VC as Crazy Bitch & the Grace Initiative

I should start this by saying that Egypt has been a very strange place in terms of emotional growth. I think I'm a more mature person than I was two years ago (thanks to aging in general, and thanks to my specific experiences abroad), but I also think that if I have made unambiguous cumulative maturity advances, I've also regressed in some ways that should be taken seriously, namely in the domain of romance and how I deal with my romantic partners.

I remember telling Desi, last year, that my near-relationship with Y and its ultimate (and final, thankfully) decline from rollercoaster romance to solid friendship made me realize the disappointing ways in which I was reverting to pre-Pookie romantic patterns.

Let's be clear: I was hardly the ideal boyfriend with Pookie. There were times, in fact, when I was so jealous and accusatory that, once I'd regained my senses, the rational/calm me was questioning of HIS sanity in staying with me.

To be tangential: I remember, once, going to Pookie's place, and on my way I was calling and calling...no answer...so then I ring the doorbell, as I knew he should have been home, already, from taking an ex-boyfriend to a Yankee's game...no answer...I ring again...no answer. Then, after about three minutes (which is actually a long time to get from the living room, two meters away, to the door) he answered and I was surprised to find his ex there with him and the air tense with what I perceived as post-fooling around guilt.

Now, one of the problems with being extremely observant, intuitive, and intelligent, is that you always think you're right, which is to say Pookie was tried and convicted before a word was spoken.

If you've ever seen the scene in Evita where she goes to Peron's house and kicks out his old playmate, then my attitude was not dissimilar. I think after a few minutes of saccharine sweet conversation my exact words were: "So where did you say you lived again?...Oh, so you live close to the subway; that's great...Well it was nice meeting you! Do you want us to walk you, now, to the subway, or you can make it on your own?"

He left and I immediately confronted Pookie with what WAS sketchy, but not necessarily guilty, behaviour. He explained to me that he didn't want to get up to answer the phone while X was in the middle of a rather serious discussion about his own life (Pookie is a regular screener, anyway, so I usually know it's unlikely that I'll get through), and that he wasn't going to be so rude as to leap of the sofa while his friend was in mid sentence to run to the door to see who was there.

To this day, part of me still wonders if there was something going on, but the fact is that then and now I found Pookie's sincerity convincing (even if small doubts lingered), and in reality, being in a relationship with someone means trusting him, and part of me growing up has meant accepting that, and not running around like a paranoid psycho worried all the time that I'm being lied to. I think Pookie and I respect each other too much for that.

Pookie, in the way that so far only he has been able to really do, diffused my paranoia and made me return to earth. He was neither dramatic in his affirmations (there was no "But you know I'd DIE for our love!" or anything so artificial as that) nor was he overly-harsh in his perry and riposte ("I have NOTHING to defend, here, and you are being a psychotic child in your paranoia")...he was just sincere ("Well Chunk, you're talking to me like a prosecutor or something, and I'm telling you nothing was going on...I'm not interested in him at all").

What was so amazing about Pookie is that he not only managed to calm me down, but he also managed to diffuse the post-fit shame. I suddenly realized that I was standing there accusing one of the best people I'd ever met, let alone had the fortune of dating, of cheating on me, and that I was doing it in an obscenely immature way, and all I could think was: "He's too good for this. He's too good for someone as ruined as I am..." I was so disgusted with myself for that, and yet he managed to say to me that yes, I over-reacted, but it wasn't something to break-up over, and all couples face these kinds of issues and move through them.

The guy is a gem.

I want to make a sidenote, here, about paranoia and cheating:

I think there's a lot of truth to the theory that people who are overly-jealous or paranoid about being cheated on are that way because they are the ones cheating, and it's their own transgressions that inform their imaginations.

That said, I think there is an alternative path to paranoia and jealousy, which you travel-down after being totally screwed viz. male rolemodels (ie: dad) and then having that trauma compounded by a first gay relationship at a destructiveness level that those who have been close readers of this blog know about.

Growing up, and I just realized this tonight (I'll get back to HOW I realized this, later), I saw a father that was the epitome of the swinging bachelor, and seeing his constant game-playing, lies, cheating, and trail of ruined women in his path, I don't think it was even possible for me to understand "male" (or more specifically: "boyfriend" or "sexualized male") and "honest" or "safe" as descriptors that could simultaneously be assigned to a man.

