First Experiences

Early in each homosexual’s life there come a time where she/he finds out about themselves. Some say that they knew all along and they were not surprised, it came all naturally. It is the time to experiment things, do weird stuff with the neighbor’s kids next door or the cousins… At an early age most of us have the cousin cousin experience, in which it is either a girl girl , boy  boy or boy girl experience. But in our case it is the GG or BB experience.

Some of us had such BB-GG experiences with our cousins, but our cousins turned out later on to be straight. But this is not the point, the point is that we realize what we want, or what our body wants from that early age and we start dreaming and thinking of men or girls. Later on when puberty knocks our doors we start having all that pleasure of self-sex.

Now it is a dangerous time when there is no one there to enlighten you about the sexual life, whether a girl or a boy. And so they enlighten us of course as if our sexual orientation is just as theirs straight. So there is another part about the sexual experiences hiding waiting for us to humiliate ourselves and unleash it.

Who does have a perfect first sexual experience? Few? Too many? At least I don’t. And some of my friends around don’t. You can not have a hundred percent sexual experience from the first time.

Unfortunately in our Lebanese gay community we have all sorts of dangers that threaten gay youngsters. From pedophilia to gay drug dealers and rapists, therefore the parents of the teenager should sense his/her sexual orientation and accept it and know how to warn him/her about the dangers that await him.

It is true that they might not be able to know about these dangers because they are not IN the community. Therefore there is HELEM at Spears Street, to answer all there concerns.

But again we hit a wall of disappointment, majority of parents never accept the fact that their child is gay, but if they did now they know where to go.

First sexual experience with a partner can either break you into pieces or build the image and complete the first phases of the puzzle. It is always about the first impression, the first experience, and it also depends on the person’s attitude and personality towards the issue.

We all pass through the first experience, we all pass through the rebounds of the first experience and we all get upset and hate ourselves from the first sexual experience. But we learn, and we improve, and this is what matters.

The Lebanese Gay Community

In a small country such as Lebanon the citizens usually share common religion, cultural heritage and specific loyalty to the country or the president of the country... But Lebanon is different; this country is split into more than three parts when it comes to the unity of its communities. Each and every community differ from the other, we have the communities that are separated by religion, the ones that are separated by politics, the ones that are separated by both religion and politics, and finally the ones who are anti-both. Variety is great, but not when it aims to destroy the unity of the country and target to create small groups headed by leaders and become separated from the mother country.

The Gay community is the fifth part in the Lebanese community though some of them are related to one of the four other parts but some remains independent. The Lebanese gay community is cruel, harsh, judgmental, unforgiving, and might break you at any time. Sad but true.

When you go out to gay places, when you start being introduced to the gay community you see everybody "loves you", Why? Just because you are new, and they are kind of bored from each other. As much as the gay community is somehow big in Lebanon as much as everyone knows each other, because after all Lebanese citizens are almost four million only.

Inside the community, you have the good and the bad, the fat and the thin, the free and the handcuffed, smokers and nonsmokers, religious and non-religious, drinkers and nondrinkers... Just like any other community, just like any other kinds of people that you would meet in a straight pub or night or even restaurants.

The problem with the gay community is that it is very sexual. As some say "this is the wrong view that everyone has concerning gay people" well it is not from their imagination that they created this view. Our gay community is very sexual, very intense with sexual vibes... It is "almost" impossible for some people to go out clubbing without going to a motel at the end of the night and having sex with a stranger they have just met at the night club.

Gossip... Gossip is unbearable in the gay community here, the judgmental kind of gossip, the prejudice kind of one that will spread rumors that has nothing to do with truth.

Relationships breakups: There comes the fun part, let's say you are dating this girl/guy and you went out for several times and everything seemed great till suddenly she/he stops picking up the phone or answering your e-mails or messages. This is how most people break up in here, while few others sit and talk about it in maturity.

Lots of sides, lots of negativity that exists in the Lebanese gay community but with all these bad manners from the people who are part of it, you can still enjoy a night out in Bardo or other places that will be talked about later on.

Abused at School?

Bullies and school: These two words fit together although bullies exist everywhere, but we usually connect it always to schools where it is the most critical time in our lives. Of course most of the bullies do have some sort of psychological issues that are caused by family problems and/or lack of attention at home.

Being bullied at this age "the school age" is very critical and goes harsh on the boy/girl; but what if the boy/girl showed the homosexual attitudes conscienceless and the bullies started making fun of them and abusing them just because they are different?

