by Arvin Ahmadi
Water didn’t seem to be an option at this party, so I poured myself a glass of red wine. It was dry, not sweet like I was expecting, but it went down smoothly enough.
After dinner, we reentered the living room, where Giovanni was holding court with the other boys. His face perked up when he saw me. “Gentlemen,” he said, and it was like a podium had sprung underneath him. “Have you met our new friend Amir?” The others all exchanged silent smirks.
“We’ve all met,” I told Giovanni.
“Ah, but they must meet you again. Amir is a writer. He is rewriting his life. That accident with the meatballs was merely a plot twist.”
Giovanni took me under his wing. I had the distinct feeling that he just felt bad for me and had already told the other boys about how I’d ended up in Rome. I was under the impression that Giovanni was trying hard to make up for my difficult past by showing me just how good I had it, being at that party.
They were fascinating people, though, I have to admit. I met doctors and painters; a singer with a shaved head who had just won a minor talent competition in Italy; a Greek man with a very loud laugh; and Giovanni’s boyfriend, Rocco, a macaroni artist. I’m not kidding. He makes actual art out of actual macaroni pieces.
All of a sudden, I was happy to be there. I felt lucky. The common denominator in the room wasn’t that everyone was gay, or that they were Italian, or that they were friends with Giovanni. It was that they were a fun, interesting group of people.
+15: Gets along with other gay men.
Most of all, the common denominator was Jahan. If these boys were a rainbow, then Jahan was their sun, the source of their light and the center of their universe. I watched the way he swept through the crowd with such wonder. He commanded the room; he always held the power, whether it was in animated conversation or in the slightest movement, the way he took a step or reached for a plate. He never second-guessed himself.
Jahan used his power to start playing music videos on YouTube, on the iMac in front of the Caravaggio and next to a bust of Julius Caesar. The party transitioned from dinner and conversation to high-energy dance party.
It was a warm evening, made even warmer by the fact that we were inside an old apartment with no air-conditioning, jumping up and down.
Jahan and the other boys took turns pulling up grainy eighties music video after music video. Some Italian, some English, but all completely unrecognizable to me.
“Who’s that one?” I asked when a woman with a seriously bad spray tan in a shiny silver leotard came on-screen.
“That’s Mina!” Neil shouted at me, sufficiently drunk by now. He got close to my face, and even with his breath smelling like alcohol, I was more than a little turned on. “She’s one of the most important divas in Italian pop culture. She was like Ariana Grande in the sixties and seventies.”
“That’s an insult to Mina,” Jahan said.
“That is an insult to Ariana Grande,” one of the other boys snapped back.
It went like that for a few hours—a different diva or queer icon would come on, I’d ask who she was, and a different boy would yell at me for not recognizing her before educating me. “Child!” “Child!” “Not again!” “SOMEONE NEEDS TO REVOKE HIS GAY CARD!” I didn’t think it was fair; these people grew up in Italy, or in Neil’s case, the Castro in San Francisco, where they were surrounded by plenty of divas. I was sorely undereducated in the diva department.
These boys made it their mission to educate me.
Neil, Jahan, and I stepped outside when “Let’s Have a Kiki” by the Scissor Sisters started blaring through the speakers.
“Amir, do you even know this song?” Jahan asked.
“‘Let’s Have a Kiki,’ by the Scissor Sisters,” I said.
Jahan raised his chin. “Very impressive.”
“It was on the computer screen …” I admitted. Neil and Jahan looked at each other, rolled their eyes, and laughed.
It was raining lightly, and the three of us huddled underneath the entrance of Giovanni’s apartment building. Neil propped an elbow against the arched wooden door. He ran his hand through his perfectly sweaty, greasy hair. The overhead light illuminated him like in a museum exhibit. He was pretty much the statue of David in that moment.
Jahan took out a lighter and flicked it no fewer than a dozen times before it caught fire. He lit his cigarette and looked at me appraisingly. “You’re going to need more lessons if you’re actually staying here,” Jahan said.
