Being in Edgewater

Being single is no reason to ruin a perfectly good Valentine's Day tradition, so I took the bus up to my old 'hood this afternoon and ate lunch at Ben's Noodles and Rice. It is the perfect neighborhood Thai restaurant: tiny, endearing, sweet staff, disarming and charming in its simplicity. When I lived and worked in that neighborhood, I used to help the owner/operator in the bank and eat at his restaurant with a fair amount of regularity. So we were friendly. I know that he doesn't remember me any longer, but I still feel such a warm, family feeling when I see him again.

Being a man of routines and regulations - dare I say inertia - eating Valentine's dinner at the most comfortable spot that I can think of seems ideal to me. Why would I want to go somewhere starchy or stuffy for a celebration of the warm fuzzies? That seems pretty antithetical to me. So Ben's was the tradition. I like it; I'm keeping it.

Being in the old neighborhood today, though, man, that almost put me over the edge. It is on the up-and-up, that's for sure. There's a few new restaurants and a couple of nice looking shops. Reza's deli is still there, but he wasn't behind the counter when I went by. That man is a precious soul, a shot of whiskey and a warm hug in human form. He'd drive you crazy, but how could you not love him? Walking past my old bank - the place where I spent so many stressful hours learning how to make small talk, how to multi-task like the mother of septuplets, how to negotiate relationships with coworkers with whom I didn't have a straw of commonality, where I made overtime - I get a thrill. I remember those coworkers, our motley crew, and our fun times together. Geez, those were great times. Walking past Bryn Mawr Care and remembering the gargoyle, that scary man who crouched on the sidewalk, looking frail enough that you could imagine a slight breeze would topple him. Strolling past my old building, still being managed by The Future. I loved that apartment. It was a tiny palace, a sweet cocoon; it was a perfect home for me.

Being away from home in every possible sense for the first time, totally disconnected from the previous 26 years of my life, this neighborhood gave me freedom. I have this strong sense that in some nebulous, impossible to define way, this neighborhood made me who I am today. I'm a little rough around the edges, I'm good with diversity, I keep to myself but make sweet, lasting connections, I'm quieter than some but more outspoken than many. I squeeze past a trio of Eastern European women on the sidewalk; they are sitting on the padded seats of their walkers with their hair in kerchiefs, speaking a language that I'll never know or care to know.

Being the crazy person that I am, I have another strong sense that I initially resist, but eventually have to admit aloud, here, to you, now: I've got to get myself out of this city.

Currently Watching

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics

Mountain, Lake

Magenta leaned forward as she moved to the edge of the chaise lounge, resting her elbows on her knees and covering her face with her hands. "My dream last night, Carey. It was not good."

"What happened? Would you like to describe it for me?"

"Well, first of all, I was hanging out at my friend's apartment last night. I've told you about Lurie, right? Yeah, so I went over to her house to watch the finals of the Australian Open. Actually, we went out to this swanky place to watch the match because Lurie read in the shitty daily free paper that they were having a viewing party."

"What place?"

"The Browbeater. Ever heard of it? No, okay, so I've never been there either. But when we got there it was completely crowded, and the host asked if we had a reservation, and we totally didn't. So we left, no room at the inn. We just wandered back down the street and couldn't find the match playing anywhere else, so we ended up back at her place."

"Did you have a nice time?"

"Oh sure, we ordered take out and cheered for Andy Roddick and talked during the commercials. Actually, that's one of the things that must have triggered this dream."

"What was?"

"Well, she asked about Walleye. She said that she was curious, wanted to see what he looked like."

"Do you talk about him often with her?"

"No, almost never. I mean, why would I, right?"

"Understandable. But he is a big part of your recent past."

"Granted. And I guess that must be why she is interested. I mean, we go out together on the weekends. We meet guys. She tries to get me to describe my 'type.' 'What kind of guys do you go for...' You know, stuff like that. I don't really have a type; I just like what I like."

"So you say. Anyway, she asked to see Walleye."

