by Omar Sharif
I found myself in an emotional triangle with both Adrian and Rayan. My interest was unquestionably in Rayan, but I didn’t feel right ignoring Adrian’s message. I wanted to be polite to him, as he was the first guy I’d met on the island—and the first guy I’d ever slept with—so I agreed to hang out with him again.
On the fourth night, while Adrian and I were heading into a restaurant for dinner, we ran into Rayan, and his disappointment was palpable.
“Hey.”
“I tried to reach you,” he told me.
“I was planning to call you tonight.”
“I’m sure. It seems you’ve been enjoying the island today,” he said, eyeing Adrian.
“We were just sightseeing. Nothing else, really.”
Rayan tucked his hands into his pockets, kind of shrugged, and then he was gone.
In the end, nothing worked out with either Adrian or Rayan. I didn’t expect to leave Mykonos with a boyfriend, but I accomplished more than I’d ever thought possible. I had discovered and freely explored a whole new side of myself. Maybe I didn’t find love, but I did find within myself permission to love.
After I returned to Egypt, Dad and I went to see Omar in France before I flew home to Canada. In my world, I’d become a little more comfortable with who I was, although no one knew any different.
Eleventh grade concluded high school, but Quebec required two years of CEGEP—the equivalent of a general or vocational college—before attending university. I went to Marianopolis College and studied liberal arts. The college was run by Catholic nuns and different from the all-Jewish high school I had previously attended. In the cafeteria, students from different backgrounds and ethnic groups would separate themselves and sit together in sections. The Jews occupied the tables near the front, the Italians behind them, the Greek students behind them, and the Arabs were on the side near the windows. On the first day of CEGEP, I felt torn as to where to sit. I wondered if I should sit with the Jewish kids—some of whom had bullied me in high school—or with the Arabs. I made the decision to alternate sitting between both groups. Less than two weeks after CEGEP began, the eastern United States was hit by the September 11 attacks. The atmosphere in the classroom grew heavy and emotions were momentarily suppressed by shock. Paralyzed with fear, everyone had gathered around a television in the student lounge to watch the developments unfold. As the newscaster explained what happened, a group of Arab students began to cheer.
“We got them,” yelled one Lebanese student.
I turned to him and retorted, “You got who? Someone’s father, someone’s brother, someone’s sister, someone’s child—who exactly did you get?”
He turned, pushed me, and replied, “The Americans . . . and the Jews,” while looking me up and down accusingly. I shook my head in disgust and walked away.
Classes were canceled for the rest of the day. People were heading home in a somber, sedated state. No one said anything to me. I left campus and drove home to watch the rest of the coverage with my mother.
That November, Grandfather Zadie was diagnosed with cancer. Our family quickly rallied together the way he’d always taught us and took round-the-clock watches at the hospital for seven months. All of Zadie’s children and I took six-hour shifts to fill every hour of each week, so he was never alone. We wanted to make sure he felt the love he’d generously given to each of us. In May, Zadie lost his battle with cancer. Although everyone rallied around Bubbie, she seemed lost and lonely without Zadie. It was equally hard to watch Mom struggle with the loss of her father. I delivered his eulogy at the funeral in Yiddish and was grateful for the opportunity to express what he meant to me—to all of us.
I was fortunate that my friend Tyler attended the same CEGEP. An accidental meeting brought us together during my first exposure at sixteen to Montreal’s LGBTQ community in a nightclub aptly named Unity. The club was so dark I could barely see anyone, like the space was meant to be hidden, and so I felt safe—and I loved the music. They mostly played dance remixes from the 90s. I’d sit at the bar, hoping I looked like I fit in, and watch everyone dancing and getting along like a community—one that I wasn’t yet a part of. When a guy came over and offered to buy me a drink, I declined. I was too shy, especially in Montreal. I stayed an hour or so longer as a spectator and then felt that I should leave. I was worried about running into someone I knew, and I wasn’t yet ready for the consequences. I was always looking over my shoulder, and hiding made it hard to have fun. I headed down the stairs to leave and bumped into Tyler, who was a year older than me. He grew up next door to my cousins, Mitchell and Lisa, in Westmount. When we locked eyes, my lips tightly pressed together, and I had the sudden urge to run, but neither of us moved. I thought I’d finally screwed up but fought off the dread when I realized there was nothing to fear—we shared the same secret.
