The Garab Chronicles

Mommy, What's a Garab? (Home - Part 1)

I had three grandparents. My dad’s mom was named Zudeikhah, and she lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Dokki with a tiny kitchen, a tinier bathroom, and a giant dining table that dominated the main room so that almost nothing else fit into the place. 

I used to cringe at the glasses of fresh milk placed on the plastic blue tablecloth that my mother tried in vain to get me to consume there every morning, and I did everything I could to avoid making contact with the disgusting layer of cream, which apparently indicated extreme freshness, which never failed to appear - floating on top of the liquid -  and clung to the rim when I tried to drink the stuff from the other side of the glass. Not only that, but this mysterious, primitive beverage came not, as the Almighty intended, from a white carton with the image of contented cows in silhouette on the tops of grassy hills, but was poured from the spout of a giant metal jug, strapped to the hunched back of a street vendor that arrived at sunrise, and thus avoided my scrupulous slumbering inspection.

When you stepped out onto the narrow street below, the smell of fresh garbage and produce invaded your nostrils before the sounds of the open-air market down the way echoed between the buildings and rang in your ears. Motorists, who were clearly unfamiliar with the cluttered old neighborhood, tried to make their way down both sides of the single, somewhat paved path, navigating between donkey-drawn carts laden with refuse and the gangs of almost teenage boys in tattered Adidas sportswear who kicked deflated sacks of worn leather between parked cars in pick-up soccer games that never seemed to end. Roosters made their presence known at all hours of the day, perched atop the countless chicken coops on the roofs of beige buildings that clawed towards the blue sky and poked each other with television antennas.

Up the street, a butcher shared the corner with the barber shop where I split my palm open the day I decided to test the efficacy of a straight edge razor after getting a bad haircut that, for some inexplicable reason, had extended to the back of my inflamed neck. Beef carcasses were strung from metal hooks around the windows of the small shop that always made the animals look significantly smaller than the images on the side of my white milk cartons ever made them appear. There was always enough blood in the air to attract giant flies that you learned to wave off rather than try to swat, and those same flies migrated back and forth between the butcher’s and the little juice shop on the other side of the street where I imbibed enough sugar cane juice to ensure a sizeable contribution to the longevity of many a future dental practice.

We lived with my grandmother Zudeikhah, far too many of us between my uncle's entire family and my own, in far too small a space with far too little indoor plumbing for some time, though the frequency with which we moved back and forth to Abu Dhabi made the experience feel more like an extended, slightly uncomfortable slumber party that would years later seem more like some exotic rugged adventure than anything else.

My father’s mother was ninety-five years old when she died. She’d always insisted on living in her own home, and she was in it when, during the first days of the last week of her life, a cold set in and forced her from the apartment and into a hospital bed, where her doctor explained that her body had begun shutting itself down, one delicate, aged component at a time, and that there was nothing he could do to keep her alive.

I was six, and my own mother delivered the news on a strangely somber elevator ride up the eight floors to my uncle’s new place for what I thought was a routine lunchtime visit that was, in fact, a hastily arranged funeral. I always hated taking that elevator. It was undergoing perpetual repairs and the overhead lights, when they worked at all, had an unnatural green hue that never failed to induce a certain nausea that combined with my pre-existing fear that the power would cut out halfway up the side of the building and we’d all plunge in darkness to a horrible screaming death. 

I’d always been allowed to take the stairs, and I often raced the car up to prove that mine was the more efficient, though sweatier, method of ascent. On this day, however, I was forced to stand in the corner, counting the floors up while rehearsing my last words and wondering why my mother was avoiding eye contact and looking so utterly trapped.

“Teta El Hagga died,” she finally said.

Until that moment, I had never personally known anyone who’d died, and it was strangely exciting, for about 3 seconds before the confusion set in. I’d watched countless hours of Anime by then, all dubbed in Arabic, all horribly violent orgies of imported carnage and decapitation. Whenever someone died in one of those, they always screamed as their bodies were vaporized or impaled or set ablaze, and I just couldn’t imagine any of those things happening to my poor old grandmother. Besides, to the best of my knowledge, she’d never done battle with alien robots or outer-space, katana wielding ninjas.

“How did she die?”

“She died of old age,” offered my mother, as kindly as one can attempt to explain death to a first grader on an elevator ride.

It was strange, walking into my uncle’s apartment that afternoon.  My aunt dressed in black, clutching tattered bits of Kleenex in her clenched fist, glimpses of my cousin bawling on the edge of her bed when I walked by her room to wash my hands. The whole thing was a little more surreal than most days, and it took a couple of hours and a full belly before my little brain began to comprehend the idea that I’d never see my grandmother again.

We never called my grandmother Zudeikhah by her first name. She was Teta El Hagga, which simply meant that she was a grandma who’d made the Pilgrimage to Mecca sometime before I came bouncing along, and if she had any name or identity prior to becoming my private candy receptacle, I couldn’t be bothered to find out about it.

After we moved out, my brother and I would accompany my father on the midday trips to deliver lunch to my grandmother at her apartment. She always wore a sheer white scarf over her hair and a blue dress that draped her entire body so that she seemed to float when she walked across the room. Her skin was pale, and her lips were cold as she greeted us at the front door and enthusiastically took our heads in her hands and kissed us one cheek at a time. Her favorite thing to sneak into my brother’s and my hands when our father wasn’t looking was Jordan Almonds. I hated the things beyond their delicious pink and lavender candy coating, and unlike my brother, who inhaled the things like they were going out of style, I sucked on them one at a time while longing for chocolate, and couldn’t wait to spit out the nutritiously annoying nut center when I reached it, to make room for the next sugary piece. My grandmother would then pull chilled bottles of Coca Cola for each of us, usually while my father’s loud protests that she was ruining our appetites escalated into a full-blown argument about things that seemed far more serious than whether or not I was well prepared to join the ranks of the clean plates club.

There, at the dining room table where my mother had tried to serve me unnatural fresh milk years before, I sat and poured myself short glasses of Coke and pretended they were shots of whiskey, then pounded them back like J.R. on "Dallas" while my father and grandmother talked, and yelled, and sometimes made up before we left to join the rest of the family at my uncle's place for lunch. That we didn’t actually sit down to share the meal we came to deliver usually set off another argument before we were kissed on the cheek, and sent off with pockets full of candied contraband.

I was sitting on my uncle’s balcony late that afternoon, and it suddenly dawned on me that we’d never drop off lunch at my grandmother Zudeikhah’s again. I’d never see the apartment with the too big dining room table on the street that reeked of garbage and fresh produce, nor feel those cold lips kissing my cheeks while pale hands stuffed my own with candy carefully selected and set aside especially for me. My grandmother loved me, and I was never going to see her again.

Later that night, I sat with the rest of my uncle’s family and watched my mother deliver the news to my father over the phone. He was overseas on business and the last conversation I remembered him having with my grandmother was an angry one in that now cold, empty apartment.

