Being married saves one from that kind of pain. And no matter what married men tell you, being made to pick up after yourself or having to explain that working late at the office doesn’t involve expert fellatio and booze filled bacchanals, are poor replacements. For a masochist like me who suffered serial rejection enough to develop a taste for it, that is all I miss about being single. Other married men fantasize about being single again just so they can finally sleep with that girl in the cubicle across from theirs without worrying about the wife finding out. They are fools. Their fantasy is dependent on a self-believing lie that prior to marriage they were masters of the art of seduction. I have no such illusions. The years before I was married were mostly spent pining and whining and I have no doubt that were I single again, that girl in the cubicle across from mine would tell me she thinks of me like bloody friend.

Between the ages of 11 to 22, I confessed love to a total of 5 girls. I will have no truck with rationalizing fools who jump up at every opportunity to point out that it wasn’t love but infatuation and true love is only when blah blah blah. It felt like love at the time and that is all that matters. In seventh grade, Mehreen (not her real name, as it only seems fair to save these women the shame of being associated with my youth) was my sun and moon, my stars and my skies. Her very existence was evidence to me of a greater being who loved beauty. In retrospect she was probably a pimply girl with bad hair, braces and a terrible posture, but given that I was a pimply boy with bad hair, thick spectacles and terrible posture, I was not being too discerning. When, after a year of nervously circling her like an insecure shark, I finally passed her a note in class with “I love you, will you go out with me?” written on it, it was the bravest thing I had ever done; braver than any act of bravery committed by any valiant hero throughout the ages. Those Allied soldiers charging the beaches of Normandy would have saluted my courage and that Roman warrior who stood facing an army of barbarians would have given me a medal of valor. So when she said she thought of me like her brother/friend/first cousin who she was too close to marry/pet Labrador puppy/etcetera, it broke me to pieces. The wallowing that followed was particularly epic. As was the wailing and gnashing of teeth that succeeded the rejection by Ayesha, that quietly pretty girl in A-levels. When Laileh, a Palestinian girl in college with curls you could happily asphyxiate yourself with said “no” I almost enlisted in Al Qaeda.

It’s no wonder then that I stopped asking women out. Traumatized, I could hear the rejection even before I had asked the question. Which makes me all the more grateful for the women who decided to take the initiative on themselves. Had they not subsequently punched my heart like Van Damme executing the Dim Mak on an innocent brick in Blood Sport, I would still think of them fondly. Meha met me at an airport and had wooed me by the time the flight landed. Six months later she moved away to another country after telling me what she felt for me wasn’t strong enough to compete with the job offer she had. Tiffany pursued me with the single-minded zeal of a serial killer and then cheated on me with the man she went on to marry and subsequently divorce. The years between and after those two were filled with cigarette smoke, dreary songs on loop and lots of forlorn looks. My wife, God bless her soul, worked away at my insecurities with the patience of an archaeologist when she decided to find me attractive. I took no chances and asked her to marry me the moment I realised she wasn’t just aiming for a closer shot at what was left of my fragile ego. Seven years on and she still claims to love me and I am not going to let her think about it long enough to second-guess it. Still, there are those moments, when life seems particularly pleasant and peaceful and safe, that I crave the suffering of heartbreak. For too long it was all I knew. Now it feels like a phantom limb. Or a ghost voice whispering “I still think of you like a friend.”

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

American’s know the truth: nothing distracts like a penis.

Recently, Anthony Weiner, a member of U.S. House of Representatives, decided to go online and expose his own member. The visual homage to his last name sent copy-editors across the United States into a penile-pun frenzy, all while being grateful he hadn’t been born Anthony Anus instead. What happened next should be closely studied by our own political and military leadership. Despite currently being shafted by its own economy, trapped in a war that it erected around itself and with a Republican party that is preparing to mount an election, America spent the next few days only making phallus jokes. As discussions of Weiner’s wiener filled every blog, newspaper and tv channel, Americans forgot about how their country had been completely cocked up since Dick Cheney’s days in office, with no sign of their problems shrinking. Their interest pricked, their government is free to dicker with their rights and waste their tax money willy nilly.

