone who takes it upon themselves to pursue spiritual enlightenment in ways that disregard and often offend religious dogma?

Sin is whatever distracts one from the path of edification. Accordingly, it is impossible to pinpoint what sin is prior to identifying where this path lies. I have many times gone through life like a zombie, satisfying my body without really trying to take that satisfaction and turn it into an energy that can transform my life.

But, what if sin leads to an awakening or an epiphany of sorts? Does that not make it part of the path? Who unleashed the snake Satan into the garden of Eden? Was it not God? Adam and Eve were destined to fail, and so are we. But, one hopes, failure is part of the process.

I am a sinner, and my sins are many. I have hurt, but mostly myself, and as a result the need for change has not been immense. I say, the only sins that remain so are the ones you have not learned anything from.

--------

I danced my heart out on Saturday. My body swayed and thrusted to the heavy bass and crisp vocals of Lady Gaga as she opened her Monster Ball with the words “Silicone. Saline. Poison…Inject me”. It was all I could do not to collapse from exhaustion, from my severely low levels of seratonin, and it took a few Irish coffees for me to be even standing meters away from her gyrating body under the dome of the O2.

Rewind, it’s Thursday.

By 8pm I was feeling a little anxious. Going out in London on Fridays and Saturdays can be unpalatable. The city is crawling with out-of-town drunken revelers and mad locals alike. Understanding this, and since both Jared and Rodrigo were visiting from NY and Rio respectively, we decided we’d take them out whilst the city is still in good shape. I blamed my anxiousness on the fact that I had a lot of work the next day and didn’t want to stay out too late. But perhaps I should have rethought the guest list in light of this glaring fact.

Most of us 'pre-gamed’ at my place. This is where the madness begins, and as of late the magnitude has been steadily rising. The bottles of Belvedere and Goldwasser came out, but so did the neat packs of cocaine and mephodrome. Drugs have always been around. They always will be. The same can be said for the social stigma surrounding them, for which I care very little. What concerns me, above all else, is my safety. Knowing very well that I am a sinner, I draw a balance between enjoyment and cautiousness, one that I have maintained very well.

But, that night, I began to loose track of how many lines I’d had. Maybe it was my exhaustion, or the need for escape from some of the harsh realities that surrounded me at the time, but I did not stop. At 3am, on the dancefloor with some of my girlfriends from high-school who have been equally indulging, I was on a plane I’d never been before. My confidence was extreme, my awareness heightened. In a moment, I saw him from the corner of my eye, the person I would drag to my cave tonight and consume like a lion ravaging a zebra. I wasted no time in walking up to him and, as I approached him, I realized that I already knew him (Derek). I’d always been interested, but he’d been dating someone up until recently. He saw me coming and beamed a smile. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

Back at my place the pace was slow and intense. We both kept doing lines as our hearts raced and eyes took in the vibrant colors. We had sex for hours, sex of an intensity and sensuality I have very rarely experienced. The cocaine delayed our orgasms for at least an hour at a time, allowing us to make the most of every single touch. When we were finished, the sun had come up, for the first time in weeks, there were no clouds smothering it. That’s when I remembered work.

-----

“Silicone! Saline! Poison…Inject me baby!” Gaga hollered at the sea of people and flashing cameras. I had survived the Friday at work, productively even, but more than ever I felt like a monster. I had no intention of seeing Derek again, though he had consistently called me since that out-of-body experience in the first hours of Friday. I wasn’t going to call because I felt like a cheap, coked-up stereotype, and all he would do is remind me of this. When did I become this person? Serial sex, extreme indulgence, leaving people hanging in tandem after I promised them the world?

I have sinned. But it remains to be seen whether this sin will be a lesson that justifies all harm or another evening under-rug-swept, eating away at my soul.

Return of a Roundhead

2010-02-28T21:55:00.001Z

When I first started this blog, I wanted it to be a place where I can lay out events and thoughts in their most raw and exposed form – a sort of therapy, so that maybe one day when I read through posts of periods past I could detect a pattern, good or bad being irrelevant, but perhaps enlightening. Over the years I feel to an extent that I’ve lost that, and fell into the trap of turning this into a Perez Hilton meets Carrie Bradshaw. In other words, dull and pseudo-thoughtful.

Now there’s little guarantee that those words don’t actually describe me. But at the very least, going forward, I’m going to resist the pressures of conformity and write as openly as I can. Some of what’s to come may, therefore, be disturbing. As this is generally an anonymous blog, I care little about judgment, however for those of you who know me, consider yourself on a license to view, I plead.

Gaijin

2010-02-24T16:50:00.001Z

Defiantly, I held my boarding pass and passport in one hand and my carry-on goodie bag (complete with iPod, books, sleeping pills, motion sickness sniffer, eye-mask, moisturiser and a forest of Reese's) in the other, all the while thinking about the 10 days of absolute isolation and estrangement that were to come and save me from two months of cosmic battery.

And "just like that" ~~(i.e. 14 fucking hours later)~~, I was sitting on the Narita Express heading to "downtown" Tokyo. In that smooth gliding train-car, I remembered why I had travelled this far alone. I watched this foreign world go by in high-definition and, looking around me at all the signs, words and even objects that I could not even begin to understand, the excitement started to rumble in my chest. I was, finally, alone and free. I had flipped the coin, and very well. I went from information overload, over-communication, over-exposure and disarray to silence, reclusiveness and Japanese efficiency. Nobody spoke English. My phone had run out of batteries and I refused to charge it for the duration of my stay. My computer was snuggled on my couch in London. What bliss, I was ready for my adventure.

And indeed, I spent 10 days roaming the claustrophobic island between bullet trains, Zen temples nestled in mountains, and one of the most energetic cities I have every visited.

Tokyo's intensity was a shock. There is no "downtown" Tokyo because all of it is super-urban and super-crowded. Every corner is a Times Square, a Piccadilly Circus. Lights blaze down on you from every inch of every building. People move like schools of fish in spectacular harmony. As I understood nothing of what was going on around me, I walked around with my Lonely Planet close to hand (whilst I would usually feel self-conscious about bearing such an atrocious token of the League of ~~Straight~~ Dull Back-Packers, I had no shame in doing so in Tokyo: this city is one place where I was going to stick out as a Gaijin (a foreigner) no matter what I did).

Alas it was spectacular fun. Though I understood nothing, everyone was kind in ways I could not begin to describe, and honesty is central to their culture, so nobody ever tried to take advantage of my glaring ignorance.

About 4 days into the trip, I levelled with myself and decided to cut through some of the BS – bullet trains with full view of Mount Fuji are fun, and I did go through a rebirth ritual or two in Kyoto – but when you get right down to it, nothing says spiritual cleanse like a brand new wardrobe and shiatsu massage.

So, after a killer massage by a highly experienced ~~and disappointingly unattractive~~ masseur, I attempted to go shopping.

As with everything in that city, what was on offer was astonishing. The clothes were unlike anything I had ever seen before. "Camp" took on a whole new meaning. There was real creativity in design, in fabric and in structure. No hang ups about fur, knee high red boots, or silk and studded shirts. But after the third fitting room it started to dawn on me – ~~I'm a fat bitch!~~ I'm an XL Gaijin. Most stores didn't even hold my size. Ok, I'm a European Medium, and an American Small, depending on whether we're talking haute couture or Zara, but my body has never been wrapped in anything marked with an "L" (unless you're talking ~~leather~~ Louboutin). So whilst accepting the fact that I am classified as a cow (a Gaijin cow) in Tokyo, I was not ready to accept that I was going to go home empty handed. Alas, I found a pair of silver metallic ~~"come-fuck-me"~~ half-boots and an equestrian blazer, but had I starved myself for a few months prior I would have come home with so much more. (Stay tuned.)

In any event, after my shopping escapades failed (though truthfully, just browsing the fabulous stores was enough to give me the kick), I turned to my other past-time: partying. I was debating whether I wanted to go to an 'institutional' club or just the local gay hole in the wall. I soon learned that the latter was not a very preferable option for Gaijin, and I spent about an hour in the former before realising that people in Japan still listen to techno at 170 beats per minute and that my ears may actually start bleeding (note to reader: since the advent of minimal techno in 2004, respectable European techno rarely passes 120 bpm threshold). Alas, I hit "Arty Farty", a London Soho-style bar with your average cheesy music collection and 15 year old prostitutes. I looked down at the crowd (I was the tallest one there) and realised, here's another relaxing thing about Japan: I felt zero sexual tension. So I met up with some friends that had been seconded in Tokyo for work and we drank and debauched to the extent possible.

On the Narita Express back to the airport the sun was just coming up. Its rays bounced off of the steel and glass of the buildings on either side of the tracks. My head rested against the large spotless window with my iPod whispering in my ears. The conductor would occasionally make an indecipherable announcement in his soft respectful voice. I did not want to go back to London – to the stress, the sleepless nights and the cold, damp streets. But I knew I did not belong in Tokyo. Though I am lucky I even got to experience this country, it is a parallel universe. I closed my eyes and fell asleep as the train slithered between high-rises.

The Edge of Reason

2010-01-31T11:44:00.002Z

Wallowing in misfortune is not only dull, it is disrespectful to your intellect. It is a clue to the fact that you have lost perspective on your own life. But, of course, removing yourself from the pattern of negativity is easier said than done. It takes awareness of every negative thought that passes through you so that you can stop it in its tracks, turn it around, and send it creeping in the other direction.

And so after the breakdown of the two most important friendships I held in this city, I did not curl up with my laptop and a jar of Nutella, as I was inclined to do. Instead, I called up A&R (see Line of Beauty) and made an emphatic appeal as to how we should do something fun and different in the coming weekend. After the success of our tranny night, we owed it to ourselves to go exploring the depths of all the alternative gay scenes in London.

A decision was made, perhaps a little too hastily. The outfits were bought. And on Friday night just before midnight, 3 leathered up boys in harnesses, boots, studded collars, chaps, masks and whips walked across covent garden (to the horror of some tourists) and hailed a cab for the Hoist.

At the front door, our outfits were meticulously checked. I was told the Jeans I was wearing under my chaps had to go, which meant that I was therefore in a leather thong for the rest of the night. The doorman tightened my harness and winked at the black band on my left arm. We rolled into the ‘club’, and i use the term loosely. The space was claustrophobic and labyrinthine, strong spotlights showered a direct ray of light below them and left the surrounding areas in gradual darkness. The smell of leather and sweat was invigorating. Music pounded but nobody danced, there was far too much testosterone in the air for that.

A&R and I made it to the bar, got some drinks, and then reached into our boots for our pouches: sexual stimulants, stimulants in general, associated utensils and condoms. We laid them out on the bar with our drinks and began mixing and matching. I felt like I was in East Berlin. Noises started to become more audible from the back rooms.

After a swig of courage, we started to make our way through the dark corridors. More than a hundred men were prowling, not a single word being said. Two hoists were being put to good use, with one guy getting double fisted in one, and the another guy double fucked in another. Deeper into the maze, we came to ceramic clearing, where about 20 men were urinating on one another. Further on, the sound of clinking metal and cries of pain was getting louder. Metal bars were scraping against the body armour of one man as he was being flogged with a large horse-whip.

The three of us watched all of this in amazement. The animalism was extreme and we weren’t sure whether it was arousing or disgusting. Nobody looked like they were doing anything they weren’t accustomed to doing.

We felt like outsiders, like tourists, gawking at everything that looked out-of-this-world, occasionally giggling at certain sites, and downright intimated when someone attempted to grab our genitalia or engage us in the relentless orgy.

For all the weirdness, I felt a certain excitement in experiencing a different thread in the the diverse fabric that is human sexuality. This is just how they roll in 2010 in the dungeons of London. Will I go back? Maybe in the spirit of fun, but probably never to engage in any of this madness.

Empire State of Mind

2010-01-18T22:54:00.002Z

Nader did his best to snuggle up under the thick, crispy hotel duvet. He checked his watch: 4.00am. Sleep was not in the stars this night it seemed. Having arrived in Manhattan just before midnight, he assumed exhaustion would take over and allow him a few blinks. He wasn’t sure if it was his recent 3 month bout of insomnia, or just old fashioned jet lag, that made the idea of sleep inconceivable.

It was Tuesday night. For a minute he considered getting up and going out for a drink, but decided it would be 5am by the time he made it anywhere, and that would be too ambitious for a Tuesday night even for this city. His laptop was within arm’s reach, he pulled it towards him and threw open its lid. Manhunt, the only way to kill enormous amounts of time without ever a moment of boredom. His eyes scanned the assortment of faces, torsos and genitalia. He wasn’t aroused, but he was sufficiently entertained. The steady stream of messages in his inbox appeased his ego enough to keep him hooked and going. Like his insomnia, Manhunt put him in a state of semi-consciousness. His perusal and movements were robotic.

Before he knew it, daylight was creeping into the room. Nader jumped out of bed and into some running shoes, Hollister sweat-pants and a polo shirt. It was –6 degrees outside, but he knew once his body started heating up he wouldn’t need to wear anymore for his run.

Outside the fog was clearing up and the sun bounced off the million panes of steel and glass spectacularly as the urban jungle smothered Central Park. The lakes were frozen, Bethesda stood delicately beyond the arches, and park rangers were making their rounds. Nader’s heart raced as he sped through the lifeless trees.
Back at the hotel, Nader held the elevator door open for a handsome gentleman that had just checked-in early. Feeling slightly self-conscious about his sweaty state, Nader stayed quiet. When it transpired that this intriguing stranger had actually checked into the room across the hall, Nader volunteered smoothly “Hey, we’re neighbors.”

The man, 5’11’’, tanned with piercing grey eyes and a wide smile replied back “Are you sure you’re not just stalking me?”

Out-maneuvered, Nader laughed awkwardly and turned to his room. Later that night, he began feeling anxiety as he realized the number of hours he’d spent awake. In his bathroom mirror the whites of his eyes were no longer so. Red rivers pulsed through them, forking their way to his iris like devil’s fingers. He walked to his closet door, and threw it open.

Clad in leather, metal and mink, Nader zigzagged his way around the island from bar to bar to club to bar with an assortment of former lovers and friends. His vodka never ran dry, and despite his exhaustion, he never felt drunk.

Back at his hotel at 4am, he decided to give its heaving bar a short visit for a nightcap. Just because he could do so with more ease than anyone else. Being a guest at the hotel meant there was a separate entrance that he could use to skip the dull line and intimidating bouncers (“Now where y’all from? Can ah see sum aahhdee?”).
The room was heavy with the scent of expensive cologne and New York swagger. His leather diva outfit turned a few surprised eyes, but they knew better than to comment lest they be known forevermore as “tunnel and bridge”. At the bar, he was two sips into his vodka rocks when a hand fell on his shoulder. He turned around slowly and it was his hotel neighbor, smiling barely. His eyes were now even more transparent in ambient glow of the bar, and full of questions. Nader extended his hand, which with the exception of his fingers was still covered in sharp metal and rugged leather, and held the back of the handsome strangers neck. He pulled it in, and the man submitted. They kissed slowly, but intensely. For the first time in days, Nader suddenly felt like his eyes wanted to stay shut.

Recovering from the sweet taste of this man’s mouth, Nader slowly regained consciousness. He had another sip of his drink and took him by the hand back through the private exit to the 10th floor.

In Nader’s room, the clothes were peeled off in haste as they both remained lip-locked. Nader forcibly turned him around and pushed his naked body against the wall. He got down onto the floor and began slowly to taste his prey’s skin with the tip of his tongue. First the back of the ankles…his calves…his thighs…his tongue gently making its way to his anus as the short hairs tickled its tip. His neighbor moaned violently.

***
The next morning, Nader realized he’d actually gotten some sleep. Two and a half hours. A miracle. He felt an unbelievable amount of energy. Next to him, his lover was also already awake, running his fingers through Nader’s hair. “I like your hair.”

Nader looked at him and thought, ‘Your eyes are not human.’

Within 2 hours, his lover had departed for Los Angeles.

Nader lay awake in his lifeless bed. The contrast was noticeably severe.

The events of his days in room 1077 in Manhattan’s Hudson Hotel did not change significantly over the coming days. Then, one night, as he lay in bed, his eyes bloodshot and his lover asleep, he slipped into last night’s jeans and put on a heavy shirt and coat. His bag was packed, and his flight was in 2 hours. He planted a gentle kiss onto his bedmate’s cheek and explained gently that he could stay until noon before the room was due for check-out.

In the street, Nader pulled behind him his bag on its silent rollers. It was 6.30 am. Sunrise was an hour away, and the forest of skyscrapers, usually lit up randomly and intensely, was pitch black with darkness. He could see their silhouette just barely traced against a sky of deep purple. Like a silent army, poised, lifeless, they stared down at him. His hand shot up at the sight of the first yellow cab. “JFK,” he grunted, wrapping a scarf around his neck and holding on tensely to his passport.

Update

2010-01-10T09:19:00.002Z

So, I've been away. For a while. But I have had a few excuses, summaries in the latest email to JS below:

"I feel crushed, but I guess this had to happen at some point. Though I always knew you were gallivanting, I never had a problem with it so long as it was out of my sight. But not only did you push your desperate predatory behaviour in my face by pursuing PAE, one of my best friends, you didn't even respect my feelings enough to ask me whether it was ok, or at the very least warn me. I feel like I was owed at least that much. My gut sank so far that day on nye when you two were outside my flat to pick me up. I chose to ignore the signs and give you the benefit of the doubt. I thought, he would never do this to me, not now, not when I'm preoccupied with the knowledge of my father's terminal illness. I was so wrong.

But then again, I was wrong about a lot of things. Most unfortunately, I was wrong in thinking that you were different, that you weren't like every other gay man in this city. I believed that you probably wouldn't have anonymous sex off gaydar, or ever rub my face in your exploits. It really is like I don't even know who you are. Where was this latent persona? Listening to you talk at the dinner table on new-years-day about your man-whore days, I should have guessed, though at 50 you'd think things would be different. Why did I always think that I was the one that fell short of your expectations? You have always had such strong convictions, and I relentlessly judged myself against them. I was such a fool.

But your moral failure and my resulting pain is not the entire reason why I am crushed. I am crushed because the odd truth is, you're as good as it gets out there in this world. If this is who and how you are, what chance in hell do I have to meet someone worthy of my time? Why do we keep living knowing that fundamental failure is inevitable? Why am I writing this email to you, when I know beyond reasonable doubt you will never apologise or try and make it up to me? My hopeless optimism is only pitiful. You have proved my so far infallible theory – that getting too close to anyone invariably means immeasurable pain.

Good luck with your life."

Weeping satellite

2009-12-14T16:40:00.002Z

We take so much technology for granted in our daily life. I know I do. I wake up in the morning to the gentle blips of my smartphone. Weather, news and facebook updates are instantly delivered to my inbox. My half-open eyes scan this impatiently until my conscience finally overpowers me and I roll out of bed. Stumbling towards the shower, I flick my iTouch to turn on my soundsystem downstairs to my morning playlist. I eat breakfast watching BBC on my laptop, then on the underground i'll read another chapter of the Antichrist eBook on my phone (and I'm one of the old fashioned Londoners. These days you need a Kindle)

And just like Apple's transformed what we do and how we do it, Google has revolutionised what it is we have access to on a daily basis. Today I sat in my office slightly worse for wear, the usual Monday blues, when my fingers anxiously punched away at the keyboard looking for the 21st century equivalent of reminiscence - googlemaps.

I scanned the eastern coast of the Sinai, carefully on 'satellite view', until my eyes finally spotted it. I zoomed down from outer space onto that very ledge where, less than two years ago, I fell asleep at the edge of the water. I still remember how that wine tasted and how sleepy I was, and how bright the milky sky shone. I sat in my chair immobile for a few minutes, staring down at the ledge. It's so far yet it it's so close. The colour of the sand jogs my memory well. "Oh to be there!" weeps the satellite.

Out of Africa

2009-11-25T15:15:00.001Z

Whoever thought of dance floors? They're too functional. In Cairo, our City Victorious, people dance on, and in between, tables. Places with dance floors rarely become that successful, people do not compartmentalise their groove that way. The joi de vivre is a palpable daily drug, consumed irresponsibly after each sunset. S and I sat in Tamarai oh so few nights ago as Cairo's most eligible partied and schmoosed, and after midnight it was electric. But, I guess, that pretty much summarises Cairo, especially when one hangs around someone like S: a stressful, surreal, extravagant blur of parties, alcohol, cigarette smoke and socialites.

