A Splash in the Face

nar·cis·sism (när'sĭ-sĭz'əm)
n.

1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself.
2. A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem.
3. Erotic pleasure derived from contemplation or admiration of one's own body or self, especially as a fixation on or a regression to an infantile stage of development.
4. The attribute of the human psyche characterized by admiration of oneself but within normal limits.

What is the worst thing that ever happened in your life? When asked that question, some folks become storytellers. They become animated and act out the ordeal of losing their dog, suffering an injurious car crash, being betrayed or getting humiliated at school. My answer is quick and simple: puberty. That was when I would look in the mirror and the glasses that covered half my face went from being a form of vision-correction to an ugly intruder sitting on my face. When the zits, pimples, and blackheads that I told myself would not appear, sprouted on my face causing shock and horror. When being overweight prevented me from going swimming with the other kids, or even taking my shirt off in front of family members, my own parents. When I restricted my diet to only salad and water for weeks in high school, only to become weak-bodied, a failure in my academics, underweight and lower self-image.

A set of eye contacts, some acne product, three years of going to the gym, a car and a job later…I could admit that I was a little more in control of my situation. I could buy my own clothing, wear the stylish clothing I had envied in my classmates, dressing up against the wishes of my mother who had insisted all my life that I wear “modest” shirts that went down to my knees, drab unattractive clothing in the spirit of not imitating the evil westerners. This summer, the sun was hotter than ever, swimming pools were filling up, my body had reached its pec-n-six-pack xenith after I had worked on it for so long and so hard … and in all that was the opportunity to lift my self-esteem from the bottom of the barrel it had been for so many years.

Is a dose of narcissism the antidote for low self-image?

I went and bought the first real set of swimming trunks I had ever worn since I was nine. I went to my uni’s campus swimming pool at later hours right before the sun went down when there was nobody there but me and the lifeguard to get the sun my torso had not been exposed to for a decade (until I realized that I’m the son of middle eastern immigrants and I wasn’t going to get that golden tan everyone else had, just a very deep hue of brown). I stared at myself in the shorts and walked around in them in front of my bathroom mirror to make sure there were no deformities or blemishes, in case I hadn’t noticed one during the past two decades.

I looked at my face. Nothing I could do about that. My eyebrows connected slightly above my nose, however trimming that would be obvious to my parents, my siblings, and anyone whoever knew me for at least 15 minutes (as it had been back in the 6^th grade when I trimmed the unibrow and was punished for it), along with my homosexuality. The eye brow issue could be taken care of with sunglasses.

That hairy situation brought my attention to something else however…a tuft of hair on my chest that made a V-shape and rippled down into a navel forest that ended down south at my bush. Just a little peek of chest hair sprouting from the shirt of an attractive man drives me crazy. Hairy chests are sexy, I might as well give up my gay membership if I thought otherwise. However I wasn’t going to a gay theme park, I was going to my university’s outside campus pool. There would be no encounter with an older woman who fancied hairy ethnic pool-boys; I was going to encounter girls whose walls and computer desktops were adorned with images of Zac Efron and Orlando Bloom, not Hugh Jackman. And so I bid farewell to my God-given pelt. As the hair on my chest and tummy washed away in the shower revealing a smooth hairless torso, the evil little voice in my head that usually tried to make me feel guilty when I was being “sinful”, when I wasn’t being a “good” believer, when I didn’t heed the “values” I was taught...was instead roaring with laughter screaming one thing, you’re pathetic!

2 pm. Water and skin everywhere. The pool had reached its highest population at this time of day, the sun had reached its most scorching temperature. Doing my best to ignore the males (mission: impossible) I sat myself down in more shallow water sitting upright against the wall so that my navel and all the above were visible, half-reading a book. A ball hit the water nearby, splashing me and the book, and a hazel-eyed brunette in an aqua-green bikini followed, apologizing to me about my now partially wet book profusely as I shook my head coolly saying there was no problem, it was only a library book. She giggled and went off to her anorexic bleached green-blond friend, swimming by later to ask me what I was reading. We exchanged names and our y/m/d information (year/major/dormitory) and began floating around the pool as we conversed, knocking into bodies, giggling at some of the stunts some of frats were trying to pull. I was a year ahead of her, and began giving her advice, her major being similar to mine and requiring the same classes. I told her I was even a tutor and I would definitely tutor her if she wanted, which she was ecstatic about.