In Pakistan we need such a distraction. Our armed forces and government have exposed the common man’s helplessness by ignoring our every plea and urinating on our dignity and self-respect. The least they could do is flash us with some attention diversion. Now before you misunderstand, let me clarify that I am not, under any circumstances, demanding that Babar Awan show us his mini-doctorate or Rehman Malik take photos of his interior ministry. Nor am I advocating for Nawaz Sharif to let loose his Punjabi pee-pee, Imran Khan his little tiger or any General let loose his missile. After all, they have all already done that on a metaphorical level.

Just give us something ridiculously funny to focus on while you continue to do everything in your substantial power to destroy our lives. In other countries, viral videos are clips on the internet that show kittens sneezing and skateboarders getting their nethers smashed. In Pakistan it is footage of innocent people being beaten to death or shot in public. We can’t watch mindless soap operas and sitcoms until someone develops solar powered televisions and we can’t go outside because the gangs of marauding political party workers are as likely to shoot us as each other. Do you see our dilemma? We have been shown that we have no power to affect the change we need and we don’t have anything else we can put that frustrated energy into. Any hope we had of seeing things improved have died when we realized that even global embarrassment like the Abbotabad incident and the murder of Saleem Shehzad have brought you no closer to repentance. So we sink deeper into depression, turn on one another and wait for the miracles to save us.

So let us laugh instead. Do something silly and hilarious that makes you seem less cruel and sadistic. Even Bin Laden became more human when we realized he was a porn fiend just like the rest of us. It won’t change the fact that you are criminally insane and will probably eventually kill us all so you can ride to safety on a wave of mutilation and murder, but at least we won’t notice the pain anymore. So stop being so selfish and start being creative. It won’t cost you anything. A picture of a political pecker will go a long way towards your own ease of mind. After all, if we are laughing at your diminutive dongs, we certainly won’t be out on the streets protesting and slowing down your destructive deadlines.

Stop wasting time, think of the greater good and post a picture of your penis. If nothing else, it will help us see what has been screwing us all this time.

8:02 AM – Stumble over prone, sleeping bodies of Hindu, Jew and Ahmedi orgy-mates.

8:04 AM – Brush my teeth with…Close-up. Even us Liberal Fascists worry about gingivitis.

8:15 AM – Masturbate in shower.

8:16 AM – Masturbate while drying off.

8:30 AM – Scour newspaper headlines for new examples of laughable behavior by silly Mooslims while pouring myself a bowl full of expensive cereal and low-fat milk.

8:35 AM – Pour bowl full of cereal down sink while laughing at the plight of poor people.

9:30 AM – Drive to work in air conditioned car that has extra large tires to illustrate how far above the “common man” I am.

10:30 AM – Sit at desk updating blog, Twitter and Facebook about how the ISI is evil CIA is good, Raymond Davis is our savior and America has our best interests at heart.

12:30 PM – Leave for lunch to Okra or some other high priced restaurant.

1:00 PM – Order unpronounceable French cuisine while consuming bottle of red wine.

3:00 PM – Return to office. Stop along the way to laugh at people praying.

5:00 PM – Wrap up for the day and head home for shower and masturbation. Stop off at T2F Cafe to score some Foursquare points.

7:00 PM – Prepare dinner for gathering of fellow Liberals. Menu: Pork, Bacon, Beer and marinated soul of Muslim child.

10:30 PM – Dinner is cold now. Damn Liberals have no respect for time. Pass time by writing blog post for Express Tribune about how much I love the West.

11:00 PM – Liberals arrive! Fasi and Nadeem brought flowers. How kind of them. We don’t let George in until he says something racist.

11:30 PM – We laugh at CCTV footage of Mumtaz Qadri. Then weep at CCTV footage of Raymond Davis.

12:00 AM – Orgy ensues.