Tyler and I became best friends and started going to Unity regularly. I’d tell Mom I was going out with other friends from school to keep her from suspecting anything. I’d drive over to Tyler’s house, pick him up, and head for the place we were welcomed as is. When I was out late, friends like Gill were sound alibis.
Until then, I had rarely spoken about myself, because I couldn’t tell the truth. With Tyler, I could talk about anything and everything without lying. Unity gave us a place to let go and be ourselves while dancing to the emboldening songs of Celine Dion and Whitney Houston. “Greatest Love of All,” by Houston, was about loving yourself. That year, while I was searching for my authentic self, that song became my anthem.
By the winter of 2002, Tyler and I had started going out more. I was still discovering who I was and finally becoming more comfortable, but being out in public still felt risky. It didn’t take long before I realized that I was at risk in a different type of way, too. For the first time in my life, I was going out on dates. I met a Jewish guy online who was handsome, affluent, and from the same general community as me. I tried to learn as much about him as I could. After a few weeks chatting, we agreed to meet in person. Donnie invited me to his fashionable loft in the Plateau, a hipster neighborhood in a Francophone part of the city.
From the onset of our conversations, I knew Donnie was a guy’s guy, but I wasn’t sure what to expect. When Donnie answered the door, he looked like he belonged in a 90s boy band. He was five eleven, with a muscular physique and deep blue eyes, and wearing a red bandana tied around his forehead that pulled the jet-black and flowy hair away from his face. When Donnie invited me inside, we sat down and started talking. After a while, one thing led to another, and that thing led to sex. At the end of the night, I left feeling encouraged that this could lead to something. After my last class the following day, I sent him a text to feel things out.
Donnie replied, “Can you come by tonight?”
I wasn’t expecting an invite so soon, but I texted back, “Sure.”
I slipped my book into my backpack, zipped it up, and headed over to his place.
When I arrived, the routine was pretty much the same as the previous night, and again, we hooked up. I knew it was getting late, and I had classes the next morning, so I told Donnie I had to go. As I was walking toward the door, Donnie grabbed my shoulder and said, “Hold on. I want to show you something.” It was strange because he sounded nervous and he was acting like something was wrong. He went into his bedroom, and I followed closely behind him. He opened his closet door, knelt down, reached to the back, and started digging for something. He pulled out a brown shoebox with a blue lid and stood up, holding it as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to reveal its contents.
“Is that what you want to show me?” I asked, pointing at the box, expecting it to be filled with old love letters or something.
He walked over to me and removed the lid.
“You see this?” he stated in a harsh tone, making me uncomfortable.
I leaned in, peeked inside the box, and took a soft step backward after seeing the gun.
“Yeah,” I replied, forcing that singular word ou
t of my mouth while my heart rate steadily increased. I could hear the thumping of my pulse. Tiny beads of sweat were forming on my brow, but I didn’t wipe them away.
It was strange that Donnie had a gun because in Canada gun laws are more strict and handguns less common than in the States. But at that moment, I didn’t care where he got it or why he had it. All I wanted was to get away as quickly as possible.
As I inched backwards, Donnie took steps closer and said, “I pulled this on the last guy who threatened to out me. I know you’re not going to tell anyone about us, are you?”
“Of course not. Why would I?”
He nodded, signaling I could go.
Trying to act normal, I turned around and got out of there. I jogged down the stairs and over to my car like everything was fine. I jumped in the driver seat, locked the doors, and turned the ignition. When I pulled off, Donnie was still standing in his doorway with the box in his hands.
