Catch A Likeness

Jamil & Israel

“Why don’t you just move here?”
“I don’t speak German. What am I gonna do here?”
“You’ll learn. Just get a job at a bar or a cafe or something like that. Everybody at my job speaks English.”
“I can barely speak English.”
“It’s not that bad. You’d be serving coffee or sandwiches, not giving a lecture on physics. You’re here every other weekend. You might as well move here. You can do what you want here, far away from your parents.”
“I wish. I wish I could just leave. They wouldn’t… They would ask me over and over, ‘Why are you going there’, ‘What’s there’, ‘Alemania, Berlina’, ‘What are you gonna do there’?”
“It was exactly the same for me, but my parents were like, ‘Go and get this gay thing out of your system. Do your gay things there where you can’t embarrass us.’”
“Shit.”
“That’s life. There are so many runaways here. Everybody’s got a story but, people come here to be free, to be themselves.”
“Sometimes I think about being here for two or three months, getting to know the city, and the German people.”
“”Ooh… getting to know the German people. That… that’s a challenge, but if you come you should come for the summer.”
“Coming from Belgium, I think I can handle the winters here but yes, the summer is the right time to be here. I’m really curious about the people. I think they’re funny.”
“That’s a word for it.”
“It’s gonna sound crazy, but when I take the bus, even if it’s full sometimes no one will sit next to me. I, I don’t mind. More room for me but…”
“Yeah that happens. Germans will also just stare at you and shout sometimes, like when you have to do official things and stuff like that. Is it colder here or in Belgium?”
“I think it’s colder here. It’s a different kind of cold. Here the cold, it feels like it cuts through your bones.”
“I always thought it would be colder there, but I guess it would be colder here. You never invite me to Brussels. I mean, I know I can’t stay with you because family… but I could do an airbnb and you could show me around.”
“You know you can always come. I feel like I’m begging you to come. There are so many places I wanna show you, and I have my own place you know? It’s just a studio but there’s space for you.”
“I’ll check my schedule to see when I can, I can make it.”
“No you won’t.”
“You’re right. Ha. I won’t. Why am I lying? If I get four days off why would I come to another cold, dark place?”
“To visit me? To see something else, something different? A new city.”
“That sounds great, but I want sun. I want something besides… an alternative to the gloom and grey here.”
“Come on? You could come and check it out. It’s not Berlin, but that’s what makes it what it is. Brussels is Brussels. There’s concerts, lot’s of parties, little places, hidden parks, and the food! The food is so much better there than it is here, but not as cheap. We could be in Antwerp in like, forty-five minutes.”
“Antwerp? Why would I wanna go there?”
“Forget it. I’ll just keep coming to Berlin.”
“Just move already. You know you want to. Who are you staying with anyway? Is it what’s his name? Are you at Jude Law’s? Hey Jude’s?”
“Fernando.”
“Yeah, him. Oh so that’s where you’re staying. I asked like fifty times but you wouldn’t tell me.”
“No you didn’t!”
“I asked you like at least three times, you never answered. I see him around. A lot. Did he tell you that?”
“No.”
“Yeah, he’s always with some Black guy, Turkish guy, anything ‘of Color’, and he’s trying to paint himself with it.”
“So..?”
“So, nothing. I’m just saying, I see him around. That’s all.”
“So your eyes are still working? You see him, and that’s what you mean?”
“Spanish Jude Law is in English, ‘Easy on the eyes’.”
“We’re just friends. Kind of…”
“Okay. You and Jude can be friends. It’s not my business what kind of relationship you have.”
“I told him I was coming and he said that I could stay at this place whenever I want. Coming here this weekend saved me from another date my mother planned.”
“She’s still setting you up on these dates with these poor unsuspecting girls?”
“I keep telling her to stop, but she won’t listen.”
“You… you need to do something. I’m not saying tell or don’t tell but you need to do something.”
“I’m not telling them anything. I wish that she would just listen and stop trying to set me up. I shouldn’t have to tell them who I sleep with. Did my brother have to tell them he’s straight?”
“Mmmm. When people say that I don’t… The expectation is that we come out of the womb straight and if we don’t, we need to act like we are. It’s not the same, to say, ‘No, I’m not what you’re telling me I’m supposed to be all my life’. And then there’s the girls who you’re meeting on these dates and their feelings.”
“But you know what I mean? I’m saying why should I have to do something that my brother didn’t have to do? Why do I have to make an announcement?”
