TEHERAN - 1976 - THE NIGHT OF ATONEMENT

IRAN - 1976 - NIGHT OF ATONEMENT

#HomoAmerican in Iran - Teheran - #MirrorsPast - 1976

🔥 THE NIGHT OF ATONEMENT 🔥

It's the Night of Ashura, a high holy day and as I made my way home, I saw sheep marked with bright paint or dye in their fleece, marked for slaughter. I'm told that all over town, these sheep are going to be killed at the beginning of this festival and the blood will run in the open sewers. It's some sort of rite of atonement and men will walk the streets tonight and whip themselves and foreigners are advised to stay inside, to keep away.

I asked the taxi driver to let me out on Hafez Avenue, so I could walk a bit, to stretch out the time, to think and to just be alone.

It's early yet, but not so early for the streets of Teheran to be so empty. In all my time here, the city never looked so vacant and I have an odd feeling about it. There were very few cars on the Avenue and none at all as I enter the maze of empty streets where we live. A strong wind swirled papers in the air and moaned in the empty alleyways and it's unsettling.

I bought some bread from a street vendor and saw a pack of wild dogs as I passed a vacant lot. Something doesn't feel right. I walked faster and faster and hurried to get home. By the time I reached our corner, I was almost running, not from anything in particular, but there is something ...a sense of urgency is in the air.

The front door was standing open when I arrived at our building and I had a gut feeling that something had happened. There was no sign of trouble, just the open door, the wind behind me and that eerie silence in the streets.

I rushed inside and met Gerard on the stairs as he was coming down.

"The wind must have blown the door open," he said, taking a piece of bread from my bundle. "I was coming down to close it.

We have to stay inside tonight and stay away from the windows," Gerard said, as I closed the door and started back up the stairs with him. "Orders from the powers that be," he said matter-of-factly and hurried away. This was also the night of Steffon's costume party and there were many preparations being made all around.

Ballet dancers love a party and love to get dressed up, so as the sun set Steffon's apartment was overflowing with gypsies and goblins and fairy sprites.

No one loves a costume party more than Gerard. He spent the entire day transforming himself into a werewolf, gluing bristles from an old broom onto his face and hands.

By the time I led Gerard into the party at the end of a chain with a huge padlock around his neck the party was well under way.

The alcohol was flowing and the music was appropriately loud, but it wasn't quite a party yet. The married couples were dancing, drinking, and making merry, while the single women and gay men formed themselves into awkward groups and looked on.

The English girls, like wallflowers, swayed to the music and looked on wistfully at the crowd and made occasional conversation with their partners or passers by.

In the center of the room, which was cleared for dancing, Michael Hall danced alone in his own little world and tried occasionally to draw other men onto the dance floor to dance with him, but they all shook their heads, smiled and politely declined his invitations. I watched him as I made my rounds of the room until I caught his eye and he smiled brightly.

"There you are!" Michael shouted, when he saw me, "Come dance with me!"

So, I grabbed the end of Gerard's chain and led him onto the dance floor.

Michael let out a shriek and we three danced together. In no time at all, it seemed the ice was broken.

Eventually Michael coaxed some strange man away from his partner and was teaching him a few moves and here and there, a few other male couples began to join the mixed couples already on the dance floor, cautiously at first, testing the waters, but soon it was a real party.

The party had begun to spill into the adjacent rooms and into to our apartment. Soon the whole floor was littered with masks and bits of discarded costume.

The party was winding down as George found me again and this time she had Gerard by end of his leash.

"Take me to meet Sammy Saabs," she said, in a comically imperious tone and relinquished his chain to me.

Helen had a camera and one thing led to another, until we found ourselves in our room, on the only large piece of furniture in there, our bed, innocently snapping candids of the hippie, the werewolf and the little green bird.

It was all so innocent, that is until George's husband burst in on us, "

Georgina!" he ordered, "Leave here now!"

Helen kept snapping away, "We're just taking some photographs," she said, waving him off with her free hand.

He came in, all the same and took George by the wrist and she didn't argue. He said something to her in Farsi and Sammy started whistling and talking a blue streak, but he paid Sammy no mind ...he was livid.

Gerard and I rejoined the party, but it had already lost its momentum.

Until suddenly, there was a commotion in the hall, some pounding on our front door downstairs as Helen burst into the room with Steffon close behind. They were both white and nearly hysterical.

"She was hanging out of the window taking pictures of the festival," Steffon accused, pointing at her and trying to catch his breath, "then a bunch of them started shouting and throwing things at us."

By that time the guests had started to thin out ...those that remained had only remnants of their costumes left on ...all except one.

He was wearing a bloody sheet, it covered his head and body completely and in his hand he carried a butcher's knife. I'd seen him earlier, everyone had, but now with only a handful of us left, it was considerably more creepy.

There was some awkward mumbling and sly glances amongst us as we milled about in circles trying to look natural. The more questions we asked of each other the stranger it became. It was becoming more and more obvious that no one in the room knew him.

Someone said he arrived early, but no one present, not one of us, had seen him talk to another soul the whole night.

Helen stopped the music and we all froze in our places, like a game of musical chairs, except no one sat down. Steffon mustered his courage and went up to the stranger and looked him in the bloody slits that he had for eyeholes.

"Who are you?" he asked.

The stranger didn't say a word. He calmly handed Steffon his drink and slowly walked out of the room.

Jeremy spoke, out of nowhere and broke the silence. Even drunk, he enunciated every irritating syllable.

"It's the SAVAK," he said knowingly, "the Shah's Secret police ...they monitor all our activities, it's for our own safety."

Michael chimed in, "Well, I know, I feel safe." He looked over at Jeremy and continued, "I always wanted a guardian angel ...with a knife ...in a bloody sheet."

Jeremy made a grand gesture of crossing the room and disposing of his drink. "It was a costume party, after all," Jeremy sniped back at Michael, without looking at him, ...and a very long one at that and I, for one, am going to bed" and out the door he went. So Gerard, Helen Judith and I retired as well to our room.

"Well it's not my fault," Helen said and crept once more to the window to see if she could see the angry crowd ...but she couldn't.

I locked the door behind Steffon and against anyone else who might happen by. I helped Sammy back onto his branch and we decided that it was probably safer to stay locked inside until morning.

From: HomoAmerican The Secret Society
Chapter: Swan Lake

https://www.amazon.com/HomoAmerican-Secret-Society-Michael-Dane/dp/0578463288

https://books.apple.com/us/book/homoamerican-the-secret-society/id1482851215