I felt like I couldn’t drive away fast enough from Donnie or his gun. He didn’t want to come out of the closet, so he pulled a gun out of it instead. He hadn’t come around to fully accepting who he was, and it was unnerving to realize that his fear had manifested into him actually threatening my life. I felt light-headed and needed to pull over, but I was too afraid to stop. I shook for the entire drive home.
When I completed my second year of the CEGEP in 2003, I received acceptance letters from all the universities I applied to other than Harvard and Yale. My family was happy that McGill was one of them, because they wanted me to stay in Montreal. Dad offered to get me an apartment so I wouldn’t have to live at home anymore. Even though I’d have more privacy in my own place, after my trip to Mykonos, I wanted to go to a school outside of Montreal where I could feel totally free. I loved Montreal, but I still didn’t want my family to know my secret, and if I stayed it would eventually come out. I wasn’t escaping my family or all the beautiful aspects the city had to offer—I was fleeing my own internal anxiety and the fear that came with it.
For as long as I can remember, reading the morning paper and watching the news has been part of my daily routine. I took an interest in politics early, naturally curious about global events and the way the world was governed. My decision to pursue political studies at Queen’s University in Kingston kept me true to my passion.
Kingston was a college town about three hours away from Montreal. I didn’t know anyone there, and no one knew me, either. Queen’s was a conservative university that provided the opportunity for me to start fresh, and I did just that, even though I didn’t consider myself a particularly conservative person.
Attempting to relinquish the labels from my past, I created a persona of who I wanted to be so that I wouldn’t be victimized all over again. I decided that when I got to Queen’s University, I was going to be popular and known the way I wanted to be—losses in the past; today I win. I didn’t know what caused kids to single me out in elementary and high school, but I decided I wasn’t going to look weak. I rationalized that if I looked tougher physically, my peers would think I was tougher emotionally. I took eyeliner and drew a scar on the left side of my face, covering it with small pieces of medical tape. I folded a bandana and tied it around my head, like Donnie—it was definitely a look. I told everyone I met that my name was Junior, and like a reality TV star, Junior was funny, irreverent, and the life of the party, with an unlimited budget.
The first week of school, Frosh Week, was a welcome to the university. They had a variety of activities to facilitate student gatherings, and that’s how I met Cayla. We were hanging out in my dorm room, talking about the activities and getting to know one another. At the end of the night, we casually ended up sleeping together, but we didn’t have sex. I was excited to hear from Cayla when she called a few days later. I thought she wanted to hang out again, but she actually informed me that she had crab lice and that I should go get checked. I was always so afraid of what I could contract from a man that it never dawned on me I could get something from a woman. I hung up the phone and immediately went to the Queen’s health center. I was taken into a little room and instructed to get undressed. A few minutes later I stood there, naked and numb, while the doctor examined my genitals and pubic hair with popsicle sticks.
At one point the doctor looked up and said, “Well, I don’t see anything. Come back in a week and we’ll check again because the lice could still be in the larva or egg stage. I don’t want you to buy a prescription and spend money on shampoo if you don’t need to—”
“I beg your pardon,” I interrupted. “Now’s not the time to be frugal with my money, okay? I am not mother hen, and I’m not going to sit on my eggs until they hatch. Just write the damn prescription.”
I went to the pharmacy to buy the shampoo, along with a little comb. While I was looking over the counter, I noticed mattress spray. The pharmacist told me that I only needed one bottle for an entire apartment, but I bought four bottles for my small dorm room with a shared bathroom. That night, I waited for everyone on the floor to go to sleep, and then sprayed the contents of the bottles everywhere. Mattress, carpets, sheets, clothes, walls, light fixtures, the computer—everything. I was both mortified and disgusted at the same time. While spraying, I thought to myself, “I’m going to kill every living thing in this building,” and I nearly did.
