Eli's Dispatches from Oman, Mostly About Arab, Pakistani, Greek, and Iranian Men

Plains, July 2013

My email to my friend Eli in Amsterdam contained only one word: "WTF????"

He had just told me that he was taking a job in Oman.

That's right, Oman, the sultanate just south of Saudi Arabia, on the Indian Ocean.

I called.  "But...but...but it's the Arabian Peninsula!  I wouldn't set foot in any country where being gay brings the death penalty."

"No, that is Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.  In Oman the penalty is only three years in prison."

"Only three years in prison?"

"Most of the states in the U.S. had worse penalties.  Besides, it is only if you are discovered."

"But...you live in Amsterdam, where everything is open.  Gay life in Oman must be incredibly closeted.  No bars, no bathhouses, no organizations."

"They have Grindr.   And it is a very good job, and it will last only one year."

"Whatever.  If you want to be scared, closeted, and celibate, go for it."

Eli's Dispatches from Oman (modified slightly for grammar).

September 2013

"You were thinking mud streets and minarets, yes?  Oman is modern!  The Food Court in the Muscat Grand Mall has Charley's Grilled Subs, Curry in a Hurry, Hungry Bunny, KFC, Papa John's, Mr. Pretzels, and Wok and Roll."

"Half the people here are guest workers from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.  Last night I met a very cute boy from Bangladesh on Grindr.  He never met a black guy before.  We went to my flat and kissed for awhile, and then I went down on him.  Kovbasa+, at least 25 centimeters, uncut!  Here's a picture (top photo)."



October

"Muscat, the capital, is beautiful!  There are so many interesting sights!  I like the Omani French Museum, the Bait al Zubir, and the Museum of Modern Art.  And there are two beaches!

 "The assumption is that gay people exist only in the West, so straight guys have no qualms about hooking up with each other while waiting to marry.  Today I hooked up with a Pakistani guy on a crowded bus.  He just started fondling me!  Before I knew it, I was aroused, and he was doing me through my pants!  When I finished, he moved away like nothing happened.

November

"Another Grindr hookup, this time with a real Omani Arab named Jamal.  Because I am black, he thought I was from Kenya  He wanted to know if all Kenyans are gay.  I told him 'Most.'

He was about 30 years old, tall, bearded, with a smooth chest, a Bratwurst+ beneath the belt.  I let him top me with my legs in the air. "

"Today I had lunch with Jamal at a place called The Steak Company.  He's married, but often has boyfriends on the side.  His wife doesn't mind -- she often has boyfriends on the side, too."

December

"Jamal and I shared one of his boyfriends, an Indian boy in his 20s with long hair and a little goatee.  He had about a Mortadella+, but he was a total bottom, only interested in going down on me and having Jamal top him.

The Arabs are really attracted to Indians, almost as much as to black guys."

January 2014

 "Today I hooked up with a guy from Zanzibar.  A tall black guy with big muscles and an enormous penis.  I went down on him in a secluded spot on the beach.  Can you believe it?"

 "I know you are into languages.  I've been studying Arabic, but I rarely get a chance to use it -- everyone speaks English all the time.  Did you know that Oman has 7 Semitic languages besides Arabic?  Also they speak Baluchi, which is a language from Iran, and Urdu and Swahili."

February

"You think that Oman is all Muslim, but about 20% of the population is Hindu or Christian.  There's a big Catholic church.  I went with my friend Jacob, who is an American, a blond-haired blue-eyed cowboy.  You think that black guys are popular here, you should see all the action blonds get!"

."I started dating an Arab guy named Mohammed, or Mo.  He is in his 20s, slim, rather feminine, but super-hung, with a thick Kielbasa.  He's only into oral, but I don't mind -- because I'm black, everybody wants me to top them.

Most of Mo's friends are gay.  No one notices, not even when they 'camp' at lunch.  He says his family knows, and doesn't care.  This is the first guy I've hooked up with who spends the night."

March

"Mo and I drove out to Nizwa, about 1 1/2 hours from Muscat, to see the Nizwa Fort. It's really a giant palace that dates from the 17th century, where the walis would govern during the Caliphate.  Nizwa is an old, traditional city with adobe buildings and an open-air souk, but also a Domino's Pizza on the outskirts of town!

There was a boy, about 17, working there, very handsome with big eyes and a slim frame.  We brought him back to our hotel and took turns going down on him.  Then he topped me.  Bratwurst+, but rather thin, so I didn't mind.