My mother spoke in the same tone that she’d later use whenever she informed me that someone close to me had passed away – not some distant cousin that I’d have to think hard to remember, but someone that she knew I would miss. She’d begin the same way on my thirteenth birthday when she’d tell me that my uncle, whose home we were now huddled in, had died of the cancer he kept secret until days before it took his life.

My mother’s voice was steady, strong enough to force the listener to cease all other thought or activity, yet gentle enough to indicate that she understood that the words she was about to utter were going to cause immeasurable pain.

I don’t know what my father said when the words filtered through the receiver he held in another country, or what his first thought was upon hearing that he would never again fight with the only parent he had left. He was the youngest of my grandmother’s children, and the last to share that place with the too big dining room table after all the others had grown up and out to their own lives with their own new families.

I remember my mother asking my father if he was still on the phone, and then telling him to let someone else drive him wherever he needed to get that night. And when she put the phone down I didn’t have three grandparents anymore, and one of the first places I ever called home was gone.

Mommy, What's a Garab? (Part: Ten Gay)

When I was in the 5th grade, Jimmy asked me if I was gay. He made it sound so good, that my fresh-off-the-boat ass replied with an enthusiastic yes before I had the good sense to go and find out what this strange new person in the strange new land of Riverdale, Georgia had just asked me. When I went home that afternoon, I couldn't wait to ask my mother what I'd just claimed to be at the tender age of 10 so that I could understand why all my classmates suddenly hugged the walls and giggled when I passed by them.

It took me a second to decipher the look on her face when I first asked the question. At first I thought she didn't hear me, so I asked again.

"Mommy, what does gay mean?"

I knew things were serious when she turned off the television in the middle of a "Days of Our Lives" episode, especially mid-week when Victor Kiriakis was on track to put an end to Hope and Bo Brady's love forever.

"Where did you hear that word?" she asked, her mind racing to catalog 10 years of "Dallas", "Falcon Crest", and "Knots Landing" episodes for any reference to something that may have conspired to set me off on this dangerous inquiry. "The boy knows," she must have thought. "Allah damn it, I thought all those hours of G.I. Joe and He-Man cartoons had infused him with enough machismo to drop balls on a eunuch."

I beamed as I told of Jimmy's query, and then Stephen's, David's, Billy's, Allison's, and every other kid in class who lined up to learn more about their exotic new classmate that afternoon. I'd been missing my friends back home terribly since school started, but now I stood on the precipice of new-found popularity, and all I had to do for it was utter a new word in American code. "This must be what they call the slang," I'd thought.

"What did you tell them?" she asked, desperation rising in her immigrant eyes.

"I said yes!"

My mother said nothing. Her eyes widened as she reached for the phone and dialed my father's beeper. 

"It means happy," she kept repeating in monotone. "You're happy. You're happy to be in America."

"But Mommy, what does it mean?"

"Wait for your father," she said, and then went back to the TV.

"Ooh, what's Victor Kiriakis up to today?" I started, in a naive attempt to lighten the mood.

"Nothing! He's not doing anyhting..."

"But Mommy, why's Hope crying?"

"She's not crying! She's happy. Those are tears of joy!"

"So she's gay too?" I quipped.

"Go to your room! Play He-Man!" she shrieked.

I don't remember much from my conversation with my father that evening, but birds and bees were specifically invoked, as were marriage in the animal kingdom and God's irreversible wrath. "What a cocktail," I remember thinking. "How the hell does a bee put it into a bird, and why on earth would that piss God off more than all the other crap Victor Kiriakis pulls on the Brady's in a typical week?"

I was instructed to go to school the next day - only because I didn't have the telephone numbers and addresses of my classmates on me that very night - and find every single one of those kids, starting with Jimmy, and tell them that what I meant to say was that I was happy. I was happy to have come to America; I was gleeful that we'd landed in this sprawling piece of Americana, South of the Atlanta airport at the crossroads of the world. I was so full of joy that only one word summed it all up, and despite my prowess of the English language as a freshly arrived pre-pubescent future American citizen, I hadn't yet encountered this magical, life changing adjective.

Years later, when Ellen Degeneres posed for the cover of Time and proclaimed "Yep, I'm Gay", my first thought was this:

Bitch stole my thunder.

Happy Coming Out Day, everybody.

Mommy, What's a Garab? (Part: The Lover)

My lover’s smile was brighter than the sun at first light, still fighting its way through the early morning mist. He wiped his eyes, blinking away the last remnants of sleep, revealing the bright sparkle that caught my eyes months before, and held me for countless, sleepless nights since.

My lover took the metal steps in his brisk stride, made barely a sound before landing on the long platform and sauntered the short distance towards my waiting arms. I’d kept the seat next to me vacant all morning, anticipating his destined arrival, the moment when he would take his rightful place next to me and the rest of the world would melt way.

Perhaps we would share something sweet today; a crisp, buttery delicacy that would awaken our still slumbering senses and pave the way for the carnal ecstasy bound to follow. I kept several such delicacies close, and tested them often for the perfect buttery crispiness. My lover had a delicate palette, and I had to be sure not to disappoint him.

He was an older man, so I’d have to move slowly to match his wizened pace. Four years of hard-won life experience were already under his notched belt when I was but an unexpected accident twixt my parents’ loins. Four years of worldly wisdom. Four years of pain, and passion, and longing had my lover over me, but I was a fast student. I would learn quickly, eager to devour every morsel of my angel’s knowledge to get closer to his valiant beating heart.

My lover approached. I held my breath. Would he speak to me today?

No, today he’d play hard to get. He would pass by me without a word, choosing instead to keep to our secret language, words spoken in silence and transmitted through the gift of touch. Discretion was my lover’s favorite game, and I played my part faithfully. To the untrained eye, the brush of his heavy book-bag against my delicate shoulder was a slight. But I knew better; this was his excuse to look at me with that smile that could melt glaciers around the most cynical of hearts. “Watch your arm, kid” was his way of telling me that he too shared the heat of my forbidden desire.

I had to be careful in my response. The bus was almost full by the time we arrived at my lover’s stop that morning, and prying eyes were everywhere. Do I wink at my lover to let him know that I understand his thinly veiled meaning? I hold back; too pedestrian. Perhaps a verbal reply was in order. Is this the day that I finally speak to my beloved? Do I tell him that his gentle book-bag kiss hurts enough to make me yell bad words, especially the thick, sixth-grade textbook bulging beneath the barely fastened zipper?

But too late, my lover continued to the back of the bus, followed by his witch of a  twin sister, who secretly whispered in his ear against me and once again took my celestially ordained spot by his side for the long, winding ride to school.

Seven thousand year old pyramids rose from the distant sands outside my window. Our bus made its way beyond the city, along the rural canals outside Giza where children younger than I bathed next to the water buffalo. “Lucky you,” I thought when I saw them. “You don’t know that cold sting of love.”

