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.

Being in London for the last fortnight has been a wonderful, heady mixture of joy, trepidation, and about three times, unmitigated panic. The whole experience has been surreal–in the last few years, the city has both changed so much and so little, that my time has felt like a series of overexposed photographs, images old and new blurring and overlapping to create something that’s eerily familiar and completely unheimlich all at once.

I’ve spent the last week with family. A lot. In a strange way, that has probably been the highlight of my trip, if only because the older and more single I get, the more I realise that I’ve not really got a lot else in my life that will provide unconditional love. Lord knows I still don’t want kids, because it’s hard enough taking care of myself without having other people in the mix, but being an uncle has some super high-lights. There are two moments from that in particular that stand out, mainly because the outpouring of love I’ve felt during them is possibly unparalleled.

The first, when my elder nephew (who is truly brilliant but I think a little poorly socialised) told me that no one in school plays with him; I suggested that perhaps, instead of talking about trains to everyone (his constant fixation), he should try just…well, playing. He came back from school, and when I asked him how his day was, looked at me with these huge almond eyes and said “I didn’t talk about trains at all, all day, and still no one played with me.”

I wanted to cry.

The second was when I put on, at the younger nephew’s request, “Hey Delilah” as we were driving home from Harrods this morning, and in his three-year-old lilt, he sang along. It was possibly the single cutest thing, including kittens and puppies, that I have ever seen.

I need to be around them more. I don’t want to be the uncle who shows up every once in a while. I want to be the uncle they call and come to all the time, and I think that to be in that space, I need to spend even more time with them. Between work and their early bed-times, we haven’t logged as many hours as I’d have liked, but in conjunction with the fact that my brother is–at heart, I believe–fundamentally lonely without his family around, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to him and some of my co-workers about transferring to the London or Middle East offices in another year or two if possible. I need to feel like there’s more to my life than…well, than just me.

Much of my wanting to look for–at the risk of sounding all New-Agey–more depth to my life is also, I think, the fact that Curfew Boy hasn’t texted or e-mailed me since I left Karachi almost two weeks ago. We spoke online for a bit once; I’ve messaged him a few times and all I’ve got so far is radio silence. I don’t really know what to make of it any more, but I think that I’m going to rest assured in my belief that since he has both finals and a job hunt coming up (or already underway), there’s a lot on his mind. And I’ll just breathe, for now. Deal with it when I go home, if in fact there’s anything to be dealt with, which is not necessarily a state of being. I don’t believe in giving extra chances, but I do remember what it was like for me when I was trying to juggle both finals and my own search for employment, and I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. For now.

The other highlights of my trip (and it’s not over yet, but I feel like with only another day or so to go, and much shopping to be accomplished, I may as well pretend that it is) were two gorgeous afternoons spent in Soho Square with people who despite having not seen in a while or with much regularity, I find myself considering friends. This poor handsome devil was forced to follow me around the huge Waterstones on Piccadilly as I raged through their fiction selections, and then to lunch at Busaba in Soho, followed by conversations in Soho Square (we scoped out deliciously sweet little gay boys who were all BFF4EVA with each other) and drinks at the Yard before we went our separate ways.

The other afternoon was with this man, also in Soho Square, during which we purchased a bottle of wine and chatted for about half an hour before I sent him off to grab another bottle (well, more accurately, he volunteered to fetch it if I’d hold our space, because let me tell you, one ray of sunshine and every bitch in this city is out there trying to get a tan). To be quite honest, I was enjoying the company so much that I don’t even know what we talked about (there was some mention of brain cells, but as mine were rapidly reeling from some rather good white wine, it’s a bit of a lost cause), but as we were joined by old classmates and a former flat-mate, I found myself lying on my side at a side of the square, eyeing some cute young things and just relishing the feel of being able to go outdoors and have a pleasant evening that didn’t involve dressing up, informing family of where I was or with whom, and reeling home later at four in the morning, since I also wound up (a) drinking another bottle of wine, (b) eating dim sum with friends until REALLY late, and (c) forgetting who or where I was for about two hours because I was loving just staggering around Soho and Piccadilly Circus and that whole tragically touristy neighbourhood.

And finally of course, there was dinner with one of my favourite non-couply couples. This cute young thing made all sorts of convoluted arrangements for us to meet up, and we may yet see each other again tomorrow. All of these men want me to go roller-blading in Hyde Park, but I don’t think that they appreciate my perspective just yet…given that I’ve never bladed before in my life, about all I’m planning to do is squeak and fall over onto attractive men within arms’ reach.

Maybe, if one of them catches me, I’ll think about moving back. Maybe.