4:15 pm. We flirted, we splashed each other, she pushed my chest back into the pool as we tried to get out. I was happy and knew I’d remember those two hours with happiness and a pinch of arrogance and narcissism. We exchanged numbers and I told her to feel free to call me if she needed help with anything or if she wanted to hang out sometime. She and her friends needed to go, and I had worked up an appetite anyway so I was on my way out. I gathered up my towels and books from the pool chair and quickly looked up to see that they had gone. As I walked into the recreation facility on my way towards the locker rooms, I saw her clique up ahead and heard her voice…

“ew, he was nice, but a total bag job!”

…followed by the cackling (or girly-giggles, whichever irks you more) of her friends.

I stopped, turned around, and walked back to the swimming pool and just sat at my chair allowing the crash and burn in my chest to subside. It didn’t. My plan had blown up, she had used me as a tool just as I had used her as an object, a means to an abstract end, and this explosion was like the big bang, and it only expanded after that.

What role had I played in all this in the first place?

A fake potential big brother figure?

A fake potential tutor?

A fake potential friend?

A fake potential one night stand?

A fake potential love interest?

One thing was certain, I was all fake. And what was her role? What was I to her?

Hadn’t she come back to talk to me? Was I just a nuisance to her and her friends that entire time? Had somebody forced her to spend that time with me? To flirt with me? Did she do it out of pity? Was it all one-sided? Had I concocted all this to raise my self-esteem? Was my narcissism and arrogance just a reflex to make up for what was really missing inside me?

I didn’t have an answer to any of these, but an unasked question was indeed answered. It’s not about styling my clothes after others, it’s not about pathetically fishing for compliments from others, it’s not about impressing others…it’s not the others who will lift my spirits up. Self-image, self-worth, self-esteem can only be determined by the one’s inner self.

Mine is just fucked up.

The Doctor Is In...

help (hělp)
v. helped, help·ing, helps

1. To give assistance to; aid.
2. To contribute to the furtherance of; promote.
3. To give relief to.
4. To ease; relieve.
5. To change for the better; improve.

After the college thesis I wrote in my last post, I promise this will be short and simple.

Before leaving to class yesterday, as I was preparing myself a snack, I overheard the television in the living room. Nobody was watching, but it was on nevertheless, switched to one of the Arabic channels available via satellite. I went to see what was up, and on the television sat a suited balding man who had a clumsy way of speaking, almost as if he had some sort of paralysis or speech impediment, next to him sat a Lebanese presenter, immaculately dressed and glowing as she spoke. It didn’t take long for me to recognize this was a Dr. Phil type show where viewers could call in and ask for advice or help from the doctor.

One viewer, Abu Omar from America, phoned in to talk about his son who he had a psychological disorder (7ala nafsiya) and had taken him to get help. I tried to ignore the fact that Abu Omar was living in the USA where he could find thousands of experts, what was he doing calling a stranger from overseas? And what was his son’s problem exactly?

“My son is 25 years old, and he’s moved out of the house! He’s aggressive about not wanting to live with his family anymore.”

As I yelped in my head how does that make your son psychologically impaired? the Lebanese presenter began making excuses for the son. Oh your son lives in America… he’s just imitating the western youth…it’s probably just a phase…

Dr. Clumsy asked whether Abu Omar had taken his son to a psychiatrist or a psychologist. Answer: both.

From his accent, I could tell that Abu Omar was from the same country as my parents, and his mentality was most likely on the same wavelength as that of my parents. I wonder now, if a 25 year old who decides to move out is considered worthy of needing psychiatric help and needing to be "fixed", what would my parents think of me? Not only am I younger than Abu Omar’s song, I come from a household where the only way to move out is marriage (to a female preferably) or death.

I respect the concept of family, don’t get me wrong, but within a family there must be respect for those members who can make their own choices. It should be an assembly that is built on love, not a congregation bound by blood. When will the Abu Omars of the world realize that?

eye contact noun
1. a meeting of the eyes between two people that expresses meaningful nonverbal communication
2. contact that occurs when two people look directly at each other

Escape. Some take up a hobby, some rely on substances, some find it through television and the internet. However for me, on those weekends free of classes and work, the only things to look forward to were the quarreling of my many siblings, the morbidity that was my mother, the detachment that was my father and the dystopia that all these entities caused when they clashed together. My escape was going to my university library to study, to get away from it all. On those sunny Saturday afternoons, as I walked from the parking lot to that century-old building, I would watch the glistening golden bodies running around campus, throwing a football to one another, tackling each other. I would watch in pleasure and pain.

