A cargo train is passing by just behind the window that is the only peephole to the wrong act that I am committing. The train makes me flip out from under him and sit at the edge of the bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d The white boy asks me.<\/p>\n
My erection has just died and my arousal has turned into a heavy feeling of shame, manifesting itself through an anxiety attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you thinking of your dad?\u201d the white boy throws the arrow at me and it somehow hits the right spot.<\/p>\n
I turn towards him and wonder if my anxious body has involuntarily murmured some of my thoughts to him. I\u2019m shocked that the white boy might have enough comprehension of how hard it might be to exist as a gay boy when you come from a place like Iraq.<\/p>\n
I take a moment and smile with embarrassment at these thoughts. In a split second, I remember how I always, maybe wrongly refer to all Westerners as whites, assuming that Middle Easterners are not.<\/p>\n
In the same split second as well, my brain justifies my shock at his question. It tells me that the last few boys that I had dated or hooked up with here in the UK seemed to share the same luxury of waking up in a world where being gay is written in the stars, where these boys\u2019 greatest concern is to get the perfect body, the perfect lifestyle, and the perfect boyfriend.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not enough because the need to also share it with the world \u201c#instagay #instacouple #instamasculine #gay couple\u201d, and so on and so forth, has to be a regular act in most relationships.<\/p>\n
I tell myself that this is their choice, but my brain also reminds me that the problem is that these boys are quick to lose interest once they realise they can\u2019t hashtag our relationship, when they realise that I\u2019m not out.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are not out?\u201d one of the boys asked me. I froze there with a trembling smile realising that this boy was unable to understand my position and I also wondered what being out meant to him.<\/p>\n
And worse, I have to witness the vanity of the requirement to validate a relationship on social media, especially for gay couples who have to hashtag their relationship to the world. The toxic need for visibility and being \u2018out\u2019 means that an exclusive club of privileged people is created, making people in my position outcasts.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m in a country where I thought I wouldn\u2019t have to stage my sexuality but here I\u2019m being asked to perform an act of visibility and be forced to succumb to a discourse of being \u2018out\u2019, whatever that means.<\/p>\n
And while I\u2019m about to think that these thoughts are not the stars of tonight\u2019s episode of conflicted identities, a train passes by and interrupts not only my thoughts but the words of the white boy next to me whose hesitant hand has already reached out to touch the edge of my shoulder. We wait for the train to pass; it takes long enough to make us fidgety, so the boy goes on with what he wants to say\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad used to call me a finocchio<\/em> which means faggot in Italian. He always went on criticising my petite body and my sexuality. Most of the time I feel the shades of his disapproval in the way I act. Sometimes I want to tweak my eyebrows and dad stands at the corner of the mirror. I understand what it means to try to exist in a skin that is sewed to fit your dad\u2019s vision, or the village\u2019s, or even your own beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n Another train passes by; that seems to be the cue for me to talk. My anxiety seems to peter out and a nakedness of what I told myself to never reveal to my next potential boyfriend, dresses the moment.<\/p>\n I go on explaining to him that I never wanted to have to talk to him about it, that I had to rehearse the act of being a carefree gay boy which seems to be failing miserably.<\/p>\n I tell him that the mere fact of being under him suffocates me.<\/p>\n I tell him that laying down next to him is wrong.<\/p>\n I tell him that I need to always be on top.<\/p>\n I tell him that I can\u2019t submit.<\/p>\n I tell him that I want to do the opposite, but I just can\u2019t.<\/p>\n And although a train doesn\u2019t pass by, the white boy hijacks the moment and I feel angry because I wanted to finish my rant.<\/p>\n \u201cSo is it your dad, your religion, your society?\u201d Like a social coach, he is trying to help me find the answer by asking a question.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s a mix of things and I try to let go of all of this but it seems to never go away. I act normally and I fall for a boy, but when things start to become physical and real, an outer army of norms invades the streets within me, it takes over, and I start to mess things up. I can never go \u2018submissive\u2019 in bed because this is not manly enough, but also being gay is the same\u2026I just can\u2019t believe that these norms sneak into bed with me. This reaches into not just my existential identity, but also the physicality of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Our teeth clench at the sound of the screech of the train outside the window, but this time I don\u2019t hand over the microphone\u2026I go on, \u201cI don\u2019t know. It\u2019s just that most of the time I think of the fact that I\u2019m not a Westerner, that I\u2019m a Kurdish Muslim, that my people suffered and are still suffering, that this suffering needs real men, men who don\u2019t sleep with men. All of this makes me want to not be me, but worse, it makes me ruin any chance for happiness, it makes me hate myself. It makes me feel disgusted and I\u2019m always scared to share all of this with boys because I\u2019m afraid to be seen as a complicated case. I\u2019m afraid because I bring to bed more than just one soul of a scared conflicted boy. I\u2019m bringing to bed a whole army that not only runs the streets within me but also spills out over my body and the body of the boy next to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Now I can see the boy sitting there, probably waiting for a train to pass by so it would give him more time to prepare an answer. A dying ember of my earlier anxiety attack flames back up. I am scared that I have revealed too much, that I have scared him off. I\u2019m thinking that I\u2019m a complicated case that can\u2019t be hashtagged onto the stage of all the gay people who need to perform their sexuality with extra visibility. I am thinking that I\u2019m an unsolved case of sickness, that I\u2019m filthy and sinful, that I\u2019m disgusting, that anything that happens to me is Karma for not being straight, I\u2019m thinking that anything bad that happens to me is because God doesn\u2019t approve, that the army within doesn\u2019t approve, that the law of manhood doesn\u2019t approve.<\/p>\n I feel nauseated and I run to the toilet to try to vomit out all these heavy, uncontrolled yet well-aimed missiles of thoughts. I wish I could flush it all away.<\/p>\n I come back to the room and the boy is standing; his body language is like an embrace.<\/p>\n \u201cLet me tell you this, I don\u2019t know how to make you feel better. I also don\u2019t want to try to fix you\u2026\u2026I mean, not that you need fixing, but the way you think might be just a part of you that you need to not fight but try to embrace. I don\u2019t want to promise you anything, but all I can say is that I understand, I really do understand, and this doesn\u2019t scare me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut I am afraid I will start being obnoxious, complicated, and overwhelming because I simply can\u2019t be at peace with myself because I can\u2019t act myself,\u201d I bark at him.<\/p>\n \u201cI will slap you then and ask you to talk to me.\u201d<\/p>\n The boy kisses me on the forehead and says to me,\u201cBy the way,\u00a0\u00a0finocchio<\/em> in Italian also means fennel, so it seems that we are also a flavourful vegetable, or at least this is how I like to think about us.\u201d<\/p>\n I smile and I tell myself to be a fennel for now, until my army of the \u2018outers\u2019 within decides to act up again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “I\u2019m afraid because I bring to bed more than just one soul of a scared conflicted boy. I\u2019m bringing to bed a whole army that not only runs the streets within me but also spills out over my body and the body of the boy next to me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":14989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1768,8],"tags":[1790,1788,1789,1733,1787,450,25,35],"class_list":{"0":"post-14983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-performance-and-sexuality","8":"category-voices","9":"tag-anxiety","10":"tag-closeted","11":"tag-hashtags","12":"tag-internalised-homophobia","13":"tag-out","14":"tag-performance","15":"tag-sexualities","16":"tag-social-media"},"menu_order":701,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14983"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15064,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14983\/revisions\/15064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}