Ochre Queer

Occasionally, one of those weeks comes about. You know, those weeks. The kind in which absolutely nothing seems to go right, and when Friday rolls around, many sighs of relief are heaved on a global scale at the thought that another arbitrary unit of time has gone past.

But you almost never have any idea why things have been so bad. It annoys the fuck out of me.

This has been one of those aforementioned weeks. I can’t put my finger on exactly why it’s been so atrocious, but it just has. Part of it could be the self-fulfilling prophecy that is my general reaction to vernal times; I just hate the fucking spring. People see love in the air, I see pollen. People sigh and get moony-eyed at the thought of the birds and the bees, I sneeze hysterically and dab away at my corneas with tissues. People don shorts and t-shirts to head into the great outdoors, I argue with my tailor about how I don’t like casual clothes, and how he should just shut the fuck up and make sure my shirts come with extra collar-stays.

Allergies aside, weeks filled with multiple disappointments just aren’t any fun. One, two, maybe even three, you can deal with. When it starts piling up, and there’s nothing with which to shovel the damn’ poo, all you want to do is curl up and ignore everything.

Or if you’re me, you find yourself prone to fits of completely untargeted rage. We’re talking fuses so short that even Tom Cruise would scoff at them (make your own jokes here, there’s a lot to choose from). The desire to shove someone’s head through a wall, to hurt someone, anyone really, starts off at a slow boil, all “Wow, s/he’s annoying”, and rapidly escalates to the point where you’re eyeing traffic cameras with a view to figuring out the most efficient way for road-rage to take care of your irritant. And of course one person in particular is hard to target so sometimes you wind up exorcising this disturbing amount of cruelty by spreading it among many people. Yelling at your assistant, honking at the slow driver who’s lost on the roads, making sure that any statement leaving your mouth is so cutting that oxygen molecules are left confused about where their other halves have got to.

At least, that’s what would happen in theory. Unfortunately, I’m chronically incapable of being a complete bastard when there’s no actual concrete blame to be attached to anyone.

But when you’ve made lots of arrangements for a (hopefully) romantic weekend, including flying people in and out of the city, putting in extra hours at the office so you can justifiably switch off your work phone while with this other someone; when you’ve called your restaurateur friends to make sure that no matter what he feels like eating, the two of you (and associated friends who’re being eaten alive with curiousity because they’re just dying to see this person that seems to have wormed his way into your heart, that slightly shrivelled-from-disuse organ) will be able to get a table at any restaurant, any time…well, then it’s a little frustrating to be stood up (if you can call a two-day-advance-notice being stood up).

And you feel like kicking puppies.

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.

The idea of dating someone terrifies me. Partly because I want that whole experience so much that it borders on obsession, and partly I suspect because even if I were to date someone, I’d live in perpetual fear of losing him to someone else who’s better-looking or smarter or funnier, or you know…not me. It’s paralytic.

Not that I genuinely expect anyone I date–and we’ll be theoretical here, since speculation’s all I really have to work with–to spend the rest of his life with me right off the bat. I know that romance and love and partnership and all that jazz is a bit of a trial-and-error process with no real guarantees, but I can’t help feeling that on some level, the decade of solitude since I became legal (so to speak, given the theocracy in which I live) has set me up for some serious karmic reward. You know: find boyfriend who’s absolutely perfect, and never have to go through the process of hoping someone likes you and the courting and the panic attacks centred around fears of rejection and the potential heart palpitations ever again. Ever. Because you’ve sort of served out your sentence of being alone, and really, what the hell?

Then comes the paralytic fear of ever letting said person out into public, and I go all Misery, because if after all of this shit I wind up meeting someone, only to lose him to someone else at a club or bar or even a friend, I’d be forced to have some sort of psychotic break. I’d probably make Britney look like the poster-child for stability by comparison.

When I was younger, I didn’t ever anticipate a future of looking back at my life and grimacing in horror at the amount of emotional emasculation I seem to have (sometimes voluntarily) undergone. Unfortunately, with my mother rapping on my door like some maternal avenger and a cowering gay man in my bathroom doing his desperate best to cover himself in a pile of discarded laundry, I was forced to confront some unpleasantly harsh truths about myself in less-than-ideal circumstances.

“What is it?” I asked somewhat testily.

“Don’t take that tone with me, you’re my son,” she started, displaying a remarkable grasp of the obvious, “and I’m your mother, and you shouldn’t talk to your mother like that.”

I sighed heavily and apologised, doing my desperate best to head off the litany of her difficult pregnancy caused by me, the years of trial she endured in relation to my upbringing and of course the latest drama in the saga that was her life insofar as it involved ungrateful servants who had the audacity to demand eight weeks of vacation just as visitors were scheduled to arrive.

“I wanted to ask if you wanted breakfast,” she said, artfully positioning herself to maximise the view of my room afforded from the half-inch of space between my torso and the bedroom door.

“I don’t, thanks,” I said hastily, before the conversation degenerated into a lengthy debate over omelettes and brioche versus more traditional halwa puri and cholay, because this, you must understand is what keeps my mother alive, the constant second, third and fourth-guessing of any decision made by any blood relative. “I’m going to just go out for a late brunch instead.”

“I don’t see why,” began another one of her salvos, “it’s not as though the food at home is bad for you or anything. Why should you waste money on going out?”

“Absolutely,” I agreed, preparing to deploy my most potent conversation-killer. “I don’t have to, but I want to. Not quite as badly as I want to go to the bathroom right now, but quite close.”

