A Portal to the Land Beyond Rainbow.

Perhaps the best thing that happens to Persian youths is Internet. I am very happy to see that dear Persian gay boys also use the power of file sharing to download a portion of their dreams. One of the reasons that I write in English (despite my bad English) is that English is the only medium that I can read about and watch people like me. When I was 14-15 years old, I almost read every book that find in libraries or bookstores. I loved stories, but couldn't sympathize to most of them and specially the love stories. First I assumed that it's my problem and no great author writes about love of two boys. But there are also vague notes about Andre Gide, Jean Genet and Oscar Wilde. I know that there must be something that I missed. Then I found a copy of one of Genet books: "Our lady of the flowers". I can only understand few words. So I picked up a dictionary and start to read. Word by word, I translated every sentence for myself. Then I find a battered copy of "Different: An Anthology of Homosexual Short Stories" and then "Homosexual Handbook" by Angello D'Archangello from Ophelia Press. And I read and read. I learned that if I want something, must search for it. No one found a treasure without search. My first access to Internet was one of my most fearsome experiences. I was reading "Dhalgren" of Samuel R. Delany back then and after finding out he is gay, I was dying to find his other books. A few weeks before that I became familiar with a phenomenon known as Web. A portal to other world. Where you can type "Samuel R. Delany" and it find name of his books, his biography and everything else about him for you. I remember how awful I felt back home with a diskette that contains three text files about Delany books. How afraid I was (and still am). How I almost shook and bathed in sweat when first searched for "GAY". How I knew about "queer". Later I found a web browser for windows 3.1 which supported web pages that contain photos. And I saw an image of two men kissing each other on lips for the first time. I save it on a diskette and watched that photo for hours that night and maybe a thousand times during next months. Then I found gay video clips. At first they were all porn. But gradually I learned tricks of search engines and found REAL things about myself. I started to search for "Queer" and learned about a TV series, which just showed in UK. A show about queer men. I found out there are thousands of gay authors, thousands of gay films. Now we can download everything that we want from this magical portal to heaven. First it was Morpheus but they closed it. Then Kazaa and then Bit Torrent, Overnet, Gnutella and hundreds of other programs. But anyway I am really happy to know that other Persian gay boys can see these films.



... And although I don't like girls sexually, I always appreciated them. At first glance many of them look like some intolerable, spoiled things. But after knowing them more, I think perhaps in many aspects they are better than boys. Quite a while ago I watched a very funny music video named Gay Boyfriend. Which is about two girls and their gay boyfriends! I really loved this music video and think in many cases girls (Not those "Look how much I am pretty, worship me please" kinds) can be gay boys best friends.