“Yeah… okay, but…”
“And I’m not lying to anyone. I’m showing up, she’s showing up. We meet, and we just… have dinner.”
“But don’t you think that the girls who come, are expecting that they’re on a date with someone who at least, is attracted to women? Someone who they can hook up with, marry, have a long term relationship with that goes nowhere, or a baby!”
“You shouldn’t go on a date with any expectations?”
“Excuse me? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s a date, it’s not a, it’s not an engagement party or something like that. It’s dinner, drinks, talking… I’m not promising more than that. I’m not promising anything.”
“But… when you’re there and she’s there, and it’s a date, she thinks that it might turn into something else. Or… at least that’s a possibility.”
“Even if I go out on a date with a, with a guy, I’m not promising him anything.”
“But with the guy, you do sleep with men. You like men, you’re attracted to them, so something could happen.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a guy or a girl, I don’t owe them anything. It’s a date, it’s not a transaction. Just because I say let’s, let’s get something to eat… I decide what to tell them about me, or my life, or what to keep to myself. We’re talking about the first date! There’s so many rules to this whole arranged thing. Even if I was straight, it would still be weird to have my mother choosing a wife for me. A while ago, I went on a date with a really cool, really beautiful girl and she knew. She knew and she showed up anyway.”
“She ‘knew’ knew? How did she know? How did she find out?”
“She asked a friend of hers from the church who knew my family and that friend made some calls or talked to her friends, and that’s how it happened.”
“The church gossip chain! People know the congregation’s business better than they know the bible! What happened? On the date?”
“She’s… she’s really funny. We have a similar sense of humour and we were just laughing and making jokes the whole night, having a good time. And… it was right from the beginning. I met her in front of the restaurant, an all you can eat Congolese buffet.”
“You took her to an all you can eat buffet on the first date?”
“It was her idea! I thought, ‘Okay…’. But we went and she ate six plates!”
“What? Six plates? Six plates of what?”
“I had never been to this place before, but the food was… Uhhhhh. She had everything, goat, grilled fish, plantains, rice, beans, attike I think it’s called, and the stuff, it’s not spinach but it’s like a spinach…”
“Pondu?”
“Yeah, pondu. Pondu, that was it. I always forget the name. There was so much food. I could only eat three plates.”
“So you’re eating…”
“Yeah we were eating and talking about music, she knows everything about music and she likes a lot of different things like cumbia, afrohouse, techno, reggaeton, she loves going to music festivals. That’s her thing.”
“What does she do?”
“She… studied educational sciences and she’s working at the University of Louvain and writing a book.”
“And… she agreed to be set up on a date with you?”
“Of course she did.”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t she?”
“When she told me, that she knew, we were talking about dating and our mothers and she was like, ‘I need to be honest with you’, and she had this, this look on her face.”
“Like what?”
“I didn’t… I don’t kn...she looked like she was really nervous and then I got really nervous. Then she just told me she talked to all these different people and that’s how she found out.”
“Yeah, cos she couldn’t find anything about you on the interwebs.”
“That’s what she said. So one of her friends has a brother that I, that I…”
“That you fucked, who texted you and you never texted back… yeah, so…”
“I didn’t say that. I don’t remember if I…”
“Then you didn’t text. But okay, what did you say?”
“I didn’t know what to do. I was sweating. I got nervous! I was thinking ‘who knows’... I was mad, I was uh, I was uh, yeah I was scared, a little bit. I was confused because I was not expecting her to, to do that. You know? “
“But what did she… what did she say, what did she tell you?”
“She said, she told me that she knew about this guy Diego…”
“So he has a name! You at least remember his name! That’s something.”
“And anyways, she told me that she also felt pressured by her mother to go out on these dates and that some of them have been really, really weird or really bad, like with touching and…”
“Ew! Gross!”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, and she said she checks everybody before she goes. She said she just doesn’t know how to tell her mother either to stay out of her business. She said she came because she knew that there wasn’t gonna be any pressure and ha ha, that there was gonna be free food and then there was, aha ha, there was, ha ha ha…”
“What? What happened? Why are you laughing?”
“She asked me to set her up with my brother. Edgar.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. Yeah, yeah she… she saw him at church waiting for my mother and she was like ‘You can introduce us’, and I said yeah.”
“Right. So she went out to meet you at an all you can eat buffet. She knew all about you, and she asked you to set her up with your brother? Who is this girl?”
“Valentina. That’s her name.”
“Valentina? I wanna meet her.”