And though I owe S for the best night out I've had, probably since NYE in Madrid (or maybe even more), my time in Cairo did comprise of other endeavours. I head a considerable amount of red tape to go through, always the rude awakening to the Third World. I also did a considerable amount of "2antakha" with my buddies from high school and AUC. There is (what now feels to me like) an unusual amount of warmth between people in that city. I never thought after 6 years that I would feel so foreign, sadly.

The Cairene street has become an unfathomable, other-worldly war-zone, approachable only in certain times of the day. Still, I drove through it with nothing but nostalgia and yearning for the time when I ruled the motorways, when I was indifferent to the honking of crazy taxi drivers or microbuses, when I was able to drive stick-shift, text, yell on speaker phone and down a can of Heineken all at the same time.

But alas, back in London, life continues. Not that one should complain, there's plenty of madness here. Just not the warm type.

And when the other shoe dropped...

2009-10-21T15:24:00.001+01:00

So yes, re "Houston, wir haben ein problem" below, it took a great deal of relaxing and bringing my feelings down to earth for things to work and, eventually, one night on my turf, everything worked perfectly.

Ever since, the sailing has been smoother, but also sans teenage infatuation. This is the point where you start looking beyond the looks for the strength of character and personal appeal in someone. The time we spend together remains amazing, but I catch my mind posing questions and making comparisons it should never make.

We all fall into that trap. Your first true love becomes the standard against which you measure all future relationships, or so some have claimed. But I am making a conscious effort not to go down that road. AD is an apple, my ex JS was an orange. It's no use pointing to the bothersome seeds at the apple's core when you know very well that, even though oranges have no such seeds, their peel is equally frustrating. Conversely, it makes no sense saying "umm" how crunch that apple seems when you know very well that the orange will always be juicier. In short, any sort of comparison, whether it accentuates what you now have or not, should be avoided at all cost. You don't end up giving the person you are with a clean slate, the benefit of doubt, or a chance to make their own lasting impression on you.

As with most things, it's easier said than done.

Huston, wir haben ein Problem

2009-10-09T21:21:00.001+01:00

The second date went even better than the first. We rolled into Lab in Soho for a choice of cocktail (out of a menu of 400) which turned into 3 cocktails and a shot of Mumm (yes, champagne shots as a side to fruity vodka are in), then walked across WC1 to Carnaby Street where we found a funky Chinese wok restaurant. From there, we hit Sketch (for about 3 seconds) and ended up at the Polo Bar for a bottle of the Widow (Cliquot, who else).

Needless to say, that was a lot of alcohol, even for my Nordic liver. I was entirely composed throughout, which is a relief, but the moment of truth arrived at the Polo Bar and we decided to spend the night together. I swung by my flat, picked up work clothes and got back in the cab to his place.

I sound like a pathetic teenage girl, but this guy ticks all my boxes. MY boxes. That is, he’s fun to be around, he’s drop dead gorgeous, and he’s kind. I’m still trying to get used to his (heavy) Australian accent, and sure, this morning he asked me whether Moscow was 3 hours ahead of us or behind. I only have envy for those who go through life with some sort of blissful ignorance.

At his place the clothes came off, fast. We were lip-locked and inebriated. That’s when we both realised there was a glaring problem. I wasn’t hard.

I didn’t get it. Here I was with one of the most attractive men I have ever come across, and King Henry won’t even fly at half mast. I was so freaked out by this unusual situation that mentally I became even less prone to getting hard.

He didn’t react very well to it either. First, he was sure it was him and that I wasn’t attracted to him enough. Then he asked: do you have a boyfriend? Nope. Are you in love with someone else? No. Are you HIV+? Nah uh.

As we lay there in bed, frustrated, I decided it was time for me to go back home. He wouldn’t let me, and I wasn’t sure how much more humiliation I could stand for one evening.

Sharing this with a friend of mine, she immediately responded, “Wow, you must really like this guy.” The truth is, she’s right. Maybe, I haven’t been able to move him down from the realm of fantasy into the very real world of intercourse. I feel almost inadequate in his perfect presence, and the vulnerability affects me in ways I didn’t think possible.

The thing is, now it will be even harder (no pun intended) to get this going off the ground. Now I have something to prove, pressure to perform. It’s a downward spiral waiting to happen. For a quick second, I even contemplated artificial inducement. WHAT THE HELL? I’M twenty £)£$%ing three!

SOIs

2009-10-07T17:10:00.000+01:00

My friend and I used to have a term we'd give to guys that were so beautiful, they actually inspired something within us completely separate from what or who they were. Sources of Inspiration, or SOIs for short (the French meaning completely accidental), are the kind of people that are so attractive, you cannot imagine them if you tried. They are unbelievably real, and you'd kill to be even a drop of water trailing its way on any part of their glistening skin.

Last Sunday afternoon was one of those London days that sears itself into your memory. Sun and spontaneity; good energy, good food, good wine, good company. At around 5 in the afternoon Charlie and I sat at our favourite cafe on Old Compton street, which was buzzing with afternoon socialites. Across the street I spotted him, sitting down with his friend. One hell of an SOI.

My immediate reaction to seeing an SOI has always been uniform. My heart jumps so violently at the magnificent sight that I deny myself the pleasure and look away abruptly, almost standoffishly. Usually, I see or meet SOIs in passing, and therefore I never have the opportunity to correct my reaction. This time was different, because we were both sitting with a friend directly across the small street from one another.

I did something I never did before, or at least, not ever to someone this attractive. I asked Charlie to watch my phone and I walked across the street, pushing through the bursting tank tops and Tom Ford jeans, to where He was sitting. He eyed me in mild bewilderment and smiled. His smile gave me courage and I introduced myself, politely acknowledging his friend also. That's when He surprised me, and asked me for my number.

I gladly provided it, half thinking he might have been pre-empting an awkward conversation by taking my number for now and scooting me back to where I came from. Holy shit, I thought to myself. Humiliation in forms I haven't yet experienced, like I needed more.

I insisted that was not the case and walked back to my seat and continued my conversation with Charlie, nonchalantly, all the while virtually trembling inside.

Minutes later, He came by to wish us a good afternoon. My fears were set aside.

One date and 4 days later, I can't get over how smitten I am by this creature. His conversation proved to be just as delightful as his features. I have no vision of what this is or where it is going, but I feel like I have a new lease on the days to come thanks to him.

Kink

2009-10-02T12:27:00.001+01:00

Wednesday night, the boys and I, all suited and booted, descended on the No. 11 Hotel in Chelsea for an Italian jeweller's very small, but very opulent, launch event. Inside the tight Parisian hall of mirrors and gold leafed accents, fabulous and overdressed women mingled with the gay crème de la phlegm (flu season was clearly also making its debut along with ruby encrusted rings). Pointless conversations were only interrupted by the clink of Prosecco flutes and the snap of an oversized camera. Needless to say, after a day of labour this was a welcome treat.

Our entourage included Juan. Juan was an acquaintance, and we got along well when we met. As we all stood and chattered in a group, the conversation devolved (as it often does) into weekend partying. First it started as a joke, we were eyeing a certain over-pretentious Mr X and joked about how he would handle himself at the Hoist or XXL (as is probably obvious through the names, both these London establishments, and particularly the Hoist, are known for their over-the-top, out-of-this-world fetish indulgence). I decided to share a story, for better or for worse, of when I needed to use the bathroom at the Hoist and the only urinal available was in fact a small man of Asian descent on his knees with his mouth open and eyes rolling with ecstacy. Having been already 3 vodka-on-the-rocks into my evening, I wasn't going to pass up the release, and if he got a kick out of it then what the hell, right?

Juan looked it me with gaping eyes. "But...you're a lawyer!" I wasn't sure what to make of that. He explained: "You look so innocent and young, I am so surprised...". Even though he was married and our relationship was at best superficial (if not cursory), I could see in his eyes a new found...respect! Maybe even a hint of curiosity that was not there before, as if he started thinking of me in a sexual way for the first time.

I was intrigued by this reaction. What is it about gay men, whether it is that Asian guy at the Hoist, or Juan that makes them weak in the face of some kinkiness? Do men have to have an unpredictable, almost abusive side to them for them to get attention? It's a social experiment that's proved itself time and time again. I, in my customary shirt and tie and unabashed preppiness, time and time again find that I throw people off guard (and get their attention) by going into bizarre details of my life.

If you, like me, believe that our relationships with our fathers in many ways influence our relationships with our sexual partners in bed, this obsession is a telling sign of...well, something. Maybe kinkiness and fetish in all its forms are mere reflections of a particular facet of a man's relationship with his father. So much to think about. I'll conjure up the spirit of Freud, but in the meantime, bonne weekend!

Bonds Notwithstanding

2009-09-18T14:42:00.000+01:00

A lot of bullshit flies after the end of a relationship. "I really think the world of you" or "Please know that I'll always be here for you" or best of all "I'd like to stay your friend". I know, because I have delivered these very manure-laden words myself.

You spend some time with someone, they become a focal point in your life for however long it is. Usually, if they cross the 3 month milestone you know it's relationship material that you'll actually remember a year down the line. But there's no telling after that what you will or will not appreciate and share once your relationship breaks off.

Today I sat at my desk, trying to focus on reading a ratio decidendi on jurisdiction, when suddenly my office phone rang. The number was private, and having only given out my office number to very few people I picked up thinking, of course, it's that freak from BNP in Paris up my ass again about that letter I sent a month ago.

But it wasn't. I put on my headset, "M speaking."

"Hello?" The voice rang in my ear. It was croaky and American.

"Who is this?" My heart was pounding already because the voice was familiar, and not in a good way.

"JD, man. How are you?"

I paused. Caught off guard and surprised. "I'm well," I managed, but that is where my eloquence ended. Since our breakup, we've probably exchanged a few words (some nicer than others), and only by text.

"Good, good." The silence was awkward.

Of course, where are my manners! "How are you doing JD?"

"I'm doing ok. I just thought I'd give you a call, you know. I remember it's your mom's anniversary today, isn't it?"

That's when I stopped talking altogether. I stammered something incomprehensible.

"It's ok, you don’t have to say much, I just wanted to make sure you're ok." His voice was soft and forgiving.

"I am. Thank you for calling JD."

"You're welcome, man."

I put down the headset, stupefied. This is the guy that didn't even remember my birthday when we were dating. How does he remember this? Even my closest friends have no idea.

Minutes later, I received a text message from JS, my partner of 3 years, saying, "Hey baby, I'm in church lighting a candle for you and your mom."

As my eyes returned to scan the pages of the All England Law Reports I felt a strange warmth. Perhaps it came from knowing that these guys, who I once upon a time shared a lot more than a bed with, still see that what we had wasn't all for nothing. Even though the relationships ended, the three people I have been involved with seriously have remained, in one way or another, a part of my life and all we have for each other right now is a level of respect and care. Sure, I'll joke around with my friends about how 'awful' it was or their 'shortcomings' in bed but the reality is we've shared, and still apparently do share, bonds notwithstanding the bifurcation of our lives.

I don't believe there is only one person out there that is the perfect Mr Right. Ask me, I'm looking for my fourth.

The Line of Beauty

2009-09-10T10:02:00.003+01:00

There it was, sitting on the crystal adorned mirror tray placed casually at the corner of a maple-brown bureau.

Alistair and Rupert (A&R) have been friends of mine for almost 4 years. I met them at a cocktail party in Knightsbridge thrown by a Austrian heir, Wolfgang. I'm not sure why I was there. Wolfgang hated my guts at the time, and it may have had something to do with his trophy boyfriend slobbering all over me. I could only attribute my invitation to Wolfgang's fiercely competitive nature. He may have even enjoyed our subtle repartee. I met A&R amongst many others that I now only occasionally bump into at functions, and the three of us got along a little better perhaps because we were younger than the rest and weren't about to inherit a castle in the schwarzwald.

There exists a world, in the upper-crust, pretentious strata of modern societies (both Eastern and Western it seems) that defines itself on, ironically, a very tribal and suspicious set of values. I was always proud of the fact that I was not tied down by such pressure or wealth. Still, something about me attracted the rogue members of this clan, i.e. the gay ones. The ones who loved to hate it but could not survive without it.

I think it all went a step too far when I realized I was being judged by these very people for my non-conformism to bourgeois culture. This happened recently, at a pretentious penthouse party thrown by A&R. We were half-way through aggressive wine tasting. when two of the guests, a Russian girl and an American guy in a kilt, asked me to join them in the study next door. The glint in their eyes gave me a solid hint as to what was waiting for me there.

We stepped into the quiet study and sure enough, there it was, sitting on the crystal adorned mirror tray placed casually at the corner of a maple-brown bureau. The Line of Beauty, I think it was Alan Brightman who had called it so with a deep sense of irony. 2 Grams (at least) of cocaine neatly stacked into a wide trail. Being a good Muslim boy for Ramadan, I asked them to go ahead without me. Whilst we were making friendly conversation, Alistair walked into the room.

"I have to rush, we just realised some of the bottles are corked and I have to go find something drinkable from the shop," he moved swiftly towards the tray and then realised I was seated on the opposite end of the room. "M! Aren't you having any?"

"No, I'm hoping for an early start tomorrow," I lied. Alistair looked confused but wasn't going to let it stop him. He bent over the rolled up 10 pound note and snorted half a fat line with his right nostril.

"M, when are you going to settle down and find a long term relationship?"

The comment, and tone, caught me off guard. Excuse me? My mind rushed for an answer while his left nostril snorted the other half. Wait, what was the question? I looked around me and realised both in this room and the next, everyone was in some sort of long term relationship. And I use the word relationship loosely, because in some cases it involved no more than an exchange of love for money.

"I don't know, but really can you blame me?" I managed to stammer awkwardly.

The silence in the room indicated that perhaps, yes, they could blame me.

Somehow everything fell into place, became clearer. Why I was assigned to a table where I knew no one at Alistair and Rupert's wedding, why I'd never even heard of their best man and man, why I am not invited to their weekly yoga and brunch even though they talk about it freely in front of me. I need a husband! And not just any husband: a bourgeois over achiever who, like me, has to be in either finance or law.

Another thing that dawned upon me, in light of Rupert's audacious flirty comments, is that perhaps married couples are avoiding me to avoid trouble. A "pretty young thang" like me could trip up their relationships faster then they'd care to know.

Alistair left the room but my discomfort remained. I knocked back the hint of wine I was tasting and walked out into the main room. It may have been the 1999 clos pegase but I suddenly felt like saying "Fuck you!" I'm not going to go boyfriend shopping so I can fit into a posse of pussies. I took comfort in the fact that they were on some level threatened by me, they should be.

But I suppose there's another possibility. Maybe I've jumped to a conclusion here, and Alistair was actually expressing a genuine wish for me to be happy and settle down. Likely scenario?

Peace

M

Qind

2009-09-02T18:05:00.000+01:00

The new edition of Qind is now out. Enjoy the masterpieces!

On the challenges of Ramadan

2009-08-26T14:52:00.004+01:00

This is the month I am supposed to get back on track. After a long period of disillusionment and 'coldness' I feel like I am due a resurrection of sorts. A rediscovery of the joie de vivre. And what better way to truly appreciate every drop of wealth and goodness around you than a fast. Peel away your flesh and bones and expose your raw soul by abandoning all that is animalistic within you between dawn and dusk.

As one of two Muslims I know who are fasting this season in London, I often get asked the question: why? Why when you barely have time to make your own food at sunset and consume it alone, when you work ridiculous hours and live in a country where the day lasts from 3am to almost 9pm? Moreover, why when you consume alcohol on a regular basis, sleep with men, and indulge in prosciutto every morning?

The presumption behind all these questions is that I am doing this for someone. Doing it because I have to do it, whilst the reality is no such obligation exists in my mind. I do it because I want to do it. I've always been jealous of monks and nuns, Halaj and Rumi, able to dive into asceticism and shed their body to truly feel their soul. Sadly, I have a fetish for all things luxurious and cocktail brunches that makes such a life improbable for me. But all the same I get a chance every year, on some basic level, to experience what these people revel in all their lives.

But Newtonian physics would have their way with me after my first long day of fasting. The strong blow of spirituality produced and equal and directly opposite reaction. Saturday I could not believe myself when I finally was able to eat. I had gotten up at 5.30am, went shopping at noon and only returned home at 7pm, at which point I showered an headed out for iftar (disguised as a dinner date).

True to my Egyptian blood I over indulged (though at a Spanish restaurant in Soho).

I drank enough water and wine to sink the Titanic. After my dinner date I swung by an ex lover and took him home for some major deflowering. I woke up the next day so tired and hung over I couldn’t possibly survive 3 minutes without water. A liter of Volvic, a shower and several pills later, I was ready for a Sunday at the gay pond in Hampstead Heath. The day was magnificent and I, for the first time ever since I moved here, tanned in London. At the pond I was giving off an unusual energy (what with my aviators in one hand and a glass of rosé champagne in the other), as more and more handsome gentlemen made their way to our spot. Ready for round two, I picked a friend of a friend who was unusually sweet and rather attractive and took him home as well.

Shocked at my own behaviour, I woke up Monday morning wondering what happened. I know now that I probably should have eased myself into the process. The good news is I am now back on track and managing this one day at a time successfully. The challenges in Ramadan are many but if anything the biggest of all is gaining good insight into who you are.

Peace
M

Vile scenes and bitter queens

2009-08-21T11:36:00.003+01:00

A kind visitor of my blog commented on my recent post (A Life of Excess) suggesting that perhaps I wasn't very supportive of gay pride parades. Dear visitor, M loves to party and will find almost any excuse to do it. My dislike for gay prides stems not only from the freakish display of flamboyance and gender confusion (no judgment, but I am gay and I don't feel very represented in these parades, but then again a gay Arab lawyers parade would probably bore us to death), it more so stems from my dislike of the values and attitudes that are espoused by the vast majority of the people in these parades.

S is good friend of mine. His relationship ended very recently, in the least flattering of manners. Against my better advice, he was entangled with 19 year old (Teddy) of a deceptively sweet disposition. Like most 19 year olds, including myself at one time, Teddy was a selfish people pleaser. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too, and hid whatever truths necessary to make sure he did. So Teddy slept around while the cat was away, and in all honesty when you're 19 you're both dumb and horny so again no judgment is warranted.

So how did S discover this infidelity? Let's rewind.

A 'friend' of his (let's call him Ugh), just as S started dating Teddy, informed S that he had a thing for Teddy. You know, usual 'friendly' home-wrecker I'm-gonna-steal-your-boyfriend conversations.

I have never met Ugh, but what I can gather from his own words on his insufferable blog is someone with an usually empty life that is need of drama to spice it up. Ugh sought the ultimate scenario for drama (and maybe even material for his blog): he lured Teddy into his trap by fooling around with him behind S's back. Nothing serious, a blow job and some tonsil tickling. He then convinced Teddy never to tell S. Soon after, Ugh tracked S down for a conversation and, overcome with what I am sure was very sincere guilt, he told S everything, including the fact that Teddy has already slept with two other guys in the past month.

I wish I could tell you, dearest reader, that Ugh is an exception to the rule (and I have a feeling he may think he is), but I would be unforgivably lying. This is what it means to be gay and in the scene these days, whether you're in Cairo or Zurich. Cheap, insincere and conniving. We need a radical shift from this culture, but one will not be possible if we keep celebrating our moral bankruptcy.

S, if anything you're a victim of your own choices. Ugh is not a friend. Teddy is not boyfriend material. If you share values with a more appropriate repertoire of people, you will somehow find yourself surround by such people.

Peace

Sterility

2009-08-18T11:23:00.000+01:00

When you grow up in Cairo, you learn to respect sterility. In a city where noise, smoke, clutter, dust and a multiplying population are the overwhelming norm, clean-cut minimalism has an almost paranormal appeal. For me, the attraction was more of a necessity. At the age of 18, I was diagnosed with a 'mild' linear OCD (after I stormed out of a NMUN meeting at AUC, projectile vomiting because the "chairs weren't in rows") that, thankfully, only manifests itself from time to time.

So here I am, sitting on top of my glass tower in London, not a paper out of place, not an angle betraying 90 degrees. And what do I miss? A little haphazardness, a little unpredictability. Yes, the grass is always greener.

