Category Archives: Self-discovery | خود آگہی

A Scribbling Phase

dance floorPooh from Peshawar, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

A hot summer evening, a party, 2012: I was with the girls I love most.  My four best friends and I were partying when suddenly a girl, an acquaintance, asked me for my permission to be kissed. I completely refused. She insisted again and told me that this will not be on my lips. She lied, and I moved away.

I was there, sitting on a couch. And I realized something different. It was not love; it was not some magical feeling in my gut. It was a point when they show you in the movies with a swirly effect that one has a flashback.

–flashback–

I was engaged in 2009 to the man who proposed me and wanted to marry me. I had known him for quite some time. We were perfect.

We went out on our first date. He tried to hold my hand. I shivered and let go. I never felt attracted, I never felt at ease. The thing kept on, I cried every time he came near, and eventually we broke up in 2011.

No, being with a male person was not new to me. And I had been to co-education schools in Pakistan.

–reality–

I looked at all my friends, So many people on the dance floor. And I was trying to locate myself.

I tried being with men, but I do not understand. Why do I still remember a girl that I had met up and was with for 6 months in 2002 as much as I remember my ex-fiancé? Why was I more comfortable with her ? Why would her touch be more caring? I realized that although I had fun with male partners, I could not be very comfortable with them unless I was drunk. I did not want to see what was inside their pants. I do not know if that fear came from a sexually abused childhood or just that I was not in the mood.

I racked my brain for my entire crush list. Why had I always fancied men like Will Young and Gareth Gates and not men like John Cena? I had my answer: I was surely not straight. And that I was sinning.  Being bisexual was not very difficult for my close friends to accept, because most of them were queer or friends of queer.

But the thought of my newly Islamized family finding out scares me of the consequences, and what I fear the most is losing my right to an education.

Scenes from My Life

kolkataAuthor: Kaustav M. from Kolkata, West Bengal, India

It all started in the summer of 2008 when I joined a computer-learning school. My classmates were of various age groups from as young as 14 to as old as 45. The first few days were peaceful and I liked going to my class. After first few weeks of peace a guy in his mid-20s joined us. He was short, used to wear spectacles and had great knowledge of computers which I found to be extremely attractive! We soon became friends and started hanging out.

Days passed by and one afternoon, I still remember, we were sitting in his room upstairs and no one was around. We started watching porn! It was male-female sex! For a boy who has just reached puberty, one can imagine how it was! Obviously nothing happened between the two of us. But it obviously got me thinking and reflecting on my past experiences.

There have been moments in the past when I have felt strong attraction towards humans of my own gender. I could never understand why I used to feel anxious around them, why there were butterflies and lilies in my stomach and liver. But the feeling was always there and always got ignored.

Watching and downloading and again watching straight porn lead me to another portal: gay porn. This was the first time I was watching ‘man-on-man action’ and I thought, “Really, so men can actually have sex with other men? Interesting!” For a long time I used to believe that men can have sex with other men only for money and it can never be anything more.

But this belief of mine changed as I started watching movies. My Own Private Idaho (1991) was my first movie where two men were in lead and something ‘funny’ was going on between the two, I thought. I was shocked and equally thrilled to find that ‘this’ can also be made into movies, like feature length movies. For a boy of 15 or 16 it is a lot. Then, Brokeback Mountain (2005)! This is when my belief was questioned. Unlike the previous movie in this one the two men were what we call ‘in love’ with each other and can do anything to be together!

The shock stayed for months.

Shelter (2007) was another pleasant shock because unlike Brokeback Mountain the two actually succeed in living together. This gave me hope. Hope in the sense that maybe someday the same might happen with me! Be it gay porn or queer mainstream cinema, it all has helped in forming my identity.

top bottom versatileLater, I came across a ‘dating’ website (hooking up is more like it) where my newly formed idea that two men can love each other was questioned! People in the website were more ‘advanced’ and spoke a language I didn’t know. They said, ‘T/B?’ and I didn’t know what to answer.

It took me some time to get it. Mostly people refused to ‘see me’ because I didn’t know what I was: a ‘Top’ or a ‘Bottom’ or a ‘Versatile’. I don’t know what I was expecting but I decided to stick around even after knowing that I’m committing a ‘sin’.

Though I’m a Hindu, I believe in Jesus. Christians believed that homosexuality is a sin. For a long time I thought maybe it is a sin, maybe I am doing wrong. The conflict continued for some time.

After  numerous virtual rejections and my chubbiness and thinning hair line, I managed to make a friend and decided to meet. This was going to be the first time I was going to meet a ‘sinner’ like me. We got along well. We talked about music and movies – Lady Gaga and Wong Kar Wai! He helped me a lot in coming to terms with myself. Because I had spent all this time in loneliness. I had no one to talk to or look to for answers for the numerous questions. Mostly it was me and the internet. By the time was eighteen I was happy with myself and had read enough to be sure that being gay was nothing ‘abnormal’ or a ‘sin’.

It was a winter night and I and my sister decided to watch a movie together. We often used to do that. I suggested, should we do something different tonight and played Prayers for Bobby (2009). The movie ended and my sister had tears in her eyes.

I looked at her and said, “Didi, I’m like him. I’m like Bobby. I’m gay”. I added, “Will you let me die like him?”

She hugged me and said, “No, never. You know that I love you, right?”

She has always loved me and has supported me ever since. Being gay probably is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Coming out to myself

lahoreComing out has been an extremely audacious  process for me as it seemed next to impossible to accept myself as who I am, given that the dynamics of Pakistani society are quite unique from Western cultures. At times it is considered  a homosocial society, where men experience more same-sex physical proximity and intimacy than any average American or British, but with  rapid globalization, the stigma has also been attached to this  homosocial behavior.