My thoughts drifted to Queen Nefertiti, whose beautiful busts - cheap knock-offs meant to exude distinction - were all over the city. What would she do if she were in my seven year-old shoes? Had she a lover as radiant and mysterious as my own? Were she alive today, would she lust after my one and only, prompting me to wrestle her to the ground, snap her little man-stealing neck and then face the royal executioner with quiet dignity while my lover wept silently next to my bereaved mother and the dozens of my classmates each wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with my heroic visage? “He fought, and he died…for love,” they would tell their grandchildren on the holiday bearing my name.

The bus came to a screeching halt in the school driveway. I waited in the front seat for my time alone with Prince Charming. Another buttery delicacy melted between my lips – this one wasn’t good enough for my lover, anyway. Nor were the eight before it, their wasted crumbs scattered down the scarred battlefield that was the front of my shirt. Crumbs could be brushed away. Not so, the longing for my destined.

My lover passed by without a word. That game again, was it? He descended the stairs. Surely he would glance my way…

Surely he would ask me why I was sitting there like a dumb fuck with biscuit crumbs all over myself…

Surely…

I walked, head bowed into my second grade classroom. Mrs. P, our British-born teacher with perm blonde hair and big glasses was passing out some sort of worksheet. I suddenly woke from my lovelorn state. “Screw me sideways with a 2-by-4 on a trolley (insert second grade equivalent of said expletive here), I forgot about the math test!”

I put my little book bag on top of the cubbies on one side of the room, and sat next to Maha, the smartest girl in our class. I liked Maha a lot. She was sweet, and gentle, and beautiful, and she didn’t cover her paper the way the other kids did when they took tests in Mrs. P’s class. She had the common courtesy to cover her answers only after I’d had a chance to copy them down, and I had the common sense to copy down a few of the answers wrong lest I attract too much attention to my newfound mathematical wizardry, or worse yet, the envy of jealous curs who had thus far only marveled at my success.

Even then I knew that cheating in math was only cheating ones self. But I had no choice. My mother told me that I could have anything my heart desired if I made perfect grades on my report card, and I had thus far succeeded in all but this one subject. And since my lover seemed immune to my subtle advances, I would have to resort to Plan B, also known as Mommy Power, to make him mine. 

Halfway through the test, however, I came to my senses. I couldn’t cheat in math, I had to learn this stuff so I could grow up to be a doctor and make lots of money and buy a big house in America where I could have parties with J.R. from “Dallas” and the motorcycle cops from “Chips”. Mommy Power was off the table. If the dingbat that had been ignoring me for the better part of the last year while I got fat playing front of the bus food taster was gonna be mine, I had to walk right up and get him…today…at recess.

Not first recess, mind you. That was a mere ten minutes to scarf down a sandwich and rehearse what I was going to say to a guy four years older than me and twice my height to convince him that he should hang with little me.

Social studies came next. The day’s Arabic lesson was a blur. I recited all the assigned verses from the Quran like I’d been nursed in a seminary. Science class was child’s play. When the bell rang for 2nd recess I whipped out of that room like I was on my way to stop the Sadat assassination. I had 30 minutes to find one six grader, confess my undying love, live happily ever after, resume a very important game of vampires and victims with my friends, and return 3 library books.

I decided that the best way to do it all was to go in reverse order. Twenty-five minutes later, I stood on the precipice. I’d stopped to eat grass, because I’d never tried it before and it happened to call my name on that particular day, and I think I may have bitten some kid along the way, but there was no time to linger on such taste profiles. I had arrived in the nick of destiny. Up on the short wall in the distance I could already see the assistant principal clutching her brass bell and checking her watch. I’d have to work quickly.

A swirl of sixth graders ran before me, like a herd of stampeding oxen from a National Geographic documentary in the midst of some advanced, undecipherable upper classman's game winding to a desperate close. The proceedings were violent, and, unlike the innocent games of my peers where we occasionally nibbled on field greens or human flesh, these kids were knocking each other down, on purpose. They were getting each others clothes dirty right before they had to go back to class. This was utter savagery, and it was as frightening as it was exciting.

The assistant principal raised her arm and rang the first bell. “Oh no! I’m out of time.”

Like Pavlov’s dogs they ran, all the good kids in packs I usually led, back to their little classes and their little loveless lives. Half the field emptied in mere seconds. But my lover had a rebellious spirit. He remained, apparently in the throes of some victory celebration, for he held the shoe of some unseen adversary with glee.

“This is my moment,” I thought. “I’ll catch him on a high.”

I ran forward, past running children and the giant strewn bodies of fallen sixth graders.  When I reached him, his back was turned. He was yelping with joy.

“Ahmed,” I called.

He didn’t hear me. I called again.

“Ahmed.”

 He turned, looked down to see me. I shook when I spoke next.

“Will you be my friend?”

He smiled…

Then he laughed.

Then he grabbed me by the shoulders and cried like a spent harpee, “Hey, he wants to be my friend.” and he pushed me into the arms of another sixth grader with a missing shoe that I recognized even then as a lesbian and said, “Here, go be friends with her.”

He never said another word to me again.

The King Is Dead. Long Live The King.

Along the way you realize that you've aged, and you begin to understand what you thought you already knew. You are not as young as you once were, and you never will be again. Enough hours pass and you catch yourself, more than once, referring to entire decades as your youth, even while memories of what those bright years looked and felt like fade and blend into one another, until one day they become indistinguishable shadows of what you once were.

Sometimes you look back, and you find yourself grateful that your mind can hear the light it cannot see in the dark.

Decisions, Decisions

The world's most disgusting "all natural" veggie dog has just passed through my lips, and is currently attempting to make love to my revolted stomach lining. Generous slatherings of multi-colored organic condiments did little to disguise the artificial horror show encased in some chemically manufactured, accidentally discovered ship-building compound now navigating my intestinal tract. I'm sure the thing will be making several unscheduled stops on the way to its exit to oblivion, and while I shudder at the thought of what it may look like at that moment of sweet release, I can at least take comfort in the certain knowledge that it won't resemble anything...natural.

On the heels of this year's Memorial Day Holiday, and the defeaning public silence that answers a policy that demands the bravery and sacrifice of our fellow citizens so long as they don't tell us who they really are and we promise not to ask them, The California Supreme Court will announce it's ruling on Proposition 8. All indications are that the recent voter-approved ballot initiative that explicitely designates hundreds of thousands of people in this state, including me and my indigestion, as second class citizens unworthy of full and equal protection under the law - will stand. I'd like to count myself among the dellusional, or the hopeful, or the oddly optomistic while using The Secret, and pretend that there's some way that the justices will rule the one way, as opposed to the other.

But I also thought that Santa Clause would make a special trip to Cairo and drop down my non-existent chimney with a He-Man action figure til I realized that he avoided the region of my birth to protest its terrible human rights record - and because he'd been branded an infadel and there was a fatwa on his jolly, sled-riding ass. Just who's sweaty lap I sat in that warm childhood Christmas so many years and repressed memories ago while confessing my deepest heart's desires has since been filed with other riddles for the ages.