A Life of Excess

2009-08-12T16:25:00.001+01:00

Do you get those moments when, as you look around you, you suddenly feel like you've landed on another planet where amazingly humanlike creatures populate the scenery, where the colours are far too bright and where, despite being a visitor of this planet, you feel that you can navigate and camouflage yourself in its humanoid population?

It all started, I suppose, when I was checking my FB messages just days before S and I were to hit Barcelona (and hit it hard) with 25 of our 'closest acquaintances'. There it was, in my inbox, a video clip from Madrid gay pride in early July of 2009. I was about 1 second away from closing the window and moving on to more productive things (like dudesnude! after all I had no interest whatsoever in the freak show and the imposed gay culture of 'pride' parades) when something caught my attention. The video was of a crowd, a large one that clogged up a wide avenue of downtown Madrid. A sea of people. In the middle was a large truck. It was covered in feathers and embroidered cloth of white, cream and pink varieties. I remembered my friends had put together their own float with the theme of Marie Antoinette. I looked closer and the camera zoomed in on the humanoids. Everyone on the truck was Arab. Armani was front centre, with his outfit just so. The boys were all beautiful, jumping around, dancing and dominating the crowds all the same. The colours were all too bright. The heavily decorated faces! Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel. It was surreal. People that back home wouldn't so much as hold a guy's hand in public were in silver tights, wigs and Max-Mara (pun intended for those of you who speak Arabic) make-up. The crowd below seemed in awe, and so was I.

In Barcelona, where S established himself as the undisputed Reina Sofia in every party of the 2009 Circuit Festival, the surreal bubble only continued. What I remember most are flashes of the time we spent there. Promenades on the nude beach, the muscle gods of Nova Mar Bella Barceloneta, S skipping through the streets of Eixample hand in hand with Rachel, the endless line of Lebanese and Dubai-based boys outside Casanova at 6.30 AM, Vodka Pink Berrys, sunglasses and the best beach party in the history of Sitges. S dominating the go-go box at The Week International at 8 AM after his first caffeine pill.

At some point in Plata Universitat as we sat around waiting for one thing or another, one of the boys asked why gay men go to such extremes to enjoy themselves. Dark rooms, drugs, 24 hour partying, sex for sex's sake – why are we so weird?

I honestly think it is more rebellion than substance. Gay men aren't weird, they've been told they're weird growing up and now they're kicking it in everyone's face. Drugs? Bring it on. Anonymous sex in dark dungeons? Why the hell not. When you're brought up in the Arab world especially (but by no stretch of the imagination is that only applicable there), you learn from a very early age that your whole existence is...wrong. That's why a lot of us go into gay scenes thinking we have nothing to lose. In a sense it is a lack of maturity, but the blame doesn't lie on us entirely.

Even though we have been marginalised by mainstream society and religion, this doesn't mean we have to live marginal lives of hedonism. We have to be attracted by wholesomeness and stability, and this can only come if we deep down accept who we are. I think the greatest irony is that those of us who swish around in parades celebrating 'pride' are actually usually the ones that have the most to prove to themselves.

Peace all
M

Sarastro

2009-08-02T21:46:00.002+01:00

You: Handsome and quirky, floppy haired and dark

Me: Starry-eyed and awkward, smiling back at you from my lunch table with my family

You: Lingering gaze and wide smiles

Me: Lingering smiles and wider gazes

You: Watched me with sad eyes as I left the restaurant

Me: Waited outside till you were done with your friends

You: Practically jogged down the street to where I was standing

Me: Watched the afternoon breeze play with your hair and the sun light up your eyes

“Enter post title”

2009-07-22T23:45:00.001+01:00

Those of you, few but faithful, who know my actual identity, have asked for another post. But I haven’t had the inspiration for anything. I’ve been listening to “Sistereis”, sitting back into my armchair, swinging a glass of merlot, and generally refusing an outlet for my imagination. I enjoy too much the brimming bottle that is my constant, relentless emotional build-up as I introspect myself into molecules.

Long live the King

2009-07-07T10:43:00.003+01:00

I have dreamed of that fedora, that certain glove for so long. But now the Man in the Mirror is gone. Rest in Peace Michael.

www.geocities.com/moosey90.

Revelations

2009-07-02T14:14:00.002+01:00

A few things going through my mind today:

How far would you go, to know the your "Destiny"? To see the "Future"? How do you see time and space? Chance and coincidence?

There is no doubt that humanity is obsessed with the unknown. There is also no doubt there exists a common consensus that our day-to-day lives, however palpable, are dream-like and somehow amiss... that beyond the the 9-5 jobs and the mortgage payments, there exists something more fundamental and True, but unfortunately also something we recognise as out of our reach.

Do you agree that this is the case? Or is it be possible that we are just desperately hoping that there's more to life than "this"? Have we been in denial, refusing to believe that our daily routines are in fact what this life is all about?

Friday I was in Paris for work, and arrived in London at 9.30PM, tired, sweaty but also looking forward to going to a friend's birthday party. 1 shower, 2 spritzes of Allure, and 3 cab rides later (+ 1 Hail Mary for my return for civilisation), Charlie, Inigo and I were on our way to Bethnal Green for the affair.

It was then when I realised there was a new 'gay accessory' that was all the rage with London guppies (gay urban professionals).

In London, a city of expats and social eccentrics, and in the middle of a treacherous recession, who would have known a personal fortune teller and clairvoyant was the new Fendi Spybag equivalent?

Charlie swears by her. "She even got that dates right," he said as the cab wormed through Commercial Street, "she told me that I should expect a huge opportunity at work around the 20th of June." Lo and behold, come the 19th Charlie landed himself a spot in the middle of a large cross-border team on a new project.

Inigo wasn't entirely impressed by his. Though she'd told him a lot about himself, he says she predicted him meeting and falling for an "older Swiss-German gentleman" within in the next few months. "Older Swiss-German gentleman!" He exclaimed. Anyone who knows Inigo knows that whatever he drools on is at most 21 years of age and almost always of Mediterranean origin.

Nonetheless I was fascinated. Growing up in the a Middle-Eastern/Mediterranean, it was not unusual for my mother to host the occasional party with a guest clairvoyant, who stares into your emptied coffee cup and foretells both your happiness and pain.

I am not cynical. And I believe it is almost downright stupid to think that the world is limited to your 5 pitiful senses. Still, as I heard Charlie and Inigo's revelations, I wondered how much of it was a mindgame.

If you believe (with kabbalistic Certainty) that you are bound for big things on X date, you will attract that energy and those things into your life. August for me has always been a 'lucky month'. But it is only that because my heart has a firm expectation in what it brings, and as a result almost every August I've had has been magical. What these clairvoyants may be doing, therefore, is giving you the power to create the destiny you so seek by "predicting" certain events. In reality, what they are actually 'reading' is your personality, and what you hold dearest. They then 'predict' events based on this and a good personality leader will sow the seeds for the events to actually take place.

On what I thought was a separate note: the next day I sat quietly in church as the priest delivered his sermon in the awe-inspiring Brompton Oratory. My ears perked when he said the following:

"We mustn't forget that [our religion] is not an opinion or a matter of Earthly theories. It is a Revelation. It is Certainty. It cannot be arrived at by the human mind, unaided."

My mind instantly struggled with this declaration. Though seemingly benign, it spat in the face of millenia of mystic teachings and even some religions. In Islam, for example, and though we believe the word of God came from Moses, Jesus and Mohamed, we are insistent that religion and spirituality are things you are born with and that you only start to lose sight of with socialisation.

But there's another interpretation. Maybe what Jesus did (and what Moses did, and what Mohamed did) was reveal an unique energy into the world and instill Certainty in his people; do what the fortune teller is doing to Charlie on a 1,000,000 times larger and infinitely more wise scale. Predicting the prosperity of those who follow his teachings and promise great reward. All you need is faith, and faith is not belief or opinion, it is Certainty. This is how your life succeeds.

Pride and Prejudice

2009-06-29T08:43:00.005+01:00

"I miss you..."

There it was, 4 months after I threw him out of my life in a nasty and scurilous text message, the validation I so secretly desired. It came in the middle of the night, of my slumber. It took my eyes several moments to focus on the screen of my phone. When I finally processed the 301 US area code, I felt a horrible mixture of guilt, triumph, and yearning.

I'd been thinking of him the past few days. It was, as I remembered well, his birthday on Thursday.

But in the morning as I bit into my apple, I realised that the ball was where I always hated it to be in relationships - my court.

My pride spoke first. That message is too little, too late. Even if it was true, that's a can of worms I need to stay away from. The exorcism of JD from both my mind and heart has been a long and bumpy road. Was I to make a U-turn after so much progress?

My yearning spoke next. The truth is, I miss him too. Isn't the truth supposed to 'set you free'? Isn't pride something you set aside when one dwells in matters of the heart?

But when you come right down to it, he sent 3 words. One of my recurring frustrations with him has always been his inability to match my expression. In the world of verbal and written communications, he was a frumpy jersey from Lillywhites and I was a fitted Romeo Gigli. So where is the moral dilemma? How/if to respond?

I picked up my phone and sent: "Me too."

Just because I will never put myself back into that relationship doesn't mean I can't be honest with myself and him. Just because things went belly-up doesn't mean we can't be grown-ups and move past this healthily. I made sure I finally restored the balance of expression, I childishly sent two words to trump his three. Maybe one day, if he's willing to talk, I'll admit that the failure of this relationship was partly my fault. I was the one with the 'experience', he had only spent time with one other guy before me, and it wasn't a relationship. I was the wise sage who always preached against long-distance relationships and their hazards, yet I raced into this one without thinking twice.

Qind - Queer Blogazine

2009-06-25T14:12:00.002+01:00

The new issue of Qind is out, you'll be thrilled to know that "the Affirmation" contributed to the "Organic Growth" section.

Actually, the 4 articles in this section are very interesting, celibacy and orgies juxtaposed with glorious art.

Peace

M

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a freak show”

2009-06-07T20:41:00.002+01:00

As fate would have it, there I was, sitting in row X with the vista of the O2 Arena before me, crowds in a consistent howl-applause mixture, lights flaring from every direction. At centre-stage, the Big Apple Circus had begun its routines. Men floated around in rolling hoops, women flew in the air and landed on strings, clowns on giant stilts stared at the crowd, pointing and laughing, and a ballerina balanced a giant metal cube on his nose.

The lights dimmed and from the ceiling bodies emerged, spinning at unbelievable speeds, hanging on to nothing but rope. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” solemnly spoke the MC, “this is a freak show. This…..is a freak show.”

The lights screamed once more and Britney Spears descended from heaven in a diamond orb.

The next 1.5 hours were nothing short of orgasmic as the legendary Miss Spears got her groove on oh so many times. And though you can certainly pinpoint a certain blandness in her expression- after a turbulent year and being virtually on lock-down by her father whilst on tour- she did not fail to make the zillion people in the audience gyrate with her. It was her against the music.

And it was, after all, a freak show, a circus. The return to good old penny-in-the-hat entertainment. But as we all stood gaping, laughing, dancing and screaming all at once, I couldn’t help but feel a little sympathy for Miss Spears. And I have a feeling I wasn’t alone. We all probably related to her a little bit that night. Parental lock-down. Relationship melt-down. Perseverance and kicking ass nonetheless.

When the MC had said that this was a freak show, I didn’t think one could limit that to what was on stage. The best performances integrate the audience, usually in crafty irony. A lot of us know we are freaks of nature. And for those who feel they are not I can only feel pity, life must be insufferably predictable.

So in dancing and screaming her name, we all celebrated a little bit of ourselves that night. The luckiest of us are freaks and performers. You want a piece of me?

Gilgamesh

2009-06-03T21:43:00.003+01:00

We shot ourselves in the foot, I realised one day as I flicked through the timeless Epic of Gilgamesh. As homosexuals, constantly wrenching ourselves away from the influence and conventions of heterosexuality, we've landed flat on our faces in the same dull traps they have fallen into since time began - only for us the shoe simply does not fit. Our moisturised heels are swimming in standard issue caterpillar boots.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the oldest written story of our human race was a love written in the stars, free and pure. I assure you they did not worry about Proposition 8. Nor did Gilgamesh's mother, in Tablet I, have an epilepsy and send him to therapy after realising the destiny of her royal son lies with another man.

True, such great journeys and epic adventures as seen through the eyes of Gilgamesh rarely materialise in our physical world today, but it is not too difficult to see (and some enthusiasts of the esoteric may even wish you to believe that) the monsters and the journeys in Gilgamesh's tale could also be demons and journeys you conquer within yourself.

But hey, who has time for profound connections and spiritual voyages with true love if we're too busy fighting for the hypotheses of gay marriage and test-tube babies? Why do we buy into simulating heterosexual relationships with all their ideosyncracies and force-transcribe them as our own? From the ring on your finger to the debate on monogamy, its tiresome and in most cases irrelevant.

I owe the freedom in my life to many an activist before me who has fought for what I deserve as a homosexual - equality of treatment. But often we lose sight of this, confuse equality with immitation.

In my tenacity to numerical explanations: if everyone aspires to be society's perfect 10 (accepted, respected, etc), heterosexuals usually achieve this through a simple 5+5. Yes, 5+5 gives you a perfect 10, but so does 2+8, or 6+4, and it is up to those of us who arrive at the perfect 10 from different variations to prove the obvious - that we are equally worthy. But instead, what we consistently pursue are the traditional "5+5" societal institutions, such as marriage and procreation, partly because the standards have been embedded in our brains and partly because we want the ligitimacy and respect that they entail.

Our mission, if one exists, should be to ensure we are equally acknowledged and respected regardless of how it is we conduct our lives so long as we follow our heart, and not to seek equality through immitation.

Weirdness

2009-05-31T21:11:00.003+01:00

A little confused by this one. The music is, if anything, retro. It's all shot in or around cairo but at the most polar of extremes. Pretty girls and generally unattractive guys (with one exception). Verdict pending.

Seasonal Anxieties

2009-05-28T16:07:00.000+01:00

I woke up rattled the other day. I was positive (certain even!) that I was late for an exam and had not prepared for it. In this intermediary dream phase I looked at my phone. Slowly, as the image of my calendar made its way through my optical nerve, I regained memory of my life now. A certain joy crept in…I work now, I never have to take an academic exam again!

Still, the bizarre experience got me thinking - true, this was the first May that has come along for me since my toddler years when I haven't had to revise for some mammoth debacle of a proefung - but is my brain on some sort of clock I am not aware of?

Yup, definitely. This morning I woke up laughing at how everyone fucked up our graduation song (from high school!). Though it was a much more entertaining dream, it confirmed that I'd somehow been programmed. I think my brain is expecting certain anxieties and manifesting these expectations in dreams. There's only one more seasonal anxiety I can think of: if I have a nightmare about not fitting into the blue speedo I bought on Ipanema beach in Rio last summer, I swea ta gawd I'm going to sprinkle xanax in a bottle of Pinot Grigio and do it Marilyn Monroe style.

The good news is, however, that you also get your positive seasonal associations this time of year. It is after all, summertime! Good food, good sex, a permanent tan and lazy afternoons. There's a certain liberty in the smell of summer, the feeling that anything is possible. Every real relationship I have had has begun in August. And though I don’t think that's exactly what I'd like to be in store for me this August, I'm hoping I can redirect that good energy to other things I need more right now. I know I'm 24 days early but HAPPY SUMMER EVERYONE.

xoxo

M

Atheism and Natural Law

2009-05-22T12:31:00.008+01:00

On of those scorching days in Cairo, with my sunglasses and car keys in one hand a decaf cappuccino in the other, I made my way up the AUC's Falaky building for my Sufism seminar. All was well during the first few minutes; the class was, as was typical with these bizarre electives, very international in its constitution and we all got along well with one notable exception (a militant Wahabi, surprise surprise).

After studying Sufism for a year I'd come to the conclusion that, without even knowing it, I was a Sufi. Sufism is essentially Islam's mystic tradition. Syncretic, panentheist, and far cry from the "Thou shall" and "Thou shall nots", it brought out the richness of the Islamic traditions of Persia, Turkey and Egypt without the bitter after-taste that so often comes from the modern Arab-Gulf Wahabism and even the moderate versions taught in North Africa (which, if I may add, are becoming less moderate). Sufism, like all mystic traditions, places great value on gnosis, and identifies that aim as a life-long process.

That day we were going through the story of Hayy Bin Yaqzan, by Ibn Tufail. This book posits the hypothesis of a human that has grown up with no education or influence from human society - alone on an island where he was abandoned and brought up by animals. A 'jungle-book' so to speak, but examined from a spiritual dimension. Will this character, Hayy (which is Arabic for "alive"), independently come to the conclusion of a Higher Power? Or will he mimic his surroundings and remain more true to animalism? The story reaffirms the primordial covenant and that humans are, by nature, embedded with the 'DNA' of gnosis, of spirituality. Towards the end of the story, Hayy, who even discovers prayer/meditation as he searches for Truth in his heart, finally comes across more humans. In time, he discovers they too worship, but theirs is a religion of fear and rules, of intolerance and dogma. The book ends on a sad note on the truth of humanity, which Ibn Tufail saw in the 13th century, and which is nonetheless true today.

Bahar, an Iranian Baha'i, was listening to all of this two rows ahead of me. He put up his hand. "There's something I really do struggle with whenever I learn more about Sufism," he started, "it seems to me that Sufis are very elitist. Even in this book, all I can hear is 'we Know, but poor uneducated souls who are trapped in dogma forever swimming around in circles and tormenting their souls'. Why isn't Sufism for everyone, and not just the intellectual and spiritual heavyweights? Surely they would be interested in everyone following their ways?"

Bahar hit it on the head. The reality is, as a Sufi myself, I despise the Muslim masses, Sunni or Shiite, and detest the restricted world they live in that shuns any creativity or curiosity in religion. In fact, calling them Muslims is a mistake in of itself, since the sacred Word as it was passed down to us first demanded the pursuit of knowledge. That aside, it may be the case that mystic traditions are, by nature, exclusive. Mysticism is a step out of the ordinary, and is unregulated. For the masses you need rules, and eventually the rules supersede the purpose for those rules, thus creating 'mainstream religion'. All the same, I reject the notion that mysticism if for the 'intellectual heavyweights'. If philosophies like that of Hayy Bin Yaqzan have taught us anything, it is that every person possesses the capacity, it is only a question of how much they really want to (or even dare to) know. How far into the unknown they are willing to step.

This is why I've come to the conclusion that it is better to be surrounded by a society of atheists than it is by a society that revels in religion. The atheists forget the rules, and in matters of morality follow their conscience and intellect, i.e. the natural law of things, and paradoxically are more spiritual for doing so. I don't think I am the first one to say so either. The great Islamic scholar of the 19th century, Muhammad Abdo wrote that when he visited the West he found Islam but no Muslims and upon his return to the Arab world he countenanced many Muslims but no Islam. As I looked outside the window that day and saw young Egyptian girls in headscarves, I realise how bad things have gotten in my country, and how desperately we need a reformation.

M

Loves it

2009-05-18T18:33:00.000+01:00

Texting 101: The Do's and Dont's

2009-05-18T13:01:00.005+01:00

[This post has been edited following S's declaration of innocence] S, our gem and fellow international party whore, recently shared the following post he picked off the internet. My comments in black and bold.

#1: DO say the words text me when you give out your number to a new guy. Giving a new guy your number and telling him to call can be iffy. Start with a text. Oh dearest benefactor, riding the waves of change. If I give my number out and the first thing I get is a text, I can already see myself leaving the guy. But that's because I appreciate some balls (pun intended).

#2: DON'T just text "Hi." Even if the only reason you're texting him is because you're thinking about him, this kind of short and shy flirtexting typically leads nowhere. Agreed. You may start to sound like you're 'special'.

#3: DO text him back within 24 hours. Anything beyond that reads "I'm just not that into you -- or your texts." And vice versa, if you don't get a reply within 24 hours, rename the contact as *No* on your mobile. Texting is so easy and non-committal, there's no excuse for that kind of delay. On the other hand, turn on your delivery reports! Yes, I have a stalker streak in me.