That should have scared me more than it did—the idea of permanence, of a new life in Rome—but I was drunk. I just giggled. “I think maybe I should learn Italian first,” I said, “before I become an expert on divas.”
Jahan scoffed. “Nonsense,” he said. Then he peered at Neil. “But if you’re serious about learning Italian, Neil could help you. He’s a tutor, you know.”
Neil and I started to object. “I’m sure Amir would prefer an actual Italian to tutor him in Italian …”
“Yeah, no. I mean, it’s not that, I just—”
“I’ll ask Francesco if he has any friends who can tutor him,” Neil said. “Maybe we can even find him a hunky Italian tutor.”
“Francesco?”
“His amore,” Jahan said.
“My partner,” Neil clarified. “‘Amore’ means ‘love.’”
“Amore,” I said, turning over the word, attaching it to Neil and his partner. I remembered what Jahan had told me last night, that Francesco was planning to propose to Neil on his birthday. “Amore,” I repeated, giggling this time.
“Look, you’re already teaching him Italian!” Jahan squealed. “So it’s settled. Neil will teach you Italian and I’ll teach you divas. And thus begins your education at l’università degli omosessuali italiani.”
I couldn’t even look at Neil. The prospect of studying Italian with someone that attractive just seemed too much. I wouldn’t learn a thing; I would spend entire lessons trying not to stare at his face. If Jahan was the sun, then Neil was a solar eclipse; I was afraid if I looked directly at him, I might go blind.
Neil, however, just shrugged. “Hey, Jahan, how about you enroll at this university, too, instead of leaving us for the States?”
“You’re going to America?” I asked.
Jahan rolled his eyes and went, “In a month, so they say.”
“Like, to visit?” I asked.
“No, for good,” Neil said, frowning.
I frowned, too; I was immediately filled with dread. I felt sad. More than that, I was confused with myself, with how I was capable of feeling loss before I had actually lost the thing itself. I’d felt this way before, when things ended abruptly with Jackson.
Jahan must have noticed, because he went, “Oh, don’t look so dreary, Amir. Odds are looking slim right now. It depends entirely if I can pass online algebra. I never graduated from college, yet somehow they accepted me into a poetry MFA, and somehow that means I need to take baby math to enroll. It doesn’t make any sense.”
We stepped back into the apartment, and I eased into the party. I remember it had felt so aggressive at first: aggressive with the tank tops and muscled biceps, aggressive when I collided into the meatball tray and made a mess. At what point did I just let myself breathe? I think it was before the YouTube dance party, when Giovanni was parading me around. One of the Italian boys taught me this phrase, “Che cazzo dici?” which basically translates to “What the fuck are you saying?” That was when I accepted the absurdity of my situation, the WTF of it all, of being around all these older gay men, and eased right in. I think that’s when the party stopped feeling aggressive.
Giovanni jumped up on a creaky old armchair and announced that we were moving to a bar in Testaccio, another neighborhood in Rome. It was nearly three in the morning; I couldn’t believe these people still had the energy to go out. But Giovanni rallied the troops and we left the apartment, wandering the streets of Rome to our next destination.
It was a long walk—we crossed
the bridge over to Trastevere, and our group was so loud and so obnoxious that half the people we passed avoided us like the plague, while the other half high-fived us and took part in our debauchery. The streets of Trastevere were cramped and alive as ever, but we marched right past every bar, every temptation. Eventually, we reached a second bridge to Testaccio. On this bridge, a group of Italian boys—they looked like teenagers, maybe even younger than me—noticed us and yelled some words at Jahan in drunken Italian before exploding into cruel laughter. I didn’t need to understand what they were saying to know what had just happened. I was shocked. But Jahan just smiled. He waved the pearls he had put on at Giovanni’s. And when he caught the look of shock on my face, he said: “The thing about bigots is they always go out of their way to acknowledge my fabulous existence, when I hardly notice theirs.”
You see? Jahan always had the power.