They are just bully kids they do not know what is right and what is wrong, they do not know what to think, how to think. They only act as their parents want them to act, they have no independent personality, they are just six or seven or eight or even ten years old.

What do you expect from the young abused homosexuals? To be come out to the community later on after what they have seen in their childhood? What do you expect? To adore the straight community and feel free to share with it their secrets?

Besides all that, all the emotional and psychological pressure that is put on the shoulders of those innocent small boys/girls from their childhood. It can even go to the physical abuse that is even softer and less damageable than the emotional and psychological stress, but it does hurt as well.

Besides all that, those abused boys/girls do their best to hide what is happening at school from their parents, from their brothers and sisters. They always live in fear that one day their family is going to know what has been going on at school. So they keep holding it together so they wouldn't break down in front of their family, they just feel ashamed of it already.

It used to happen at my time, and used to happen before my time, and is still happening till today. Why doesn't it stop? Because parents are still unable to accept anyone or anything that is different, and they still believe that they are "normal" and homosexuals are "abnormal", they are "right" and homosexuals are "wrong".

Such a shame, to still have such mentalities in the twenty first century at a touristic open country. The country that is considered "advanced" than the rest of the Arab countries. In this "advanced" country they still fight over a "parking space" and kill each other for it.

What can be said more! We reach a phase where depression and desperation get hold of us... But we should fight back and never surrender...

Bardo

One of our favorite restaurants that is located in Hamra street is called Bardo. It is a rather exciting restaurant/pub that makes you interact with "the family" as one of my dear friends likes to call it. People are easy going, you can meet who ever you want and talk with whomever you want.

If you look at Bardo's environment and you inspect each and everyone's action and then you compare it to the same peoples' reactions in a straight restaurant/pub, you will see the pressure that "the family" is exposed to by the straight community.

Bardo has become a place where we can meet each other, and interact with each other and even get to know new people who may become something special later on. It has combined "the family" and made sure that this "family" is able to meet every day or once every week.

There we are ourselves, our souls are free.

A Night at Al-Marina

Al Marina is a place where you go to at night with your girlfriend or boyfriend and make out in the car or at the seaside. The place is dark and is in an area far from any inhabitants or inhabited buildings, or any buildings at all.
Usually straight people go there in groups or couples, to drink sing, listen to music, and/or make out while having the whole sea in front of them. A fantastic view, with a romantic sense and dimmed lights. But what if homosexual people want to go there, in groups or couples, hang out, sing or listen to music, and/or make out?

It is an adventure and it might be riskier than climbing the Alps, you might want to think twice before walking out of the car with your same sex partner holding hands and sitting at the rocks and making out. Why? Because there are no restrictions that would ban anyone from attacking you at any moment if they saw you.

My own experience went safe, we were just sitting there looking at the stars and enjoying our calm night out. We had a touch here and a touch there but we could not be as free as the "straight community" is free. This is not "nagging" about the situation this is trying to understand the situation and give it reasonable explanations and analysis.

The night was over, and we both had a good time but something kept me hanging. I wanted to be as free as I was born...Naked...

The question is: Why can we not be "naked"? Just as we were born...

We always go back to religions, parental and environmental social backgrounds that handcuff the society and put it inside cages of threat and disgrace if ever it tried to break into the real world.

The question is: Do you not feel annoyed by all the restrictions that we face in our everyday life? Do you not feel disgusted by some attitudes?

When is it the time to change? And where should it all start? And how?

The Nightlife

Gemayze street, Downtown area, Marina Dbayyeh area, Monot street, Batroun area... These are the places of the famous Lebanese nightlife. It is where the Lebanese people forget about their disastrous life and enjoy the time with loud music and a drink from here and another from there ending up forgetting their reality for sometime but not for so long because the sun always shines the next day.

Most of these places are considered to be straight clubs, straight pubs, straight hangout places, but where do gay people go if they wanted to hang out and meet other gay people? Where can they go and be themselves just as straight people being themselves?

Since it is still unacceptable for two men to kiss or hold hands in any pub, or on the street, gay people now have their own hangout places, nightclubs, pubs, and restaurants. It is a stage of "Not to Mingle", just because homosexuals are being abused (verbally and sometimes physically) and just because homosexuals are not accepted yet in the community they had to have their own places, because at the end of the day they are human beings and they need to go out, forget their disastrous life and have fun meet other gay people and live normally.