#4: DON'T purposely send him a "mis-text." Women tend to use this move as a way to make single men jealous. But he'll see right through your needy outreach and move his texts on to the next. Hmm guilty. Did it once during university. I was trying to figure out if this dude sucked cock by mis-texting him and suggesting I was into leather. I followed it up with an apologetic message though within 5 minutes. Awkward? Me? Never.

#5: DO ask him out over text. If you like him, gauge his interest by sending a light-date invite without hesitation. Try: "Don't know about you, but I predict I'll be starving after work Thursday. Dinner?" Text-to-date is an interesting approach. I personally opt for the phonecall because I'm a lot more charming that way. If you're not sure about his degree of interest texting is an easy way out. I don't like easy ways out.

#6: DON'T kid yourself. If he only texts you past 10 P.M., he's probably looking for an encounter you'd rather avoid. The late-night flirtexter does not want to date you. Respond at your own risk. A) 10pm?! Is that the threshold for a 'late-night'? Yikes girl, we's gownna push dat BACK a coupla hours for the real world (i.e. outside of Arkansa). B) Why would you want to avoid that kind of an 'encounter'? Are you 'saving yourself' and keepin a lid on your hot pocket? C) On the other hand, that late at night he may have had a few drinks and lost his inhibition, spelling out what he really wants. Though that goes back to my moxie/balls point. If you ain't got it, me don't want it.

#7: DO use the phone on certain occasions. For instance, if he calls you and you like him, you absolutely must return the call. Texting back in response to his call reads uninterested. Bingo.

#8: DON'T go overboard with abbreviations and acronyms. Things like "MTFBWU" (May the force be with you) and overzealous "LOL" usage should be reserved for texts with your tween cousin or BFF, not to a PBF (potential boyfriend). Muffin, if you're texting guys MTFBWU we have bigger problems than text messaging protocol. That aside, I couldn't agree more. In fact I would go to the other extreme and highly recommend the use of full sentences, spelling, and punctuation. Your message will be clearer and you won't come across as a hormonal teenager (S, for you that effect is inevitable sometimes but at least that way you can delay it :) You know you love me.)

#9: DON'T send a sensual message before you are in an exclusive relationship. Doing this puts your secret fantasies at a high risk of being forwarded to all of his male coworkers. ?! Is there something I should know? This sounds a little too 'close to home'.

#10: DO learn how to send him into the friend zone. Throwing a "Buddy," "Pal," "Kiddo" or "Sport" somewhere in your texts usually accomplishes this. If he's smart, he'll take the hint. Girls interested in dating him don't typically call him "Kiddo." "Buddy, pal, kiddo, sport"?! That just screams closet queen. I would go with a more suave "dude" or "man".

#11: DON'T text your ex. This rule is especially important to remember when you're feeling lonely and vulnerable. Drunk dialling sucks. I have shattered phones to prove it.

#12: DO send a thank-you text, post-date. Even if there were no sparks, it's just proper flirtext etiquette. But if you had the best date ever (we're talking full-on fireworks), call him the next day to say thanks. If he felt the same way, he will definitely appreciate the reassurance! Capital suggestion. I would do just that.

That's all folks,

M

A True Eurovision

2009-05-17T15:55:00.001+01:00

Few events rock the European gay calendar like the Continent’s annual Eurovision bash. For decades, the cheesiest of Europe’s singers have gathered in this bizarre endeavour that has become synonymous with campness and light-hearted competition. (Intentionally so, perhaps, as it is probably a post-war manifestation aimed at bringing more harmony to a continent that has seen its fair share of wars for millenia.)

I’m not big on Eurovision, but inevitably there were half a dozen parties being thrown in honour and I had to agree to at least one. As we sat around, gobbled sushi and downed Veuve I looked at the scorecard with the list of all the countries on it. My mind stumbled a few times. Israel? Turkey? Azerbaijan?! This is a Europe very different from the one we are all used to.

As the show began, and Cirque Du Soleil put us in sheer awe, I noticed the sea of flags waving in the crowd. It was an awesome spectacle. Greece and Turkey, Germany and France – it is a rare and amazing reminder of how far these peoples have come.

Israel’s show was either 2nd or 3rd, and it was partly sung in Arabic. Iceland, one of the most hated nations following the recession, came in second place. Azerbaijan 3rd. What is amazing about Eurovision is not only does it unite all these random cultures, but also that it puts them all on equal footing. Germany, Europe’s largest economy and most populous nation, wasn’t even in the top 20. Iceland, with a population of less than a half a million people, came in second. The slates had been wiped clean before the show, and everyone was there to have fun.

My personal favorite was Moldova! They had amazing energy. Sadly though, they did not win!

Spring Insomnia

2009-05-13T01:52:00.002+01:00

Leaves awakening
Daylight tangles through branches
Hear the rays whisper

America: The Virgin (Meat) Market

2009-05-08T00:16:00.004+01:00

Hola from the City by the Bay. Yes, after about a week of inebriation in New York, going out with 8 ft tall transvestites at 5am and knocking back Greygoose like a Russian on crack at swish bars and perfume launches, it is definitely time for some sun and relaxation a la California. And as I have left New York, a city that really bares little resemblance to the rest of this vast land, and have ventured to the edge of the world aka the West Coast, a theory of mine has confirmed itself yet again.

It is hard to think of America as a 'virgin' anything. We're talking about a country that invented the art of commercial exploitation. The country where evangelical leaders tour its flat states, like a circus or a rock band, and prostitute fundamentalism to masses on wide screen TV's standing in front of neon crosses.

That said, I can't help but realise that the vast stretch of land from Maine to Baja California is in its twisted way...a Gay Mecca.

Hear me out! Yes, I'm well aware that by now about a third of the population of this country is at least 20lbs overweight, and probably the same proportion is deep in a religious fundamentalism that makes Cairo look like Amsterdam. That said, it is also the case that there are hundreds of thousands, probably millions of gay men in this country that live in between the alcohol free, Joseph Smith extreme of Salt Lake City and the pseudo-European simulation of New York City. That is where the gems truly are.

See, the gay New Yorkers, they're just like the gay Western Europeans. Rubbed up against each other, alcoholic, rarely ever drug free and generally cynical about the idea of a long term relationship. When they're good looking, they know it all to quickly, and sincerity is rare.

On the other hand, the deeply religious homos of Salt Lake City (which I am using as a metaphorical epicenter, psycho-religious gays are everywhere in the States) more often then not loathe themselves, revel in abstinence, and the repression often drives them to the former extreme.

But if farmer Joe wasn't brought up a devout Mormon, and grew up in the Heartland of cornfields and Ford pick-up trucks, only to realise one day that he has a thing for other guys, chances are Joe is the gay Holy Grail. And here's why:

Aesthetics first (of course): Americans have the widest gene-pool of any nation. Chances are Joe's parents or grandparents were a mix of Irish/Italian/Russian/German/Jewish (yes, technically a race)/ad infinitum and we all know mixed breeds are a delicacy. Manual labour, and corn fed chicken are more common in the Heartland. That is of course in addition to the American craze and appreciation for outdoors sports. In other words, Farmer Joe is probably buff and handsome. En plus, 80% of men are circumcised in the good ole US of A, and hygiene is an integral part of social acceptability. Aside from sometimes painful accents and abominable taste in clothing (both things you can train with a handy whip from Ann Summers), I'd say we have a winner.

Second, lets look at the psyche: Farmer Joe probably grew up in a quiet town, with one traffic light, or even better, on a farm. His education may not be a strong-point, but growing up in a relatively more normal family and environment, he probably has deep rooted family values and principles. He is religious, but logical and pragmatic in that quintessential American fashion. He appreciates simplicity, and sees his happiness in perhaps having a family and an extra SUV. Even if farmer Joe grew up in a city like Cincinnati, chances are the mentality is not all that different.

I have seen my fair share of Joe's, who've tunneled their way to the East/West Coast (or even Europe) in search of 'city life', and I remain infatuated by what they represent. A kinder, less insatiable alternative to popular 'gay culture'. God-fearing, stable and attractive.

So girls, start booking those 15 connecting flights to Iowa (which recently legalised gay marriage!), Brokeback Mountain ain't no fantasy.

Sun and watermelon martinis,

M

Eyes Wide Shut

2009-05-01T15:58:00.009+01:00

I read through some of my blog posts the other day (narcissist that I am), and I was surprised to see that I have been pimping London out almost as much as Sarah Jessica Parker pimped out New York in here televised turn-of-the-century bible. And though as I watched her do it on television with a mild repugnance - after all, how much of a farm girl do you have to be to love 22 square miles of concrete that much? - I now understand, in ways I didn't before, what it means to be infatuated by a city. Whilst Cairo will always be my home, my stomping ground, its surreal contrasts of dusty Middle Eastern alleys and glitzy nights of savoir-faire forever burning a candle inside me, I have spent my adult life so far on this chilly island and it is a different thing altogether to find adulthood in a city like London.

So, my dearest reader of formidable patience, this post will be nothing less than another ode to the happenings of this city eternal, the centre of the universe.

But tonight's tale is a little different, because after all I was in search of something a little different myself. I had spoken to my friend Victor (of Qind, a London-based gay magazine targeting a more thoughtful audience) recently one lazy afternoon in Soho at Qind's issue launch about his thoughts for the future.

"We want to talk about sex but in a slightly different way," he said. "We may be out, but sex seems to be very much in the closet. Demonised and fetish-ised, a thriving industry has been built on it. Then there is the guilt and shame, which can lead to its expression in not-so-healthy ways. We are bringing sex into the light, with a focus on respecting your sexual space and desires. We want to put sex in its rightful place as something healthy, normal and natural from mild to wild."

As liberal as even a place like London could be, the reality is that much of our carnal pleasures are still reserved either literally or metaphorically for dark dungeons. But the question poses itself: how liberal does one want to be in these regards? Where do you draw the line between healthy and unhealthy expression? These are questions that will probably remain unanswered, but I got closer to an understanding of the whole issue much sooner than I expected. Friday night was not a good night for it either. I had to catch an 8am flight out of Heathrow to JFK the next day, but my curiosity was far too overwhelming…

***************

"33 Grosvenor Road. We'll see you there at Midnight."

My friends Archie and Lawrence were also invited to this 'event'. Somewhat intimidated myself but perhaps too suave-sounding to admit it, I'd suggested we all go together. Like glamazombies in dark trench coats, our black cab pulled up to the Georgian style mansion in silence on a warm spring evening. "Are you sure this is it?" I wanted to ask. Though it was a main road, it was quiet and no light or sound seemed to come from the building in question. My question was irrelevant, because Archie had already made his way between the Doric columns to announce our arrival. A light breeze flapped through Archie's coat as he lifted the knocker, twice.

After what was a very quiet minute, a handsome butler slowly opened the door. "Welcome," he motioned us in the foyer. It was an old but well preserved house. Sky-high ceilings, wooden banisters and Louis-quainz furniture. A dim, giant chandelier floated above us.

Lawrence looked at me with a dry smile. "This must be the Main Audience Chambre," he snickered. I giggled uneasily.

"Gentlemen, your coats?"

Seconds later we were being guided through a corridor with thick maroon carpets. The old architecture was enchanting, but its flawed acoustics hinted at what awaited us not too far ahead. The sound of laughter, a woman's laughter, came vividly. We went down a short flight of stairs and the environment grew, emboldened.

A tall, slim, and frankly gorgeous woman wearing very little walked by in her aviator sunglasses, joking in Russian. The music was evident, and it was coming from somewhere inside. But the journey to the dancefloor was all too exciting. A red, ancient lounge chair with soft omniscient lighting stood alone in one corner. We walked by. Shelves displaying shoes so vintage the brands were barely recognizable. This was a glamorous, alternative affair.

Enfin, the dancefloor appeared. A DJ was spinning, and a waiter walked around with champagne flutes. It was hardly packed, but it had an unusually cosy feeling. At one end of the room, a couple of steps led to a warm jaccuzi and, further on, a bed.

What followed was surreal, to the point that I struggle in finishing these sentences. But using Victor as my inspiration, for bringing sex out in the open, my perspective and expectations were very broad.

Bodies intertwined. The clothes came off at the request of our glamorous hostess, and all that remained was 40 or so guys in tight speedos. As the vodka et al kept flowing, the intensity grew. I was in the middle of a very large orgy. Naked bodies surrounded me, rubbed against me. Lips engulfed several parts of my body. And the same applied to everyone arround me. My tongue explored foreign skin, tasting every inch of it.

Hours it lasted. Threesomes, foursomes, and more. Why did this not feel sleazy?

Now, 5.15 am as I write this, with only hours before my flight, I realise that this was a long time coming. Sex is a biological necessity, like nutrition, and when you truly see it that way, you will realize that that orgy could easily be compared to a dinner party.

The End is Nigh

2009-04-28T13:55:00.004+01:00

It is virtually impossible to avoid the media frenzy that has consumed the world over the past few days. Pig flu? At least SARS had an ominous and foreign ring to it. Spanish influenza sounds more like a dance and even the bubonic plague hints biblical glory. What an unglamorous way to go, a pig virus.

Of course, in my kidding I disguise uneasiness. Though I'm not quite ready to get on the mask-wearing, news-channel flipping, hypochondriac bandwagon, the notions of apocalypse that follow any forecast of a pandemic excite me.

The recording angel opens its hundred eyes and snaps the spine of the Book of Life.

What is it about eschatology that rouses a primordial yearning within people? And all the same…scorn! When that clan in Russia trapped itself underground last year in bitterly cold permafrost, certain that the end of the world would come within days, I wondered as to the value of eschatology beyond the feeling of control that it gives people. The finality and the end of mystery excite those who dwell in Armageddon.

Correlation(ships)

2009-04-27T13:47:00.002+01:00

The weekend brought more sunshine than the BBC would have ever dared to publicly admit. The unspoken rule is, when in doubt, forecast rain. If the sun creeps out, everyone will be in too good a mood to care about inept predictions. But if the opposite had happened, their credibility would have been at stake. I would march in protest if the weatherman had me out on a Saturday in hot shorts and sunglasses, only to be drenched in rain.

So on a lazy sunny weekend Roy, Suli, Yolanda and I sat out on Roy's roof terrace having something bubbly to drink and barbequing hamburgers, with Regents Park and the whole vista of London before us. It was picture perfect, though a chilly wind was picking up.

Not long into our lounging, in walked Romanus, and I nearly choked. Romanus was the size of a bus. Not fat, no no, he was 100% steroidal (and after what must have been a morning under the UV rays of a sunbed) roast beef. Had he not been wearing a ridiculous pair of denim shorts and a navy blue wife-beater, I would have easily assumed he was a professional bodybuilder.

His effeminate clothes provided a contrast that was difficult to appreciate, especially after 3 glasses of champagne. Though, in truth, I struggled in my head to put him in any outfit that would even match the uber-masculinity his body seemed to suggest. Romanus did have saving graces- he was sweet, unassuming and handsome. Roy told me that he used to be thinner than I am (which, for the unprivileged who haven't met me, would amount to emaciated), though Roy himself admits he was much more attractive back then. The current Romanus was a result of a couple of years' worth of injections and plastic surgery.

As the evening progressed I noticed something else that struck me about Romanus. He was brutally honest about himself, in the way that victims of war or cancer patients sometimes are, reducing events and experiences that undoubtedly were very painful to an austere matter-of-factness that sometimes makes others uncomfortable.

I had missed the beginning of a conversation, which was evidently about his dating life. But my ears perked when in the manner I described above, he turns to us and says, "I don’t know, I just have not been able to go on a second date with someone for what seems to be years."

Suli automatically assumed the lack of interest was on Romanus' part, and told him that eventually he'll get butterflies from someone. In a sense, Suli probably didn't expect that someone so good looking and that pumped up could have trouble getting a second date. "No, it's not me who loses interest, the problem is not on my end," replied Romanus, "they just loose interest in me."

At this point I'd had a little more to drink than I should and I jumped at the opportunity to berate him. "How long did you say this has been happening?"

"More than year, with quite a few guys," he innocently responded.

"Well since you're the only common factor in all these first dates, I'd say the problem certainly is on your end."

He stared at me, but not in indignation, I couldn't quite place it.

I tried to explain the blindingly obvious: that he was, in effect, attracting the same kind of guy in to his life, and that if this was ever going to change he'd have to change not only his approach but how he sees himself.

"Well, I've already paid for it but you just summed up my 2 years of therapy." Should I be charging money for my drunken antics?

It may be novel to Romanus but my fellow homos and I have been debating the Correlation for a while.

BEWARE OF THE FORMULA:

Muscle Mass divided by Age --> Boyfriend(hotness exponent) multiplied by # of Years LTR

or

This formula, unfortunately, has most gay men by the balls. The Correlation derived from the above formula is that the youngest guys with the most muscles get the hottest boyfriends for longest time. As age increases or muscle mass decreases, the integer on the left has a lower value, thus resulting in a less-hot boyfriend for less years.

The sad truth, therefore is, that gay men often times attach their worth as individuals to the left side of this formula. And like many other things in the gay world, it’s a vicious cycle, in this case with two faces:

Face 1: Expectations. You blame your current single-hood on your physical inability to attract the kind of guy you want. You are certain as Pythagoras that if your arms were a little thicker, your chest a little wider, or your waist a little thinner that your 'league' will change. You work, and you work hard at the gym. Maybe even experiment with a couple of steroids. You get bigger, and your waist is as thin as a 5-year-old girl's. Hotter guys start approaching you and checking you out. But now they're all too attainable, and the interest is physical - the emotional void grows and you're hooked on the approval, moreover, you still can't get the dreamy guys you want. You go up a bench-press weight, your pecks get a little bigger, and like equity shares, your expectations for a return on investment grow with them. You're looking for hotter guys now, whilst the truth is there is no ceiling to this vicious cycle. Deep down you know these guys that you never attracted when you were too thin or too fat are only now approaching you because of something entirely separate from your person. They're caught in the vicious cycle too. Which brings us to Face 2.

Face 2: Common vulnerability. The formula above preys on the self-doubting. What you have in effect is a community of self-doubters with amazing bodies. Emotional vulnerability and weakness of mind is masked with physical strength. The very people that fall victims are the same that perpetuate the Correlation - it is all they know and those who present an alternative are threatening their reality. Instead of building on their intelligence and maturity as gay men and identifying these traits as their greatest assets, the focus and worth lies in their appearance. As a result, you get statements like: "How the hell did he end up with him?!" when you see an 'attractive' guy with a non-conformer; or better yet "Oh look at the really old and saggy guy and the really young hot guy. I guess he really needs the money." Is it not possible that 'older' guys, in their life experience have gathered up enough charm and emotional security to attract younger ones? Is money the only option, the only other alternative currency of power or status in this fucked up gay community?

A disclaimer: there is nothing wrong with looking and feeling healthy. If you've got some extra flab you should by all means hit that treadmill. If you're feeling underweight by all means get a trainer, work on some muscles. A healthy body in the end only aids a healthy mind. The trick is not to associate this with your social status or worth. You will succeed in surrounding yourself with people, but will not feel much better about anything.

I'm rambling, and if you made it this far in the post than you clearly have more tolerance than I can hope for. It is just sad to see millions of guys with amazing potential become slaves to their bodies and the labels they wear.

Peace

M

Fuck Disney, Fuck Hollywood

2009-04-20T17:21:00.002+01:00

I'm not an angry person. I truly believe that my misfortunes are mine and that blame is counterproductive. But, realistically now, we can't all be Kumbaya all the time, can we? In fact, I think it’s a little healthy to (once in a while) realise where the problems lie around you, whip out your manicured index finger and point at something as the source of all evil incarnate without flinching.

Billions of words, millions of pages and the endless depths of the wasteland that is cyberspace dedicated to (or wasted on) cracking the relationship code. Why you and I aren't in one. How you and I could be in one. What to do once you're in one, and how to gracefully fall out of one.

Meet Roy. Roy is 42, reasonably good looking, camp as Christmas and richer than God. After a hypoxy and a mud bath, he drove to Pimlico and honked his S Class outside my door urging me to hurry up. We were on our way to a party in north London and hearing that Brazilians were featured as canapés, his patience was not to be tested. I rolled into the passenger seat, bottles of bubbly clinking in one hand and travel size moisturiser in the other, clearly not 100% ready yet.

"Habibi," he says in his Lebanese/French accent "don't keep mommy waiting like that."