"Yeah, so I was like, log on to my Facebook page. There's some random pictures of him on there. Not much, since - this is kind of funny, actually - I didn't even join Facebook until after we broke up. Before I was kind of lazy about it. Keeping up with people, I mean. I let him give me updates on our mutual friends and made him keep me posted on the lives of the people we met and got to know in common. So, anyway, she logs on to my page and starts flipping through my photos."

"And?"

"And that's it. There he was. Walleye in Indonesia with me and a group of our friends. Tiny Walleye at the base of Chichen Itza. That's it. Big deal."

"What did Lurie say?"

"It doesn't matter. Nothing. What matters is, he was in my head. And then he was in my dream."

"So tell me about your dream, then."

"We were driving. It was the two of us. The absurd rules of dreaming were in full effect, though, because while I am one-hundred percent sure that he was driving the Volkswagon minibus in which we were riding, I am also quite sure that we were both sitting on a flat floor covered in green astroturf."

"Hmmm."

"And we were driving through these mountains. Beautiful mountains. Sharp peaks, amazing views. The scenery was spectacular, flying around these bends in the road. And Carey, Walleye and I, we were, you know, together."

"Okay. Can you remember how you felt about that?"

"I felt safe. I felt wanted. I felt like things were back where they were supposed to be. I remember seeing this lake up in the mountains; I guess we were driving around it. I remember how peaceful, calm, and perfectly serene it looked. I think that I felt like that lake."

"Magenta, were you in control of this dream? I mean, did you ever feel like you were directing the events that were occurring?"

"I know what you are talking about, Dr. Carey. Lucid dreaming, right? No, it wasn't like that at all. Because here's how the dream ended: he killed us."

"What do you mean, he killed you? How?"

"He was accelerating too quickly, we were coming up on this overlook, this enormous curve in the road high over the lake. And he just floored it. I remember the feeling, the thrilling few seconds after we left the road and the vehicle flew out into the open air. It was exhilarating, nothing short. And then the reality, the panic, the terror: we were going to die. I was dead. He killed me."

"Wow."

"Wow for sure. And then I woke up. I made myself wake up. I didn't want to die. You know they say that if you ever die in your dream, you die in real life, too. Like your brain thinks that you are really dead. So you are."

"The awareness of this obviously didn't escape you."

"That dreaming about Walleye killing me could have killed me? No, it didn't escape me at all."

Currently Listening to:

Kings of Leon, Only By the Night

Modern Housewives

I think that Modern Family is the best, most intelligent show on TV. There are other good comedies on television now: The Office is smart and the characters are very well-developed, 30 Rock is slapstick and hilarious if often cursory, Scrubs is still hanging on with its glowing, celebratory homoeroticism and sarcasm. Arrested Development was hilarious because it was outrageous, no-holds-barred, not remotely believable, and every character was (at least) seriously morally compromised. But last night when I was watching Modern Family, I actually had a moment where I said, aloud, to the TV, "Yes." This show is just so accurate, so true to how life is. There aren't any good people or bad people on this show, just three wildly different but connected family units made up of entirely true characters. The dialogue and family dynamics are so believable, so real life.

In last night's episode, there was a struggle between Claire and Phil, the straight married couple, as a result of her inability to figure out how to operate the new, fancy, fandangled television remote control. Phil wanted to teach her how to use it and Claire resisted, which led to an exchange something like this between Claire and her daughter Haley:

Haley - Why can't Dad teach you to use the remote?
Claire - Because we are married.

That, to me, is how relationships work.

***********************************************

I guess I'm not a very ambitious person. Or maybe I'm just not a very driven person. I'm sure there's a fine disitinction, but I'm either too overcome by inertia or cozy in my current personality divet to figure it out.

I found out last week that my ex-boyfriend Kevin was admitted to the University of Chicago's Master's of Social Work program and is pursuing admission at Columbia University in New York City as well. This was surprising to me. That probably sounds condescending and patronizing or just plain rude, but my surprise has nothing to do with his intellectual capacity (which is quite high) or his qualifications (which are impressive, I'm sure). It has to do with the fact that he is setting his sights on prestigious schools and programs instead of settling for easier, safer - and frankly cheaper - options.