Me? I’d felt powerless my whole life. This was new to me. Confidence. Power. Whatever you want to call it. But instead of feeling inspired by Jahan’s words, by knowing I could be like that someday, too, I felt an itch under my shirt.
Jake’s blackmail came rushing back—You wouldn’t want us to smear your faggy little secret across town, would you? I was quiet the rest of the walk through Testaccio as the anxiety festered under my skin; I felt it through my shirt like a burning rash, and I thought that if the other boys so much as looked at me, they would see it. Could Jahan tell that I was hiding this big secret? That I was stalling a big decision? Could he tell that I wasn’t totally comfortable, that I was spiraling inside my head, that I was neither here nor there?
Maybe all they could tell was that I’d had four glasses of red wine. I was drunk. Being drunk can be a great thing and a terrible thing. It can help cover up your emotions, or it can expose the hell out of them. It can help you make friends and lose them.
We arrived at Rigatteria, the bar Neil’s partner had just opened. I had kind of assumed it would be a gay bar, but where he took us was the literal opposite of a gay bar. It was an antique shop. There were at least fifteen odd lamps. A wooden panel. Mismatched couches and armchairs. And it was just as empty and quiet as an antique shop. Neil explained to me that in Italian, “rigatteria” meant “junk shop.”
But then we hit the rooftop. It was a completely different vibe upstairs, kind of like the difference between your brain before coffee and after coffee. Downstairs was decaf; the rooftop was triple espresso madness. Pretty Italian girls and handsome boys with tight jaws and even tighter shirts were dancing, and we danced alongside them. There were yellow lights, orange lights, so many lights. It was like we were at the center of the universe. If Rigatteria was a junk shop, the rooftop was its hidden treasure.
At four in the morning, Jahan did a split on the dance floor and ripped his pants. The party was as alive as ever.
At four thirty, Neil and his partner kissed. I’ll admit, it made me jealous. When they came over so Neil could introduce me to Francesco, my whole body tensed and my mouth turned dry. It was a short introduction, since Francesco didn’t actually speak any English, and Neil laughed and said, “Maybe I really should try and teach you Italian.” He slapped me playfully on the back. I think Francesco noticed my cheeks turning red.
I looked around the glowing rooftop and wondered when this would all come to an end. My Italy escapade, yes. But mostly this party. I wasn’t used to being out so late. Come to think of it, I wasn’t used to being out, period.
At five in the morning, people were still going strong, but our group left. We headed over to Garbo, the bar where I had met Jahan, for a “nightcap”—which I learned was not an article of clothing but an alcoholic drink you have before bed. (The vocabulary around drinking is truly astonishing.) Neil stayed behind to help his boyfriend—sorry, partner—he said he preferred that term, since it felt more serious, more committed—clean up. At Garbo, people sat around a clump of small round tables, drinking their nightcaps and telling wild stories.
Jahan appeared from the bar with a bottle of champagne.
“It’s time for a toast,” he said. “To many things. Neil and Francesco’s new bar. And our new friend, Amir.”
He held the champagne bottle under his arm and yanked the wooden cork off, and with that decisive pop, I decided that I was in awe of these people. As Jahan filled the champagne glasses with bubbly, golden delight, I felt incredibly lucky. I could have been alone. I could have been home dealing with the worst kind of coming out. Instead, I was with these men, this secret society of Italians and Americans who were free to be themselves. I felt happier than I’d felt in a very long time.
Most everyone soaked up Jahan’s toast, this moment, except for Rocco, Giovanni’s boyfriend. He refused to sit down. He went around the bar, arbitrarily pinching strangers’ nipples. (To be clear, this is still not the nipple story.) His boyfriend looked annoyed, but he tried his best not to intervene. He and Jahan were having a conversation. Rocco also showed off his macaroni art to me on his phone, which I pretended to be impressed with. It didn’t look much more advanced than Lego pieces.
We left the bar at six in the morning. Giovanni called a taxi and went home. Rocco kept walking with Jahan and me even though I’d assumed he would go back with his boyfriend.
