It Sucks to be Me :-)

I just saw Avenue Q in London. It was awesome. Exactly the right mix of snarky social comment and actual plot, and most of it was personally relevant (or at least personally referent). What do you do with a BA in English? (well, French and Medieval Studies, but it amounts to the same thing). I'm currently downloading most of the songs, my favorites being "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist", "If you were Gay", and "It Sucks to be Me." Oh snarky humour, how I have missed thee.
Life with theatre is good :)

Gay's the Word

In London, there is only one single Gay bookstore. I expected more, in a city this size, but one is better than nothing. I found the shop this evening and was initially put off by the rather, well...male focus of most of the merchandise. The lesbian section is small and in the back. But it's there. I bought a couple volumes of secondhand fiction (can't afford new books as the pound is too strong vis-a-vis the dollar, can't afford anything too obvious since I'm going back to Morocco). I would have liked to talk to the proprietor, but he was busy for most of the time that I was there. Still, it was nice. A place with a nice, obvious title emblazoned outside. The simple idea of being out in the open and having it not be a big deal. I'm inclined to think that it's really not a big deal, it's simply outsiders who make it one.

I figured out my sexuality in an environment where people are people, women or womyn or boys or bois are pretty much exactly the same, and who you date doesn't make much difference to anyone else. As a result, I tend to look at it all in a matter-of-fact sort of way. You're transsexual and dating a drag queen? No problem. I'm female and dating someone completely androgynous? Who cares? Problem is, very few other people see it that way. The fact that four states have just banned gay marriage, including my home state of Florida, illustrates that fact. I've never been one to be terribly political, and I'm not inclined to be publicly Out and Proud when, as I've said, the notion of who's dating whom is really no big deal to me. But when it comes to people's rights being taken away...I get mad. I was born in the States. I don't live there now, but it's a country I want to be able to come back to. And when I come back, I want to have the same rights as everybody else. I don't care about getting married. I don't care about a ceremony or a pretty white dress. But I want to know that if anything happened to me my girlfriend could come visit in the hospital. I want to know that if we were victims of a hate crime we wouldn't also face discrimination from the police. I want to know that no one else would be able to put their politics or their religion into our relationship, because our relationship is between us and only us.

This is the reason why, even though I'm not political, I think it's important to have a visible presence. Everyone on Marchmost street knows that there's a gay bookstore there. No one really seems to care. I'm sure that they've had tough times, but they've been there for years and gained acceptance. And that's just the point. People fear what they don't understand. People fear the unknown. And the only way to get over the fear of the unknown is to make it known. When people stop thinking of the Big Scary Homosexual Agenda and realize that gays are people too, it won't be such a big deal anymore. And that's the way it should be.

A New Experience

It's been quite a while since I've posted on this site. Partly it's that I've been so incredibly busy that it's been a struggle to find time to breathe, much less angst. Partly it's because the list of potential things to angst about is far too long to write down. I've fended off random propositions from guys on the street, had a coworker express his deep and unrequited love for me, been unsure of the limits of acceptable friendly behavior in several instances, and generally had a number of things to deal with.

And then there was something completely new.

I'd been in the office all day, doing paperwork and using the internet, and when I went back to the hotel one of the guys walked with me, since it was on his way. He invited me for a cup of tea, and I thought what the hell, might as well, get the sorry-let's-just-be-friends conversation over with and move on.

But it didn't happen.

We got tea, and we chatted. About Morocco, about travel, about any number of subjects...and none of them had anything to do with his wanting to get together with me. It was like hanging out with a friend at home, enjoying each others' company with no expectation of anything other than friendship going on. I was stunned. It's the first time that that's happened here. Eleven months in Morocco, and it's the first time I've been somewhere unchaperoned with a guy my own age that hasn't resulted in awkward conversations or awkward acts.

Sometimes the world can still surprise me.

I'm glad.

All shall love me and despair (Retroactive Post)

I’m not Galadriel, nor do I wield a Ring of Power à la Tolkein. But I’m beginning to think the statement is apt.

One of my coworkers just told me that he likes me. I’ve known this for a while, but it’s never been explicitly said before. And things that aren’t spoken can be ignored. But now this evening over mint tea he said it, said that he’s been in love with me since the moment he first saw me. Which is flattering, but very, very awkward. I told him that I like him very much as a friend, but not as anything more than that. He took it well. I know it can’t be easy to let yourself out so far and then be rejected. And he was obviously disappointed, but quietly so.

