K’s Shout Out

Dear GiBs,

It’s only been 2 days since I’ve been reading your blog, and today seeing that you haven't written anything yet in 2011, I decided to write to you.

I could relate to many things you said, but not to most.

Like you, I have lived my whole life in Beirut, I understand the culture we live in and the injustice that is part of our lives. Whether we are gay or not.

Like you, I come from a disappearing middle class, one that like any other social class in Lebanon is filled with social and family obligations.

My path however is quite different from yours.

I realized that I was gay a couple of years ago, and scared about it I decided to go to a psychologist for help, with the hope he could help me change.

He explained to me since the beginning, that there is nothing that can be done. I did a one-year therapy (secretly), at the end of which I decided to tell it all to my parents. It wasn't easy, and now, one year later, it still isn't.

Throughout therapy I could never find a guy here because he would be Lebanese, and Lebanon being a big village we would be bound to meet again or know someone he knows.

After telling my parents, I realized I could not live here any more and therefore left to the States for a year. During that year, I made great friends, had some amazing experiences, but nothing sexual. I was too afraid to take a step in that direction.

While abroad I would always have the same discussions with the gay guys I met. The minute I would meet one I would ask him:

- I there was a pill....
- NO!
- But you didn’t even hear the question...
- I know your question! They warned me about you! If there was a pill that would make me go straight?!
- Euh... yeah
- Well the answer is no!
- How can you say no so quickly! I mean think about it!

… and then I would go on depicting a scene almost as in science fiction, where gays would line up to turn straight just by swallowing one pill – in the back of my paranoiac mind there would be a side effect to that pill, but of course I would never add it to the discussion.

It would take me almost 20 minutes afterwards to describe to them the scene, the characters they were, and the advantages of being ‘like everyone else’. I would look at them, their eyes buried into deep thoughts, hesitantly change their answers from this offended "NO" to a tentative "I don’t know… it depends...", or an undecided "maybe".

Basically my whole point with this is how do you accept it enough for you to live it?

Because in my mind NO ONE, NO gay accepts it fully. There will always be a small noise nagging you from inside your head. Which is normal. No one wants to be different. No one wants to be part of a minority that has to fight for their right of existence.

But how do you accept it enough for you to act upon it? How does GiL’s horniness to pick up a complete stranger outweigh his fear of this stranger stealing from him, killing him? What he recounted is even worse than my imagination had created.

I’ve never been to Acid, or Bardo or any of the places you talk about. In fact, I never understood people who go there. Aren’t they scared of being recognized by other people?

You seem to be quite comfortable with your homosexuality but (if I understood correctly from your blog) you haven’t told your parents yet while I, who is still fighting it internally, already have. So many contradictions lay between us!

I want to believe I am not the only one that feels this way, though while reading your blog and others’, that’s not how it seems.

If being gay is difficult enough, being gay in a third world country is even harder... but being gay in a third world country and not accepting it after a year of therapy and another one abroad is more than I can deal with.

I hope you were not offended by anything I said, because it isn’t at all my objective but simply the way I look at life.

Thank you for sharing your experiences, I am sure you are helping people, not only in Lebanon, but around the world to accept themselves.

-Your fellow GiB

-- guest post by K. Photo taken by GiB#2 in San Francisco.