Anger doesn't seem appropriate yet, not with three whole days of sweet anxiety to marinate in before the big decision. Sure, out-of-state bigots suddenly uncomfortable with the burden of officially being called bigots while invoking their right to practice religious intolerance in the civic arena is infuriating. But the bigots next door aren't nearly as infuriating as the millions of California voters who should have just known better but didn't. Bad, bad California voters. If this thing doesn't go my way on Tuesday, then Santa's jolly, sled-riding ass will be doing a fly-by of the entire state from now on, and I'll never get my goddamn He-Man action figure.

Oh, and fuck you, Kenn Starr.

Mommy, What's a Garab?(Part: Milk and Bread)

   I was ten when my family and I decided to make the luxurious townhouse community of Lake Harbin Apartments our first permanent American home. Nestled in the burgeoning no man's land of Morrow, Georgia, ours was a quaint 2 story palace with worn beige carpets, seven gallon toilets, and an electric stove. I'm not sure which issue of Architectural Digest our new home was featured in prior to my parents' decision to sign the lease, but I'm certain that if there was an article, it would have been entitled "Slummin' It".

   The best part about our new home, aside from the screaming crack lady up the way hitting a C-note as she was dragged to rehab one night, was that for the first time in my young innocent life I inhabited a place with an upstairs. I must have run up and down that carpet padded stairway to my bedroom a couple hundred times those first few weeks in our little piece of America while my mother looked on with pride. "We've finally arrived," she must have thought. "My little family has acquired the 2nd story dream that lives in the heart of every poor immigrant who's left everything behind to schlep it to this magnificent land."

   Had I been a more observant child, I might have recognized fear, loathing, horror, and suicidal despair in my mother's eyes. The painted wood railing I gripped as I climbed up and down those stairs was loose enough to come off in my tiny hands at any moment, plunging me head first down a worn carpet highway to the broken neck that now seemed part of my shining destiny. Those tears of wonderment I saw well up in her eyes were likely shed for the bad reception we got on the rabbit ears over the TV set in the living room that doubled as a running head start area to the back door in case the up the way crack monkey escaped her treatment program and decided to barge in through the front door looking for her next fix. Not that my mother had resorted to dealing crack in her attempt to adapt to our new surroundings, but all the same.

   That winter, to my effervescent dumb schmuck glee, I saw the realization of my second biggest childhood dream - which tied with riding shotgun next to David Hasselhoff on an episode of Knight Rider and lingered just above driving a motorcycle between an Eric Estrada and Larry Wilcox sandwich on Chips - we got snow!

   As one of the underachieving neighbor kids quickly pointed out while I was losing my mind and doing back flips in the running head start portion of the living room, it doesn't really snow in Georgia. It rains alot, and if the temperature is just below a certain point the moisture in the air that usually feels like a humid possum's asshole turns to ice that weighs down telephone wire and kills motorists unaccustomed to driving pickup trucks with no tread on slick asphalt. But I didn't care because white goodness was coming down from the sky! This was so exciting, in fact, that the powers that be saw fit to interrupt my morning cartoons with news of the obvious.

   "Snow, mommy, snow! Why are you crying again?"

   The woman with the big hair on the television was clearly not as thrilled as I was at the prospect of  snow men with carrot noses populating every street corner within sight. Matter of fact, she looked damn near terrified.

    "Mom, where are the fucking carrots?" I yelled, three quarters of my 4 foot frame buried in the room temperature crisper of our refrigerator.

   "Sshhh! I'm trying to watch this. Quick, go turn on all the faucets in the house before the pipes  freeze up and explode, killing us all with flying shrapnel in our sleep!"

   "Mom?"

   "Do it now! The woman on the TV just said! Hurry, before I regret moving to this miserable fucking country even more than I already do."

   I ran from bathroom to bathroom, up and down the stairs I'd grown tired of and now cursed with every panting breath. The kitchen sink trickled while the half bath with the exposed laundry pipes in the downstairs hallway gushed at the only setting the loose knob on the faucet allowed. "Mom, you wanna go outside and make snow angels?"

   "What the hell is a snow angel? We're Muslim, we don't believe in snow angels! Bundle up."

   "But Mom, we're inside."

   "The lady on the TV said to!"

   Seven layers of clothing and a pair of kitchen rubber gloves later, I was outside in the sub zero hinterland of my dreams. My younger brother stood next to me, stuffed inside enough jackets and sweaters to look like a mobile rotunda. All the other neighborhood kids were already outside - visibly under-dressed by my estimation -  slipping and sliding on over sized garbage bags ripped asunder to make improvised snow sleds. Children threw themselves to the ground, one by one, and flailed their arms and legs in apparent ground-based temper tantrums. "What the fucking fuck is Igardo doing over there," I asked the nearest child I didn't feel intimidated speaking to.

   "Well, duh, he's making snow angels. Stupid foreigner."

   "So that's what those look like. No wonder mom didn't want to do that, it looks painful as hell." I decided in that moment that I didn't believe in snow angels either, and shoveled together a carefree wad of freshly fallen ice and mashed it into a ball.

   "Snow fight!" I yelled, and hurled the thing as hard as I could at the closest human figure, which at that moment happened to be my little brother who should have been wearing a scrarf. I distinctly remember hearing him say "Ow" right before he went down. Snow balls primarily comprised of ice and sidewalk crumble apparently had the potential to cause what some medical authorities refer to as a "hurts like a bitch" sensation. In either case, my brother decided to roll himself back inside, away from the frigid adventures of a dangerous wilderness. This was clearly not his dream.

   I began to feel some slight pressure below my waist, concentrated in my forward bladder area. Goddamn it, I had to go to the bathroom. It had taken me 12 years to put on enough layers of clothing to convince my mother that I wouldn't freeze to death outside and leave her childless and destitute, and I could only imagine how long it would take to remove the upper pants and gloves necessary to relieve myself. I could always just open the zipper and squat in the snow, pretending to gather enough snowflakes to form the base of my nascent snow man. "Zzzz," went the little metal tab. I reached in with cold, wet gloved hands and rummaged for the sleeping future tube steak that would one day inhabit the prime real estate area between my legs.

   But something happened when the cold Georgia air hit my little Vienna suasage. All of a sudden, I didn't have to go anymore. It was as if an automatic shut off valve attached itself to my urethra with a flashing neon sign that read "ABORT. ABORT." Besides, there were too many prying eyes about, and even then I had become keenly aware that I was pee shy.

   I muddled about in the cold for hours, growing dizzy as the toxicity levels in my blood rose to ill advised concentrations. "Gotta pee soon" went the looping thought in my head. "Gotta pee soon." All the while, my sad little snow man grew, though he was nothing near the the fantasy 3 tiered frost tower foretold  in  the instructive cartoons that had thus far served as my life guides in this strange and foreign land. Four hours in, and all I had was a trio of sad little balls stacked on top of one another with half mangled twigs sticking out the sides for arms and still no fucking carrot. Even if I somehow managed to finish my sad little snow guy, I had no idea where on earth I'd acquire the fetching top hat that would adorn his naked crown. I was fucked.