I feel bad. I do genuinely like him. Just not in the same way that he likes me. Damn unrequited love. He’d be a good candidate, if I were single and straight. He’s an open-minded Berber atheist who can talk about philosophy, he speaks four languages, he has a good sense of humour, and he’s good-looking as men go. But I’m really not interested. Even if I were single, I’d still have said no.

My life would be so much easier if I were interested in men. There are so many candidates, and if I picked one it would get rid of the competition amongst the others and then maybe I wouldn’t have so many problems because I would be very obviously off the market. It’s hard to keep claiming that I’m not single when I don’t even have a picture to show. (Girlfriend, can I get a picture of you in drag?).

Circe

I had intended to blog about a conversation I had a few nights ago. I'd already written my post, but saved it in the wrong format for the Moroccan cybercafe computer to open. I'll leave you instead with a quote by Olga Broumas, from her poem "Circe."


What I wear in the morning pleases
me:green shirt, skirt of wine. I am wrapped

in myself as the smell of night
wraps round my sleep when I sleep

outside. By the time
I get to the corner

bar, corner store, corner construction
site, I become divine. I turn

men into swine. Leave
them behind me whistling, grunting, wild.

A late night talk about a lot of things (Retroactive Post)

Last night, we had a discussion. Me, my fellow American expat tour leader, her Moroccan boyfriend, and all his brothers talked about life, the universe, and everything.

Or rather, we talked about a lot of semirelated things including women in Islam and in Morocco, Islam in general, Arab countries versus the US, capitalism, and so forth. And I’m honestly not sure how much communication actually took place.

It all started when my friend Autumn asked why women aren’t supposed to pray out loud in mosques like men. The answer that the boys gave was so that weak men wouldn’t hear women’s voices and be aroused by them. Frankly I found this explanation to be bullshit, as very few women have voices that are that inherently sexy. The same explanation was offered for why women have to keep covered and wear hijab (headscarfs). So that weak men won’t see them and be tempted. And the boys seemed to see no problem with this logic. But when Autumn asked why it was the women’s responsibility to protect men from their baser instincts, the merde hit the fan and resulted in a conversation that lasted until four o’clock in the morning.

The conversation was not in the least bit organized, with people getting defensive, jumping to conclusions, changing the topic, cutting one another off, and generally spending more time trying to say their piece than listening to anyone else’s viewpoint. Nevertheless, I’ll try to make my notes and reflections as coherent as possible while still accurately reflecting everything that was said.

To begin with, the statements of the boys: the hijab and the restrictions on women are designed to protect them. If women are not visible to men, audible to men, or perceptible to men, then they won’t tempt men, and therefore they won’t be harassed by men. The boys used the example that if a women walked naked down the street, all the men who saw her would desire her, wouldn’t be able to control their instincts, and would attack her.

The girls’ response: Why is it the responsibility of the women to keep the men from acting like beasts? Why can’t the men be strong enough not to think about sex all the time? The brain should rule the body, not the other way around. And who said anything about being naked? We walk down the street fully clothed, and we get hit on and catcalled at least ten times a day. We’re certainly not dressing provocatively or acting in any manner that might remotely be considered erotic.

To which the boys reiterated that weak men can’t control themselves, weak people can’t control themselves, and if one of the guys were to get naked right now wouldn’t Autumn and I be tempted?

No, was our immediate, unison response. No, not in the slightest. I think his male ego was a bit deflated after that.

But with regards to the idea that weak people can’t be tempted…how on earth are these supposed weak people going to be able to make themselves stronger if they aren’t occasionally challenged? Not by naked people walking down the street, which really happens quite rarely in most of the world, but by more everyday things? If people are never challenged, they will never improve themselves, was Autumn’s main statement, and I agree. But I would add that no one can be improved or redeemed by subjugating anyone else. And while men here might convince themselves that restrictions on women are there for the women’s own protection, the evidence indicates the contrary. A good Moroccan friend of mine wears full hijab and tells me that she still gets catcalled on the streets. And women in full face veils may be anonymous, but they are conspicuous by their very anonymity. They may get less overt male attention because they generally don’t leave the house without a male relative, but they do get noticed all the same. And I highly doubt that anyone enjoys or feels protected by wearing head to toe black clothing in the middle of August heat.

I have more to say on this topic, but it’s 1am now and I have work tomorrow, so I’ll have to finish these thoughts in another entry at another time.
9 August 2008

The Marrakech souks

The Marrakech souks. Where they sell lamps and carpets, hashish and sex.

Yesterday walking through the souks with my friend we took a wrong turn, and immediately there was a kid, maybe fourteen, asking where we were going, telling us how to get to the square. Asking what we wanted.

“Square? Restaurant? Tannery? Carpet?”

And, as we walked off, ignoring him…

“Sex?”

