April 16, 1999

Crisis and chaos

The war in Lebanon illustrates the ongoing struggle with AIDS

by Paul Harris

At the end of this month the Lambda Book Awards will be announced, and we'll find out if first-time novelist Rabih Alameddine has won with his extraordinary novel Koolaids, set in Lebanon. The book narrowly missed winning a Barnes and Noble Discover Award.

The gay and lesbian "Lammies" will be awarded at the annual banquet at BookExpo America in Los Angeles on April 29.

I met with the Middle Eastern-born painter and writer at his home just off Market Street, near the Castro in San Francisco. Alameddine has been living in California for almost twenty years, but his family still lives in Lebanon.

He is a wonderfully irreverent character who delights in the awfulness of movies like Showgirls while claiming to be missing out on several key gay genes. He claims to be missing both the fashion and the decorating genes, and to hate Liza Minnelli.

Thirty-nine years of age, with a fierce intelligence, Alameddine originally set out to be an engineer. He made his first radical career change when he decided to become a therapist. While studying to be a therapist, he started his journey as an artist through painting.

Alameddine's debut novel has created quite a stir. Experimental and fragmentary in style, with jumps in both timeline and in characters speaking in first person, it provides a challenging read.

Paul Harris: Why did you start to paint? Rabih Alameddine: I realized I could learn about myself through painting. I started to paint on April 10, 1992. By June, I was in an exhibit.

My paintings were experimental—I had no clue what I was doing. The one thing I realized when touching brush to canvas was how sensual it was. At the time, my sex life was really dull. I took it out on my painting. I cannot tell you how delicious painting was at that time. I had no interest in drawing, just putting paint on

canvas.

While teaching psychological statistics I had my first solo show and signed with a gallery in New York. By 1995, I had a gallery in London as well. There was a time when painting was better than sex. Then it sort of became mechanical. My art career took off quickly, then flattened out—which is okay. When did HIV become a part of your life?

I was diagnosed in 1986.

How would you say that HIV has affected your work as a writer and an artist? My whole life has been HIV. How has it not been affected? Everything that I am doing in my life is based on the fact that I am dying. Whether I am going to die of AIDS or not I do not know. But that realization changed my life. I would not have painted if I had been negative.

I painted because I wanted to learn about myself. My first exhibit was called "The Immortality Project." I believe all art is a search for immortality. I painted 70 paintings of my face. I wanted to ensure that people would remember me and I wanted to control how people would remember me.

Everything I have done is with the idea that I am going to die. Everything in life is about experiment. Most people live their life as if it is permanent, and it is only when we accept and understand the impermanence of it, and I don't mean just this life, I mean the whole infatuation with life after death. The belief in the hereafter is the mind desperately clinging on to permanence. Whether there is a God, or heaven and hell, I do not know. As long, though, as I believe there is I will never be able to live my life fully in the moment.

Having started painting at the age of 32, at what stage did you start writing?

I think I have always wanted to be a writer since I was four or five, but I didn't write for a variety of reasons. Mostly because I was terrified of writing. When I used to write, I used to try to hide in my writing. I used to write science fiction stories but not get beyond a couple of pages.

Then one night I sat down and started writing. And the first thing I really wrote was Koolaids.

How long did it take you to write Koolaids?

Thirty-eight years (laughing). It is not a straightforward novel.

The book compares the war in Lebanon with the ongoing struggle with AIDS. The reason for writing it was not to draw the comparison between the two, although the comparison is apt.

The whole theory behind the book is one of crisis and chaos. Since my life has been in crisis and chaos for so long, I couldn't think of any other book to write.

How would you describe its style to someone who hasn't yet picked it up?

The most important thing about the book is that it is a reflection of the way in which I see the world and think. The problem I have with most contemporary literature is that it attempts to write about issues that were important in the nineteenth century.

I realized I couldn't write a straightforward

narrative easily because my mind jumps from place to place. How can you think linearly after watching television? How can you think linearly when you go to the movies? Anybody who has been through a major crisis—which is what I believe life is about cannot but see life except as fragments. You cannot be with your lover dying completely, well at least I can't. In the late twentieth century we see life in fragments.

How much of the book is autobiographical?

I am tempted to say none of it... but once I wrote it, I made it mine.

How did you find a publisher?

I gave it to everyone I knew for their comments. I found most agents really have no clue. I walked into A Different Light [bookstore] on Castro Street and gave it to the manager, Richard Labonte, whom I knew. His boss, the owner, is an agent and he took me on. He sent it out to four publishers and Michael Denneny at St. Martins Press bought it. It was the lead book for their imprint Picador.

What are you writing at the moment? St. Martins gave me a contract for a book of short stories which I am working on at the moment.

Is there a common theme?

The theme is the usual. Human longing. Since I still consider myself a new writer, it is still mostly experimentation. They [the stories] are in completely different styles.

Do you see yourself staying in the United States?

Yes, although I don't fit in the gay community very well. Watching Lebanon disappear has been fascinating, since I am still attached to it. It was not unlike watching a friend die. Why do you say you don't fit in?

When I moved to San Francisco I loved it. I wanted to belong to a gay community. But the whole idea of community of inclusion also means you have to exclude some people.

Since most of us had been rejected we created a community where most of us could belong. However, we get a lot of exclusions of people who do not fit. In the fifties, I am told, the gay movement was so much more inclusive.

Paul Harris is a freelance writer living in New York City.

KO

Rabin Alameddině

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11