I need to go back to school for a master's degree next fall, too. I've been kicking this down the road since, um, 2005, when I was admitted to Loyola University in New Orleans but chose to move to Chicago instead. (That was the summer that God and Pat Robertson decided to punish the wicked city of New Orleans via Hurricane Katrina anyway, so it was a serendipitous choice.) My criteria for schools and programs that I'm looking at right now can be summed up in two words: quick and cheap. I'm not aiming for the skies or a fancy degree; I just want to do it and be done with it so that I can get back to a career that I truly loved, teaching.

But here's a confession, something I've been thinking about and ruminating on lately: what if I really just want to be a family man? I really hate the feminizing pronouns and roles that a lot of gay men adopt in their quest for a unique gender identity - I'm a man, and if we are gonna be together, you should be too, as that's kind of the point - but something about this song by Jay Brannan really speaks to me.

There's a couple of f-bombs in here, so you might not want to watch this if you have a teensy, impressionable child on your lap or something. Otherwise, it is a beautiful song. Jay Brannan posing the musical question, "I want to be a housewife, what's so wrong with that?"

Currently Reading:
South of Broad by Pat Conroy, which contains this lovely snippet:
"Because I had the Southern boy's disease of needing to be liked by everyone I met..."

Sunset

I'm feeling brave and combative, so I'm going to go ahead and say this: you've never known beauty until you've seen the tops of clouds from a tiny plane porthole on a sunset night like tonight. The fiery distance on the far horizon could hardly be contained. If not for the rolling, peaceful, cool blue nimbus close to us, the vast, limitless grazing expanse keeping us safe, our plane would surely have been consumed. Eventually the fire gave way to a golden glow, a warm amber, a band of perfectly enunciated visual spectrum, and finally a deeply resonant navy which faded to black night as we flew farther and farther north (why north? why? insanity...same mistakes over and over...why?).

Sunset isn't about color, it is about the colors. The evolution, the permutations, the ebullient fades. The group, the chorus, the textual interplay. Sunset is life. I hate it. It kills me. It is perfect.

Currently Listening To

Contra by Vampire Weekend

UAE

No matter what I say here, you are going to be the one to choose whether you believe this to be a true story of not. Go ahead, make your choice.

***************************************

Ashar and I met on a gay social networking site last spring, something akin to MySpace like 5 years or 20 site upgrades ago. It is a lame and clunky website, but turns out to be a good way to meet guys. I also met Scott, my wonderful summer boyfriend, and Zach, a sweet boy who has since fallen madly in love and off the rails of sanity, on there as well. Ashar and I were both in the video chat room late one Friday or Saturday evening. He's very handsome in an exotic, other-side-of-the-world way, and he was looking as bored as humanly possible, so I struck up a conversation. We hit it off.

Over the next few weeks we chatted online a bit, sometimes with text, sometimes with microphones and videos. Turns out that, though he was living in Manhattan, he has the posh British accent that Middle Eastern people sometimes have when their formative English experiences happen on the other side of the Atlantic. He was born in Las Vegas (who has even claimed to have been born in Las Vegas? No one, I assert) and is therefore an American citizen, but he spent his childhood years in London and his adolescence in Dubai, where his parents have permanently settled. One unsettling thing that I noticed at first: he claimed to be bisexual. This is actually a pretty common thing among gay men, though, when they are first working through a coming out experience. Many have had relationships with women in the past, and they try to reconcile this history with their current, maybe newly-discovered attraction to men. It is pretty easy to shrug off these claims of bisexuality, just a step in the gay man's evolution.

Ashar and I learned a lot about each other over the weeks and developed a pretty good friendship, as far as I could ascertain and these online things go, you know. He kept prodding me to come to New York for a visit, and I was at a fairly impressionable place and needed a getaway. So I found a good package on Travelocity and went. It was a great weekend. Spring was coming on, Central Park was a bit soggy but blooming, the food was primo, the boys were looking fine. I experienced New York City nightlife for the first time, and had the most fun, most memorable club night of my life. I should hasten to add at this point that Ashar and I did not become romantically involved.