April

"I hooked up with another Arab guy on the street.  We met at the Family Bookshop, which has a good selection of English books (you can't find Dutch books in Oman).  He had a remarkably hairy chest and a Kielbasa+.  I went down on him while he kept talking from a porn movie 'Yeah, yeah, go down on that big cock, yeah, yeah.'"



May

"Mo took me to meet his family.   They asked me if we would get married!  Of course, same-sex marriage is illegal in Oman, but legal in the Netherlands, so if Mo comes back with me.  I'm not realy looking for a permanent relationship.  I think it's time to say goodbye to Mo."

June

"All of the guys I've met so far, Arab, Indian, even American, have been super-hung.  So I was disappointed when the Grindr hookup I had last night, an Arab guy with a thin beard and nice pecs, turned out to be only average."

July
"My year in Oman is almost over.  Would it be ok if I come and visit you on the Plains before I return to Amsterdam?  I could use a quiet, peaceful vacation after the nonstop sex of Oman."

See also: The Dutch Caribbean at the Horseman's Club; My Best Day in Amsterdam

The Sausage Sighting at the Film Festival

The Plains, Spring 2015

When I lived in the gay neighborhoods of Los Angeles, New York, and Fort Lauderdale, there were annual Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals to attend.

In the Straight World, not so much.  You can go to mainstream film festivals to see an occasional gay-themed piece (mostly about gay teens being bullied at school) amid the many selections about lonely, isolated heterosexuals and melancholy children:

A woman tries to keep the rattling suitcase of her dead husband closed.

A young boy walks through a deserted city to a house where a little girl is ballet-dancing.

A man chases a balloon through a subway station.

A young girl collects fallen leaves.

There is occasional beefcake.  Graham Patrick Martin, who played a gay hustler on Major Crimes, plays a guy who hires an "authentic girlfriend," and instead of sex, gets a nagging harridan.  But at least he takes his shirt off.

Buffed Polish actor and dancer Rafal Iwaniuk, who has posted a "like" of a gay sauna in Warsaw on Facebook (unless it's another Rafal Iwaniuk) plays a tough who sits next to a guy on a train and makes him feel threatened.

The festival of short films here on the Plains last year was sponsored by the University, and held in three venues downtown.  Most of the shorts I saw were held in a t-shaped theater with folding chairs and couches.

My date (Jimmy the Boy Toy) and I sat on a couch on the left side of the "t," where we could see the screen and the projection booth, a narrow room separated from us by a curtain.

The projectionist stood and walked into the "t" to adjust the sound and so on.  Otherwise he slouched on a couch just in back of the curtain.  He didn't realize that I could see his legs and crotch perfectly, especially when the screen lit up with a bright scene.

He was a college student, tall, a little chunky, with thick hair and a bright, androgynous face, wearing a festival sweater, and very tight jeans that displayed a substantial basket.

He usually didn't watch the movies.  He texted on his cell phone with one hand.  The other was lying on his inner thigh, parallel to his crotch.

Right next to his bulge.

I nudged Jimmy.  We both put our heads on our elbows and pretended to fall asleep so we could see better.

This short was about a young man locked in a room with several versions of himself banging on the door, trying to get in.  Not very interesting.

The projectionist was now paging through something on his cell phone.  I couldn't see what.

He was starting to tent!

The short ended.  He got up to cue the next one: about a woman trying to assemble the fragments of her ruined life in a deserted basement.

Texting again, then back to paging through something.  Porn?  His hand moved to his crotch.  Now he was cupping.

I looked closely.  He was starting to fondle.  The tent came up.

The short ended.  He stood, tenting, and went to cue the next one.  A woman who is distracted by vivid daydreams, and goes to a clinic in an attempt to become "normal," but ends up dancing with unicorn people.

This was a long film, nearly twenty minutes.  The projectionist lounged on the couch and paged through his cell phone again.  The tent returned.  He began to fondle it.

Would he pull it out?

Yes!  Well, at least he unzipped.  Now the tent was in his white briefs, a clear view of a fully aroused Bratwurst+!

He fondled it for a few moments, then slid it back into his pants and went back to texting.

Unfortunately, at the 2016 festival, there was a different projectionist in the t-shaped theater, and no tenting happened.

I did get a glimpse of one of the participants at the urinal.

Impressive, but not really worth sitting through six hours of films about lonely, isolated heterosexuals and melancholy children.

See also: My Platonic Friends and Their Boy Toy; Topped by the Vietnamese Twink

The 4th of July in the Straight World: Fireworks, Cruising, and Searching for America

Plains, July 2016

In gay neighborhoods, we never went to 4th of July Fireworks.  Deliberately watching loud, flashy explosions?  More of a heterosexual thing.  Besides, gay people were criminals in 23 states, we were deprived of our most basic human rights, we were regularly beat up by the police and demonized by politicians -- why should we celebrate the Independence Day of a country that hated us?