   Just then my father pulled up, or rather skidded into a parking space in the family boat-on-wheels, a ginormous, pale lime green Oldsmobile built with enough American steel to affect international tariff policy for an entire year. When he emerged from the driver's seat, in an adventurous 3 layer ensemble, he clutched several heavy plastic bags emblazoned with a regal logo that I immediately recognized.

   "Help me," he ordered.

   I was crushed. Ever since we'd moved to this glorious country, trips to the local Food Lion grocery wonderland with the Ms. Pacman arcade game had been a family affair. Why had my father abandoned me in the frozen desolation of our apartment complex with a miserable excuse for an ill formed snow gimp to go to the grocery store alone? I needed answers. Hell, I deserved answers, and I was going to demand the truth!

   "Why--?"

   "Here, hold this," he said as he handed my not one, not two, but three double bags each containing a single gallon of whole milk. He then reached into the passenger side and retrieved more bags, these overflowing with loafs of Sunbeam white toast. Were we expecting company?

   "Where's your brother?" asked my father. I remained silent. Something was off. Not only had my once loyal dad gone to the greatest place on earth without me, he'd forgotten all the other stuff you're supposed to get at Food Lion to boot. There were no Fruity or Cocoa Pebbles in the countless heavy bags he somehow expected me to lift all the way from the car, across the sidewalk, and up the steps to our front door. There wasn't even a single pack of all-beef bologna, which he knew damn well I liked to pan fry on our electric stove this time of year, nor a bottle of the Parisian-styled salad dressing to pour over it when I was done. Numb nuts had forgotten everything but gallons of boring plain milk and slices of boring plain white bread that I had no bologna to put between. I was a growing boy. What the fuck was I supposed to eat, air sandwiches?! Fucking fuck.

   When we got inside, my mother rushed to my father and hugged his neck. "Thank God you got home safe," she beamed. "I was getting so worried."

   "Well, just wait til you see what dumbass forgot to bring home," I thought, as I contemplated accidentally kicking the man who contributed the little swimmers that made me possible in the shins. "You won't be so glad then." But in that moment, something over my mom's left hip caught me eye. The television screen flickered behind her, and through a fuzzy glow I made out what looked like scenes of panic at my beloved Food Lion. If the single greatest place in America was the scene of turmoil, I needed to know about it. I dropped the bags of milk where I stood and rushed to the TV altar that had been carefully squared against the main wall for both aesthetic and reception purposes. As I got closer, I could indeed make out the figures of men, women, and children clamoring for the quickly disappearing items on the Food Lion shelf - and all of it seemed to be centered in the bread aisle.

   "Again, ladies and gentlemen, we don't know how long this winter storm will last, but the highway patrol urges all residents in the metro area to remain indoors and stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary..." It was the woman with the big hair that interrupted my cartoons earlier that morning, and she was wearing the same dress. They never wore the same dress twice in one day.This  had to  be serious.

   "Residents are advised to stock up on groceries, milk and bread items, especially now before icy conditions make road travel even more dangerous. Keep your faucets on overnight..."

   "WE'RE UNDER SIEGE!!!!!!" I ran to the bathrooms and turned the water on full blast. I was too young to die of shrapnel wounds. Rushing to the kitchen, I checked the cabinets one by one and took down a careful inventory of all remaining food stuffs. My brother's Fruity Pebbles would have to be rationed out carefully if any of us were to survive Winer Storm '87. My father, though valiant in his efforts, had gathered too little milk and too little bread. Had I but been there to push more of our neighbors out of the way and help shoulder the load. Poor sap, he was trying to protect me from the blood hungry masses who might have turned to cannibalism at the Food Lion as the shelves emptied and the situation turned dire.

   I shook with fear and dread. Not since the crack lady's night screams had I felt such ice in my veins. My brother, nursing his right ear with an ice pack on the couch for some inexplicable reason, winced as I ran past. Backing into a corner away from the windows, I thought I glimpsed my mother staring at me with genuine concern. "I think something's wrong with that one," I thought I heard her whisper, but my mind was on more important matters; matters of pure, visceral survival. "Milk and bread," I told myself. "Milk and bread."

Mommy, What's a Garab?(The Case of The Accidental Drag Queen-Part 2)