I threw the British two-finger salute over my shoulder, and we walked on. But his litany of questions stayed with me. Square, restaurant, tannery, carpet, sex. The things that they think that a tourist might be seeking. The impression that we’re all both shopaholics and whores. And there are tourist women who come here, spend a fortune, meet a boytoy for a few days, and leave. It does happen. So they’re not entirely wrong. How do they differentiate between those of us who are here to explore the culture and those of us who are here to exploit and be exploited by the men? They really can’t. They could look at how much we’re covered, but it’s not a hard and fast rule that more covered means more conservative, even among the women here. They could assume that we’re all virtuous until proven otherwise, but that goes completely against the culture here and so would never actually happen.

Some of my expat friends have begun referring to Western women as belonging to a “third sex.” We don’t follow the traditional rules for women here, but we’re also clearly not men. So people don’t really know what to do with us. They (and by “they” I mean men in general who work with tourists) try to laugh and joke and have camaraderie as they would with other men, but there’s almost always something greedy under the surface, whether for money or for sex, and often for both. There’s almost an assumption in some places that a financial transaction might lead to a sexual one. The other day I bought a small painting for an inflated price, and the shopkeeper offered to give me a massage and wanted to give me a kiss. And while I told him that that was Not Okay, I got the impression that there had been other women in the same situation who had said that it was okay. And with such precedents, it’s almost understandable that there would be assumptions. But it’s still an irritating situation. And I have yet to find a solution that actually works.

The God of Small Things (Retroactive Post)

The God of Small Things. The God of Loss. The ones who make and break the Love Laws. The things I think about after reading this book.

How the rules of society determine who is able and allowed to love whom. How the desire to fix these ideas in stone creates pain for all transgressors who are not truly transgressors, who are simply the forerunners of those things that are still taboo but which will someday (inshallah soon) be accepted. Caste and Race and Family Ties. The established network of each.

In some ways I too transgress these laws. I love a woman, and an androgynous one at that. It’s not so bad these days as it was in the past. I’m quite happy that I didn’t live in the 1950s, when I would probably have been forced or felt pressured by society to marry some nice decent chap and had 2.5 kids and would have probably never even acknowledged to myself that women are more beautiful to my eyes than men.
On the other hand, my current life presents its own set of problems. I’m a lesbian living in Morocco. My girlfriend is afraid to come visit because she thinks that we’ll get lynched. I think we’d be alright, but nothing is certain, no matter what country we’re in. And given that she comes from an activist background and has seen all the bad things that can potentially happen, I have to respect her fears.

One thing that struck me in the book is how characters who seem on the surface to be very minor actually wield great power. Baby Kochamma seems like just a petty old biddy, and indeed that’s exactly what she is. But she manipulates the stories that people hear and that they believe to dramatically alter the outcome of events. But for her manipulations, Velutha might have lived longer and died differently. Ammu would have survived longer as well. The twins would have grown up together and not gone mostly mad. All these lives that could have gone on happily and indefinitely were ended or altered irreparably. By someone who appeared only to play a peripheral part.

I wonder, in my life, if there are people in the background that I’m not aware of, people who pull strings to manipulate thoughts as she did. I shudder to think of it. I wonder, if I continue to live in countries that are more traditional, what will happen if I flout custom to too great a degree. I want to tear down all the walls and barriers that exist, but doing so would probably bring all of them down onto my own head. So I’ll tread cautiously. And I’ll pray to the Gods of Things Small and Large to keep me safe as I walk the tightrope of customs, cultures, and beliefs.

2 July 2008

Midnight in Todra Gorge

Midnight, that time when dreams are shattered, when waking and sleeping are nothing but myths. When boys that you once thought of as brothers try to take your hands and hold you under the starlight, which might be romantic if it weren’t so wrong.

I wish that there were some way of saying that there’s not a snowflake’s chance in the hottest hell that I would ever get together with any guy here. I can’t believe that Mohammed of all people tried to pick me up. I’ve told him that I have a "boyfriend". He asked about my "boyfriend" when he saw me today, right when I came in. So he knows that I’m with someone, even if he doesn’t know the whole truth about that person. Why should it matter if they’re half a world away? My heart belongs to someone else, and that’s the important thing.

There are bugs flying around my room in Taborihte, where I lie on the bed in my underwear to avoid the heat, smelling of rosewater and frustration. After Mohammed tried to hold me on the terrace I fled (meaning that I calmly said that I needed to leave now), and then I went to the terrace in the new part of the hotel, where I stood on the unfinished roof and railed against the universe for making these boys a recurring theme in my life.

