Do you care? If I vanish into thin air.

A month passed since my last post. Back then I decided to quit writing here for a while. My reason was fear. Some of this fear was from myself and some of it was from the new Iranian Internet law. I was afraid because I realized that here I wrote about things that during 26 years of my life I didn't tell to anybody. I realized that my feelings became like a dam with 26 years of solitude behind it and a little crack in this dam didn't just relieve some of the pressure. The crack started to grow and the dam is in danger of falling apart. But stakes are high and so I tried to force myself back to my closet and somehow damp this crave for friendship. And yesterday I ended up chatting with L.E.O., The chatting robot of Lion Head Studio! The subject of our chat: Gay marriage in Fable game! I told him (it told me, it doesn't have a gender, but I think Leo is a boyish name) about myself. When I told him: I am gay, what do you think about it? He answered: What do YOU think about it? He just repeated my question, but I think that's the best answer I ever heard for this question. When I told him I feel lonely. He answered: Talk to your friends. I told him I never had a friend. He answered: "Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery, Today is a gift...which is why it is called the Present." I don't know which word in my question triggered his Case Based Reasoning system for such an answer, but I am thinking about this since then. For how long I want and I can live in my past? For how long I want to sacrifice my present in fear of what will happen in future? For 26 years, I was what my family wants. Am I feeling happy? Perhaps I can pretend to be what they want for another 26 years. I will be a 52 years old, married, possibly successful engineer. Will I happy then?
The Second reason of my silence was the recent Iranian Internet law. According to this law people can be tracked and persecuted by law for almost any kind of online activity. Writing a gay weblog certainly is a great crime from our judicial system point of view. I think that’s crazy, but in my dear country many things are crazy. And arrest of twenty gay men in Shiraz for being in an online gay chat room and also arrest of two university students for writing a porno weblog, made my fear even worse. Last month I heard that Iranian government censored Blogspot and many other Internet sites. I know how simple is tracking someone in Internet and how dangerous some of our government people can be. Last May Persianblog closed all of gay weblogs. Their crime: Writing about inappropriate matters. This time it seems they targeted bloggers instead of blogs. Maybe I am a little too paranoid but I afraid of them. When Abandoned Island deleted all his posts and just wrote: "I want to stay alive." I remembered how Max said exactly the same sentence in Bent when Nazi soldiers arrested him and his gay friends and sent them to Dachau. Despite all his efforts for staying alive he killed himself at the end of movie. I don't understand why we can't wear our pink triangles without loosing our life? When I read Bent reviews, some people wrote: now is the era of sexual freedom and making films about persecution of gays during World War II is useless. They said portraying gays as victims is inappropriate. Maybe it is. It seems we live in different worlds. (You can watch complete DVD version of Bent here, it's about 80Mb and 1h45m and you need Real Player(Warning: This film rated NC-17)). When in the beginning of movie Mick Jagger sings "Street of Berlin", I thought how we can sing exactly same thing about "Streets of Tehran". I hate politics, but why some people think they have the right to decide for every body else?
After thinking about all of these, I thought: so what? I always moaned (in past for myself and then here) and blamed other people for don't understanding me. I always knew I would not be welcomed, as my true self, in my family and society. I always knew about danger of being gay in Iran. But the problem is that I have no choice. I am what I am. Either I can eat it, enjoy the taste and live my life or deny everything I am, live a lie and hate myself every step of my life. It's a decision like any other decision. With consequences: both positive and negative. As Ed said: People cannot gain anything without sacrificing something, you must present something of equal value to gain something.



Streets of Berlin.
By: Mick Jagger
Music: Philip Glass
Lyrics: Martin Sherman

Streets of Berlin
I must leave you soon,
Oh, will you forget me
Was I ever really here,

Find me a bar on the cobble stone street
Where the boys are pretty,
I can not love for more than one day
But one day is enough in the city,

Find me a boy with two ocean blue eyes
That show no pity,
Take out his eyes he never needs to see
How they eat you alive in the city,

Streets of Berlin
Will you miss me?
Streets of Berlin
Do you care?
Streets of Berlin
Will you cry out?
If I vanish into thin air,

If I vanish into thin air.

... And do you know what Orkut means in Finnish?

... And Mrs. Parsipour in her review of Dr. Shamisa's book "Gay relationships in Persian literature" wrote that she thinks Persian people are among first gay people of world(Thank you very much!). She wrote that Gilgamesh and Enkidu love story is the first account of gay love in literature. But then she wrote three things that I found very amusing: First she thinks flourish of gay relationship in ancient and middle age Persia was due to easiness of access to boys and also because they can't get pregnant! She also thinks, satisfaction of sexual needs of men by boys is somehow responsible for oppression of women in Persia. I agree that women condition was completely unacceptable during our history, but blaming it on boys is a little unmanly (or unwomanly!). And I just wish none of those fanatic religious people read this article. In last section she point to the prophecy that a "bearded woman" will kill Mahdi and commented that maybe they mean a gay man by this comparison. FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!!!

... And I think Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is best Harry Potter film until now and is a real masterpiece. Harry starts to grow up and fortunately the atmosphere of film also changed with him. This film is much darker than first two parts and since it assumed that we know everything about characters, the story progress much faster. I think Alfonso Cuaron did a great job in directing this film and really captured what makes Harry so great. Cuaron last film, And Your Mother Too was somehow a gay film. It's story of how two teenage boys find out about love, world, straight sex and offcourse gay sex. At the end of the movie they ended up kissing each other on the lips and then go bed with each other. It's a great film.