Pubs such as Life-Bar, nightclubs such as Acid & Milk, and Restaurants such as Bardo, are not gay friendly places but gay places, other gay friendly places can be such as: Teh Marbouta, Torino...

Now days homosexuals are able to go out enjoy their time, and actually kiss in the middle of their restaurant/pub/nightclub and they would not be abused nor kicked out, because they became living in tribes.

To Mingle or Not to Mingle

Human beings cannot live without interacting with one another; they are very social and dependent on each other in several things. And so in order to interact with the other person you need to build some sort of a relationship or a connection which keep you and this person connected to your needs and her/his needs. But all this connection should be mutual from the two sides; otherwise it will not give any fruits in the end of the day.

The question is: How can gay people in Lebanon mingle in side of the community, and how can they become a part from this community just like anyone else? How can they interact with the straight people and have this mutual will to connect and help each other in order to survive? Or should the gay people only mingle with gay people and exclude themselves from the whole community? And wouldn't that be a very wrong step towards increasing the misunderstanding and the gaps between the straight people and the gay concept?

To mingle inside the community is to be "one" with the community while maintaining your own views and personality, but being accepted as an entity no matter what your views, color, sexuality, and religion are... To mingle inside the community is to wear the "clothes of that community"...But not exactly. You only wear these clothes, if they fit your body, if they don't then you either edit them, or change them, because at the end of the day, if you do not like the green color, you won't ever feel comfortable wearing the green color, so you change it to the red color.

To mingle... Is to become accepted. But the fundamentally judgmental Lebanese community will not allow any homosexual to mingle among it. Why? Because we go back to the first article I've written, religion, parental and environmental social background, and I must add one more thing: Because the Lebanese community is afraid of change, and of losing the religious, sectarian political system they have if we ever progress. So it is all connected and it is all in the hands of the rulers of the country.

To mingle is to forgo your sexuality in front of the straight people. Because nobody wants to be mocked, or made fun of, or even beaten by straight guys. To mingle is to have tow lives, a life that you fake, and a secret life that you are not proud of it just because people made you feel ashamed of it. To mingle in Lebanon is to wear the green color that you hate in order to just be loved and accepted by the people who curse your secret life.

Not to mingle...Not to mingle... Gays will separate themselves from the straight community, they will not care if they are accepted or not, loved or not, respected or not, but they will stick together as one herd and will fight for their rights as one hand so that they force the community to accept them and respect them.
They will organize demonstrations against the government in order to ask for legal acceptance (Article 534 of the Lebanese Penal Code where everyone should sign to abolish: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/abolish-article-534-of-the-lebanese-penal-code), they will walk in the streets of the country to show the people that they are humans and deserve to live, they will be on talk shows and television programs to enlighten the people of this country that all what religions have said, and parents have created is just a lie and a fallacy.

Not to mingle is to stand and sacrifice for a cause of existence. Not to mingle is to stand high and be proud of who you are, who you have been and who you will always be: Lebanese & Gay.
I know that all this is just hard for us to do, and I know that if we move towards this step lots of us are going to lose their jobs and be humiliated in their neighborhoods, but what if we didn't do such a step and they found out about you? You will always be humiliated and maybe abused...
Is it not worth it to suffer for a year or two or maybe five years and then have a government that protects you and society that understands you?

Yes, I do also understand that the gay lifestyle in Lebanon is beautiful, we have our pubs, our nightclubs, our restaurants and even our hangout places, but all this is still not enough for us to mingle with the rest of the community.


In the end of the day the choice is always ours, we either fight the unfairness and the disgrace we live in, or we let it go and live under the 534 Article of the Lebanese Penal Code, which can be applied anytime and we all be taken to prison just because we are homosexuals.

The Coming Out

The Big deal in our life is to graduate and receive our masters or/and PHD and show our parents, and the society that we live in what we have become. The big deal is to shine just like a star in the sky in front of the people who either underestimated you or didn't think you could make it through.
But you work so that these specific people start look up to you, you come out to be a very successful person with lots of people around you who are either jealous of you or happy for you (I doubt that though).

But what if you are homosexual? You reach a phase where you have to come out to your family, your mother, father, sisters,and brothers... Some of the people I know have been there, mothers always know, fathers always reject, and sisters sometimes ignore and brothers are disgusted... But not always, in other cases the coming out goes smooth and we live happily ever after.