“She told me that she was happy that I was paying for the food and then we went out for drinks, and we even tried to go out dancing, but… we ended up going back to her place and having some drinks and I fell asleep on her sofa.”
“So it was like a real date?”
“Yeah, a little bit, I guess.”
“So when are you gonna introduce her to your brother? Edgar?”
“I already did.”
“What? So what happened?”
“They, they spend a lot of time together. She’s met my parents, been at dinner at our place. She’s all over his instagram, it’s like high school, but they really go together. Edgar told me that they hang out almost everyday.”
“That’s crazy. I, I can’t believe it. Ugh, hold on. Gimme a minute. Hey. Yeah? I’m with Izzie. No, no you missed it already. It’s over. We’re just outside, outside the gallery. It was like, like white boy art shit. Edward Cullen lookin boys, muscles, cocks, machines, landscapes. I’m not talkin to you! Don’t look over here, nobody’s talkin to you. No! Of course It’s not Izzie! No, I was talkin to you and these Hitler Jungend clones were looking at me like I won’t lay they flat asses against this cold concrete. The fuck I won’t! Just meet us at Klunkerkranich. You do know where it is! Yeah, okay. We’re leaving now. Just meet us there, I have to go. Someone else is trying to call me. I have to go! Bye. Sorry. Just one sec… oh shit, I missed it. Okay but he sent me a message. Guido.”
“Is he meeting us at that place?”
“No. He is definitely not meeting us there.”
“Okay… why not?”
“Well, if you must know we are having, sigh, some problems. He just wants to know what I’m up to tonight and if I feel like hanging out with him and Sven and Georg, and the answer is no.”
“What happened?”
“The same shit. The same. I came home from work early in the morning and I knew there were people over because there were shoes in the hallway that weren’t mine, weren’t his. Kebabs, like half eaten on the coffee table, beer bottles everywhere and I’m looking around like, Where are they because I know they’re not gonna be in my bed.”
“Oh! Shit.”
“Oh shit it is, because when I opened the door, that’s where they were. He was drunk and there were two guys on the bed lying next to him.”
“Were they, the two guys, were they naked?”
“What do you think Israel? Although that’s not really the point.”
“Sorry.”
“I was seeing red. I texted a friend from work who I was on the Ubahn with and was just like, ‘Hey, can I come to yours?’ I slept at my friend Roe’s place and when I got home he was gone. No text, no nothin.”
“Did you call him?”
“For what?”
“To talk about… what happened?”
“No, because I was expecting him to be there or to call me so we could talk about it.”
“So when did you see him then?”
“I had to work that night so I took a shower and got dressed and was waiting for him to come back, but he didn’t. So I went to work and I didn’t see him until the next day.”
“What did he say?”
“‘I’m sorry Jamil. I fucked up.’ That’s it. I was so angry and all he kept saying was, ‘I fucked up.’ I was like ‘Really that’s it?’ We have like maybe two rules and one is that you can have someone over at the flat, but they need to be gone when he gets home or I get home. Preferably there are no traces that anything happened, but at least the other person, or the other people, they can’t be there. He can pick up someone right in front of me, just… when I come from work they better be gone.” 
“And he didn’t say anything else, just, ‘I fucked up’?”
“No he didn’t. I ‘cussed him the fuck out’ and he was like, ‘You’re out of control’, ‘You’re being so aggressive’, ‘I said I fucked up’, ‘I said I was sorry’, ‘The only mistake I made was not telling them to leave’, and that’s fine but when they woke up, or when he woke up why didn’t he message me? Did they fuck all over again? Where did he think I was? He knew I was coming home that day.”
“When you asked what did he say?”
“‘I thought you were with your friends!’ He literally said that. He didn’t text me, he didn’t call, and he got mad when I asked him if they fucked again before they left. There are so many ways I feel like he’s damaging the relationship by just being careless.”
“I thought it was supposed to be easier. Being in an open relationship.”
“Really, more easy? I never thought about it like that, I just thought it was more honest.”
“But can I ask you, what was… and I’m on your side, but what was dishonest about him and these guys?”
“Nothing, I guess. That’s not it. It’s not about that. It’s that he… he knew that them staying over was against the rules. Like I said, we don’t have that many rules, but that’s one of them. He should’ve, he should’ve thought about me. If he wasn’t gonna do it and then tell them to go after their fuckfest, then why didn’t he tell them to leave when I was at Roe’s? Why did he fuck them again, and then not text and be conveniently gone when I got back?”
“You could’ve been with someone else.”