Within ten minutes, the fumes were so heavy from the spray that they set off the smoke detector and all the alarms in Albert Hall. Everyone had to evacuate the building in the middle of the night and wait for the firemen and paramedics. It didn’t take long for rumors to float around that the firemen could pinpoint the room where the smoke detector had gone off. As humiliating as the situation was, I went over to one of the resident hall managers, who was talking with a fireman and admitted, “I think it was my room, but there wasn’t a fire, and I wasn’t smoking or doing drugs.” The next day, it seemed that everyone had heard that I single-handedly emptied out the dorms. When I walked into the cafeteria, people whispered and laughed, but it was funny enough and fit with the persona I had created, so I just embraced it. I even bought a T-shirt that said, I GOT CRABS AT HERBS. From that point on, I was famous on campus. People would point and say, “Hey! There’s Crab Lice Boy.”
I was starting to make friends on campus, and no one suspected I was gay—because, hey, I got crabs from a girl in my first week at college. Three weeks in, I became a little more exploratory, and I met a fourth-year student named Chris on gay.com. He invited me to hang out at his off-campus housing that Saturday, telling me that his housemates would be out at the bars. The area he lived in was known as the student ghetto. After freshman year, groups of students often rent a house together near campus. Since it wasn’t far, I walked over to his place. When Chris answered the door, he looked exactly like his photos. He was incredibly muscular, with short, spiky brown hair and indigo eyes. He looked like a sexy, fit farmer from the prairie provinces of Canada. I hadn’t been at Queen’s long, and until that point, I hadn’t met anyone that was gay. There weren’t any gay bars in Kingston, at least none that I’d heard about. What Kingston did have was seven prisons, a military base, and three post-secondary institutions, including a military college.
The building he lived in looked like a fraternity house that concealed a wealth of student history; I was sure that new groups of students left their own contributions one year after another. When I took a few steps inside, the floorboards creaked loudly, making my presence known. The large living room was off to the right, and the kitchen was directly behind it. Empty beer bottles cluttered countertops, bookshelves, and what seemed like every open space. There was a flight of stairs that led to the second floor, but Chris motioned to a door beside them that led me downstairs to the basement, where he slept. We sat on his unmade bed playing video games, drinking beer, and talking a little. The rest of the time we spent making out. I opted not to have sex with him because his penis was larger than any I had seen before; I was worried I might get turned inside-out,
like a sock fresh out of the laundry. Chris promised to use lubricant, but I told him not to come near me unless he was offering an epidural. Around midnight, the door slammed shut above our heads and the floorboards creaked as though a herd of cattle was being led into the house.
“I thought you said your housemates were at the bars,” I reminded him.
“Yeah. The guys aren’t supposed to be home this early. I don’t know what’s going on,” he said.
What I didn’t know was that Chris played on the football team and lived in what was known as the football house. Chris was unusually calm, despite the fact that he wasn’t out to his teammates. His confident reply let me know it wasn’t a big deal—to him.
“Don’t worry about it,” he told me. “You can spend the night and leave before everyone wakes up.”
No sooner had he made the offer then the guys started pounding on his door, yelling in sync for Chris to come out and chill with them.
Chris yelled back, “No! I’m tired. I’ve got to get some rest,” but the guys were persistent and continued banging on the door.
I panicked and insisted, “I have to leave. I’m sorry. I just have to go.”
He said, “How are you going to accomplish that without going out the same way you came in? And I’m not okay with that at this point. Are you? Just wait until everyone goes to bed.”
I hadn’t met that many people online, and I certainly hadn’t spent the night with anyone from the internet after my first time meeting them. While he was trying to get me to sit down and relax, I was looking for another way out of the basement, and the window in the top corner of his room was it.
“Lift me up and help me through that window,” I suggested.
He smiled and replied in a sensible tone, “Junior, you’re never getting through that window.”
But I was filled with useless information from my cousin Mitchell, and I insisted that I’d heard if your head can fit through a space, your entire body can fit through it, too.