Being brought up in a traditional middle class family of Lahore, I have always been discouraged to ask questions and been advised to conform to pre-existing knowledge and cultural values without getting skeptical about it. But I was  born an inquisitive child for whom Whys, Whos, Hows and Whats has been very important. And I guess, this is the result of my innate curiosity and inquisitiveness which made me realize and accept my gaiety. My questions were regarded as the biggest dilemma of my childhood life as my elders used to say, “Pata nae yeh iitni ajeeb ajeeb baatain kyun karta hai? Hum nay to kabhi koi sawal nae poacha tha apnay bazarguan say. Bus un kii har baat maan letay thay chup kar kay.”

This thinking pattern is a part of our collective unconscious that my parents, grandparents and perhaps great-grandparents all were a part of – the kind of people who were used to  spending life in accordance with what has been passed on to them under the name of morality and values. Any possible deviation from those mythical and folklore-based traditions was considered unholy and blasphemous. But, things were different for me. It was not a matter of me being gay but generally I was different from other children of my age. I had individual opinions, or tried to, anyway.

I tend to see certain level of pseudo morality, injustice and hypocrisy within the framework of norms handed over to me. I could never understood than why the hell we Sunnis need to hate Shias when they are Muslims as well? Why   have  men been given an edge over women in Islam when I see my father being rude to my mother? I never got satisfied with the replies to those questions then.

I knew from day one, as far as I can remember, that I liked men. This awareness came when I was 6 or 7 years old and one night, after my parents went to sleep, I turned on the TV and started watching an old Lollywood movie. In one scene, the protagonist was shirtless and that was the moment, I guess, when I felt something different, something I was unable to define at that time. I still remember that the next day, I couldn’t concentrate in my school and had severe headache. What I was feeling at that time was mixture of shame, joy, fear and guilt.

My way of talking, walking, behaving and expressing things was different and that was clue enoughfor my father who tried to carve out a physical and emotional hardcore man out of me, after his friends and relatives started pointing out potential feminine streaks in me. Alarmed by the situation, he did what every conscientious father might have done and I quite intelligently dealt with the situation by manipulating my walk, talk and behavior like the man I was expected of becoming – prototype my father and my society have carved for me. I was 10-11 years old than.

Whenever I saw my kind of guy, I did experience warm sensation on my face or a flutter in my chest. But I always used to lower  my eyes and shun my feelings. Considering it an abnormal feeling and a budding disease, I even used to pray to Allah to take this scourge of perversity away from me, but he never did. Why, I came to know later in my life.

Being bullied at school for being gay as well as a chubby kid, I turned out as an extremely aggressive and emotionally aloof man who give doesn’t give a shit about anything around him. Actually, it was a defense mechanism, a kind of maneuvering to repel people away from me, in the fear that they might stigmatize me. Wearing that mask, I used to think that my ordeal was over but it was becoming tougher as I entered in college. Being exposed to a large number of men, badly managing my newly acquired puberty and having no one to confide in, I was heading towards acomplete disaster.

But, somehow, out of blue, I befriended a college fellow and unexpectedly one fine day we both started talking about this issue after cracking a Pathan joke. And I came out to him and to my surprise, he also joined me in this coming out. I can’t tell you how  relieved and unburdened I felt that day after sharing my loathsome secret with him. But still, being Muslims, we considered it a sin and a perversion. After that I just happened to identify and befriend  several other boys in campus with the same orientation. It was indeed a strengthening experience for me as I realized that I wasn’t alone. Whether it was a disease or a perversion, a natural calamity or choice, I now knew I wasn’t the only one, that there is a whole group of us with same thing.

Then as I moved for my graduation and than Masters, I started doing research regarding this issue while continuously praying to Allah every day, in the hope that one fine day, He would take pity on me and let me find a solution for it. I came across the scientific research evidences, in both medical and psychological literature, which clearly states that it’s a natural phenomena, not a matter of choice and my heart knew that I never opted for it and it was natural for me, not an ‘adopted perversion.’

badshahi-at-eidBut that scientific scholarship was hardly enough for me because being a traditional Muslim I had been told that it’s forbidden in Islam. And I don’t want to forgo my religion for my orientation’s sake. I still remember how terrible those fruitless ‘research’ days were when nothing functional was coming out of it. Capital punishment or celibacy, that’s what Islam seemed to offer me at that time. What I needed wasn’t any permission to have sex with a man. That was hardly enough. What I was actually looking for was a way to envision a life of love, intimacy and commitment with a man in the context of a religiously alive traditional Islam. And finally, one day, just like a guardian angel, I met my expatriate cousin, who has been researching the issue of homosexuality within Islamic literature. He shared extremely valuable information with me regarding the alternative viewpoints on the issue based upon the analysis of Quran, Hadith and Islamic jurisprudence. I gave a thorough study to the works of Scott Siraj ul Haqq Kugle, Daayiee Abdullah, Muhsin Hendricks, Pamela Taylor, Samar Habib and other distinguished scholars, analyzed their work, evaluated it and followed my spiritual institution.

And then finally I came up with my stance. I realized that Allah doesn’t hate me, He doesn’t detest me. And that my gayness is a hard-wired element of my personality, which can’t be changed and why should it be changed because it’s a manifestation of my Allah’s diversity, not a moral failing.

After this, my attitude towards my own self as well as towards others started changing for the better. I became more confident, happy, peaceful and contented while further disseminating this positivity. From that day onwards I decided to educate, help and facilitate people in general and sexual minorities in particular, with all the resources available to me. I wish that one day all sexual minorities will get full and complete acceptance, not tolerance or sympathy, but complete acceptance for their difference. I know it’s difficult, but I’ll continue to work for this cause.

(A version of this article was published in the July-August issue of Gaylaxy Magazine)