“Even if I was, they weren’t supposed to be there in my bed. They weren’t supposed to stay the night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, but thanks.”
“See, that’s why I stay away. From relationships.”
“Well you don’t really do relationships, so what does that mean? No judgement!”
“All I’m saying is that I think it’s, it’s hard.”
“Well relationships aren’t easy Israel, that’s why they’re relationships.”
“I… don’t understand?”
“You’re in relation to another person. That’s never, that’s never like one hundred percent like ‘woo hoo’, everybody’s having a good time. If everyone is claiming that we’re all fine, somewhere it’s not fine. Someone is lying.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you. I was try…”
“Who said you offended me?”
“It’s because you brought up me, you said that I’ve never, or I don’t like relationships.”
“No, that’s not what I said. I said that you don’t do relationships? You do sex, fucking. I’m not judging you, but it seems like…”
“Like what?”
“Most of the time when I log onto grindr and you’re here, guess who’s also online?”
“What’s your point? We’re online at the same time. What does that mean?”
“You’re on it all the time Israel.”
“Am I on it all the time, or is it, sometimes I’m on it, and you just, you just happen to be on it? At the same time?”
“Just forget it. I’m not trying to… I’m not trying to…”
“Just tell me what you wanted to say. You can say it.”
“You will… you’ll drop everything to meet up with a guy, to have sex with a guy. As soon as you can, you’ve got your phone out. I mean we all are on our phones, but you’re on grindr, scruff, romeo… you’re on ones that I’ve never even heard of.”
“Yes, but you said so yourself, you said it, we’re all on our phones. And why do I have to have a relationship? There are a lot of people who wouldn’t even give me a chance, even if I wanted to be with someone, because I’m not out.”
“You’re joking right?”
“No. No, it’s not a joke. It’s not funny. Because I don’t want to be in a relationship, because I’m still trying to figure things out I can have sex with whoever I want. You’re always talking about queerness and stuff like that… why do I have to follow these rules? Why is it important that I have sex, that I like to have sex?”
“You like to have sex so much that you’ll lie and leave a friend’s birthday party early. I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you hunting…”
“Come on!”
“I have. I’ve seen you going after guys that don’t… sigh… I mean that’s a whole other thing, but I’ve seen you drinking and looking around for that guy who’s gonna be the one who says yes. You lost a friendship because you couldn’t say no to your friend’s man, because he wanted you. You told me that you didn’t know why you did it. ‘Jamil, I’m not even attracted to him’, remember that? So, I’m not judging you, I’m saying… okay, maybe I was just a little bit annoyed and this is not the right time for me to say anything. I’ll own that, but it… it does bother me that whenever we go out, I feel like you’re always looking for the next one… you’re not really here.”
“I am… I’m embarrassed if that’s what you think. About me.”
“It’s not my business. Maybe, I should, maybe I should’ve been quiet.”
“But it’s out now. It’s all out there, and it’s true. It’s the truth it’s reality. All day long I think about it. I, I, if I get a message and someone wants me, I go. Sometimes I go and I don’t even want to. I have to. I’ve fucked people that I wouldn’t even look at, that I wouldn’t even see if we were sitting next to each other. What I did to Patrice… “
“How long has it been… like that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe always?”
“Did… anything ever happen?”
“No… I mean there was something, but not like that, like that kind of thing. My father, he, he was very sexual and he always talked to me and Edgar about sex. He asked us all the time if we were having sex and he told us that we should be out there. Sometimes my mother was there, or my sister, but he talked about it anyway, and he was so, so graphic. It was embarrassing, but also… it was exciting. When Edgar was sixteen, he took him to someone, to a woman.... We know that my father… We know what he did to my mother. She knows. He doesn’t come home sometimes for days, so she has to know. After Edgar went to see this woman who, who probably is having an affair with my father, he told me… make sure you have a girlfriend because he’ll do it to you too. So I did. I did so I could tell him that I didn’t want to hurt my girlfriend or lie to her. It was a French girl. She had already had sex. She was having sex when she was thirteen. We were very, very active. When I told my dad on my birthday that I didn’t want to do it, he said that I had to. That he wanted this woman to teach me how to be a man, and that my girlfriend couldn’t do that. But that’s the only thing that happened, and he didn’t force me to do it. The woman, she screamed and she winked at me and I started moaning and grunting I guess, and he was satisfied. It’s kinda funny… when I think about it now because we, we fooled him. And after that he left me alone. But that has nothing to do with, with who I am now.

Written by Isaiah Lopaz, Anthology / Appendix 2021