Tag Archives: marriage

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.