As we were crossing the Viale over to the other side of Trastevere, Rocco put an arm around my waist.
“Um …” My body turned stiff. The only other boy who had touched me like this before was Jackson.
“What do you want?” Rocco asked.
“Sleep, I think?”
“Are you sure about that …” he slurred.
I wasn’t sure about anything. I thought Rocco was with Giovanni? He kept his hand on my waist as we kept walking; it made me uncomfortable, but I didn’t want to just assume that he was hitting on me. I’d already learned that Italians kissed on both cheeks when they said hello; maybe this was their good night.
When we reached Jahan’s place, Jahan cleared his throat and asked what I was doing, looking at me like don’t do that, and I realized, as Rocco pulled me in closer, that he actually thought we were going to hook up.
I broke free from Rocco’s insistent grip. “I’m staying with you, Jahan! If that’s all right,” I said. Jahan smiled in a relieved way. We said good night to Rocco, who didn’t seem very happy with this particular outcome.
“I’m sorry about that,” Jahan said as we walked up the steep, uneven stairs in his building. “Rocco can be a little …”
“Aggressive?”
“Drunk.”
“Yeah. Not cool.”
Jahan quietly fidgeted with his apartment door until it opened.
As we were brushing our teeth next to each other in the bathroom, Jahan smiled at me in the mirror. “I hope my friends didn’t completely scare you off tonight,” he said. Some toothpaste dribbled down the side of his cheek.
“Are you kidding?” I said. “I had the best time.”
“Of course you did. It was practically a Fellini film tonight. You know, I’ve been trying to convince all those guys to re-create the orgy scene from La Dolce Vita for years now—some would prefer to call it a party, but, I mean, it’s the climax of the movie for a reason …” Jahan looked at me like I was supposed to get the reference. “You’re kidding me. Not even La Dolce Vita? Oh, Amir. We’ll have to fix that. Now, I don’t know what your plan is for tomorrow and the rest of your time here—”
“I don’t really have a plan—”
“—but you can stay at my apartment for as long as you need.”
“No, no,” I said, gargling water. “I couldn’t.”
Jahan spit in the sink. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to taarof with your mouth full, Amir joon?” He handed me a towel. “I insist.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you, but I’ll get out of your hair—”
“Nah, baba,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “You are more than welcome here. I would be thrilled to have you. Ecstatic. Elated!” A playful
smirk crossed his face. “How’s that for Persian hospitality?”
I don’t know why, but every time Jahan used a Farsi word or mentioned being Persian, I did a little cartwheel inside. He didn’t keep his halves separate. He was Iranian. He was gay. He was all of that in the same breath. I’d never met someone like Jahan, a double whammy like me, who embraced both sides—every side—of himself.
Interrogation Room 38
Soraya
MY FRIEND MADISON’S brother goes to Amir’s high school, and she told me her brother and his friends all hung out in the food court of the mall. So that’s where I went. It took me a couple of days after I made that discovery, though, since I had morning-to-night rehearsals. We were learning the choreography to “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats.” I was pretty drained at the end of those days. Maybe I was still processing what I’d learned about Amir.
Anyway, I made it to the mall eventually. The food court was sad. I don’t know how else to say it. If this was where high school seniors hung out, I would prefer to just stay in middle school. The lighting was terrible, and all the tables were cluttered and plain white. It was about as basic as a Starbucks frappuccino.
The seniors were in the back. They were clustered together. I nervously talked to a few of them. Most of them didn’t know Amir, until one girl looked at me kind of funny and then looked over and said I should talk to this one guy Jake.
“Did you know my brother?” I asked him. “Amir.” He looked at me with beady eyes. He had annoyingly twisty hair. He looked at me like he recognized me. “You should talk to Jackson Preacher,” Jake said quietly.
As I walked away, I felt like he was watching me.
Twenty-Seven Days Ago
THE TV WAS blasting at full volume when I woke up on Jahan’s couch. It sounded like one of those MTV-style reality competition shows: “… and a grand prize of one hundred thousand doolahs! With extra-special guest …”