Fifteen Years Ago…

I was always the odd-one-out at school…that little boy who neither fit well with the other boys, but certainly could not acclimate with the girls. During recess periods, where the room was our domain, where we could play board games, paints and crafts, make magnet designs, etc…a schism would occur in which all girls would go play with the dolls and “play house” and act as mothers, while the boys would go play with the big blocks, build forts, cause destruction, and fight wars. I was not attracted to either, my only escape being the desk that I sat at, observing the other children for the entire half-hour, making split-second eye contact with whoever happened to acknowledge the little boy sitting at his desk, and finding escape in the eyes of my teacher whose eyes locked into mine in what I consider now in retrospect, empathy.

Eight Years Ago…

With pubescence came my parent’s paranoia and fear that I would tarnish my soul with the worldly desires my hormones were opening my eyes to.

“You should not look or speak with any girls.”
“Do not shame us in public, all eyes are on you.”
“Look without lust.”
“Avoid eye contact with women.”
“Stay away from committing adultery of the eye.”

What was one of my only ways of communication with others was now turned into a sin. I grew up to feel guilt when my eyes met with those of a female, and yet my attraction to males only made eye contact with boys embarrassing due to the fact that such eye contact was what my parents had warned against, lustful. In order to survive however, I managed to overcome that enough to be able to interact, to look into a girl’s eyes, to avoid being labeled as “shifty-eyed”, I became personable and a joy to be around. But the damage was done, I would remain meek, I would never pass the line from weak personality to strong personality, I would remain the type of person who could easily be taken advantage of, remain a drone in my family’s household.

Two Years Ago…

As summer came along, I had my own car, I was taking summer chemistry course, I could escape at my whim. At that time I had decided that if I couldn’t accept the face that looked back at me in the mirror, at least I could build myself a body to be proud of, and so I headed to the on-campus gym. The gym was going through renovations, which was not a problem since it was summer and only a minority used the facility, the faculty and students who had not gone back to their hometowns or hadn’t gone on vacation. Because of the limited equipment, those of us using it would have to share and “work in” sets by taking turns on certain equipment. Eventually there was no need to verbalize, in order to take turns on a piece of equipment with another person, all that was needed was eye contact and a quick mutual nod to seal the deal. To one man there who regularly worked out, making eye contact and nodding would have a whole different context…

One Saturday Afternoon…

On a sunny autumn weekend, walking to the library to study, my excuse to leave the house unquestioned, my method of escape, watching the sweaty frat boys throwing around, passing by the campus McDonald’s and the smell of warm French-fries, I had no clue that I would get absolutely no studying done that day. I walked into, used the bathroom, and as I washed my hands and left the bathroom I recognized a familiar face. I had never heard him speak nor new how his voice sounded like despite having shared the gym facility with him all summer long. He wasn’t the type you’d find out of place on campus or attention-grabbing, just a tall, shirt-cap-and-jeans type and a nice handsome yet silent face. Nothing special, but definitely not hard on the eye, he was the type that just blended into the background and never stood out. As I had trained to do with any of my acquaintances, there was eye contact made, and a nod. I settled my books down on a table in a giant silent area reserved for intense studying, silent and nearly empty as was expected on a sunny Saturday afternoon. A left the area to head for the water fountain which was next to the men’s room, only to see my acquaintance again.

Make eye contact.

Nod.

As I brushed past him, our shoulders collided, to which I turned my face backwards to him apologetically. His head had turned back towards me simultaneously, and as I walked to my destination, I felt the ruffle of someone quickly turning and rushing behind me, as we both headed towards the bathroom/water fountain. I knew it was him, and I had an idea of what he wanted. A sixth sense? Common sense? My subconscious kicking in screaming he wants to screw around with you in the bathroom? I sped up and avoided the water fountain totally and found myself in the middle of bookshelves and just kept walking, going to areas in the library I had never seen and eventually ending up full-circle to where I began. I found my table and seat, and sat back down again, confused and laughing at myself for thinking that he wanted me, nevertheless wanted to have me in the bathroom stall of a library. He passed by my table.