   I hated high school. Correction, I hated the first 3 years of high school. The only thing I had going for me when I first set foot in the halls of Henderson High was that the man boobs(or pecs if you speak WEHO)I'd developed in the 7th grade had finally deflated.
   My father's overseas business ventures had all taken a nose dive, and the charming global recession that heralded the end of Reaganomics effectively killed the real estate business that had sustained my family after we moved to the United States. Everything we had left we put into a little experiment that quickly turned into a colossal fiasco, or "the bakery", as we like to refer to it at my house.
   Said fiasco was the brainchild of a then failed German pastry chef who'd purchased one of my dad's houses. Together, they decided to turn my mother's penchant for making cookies into a full time occupation, and almost overnight we were open to the public...
in a strip mall...
between a Kroger and a K-mart...
in Riverdale, Ga.
  By the age of 12, I became well accustomed to the sound of liquid assets swirling down the toilet. But hey, at least it smelled good. We closed the bakery after what can only be referred to as a fire sale, and sold the apartment in Cairo that my grandmother had insisted we cling to in the hope that we'd one day come to our senses and move back to the old country. The farm that my dad owned with his bothers and was never much more than a massive patch of desert was also sold at a bargain basement price to pay off an endless list of creditors.
   I'll always remember my 13th birthday as the one where I woke up to discover that my favorite uncle - the one I had been named for- a) had liver cancer that he didn't tell any of us about, and b) had just died of said liver cancer before anyone could rush to his bedside across the ocean to say goodbye. The house we were living in at the time was the last that my father had built and was unable to sell. It was a cute little house, and it was on the market the moment we moved into it. But considering that I now associated the place with my uncle's long distance death, financial ruin, and a traumatizing list of bodily transformations that can be summed up as "boy tits" and "hair down there", I was more than relieved when it was finally sold to the highest low bidder.
   This final sale of my family's final asset meant two things. First off there would be a change of locale,  this time to a Chamblee-Tucker apartment community distinct only in that it surrounded a lake favored by frequently pooping geese. Second, since there was no money left over to keep sending my brother and I to the pretentious uber-prep school where I learned the true meaning of rich kid entitlement, we were pulled out to attend the local public schools...something you were taught to fear thoroughly at said uber-prep.
   And my first week in high school didn't help matters. For starters, I didn't know how to dress myself. Back at the uber-prep, they made us buy their blue/gray uniform with stitched in fascist insignia. There was a fascist spring look, a fetching fascist winter wool blazer, and even bright red fascist gym attire. Suddenly free to dress myself with no money or sense of style, I managed to become my own little fashion emergency; a complete dork in mismatched, ill fitting bargain store chic. I looked like an idiot, shielded only by the mine field of acne erupting across my forehead that no amount of Clearasil would cure.
   Sitting on the cold hard floor with my sketch pad in front of Ms. Fuget's pre-Algebra class one early morning, I saw a couple of older boys approaching. They were memorable only in that one of them was wearing army pants and had a ginormous afro adorned with a pick even as it poked out under a sideways bent baseball cap. I remember thinking to myself, "Golly gee, the vice principal at the uber-prep would have positively manhandled that kid for wearing a baseball cap indoors."
   As the boys approached, they whispered something inaudible to my over-sized ears, before Afro-cap came sailing into me without warning and knocked me head first into the beige wall I was trying to blend into moments before. It was an odd feeling, that mix of numb, dull pain with indignant rage that I knew I was too small to do anything about. My eyes filled with hot tears, held back in the knowledge that the empty hall would soon be full of other students who might one day refer to me simply as the odd boy who dressed badly and cried for no reason. Afro-cap and his companion continued laughing down the hallway, and I went back to my sketch pad as soon as I could grasp my pencil again. The era of my adolescent torment, foretold in many a John Hughes movie, had officially begun.
   The next few months were no less precarious. I still had no friends, at least none who would warn me of the special treat that awaited me in the science room one cold dark morning. Claudia, an uppity raging ball of bitch who drank baby blood for breakfast and kept voodoo dolls of Mother Teresa in her bra strap, had somehow gotten it in her head that innocent little me, the walking fashion faux pas, had been talking shit about her behind her back. She even heard that I went and called her a bitch. Nevermind that I didn't actually have anyone to talk shit with, I didn't even know Claudia the bitch enough to verbally recognize her evil bitch-faced bitchiness.
   I walked into the science room before class that morning, since I'd decided that the hallways were incompatible with my desire to avoid head trauma on a regular basis. Claudia was there, casually chatting with her usual entourage. As I slinked into the room, Claudia rose from her seat and approached me.
   "Hey Mohammed, what's up?", she said as she extended her open palm in a low five.
   I was shocked. In the three lonely months I'd been at that school, I'd only seen Claudia glare at those she hadn't deemed worthy of common courtesy, and I had definitely been on that list.
   "Um, hi Cludia", I said as I went to slap her five, at which point she withdrew her hand...
   and used it to slap me.
   Claudia the bitch slapped me across the face in front of room full of people, and said something about how I shouldn't talk about her behind her back. Then Claudia the bitch slapped me three more times, alternating cheeks for the sake of symmetry. Those same hot tears filled up my eyeballs once again, this time stinging with a sharp pain and the knowledge that I'd once again suffered physical agony without the satisfaction that came with knowing that I'd at least earned it.
   But Claudia the bitch wasn't long for my high school. Recent compliance with a Supreme Court ruling concerning school bussing meant that mine was to become a Minority To Majority depot of learning. In other words, there would soon be other badly dressed ethnic minorities like myself roaming the hallways, and, if I was really lucky, there would be enough of them to erase my status as resident pariah. Had I understood any of that then, I might have had cause to celebrate.
   Apparently, though, enough of my classmates' parents thought the imminent demographic shift meant something really bad. The idea that their precious children would suddenly have to co-mingle with other children of different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds was enough to initiate what I've affectionately come to know as "The Great White Flight." Gobs of my Caucasian classmates seemed to vanish overnight as their families fled north, buying up cluster houses and settling into homogeneous God fearing communities known for small town charm and anti-gay city ordinances. Claudia's family went too, and they weren't even white.
   Pretty soon, I started making friends. In 9th grade, I became very popular with a group of older boys who turned the otherwise friendly game of "butt's up" into "peg the out of shape redhead with a wet tennis ball." That same year, I became everybody's favorite tackle buddy in the countless games of pickup football I got drafted into. It didn't matter that I didn't know any of the rules, as long as I fell well when I hit the bigger kids with my intimidating 5'6" body.
   I'd given up on contact sports by Sophomore year, when I discovered the solace of the art room. In this strange land where we got to listen to college radio and "critique" each other's work, I felt that I'd finally found my calling, and set about to take the world by storm with my very important perspective sketches.  I joined the Art Club by default, the French Club by choice, and took the next logical step by joining the International Club, just because.
   The International Club, a distinctive collection that comprised a full 25% of all the outcasts in the entire school, met about five times a year and managed to do exactly two things. The first was an arbitrarily declared "food day", where we barricaded ourselves in the foreign language room after school with the various covered curries and authentic culinary representatives of our respective home countries. And, there was that second thing…
   Every year, the International Club threw a fashion show at a captive audience in the school cafeteria, mainly because the genius architect of the building had designed the room with its very own stage. Two long lunch tables were placed at the lip of the stage and covered with some sort of fabric to form a catwalk, and then the lights were dimmed enough so that nobody actually had to  see any of the show.
   The first time I got yanked into this pageant, I was asked to choose one of the many traditional Egyptian garments I had lying around my closet and then parade around in the thing before 200 of my fellow students right after lunch. I tried to protest, insisting that every Egyptian I'd ever known dressed like the average New Yorker. Besides, I'd finally managed to start dressing like the kids on 90210, and my classmates were finally beginning to accept me. Why on Earth would I do anything to jeopardize that by wearing some long flowing robe thing that may or may not have been hanging in my father's closet?
    "Can't I just wear a suit?" I pleaded.
   It all fell on deaf ears. The one kid from Taiwan had already beat me to the "we ain't got no weird clothes where I come from" punch, so he got to strut in the suit to Enigma's Principles of Lust. I got to march with a sheet wrapped around my head next to an Iranian girl who actually dug up a shimmering floor length gold and black number that looked like a designer burka without the oppressive face plate.
   But the best part of this thing, aside from the fact that the audience seemed to completely eat it up, was the appearance of the lovely ladies from the Korean Club. Fourteen year old divas in their own right, this pack of 5 girls was the highlight of every International show ever held at the school. They materialized out of thin air in perfect hair and makeup, head to toe in patterned crimson body suits. They moved as a single unit, defying physics and climaxing with a synchronized flaring of hand fans that brought everyone in the room to their feet.
   The show went so well, in fact, that the following year our captive audience would be the entire school. Every student, every teacher, administrator, and janitor would attend our annual fashion show. There weren't enough lunch tables in creation to re-create the kind of catwalk necessary to fill that space, and as artists on the cutting edge of international fashion, we needed something new...bold...fresh.
   Our history teacher, Mrs. T, would stand at a podium on the big stage behind the basketball goal thingie at the far end of the gym. As she read some inspiring thing about some other country, a kid from said country would enter the space in costume, preferably with a flag, and form a ring around the sidelines, between the free throw circles. And that was it.
   A budding expert in the anti-climactic, I decided to open my big mouth and imply that the show needed a little more umph. And I was gonna be damned if I'd end up prancing around in front of that many people with a sheet wrapped around my head.
   "What do you suggest?" asked Mrs. T.
   Since there was no Google back then, and the details of the show were top secret to outsiders, I limited my research to the art room, and the advice of one Matt Grant. Matt was a very deep artist who made meaningful box art, so I felt that I could trust him.
   "What exactly does the Statue of Liberty look like?" I asked him that afternoon after our final rehearsal.
   "Why don't you look it up in the encyclopedia?" Matt Grant mused.
   I knew that guy had all the answers. In no time at all, I began constructing a giant pointed tiara, measuring it carefully against the top of my own head. When Matt Grant looked at me like I'd completely lost my mind, I let him in on the secret crescendo of the extravaganza that would be unleashed upon 1300 people in the gymnasium in less than 24 hours. When I was done explaining the show, he still looked at me like I'd completely lost my mind.
   The next day, I stood outside the packed gym at the end of a long procession of colorfully clad, flag waving models. One by one, they entered the massive room, hundreds of people on either side. I pulled up the layers of white sheets I'd wrapped around myself so that I wouldn't trip as I made my entrance. I held my cardboard torch in one hand, and a plaque with Roman numerals on it with the other. As I approached the doorway, I ducked a little so that my tiara wouldn't catch in the top of the frame. I waited...
   And then, I heard Mrs. T:
"...Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."
   "Shit, my queue!" I ran into the center of the gym, where an apple box waited for me. I could feel the shocked silence as hundreds of faces blurred past me.
"...The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me..."
   I climbed the apple box, as the five members of the Korean Club closed in around me, fans at the ready.
   "...I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
   I held up the torch as perfectly synchronized fans flared open around me, and the entire place went absolutely nuts. In that moment, I'd completely forgotten about Afro-cap and troubled Claudia. I'd forgotten about the bakery and the home in Cairo that I'd never get to see again. I'd forgotten about everything, including the fact that the Statue of Liberty was a woman, and that I stood on an apple box before 1,300 people in a dress.

