Lebanon Hostage Ch. 07

I can't ever, ever let him know.

Except... Don't I owe it to him to let him know, precisely because I see how deeply disturbed he is by the thought of being ogled? I ought to tell him so he can take whatever precautions he feels are necessary. If we're still hostages come summer (obviously I hope we're not), and if we're still together (obviously I hope we are), Allan is going to want to strip down to his shorts again. But he probably wouldn't do it if he knew about me. The entire time we've been together, he would probably have kept more distance between us if he had known. He probably wouldn't have hugged or touched me the way he's done. It's inconceivable that he would have invited me to huddle in bed with him.

The more I think about this, the sicker I feel. I have been using Allan terribly. Is it... Does what I've been doing to him qualify as a kind of sexual abuse? A kind of molestation?

I spend a couple of days obsessing and stressing about that question. I decide I have to tell Allan. Even if it fucks up our relationship beyond repair. He needs to know. He's entitled.

This decision scares me. But it also lifts the burden of guilt. And the more I contemplate telling him—the more I imagine doing it—the more convinced I become that he'll handle it well. This is Allan we're talking about. He'll be empathetic. He'll see right away the difference between me and Waleed, he'll recognize that I've tried to honor boundaries, even if, yes, I should have been up front with him from the beginning. He'll roll with it. We're friends. I'm sure he'll feel... imposed on. Used. Maybe even betrayed. Maybe even violated. But I'll apologize profusely, I'll explain that I kept it a secret because I was trying to prevent him from being uncomfortable—although, again, I realize now that was the wrong way to go about it, I should have been honest. And he'll understand all that.

Won't he?

Once I've worked out in my head a scene in which I tell him, and he accepts it, accepts me, I feel a growing yearning to come out to Allan. I want to turn that imagined scene into reality. What a relief it would be, not to have to hide from him anymore. God, it would be wonderful to eliminate that particular stress from my life. Don'tI deserve that? Hostage life is stressful enough as it is.

Then again, if I tell him, and he doesn't take it well, if this turns out to be too threatening for him, beyond his limits, beyond his capacity for generosity—my life will become far more stressful. Both our lives will.

What should I do, God? Tell me, don't let me do the wrong thing...

I'm going to tell him. It's risky, it's a leap of faith. But I have faith in Allan's goodness. And whatever happens, I am ethically obligated to tell him, I'm convinced of that. If I don't tell him, then I am... not as bad as Waleed, but enough alike that I can't live with that.

It needs to be a day when Sayeed's shift is on duty, so there's no chance of Waleed bursting in on us for one of his rants. Also, during a Sayeed-led shift, Allan will be in a better place to receive the news because Waleed won't have been ogling him in the bathroom that morning. I need to be sure he's in a good mood when I do it—not low or irritated. I should do it in the afternoon, after the midday meal and Hikmet's English lesson, when the guards typically leave us alone.

A day comes that meets my criteria. I almost chicken out. A voice in my head tells me: This has all been a Strange Idea, don't do it... But the guilt is stronger than the anxiety. So is the hope.

"Allan, can I talk to you about something?"

He looks up from his book. "Hmm?"

"There's something I need to tell you." I can't look him in the face. I take a couple of heavy breaths. I can't turn back now...

"What's wrong?" He's concerned.

Eyes on the floor, I break through the wall. "I'm gay."

That's it. I've done it. Shit.

I still can't bring myself to look at Allan, so I can't see his face, but he's silent for several beats. When he speaks, he sounds a little tense, but I wouldn't say he's upset. "Are you sure? How do you know?"

I've imagined Allan reacting both positively and negatively to my announcement, but I've never imagined him questioning the announcement. He's reacting as if he thinks I might be in the grip of a Strange Idea. "Um... Because I'm attracted to men."

"Sexually?"

"Yeah." Why did Allan have to say that word? It makes me wince.

"Are you saying that because of... what used to happen sometimes when we would huddle?"

God, how humiliating. "No, it's... I knew before that."

"Before you were taken hostage?" I nod. Allan absorbs that. "I asked because... you know, when men are imprisoned... sometimes they feel the need to... seek release with other men. Even though they wouldn't normally have a desire to do that. I thought maybe that could be what you're experiencing."