Make eye contact.

Nod.

He reciprocated with a smile. Something he had never done before. This smile was in no way a smile of acknowledgment, his entire face changed from dullness to a wide bright-eyed, grinning snap shot of a Disney villain (or a Hollywood homicidal maniac, whichever frightens you more). If I had not been extremely alert to what was happening, I would’ve found it comical. He repeated this again and again, passing me by, hoping that I would acknowledge him, take a hint and follow in the direction he was heading (the men’s room). He literally circled around my little table, only he would do it by circling around the area from the outside and reentering so as not to seem obvious. He got tired of walking I guess, and decided to sit at a computer that was in my direct view a couple of feet away. He was not only ambitious, he was clever. Every time I would look up from my book, there he was, the back of the computer monitoring facing me, his head hidden in front of it, and his legs spread open in front of me with his hand firmly grabbing and caressing his groin, an effort to tease me or make his message clear, I don’t know. And even from a few feet away the message was clear to me, he definitely didn’t have a gigantic permanent marker in his pocket, he was excited about something. He would quickly move his head to the side to check if I was looking at him or if I had decided to join him in the bathroom.

As hard as my heart pumped, no blood rushed to my dick. I never got hard. Despite the fact that he was probably among the great bodies I had checked out discretely at the gym over the summer, I just wasn’t excited. That only added to my confusion and war of thoughts. He was way beyond my league yet he was stooping down to propositioning me for some sort of sexual interaction in a public toilet! He probably could get with any girl or guy he wanted to be with at a party, club or pub, in the comfort of his own bedroom (or any bedroom for that matter). I had neither a good body (I had only begun a workout regimen), nor charm (at least not any that had been shown to him), nor a great face.

Why me? Is this how I want it to be like? My first time in a smelly public bathroom stall? Did I send him the wrong message? Did I send him the right message and was just too coward to finish what I started? Am I a wuss? a pussy? a prude? Why me?

If I were to follow him into a bathroom stall, what would be awaiting me? Would he want me to blow him? Give him a hand-job? Would he reciprocate? Would he strip me down and bend me over, giving me a great view of the graffiti on the bathroom walls as he fucked me? Does he use protection? Why me?

Would we get caught? Is he a regular? Has he ever gotten caught? How loud would we be? How would we clean-up? Will I get stained? Should I tell library security about him? Why me?

He eventually gave up the crotch-grabbing and tried other methods like sitting at a table near me with his back towards me (and loudly sighing as he got up to leave the table) and doing his “circling of the vultures” dance again. After spending about four hours at the library, in which he did not seem like he would give up, I sneaked off when I could tell I wasn’t in plain sight of him.

As I got to my car, I wondered why I had stayed for so long, heart-pumping, distracted, and unable to study. In a perverse way, did I like the attention I was getting? I had left in disgust of this man, but as I drove away from campus, passed the library I saw him walking on the side-walk, his face had returned to its previous expression-less state. I tried to imagine what he was thinking and feeling…that deep annoying feeling in the gut you get when you don’t take care of your full erection; resent at getting rejected by someone below average like me; or simply thinking “well it’s his loss”.

I noticed in his hands he was holding nothing more than a notebook and a folder. Had he really gone there to study? What was a stud like him doing on a sunny Saturday afternoon at the library? I had judged him and felt disgusted by him, concluding that if he was interested he should at least respect me and invite me to his dorm room or at least someplace significantly more sanitary. Maybe that was his escape. I sought refuge in the library; he may’ve sought refuge through sexuality, a sexuality that couldn’t be satisfied in more conventional ways (through a girlfriend, boyfriend, and one-night stands). He could’ve been a conservative farm boy attending university yet not absolutely free from the demons set upon him by his upbringing, or a wealthy heir who couldn’t fulfill some pleasures due to his class and society, or a popular guy (a frat?) on campus whose public social obligation was to spread as many sperm cells throughout the female population as humanly possible. There may’ve been a void in his life that could only be filled by a hard dick in a bathroom stall. We may’ve been on the same figurative lifeboat, just drowning at a different pace.

In the end of it all, I only lamented him for turning something I had grown to use as a form of communication when my tongue was unable to speak on my behalf into the same thing my parents had warned me against.

My Parents. Him. They both drove me towards the same thing …escape.