Exercise, Daddy and Other Musings.

Another, otherwise, peaceful dinner conversation disrupted by my disregard towards my health. I just don't see the point of going to the gym. I don't see why that's so unusual for my family to understand. I don't mind the flabs forming on the sides of my stomach. My father dubbed my likes and dislikes as 'ghair fitri' (unnatural). I don't see how wanting to get tired can be considered natural and wanting to rest be considered unnatural.

My father says he wants me to talk openly with him. He wants me to tell him my vision for my future, where I see myself in ten years time and what the purpose of my life is. He maintains that he's always allowed for us to openly express ourselves. I sit across the table from him and think to myself: 'What lies!' We don't speak about anything in this house. We don't talk about the time he beat my mother, we don't talk about the time he threw a slipper at my brother when he was 3 years old or the time he beat the butler for not bringing him and his friends tea.

I feel uncomfortable speaking about myself with him. In fact, I feel uncomfortable speaking about anything with him. I don't know when he's going to snap. I've learned to deal with him by keeping my mouth shut and just nodding at everything he says but he seems to have a problem with that too now. He has a problem with everything. He said that I should go see a therapist and all I could think about was how he needed a therapist more than I did.

That being said, I have a myriad of issues and I feel as though I do need a therapist. I sit on this blog, typing away, just trying to figure out my life but it isn't enough. There's so much uncertainty. So much I don't know. So much I'm not satisfied with. My father doesn't really understand my 'likes and dislikes' but to be quite honest, I don't know what they are. I feel uncomfortable when my father asks me these questions because not only am I uncomfortable with my father, but I also do not know the answers to the questions he asks.

I think my father and I have finally agreed on something: a therapist may be good for me. I desperately need someone to piece together the broken fragments of my life.. I can't do it on my own. I just need someone to make everything less confusing, to make some sense of things. I think my mother sums up my life more accurately than anyone else, she asks: 'Tum zindagi se bezaar kiyun ho?' (Why are you sick of life?), and I don't know what to say. I know she's right and I want to change, I just don't know how.

...

I look deep into your eyes, searching for your soul but I know that all that lays behind the lenses of your eyes is a retina that leads to an optic nerve. So I put my hand on your chest and try to feel your heart, but your heart is just a piece of flesh beating away, pumping blood through your veins. So I take a step back and I look at you and I search for the person I love but I know you are just bone covered with meat covered with skin and suddenly I feel more lonely than I ever did before.

You're saying something, I can hear you but I can't quite comprehend what you're saying. I know what the words coming out of your mouth mean as described in a dictionary but I don't know what you mean because you aren't really there. You're shouting now, I know you are, but your voice is fading away into the background just like the whisper of the ceiling fan above my head. I look around and see where I stand and although this room looks familiar, it doesn't quite feel the same and I realize that you're still there and I'm fading away.

I'm going to a place where I feel nothing but I already feel nothing because I'm not where I think I am. It's all in my head, everything. I don't see the world, I see my perception of it. There is no way that I can truly feel anything I can only feel my perception of 'feeling.' I'm all alone.

Hold me tight and remind me to come back. Remind me that I lay in your arms. Kiss me so I can feel your lips on mine. Touch every corner of my body so that I feel your hands sliding over my skin. Hold me tight and tell me you are real and I haven't just made you up. Write me a poem and read it to me to show me that you think the way I think and feel the way I feel. Please, just feel me and make me feel.

Shaadi season

Yes, It's that time of the year again. The time when the drawer is full of wedding invitations of relatives whose names you've never heard of. The time when you get the opportunity to witness the level of intellect and double standards present within our society. The time when you return home at 2 am, eager to take a seat on the commode only to pass out burning liquids. It's 'Shaadi' time.

This festive season kicked of with my cousins engagement where I heard a song whose lyrics roughly translated to:

'The groom is wondering how the bride will be' (because he hasn't actually ever seen the bride).
'Tell him the bride is like a piece of gold' (because women are shiny material objects, gifts of sorts).
'Whichever house she goes to, she'll make that house a piece of heaven' (God forbid she ever wishes to step outside that piece of heaven without the company of a male relative).

I think about how I sat quietly through the song and I'm impressed at my display of patience and maturity. My usual self would have either kicked the speakers till they became unable to play this damned song ever again or burst out laughing finding such ridiculous lyrics hard to believe in. But I realize that I must stay calm and maintain a certain level of discipline and continue to wear the fake smile on my face as I shake hands with relatives, whose faces I remember only vaguely, as though it's a great pleasure to meet them again. 

Despite the ghastly Parathas that have resulted in me spending a great number of hours each day in the washroom passing out God knows what, I've made it through the bulk of the season. I had an interesting discussion with my family the other night on our way to a 'Baraat.' The groom was a son of a close friend of my fathers and we were following the grooms car to a wedding hall. I'm not quite familiar with the customs of each function and I don't really care but in order to remove the awkward silence that persisted in the car, I decided to question my mother on the topic. She told me that during a 'Baraat' the 'lerkay wale' (friends and family members of the groom) go to pick up the bride and bring her home. I question 'Why can't the bride take the groom home,' and the car bursts into laughter and I sit there, puzzled, unable to understand the humor in my last statement. My mother jokingly asks if that's what I want for my wedding. I reply with a 'Why not?' and the whole car is perplexed by what I'm saying and alas, awkward silence continues till we arrive at the wedding.

I don't understand desi weddings. They seem so sexist, defining the roles of man and wife before they even meet. I'm not going to say they are very hetero-normative (even though they are; I can only imagine the confusion a gay couple would go through if they were have a desi wedding) because I understand that our society simply isn't there yet but to learn that our society isn't even willing to treat husband and wife equally is disheartening, if not infuriating.

My older brother doesn't want to get married anytime in the near future and although I understand, my mother seems almost unwilling to accept this reality. She tries time and time again to convince him to get married and after he refuses she jokes and says that one day, she'll pretend like she's taking him to a relatives wedding, but it'll actually be his wedding. For his sake, and for our societies sake, I hope she is in fact joking.

My Big Fabulous Gay Life

I feel like the words 'gay,' 'fabulous,' and 'pink' are often used as synonyms. When you are a homosexual, albeit in a country like Pakistan, the people who are most likely to accept you are almost unwilling to see you as anyone beyond the gay stereotype. You have to listen to Beyonce, you have to know how to dance your ass off and you have to be a fashioniesta.I don't mean to promote these stereotypes but I do feel as though many of these things come naturally to many of us, what does not come naturally however, is the supposed gay lifestyle.

We all don't get the opportunity to shake our bootylicious booties at gay bars, we can't all travel the world, not all of us enjoy sexual promiscuity (I'm not talking about myself here obviously) and we definitely can't all have completely hairless bodies at all times of the year. It seems not only pointless but also impossible to live that stereotypical lifestyle but I can't help but find my life empty without a touch of pink.

I exert a great amount of conscious effort to be as gay as possible. I gave a lap dance to a couple of my male heterosexual friends one night and it wasn't because I found it funny, or I just felt like it. I did it because I wanted to feel gay. I wanted to live My Big Fabulous Gay Life if only just for that one night. I know full well that this desire may just be the result of the way we're depicted in the media but I can't help but want to be as gay as Justin Beiber's hair (I don't even know what that means other than I can't think straight). I know I did not choose to be gay at birth but I feel as though I'm choosing to be super gay today.

Gay at birth, fabulous by choice.