But I live in the Straight World now, and apparently the 4th of July Firework Celebration is the big event of the summer, so last night I went, for the first time since high school.

My friend Gabe had to work at the gay-friendly coffee house, and my sort-of boyfriend Dustin was out of town, so I went alone, figuring I would run into people I know there.

First they had a Red Hot and Blue concert in the amphitheater, with the orchestra playing instrumental versions of semi-patriotic patriotic songs:



"Philadelphia Freedom"
"Party in the U.S.A."
"Born in the U.S.A."
"America" (the Neil Diamond version)
"American Woman" (weird choice)
"American Pie" (come on, just because of the title?)
"This Land is Your Land"
"Yesterday" (what was a Beatles song doing there?)
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic"

After that, things got even more weird.  It was like an episode of The Twilight Zone.

1. I walked around the park three times, and saw no one I knew.  I must know 100 people in town from school, church, the gym, the coffee house, and the bear parties.  Where were they?

Did I take a "step to the left" and pass into a weird parallel world?

2. The crowd consisted mostly of heterosexual nuclear families.  Thin tattooed Dad and super-hefty Mom, in their twenties or thirties, towing overly excited preteen kids and maybe their wrinkled, cane-wielding parents.

There were a few clumps of teenagers and college students, but:

3. No gay couples or groups, that I could see, anywhere.

For that matter, no Muslims.  No African-Americans.

Just a lot of overweight white people with "Build a Wall!" on their t-shirts and American flags on their coolers.   I was surrounded by conservative, redneck, Trump supporters -- and, no doubt, homophobes.

Gulp.

What, don't liberals like fireworks?

4. I wasn't being cruised!

The pickings were slim anyway -- not a lot of cute guys among the overweight white people.

But I'm a twink magnet!  I get that familiar face-crotch-face glance and horny half-smile constantly, from nearly everyone under 30 I see, whether it's at the Student Union on campus, at the J.C. Penney's in the mall, at a Christian fundamentalist pizza restaurant, even at the  doctor's office.

Here they weren't biting.  I walked past several clumps of teenagers and twinks -- nothing.  No hot Dad looked up from his hefty wife to give me a surreptitious glance.    Just a few boys in their early teens, too young to understand what they were doing.  And a few women.

I was being cruised by women!

Explosions, heterosexual cruising, and Trump politics.  This was not my country.

As Janet says in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, "If only we were among friends, or sane persons!"

Time to get out of there!

The fireworks hadn't even started yet, but I had enough.  I pushed my way out of the park, struggling against the stream of heterosexual Dads and Moms clamoring in with their coolers and lawn chairs, their overexcited kids pulling on their arms and squealing "Hurry up!  Hurry up!"

Not expecting anyone to be going the other direction, they almost crashed into me over and over again.   I had to inch my way forward, yelling "excuse me!" to gt their attention.

Finally I reached the street just outside the park.  I was stuck at a stoplight with another guy who was pushing against the tide:in his twenties, clean shaven, a severe military haircut, a little chunky but with thick biceps, wearing a red button-down shirt, cargo pants, and red tennis shoes.

Leaving the park before the fireworks -- was he also feeling out of place in the crowd of overweight, ultra-conservative heterosexual nuclear families?  Was he liberal, or gay, or both?

"Quite a crowd" I said.

The Pedestrian grunted something incomprehensible.  Then the light changed, and he rushed off.

My route home went the same direction he was going, so I followed, past the ice cream store, the comic book store, and some antique shops, a tea room, an incongruous travel agency, two heterosexual taverns, a halal grocery store, all of the familiar places of the Straight World.

To the corner of my street, and the gay-friendly coffee house.  The only business on the street that wasn't closed and dark.  There was cheery yellow light illuminating the rainbow flag in the window.

Sure enough, the Pedestrian went in.  I followed.

There was a small crowd, a few lesbian couples, a group of gay men, some college students working on papers, an older man staring at his laptop.

It was Open Mike Night.  On stage, a guy in his twenties was singing "America" (the Simon & Garfunkel version):

"Kathy, I'm lost", I said,  though I knew she was sleeping. "I'm empty and aching and I don't know why."  

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for America.

I stood in line at the coffee counter behind the Pedestrian.  "Nice to be home, isn't it?" I said.

He turned back and smiled.

See also: A Nude Party with the Golden Boy