We stayed close after that May weekend, talking often, trading stories of our current boy dramas, our complicated exes and ohs. I got Ashar to come visit for the long July 4th weekend, and we had a great time. He had never been to Chicago, so we did some touristy stuff, went up to Scott's family manse for a pool party/cookout, hit up the bars so he could compare and contrast our gay Chicago nightlife to his own. I tried to convince him in advance that the Chicago boys would love him, but he seemed to believe that all Midwesterners are white xenophobes who would be less likely to find his Persian-Pakistani ethnicity appealing. I won that argument in the end.

He told me just after that July visit that he was going home to Dubai for his cousin's wedding. This female cousin was his best friend and closest family member, so he was very excited and was going for the entire two weeks of festivities. This must have been early to mid-August. I remember him wishing me a happy birthday and ribbing me for being such an old man. I got an offline instant message from him a few weeks later on AIM saying that he had so much to tell me about his trip home to Dubai. That was the last time that I ever heard from him.

I sent him text messages, I tried to instant message him, I called his phone number, I sent emails on the ridiculous social networking website where we had met. Nothing. I did Google News searches for his name, hoping that I wouldn't find any mention of him in any New York newspaper obituaries. I called his work phone number, sent emails to his work address, and got no answer. Left voicemails, kept trying over the course of several months. Then I gave up.

**************************************

New Year's Eve, just a few days ago, 8 o'clock, getting ready to go out for a big night. I started my congratulatory, well-wishing texting a bit early, expecting that the place where I was going for the evening would be packed and noisy and I would be drinking and it would be impossible to do much with those tiny phone keys under the influence of that wicked combination. I'm not sure exactly why I sent this message, some combination at the crossing of sentimentality and fatality, I suppose. But I sent it.

Outgoing Text, 12/31/09 7:59 pm CST
"Happy New Year, Ashar, wherever you are and whatever the hell happened to you. I still think of you fondly. <3 David..."

When my phone buzzed a few minutes later and I saw his name on the screen, strangely, inexplicably, I felt nothing. Not surprise, not excitement, nothing.

Incoming Text, 12/31/09 8:01 pm CST "I think you messaged the wrong person?"

Now I know why those messages weren't returned. His phone was deactivated, he's moved, someone else has his number now.

Outgoing Text, 12/31/09 8:02 pm CST "Sorry! I must have an old number. Happy New Year to you, anyway! hahaha"

Well, that's over. I can delete his number from my contacts for sure now. Continue getting ready, fiddling with hair, etc.

Incoming Text, 12/31/09 8:09 pm CST "Are you trying to reach Ashar Khan?"

Sproing!!! Sweet, surprising, a lead!

Outgoing Text, 12/31/09 8:11 pm CST "Indeed! Do you know him? Do you know how I can get in touch with him?"

Incoming Text, 12/31/09 8:14 pm CST "This is his wife; I have his phone."

Oh. My. Allah. (I say this as a prayer, and not in vain. A prayer of total shock. Prayer as punchline.)

Outgoing Text, 12/31/09 8:19 pm CST "Is he in the US? Can you give me his new number or some other way to contact him?"

Incoming Text, 12/31/09 8:29 pm CST "Are you talking about Ashar Xxxx from Xxxxx Xxxxx? May I know who this is?" (Family and employer names redacted to protect the innocent from Google search results)

Okay, time to panic. Wait, must reread initial messages to make sure I didn't say anything inappropriate. Okay, besides the <3, everything is quite tame and asexual. But what if I'm not the first, just another piece of evidence in a mounting case against his heterosexuality? Is this an arranged marriage? Did he marry his cousin? Must act quickly, must lie creatively, accurately, and convincingly.

Outgoing Text, 12/31/09 8:32 pm CST "This is his friend David from Chicago. We went to UPenn together. Can you send me his number?"

And that's pretty much the end. I made one more unanswered attempt a few minutes later.

Outgoing Text, 12/31/09 8:57 pm CST "Alright, thanks anyway. Please tell Ashar that his friend David in Chicago says Happy New Year if you have a chance. Take care!"

Waiting in line at the 53rd and 6th Halal food cart in midtown Manhattan with Ashar, 2 am, May 2009.

Currently Listening to:
John Mayer's Battle Studies