Mommy, What's a Garab?(The Case of the Accidental Drag Queen - Part 1)

   It was early evening in Cairo the first time I went swimming in a dress. My mother had thrown off her blue one piece with the thin, horizontal white stripes and tossed it to the edge of the bed in her haste to put together a presentable ensemble and greet the unannounced company at the front door. That poor,  beautiful, thread-bare dress that she wore around the house when she didn't care what the rest of the world thought of her appearance lay there in a sad heap, the tail sagging mere inches from the floor. That marvelous dress that I snuggled against for warmth, where I'd buried my tear stained face for so much comfort when I'd come running to my mother's bosom in moments of 7 year old distress, now lay there cold, and alone. My heart broke at the sight, even as my mother's laughter echoed in the next room against the high pitched chatter of our faceless intruder, hungry for an evening's entertainment.
   I stood in the open door, my back exposed to the long hallway leading to the living room behind me. I heard my name, faintly, and knew that I would be called on shortly to greet our unwelcome guest. My time with the dress was short; I had to work swiftly. I glanced at the my mother's dresser with the over-sized mirror, then heard my name again. There would be no time for make-up today.
   In an instant, my knees were gliding across the shiny hard wood floor, carrying me towards the edge of the bed and into the gaping mouth of the dress. I pulled up on the sacred fabric, lifting it from the floor and releasing a residual wave of my mother's perfume. Had I lingered there, my nostrils may have flared at subtle hints of rose, lavender, and estrogen, but I had to journey on if I had any hope of avoiding discovery.
   I began to climb, my feet disappearing into the translucent dark under the flowing fabric. I quickly squeezed through the tight, built-in elastic belt zone, a corset-like hallmark of late 70's/early 80's couture. I grasped blindly for the long sleeves, thrusting my tiny arms through never ending tunnels in search of the light. And all the while, my tiny heart pounded in my fragile chest. I heard my name again from the living room.
   "Shit," I'd have cried if only I'd known the word.
   I tentatively rose to my feet. I hadn't been able to find the neck line yet, and I was tripping on a mound of house dress while teetering to what must have been dangerously close to the edge of the bed. I was going to fall and break my neck, and when my mother found my dead little body she was going to have to explain it to company that wasn't even family and then throw away her favorite dress. I heard my name, then two sets of footsteps.
  "Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!"
   But then, salvation. I found a hole, and I hurried to poke my head through it. Blinding light found me on the other side, and all around me the heavy dress fell in heaps  and I caught a glimpse of myself in the over-sized mirror above the dresser. Fierce by the age of 7.
   My mother entered the room with her guest in tow, the mother of three boys who happened to be my best friends at the time. Standing there on the bed, I towered a full half inch above them. I knew because at that point I was splitting my focus evenly between them and the dresser. My mother laughed, then said I should take off the dress because I was going to ruin the elastic if I wore it that way. Then she remembered the water on the stove and turned to make her way to the kitchen.
   Our guest, mother of the 3 boys I'd been spending alot of time with throughout the school year, sat next to me on the bed. She was a quiet woman when it came to us kids, so I always considered it a rare treat to hear her speak.
   "You shouldn't wear your mother's dress" she said.
   "I know, I'll ruin the elastic."
   "No, it's not that". Two whole sentences in one day! This was exciting.
   "Why not?" I asked, hoping to watch her lips move a third time.
   "You just shouldn't."
   Ten years later...

Mommy, What's a Garab?(Part: VD for Everyone)