But what happens when the family rejects their children? Have you ever asked yourself this question? Those people who you have lived your whole childhood, teenage, and adolescence together will forgo you just because you are different, how do you feel? Another question that annoys is that: How are they able to forgo a part of the family, a part who has been there for the past twenty or twenty five years? Would they not be forgoing a part of a whole? A part that completes the puzzle? How can they do that without having second thoughts about it?

Usually the father and the brother do the "forgoing" step after the coming out, the mother softens and the sister weeps. Was not this kid a part of the father's life? And isn't this kid the fruit of his fatherhood attitudes? And again, doesn't this father have any kind of feelings towards his son that drive him to accept the fact that he is homosexual?

Lebanon my friends is the country of variety. People accept and others reject, people die because of wars and others go clubbing the night after...

But where do Homosexuals stand in the coming out process? Some of them get psychiatric help, others forget about it and hide it in front of the straight society, others go for it with whatever guts they have, and some just let it go and who ever finds out, finds out...

It is essential to realize that Lebanese families are still concerned about their social stance and economical levels, and other people's talks, religion, ethics and morals, which used to exist hundreds of years ago in Europe.

The coming out is crucial and hard but not impossible. What's needed is patience, because when you are a grown person whether a male or a female, and you are socially and economically independent you wouldn't mind being thrown out of the house, or being excluded from the family. You reach a psychological phase where you'd say: "Those who accept me, accept me, while those who don't, they just don't". No matter who these people were, you know that you can live without them if they can live without you. In order to come out, one should be emotionally and psychologically independent and is not related to anyone who might forgo her/him if they knew about their homosexuality.

Fitting In

We should always face facts. Every day, and every hour and even every moment in our lives, we should be able to face the "facts" whether we like it or not.
But in order to do that, we should be able to "see" and understand the situation we are put in.

For most of gay people in Lebanon their lives are nothing but a discrete scary situation. Most of these people try to hide their sexuality in public places, just because they know they are going to be rejected, so they "fake it".

What do they fake? They fake their attitudes, they fake their behaviors, and they even fake their body movements. But at the same time, they seek acceptance from the community.

I am not saying let's go act "bitchy" and give them the crazy attitude, and by that we would really be seeking acceptance, "no" but why don't you just act normal and natural?

But fact is, in order to fit in the Lebanese community, you must not be different. They oblige you to transform yourself into one of them otherwise you will not be accepted as one of them. They force you indirectly to change yourself at least while you're with them to be alike and then they would love you and accept you and even fight for you.

It is explicable now why most gay people tend to change their attitudes and behaviors while they are in straight places, or between straight people, but one might say:"So what if the community found out that you're gay, and rejected you?!"

Well, yes so what if they found out and rejected them? It may seem simple, but unfortunately it is not. The problem is that they will not only reject you and kick you, they will discriminate you from others, they will use violence against you, they will break you in any means possible, just because their religion told them to do so, and their parental and environmental social backgrounds told them to do so.

If you are not one of them, then you won't ever fit in, sad but true.

At a Striaght Pub

Yesterday I went to meet my friend in a pub around downtown Beirut, we were sitting and kind of chatting and something just grabbed my attention, a guy and a girl French kissing in the middle of that bar. So I thought what if two guys were kissing instead of this guy and this girl? I started drawing several scenarios:

a- They might have been kicked out of the pub and never to come back again, humiliated with hateful words.

b- They might have been abused physically by some of the customers, and the owners, and eventually kicked out of the club for good.

And the final scenario is the most common:

c- They might have been taken out of the club, by the "MEN" and got their asses kicked in front of everyone on a weekend night...

This is the truth...

The problem with our society is that it suffers from different problems that have several causes and stimuli:

a- Religion

b- Parental background

c- Environmental social background

These three problems drive our society into a very judgmental, hypocritical, and chaotic system that refuses to accept differences, and other people's social or mental deformation.

SIDE NOTE: I am not saying that being GAY is a deformation, I am only trying to explain how is the Lebanese society created, and on what bases.

So where should gay people live? Should they all leave the country? Go to Europe, Canada, or to some states in the United States?

But if all the gay community leaves from Lebanon, I think the population would decrease into half… Such a big gay community, but afraid to be exposed in front of the public, because of the (A), (B), and (C) that I mentioned previously…

The question to be asked: When will the Gay people in Lebanon stand up and ask for their rights? Because as we always say: One Hand Does Not Clap.