The little inconveniences of life can sometimes be really aggravating. For example, I’m sitting in Lahore right now, trying to kill 90-odd minutes between my check-out time (past) and car to the airport (yet to happen), because it was impossible for me to get on an early evening flight back to Karachi, and instead I’m going to wind up reaching home at about half past midnight and be buggered (not in the amusing way) for work in the morning.

On the other hand, two things about this weekend make up for this situation. The first is that I spent the last 20 or so hours with Curfew Boy, ensconced in my hotel room, watching the original UK Queer as Folk TV series, amid cuddles a-plenty. More on that later. The second is that for the first time in many years, I feel a bit like a “real” person. And I mean that in the best possible way. Flying to Lahore for the weekend to see the guy I’m…well, I’m scared to death that if I say we’re dating, he’ll never want to see me again, but I’m also not sure how long I can keep playing the “getting to know” card, since we’re on our third meeting in as many months, and for something long-distance, that strikes me as somewhat substantial. Anyway, deciding to get up and just go; to be able to afford, for the first time in forever, the ability to do something like this, somewhat spontaneously without saving up for it (or having to!) in a massive way (although I really should have, still, fiscal responsibility be damned)…well, it’s pretty fucking liberating.

I think what frustrates me most about living and working in Pakistan is the lack of essential economic parity. I mean this in the most selfish manner possible, but not without some sense of reality; I’m well on my way to 30, barring any truly mad benders, in a relatively senior job at a pretty good corporation, and because I live/work in Pakistan, I’m probably never going to be able to afford to buy my own place. For the sake of perspective, I make less money at this job at a significantly larger company than I did fresh out of college, working for a university as an administrator. To me, that’s just absurd. Obviously, pay scales aren’t anywhere nearly the same the world over, but it’s more than a little infuriating to have to think that unless I’m willing to take out some hefty leases/mortgages with interest rates that are almost as high as my age, it’ll be well-nigh impossible for me to buy a car or an apartment (or even rent, really) without saving about 3/4 of my salary for the next few years.

There’s probably a thesis of sorts in here somewhere, but the short version is that most companies in Pakistan are inherently terrible classist. The assumption on salary scales is that if your family can’t afford to subsidise your lifestyle, you’ll probably be happy to settle for whatever is handed out to you, and if you’re in a situation where your family can cover your rent etc., you don’t need a whole lot of cash in any case, because all your essentials like rent/utilities/transport etc. are already covered, and so you’re basically just working to earn spending money. It’s remarkably annoying. Not quite as annoying as having to be constantly aware of the fact that in order to continue living a reasonably comfortable lifestyle in Karachi, I have to maintain an uneasy balance between doing what makes me happy, and not doing something that would–even unintentionally–piss off my family and lead to the withdrawal of car/rent privileges, because I can’t fucking afford to rent a clean, well-maintained apartment in a decent part of town and eat anything other than ramen and/or fast-food at the same time.

Which is why flying to Lahore for 36 hours, to see someone in whom I have an interest that could be classified as romantic (is that vague and safe enough?), is a remarkably liberating sensation. It’s temporary and on a tiny scale compared to what I’d like to be doing in an ideal world, but it feels, at long last, like a start. Like I’m finally starting to go somewhere with my life, both in terms of how I’m doing financially and how I’m doing in terms of emotional evolution. This last day and a half have cost me about a third of my monthly salary, but for the first time in a while, I don’t really care. Well I do, in that I’ll have to be a little careful with my spending (and my grossly large credit card bill, courtesy of three international trips in five months, the last involving the purchase of about 50 books in ten days), but I don’t in that I feel like it was worth it. It…it feels good, if that makes sense, this having thrown caution to the winds, having spent time with someone I like, having done this for–I would like to think–not just myself, but for that person also.

It’s all crazily, desperately, irrationally wonderful. Or so it feels.

I’m not floating high on the cloud of endorphins from extended cuddling though. I’ve been missing this whole situation for a while, the sense of being attracted to someone who reciprocates that. Of if not being loved, at least being liked, with nudity a major factor in that particular equation of charisma. And unlike the farce that is unrequited passion, there’s at least a sense of purpose to all this, even if everything goes pear-shaped in the end. Which is not to say that I’ll be all calm and collected if/when this ends (because all good things do inevitably come to an end, be that final or metamorphic), because I won’t–I’ll undoubtedly go off my head. But hopefully, it won’t feel like it was time wasted. There’s growth here, I feel (leave off the jokes), growth in an area of my life that has been stagnating for so long that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to touch someone and have meaning, not just purpose, behind that contact.

Time to go home. And wait for next time.