   I hate this fucking, ill-birthed Hallmark holiday form hell. Bitter Thursday, benignly known as Valentine's Day to the three percent of the population that hasn't been needlessly scarred for life by its evil consumer driven tentacles, has earned a special place in the darkest pit of my heart. So come, all ye kindred weeping spirits. Dump the blind date you didn't want to blow fifty bucks on anyway, burn some incense, turn up the mantra music, and read my tale of woe:
   My first run in with VD was in the fifth grade. The year was 1987, and my family and I had just moved to the suburban bonanza that was the Riverdale, GA. Reagan was king, Swayze ruled the box office, and The Bangles had written a hit song that popularized the walk of my people. The only thing these things had in common was that I didn't understand any of them.
   Growing up in Cairo and Abu Dhabi, I'd always had British and American nationals for teachers, so I was fortunate enough to pick up the language fluently, without an ostracizing accent. The slang, however, was an entirely different story. My teachers didn't teach me no fucking slang.
    My mother spoke three languages herself, so she was always a few steps ahead to make sure that I never learned any of the "bad" words. Even watching endless subtitled episodes of "Dallas" and "Falcon Crest" with her did nothing to aid in the subversive side of my education, since I was always sent out of the room or under the covers at the mere whiff of a sex scene. Any inappropriate language that made it onto American network television at the time was censored out well before it was exported to our TV and beamed onto our screen through any of the three channels that were available.
   The countless Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson action flicks I sat in front of did nothing to quench my thirst for dirty and off-color phrasing. "Die, you mother fucker!" was always drowned out by some massive explosion, usually followed by a hail of bullets. In the face of that kind of excitement, who had time to reach for a dictionary? By the time we boarded the plane for our new home across the Atlantic, I was convinced that America was populated by the wealthiest, most fabulous, and violent people on the planet. I couldn't wait to get here.
   But then I arrived. My first few months in an American elementary school were spent trying to convince my new classmates that when I answered the question "are you gay?"  with an enthusiastic yes during the first week of school, I was trying to tell them that I was happy. Really, really happy.
   In those first friendless days of the year when I'd gone around asking some of the other boys if they wanted to be my best friend, I was quickly made aware that everyone else in my class had already filled that position. Passing on pizza because none of the lunch ladies in the cafeteria could confirm or deny the existence of pork products in the mystery meat on top didn't help matters. I was officially an outsider - a foreigner without a best friend who didn't eat pizza.
   Enter Allison Whatsherface. Allison was a cute girl with big glasses, who often wore a brown dress with a fetching floral pattern. She often sat next to her friend Kim, a budding bull-dyke.  One day, Kim(who hated me and my foreign penis) came over and angrily handed me a folded slip of paper. On it were scrawled some fateful words that I soon forgot, but they effectively declared Allison's undying 5th grade love...for moi. I didn't get it.
    I didn't understand this concept, called dating, even then. Boyfriends and girlfriends didn't exist where I came from. People got engaged, then they got married after college, at which point they moved out of their parents' homes - but only if they were able to secure their own apartment. In my world, everyone on "Dallas" got married before they did that thing I wasn't allowed to watch them do. I looked down at the delicate little note in my hands, trapped and confused. Then I looked up and saw Allison across the room. She flashed a huge open mouthed smile and waved. Kim stood nearby, seething as she waited for my answer.
   I did the only thing I could. I did what I'd watched J.R. Ewing do countless times sitting in my mother's bed, though I lacked the fetching cowboy hat. I looked at Kim and hissed my message with all the dramatic flair of a drag queen in training: "Tell her to shut her big. damn. mouth." Kim smiled, and then she strutted over and delivered the message to Allison. The smile dropped, and I suddenly realized that the entire room had gone dead silent. Everyone had been listening in, and apparently I'm a very loud hisser. Passing on pizza was nothing compared to this, my first epic social blunder as an American.
   Epic social blunder #2 wasn't far behind. All the boys that didn't want to be my best friend a few short days prior were suddenly clamoring to talk to me. "Are you gay?!" one boy asked. "How gay are you?"  another chimed in. Hell, I had no idea what they were saying, but they were just so excited. "Gay" sounded like the greatest thing anyone could be, so whatever it was, I knew how I had to answer. I smiled, even bigger than Allison Whatsherface had a few moments before.
   "Yes, I'm very gay!"
   Suddenly, other kids who'd never so much as acknowledged my presence looked up at me with eyes wide, seeing me for the first time as the rock god I knew I was. Even Kim was smiling at me.
   "Wait, you're gay?" asked one flummoxed child after the next.
   "Yes! I'm gay!"
   "No way!" said some kid in the back.
   "Way!"
   I was suddenly the most popular 5th grader in creation. I was surrounded by an adoring public, and they couldn't get enough of me. Their eyes were full of wonder as they looked at the gayest kid in their midst. I'd said the magic words, and made back the friends I'd lost in moving to a new land. I've since learned that wonder and fear look remarkably similar to one another.
   The other children slinked away, one after the other. They whispered among themselves as they retreated, stealing sideways glances at me as they went. Later at lunch, nobody talked to me and it wasn't even pizza day. I was confused. Was popularity really this short lived in America? Was I not supposed to say yes to gay after all?
   I walked home as quickly as I could that afternoon. I had to know what I'd say yes to, and I was sure that my mother could consult "Dallas" for the answer.
   "How was school?" she asked, smiling.
   "Mom, what does gay mean?
   Her smile vanished faster than Allison Whatsherface's did after I crushed her heart, causing her irreversible childhood trauma. My mother's voice suddenly filled with dread and fear.
   "Where did you hear that word?" she demanded.
   I recounted the whole sordid tale; My J.R. moment, my sudden surge in popularity, and the uncomfortable silence that followed, signaling the beginning of my exile.
   "What did you say when they asked you if you were...that word?"
   "Um, yes." I managed sheepishly.
   Hand wringing gave way to white knuckles. If she could, I'm sure my mother would have leapt out of her own skin in that moment. After unspeakable sacrifices, she'd managed to bring her children to a place where they could live a better life, and within a couple of weeks, one of them had gone like a dumbass and gotten himself branded for life.
   "But mom, what does it mean?"
   "I can't...we're going to wait for your father."
   I'd never seen the man who took part in my conception freak out like that before. His was a quieter, gentler shock - the kind that usually signals a coronary episode.
   "And you said yes?!"
   Perhaps nodding my reply this time would be less provocative. It wasn't. More hand wringing, more white knuckles. And then I heard something about birds building nests for bees and planting eggs in the soil. Math may have been involved. Either way, I was strictly instructed to march my butt into that classroom the next morning and go to each and every kid in the room and tell them that when I said gay, I meant happy.
   "But dad, there are so many kids in my class..."
   It took a couple of weeks to hit every single one of my classmates. By that second Friday afternoon, I'd developed a shorthand for what had become the most surreal little exchanges of my pre-pubescent life:
   "That thing, gay? No, happy..."
   But the damage was done. That early September, I became the youngest person on record anywhere to come out of the closet, and I didn't even get a stinking float. None of the other kids really talked to me until the following February. It would be the 14th to be exact, though like many other trifles, the significance of that day wasn't in our "Welcome to America, Here's Some Shit You Should Know" brochure.
   I showed up for school that day much like any other. The traffic cop who helped me cross the street by my apartment would represent 35% of the human interaction I got in the morning, with a solid 62% to follow from Mrs. Price, my incredibly kind home room teacher. The other 3% was a free for all.
   But today was different. Steven, a kid that hadn't said 12 words to me in two months, handed me a piece of chocolate as soon as I walked into the room. Within seconds, Jimmy had presented me with a lollipop. Allison, who'd clearly been pining for me these many long weeks when she was ignoring me, handed me a little pink card with a heart shaped candy taped to its cover. I got cards and candy from everybody. I was beside myself, grinning like an idiot with tears of joy welling up inside me. I was ready to shout "You like me! You really, really like me" when Kim walked up and thrust a miniature candy bar into my overflowing hands.
   "Happy Valentine's Day," she grumbled before she shuffled away.
   And then I saw it. This wasn't my special "Love the Foreigner You Ignored For Months and Made Cry Nightly" Day. This wasn't my float! This was some cheap holiday I wasn't told about where you had to buy gifts for people even if you didn't like them, and I was empty handed. This was yet another excuse for the other kids to hate me, which they did once they realized that I couldn't return their Snoopy themed valentines with any of my own.
   For one desperate face-saving moment, I tried scratching my name out on the valentines I'd received and re-gifting them to the other kids, but Kim was first to expose my shameless ploy. I was defeated, reduced to shredding the little cards I clutched in my tiny fists and scattering them to the wind in a fit of rage, screaming "Here, give these to somebody you really like!" all the while. The other kids were horrified, fresh little tears of trauma that landed many of them in therapy years later forming before my very eyes. I was the little foreign gay monster that destroyed Valentine's Day for all of them. I'd even managed to frighten Kim, whose smug little smile had vanished momentarily.
   I didn't make many friends in the 5th grade. The following year, I switched schools.

Dear Anderson Cooper,

What she said.