I don’t think they got what they wanted out of this piece since they never published it. However, I still like it. So here it is:

——————–

CHAOS WITH A CHEWY CENTER

“Pakistan is on the brink of collapse.”
“The country is about to be swallowed up by internal strife.”
“The rest of the world is running out of patience.”
“Lo I beheld a pale horse and it’s name was Death. “

Oddly, none of these proclamations create even the slightest sense of panic in the average Pakistani anymore. Instead, what you will get, is a glazed over look of boredom. We’ve been here before, too many times and we will be here again. In fact, one might argue, Pakistanis are so comfortable on the brink of chaos that we have built our house there. Laid down roots. Every morning we battle the forces of uncertainty with the same sense of routine you have when you brush your teeth.

Wake up. Make unsuccessful attempt at seduction towards spouse. Crawl out of bed while struggling with sense of self-loathing. Battle the forces of chaos that threaten to swallow the country whole. Make breakfast. Read the newspaper. Watch the sprinklers come on over the front lawn. Rail against outside forces that are influencing the future of the nation. Rail against internal forces that are affecting the future of the nation. Go to work.

That’s the greatest tragedy and the greatest strength of Pakistan. That despite it’s mismanagement and endemic corruption and continuous struggle between moderation and extremism, it somehow continues to exist. I’ve been hearing stories about how in 10 years time the country will be no more since I was 10 years old. How one approaches those stories is what reveals oneself as either an optimist or a pessimist. The pessimist sees the continued existence of this doomed narrative as a sign that something in our collective souls is utterly broken. The optimist sees it as proof of our exemplary resilience. I, myself, vacillate between the two states like a manic schizophrenic. Some days I am proud of the fact that despite the waves of extremism and suicide bombings and drone attacks, we have a thriving arts and culture scene. That I can still find the spaces to go on stage and talk for an hour about the comedy inherent in my penis and the endless male quest for the perfect porn. Other days though I feel like Nero tuning up his fiddle.

So what is the future of Pakistan? If, like Nostradamus, I gaze into my crystal ball and attempt to divine the what-is-to-come, I see a continued battle between two ideologies: The conservative elements who see Pakistan as a state built for their violent, intolerant and aggressively oppressive form of Islam. And the Liberal elements who see Pakistan as a state build for their open, understanding, passive and accepting form of Islam. Unfortunately, the former group expresses their ideas in the form of combustible humans and the latter in the form of art, poetry and literature. The pen may be mightier than the sword but it takes a beating when put up against the exploding jacket. Fortunately though, both sides are actually quite small. Their battle, then, isn’t for the future of Pakistan really, but for the immense, undecided moderates. These are the people who cheered the death of Salman Taseer and mourned the prosecution of Dr. Afia, but also want time to go on Facebook and look at pictures of their best friend’s girlfriend while scouring Youtube for Shakira videos. They are misinformed and over-opinionated. They are also not as dangerous as they look but much more frightening than they should be. What’s worse is that they will never pick sides.

So things will continue as is. 20 years from now we will still be talking about how Pakistan is on the brink of collapse and things are falling apart because the center cannot hold. It’s up to you to decide if that’s a good thing or bad.

Written by a Ameer Hamza, it said:
“We are not sure about this Bibi, whether she committed blasphemy or not. It is for our courts to decide, not us. But then why did Salman Taseer say what he did. Why did he call this a black law? It is not a black law and I condemn anyone who calls this law a black law. Salman Taseer may have been a liberal but it does not allow anyone to call the law of ALLAH as black. As far as your contention that we as a nation have become more and more bigoted, there can be no two opinions about it. We have turned into extremists but to call love of Prophet as extremism is not proper.”

Now the inherent ludicrousness of a man criticizing extremist behavior while getting riled up about the blasphemy issue aside, it highlighted my anger at people on the other side of this debate. A lot of otherwise rational and intelligent people seem to lose their sense of coherence when it comes to the blasphemy issue in Pakistan, made all the more evident by the upper and middle classes of the country having simultaneous orgasms over the assassination of a vocal critic of the Blasphemy Law. It is the first time these two socio-economic groups have agreed on anything since the advent of the Benjamin Sisters and it seems to be an agreement founded on a lack of information and ignorance that goes beyond lazy and into the realm of destructive.