I can see why that would be an easier scenario for Allan to live with. Or maybe he intended that scenario to be reassuring tome. Unfortunately, I can't give Allan the easier scenario.

"No," I say. "This isn't that. I already knew about this, for a while, before I came to this country... It's the main reason I came here, actually. I wanted to talk to Bernie about it. But we never got to. You're the first person I've ever told. But I've known for a long time."

Despite how scary this conversation is, it felt good to finally disclose to someone what I just did. To let it out.

Allan seems to be groping his way forward. "So... what made you want to tell me?"

Does the question mean he would rather not have known? Or was that question code for: Are you sexually attracted to me?

"I feel like I should have told you sooner," I say. "So you could... do whatever you feel you need to... to protect your privacy."

That was painful.

Allan's looking into space, lips pursed. Not angry, I'm pretty sure. But not rushing, either, to assure me of his acceptance, as in my optimistic imagined version of this scene. "I appreciate that," he says carefully. "But in that case... why didn't you tell me sooner?"

Just as I feared: he feels used, violated. "I'm sorry. I know I should have. I was afraid of screwing up our friendship."

"You're not afraid of that now?"

"Yes, I am. Very much. But I felt like... I owe it to you to let you know, either way."

Allan looks toward the ceiling. "I assume you want to keep talking about this." His tone implies that he would prefer not.

I blink. "Not if you don't want to..."

"No, we definitely need to talk about it. But I'd rather not do it now. Do you mind if we wait a few days?"

A few days? I thought for sure he'd want to hash this out now. This is bad. He's pushing me away. He doesn't want to deal with me, it's beyond his limits. I have fucked things up.

"Sure," I say.

He can hear how tight my voice is. "Jeremy." He waits for me to look at him. "It's going to be fine." The reassuring words notwithstanding, his voice is rather tight, too. "We will... make this work, the way we make everything about our situation work. But I need some time to think about it. I'm assuming that you thought about this for quite a while before you brought it up, right? So now I need some time to think it through. I don't want to speak off the cuff and say something I might end up regretting. All right?"

I nod; I don't say anything because I'm worried that I'll tear up if I do. Allan's words made me feel a little better. But I'm still regretting that I did this. It was a Strange Idea after all.

Something has broken, and the pieces are lying scattered between us. Things have changed, permanently, for better or for worse. Allan and I have crossed over to someplace—I have propelled us to someplace—from which we can never come back. Goddammit, why did I open my fucking mouth? As if we didn't have enough shit to deal with already.

* * *

As Allan promised, it's fine in the end. I was right to have faith in him.

A couple of days pass before Allan announces that he's ready to talk about "it." During that time, he makes a point of showing that he's not pulling back or giving me the cold shoulder. He initiates small talk about this or that, as usual. He doesn't behave any differently toward me when we're unchained to exercise; he still holds my ankles and asks me to hold his for sit-ups. We've always been in the habit of peeing into our bottles with our backs to each other, so nothing changes there. The only noticeable difference during these days is that Allan spends more time than usual lying down thinking rather than reading—although he does some reading, like normal, too.

I came out to Allan on the first day of a three-day weekend shift for Sayeed, Mohammed, and Hikmet. On the last day of their shift, Allan tells me he's ready to talk. That's sooner than I had expected when he said he wanted "a few" days to think things over. Perhaps he wants us to talk before Waleed returns.

We sit on our mattresses, facing each other across the room. The first thing Allan tells me is: "I like that we're together. I hope they keep us together. What you told me doesn't change that. I appreciate that you told me, especially that you did it out of respect for me."

He goes on to say that he's been thinking during these past couple of days about what he might want to do differently going forward—what new rules he'd like to have to protect his privacy, as I had said. But he hasn't been able to think of anything. I have been "a gentleman." He doesn't have anything to complain about in the way I've conducted myself, except that maybe he would have appreciated knowing sooner. But he doesn't regret anything we've done in the past. The huddling, he admits, is something that's a little uncomfortable for him in retrospect. "But even that... I probably would have done it anyway. We needed the warmth."