Why do men fall in love with me? Or rather, why are they attracted to me, since I can’t very well call whatever they’re feeling “love”. I don’t know why, I just know that they constantly do so, and it ruins what could be perfectly nice friendships when people try to bring sex or romance into the mix. I don’t like boys. I don’t even really like girls either. I like androgyny, which is difficult to find and hard to explain. I might describe myself as a lesbian or bisexual, but they’re simplistic labels for something more complex. I like people who fall into the middle of the gender spectrum. In general I prefer them to be female bodied. I have found some male bodied people to be attractive, but attraction is as far as it’s ever gone. My partner is female on the outside (except when in drag) and genderqueer on the inside, which is how I like it. I like people to be complex.

A while ago there was a night in the desert much like this one. Mubarak took me on a walk in the Sahara at night, wanted to get together. When it became clear that nothing was going to happen he said in frustration that he didn’t understand what was so complicated. “You’re a pretty girl,” he said, as though it was as simple as that, as though the simple fact that we were male and female in the moonlit Sahara should make me fall into his arms and swear that I would be forever his. As though a queer American female with a liberal arts education and literary ambitions and a straight Moroccan Berber man who lives as a semiliterate nomad in the desert should suddenly be perfectly compatible. As though our differences must suddenly make no difference at all. And it’s not that I don’t respect him as a person or think that he doesn’t have value. We could have immense amounts to teach one another. The problem is that he wants it to be in the context of love or lust. And, as many men in Morocco are coming to find out, I’m really a heartless bitch when it comes to men. They throw themselves at me and they mean nothing to me, so I toy with them without meaning to. I’ve probably broken several hearts. I’m really not entirely displeased. It’s retribution in kind for angst.

Coming Out

As of this afternoon, I am officially out to one person in Morocco. It’s quite a relief, really. I’d been thinking that I would burst, keeping the weight of it inside. There were days when I wanted to run down the streets, screaming “I’m a lesbian!” to the disapproving world. I realized, of course, that that would be a bad idea. But that didn’t stop me from thinking about it.

This afternoon, I had lunch with a friend at Café des Épices, overlooking the spice souks of Marrakech, near djema al fna square. We sat there and chatted for hours, about any number of things. She’d told me in the past of her ill-fated relationship with a Moroccan man. I told her about my long-distance relationship with my girlfriend of two years. She, being an American and an anthropologist and a generally cool person, was fine with it, as I knew she would be. And it’s such a relief to come out.

I realized, after my recent visit to the States, just how tense I’d been over here. And I’ve decided to be more relaxed about a lot of things. I'm not necessarily planning to come out at work or to wear rainbows and pink triangles everywhere. But it's nice to know that there's at least one person in this country that I can talk to without worrying about always keeping gender-neutral language when I talk about the person I love.

An Afternoon with H.

So. I’m going to recount now my experience of this afternoon, which is typical of all my relationships with Moroccan men.

I’ve known Hafid for a while. He runs a babouche shop in Essaouira and works nights in a hotel. We’ve had a few conversations, and they’ve all been fairly low key. So when I ran into him on the way out to the beach, and we’d both planned to take a walk down to Diabat, it made sense for us to walk together.

The way out was easy. We chatted about inconsequential things: weather, our families, business in Morocco. I waded barefoot in the water as is my custom, and I laughed when he soaked the hems of his jeans in the surf.

The way back was harder. Somewhere he got the bright idea to tell me “tu me plait,” (literally, “you please me”). I laughed and said that was nice of him to say. But he started insisting, “no, really, I like you a lot, you’re very nice…”etc. Which, if you’re a guy, is exactly the wrong thing to say to me. Because it’s always the start of something awkward.

He continued to tell me that he wanted a relationship with me, a nice, honest relationship. And I told him, honestly, that I only wanted a lighthearted friendship, and none of this relationship stuff. And he wouldn’t accept that. He kept asking why, and I kept saying that there are lots of reasons, none of which really bear discussion at this point. And I danced my verbal dance around him, and he knew I was dancing and evading the question, and he wouldn’t accept that I wouldn’t answer. He wanted to know the main reason. But the main reason is one that I can’t tell. Because “I’m not heterosexual” is not an answer that he would be able to hear.

An Introduction

So. This is the beginning.
I’ve been living in Morocco for about five months now, and living in a male-dominated heteronormative society is starting to drive me nuts. I’m starting this blog as an outlet for my feminist lesbian angst. You can expect semiregular posts here about gender and sexuality, women’s rights, and society and religion in general. I may eventually branch out into the best places for a lesbian to hang out in Morocco, but I have to find some places first. Wish me luck with that.