Geneva Convention / Lebanon
“I almost died in the Beirut Port Explosion, but what it taught me was that life is frail, life is fragile and life is silly. Wigs are silly. Fake lashes are silly. Overdrawn lips are silly. But you know, from the right angle, they’re also beautiful. Wigs are beautiful. Life is the beautifullest – from the right angle. We grew up in darkness most of our youth, us adult gays today – pre-internet. No idea what world we belong to. Who will ever understand us. Will we ever find love? Will we ever find beauty? Will we ever find friendship? But then you travel, you meet gays and theys, you go to their pride events, their bars, their home hangouts. You find a home. Today’s youth are hopefully less in the dark. They hopefully know when a therapist their parents sent them to is actually a conversion therapist trying to instill shame and darkness inside them.
They hopefully recognize the names of secret electroshock therapy centers and have the online means to ask for help before they are taken to them. They hopefully have a network that they can tap into in order to feel harmony and permission. Until one day, they give themselves this permission.. to be their uninhibited selves.
I come from Lebanon, a land of absolute beauty but also incredible chaos. Live and let live. This land has let us live on it for thousands of years. This fertile crescent. A fertile effervescence. Live and let live. Recently, there was a public call to harm/attack queer people in Lebanon. What a cowardly ungodly thing to suggest, let alone demand. Queer people cannot be eradicated. We have always been born to straight parents for hundreds of thousands of years. What a losing game it is to try and erase us. And yet, we must learn to let ourselves live, us as queer people.
We sometimes internalize the dissenting voices, out of habit, and begin to oppress our own selves. Even when we go abroad. And to that I tell you: wear a wig. Wear your lipstick overdrawn. Put on a massive pair of eyelashes. Life is silly. Life is fragile. Life is beautiful. We are here for just a blip.. might as well make it the most beautiful, magical blip in the history of the universe. ♥️”