Part of finally understanding that you are gay, and finally allowing yourself to, in my case, let ANY man be trusted enough to even be your friend (I don't think it's a coincidence that I had an untrustworthy father and thereafter only had female friends), let alone your lover, is letting go of that fear that a man (even a boy...a schoolmate...anyone who will eventually become the lying, sexualized male) will do to you what your father did to others, and giving a man a chance.

We all know what happened the first time I gave a man that chance, and with my relationship with Pookie beginning (on 13 February 2004) barely more than 5 months after my relationship with the evil Russian ended, I think it's understandable that "damaged goods" would barely even begin to encompass what was going on with me, emotionally, with significant spillover effects into my relationships.

That said, a lot of what was healing about Pookie was that I DID trust him. He's wonderful. He respected me, was honest with me, and sometimes, to my disbelief, he adored me. Receiving love (or whatever it is he'd prefer to call it) is VERY healing, and it makes you value it so much that you want to give it back, and you commit yourself to loving and healing others. (but that's not the point, here)

Back to Cairo...

I think that the amount of dishonesty built into a society where men believe that their survival depends on lying about their sexuality (and, by extension, the survival of their families, their religion, their state...the sky would FALL if nature were so wildly violated as for homosexuality to exist and be acknowledged...it would be total anarchy -- or so they like to believe) is destabilizing for someone like me (for all of us, really). I also think that this directly contributed to certain backward-stepping, on my part, to pre-Pookie levels of paranoia.

I do not trust nearly as much as I did before I moved to Egypt. Not only do I not longer trust men as much as I did before, but I don't trust phone companies, waiters, landlords...I don't trust PEOPLE as much as I did before I moved here, and certainly not a man who will call me "habibi" or try to have sex with me.

That said, even if I understand this (and I've only understood it with this clarity for, like, 45 minutes, now), I don't like it, and I won't stand for it.

Why do I mention this? I had a date tonight.

Preface: about a week and a half ago, someone messaged me on MSN (Microsoft messenger...an email-based chat program structured according to "buddy lists"...not Man Search Now, or something, for all you straighties with wild imaginations) and said "I noticed that your are on my old email account, but I don't know who you are" and indeed he was on my list, and I didn't know who he was. We were talking, he was a 25yo painter -- aka: not my type -- and without any discussion of status or sex roles or anything of the sort (which would normally be the most important ingredients to a chat between two gay men in Cairo) we agreed to go to dinner. It was one of my first "normal" dates (I'm sure Desi loves the normative values reinforced throughout this entry lol) since moving to Cairo.

He's decent, polite, smart, and if not INCREDIBLY charismatic, and if not TOTALLY my type, and if not FULLY adorned with all the markers of success that would be important in a society like this one (where, for instance, the fact that he went to Cairo University and not a British or American school is only IN PART compensated-for by his BMW and summer studies at UCLA), he is (most importantly, I'm remembering) someone I just instinctively feel I can trust.

We've had three dates, all of which I can candidly admit were rather polluted by my Cairene baggage, and he's just NICE. We've never even kissed, never discussed sex, actually (and NO Desi, I'm not saying "We are BETTER for this, because sex is bad and I hate gay people," so get OVER your critique of me as a homophobe!) and in a way that is eerily similar to Pookie, he weathers my weirdness with surprising dexterity and tolerance (which is NOT to say he enables me!).

Tonight, though, I crossed a line. I over-reacted. I was immature.

He has a tendency to talk on the phone when we are together, which is a pet peeve of mine in general. I tend to think of myself as very considerate, as far as cell phone etiquette is concerned, and ALWAYS apologize to whomever I'm eating with (even platonic female friends) if I have to take a call while at the table, and I ALWAYS minimize the length of that call. That said, he usually does tell me "Sorry this is my dad, do you mind?" or "it's international, so just give me a few minutes, ok?" with a level of considerateness that FAR superceedes that of most Egyptians.