I’ve been accused of blasphemy myself a few times by people misunderstanding stand-up bits of mine. The fact that I dared to make fun of anything related to religion was enough for some people to declare me blasphemous in the past, fortunately just not in any public forums. It’s an issue I’ve even directly addressed in stand-up shows just before organizers asked me to never again “go down that route”. After my last column family members asked me to not say anything more on the issue because the reaction tends to be violent and irrational. I haven’t decided where I stand on that. As a father I should shut the hell up because her life would be worse without me (despite what my critics say), but as a citizen of this wretched country wouldn’t my silence just make me morally as guilty of the prosecution of Aasia Bibi as the people who are actively campaigning for her death?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that in all the rhetorical and polemic frippery of my last column, I missed out on something important and that is a simple clarification of my stand point. So here it is. A response to Ameer Hamza and everyone else who calls the Blasphemy Law “Allah’s Law” and demands the death sentence for transgressions committed against it.

(I originally posted this in the comments section of my article but given the generally devolved level of debate that ensues there, I am reproducing it here)

“Normally don’t respond to these but Ameer Hamza’s comments have put me in a bit of a mood, so this is largely addressed to him and anyone else who reads this without having taken the time to understand the details of what is happening.

I hope that clears things up for you. Sorry for droning on like this but I would much rather there be a concerted effort to clear up misunderstanding, instead of the usual mud-slinging that goes on in these comments pages.”

Let me tell you a secret. Lean in a bit, I don’t want anyone else to hear. Ready? Here goes: Fashion scares me. No really. It gives me the shivers. Two things that I fear more than anything else in the world are Fashion and Sharks. Why Sharks? Blame those damn Discovery channel specials. Have you seen them? The ones where Jaws comes flying out of the water like a torpedo with teeth, grabs onto a whatever morsel is innocently floating on the surface and then crashes back down with the force of Adnan Sami Khan landing on a water bed. Those things are utterly horrific. I don’t care how many times the narrator tells me “Sharks are more scared of humans than we are of them.” Humans don’t come at you with a head full of teeth when scared, we urinate ourselves politely before crying hysterically. Until I see a shark do that, I refuse to believe the narrator.

I would like to think that Fashion is more scared of me than I am of it. I think that’s why I pick on it all the time. Is there anything that presents itself as a more vulnerable target for mockery than the fashion industry? An entire industry that churns out an endless army of pretentious fevered egos talking about limited color palettes and glorious seams, with shelves full of poorly designed, terribly written and horrendously photographed magazines that feature the same three models on their cover in various stage of starvation. All focused on a group of people who haven’t innovated since the Kurti. These are the things I always say to get a laugh. It works by the way. Most people are sick of the Fashion industry. Do we need two fashion channels? Was one not enough to highlight the mild variations on a tired theme that every designer claims is defeating the Taliban like a paisley covered drone? Must they be our only source of celebrity? Can’t we do better? No wonder there is an exhalation of anger in every laugh I hear from the audience when I make fun of fashion. But that’s not the secret I was going to tell you.

The secret is, I hate fashion, I mock fashion, I ridicule fashion because…because it scares the beejezus out of me. Look at me. Fashion, style and the intricacies of looking good are clearly a mystery to me. I try. God do I try. I’ve been buying GQ’s and Esquire’s since I was thirteen. But I just can’t understand them. The photos of men wearing slim cut suits with pin striped crisp shirts might as well be a series of hieroglyphics on a wall in Cairo for all I can understand them. That’s why, for most of my late teens, I roamed around in formal black pants, a purple kurti, grey socks and snub nosed Bata shoes. I thought that was fashion, until I realized good fashion doesn’t involve mocking laughter from everyone who sees you. When I met my wife, (who has tried to hard, so very very hard to get me to learn about fashion) I was wearing a button down shirt, track pants that swished when I walked and open toed sandals. Even right now, as I am writing this, the clothes I am wearing can charitably be described as grotesque. Most days I look like my cupboard attacked and raped me with clashing patterns and mismatched textures. And then, dressed like a clown prostitute with hints of business formal, I look at the fashion industry with its beautiful women and gorgeous clothes. And I hate it. So, like a shark I attack it. There, the next time one of you hear me mocking you, just know it’s because deep down I just want to look good.