As we crossed Westminster into Camden and (choke) the unknown beyond, Roy and I were having one of our usual discussions about men and relationships. He was frustrated. Here he was at his prime, looking good, feeling good, and still the 'right guy' hasn't come along.

Well, what do you define as the right guy? I asked. His answer wasn't entirely clear. He wanted someone that came from a good family, with good values. He wanted someone that is financially secure, "No more toy boys! Prostitutes are a dime a dozen darling and honestly I'd rather just pay for sex than have to pretend I'm interested in their lives."

Cynical, but honest. Then he said something else. "You know," he stopped suddenly at a zebra crossing and looked me straight in the eye, "it may be that I'm just not looking hard enough. It is almost like I don't have the energy. Recently, it dawned upon me that maybe there's a reason why I don't care enough.

"You see," he resumed driving, "I've been sharing a house with Xavier for 18 years. We've never dated, never kissed, never even the thought of sex between us. We just got used to living together, meeting other guys, dating them for a while, and then discarding them. But think about it this way, whatever guy I meet, the sex will be great, it'll work for a few years, then eventually that will fade away and what will really be left is companionship. But, you see, with Xavier I already have the companionship. I'm not ready to invest another 18 years in someone else. The 'right guy' I'm describing is actually just another version of Xavier! So all I really want it seems is the first part of the relationship. For the happily-ever-after, I have my friend Xavier."

I was on the verge of saying something before I realised how stupid it really was. In a soft and lustful tone with yearning and butterflies, like Cinderella on ecstacy pills, I was about to say "But don't you want to fall in love? Meet someone special and grow old together?"

When did we decide that Disney and Hollywood got it all right? That Cinderella was a true story and that Cameron Diaz could act? We've been polluted, our intelligence insulted. We walk into one of these movies and for 2 hours our spirits are played into ecstasy as the love story unfolds before us. Of course, somewhere along the line Drew Barrymore throws a hissy-fit, Meg Ryan is reduced to tears or, God help us, Julia Roberts goes through an existential crisis. "It can't all be smooth sailing," you can hear the directors say as they plot the divorce of rationality from emotion.

These love stories are like drugs, the relationships they simulate last a couple of hours, they give you a rush and inevitably, as you walk out of the movie theatre and start holding up your love life in comparison, a come-down. Who's to say that Roy and Xavier don't have the perfect relationship? Sex when they need it, and someone they can rely on who will always be part of their lives? Not me. So I kept my mouth shut.

Now its time to look at myself. What kind of a relationship is logically the one that will work best for me, Shakespearean hypocrisy aside?
I've stopped leaving slippers behind; no prince-charming for me, thank you.

Viva la Résistance!

2009-04-06T16:05:00.003+01:00

We've all been there. Boy meets boy. Boy falls head over heels for boy, and is pretty sure the same is true in reverse. Boy realises tragic flaw in boy. The tragic flaw consumes the entire relationship and boy can no longer play the game. Boy dumps boy, wondering if the other boy was just as head over heels for him…It's called Shakespearean tragedy with a homo twist.

Though my relationship with JD had, at least in my mind, substantially ended quite a while ago, old flames were somewhat fanned when he announced he was visiting London for a few days to see 'a sick uncle'. I wasn't entirely sure meeting him was a good idea, but he insisted that it would be a good thing and I was after all curious as to whatever happened between us.

In typical neo-JD fashion (neo as in post-turning-into-a-freak-I-don’t-even-recognise JD), he came and went, failing to ever make enough effort to realise that dinner. And the thing is, before he said he was coming, I was fine. Things were moving on. I'd met Superman (ok, he just looks like superman because he has an amazing jaw-line and Scottish features - and ever since I met him that Mandy/Booka Shade track "Superman" has been playing in my head!) a few weeks back and along with another couple of friends-with-favours, things looked like they were on the up. But in those three days JD spent here, messaging but never committing, begging but never promising, I was gradually consumed with enough anger to burn a whole through the ground beneath me. The day he was leaving London, I sent him a message asking him to kindly delete all of my contact details and not to ever fucking dare so much as think about calling (add a few more four letter words in there). Predictably, he messaged back expressing hurt and confusion, but he will have to try a lot harder than that to get a response from me.

So Viva la Résistance! Taking the lead from my homegirl Oprah who first debuted the "He's Just Not That Into You" book into our dating lives, I moved ON.

But herein lies the danger. Though I technically dumped him, the reality was that he constructively dumped me because he left me no choice. I was dumped indirectly. I've never been dumped before, but thankfully have seen enough of it around me to gather a little intelligence to help me navigate the aftermath. And it is an abyss.
Attention. That’s what you always need when you've been dumped. You need to know that people still want you, that you still matter, that you have prospects and won't be alone forever. Now I know that sounds silly, but its true. As noted, I had seen this around me several times, and I did everything but strap my hands together to stop me from dialling exes or fuck buddies from times past.

And my friend P Bear was right; the only way to get over a man is to get under one. Just always make sure it's not something you'll regret.

So I put it all behind me with speed I'm even surprised I could muster. That same day (last Friday) I sent the text message I was in Soho for a birthday, and out of nowhere I met a stunning guy from San Francisco. It was perfect, he was gone on Monday, and he was looking for some fun and someone to have dinner with. I happily obliged, also knowing that I will be in San Francisco next month and will probably need similar treatment.

And when it rains it fucking pours. Remember Kyril from my New Years Chronicles? Out of nowhere I get a message from him, asking if I was in London over Easter, and whether I would be interested in having coffee with him. Superman leaves me a heart-felt voice message on the phone that evening (I told him about the situation with JD, and he is doing his 'best to give me some space).

So I've decided this is a lot like the France in the 18th century. Was JD the equivalent of Louis XVI? Did I lead my own résistance movement to rid myself of the tyrant? No, I think JS, my previous partner of 3 years, was Louis XVI. Once I'd ousted him, JD came in as Robespierre with promises of freedom that turned into a Reign of Terror. If my love life follows the analogy of the French Revolution, I'm bound to have a Napoleon very soon. I just hope this one is taller and has a bigger penis.

Where do I start, where do I begin

2009-03-31T21:04:00.004+01:00

As I plop down onto my sofa to write this, I can't help but remember the first time I wrote an electronic journal. God it feels like aeons ago. I was probably about 9 or 10 years old, keyboard happy on my LC Macintosh. Now as I watch the blank screen of the computer patiently as it loads, I catch my reflection and ponder as to how much it has changed over these many years. Was I ever innocent?

Life - it's always been about getting ahead for me. On top. I think I inherited that, probably from my mother. And in so doing I developed a whore-dom for her approval. When she died, I prostituted every skill that I had to make sure the approval never died with her. I made sure everyone approved of me in one way or another. It sounds pretty screwed up, but the reality is it has helped me a lot. I worked my ass off, finished first in my graduating class both at school and university. Took diversifying my time to the extreme - writing, web design, saxophone, track and field training, charity, politics and eventually - law.

But I didn't stop there. Like her I've always been a social creature, and nobody approves of a know-it-all do-it-all geek who can't carry a witty conversation or enjoy cointreau. I used what looks I have and combined it with whatever affluence I had acquired and morphed it into charm. The subtle kind of course, the kind that takes equally charming and affluent people to truly understand (the rest are confused, baffled). Even in my criticism I make sure that it is tasteful, hyperbolically understated so as to deepen the injury intended.

I was always like this. I dont remember a time when I didnt craft every word that came out of my mouth, or didn't plan a couple of steps ahead, or obsess over social dynamics. Innocence and spontenaiety? In theory possible. But it's almost as if I can hear my Id, Superego, and Ego - every layer of my brain - talking at once, analysing every moment.

Now I'm 23. Now I'm running. Faster, faster. Not sure where, but in doing the above I have surpassed even my own expectations. Now there's little out there to challenge me to go further. "A god amongst flies" AD tells me, and I allow myself the thought out of egoism.

The world around me has changed since the age of 9. London is the perfect escape. Transience. Let me hear you say it, with a capital T, Transience. After hating growing up in a family where family members disappeared, and in a school where your friends often came from far away places only to return with a piece of your heart with them, no justice was quite so poetic as me moving to this wasteland of London. Here it is multiplied. No one same set of friends exists from weekend to weekend as the never ending flock of 747s swoops in and out of the city. You spend your day between 2 or 3 languages, 10 or 20 nationalities, people you will never see again and people you will bump into weeks later and never remember.

London is the perfect escape. Life in London is a surreal blur, not for the motion sick or the faint of heart. Thick skin and a thicker wallet is all you need. Opulence, the city thrives on it. Spend your weekends on a diet of vintage champagne and pure cut cocaine, spend your week closing the deals and billing the hours. In between you throw in the exhibitions, the pseudo-philanthropic events, the afternoon teas and the late night coupes. Leave the country once a month and pretend like you never want to go back. Its as if we all are afraid of having an hour to ourselves, lest we think inwards and not outwards; lest we realise the gaping abyss we are trying to fill with infinite ambition and indulgence. It's a cliche, but in a city of so many people the easiest thing for one to be is alone.

Was I ever innocent? The question, I guess, is what you would define as innocent. If you define innocence through actions, then that ship has sailed a long, long time ago. If its a state of mind or an tenacity to faith in the goodness around you, even when you live in a place like London, then maybe the curtain hasn't quite been called yet. One thing, however, is for sure. In constantly pushing and getting so far ahead I sometimes fear that I've lost a bit of who I used to be along the way.

Heart-warming

2009-03-01T11:47:00.002Z

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Poems on the Underground

2009-02-11T09:55:00.004Z

Repeat that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound,
Off trundled timber and scoops of hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:

The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Diary of Zarathustra's Groupie

2009-02-05T17:36:00.001Z

"Der Mensch ist ein Seil, geknüpft zwischen Tier und Übermensch - ein Seil über einem Abgrunde."

I've been a Nietzsche groupie for a while, but as of late I've taken that laterally to being a fan of Zarathustra. Two reasons, first, ever since art class in 3rd grade at elementary school I've always looked up to Leo Da Vinci and Michelangelo for being versatile, accomplished people of virtually every craft and trade. Inventor, scientist, artist, carpenter, surgeon, you name it I'm fascinated with the Renaissance man, his fearless optimism and pursuit of knowledge and ability, the excitement of individualism and the self-actualisation that must surely result. I had no literary background to describe the Renaissance man in Ms Batty's 3rd grade arts and crafts class, let alone the Übermensch (over-man, beyond man, super-man) as envisioned in Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra), but I could sense the yearning for greatness that these men (and women) turned into something real.

The second reason is my new found interest in Zarathursianism (or Zoroastrianism, founded on the teachings of Zoroaster or Zarathustra), a religion that flourished in Persia among other places prior to the Islamic Empire. As children in the Middle East we were taught that the Muslims defeated the "fire worshippers" from what is now Iran as the empire spread from Spain to China. Fire worshippers. That sounded pretty stupid and a tad scary. But the Zoroastrians don't pray to fire, they ignite it to give them inspiration in connecting with God (Kabbalists still use candles, and churches are lined with them). The In fact, the principles of Zoroastrianism are pervasive throughout all three Abrahamic religions and of course pre-date them.

I suppose the irony is that, with me being so excited about religion, an often blasphemous and angry atheist like Nietzsche turns out to be one of my heroes. "When I come across a religious man, I feel the need to wash my hands" he says. And in many ways I couldn’t agree more. The Sufi order to which I hold most affinity is the Malamteya order - which rejects ostentatious displays of religion and goes to extremes in doing so.

But what's the relationship between his concept of the Übermensch and Zarathustra, the prophet? One of Nietzsche's attacks on religion is that it focuses too much on the benefits of the afterlife and religious folk as a result are willing to settle in this life for much less than what they would otherwise be willing to, and can, attain. This can be tied quite well to the Zarathustrian aversion to asceticism in all its forms. Unlike the Abrahamic traditions for which there exist an array of mystics who fast for months on end and walk around barefoot in concrete caves, Zarathustrians focus on the here and now and with insist on active engagement in good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. Monasticism is therefore practically taboo. Another interesting fact is that proselytizing, or 'converting people', is generally not practiced. Though this may be for historical reasons, its another de-emphasis that works towards the theo-phobic Übermensch.

What I'm trying to say is that it's often comforting too see that ancient ideology and relatively modern philosophy still in many cases converge. In many ways it actually feels like we're all saying the same thing over and over again, with different words and in different languages, and the lucky ones get a glimpse of this harmony now and again.

If you're still snoring its time to get up and hit facebook.

Politics of Sex

2009-02-01T09:43:00.001Z

Etiquette is something we learn as very young and ungrateful children. Where to put our cutlery when still eating and when done, where to leave our napkin if we’re visiting the mensroom, and how to never bend our backs while eating soup. You also learn ‘cocktail party’ etiquette as you reach adulthood by 18. You learn the kind of conversations that are acceptable with people you just met, how to seem debonair even if you’re an out of control alcoholic, and how to politely divert any unwanted sexual interest heading your way. How to be pretentious and angelic in one breath.

Those rules I’ve pretty much adopted throughout my life as law, even if at times unnecessary, because I’m a whore for approval and shudder at the thought of being considered ungracious.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve been finding my Gwyneth Paltrow approach to socialising in large groups detrimental to when the time comes and I escort one of the lucky gentlemen to my bedroom. It seems that the faux pas I’ve been so warned against are in fact the only way you can survive being gay and sexually active, at least in London. And of course, its sad.

The examples are many, but lets take the most recent one with Ishmael. Friday night I was planning a quiet and cozy night indoors, probably read a little more Umberto Eco and dabble with a little dinner. It was not to be though – I hadn’t had sexual intercourse (not counting oral sex, who does these days?) for a month and Charlie was insisting that I head out to the Box in Covent Garden for a drink.

The Box is, of course, a gay bar. It stands out from other gay bars because the men are pretentious (more than your average dose) and muscle-bound. I may at times lay claim to the former, but not the latter. Still I went, knowing that by now Charlie has introduced me to half the regulars there and I wouldn’t be at all bored.

I’m glad I did, the evening was fun. People I hadn’t seen since last year were hanging around, I flirted with couple of cute bartenders, had delicious vodka, and even went out for a divine menthol cigarette (and I don’t even smoke). At some point at around 10.30pm I was introduced to Ishmael, a sexy Spaniard who works for British Airways as a flight attendant. I carefully asked him if he knew any of the other BA flight attendants I’d slept with in the past (they are a dime a dozen) and felt refreshed when he didn’t. He asked what I did, I replied not revealing too much for fear of being tacky. We talked a little, and as we were standing side-to-side I politely had my hand around his shoulder when i leaned over to talk to him. I was heading home soon and I told him that. Where do you live, he asked, and I had moved to Westminster which was not very far away. Since he lived in Croydon (which is at least an hour’s worth of public transportation) I offered that he spend the night at my place. He smiled, and said he would like to.

At home, the cork was popped, the clothes came off, and we made out for a while. I took him upstairs to my room and got him in bed. It may have been the vodka but he was really hot. After teasing him a little more I went into my wooden treasure case (thank you S! I’ve been putting to good use) to take out lube and a condom. As things progressed he stopped me, looked, and smiled: “I’m sorry, I’m only active”.

First of all, WHAT?! An active BA flight attendant?! What has happened to the world? I checked and sure enough things were really tight down there. “Its ok,” I mumbled, and though on occasion I have switched sides I wasn’t going to do it with someone I just met and I wasn’t in the mood for it anyway. We played around a little more, he eventually gave it a try, but it was so difficult I was literally in pain every time I pushed.

Resigned, we fell asleep next to each other. In the morning I got up, made us breakfast, and got ready for my run. When he left, I messaged Charlie, who had seen us leave together and was inquiring about how well thing went, and I let him know of the unfortunate disappointment.

He wrote back: “A lesson your mother has to teach you is about careful due diligence before you rush home with someone!”. Due diligence. Hm. So what, as I passed him his Corona that night I should have casually slipped in: “So, do you take it up the ass?”?! My faux pas etiquette monitor would have burnt me on the tongue no sooner. How much are you supposed to discuss when you’re planning to take someone home, without loosing the charm of the moment? I realise this is entirely unchartered territory because for straight couples, unless the guy likes girls with strap-ons, there is really one way things can go: he’ll give and she’ll receive. But with two men, there’s a couple of options, and just as I’m pretty fixated on one option so will other guys be- and liking each other at a bar is not enough. I need to figure out a way to, somehow, know which side he’s on without spelling it out and ruining the fun. Though i can’t be blamed for my assumption this time around (I repeat, BA flight attendants are almost always passive), what am I going to ask the next time? I figured that in clubs things are a little easier. When everyone’s jumping and dancing you sometimes get a feel for which end of the spectrum Mr. X is on. Moreover the etiquette rules are thrown out the window with the music, the sweat, and substance abuse. But clubs are the worst places to meet people in London, and I plan on sticking to my bar/dinner party scene.

Anyone come up with a crafty little trick, throw it in my direction.

The New Year Chronicles

2009-01-11T11:18:00.004Z

Breathing a sigh of relief that the ‘date’ I was so afraid of (see "Moral Dilemma”) turned out to be a friendly dinner with a very senior co-worker, my mind switched immediately to holiday/party mode. It was the morning of the 31st of December, 2008. Packing my bag was taking longer than usual, as every morning, afternoon, and evening from that day until the 5th of January had to be pre-planned to the last belt.

Decisions made - I locked my front door and in minutes I was walking through the gorgeous St. Pancras station, hunting for my friend Charlie.

(Background: Charlie and I met in a club in early 2005. He is by far gay London’s most established socialite. A Jewish Iraqi of Austro-Hungarian descent, who grew up in Sudanese Catholic school in Khartoum, we instantly bonded in the royal fuck up that is our bi-cultured (or in his case tri? quad?) upbringing and our passion for middle-eastern culture and men. In that club at around 6 am we realized that we knew a lot of people in common in both Cairo and London. Ever since that night we have been to a large extent part of the same ‘family’, after he announced semi-officially that he’d ‘adopted’ me. During the three or so years I spent with James, we grew apart as James despised Charlie and his drug-taking habits, and Charlie did not appreciate the judgment. To define Charlie as a druggie is to define Madonna as a blonde – its irrelevant and he is so much more than that. Charlie is a spiritual and social landmark with an intense history and sharp people skills.)

As I walked through the awe-inspiring atrium of the train-station I saw a figure waving from the escalator, phone in one hand, shopping bags in the other. Charlie gave me a big hug and whispered in my ear with an almost sinister wisdom: “My dearest son, are you ready?”

Within in minutes our train was making its way out of London to Bruxelles. In typical Charlie fashion, he dumped his bags, silk scarf and coat on his seat and dragged me by the hand to the restaurant car. On the way there we ran into a friend of his that was travelling to Bruxelles for the same purpose, ‘La Demence’.

(Background: La Demence (which is french for The Insanity) has for the past year or so, along with Amsterdam’s ‘Rapido’ and Ibiza’s ‘Supermarxe’, been known as one of Europe’s best gay circuit parties, usually held in Bruxelles. This is no meek business. Buses run from Amsterdam, Paris and Köln to drop eager gay clubbers in Bruxelles for the night and wait outside for a 10am return journey. The party is held at Fuse in a not-so-cool neighborhood in Bruxelles, though to be entirely honest all of Bruxelles turned out to be a scheisshole.)

Charlie’s friend on the train, Cedonic, was a delicious Portuguese boy who just happened to be a contemporary art museum curator and who, as I saw for myself later on, has abs so ripped and defined I felt like I was looking at a map of mid-town Manhattan. Plus a sense of humor. We spent the 2 hours from London to Bruxelles laughing, joking, and all slightly anxious of what is to come.

In a bitterly cold Bruxelles, Charlie and I made a bee line for the cab. We met another member of our London ‘family’, Zahed (My ‘uncle’, an African-Yemeni who grew up in London and recently moved to Madrid) and we all made it to Vorst, where we were staying with our friend Sameer (A Syrian diplomat who recently moved to Belgium, but who spent many of his childhood years with Charlie in Khartoum). Sameer was a generous host, and in no time we were preparing for our NYE dinner with his two Belgian friends. They were pleasant, but the conversation dove sometimes far too deep in French that Zahed and I couldn’t carry that well. As the champagne flowed we realized the hour approached 11 and it was time to move on to our next destination.