Relief makes me misty, but I don't actually cry. I entered the conversation already expecting this outcome, since Allan's behavior over the past couple of days had led me to anticipate that this was going to end well.

Allan does want to implement a few new rules to make sure we both feel respected in this new situation and, most important, to keep me safe. First, we should neversay what I am—by which he means we should never speak the words "gay" or "homosexual," even between ourselves. We can't take any chance of the guards overhearing and understanding. In fact, Allan suggests, we should avoid the subject altogether during Waleed's shifts, given his habit of lurking outside our door to catch us making noise.

Second, I need to feel totally free to tell Allan if he's doing or saying something that makes me uncomfortable, and he needs to be totally free to tell me the same thing. Allan wants us to agree now that we won't be offended by these requests—or at least he wants us to agree that we're not entitled to be offended.

Third... here Allan falters, becomes euphemistic. We need to think of ourselves as being like coworkers, where our job is helping each other survive. To avoid complicating our ability to work together at that job, we need to always keep our relationship professional...

I get what he's saying. He doesn't want me to ever make a pass at him. Or, if I interpret what he's saying more generously—which, knowing Allan, I should—he's gingerly cautioning me against becoming attached to him in an unhelpful way. I tell Allan I understand what he's saying, and I agree. Professional relationship.

Good, Allan says. So, now, by way of implementing these new rules: Is there anything he should do, or not do, to avoid making me uncomfortable?

I tell him that things are fine right now. But so he knows for the future... Back in the summer, when he had jock rot and lay around our cell naked... that was extremely uncomfortable for me.

Allan squirms. He can see, he says, why that would be a problem. He assures me that he definitely would never do that here, in the apartment—for multiple reasons, not just because of... what he knows about me now.

In hope of making the situation less threatening to Allan, I tell him, "You're not really my type, physically." I feel very awkward as I'm saying it: judgmental and perhaps inappropriately revealing. I'm also well aware that while the statement is true, it's misleading to the extent that I'm suggesting he doesn't need to worry about me having sexual feelings for him. Yes, Allan is not my physical type, but that fact has never stopped me from lusting after him. He doesn't need to know that last part, though.

Allan responds with an uncomfortable little laugh, but he also says, "I appreciate knowing that. It does make things more comfortable for me." He looks like he's tempted to say something more, but then he decides not to. On a later occasion, however, once my sexuality has become a freer subject of conversation for both of us, he'll say, "If you don't mind my asking—what is your type, out of curiosity?" He sees right away that the question has flustered me, so he hurriedly follows up with, "I'm sorry, just tell me if you're uncomfortable answering that, that's the rule." I tell him I'd rather not answer.

That's a later conversation. During this first conversation, I thank Allan for responding so well to my coming out. He confides that my announcement wasn't a total surprise, he had suspected before. But he had assumed that if I was gay, I didn't realize it yet. "Why did you think I didn't realize?" I ask. Because I never said anything to him about it, Allan replies. Also, because of how Catholic I am. (How Catholic am I? I thought I was keeping my religion unobtrusive.)

I ask Allan what made him suspect I was gay. He doesn't want to answer that question, he hems and haws, but he doesn't actually invoke the "I'm uncomfortable" rule, so I press him. If I'm obvious in certain ways, I want to know it. He prefaces his answer by making clear that he knows these are stereotypes, which is why he never assumed I was gay, he just thought sometimes that I might be. But the stereotypes are: I'm very emotional. I told him I've never had a girlfriend. (So, he did pick up on that.) I know nothing about sports. I study literature. (I protest that one. "I told you," Allan says in self-defense, "these are stereotypes, I know that.") And then there's something about the way I move and hold my body... It's subtle, he assures me, so subtle that he couldn't pinpoint for me what it is.

I'm unnerved by what Allan said about the crying and the body language being clues. "Do you think the guards suspect?" I ask. Allan shakes his head right away. No. No. In this country, openly homosexual men are... He chooses his words carefully, picking his way around slurs. "They're overtly effeminate," Allan says. "You're nothing like that." In which case the guards wouldn't have any reason to suspect me—beyond the fact that they may still suspect both of us, because of the huddling.