I blame Bakra Eid. The big joke is that if an American saw the goat being slaughtered he would need years of therapy. But we are so used to it. And we take pride in that. Maybe the fact that he has empathy and compassion is not something to be judged?

Maybe after hearing about a suicide blast we should let it affect us. Fuck it. Let’s take a moment to contemplate the meaninglessness of our shitty jobs and how we need to tell each other we can still feel love and have a capacity for empathy.

“But if you change your way of life, then that means the terrorists have won!”

Yeah. So? Maybe we should let them win in that regard. Cause we sure as hell aren’t winning right now.

I blame Bakra Eid. The big joke is that if an American saw the goat being slaughtered he would need years of therapy. But we are so used to it. And we take pride in that. Maybe the fact that he has empathy and compassion is not something to be judged?

Maybe after hearing about a suicide blast we should let it affect us. Fuck it. Let’s take a moment to contemplate the meaninglessness of our shitty jobs and how we need to tell each other we can still feel love and have a capacity for empathy.

“But if you change your way of life, then that means the terrorists have won!”

Yeah. So? Maybe we should let them win in that regard. Cause we sure as hell aren’t winning right now.

1) Write in the comment’s section of anything on the internet; and
2) Vanity googling

I knew doing the first was a mistake the moment I did it. See, a friend of mine wrote an article for a newly launched paper. He is, in my opinion, one of the funniest people I know so I was thrilled to see his first attempt at being a columnist. Now, having written a few columns myself in the past, I know what an article looks like when it’s been poorly edited. This piece suffered from that. It had very little of his original style in it and suffered for that, but still was quite funny. Apparently, some people didn’t agree.

Now in real life, if you don’t like something, you usually just walk away from it. But on the internet, where anonymity is available, people adopt a radically different attitude. The internet affords you the opportunity to be anything you want. Turns out, what people most want to be, are assholes. The comments under his article were crass, spiteful and rude. Like all internet comments tend to be (trust me, I’ve been called a “faggot” on youtube enough times). They attacked him on a personal level. For me it was a little difficult to see a friend getting such an unnecessary brutalizing and I stupidly jumped to his defense. Stupid, because on the internet, the best defense really is no defense. Ofcourse, I should have written an articulate and reasoned critique of the critics, or maybe just tried to be the voice of calm by pointing out it was poorly edited and there was no need to get personal in the attacks. Instead, I responded in exactly the way the original commenter’s had been behaving. Wrote something stupid and crass and aggressive.

I instantly regretted writing it once it was too late to take it back.

Which brings us to the second thing I will never do, googling myself. I do it after a stand-up show to see if anyone has posted any reviews. This time, the first thing I came across was a series of blog and twitter discussions between a group of people who loathe me. Which is fine, I understand that not everyone finds me funny. Some people do and some people don’t. Hell, I don’t think some popular comedians are funny either, different strokes and all that. I am grateful for all the people who DO find me funny. It’s a small group but I appreciate their attendance at my shows and for every time they laugh at one of my bits. But I can read a 100 people saying “good show” and I will still obsess over the 1 guy who says “you suck.” It’s ridiculous. I focus in on that one criticism and obsess over it. For. Fucking. Ever.

I know, I have issues.

The recent google search revealed a group of people who seemed to go out of their way to voice their hatred of me. First for defending my friend in an aggressive manner (completely disregarding how rudely they were attacking him in the first place) and then just using that as a launching pad for vocalizing how much they dislike everything I have ever done. And for a while I couldn’t figure out why they were going on about it, going out of their way to just bash me and everything I’ve done. Until one of them posted something revelatory. They wished I could read their comments.

They wanted me to know how much they hated me.

They wanted me to react.

I almost did too. Almost wrote to the the person to ask them why they hated me so. Then I realized that was me doing exactly what they wanted.

Did what they say hurt? Yes. Did it anger/upset/frustrate me? Yes.

Will I respond?

No.

Although, in a way, this blog post is probably going to thrill them. So fine, just this one time:

If you like my comedy or even dislike it but are decent enough to understand that I put a lot of work into it and so probably have some emotional attachment to it (and am also a fucking human being), thank you.

If you find it fun to attack because it gives you a vicarious thrill, fuck you.

There.