11.35pm - We were guests at a private do held by one of our Lebanese/Palestinian friends. The other guests were an ever-so-subtle mix of Moroccans, Parisians, Israelis, Brazilians and the very random American girl from Michigan (?!?) who showed up with a horrible French accent and in a full Marie Antoinette outfit that was far too small for her (yes, I was asked at some point to try and zip her back into it…”bitch stay away from the quiche!” i managed to squirm). We were handed feathers and champagne as we walked in and of course invited to the mountains of charlie and kitty in the kitchen.

As the hour approached midnight I got a call from JD. My heart sank. What the fuck? I went into the balcony and picked up, my fingers already freezing. It was, as is typical with his phone calls, short and bland. Yes, happy new year to you too. I hung up and walked back into the party, trying to forge that just happened.

12:00am – BONNE ANNEE! Mwah, Mwah, Mwah

12:01am – 3.30am: the music got louder, the champagne and charlie being consumed in larger quantities. I was developing a crush of unusual intensity for an Israeli boy. Predictably, his Belgian boyfriend of 7 months was also at the party, and he was getting uncomfortable with the amount of time we were spending together. I decided to maintain my own self-respect, as much was possible anyway given the circumstances and environment. Somewhere in the middle of all this the music suddenly died down and our intoxicated host gave a surprisingly articulate speech, thanking us for attending, and inviting us all to share our new years resolutions. His dilated pupils somehow made their way directly to where I was standing:

“Notre pharaon,” he let out loud, for the 3rd time forgetting my (rather common) name. “Alors?”

I had nothing to say. I hadn’t even thought of it. New Years resolutions are a load of bull. But for some reason, whether because of my fresh encounter with this Israeli or some divine inspiration encapsulating the past year - I blurted out almost in exasperation: “More friends, less lovers”… Amidst the cheers and jeers Charlie looked at me in approval, and gave me a big kiss on the cheek. I glanced at the Israeli, who was staring straight back.

January 1st, 2009

We got up a little after noon, and went for a walk in Le Grand Place and the centre ville area. Bruxelles was dull, cold and not entirely friendly. Our phones were ringing incessantly. It was, after all, La Demence evening, the carrefour of gay Europe and the rest of the masses that have trekked in from far and wide were arranging dates with their coiffeurs, trainers and dealers – and inviting us to the same. We stayed out of it for the large part.

11pm: We decided to go for dinner in centre ville. There was no way on earth we were arriving at the club before 3am given the obscene queuing that was inevitable. At 1.30am we were invited by a friend to his dealer’s house. Calimbro was a muscle-bound Brazilian who was far too generous with his charlie and Mitsubishi candy. The conversation between him, his guests, Charlie and Zahed was all in Spanish, which I have no knowledge of. One of Calimbro’s friends was a quiet Chinese-German boy from Dusseldorf who had taken the train in for the party also. As he spoke no English, we managed a decent conversation in German. He was slightly intimidated by the build-up to this party, and I couldn’t blame him. Don’t worry, I said, just enjoy yourself…

Famous last words. 3.30am we raided the arena that is La Demence. (Setting: Spread across three floors, including 4 bars, a dark-room and 3 dance floors, Fuse was definitely Belgium’s biggest. The music was high impact, high energy, and ranging between soulful and dirty. The crowd was eclectic. Muscle marys and leather-bound masters danced as the odd twink made his way to the bar for something other than water. Topless Brazilian girls and of course, fat drag queens.)

I was in ecstasy. The crowd wasn’t necessarily Europe’s most sophisticated, but it would certainly do for this evening. The Israeli boy was there, and so was Cedonic. I flirted with both for a while, but was generally disinterested in sex (trust me it happens when flesh is shoved up your nose [see video above]).

We left at around 9 am on the January 2nd and after restless and short sleep Zahed, Charlie and I got on a flight to Madrid.

As it would turn out, Bruxelles was only a prelude to a formidable symphony played out in Madrid. We arrived a little after 10pm, picked up the bubbly at the airport and made it to Zahed’s flat. Some friends were having a good-bye party for a friend a Boite near Chueca but of course, being Spain, that was starting at around 4am. We drank at the flat, I slipped into something preppy and purple, and we walked the few blocks to Boite for the party. I was instantly shocked by how different the boys in Madrid are – friendly, good looking, generally young…it was heaven. This was to be, however, a light evening and I stayed with my vodka on the rocks for most of it. Zahed, who had come along, was introducing me to his Madrid posse, some of whom I recognized. One of them in particular, Inigo, had hosted a private party at the SoHo House in London around August time and, though I’d spent quite a bit of time at that party, I hadn’t realized how hot he was till that evening in Boite. I said hello, my gaze lingered slightly, and I moved on to the dance floor (they played Modjo, which is daring, and I appreciated the moxy).

Home at 6.30am, I crashed till about 4 in the afternoon. My phone was again buzzing constantly. The Cairo and Moscow crowd had arrived. This group was usually made up of Armani and Kyril, the only two I could call ‘friends’ in the loose sense of the word, plus the usual assortment of muscle marys, Mohameds to Vladimirs, whom I communicate with on a strictly “hi, how are you, lets grind” basis, ready for a good time in the most extreme sense.

(Background: Armani is one of the Middle East’s most famous socialite. Flamboyant but closeted back home, his Madrid/London trips are frequent and involve hardcore clubbing and vast quantities of drugs. He’s in the movie business, and counts 3 of the Spice Girls, Beyonce and Naomi Campbell as friends, not to mention Egypt’s billionaires. I met him at a private gay party in the Sakkara Country Club and we flirted very randomly. He wasn’t my type but I was intrigued by the conundrum that was his life and of course the fabulous parties he would drag me too (yes, i was ever so reluctant). As for Kyril, he is also a lawyer but lives in Moscow. We met through a mutual friend in London and again flirted very occasionally. I had always wondered what it would be like to spend some time with him one on one).

Yes the phone was not shutting up. Lunch at Isolee? Why the heck not. To my surprise Inigo was also there. Lunch was brief, and I wasn’t speaking too much. I was still in a bit of a haze, and needed a siesta. Kyril, Armani and I walked around the shops a little, then I excused myself to go nap. Dinner was at 10 with some Dutch boys in their apartment in Cheuca, and around 1.30 we headed to a funky bar where all the waiters were dressed as nerd and the only light was lazer and LED screens from behind black walls. At 3.30, we knew well it was time for Cool.

I’d been to Cool once before, with James and his friends a couple of years ago. Nothing was going to prepare me for what happened this night however.

The music was amazing, uplifting, beautiful. The club is set on two levels. On the top level are two bars, from which you can watch the madness below. And below was the large dance-floor, all pointed towards a stage where the dancers were performing. Everybody that should have been there was there, Charlie, Zahed, Kyril, Armani… I was starting to run into even more people I hadn’t known were visiting from Cairo. Inigo was there with his friend (who got too drunk and vomited on my hand, luckily there was ample soap in the bathroom) and who one of the Dutch boys took home to sleep.

Charlie had hooked up with an Egyptian I had never met before. Why are there that many Egyptian in Madrid?

Suddenly in the middle of this euphoria, just as my body was internalizing the amazing music and my brain rushed with ecstasy, Zahed walks up to me with wild eyes and yells “ARMANI COLLAPSED!”

For those of you who don’t know me personally, allow me to explain. I (clearly) don’t hold any judgment for people who use, shall we say, “enhancement”. It may sound like a cliché but there is such a thing as recreational use with calculated and low risk. What I don’t understand or respect is when people aren’t able to control themselves (be it on drugs, alcohol or whatever the hell you like). Using GHB is stupid and too risky, but our Middle-Eastern superstar thought he was far too cool for all that at Cool.

I asked Zahed where Armani was, and he said that the bouncers threw him out of the club. Armani was at Cool with at least 20 other people and I was by no stretch of the imagination his best friend, I’m sure they’ll take care of him. Still I decided I’d take the ramp between the lower level and the upper bars to get a drink and say hello to some people.

Just as I entered into the connecting ramp area I saw 3 or 4 people gathered around a lifeless body. Yes, Armani wasn’t my best friend, but I couldn’t see him like this. Kyril was there too. The bouncers were trying to wake him up, slapping him on the face, no luck. They were going to throw him out but he was half naked and his coat was still in the coat check. They dug into his pockets to find the ticket, each time their fingers returning with everything but. Kindly, they returned the illegal articles to his pockets and looked at us and shrugged. By this time it was only Kyril and I standing. I managed to get water off of someone and sprayed Armani with it. He jolted to life, delirious and incomprehensible. Violent too, he was kicking and yelling. “Shit”, said Kyril, “We have to take him home”.

Kyril put his coat around Armani, and I gave Kyril my sweater since I had a jacket too. We carried Armani, who frequently attacked us, through the cold streets of Madrid across Chueca (no taxi would even stop of course). It was a journey, that lasted at least 45 minutes but felt like days. One of Armani’s friend, an Egyptian muscle mary with a bad attitude, showed up out of nowhere to help. Armani’s kicking and slurred half-conscious screaming was getting worse. He slapped Kyril (very hard) and bit me. That’s it, said the Egyptian guy, he needs some cocaine to wake up.

So here we are, on the Gran Via no less in downtown Madrid, at around 6am, digging into our pockets for a key and white powder to feed someone that OD’ed on a drug that resembles cleaning fluid. If only it worked…

Fast forward, we are taking Armani up the stairs to one of his friend’s places. The fleet at Cool had been mobilized and they were on their way now that the dirty business was done. I opened the door for them, only to realize that Armani had also brought the Gucci Corner to Madrid.

(Background: the Gucci Corner was the corner at the American University in Cairo’s Greek Campus (no longer with us) that consisted of all the page-6 socialites from the American International School and Cairo American College (with the odd Lycee Francais graduate). They are pretty girls, generally fabulous and unfortunately unremarkable. As I went to one of the two American schools, I new them on a strictly “hi, good-bye” basis.)

One of them, with crazy curly blonde hair, walked up to me and said: “M, is he ok?” I assured her he would be. “Good, where’s the kitchen? I need vodka and a fat line.”

Armani regained consciousness at about 9am, embarrassed and apologetic. I was relieved. Just as I was going home, Gucci Corner clone 1 walked into the room with some more charlie and a big smile telling Armani: “Come on big boy, we have to be in Space in 6 hours.”

I slept and woke up in time for Heaven again at 2am the next evening. At this point I was through, tired of the ridiculous consumption, of the clubbing, of living in a complete bubble. I mean Inigo for example was one of a few guys who were literally on their blackberries in Heaven changing their flights in one hand and downing champagne with the other. There are people dying in Gaza. I enjoyed Heaven, but was happy to head home, alone, crash for a few hours and get on the flight to London. I had taken the next day off for detox and recovery but the truth is I felt fine, London’s arctic temperatures actually waking me up.

“Only once a year,” I kept saying to myself, “thank God New Years comes only once a year.”

Memories of Autumn

2009-01-07T17:43:00.003Z

The fog was dense, an opaque blanket had been thrown over the city. It was nighttime. The streetlights were smothered, muted by the ominous cloud of particles that surrounded each raw bulb. Walking a few feet apart laterally, we made our way over what we hoped was Charles Bridge. I stretched my left hand out, trying to find the ledge. When my fingers touched the rough surface, I glanced to the right where the sound of his footsteps came and could only see a dim outline of his body. The fog was dense. His pace was steady. I could hear his exaggerated breathing with every few steps.

I stared ahead into nothingness. My left hand hovered over the ledge, occasionally dipping my fingers to tap the damp, cold stone. In the fog, the colossal statues that line Charles Bridge approached me with mystical glory. Out of the thick grey a dark, towering figure would appear, a poised body, a biblical promise. They were awe inspiring, and terrifying at the same time. The immense love and unexpected confusion that I felt at the moment only accentuated the contours of the dark figures, the chiseled faces and crosses.

Moral Dilemma

2008-12-30T12:56:00.002Z

After living life for a while, awkward situations get easier. Or easier to handle at least. For example, you develop skin thick enough to take criticism (of the non-constructive kind), or have the wisdom to say No to seeing someone again because your incompatible as people but have great sex.

When I started work there was inevitably going to be a wide array of awkward situations that I will find new and difficult to deal with. One of them just hit me in the face.

My office is about 3 doors down from the office of one of the main partners in the Corporate Finance department. He's about 65, very pleasant, and I've worked with him on several smallish matters. When he found out I was from the middle east, he told me how he'd spent years in Dubai working for the this law firm.

On the 23rd of December before heading off for Christmas he came into my office and asked if I would like to have "supper" with him on the 30th. The invitation was very kind, and I said yes.

Today, as I am at work, I start getting nervous. Does he think this is a date? I noticed he does not wear a wedding ring. He comes into my office on random occasions to discuss his trips, tennis, the like. On one hand, being probably the most junior person in my department, I'm flattered by the interest but on the other hand I'm terrified by the possibility that he sees this in any way as romantic.

He's a very pleasant person and I have no reason to not give him the benefit of the doubt. As my friend also pointed out, it wouldn't hurt my career to be friendly back. But at the same time, I'm afraid I'm going to be labelled as Whora Flynn Boyle.

The "supper" is tonight in a very nice restaurant in Mayfair. God help me, I have to go home and pack for Brussels tomorrow!

Trentemoller's prose

2008-12-23T22:26:00.003Z

On sex and fulfillment

2008-12-16T20:18:00.005Z

In the few true relationships that I have had, with one exception, sex has posed in one way or another a problem. I guess the kind of person I'm interested in on an emotional level often times is very different from the kind of person i'm interested in bed. Or something. At least that's what I'm convincing myself for the time being. That sweet, decent, mature guys who aren't emotionally insecure are rarely good in bed.

But then again, what is good in bed? For some being had with each limb tied to a bedpost; for others a little vanilla? I think in the beginning I had a very rigid approach to what I wanted. Now with more experience I see that every person strikes a different chord and chemistry. I start to wonder if I have begun molding myself to match the guys I 'date' sometimes. No, I guess I don't. There's nothing wrong with responding to chemistry, but I certainly find room for self-expression.

After the collapse of my short but intense relationship with JD, and having not seen him for a month prior, my desire for physical intimacy was peaking. In almost no time I found myself on several dates a weekend, most of which have ended with sex. It wasn't just sex, it was good sex. My carnal pleasures were fully tended to for the first time for a long time and for a while, I was feeling the high.

Then last sunday night, I was getting ready for bed alone for the first time that weekend, and suddenly felt overwhelming pain. I missed JD. I missed that sex with him, though not the most varied or expressive sometimes, meant a lot more to both of us.

On Monday night my Friday night date called when I was at work, letting me know that he was at an office event near my place, and that he'd like to see me. This is CM, a sweet and genuine Canadian guy. Though I wasn't sure we were a physical match at first, he made up for that in bed impressively. I replied back asking him to wait for me while I wrapped things up at work and stopped by my Dad's (who is visiting London) to give him his birthday present.

He waited. I took him to my place, and as I was tired I jumped right into bed, not thinking twice that last thing I wanted tonight was sex. We slept next to each other, and it felt good. I have no intention of seeing him romantically, just not at all prepared for that right now, but it is amazing how special the moments are that you can share with complete strangers.

Pure ecstacy

2008-12-12T07:57:00.001Z

How Stella Got Her Party Groove Back

2008-12-11T12:03:00.006Z

When S said he was visiting me in London for a week, I instantly felt anticipation. S, one of the most fabulous Cairenes I know who I've incessantly and extravagantly partied with every time we found each other in the same country, is in his own way a legend. His visit lived up to its mighty expectations.

Friday night I came home from work to beautiful flowers, a birthday card, and organic Eastern inspired accessories. With no delay the iPod was thrown into full blast as we prepared for our first night in London together.

First, dinner at I's gorgeous North London flat. After champagne, delicious food, and exotic indian furniture the cab picked us up and made its way to the Shadow Lounge. "Only 2 hours" we kept saying to ourselves, but that really turned into 3. The music was good, and the alcohol kept flowing, I was trying to make sure it wasn't too crazy a night so that tomorrow we still have energy for more. At 3am we walked over to Low-Profile for more clubbing, and from there we ended up at Ghetto, which true to its name had us screaming all the way back to my flat (in a rickshaw!).

Saturday, after getting restless sleep, we got up to have some brunch and hit the liquor stores - we had planned a birthday celebration at the flat and we were to make sure it was well supplied. The first guests started arriving at 7pm, but an explosion of 25 or so guests took place at around 9.30-10. Blondi & Kaki, beautiful girls that went to high school with me, were there. So were a bunch of Palestinian bankers living in London, who made frequent visits into my bathroom en mass. "I'm dreaming of a 'white' christmas" said one of them sarcastically as he put his nostril to a rolled up £20 note. Meanwhile, the bubbles were flowing in the living room as people got up to dance. The hour was, however, approaching midnight and there was no way we were spending the whole evening at home.

A fleet of cabs took a chunk of us to the Shadow Lounge (again!). The music was 3 times better, the crowd beautiful. Blondi and Kaki dominated the pole, whereas S himself was getting a lot of interest from tall Irish farmers and nicotine addicts. I went out for a smoke, the first in years. Later, I had some 'snow' myself. The beat was hotter, the colours brighter.

At 3.30, we went to have dinner at Balans with SM, and Blondie. After munching on chicken salad, S decided it was time to hit the gay sauna near my flat. Having never realised one existed so close, and since it was his only weekend here, I obliged. An hour after hanging out with perverts, I decided I'd go home and clean up. It was dawn, and I could not get any sleep anyway. I lay in bed sleepless, probably because of what I'd snorted. I went to have lunch with my father and quickly returned home because it was Sunday - Rapido night.

At 7pm we were making our way into the fabulous Koko Theatre for Amsterdam's most famous party.

Dancers on stilts in outrageous costumes made their way through the thumping atrium as a sea of muscle-bound men danced their palpitating hearts out. The drug of choice tonight was mdma, but I wasn't going to go very far tonight with this little sleep. True to my vow, I went home at 1, but S continued with my friends and later hit Fabric at 2am, and Orange at 5am. He came home just as I started to wake up at 8am.

Over the next 2 days, though I had work to do, S made it Heaven, to G-A-Y and G-A-Y late, and we had dinner at Beach Blanket Babylon. I haven't partied like that in, literally, years and though it was excessive I was grateful for the random and not-to-be-repeated-for-a-long-time experience. S, be sure to get your ass back here!

We apologise...

2008-12-05T11:24:00.002Z

Why is the entire service sector in England under the illusion that these words hold some magical effect? "Your phone won't be available until Monday sir, we apologise for the inconvenice of leaving you stranded and out of reach for the next 4 days"; "Sorry sir, you're flight's been delayed for 4 hours, but I hear there's a Slug and Lettuce around the corner"; "Please accept our apologies sir, the DLR and the Jubilee line are both closed for a reason we are not ready to disclose, and you have no way of getting home from work."

Everywhere you look, there's an apology. Your mail, the nearest dysfunctional ATM machine, and sometimes when you're lucky, when someone pushes you aside on the tube.

Yes, being in Britain is all about non-confrontation. But I'm just tired of getting the lame apology every time I'm disappointed. Maybe I'm too Americanised (though I beg to differ, as now I spell apologise with an "s" not a "z") but at this point I actually get angry when someone tries to say they're sorry. The poor call-centre folk have undoubtedly black-listed me at this point. I don't want an apology, I want my issue resolved or to be compensated in some way that does not involve empty meaning.

JD, true to form, posts as his facebook status yesterday "JD is waiting for you to call". Though I am well aware that the world does not revolve around me, I couldn't help but wonder if the status was directed at me. Me call you? On my birthday, and after all you've done?

Still, I found a certain charm in the fact that he did not attempt an apology. Just then I remember I haven't checked voicemail in days. As I had guessed, he did call. Not to say happy birthday, not to say I'm sorry, but to return my earlier call and say that he missed talking to me.

I've decided I'm not three, and I don't need a happy birthday- and definitely not an apology. Maybe later tonight I'll give him a call. He has a lot of self-proving to do in a very short time.

Ghosts

2008-12-03T15:01:00.004Z

I had a very surreal and, at the time, terrifying experience this morning. It was about 7.15 AM. I wasn't quite awake yet, but I also wasn't really sleeping. I knew my alarm would go off as it usually does at around 7.45. I would then snooze it till about 8 before I make a real move. Bottom line is, I had about 45 minutes that I intended to spend in bed drifting in and out of consciousness.