On the subject of being careful with words, Allan apologizes to me for the language he's been using when he vents about Waleed. He says he hopes that I didn't take that language as an attack on me, though he can see why I could have. Did what he said about Waleed make it harder for me to feel like I could tell him about myself?

A bit, I admit. I start to explain that there was a much more pressing issue: I felt guilty seeing Allan get upset about Waleed looking at him, when I knew that I too have secretly looked at him... As soon as I begin this explanation, however, I realize I cannot tell Allan this, not after assuring him that he isn't my type. Secretly panicked, I change course midstream: I tell Allan that I wouldn't want him tothink that I had been looking at him the way Waleed does.

Allan responds to this by telling me again that he appreciates my wanting to respect him. At the same time, he insists, me looking at him would be totally different from Waleed looking at him. I'm not a guard. I don't have a gun.

Allan will continue to become enraged at being watched by Waleed, and he will continue to vent that rage in my hearing, especially while exercising. But he never again refers to Waleed as "queer." Instead Allan calls him a "fucking pervert," to which I have no objections. Allan wants to know what I think about his theory that Waleed is gay. He wants my expert opinion, I guess. I tell Allan I'm not sure what to think, but the idea that Waleed might have secret homosexual inclinations had never even crossed my mind until Allan brought it up.

Allan feels there's one thing he needs to ask me even if it makes me uncomfortable. Do I have any reason to think I might have the AIDS virus? I seem healthy, but if it's in my system, waiting to make me sick, this is not the place I want to be when that happens.

The question is unsettling but not terrifying. I had considered getting tested after I stopped seeing Dale, but I didn't have the nerve to walk into a clinic, and my fear was never strong enough to goad me into doing it. Dale had made a big deal about "playing safe," and everything he and I did was consistent with what I had read about safe sex, at least when it comes to what did and did not entermy body. I allowed Dale to insert two different things into me, but his dick wasn't one of them. Dale took the risk of sucking my dick, condomless, after he was persuaded that I was a virgin.

The fear that somehow I might have contracted AIDS anyway had crossed my mind when I learned about Guillaume Pierrat, the French hostage who became sick and died. The possibility crossed my mind again when Allan and I spent that wretched week-and-a-half with colds in the abandoned office. But I've always written this fear off as morbidity, to which I know I'm prone. I have the same reaction now to Allan's question. It's an unnerving possibility, and I wish I had the peace of mind of having been tested; but no, I don't really have a reason to think that I've contracted the virus. It's a worry I'm going to shoulder aside.

Allan and I keep discussing my homosexuality over subsequent days. Shyly and tentatively at first; always quietly, with a cautious eye and ear on the bedroom door; but with increasing ease. We're reliving, to some extent, those first days after we were brought together in the Shouf prison, when we were just beginning to get to know one another. I discover that I feel nostalgic for that initial stage of our relationship, when we were still virgin territory to each other. We're experiencing again, now, the pleasures of exploration and self-revelation, as I introduce this additional part of myself to Allan.

After overcoming an initial awkwardness, Allan is intrigued to know about my experience as a gay man. He says he had a gay coworker in London, but they never had occasion to relate more than casually, so I'm the first "gay bloke" Allan's ever gotten to know. I know that Allan's an inquisitive person by nature—he's a journalist, after all—but in addition to that, I get the feeling that conversing about my sexual orientation makes him feel worldly.

When Allan learns that I've had sex with only one man, and never with a woman, he questions how I can be sure that I'm really gay. Maybe I'm still experimenting, figuring out who I am. Well, okay, I say. You tell me: what's it like to be sexually attracted to a woman? And I'll tell you if that sounds like something I feel.

Allan waxes enthusiastically explicit in describing the pleasures afforded him by women's bodies. I no longer need towonder what was going through his head the night I heard him masturbating. Also, I am left convinced that I am not in the slightest degree heterosexual. I have at best an academic interest in female anatomy, but I'm not much interested even at that level. I sincerely cannot understand Allan's fascination with the things that fascinate him. I don't feel so much as curious to experience for myself the sights and smells and tastes and textures that he describes for me with evangelistic zeal.