The very mention of bodily functions causes my mother’s eyes and lips to narrow and her nostrils to become thin and pinched. It’s a wonder none of us grew up with severe colonic diseases or kidney malfunctions. And to date, it’s always been a great way to bring one of her diatribes to a close.

I was thinking about that tonight, as I drove back from a farewell party for a friend who’s moving to Vietnam in a week. Much as I enjoy being able to instantly cut off conversation with the woman who somehow raised me, the last decade or so has been spent in figuring out ways to cut the apron chains, to break away and establish my own life independent of the Pakistani family unit. And watching my friend throw everything she has to the winds so she can get out of Karachi, away from riots and bloodshed and uncertainty…it’s impressive. And while I’m (mostly) happy for her, there’s a hefty component of envy involved as well.

I want to leave here. I want to drop my responsibilities, my duty to take care of my mother, to my household, to my home, leave them all by the way-side and just go far far away from all the people here. From the houses, the gardens and the servants.

I want to cook my own food. Make my own bed. Iron my own clothes.

When it comes to being domestic, I’m something of a Viking.

Four cups of coffee into my flight, I’m groggy and ready to pass out, but no matter how much my eyes sting and my bones ache, I can’t bring myself to sleep. For once, I can’t even blame the plane or the crew—I’ve got two seats to myself at an emergency exit, so there’s plenty of room for me to kick off my shoes and the steward responsible for the side of the plane where I’m sitting has been nothing but generous with his disbursement of wine. Kind of like a latter-day Dionysus, only airborne and in a tight little burgundy jacket. If I weren’t so incredibly tired, and somewhat horrified to see what I think is competitive tap-dance on the video feed, I’d probably make some sort of half-hearted pass at him.

But there’ll be time enough for that.

I hope.

Because I got onto this flight with every intention of dying, and now, years after the idea first popped into my head, the notion is terrifying.

I’m not a suicide bomber or something stupid like that. Actually, I’m about as far away from being religious as you can probably get without actually stepping into full-on atheism, despite being raised by two individuals who were both immensely rooted in their faith and did their best to instil that in me. For some reason though, I find myself much more comfortable on my knees with a cock in my mouth than in a mosque, chanting “God is great”, no matter how much peace of mind it’s supposed to bring me.

Not always. There are occasionally days, even for gay men, when a blowjob just doesn’t cut it. Rare, admittedly, but they do exist.

I didn’t want to come back. I toyed with the idea of just…walking away from everything, into the sunset, preferably with a very strong vodka & tonic in one hand and a cigarette in the other. So you know, dying in that sense, not in the “deep in the ground, mouldering away” sense, because honestly, what would that really accomplish? I got over that phase back when I was 12 years old and trying to figure out a way to jerk off to Baywatch episodes without my parents catching me (the trick, if you’re interested, is to stare at the screen as intently as possible when someone attractive is on, then re-imagine him in your head later on. Simple, but effective).

But when the plane touched down and I got into the cab, watching all the foliage rush past in a blur of green, I started reconsidering. And by the time I got to my apartment, I’d already managed to consolidate all of my bank accounts.

I hate December.

Sometimes, when you live in Karachi, life seems to take a particular malicious sort of pleasure in aggravating you. Never more so than in December. And January.

Definitely January.

Pakistani weddings tend to be pretty lavish affairs, no matter who you are, or how much you earn. Most weddings are spread over about three to four “main” events, with numerous pre-event parties and dinners, all of which adds up to an extended two-period effort to avoid a psychotic break of some sort.

All of those efforts are completely useless though, when you run into someone at a wedding, realise you’ve seen him online, fall madly in love, and then further realise that you work with his sister on a daily basis. And that he’s leaving the city in a few weeks whereas you’re getting on a flight out of Karachi in about eight days.

Waking up to a hangover is never any fun. It’s even less so when the reason for that hangover is lying in your bed, your mother is pounding on the bedroom door to wake you up, and you reek of cheap bootlegged local vodka.

And in Karachi, at that.

“Get into the bathroom,” I hissed at the warm body I’d found so appetising the previous night.

And as he disappeared into (what I realised for the first time was) a haven of white tile and steel-coil tubing, I found myself realising, once again, how much easier life would be if I weren’t so incredibly desperate to find love. It’s all very well and good to talk about how “love comes when you stop looking for it” or “you’ll find love when you least expect it”, but I suspect that saying shit like that is akin to treating an ice age as a good opportunity to improve your slalom technique–theoretically viable, but practically, a raging bitch and a half.

But when you’ve been stood up by the love of your life, what’re you going to do? And really, who’s to say that despite having only met once, he couldn’t/wouldn’t/shouldn’t have been the love of your life? And if you’re spending hours trying to find the one market in town where you can buy condoms and lube without the entire city knowing you’re hoping to get lucky, the least you can hope for is the arrival of that same sacred love(r).

Because if you don’t, the bitterness engendered by watching your best friend cuddle with his boyfriend on a couch is really quite fucking traumatic. Perhaps not quite as traumatic as your mother banging on a door that’s the only barrier between you and instant stoning-to-death-for-sodomy, but pretty high in the overall rankings. Seven or so drinks in the company of repressed homosexuals with negative social tact doesn’t help matters much either.

Then again, I’ve always been a little on the sensitive side.

I came here to start a new chapter in my life. Hence the title of this particular post. Things were getting a little awkward around where I used to be, and I just didn’t feel like myself any more.

So yeah. Here I am.

Hi.