I turned to my side, and could feel myself drifting back to sleep. The room, as it always is, was dead silent, and the only light was the omniscent, soft mood lighting that came from under my bed. My eyes became heavy, and I felt myself dosing... In an instant I felt someone get in bed behind me. My heart sank as I regained consciousness. Was that a dream? No. I was paralyzed. My muscles stopped responding. I was being pinned down, and one of my captor's arms held me still from the neck. I needed to yell, scream, say something. I couldn't even turn around to face him. I knew it was a man, because he was singing, in colloquial egyptian, something strange and non-sensical.

Though I couldn't utter the words, my mind started reciting prayer. I was in terror. I gave one big push backward and suddenly I was free, my muscles back to normal.

I sat up in bed, wondering how much of that was actually real. The comfortable answer was: none of it.

I got into my suit, walked all the way to the tube station only to realise I'd forgotten my wallet and work pass. Cursing myself, I walked back to my flat and took a cab. At noon, I had a date with an Australian guy (Mr R) I had met that rampant Friday at the Adams Street priv club (see "Great expectations").

Mr R was pleasant, and very handsome. Perhaps a little too pleasant, but I guess you exepect a certain amount of pomp when you're dealing with bankers. We had a civilised lunch at Carluccio's in the Wharf, where the conversation drifted from personal backgrounds and work, to plans for the future.

As he spoke the heavily accented words came slowly from his mouth. A bustling Carluccio's sometimes made it difficult to catch every single word of every sentence, to the point where I was picking up every Xth word...Like LED banners, the words flashed in front of me in a disjointed and jumbled manner. I lost track of the sentences, and his point.

"Beach"; my brain jolted into the past. D, the beaches of Ras Shitan, of the Egyptian North Coast. Man it was warm there. Man it's freezing in London today.

"Bank of New York"; walking for what seemed like miles from SoHo in New York downtown to the financial district with J. Why does NY just get better weather than we do?

"Music teacher"; a high school crush, one of those deeply psychotic ones where you never tell anyone about it and just obsess for hours. Listening to my CD player (remember those!), a pubescent teenager going home after badminton practice on the after school bus.

"Lamb stew"; I don't like stew. Tried it once where it was actually decent. That was with JD. That asshole.

This went on for a while. At some point I think Mr R realised my gaze had become strange, as if I was looking through him, not at him. He realised he was talking too much.

We walked back through the Canada Square mall to the underground entrances of our respective buildings. Where the path forked I thanked him for an enjoyable time and sincerely expressed my wish to see him again. We decided we'd keep in touch as to the next opportunity.

As I walked into my building, I realised that perhaps the concept that ghosts live among us dull humans isn't entirely inconceivable. Here I was attempting a civilised early lunch, and in many ways all I did was bring my ghosts to the table. I'm fairly certain that, to some extent, a ghost or ghosts followed him to that table too. What happened this morning in bed, if on any level 'real', was a mere extension of this presence, probably induced by dream-like mode.

Great expectations

2008-11-30T02:08:00.002Z

Humans never cease to amaze me in their capacity for ridiculousness and disrespect. If you've read my posts since August, particularly "Meet him at the Love Parade", you may have figured out that I had met 'someone special' (JD). And for 3 or 4 months, I thought I really did.

Something that started out so intense and strong somehow ended up going to hell in a handbasket faster than I could utter the words. Hmm where to start? Between August and mid October, it was like a dream. Between London, Washington DC, Amsterdam and Prague we existed on a parallel frequency. It was love at first sight, and attachment that seemed to promise a lot very soon. Sure, in the end it was a long distance relationship, and I was wary of the inherent dangers in that; but still I was convinced that with enough hard work it would at least bloom into something sustainable and rewarding...

I think the alarm bells began to sound in Prague, late October. We'd spent a fantastic weekend in that charming place, but, him having been away from the states for a couple of weeks, I noticed he was a lot more impatient and on edge than usual. Now I recognise it as a combination of homesickness and discomfort, but then all i felt was an odd sense of disconnection. We didn't have sex. We went clubbing a couple of times, and the fables of Prague's wild nightlife proved to be wild fiction. The city was beautiful but something was off.

I haven't seen him since. Two weeks after Prague, I get an abrupt phonecall from him on a tuesday morning asking me if I wanted to join him and his friends in Roma that weekend. That pissed me off. A) two weeks was the longest time we'd spent apart since august, B) clearly he'd planned this with his loser, white trash American hill-billies before speaking to me, and C) he wasn't even out to them, so what exactly would have been my designation in that scenario? I hung up, decided to ignore him. It worked, for a while.

Sunday, I knew he was leaving Italy, but wasn't sure what his next destination was. I had made it clear before our last phonecall that I would be in Paris for lunch on the 22nd of November, and sent him a message asking whether he would meet me there as promised.

No response.

Monday he calls from Barajas in Madrid, clearly already on the way back to the states. My patience ran out, and I sent him an email expressing concern. It wasn't nasty, it was very clear and in it I asked what exactly was wrong - he was acting strange and distant. I had fallen ill, my father had been diagnosed with an illness and was flying to london on Tuesday and he didn't so much as ask or care.

No response.

I was insulted. I decided that was it, this was clearly a failed endeavour. A disappointment of unusual proportions. In my mind, I lost all respect for him. And I have too much pride and self-esteem to even cosider someone so self-absorbed.

Friday, a few days after I'd sent the email out, I took to the London night. FS and I hit the Box, and a debut vernissage in the Adams Street priv club. I found myself in flirt mode. I was moving past this asshole, at any price. I must have arranged 6 dates in the space of the 3 hours I spent between those two places. Clearly, I was overcompensating (though at least 3 of the guys were really gorgeous).

Naturally, and as things like that often go, JD called right in the middle of all that. I wasn't expecting an apology, but I was expecting some acknowledgement of what transpired between us over the past week. I got none. He spoke as if nothing had happened. He spoke about the auto business in the US and the government bailouts planned *yawn* and had very little else to say. In the end, he asked me to call him back later.

Likely scenario.

I went home, took a nap for a few hours, and got on the train to Paris. There, I had a fantastic day sitting on corner cafes, roaming st germain de pres, le marais, and ending the afternoon with coffee at le fumoir with a few friends.

The next morning, in London, I turn on my facebook to find that he's still awake and 'sad'. In silly optimism that he may have actually grown a pair of balls for introspection, I called to check up on him. Of course, he was really 'sad' about the state of the economy, and what it meant for his business.

I managed to ignore him the following week altogether and until this day, Sunday. I do feel much more liberated now than I did the past weekened. I went on a couple of dates on Saturday, had sex (at last), and feel like I can finally refocus my energy, time and money on something more valuable and worthy - me!

I read somewhere the past couple days that part of loving yourself is accepting your limitations. Does that sound silly to anyone but me? Personally, I never thought there were any real limitations on what I could do. Only the limitation of time perhaps. But isnt' loving yourself refusing that any limitaitons bind your actions? I see a value in seeing yourself as human, and forgiving yourself for mistakes made, but does that necessarily entail reducing yourself to a mere frame? I hope not

Must-watch

2008-11-24T11:00:00.001Z

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jEfVs6qaLSA

Hyperborea

2008-11-09T19:54:00.001Z

(source: Wikipedia)

In Greek mythology, according to tradition, the Hyperboreans were a mythical people who lived far to the north of Thrace. The Greeks thought that Boreas, the North Wind,lived in Thrace, and that therefore Hyperborea was an unspecified region in the northern lands that lay beyond Scythia. Their land, called Hyperborea or Hyperboria — "beyond the Boreas" — was perfect, with the sun shining twenty-four hours a day.

Never the Muse is absent

from their ways: lyres clash and flutes cry

and everywhere maiden choruses whirling.

Neither disease nor bitter old age is mixed

in their sacred blood; far from labor and battle they live.

(Pindar, Tenth Pythian Ode, Richmond Lattimore, translator).

Reaching such exotic lands is never easy; Pindar cautioned:

Never on land or by sea will you find

the marvelous road to the feast of the Hyperborea.

Copper, Beech

2008-10-13T07:27:00.003+01:00

The edge of language and its ability to communicate. The point at which words are no longer sufficient; when that line is crossed where seemingly infinite combinations of letters and sounds produce a word so unfortunately limited. Only then Human can interact with its environment.

The objects, smells, and sounds all stand in a vacuum, as in a museum. Knowledge of them becomes a purely experiential exercise.

Human stares at an empty jar through museum glass. Traces of the jar's contents still line its rim. The curved glass smudged, translucent in the neon light that glares above. The curved glass, smooth and cool. The emotions of haste, hunger, and the consumer's absent-mindedness all flow to Human as it observes and senses. Sensory perception feeds not into logic, but a much wider and deeper pool of emotional intellect. One that is constantly muted by its shallow, automated, 'logical' counter-part.

Removing words from objects sets them free. The most mundane and ordinary of objects become vessels of passion, seeking their place in the uni-verse, emitting energy and communicating with a receptive Human and with every other object.

Watch the train station as it is stripped of all literal description. The vast, hollow space devoid of the purpose for which it was originally built, becomes a Godly, awe-some place. The tracks become mere terrain, or an idiosyncracy. The train car comes to life, its linear caverns no longer slaves to functionality. It too joins the spirit of the uni-verse.

Francis Bacon

2008-10-13T07:19:00.006+01:00

Pope Innocent X (Study of Head)

Strong, wide, dark strokes of paint distort, overpower a grainy and meekly painted figure. Alarm is injected as the pale face is sucked into an abyss, the lavender providing an almost mocking contrast. Had the face been invisible, the figure would be nothing but composed, regal. The intricately painted mouth and its silent scream evoke a sense of decay, of terror.

Viva La Vida, or Death and all his Friends

2008-10-02T23:19:00.001+01:00

Today I woke up and walked outside to crisp, frigid weather. The sun was out, but it was official- London’s perpetual season, autumn, had finally come. I walked through Foldgate Street, spilled into a busy Bishopsgate. As I marched towards Bank, my iPod filled my ears with Coldplay’s most recent album – Viva La Vida or Death and All his Friends. I always thought that was an anticlimactic title. Not very catch, is it (granted, Coldplay never really looked for that anyway)? Viva La Vida, long live life... Or Death and All His Friends…?

The moods in the songs swayed from sentimental melancholic, to feisty, to stoically exuberant. The album had become a very big part of my life recently. I have been listening to it practically every day since the beginning of September. I will admit, it’s a masterpiece. “Strawberry Swing” and “Lovers in Japan” go through my head even when my iPod is tucked away as I work.

Work. The stress and the hours. Inconceivable to me just 2 months ago, now it all holds a firm grip on my life. I know as the banks of Canary Wharf take a tumble and as the finance world goes to hell in a hand basket, I’m lucky to even have a job this good – but my carefree days of floating around London in the afternoons and the Continent in the weekends are gone.

The first few 2 or 3 weeks it really got to me. Seeing JS’s life – so advanced in his career he really has little to worry about, be it time off or ‘climbing the ladder’ – made things a little harder as I judged myself in his frame. It was and in many ways still is a harsh perspective.

Now as I sink into things more comfortably, and see all the blessings that are around me – a beautiful boyfriend, a great job, and a bright future – I am ready to go back to being my chirpy self. In control, sane, and always looking ahead.

After all, isn’t that what they meant when they thought of that name for the album? Choose life, or wither on the vine.

Mauve Skies

2008-09-27T11:02:00.002+01:00

Why

2008-09-24T22:15:00.000+01:00

“Why?”

After the long silence, one word is what I get. I didn’t see it coming. I’d gone to brush my teeth, and walked back in my room to find my mobile screen light had come on. I opened the message from my estranged former partner and stared at it.

“Why?”

What am I supposed to respond and say, if anything? What is he talking about? Why we broke up? There’s blame in that word, accusation. In a sense, “why did you destroy something that worked so well?” or “why me?”. He was a master of blame, looked for it everywhere around him but himself. I hated that. Is he really trying to blame me for everything?

Beneath the layer of accusation I can also read despair. I can see him now, on his sofa flicking through the channels on television as he usually would, not watching much, though now I suspect the volume would be turned up a little louder as he tries to scare away my ghost lying there next to him, hugging him from behind and falling asleep with my head against his. I know this is probably what he’s doing, I know because this is what I have done.

I’m not as sad about losing that relationship as I am heartbroken over what I’ve done to him. I love him still, I never will stop caring for him because I know him so well I can see past anything he says or does.

Yet this one word, staring me in the face, I can’t even reply to. Why.

A few possible responses run through my head. The one I began to text back was “You deserve a lot more than I can give you right now.” Corny, but true. I wasn’t ready to move in with him, throw in the towel so to speak and focus what little time I now have every day on just furthering a romantic relationship. This is obviously an item on my agenda, but it is one of many. Or maybe it was because I’ve betrayed him several times during the 3 years we’d spent together, and, finding that I could no longer maintain my own self-respect, I decided to run in the other direction. Or maybe it was because I felt so weak around him, used him as my moral compass, felt bad when he felt bad, and only happy if he felt happy; I’d lost control of myself and my own conviction, and I resented him for it. Maybe that’s “why”.

In the end, James, I really don’t know “why”. People’s paths cross, and some souls are closer together than others. Life without you is in many ways a living hell, but I’ve just begun to get back on my own feet, feel like my own self again. Maybe that’s overrated, but right now, even with all this doubt, it feels right.

Sticky and Sweet

2008-09-20T23:57:00.000+01:00

“I want to thank God, and all my friends, that it DIDN’T FUCKING RAIN TODAY!” screamed Madonna mid-set. Sean, standing behind me, was 30 minutes into screaming and now his voice sounded more like an owl after a swig of diet coke. JS had got us tickets so close to the stage, I could practically smell the dancer’s resilient anti-presperant. Now that’s what I call Sticky and Sweet.

Sticky and Sweet, though not nearly the emotional tour de force that was the Confessions tour, was sexy, and total innovation – from the stage design to the remastered versions of all her great songs. Aside from some punk-ass bitch that tried to cut in front of us, the show was a visual treat, and the sounds that came from the mega speakers were divine. All hail the Queen.

Less than 48 hours later, I was strapped in a tight flight suit, bracing myself to jump out of a plane at 10,000 feet. I wasn’t even nervous, but at the fear of looking like the Dalai Lama I tried to joke around a bit. My instructor was more playful than I was. Since it was my first ‘Jump’, he was strapped to my back to guide the skydive, and, when it finally opened at 3,000 feet, the parachute.

“Mate, what’s the difference between a Ferrari and an erection?” He yelled at me as I sat on his lap in the cramped, noisy wooden plane (yeah, I was ready to jump out of that thing if it ever got us to 10,000 feet). “What?!” I managed to yell back. He moved in a little closer and said “I don’t have a Ferrari”. All of a sudden, the air got colder, the sound of the engine faded. I was dropping, so fast. The clouds were far…below me. I was coming at them full speed. The air was so clean and crisp. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, yet it was going by so fast.

I was coming up on the clouds, and as the mist hit my face, the parachute shot up.

A tale of two cities

2008-09-20T23:55:00.000+01:00

He makes him feel alive.

In London, the dark streets smothered with impatience and the silent shuffle of black suits blur his vision as he paces towards his office. The grey clouds above swirl, and in his eyes they merge with the square pavement, the asphalt, and the stone, steel and glass towers. The Royal Exchange and its Corinthian columns bear the Greco-Roman qualities of autumn like no others. A cold breeze runs through the streets unchallenged, floating around black taxis, down escalator shafts and through his own jacket.

The monochrome bleakness of his surroundings drives and animates his thoughts. His brain, surrounded by robotic movements and disengagement, jolts inwards, implodes with thought and colour. His thoughts take over his senses, simulating powerful sensations and memories of times long lost; like an ex drug addict hit by a flashback each feeling tingles through his veins and sends a sharp pang through his hollow chest.

At his desk, the computer’s processor hums silently, almost imperceptibly. Hundreds of documents lie in neat folders and piles around him. He picks up a piece of paper. The font is uniform and small. The language looked familiar. His eyes search for the beginning of the first sentence, but just as he starts reading a dab of blue jumps at him, strikes him from between the lines. Like a watermark hidden behind the black ink. He bites his cud, pauses. His eyes struggle to readjust on the page. A few more words and the sharp pang hits him deep in his chest, again.

A page and a half later, he gives up. He closes his eyes, leans back in his chair. The dab of blue swirls in his head, like cotton candy. It creates a pattern, then a circle. An eye, an eyelid, an eyebrow- a face, a smile.

Poems on the Underground

2008-09-20T23:04:00.001+01:00

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

-Robert Graves

Meet him at the Love Parade

2008-08-04T16:59:00.001+01:00

I go for long periods without writing anything at all. I like to say to myself that I’m too busy living life, which may very well be the truth. I say that, and then something happens, inspires me, makes my surroundings so inadequate that I have to work with the joy, pain, or often a mixture of both by writing something down. A record.

My last true summer vacation is coming to a hasty end. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. The wind blew me a lot of places I had so looked forward to seeing. What is even better is that on every trip I was surrounded by people that I loved and enjoyed. Rio was a dream. So was Rome. Cairo, Siwa, Sinai, and the Egyptian sun that once inspired the first monotheism brought me back to earth and in utter beauty I found myself emotionally regenerating. The last leg of my trips was not necessarily the most overwhelming, but certainly the most intense. Attending Pride weekend in Amsterdam was an experience I don’t think I will ever forget.

I flew in early in the morning on Saturday. Jim’s friends happened to be staying the hotel next door, so I met them briefly for breakfast on the beautiful PC Hoofstraat. DK, SL, and SF had all flew in from Cairo and were sleeping still in the hotel. Soon we were all making our way to the parade which went down the Prinsengracht. The atmosphere was euphoric. Scantily clad men and families (children included) danced and waved in the streets, confetti and celebration floating in the air. DK, SL, SF and I were all in bright clothes, our surroundings clearly elevating us. We watched and played and met yet another two friends from London, who had gone slightly ‘out there’ with the outfits. One of them spent the good part of an hour posing for pictures with tourists. It was a lot of fun.

Soon the party moved further north to the gay neighbourhood. Music was loud and everywhere, people hopping, jumping and laughing. What struck me the most was how friendly everyone was (but I guess living in London always makes that a truly remarkable feature). I had met this German/Canadian guy earlier at the parade, and I contemplated having a little fun with him. My two friends from London offered me some dancing chemical inducement, and, figuring it was legal and probably not so bad an idea once in a long while, I happily obliged.

Somewhere between the rolling bass and dancing bodies, a beautiful man caught my attention. He was about my height, or a little shorter. Trimmed beard, short blonde hair, ocean blue eyes, and athletic/slim stature. He saw me and smiled, and as soon as he did I felt this odd sense of familiarity. Not like a déjà vu, but more like a sense of relation, though I was sure we’d never met. JS he said his name was, Iranian but from the States. We spoke for a bit amidst the madness. His mannerisms were Middle Eastern. I figured that may be what was striking the sense of familiarity in me. He was very sweet, and his kisses were simple, not glaringly sexual. In the circumstances, he was a little drunk and I was still recovering from the amphetamines, so at the end of the evening after he’d gone to the White party and I to the Bear Necessity party with DK, I promised him we’d have lunch together the next day.

Sunday was a dream. I stopped by his hotel and took him to my neck of the woods for food. The city was quiet, beautiful, and a little cold. I put my arm around him to try and insulate us both, and we strolled through the narrow roads and over the canals. As we were both a little tired, we opted for a nap together, and it was one of the most amazing few hours I’d spent with anyone. Though not sexual, it was an intense experience, like prayer. We held each other, gently touching, tasting, feeling all there was to feel. The gravity of his skin kept my arms in motion, engulfing his body. Soon we both fell asleep, practically glued together.

Then SA arrived by surprise from Austria. I promised JS we would meet later in the evening after I’d spent some time with her and share a drink as a group as his cousins were also in town. I hopped in a cab and picked up SA, and by then the streets had filled up again with music. We danced as we walked to Rose’s Cantina for a bite and some alcohol. JS met us there with his group and we had a substantial amount of Petron. I watched him as he laughed and joked around. The sense of familiarity was so strong at this point, but coupled with even stronger infatuation. I was lucky and honoured to find out that he felt just as strongly about me. We had a great night, took all of the bar staff at Rose’s Cantina out partying with us to a couple of clubs. SM was having a blast, making friends left and right. I had missed her so much, and was so happy that I was able to offer her great company and a fun night in Amsterdam albeit my last one.