Tonight, though, as I said, I crossed a line. We left a cafe to go to a restaurant (what can I say? Sex-free dates are highly-caloric!), and on the street on the way back to the car I noticed him look up at the building we were passing, and open his phone. He told me to wait while he stood there and made a call, in Arabic, with no explanation (it was only due to my freakishly-good powers of observation that I noticed his eyes dart upward before making the call, so I could assume he was calling a friend in the building). He then, after telling me to wait, told me we could keep walking, walked me to the car, opened my door, and motioned for me to get in and wait. He expected to pace up and down the street, speaking to I don't know who in a language I don't understand, while I wait like a lap dog in the car for who knows how long?

Certainly NOT.

We were sort of joking in our gestures: My hands waving, shutting the door and not getting in "No, I'm not getting in. What's going on?" His body-language reply, smiling: "Just get in! I'll be right there!" Me calling him, half-jokingly, on the other line, to tell him to hurry up; him again motioning for me to get in the car....

Me feeling insulted and losing patience.

Me walking away and getting in a taxi while he was not paying attention.

Me forgetting my keys were in his car.

Me waiting on the street, locked out of my building at 2:30AM trying in vein to get ahold of him.

Him coming back. Us talking. Me trying to explain with a level of articulateness so incredibly low that one might think English was my third language. Him disarming me with a big smile and (out of his control) that sense that, as I said, he was trustworthy.

What happened, then?

I tried to explain to him that I knew I over-reacted, but that I thought he had been extremely rude. As he said, and as I acknowledged, I could have won (this connects to the idea of grace, later) if I'd just waited patiently and then said to him: "That was really rude." Instead, I lost all my credibility by over-reacting and having to be the one apologizing. I explained to him that it didn't matter to me -- winning or losing, looking crazy or not -- what mattered was that I felt disrespected and had to exit that situation.

Of course, part of it is that he DID fail to go through the usual motions of "sorry this will just be 5 minutes" or "a friend from Sydney...just wait in the car, ok?" or any of the things that would have increased my tolerance from a zero to a perfect ten, and part of it is also that when you combine the trust issues that have resurfaced in Cairo with the fact that he was rattling away in a language I don't understand, I am left feeling really uncomfortable and insecure.

The key, though, was that I didn't see him as treating me with respect, and the trick with this Chunk is that I have extremely high (EXTREMELY high) expectations of what respect means.

If you have won my trust and understanding, then I will be the most considerate and accommodating person you've ever met, but in this case, because he missed the step of keeping me in the loop about the call, I was intolerant and haughty.

An unfortunate result of the emotional conditioners I talked about, earlier (and not just seeing my dad, but the way my mother has also made various mistakes in her romantic arrangements) is that, as a protection against disrespect and abuse, I have to be treated like a queen...or, prince...or whatever reference to the monarchy suits you.

I have walked out of dates in Cairo (literally left money on the table and walked away with no explanation, at restaurants) for ONE mis-placed comment (in the particular instance I'm thinking of, a Libyan told me I was being rude...my blood sugar was low, it was finals, and I knew how totally polite and out-of-my-way considerate I was being to meet him at all, let alone have him lecture me about my Arabic, which is when I asked him to please talk about it after the food came, and not now, which is when I was told I was rude)...I have deleted phone numbers, emails, and people because of ONE unsolicited comment about my appearance or tasteless reference to a much-loved ex. Failure to give me the place I deserve -- not talking to me enough at the party you invited me to, not introducing me with any sense of my place of privilege within your romantic life being transmitted when I meet your colleagues from the embassy -- not deferring to me in all the ways I will of course defer to you, these are fatal flaws.

The problem, as I'm sure you can see as well as I can, is that my importance is so contingent upon the recognition of that importance by these men that my worth becomes, as one of my favourite singers says, "embarrassingly conditional."

I do deserve a throne, and I know for a fact that I'd not only occupy it with generosity and style, but that I'd also do everything I could to build a throne just as nice, if not nicer, for my partner. Mutual respect. Mutual empowerment. Mutual adoration, right?

Here's the catch: for someone who thinks of himself as possessing so much elegance and class, I haven't demonstrated very much grace. I have been, to quote the same singer, "utterly threatened."

I am right to feel entitled to good treatment, because I'm a loving person, a fantastic person, and because I give excellent treatment in return, but real maturity, and real security with myself, would mean reacting better and more gracefully (more tolerantly, more communicatively, and more generously) when I don't get the treatment I deserve. That is my next step, my new goal.

VC