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.