I kept dreading the morning, when I knew I would have to leave. JS and I fell asleep on the couch in his hotel room, with him resting his head against my chest. At some point in the middle of the night (or morning as it was) we moved to the bed. Again we fell asleep together and woke up far too early to catch our respective flights. As his flight was an hour later than mine, we spent our last few moments together by the gate D14 in Schipol. It was a beautiful day and the sun lit his eyes up like the sky. I kept him very close until it was time for me to go. On the short flight to London and until this moment, hours later, the pain of leaving him behind has been multiplying, though equally has the feeling of joy at meeting someone that managed to shake up my reality. Before boarding I had given him my Bedouin scarf, just to make sure he didn’t wait too long before visiting me in London. But any time at all is too long at this point. As I write this I stare blankly at the trees in Battersea park, feeling like someone’s ripped a piece of my gut out.

Failure rates

2008-04-27T00:34:00.004+01:00

A new Chief Executive at Proctor and Gamble recently decided to take the issue of corporate busines strategy to the next level. To him the biggest threat to P&G was the strategic inertia that kept it from adapting and taking the innovative lead in the market. He re-structured the company, and created subsidiaries aimed at innovation and only innovation. But instead of setting a success rate for these subsidiaries, our fellow CEO decided to set a common rate of...failure.

When you think about it, it is ingenius. His argument was that if the new subsidiaries weren't failing enough, they weren't taking enough risks with their innovations. By setting a rate of failure, he ensures that his thinkers were thinking far enough outside the box to make mistakes or, when they get lucky, come up with something brilliant.

I wondered, learning all this, if we as individual should set a standard rate of failure for ourselves - just so we can make sure that we're taking enough risks in our lives, and truly maximizing our benefit from it. I personally shudder at the very idea of a standard rate of failure. Failure to me has never been an option, and when it has happened on very random and few occasions, I struggled with it immensely. Not on a self-esteem level necessarily, but simply mourned through the de facto situation.

I realized that perhaps the reason I fail so infrequently is because I take very little risks with my life. Maybe I am not really living, just going through calculated motions which are in the grand scheme of things at best circular, anchored down to a center, like the limb of a protractor. Not that I've never taken risks - falling in love was a risk, moving away from home at 17 was a risk. Still now more than ever I feel inertia, and perhaps taking a risk (albeit an intelligent one) is the answer?

Sex and Emasculation

2008-04-26T23:58:00.006+01:00

e·mas·cu·late

1.	to castrate.

2.	to deprive of strength or vigor; weaken.

–adjective

3.	deprived of or lacking strength or vigor; effeminate.

With the gradual revival of my sex life, and with the ebbing of the tide of monogamy, I've gained a perspective on sex and particularly my sexuality that had been lost on me in the past. It is in those moments of ascending suspense, of nearing sexual climax, and the resulting 30 or so seconds of pure ecstasy by which (if you're of the freudian persuasion) the human psyche is eternally mesmerized; yes it is in those few but parallel moments that inhibitions are truly lost, as if with every physical thrust our conscious inertia loses ground and our deepest fantasies and secrets merge for the glorious tour de force.

The feeling I get during sex, uncomparable to any else, now is matched with intrigue at my own thought trajectory. As I near my own climax, thoughts rush through my head at an alarming rate. Suddenly, and though i see a beautiful male form before me, I stare him in the eye and my brain begins to emasculate him. Little by little, he turns into my beautiful, hungry...no... sex-starved...girl. I go even faster. My thoughts spiral into four letter words demeaning him, reducing him, objectifying him, all to get what I want out of him - a solid orgasm.

I lay in bed next him thinking about what just happened. Am I actually straight and in the closet about it? No. I'm fairly positive the reason I emasculate my random sexual partners to get a good kick is because, on a very fundamental level, if they retained their masculinity during sex I wouldn't feel as confident or as dominant. Society has taught me that, at least in bed, women are on the receiving end, seeking the domination of their male partners. That scenario either is natural or convenient for me. I seek to dominate because not only is it sexually pleasurable, but it also takes away any nervousness I might be going through in light of how gorgeous or 'masculine' this guy is.

The good news is, once the sex is over, any trace of such sexist animalism is gone. The human being that he is resurfaces and my sexual rants are drowned out...

The Names of God

2008-03-23T19:22:00.006Z

Just a few thoughts that ran through my head today-

The Quran, the 'Word of God' (I'll explain the quotation marks later on), refers to Him using 99 different names, usually in what we call in arabic 'exaggerative tenses'. An example of this is "Ghafoor" (most forgiving) and "Raheem" (most merciful). Arabic has always been the essence of Book and the platform from which the Quran could realistically thrive and be subject to esoteric interpretation. Arabic has also always been the essence of pre-Islamic culture (yes, the Peninsula did indeed have culture at some point in history), a culture that placed great value and emphasis on articulation and mastery of the written and spoken word. As we all know the Book wasn't actually written till the Second Khalipha, it had remained in the memory of the inhabitants of the Peninsula for the interim period after Prophet Muhammad's 'wa7y' (from 'i7a2' - inspiration). The connection P. Muhammad formed with Angel Gabriel (a powerful 'package' or energy or Light) revealed the Quran at different stages and in several chunks. The connection was manifested in the spoken Arabic word.

There is therefore an unmistakable emphasis in Islamic practice on recitation- be it prayers, words, or the actual Quran. If you follow my train of though on this, uttering the 99 Names is therefore there to inspire you into a connection with God, the Light (An-Nur).

On the other hand, a fundamental tenant of Kabbalah is the revelation of the 72 Names of God. These aren't actually names, they are non-sensical sequences of Hebrew letters (3 letters to each sequence), methodologically derived from the passage in the Zohar describing Moses fleeing Egypt and parting the Red Sea. It is believed that this passage provides a mystic code to miracles, and that the 72 Names are the ultimate decryption.

Emphasis here as it has been in kabbalah is not on the spoken word, but rather on the power of Hebrew letters. The eyes are considered the true mirrors of the soul, and therefore scanning the letters imprints not only images but a certain type of energy.

As a native Arabic speaker, and as Muslim, I find this approach slightly difficult. The culture I come from is overly articulate and the language tends to be ornate and almost rhythmic. To discard all this and try to focus on meditation through sight has been a challenge. Still, I do feel the force of the Hebrew language when I actually attend Shabbat. Or maybe I'm just picking up on the energy that surrounds me there, or the actual singing (in Hebrew).

il fait si froid dehors, ici c'est comfortable

2008-03-14T22:25:00.000Z

The two or three weeks of relative pain I spent following my break up eventually turned into something altogether different. After relentlessly trying to fill the space Jim occupied in my daily life with school work, socializing, and travelling, I realized I’d perhaps distracted myself too much, to the point where I feel a bit of motion-sickness.

Exams were in mid February, and I spent the entire first half of the month trying to focus on studying and occasionally seeing my father who was staying in a hotel not far from where I live. With the former I felt frustrated, or blocked. It’s not only that the material was unbearably dull and unrewarding, but it’s also that I felt very insecure about my abilities after spending so much time with such an over-achieving set of classmates. Pre-dominantly Oxbridge, arrogant, and just as fiercely competitive as I am, I felt like I was surrounded be people that were so much more engaged in their careers than I was. Law for me was a random choice stemming out of indecision, and with a little hard work and a lot of luck I ended up on the team of trainees for the world’s biggest law firm. For my classmates I feel like they’re on a deliberate and endlessly thought-out path. Three years ago I didn’t even know what a solicitor was. And now as this un-engaging work is being thrown at me, I feel like they’re much better equipped to handle donkey work than I am.

Emotionally things have been equally difficult, and it’s not just my break up I’m talking about. My schedule has filled up to the point where I have little time to relax at home and read a book, I feel like I’m constantly running and rushing (from school to lunch to shrink to coffee to dry cleaner) and perhaps I subconsciously made my life so just so I could not think about the fact that I’m worried about my career and performance at school, or the fact that there’s this huge gap were Jim used to be. I started dating people and trying get back into having a little fun, but after my date leaves or after going out with a few friends I feel more alone than I did before. I feel like I’m on a steep learning curve, with a promise of some sort of maturity and complacency at the end of the line; the line being curved, I just can’t see it yet.

On the plus side I feel an amazing rush of independence and my aggressive schedule has allowed me to meet interesting people in different settings. Building strong friendships in London is a difficult task, but one that I know I will succeed in. It once amazed me how I had 200+ contacts on my phone but not one I could call when I felt down or wanted to talk. Yes, there’s a lot of crap to sort through but good people are everywhere, and you need to be able to spot them and put the right amount of effort into building a relationship.

I’m typing this from a rainy and cold Vienna, and I just got off the phone with a dear and close person. As he prepares for his grandmother’s funeral, I feel that perhaps we are all more emotionally connected as a species than we think. It’s not a matter of synchronicity or coincidence, but perhaps a channel of energy, ‘Light’, what have you, that puts our souls in their primordial state – united.

Dance

2008-02-10T17:43:00.000Z

This is truly amazing.
The music is from Buddha Bar (III i imagine) but the burlesque vintage dancers turn the track into something haunting...

Pan's Labyrinth

2008-01-19T22:52:00.000Z

"Because the paths of the Lord are inscrutable, because the essence of his forgiveness lies in his world and his mystery, because although God sends us the message, it is our task to decipher it, . . . when we open our arms, the Earth takes in only a hollow and senseless shell. Far away now is the world in its eternal glory. Because it is in pain that we find the meaning of life and the state of grace that we lose when we are born. Because God, in his infinite wisdom, puts the solution in our hands. And because it is only in his physical absence that the place he occupies in our souls is reaffirmed."

H-I-Larious

2008-01-15T14:09:00.001Z

Certainty

2008-01-10T12:19:00.001Z

I sat up straight in bed, looking down at my Business Law and Practice text-book. I wasn’t very comfortable, and I needed a highlighter. I wanted things to be easier to skim through when it came time for the exams. I looked at room door, closed as it was, and my backpack, equidistant from the bed and the door. I didn’t want to get up. I had wrapped myself in the blanket already.

“Taher!” I called out to my flatmate. Maybe he’d help me. Silence, and the noise of some music chart countdown on TV fading in and out. “Taher!” My voice rang in the walls of my room. The grey morning light in London meekly flowed into the room. My lamp was on, I didn’t care.

“Taher!” This time the echo hit a chord in my chest. My vision blurred as tears began to form around the corners of my eyes. Why can’t he hear me? I called out again and again. A stream had developed, and the tears flowed. Why can’t he fucking here me? Am I not fucking loud enough? Every time my voice rang I felt like the walls were closing in. I prayed that he make it in time before I could no longer breathe. Cold air swirled around me and had me digging my arms deeper under the blanket.

----------------------

It feels like peeling away layer after layer of my own skin. Like methodologically chopping away calculated pieces of my own heart. Like severing an arm, or a leg. It feels pulling in the window shutters on a sunny day in spring, leaving the room in dark nostalgia. Like digging a whole in my stomach, shovel in hand, not looking up or ever considering how I might be able to one day climb back out and forget that an abyss so consuming ever existed.

It feels so overwhelmingly regretful, yet I’m doing it. I’m pushing with all my might the beautiful movie-set out of the rolling camera’s frame. A blank canvass must do for now. In my mind there is no doubt. My intuition bites at me for hurting him, but cheers me on in pursuing what is right. My heart is pulling at the other end of the rope as it always has – it is equally as powerful, and when the day’s exhaustion sets in it gains considerable ground and I lay in bed, phone in hand, my fingers running over the keys that would spell out my heart’s desire.

I hope one day I will forgive myself for this, and truly find myself convinced that it was the right thing to do. For now it’s a risk. They say the greater the risk, the more extreme any potential reward will be. I hope they’re right, because right now, I feel like I’m running through the motions of life in a vacuum.

Certainty is the key. Certainty that Light is in my life at this very point in time, and that tomorrow will be more beautiful than I ever imagined.

James, if you ever read this, do know that I have loved you to unreasonable extremes. Reality hasn’t been kind, and nor have I. This is only one of the beginning chapters of my life, and I plan on learning from it. Thank you for every minute of every day we’ve spent together.

How frodo baggins got his groove back (and started to free associate)

2008-01-06T16:36:00.001Z

The weekend started in a weird way.
Jim and I had decided that it was finally time that we suspend our relationship. I'd decided that a while back but he was finally convinced when he found out I had been to a Christmas party hosted by Freddy, the 'devil' as he would call him. Point being, by crook more than hook I managed to get what I think I wanted which was a separation. It hasn't sunk in, I don't know if its a delayed reaction or maybe, just maybe, I'll distract myself to the point where I just look at it as a pleasant thing of the past, without the emotional mourning.

I've been very good at distracting myself so far.

Friday night I come home from university and I realize i have no plans. I didn't feel like going to Shabbat and i knew it would be quite empty as most people are still on holiday. I decided it was (finally) time to return to the gym. I also decided that it would be just a treadmill day, as i had had too much food in California over the christmas break.

I put on my hollister gym pants and polo shirt, packed a bag with deodorant, gel and what have you, and walked to Virgin Active Chelsea, which is only about a 5 minutes away. I made a beeline for the treadmill, and despite hoping I'd last for an hour, i only made it to 45 minutes and felt really tired.

I don't like that slight dizziness i get after i walk off a treadmill. I walked rather slowly to the mens locker room, which was attached to this fully equipped spa. Ah what a great idea - i took off all my clothes, took a shower, and wrapped myself in a towel for the steam room. Now this isn't one of those sleazy London 'gay gyms' that I've grown to hate. It's actually respectable and frequented by straight men (as much as it likely that gyms are frequented by straight men in London anyway). The spa was nonetheless a little sexually charged. I'd catch someone looking at me as I took a shower. The dark steam room was eerily quiet. The jacuzzi (which is the best I've seen!) was far too comfortable. None of the facilities were mixed so no trunks or towels were necessary at any point, and many made use of this freedom.

At some point i saw this guy, a stocky, blond, boyish good looking guy, probably mid twenties. He seemed as straight as they come. Just my type. You could probably guess what ended up happening. It was strange though because he never made it clear that he was in any way interested. It was only when i went back to the locker to get dressed and saw that his locker was across from mine did I start a conversation about, something stupid, being back from the holidays. His face lit up and he started talking back enthusiastically. Wayne, he said his name was, from South Africa. I gave him plenty of opportunity to make beeline for the exit but he was attached like a little puppy. I asked if he was doing anything and suggested this bar that was not too far from the gym. "I'd have to go home to change first" i said. I can't be caught in Kosmopol in sports gear. He said sure I'll come along and wait.

When he said wait, i assumed wait in the living room while i got dressed. He was a little bit more forward than that, and followed me to my room. as i took off my gym pants and put on some jeans, his hand tapped my thigh. I moved in a little closer and we made out for a while before i pushed him into bed. It was good vanilla fun, definitely needed it all. After we were finished he asked if i picked up guys from the gym every day. I honestly have never done so, and he seemed to have trouble believing that. We lay idle for a while before finally deciding to actually make it to Kosmopol. Once there we had fantastic cocktails. He looked at me and asked: "have you had sex with a Jew before?" I answered "Yes". A little disappointed, he extended his hand and said "Well you're definitely my first Arab". I hadn't known he was Jewish, but I thought that was kind of cute. He also made a point of the fact that he'd never actually dated guys. He was much more into women for relationships, men for the odd fling. Fair enough, at least I'm not going to have to deal with drama. Come to think of it, he was actually really aggressive in his manner of speech. Short man syndrome we used to call it.

We shared the sofa with two ladies, our conversation with them lasted for hours. My flatmate showed up, and as soon as he saw my new catch he looked at me and asked "who is this guy? samwise gamjee?" (you know, from lord of the rings?)I thought that was pretty funny, and commented that he was a really hot samwise gamjee. At the end of it he'd had too many drinks and was resting his head on my chest. I asked if he wanted to leave and he finally said yes. Somehow we made it back to my flat (he was really drunk). Before falling asleep instantly he looked at me and said, "you know, I hate people like you". He wrapped his arm and leg around me and fell asleep.

Killer

2008-01-06T16:29:00.000Z

I'm really getting deeper and deeper into In Search of Sunrise 6 Ibiza - especially the last few tracks of disc 1

this is awesome

Malchut

2007-12-06T08:55:00.000Z

So in the struggle for a little more perspective and perhaps a little less seriousness, I found myself somewhat coincidentally (although as I had come to learn, no such thing as coincidence really exists) with a yarmulke and a Jewish book of songs. The paradigm shift was necessary, and in reality my immersion into Kabbalah has been of significant educational and spiritual value.

Here it was finally, a non-elitist mystic tradition whose esoteric interpretations of holy scriptures was streamlined and attainable. Reality and every-day life seem to be the focus of all the classes, not axioms or metaphysical bubbles. That is not to say that the metaphysical aspects of this philosophy are undeveloped - the focus is all that is really different from any Muslim/Sufi/Christian tradition that I've experienced and studied. The idea is to fulfill one's life here on earth, full-stop.

Unlike Islam and Christianity (and perhaps even Judaism but I'm no authority on that yet) sin is an alien concept. Unlike Sufism, time is not devoted into sober/intoxicated gnosis, and into what sometimes felt like intellectual pomp (and an inevitable pity of the 'religious' masses).

The Zohar, the book interpreting the multi-layered codes that are verses of the Bible, provides more insight and fascinating interpretation than I can fill this page with, even after only two months of study. Instead I will give a brief snapshot of a lesson that illustrates the kind of things that are presented for me to analyze-

The title of this post is obviously a hint. The Tree of Life is a complicated concept, one that i haven't digested completely. The logical inconsistency of God (referred to as the Light) spending 6 days in creating the world is addressed here - Kabbalah takes us back to the Big Bang and states (now with scientific referencing!?) that the World exists in 10 dimensions. In the beginning, the Vessel that is our collective souls received Light in an uninterrupted infinity. The Vessel, receiving something which it has not earned, was unable to truly reflect this Light and appreciate it I suppose. When the Vessel (our collective souls into one) shattered (in Sufism, the day of primordial covenant alastu berabbikum - bala shahidna), a contraction in the universe took place and 6 of the 10 dimensions formed the Upper World of which the physical universe (Malchut, Kingdom) was begotten. A vacuum was created in the centre of an an infinite force of light (panentheism takes a literal meaning here), and within this vacuum the illusions of time, space, and motion existed. Malchut (in Quranic Arabic, the ملكوت) is the expression of Creation, of the world that surrounds us. It is 1% of our reality - the world of the 5 senses. It is the curtain that hides the Light.

In its practicality Kabbalah focuses its effort on removing every layer of cloth that shades our vessels from the Light, for that is the our vessels' only source of fulfillment. The paradox is that Light will only be received as you give it away or share it. Reactivity, blame, self-doubt, substance abuse, etc all remove perspective and keep you in the dark. Proactivity, identifying the opponents within you (again in Sufi terms the Soul and the Self), turning challenges into opportunities, etc. are all features of the Light and expressions thereof will in turn lead to happiness and fulfill the Vessel's primordial purpose - to earn the Light.

I guess in conclusion the most interesting aspect for me has been this 'illusion' of time, space, and motion. There is a general rejection of the concept of a future, particularly an unpredictable one (or a distant past for that matter). Each one of us possesses the ability to master the physical realm in almost godly ways. Since time, space, and motion are all illusions of the 5 senses, its your connection to the light and attitudes that you cultivate right here, right now that will determine your future without failure. "Miracles" are only more solid connections to the Light in the face of which physical limitations are inconsequential.

To demonstrate: When Pharoah and the Egyptian army were closing in on Moses and his army by the banks of the Red Sea, Moses cried out to God for salvation. God responded "Why are you calling out to me?"

In its commentary, the Zohar explains that there was no need for the Creator's help — because at that moment Moses revealed the 72 Names of God, and the collective consciousness of his people was elevated. But not a single molecule of water moved until the people had physically moved forward into the sea with unwavering certainty. Only when they were neck-deep in the waves — and still maintained complete certainty that the water would part — did the sea part to give them a passage to freedom.