Of course, one of the other issues of not having ever dated anyone or been in a relationship (leaving aside the worrisome fact that I find myself using that particular sequence of words with a disturbing degree of readiness these days), is that when something in the realm of romance does crop up, I have absolutely no clue as to how it should be handled.

I mean, honestly. I’ve now reached a point at which I treat the possibility of a relationship and my part in it with the same sort of consideration you’d give to seeing someone juggling flaming torches in the middle of a petrol station. Of the last 48 hours, I can honestly say that at least a good dozen have probably involved some form of anxious thought around Curfew Boy. Which is ridiculous.

There are some wonderful complications inherent in being a gay man in Pakistan. With a few notable exceptions to the rule, most single gay men (and women) live at home, with their families. (In all fairness, so do most single straight men and women, thereby uniting both heterosexuals and homosexuals in their inability to find some way to hook up with each other.) What this means then, is that it becomes remarkably difficult for you to go out to a party and invite someone back home with you, even if you would like to so do. It becomes even more difficult for you to necessarily maintain some sort of relationship predicated on more than just having meals together or furtive day-time gropings, because many families will (un)necessarily flip out at the idea of their beloved progeny having been out all night long at someone else’s house. Not all, mind you, but many.

So you can’t really hook up with anyone on the spur of the moment, and you can’t really go out and spend the night at someone’s house for fear of your family calling the police because they think you’ve been kidnapped/had an accident/been caught in some sort of rioting/abducted by aliens. And it is, believe it or not, hard to explain to family members why you feel like spending the night at someone’s house (drinking is officially illegal, so it’s not so easy to go with the “I was drunk and didn’t want to drive”), because “good people” don’t sleep anywhere but their own beds, and besides, what if there was a family emergency and you had to be home?

Admittedly, most of the people I know are exceptions to this rule, but if you don’t live on your own, there’s a lot of drama associated with socialising.

Strangely enough, it’s generally OK for you to be out until five in the morning at parties though (albeit not in my case), but if you’re going to apply that to a significant other (and party of a sort it will be, admittedly), it can become a bit much. This is definitely a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too, but given how much I am not a morning person, it’s pretty much a guarantee that having to stagger out of a lover’s bed at four in the morning to drive home on a regular basis will inevitably wind up in massive amounts of drama and more effort than one should really have to expend on anything short of world domination.

Further complicating all of this are the dual facts that (a) Pakistani parents wield powers of guilt and obligation that would make even the Catholic Church weep with envy, and (b) local employers, be they multi-national corporations or local institutions, have predicated their salary structures on the notion that since anyone under the age of 30 and/or unmarried will undoubtedly be living at home for most of their lives, or in an abode that is paid for either fully or in part by contributions from the Bank of Mommy & Daddy, they don’t really have to disburse particularly lucrative amounts of cash. To wit, the average salary of a fairly high-powered executive type in Karachi is probably under USD 30,000/- per year. Taken in rupees, that looks pretty substantial (it’s all the zeros), but given that the monthly cost of renting an apartment in a safe neighbourhood can be about USD 12,000/- per year (and that doesn’t necessarily include utilities or TV/telephone/cable), and that an average car like a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Civic (OK, average world-over, but considered somewhat high-end in Pakistan) can set you back somewhere in the realm of USD 20,000/-, you’re looking at sacrificing a hell of a lot of what dragged you back to Pakistan in the first place.

You know, servants, no rent, family cars to use, laundry done for you, houses cleaned, beds made, etc. etc. And all these numbers are making my head hurt.

So what do you do? Weekend trips away to the homes of friends who are kind enough to put you up? Hiding in hotels and lying to families about sudden mysterious “work” trips? It’s also tough enough to get sorted independently since the idea of independent living hasn’t really taken root in Pakistan yet, so not only are places few and far-between, they’re fucking expensive. And despite all the rioting and violence etc. etc., real estate continues to appreciate in value to the extent where buying land and building a house of your own (or even owning an apartment of your own) is well-nigh impossible in the short-term. Mortgages are rare, and absurdly over-priced. The kind of credit market that could set the tone for any sort of stab at independence doesn’t exist (for example, I have one of the lowest-rate credit cards on the market, and my APR is still about 30%), and quite frankly, living in Karachi for example, is pretty fucking expensive.

So you suck it up. Mostly. And you remind yourself that you’ve done the right thing by coming home and taking care of your family, even if it’s not the best thing in the world for you. Occasionally, you mount a moral high-horse and sneer at those foolish Westerners, those callous people who abandon their aged parents to nursing homes and retirement communities, in an effort to mitigate the stifling life you’re somehow trapped in. Mostly though, you try not to think about it, and you keep telling yourself that things are just fine the way they are, and it makes sense to not go it alone, and what do you have left if not family and you owe your parents something.

Mostly.

It takes way more courage to break away from this quicksand of tradition and obligation in which we live than it does to play the martyr, I’ll tell you that.

You don’t know what awkward is until you find yourself choking on a particularly fiery order of Pad Kee Mao at four a.m. in the morning while some random Thai hottie chooses to try and chat you up.

Oh wait. Yes you do. It’s when you can’t actually say anything to him because between tuk-tuk fumes and the battery-acid that is nam pla prik, your vocal cords are disabled.

But all of that pales in comparison to the inevitable conversations you wind up having with relatives about when you’re going to get married. “Never”, you may reply if you’re having a bad day and want to bring the conversation to a screeching halt, “Oh, it’s too soon to think about that, how’re your corns doing?” if you want to jokingly deflect the topic, “What’s your issue, unhappy with your own lack of marital bliss?” if you feel that a good offence is the best defence, or maybe just a simple “None of your damn’ business”, if you want to really hammer the point home.

I don’t really sleep with anyone in Karachi, so I can sometimes really empathise with the familial angst around my dying alone and unloved, especially when I’ve been through one of those days when you really just want to come home and get a hug and cuddle from someone who isn’t actually related to you by blood. Someone with whom the hug and cuddle can turn into a peck on the lips, some feverish fucking on a table-top, more cuddling, naked dinner by the pool, that sort of thing. And the people I meet when I travel abroad are all almost uniformly lovely people with whom I’d want to build some sort of relationship, but they’re…well, you know, X-thousand miles away and more often than not, have little interest in dating someone who lives on another continent.

I can’t say I blame them, if fairness is to be at all entertained.

Sometimes though, you wake up in the mornings and have one of those terrible moments of self-doubt in which you realise that it’s entirely possible for the rest of your romantic life to consist of disturbing intimacy with your bedding.