Kuwait

25 February 2010
National holidays and Anniversaries 5-20-50

The commotion in the streets
Young boys and men hanging out of cars—out of windows, sky roofs, waving flags, wearing Kuwaiti flag colored wigs and all manner of garb. Blasting music
The Kuwaiti youth (read: male) display their mobile phone numbers both large and small format on the back of their cars, encouraging young women to call them anonymously.
One of the many ways people get around the strict social mores.
Walking along one of the main streets, watching the cars and excited males drive by with Kuwaiti flags and sheiks and emir portraits plastered to their car windows and on car bodies…but also Saudi Arabian flags, a Lebanese flag, Qatari visitors and tourists from Dubai, all participating in a “people’s parade”—ie. a MASSIVE bumper to bumper traffic jam for hours starting from 3:30pm and going on until past the time I could see it (over 8 hours) and on onto the ring roads. A massive party indeed. Not the typical parade to be viewed, but to be a part of/to participate in and be part of the spectacle.
How impossible, it seemed (or so it actually is), to meet any of these guys or people. Social circles are tight/ tightly policed by everyone. Self-policing. I kept asking myself, where are the women?
Loud music and constant honking
Dumping of trash (plastic bottles, cans, paper) into the gutters by Filipina maids behind the SUV’s of their employers frantically trying to insert the trash through the grating in the street and watching the children while the parents amuse themselves with other things. Half of Kuwait seems to be Filipino—the service people of any restaurant, the maids and trainers, the airport personnel. Then, the workers who are on the lower levels: 3 out of 5 of the taxi drivers we had at random were Iranian. Then, the Bangladeshis, Indians, Pakistanis.
There would appear to be plenty of jobs that pay something for me to do here. I don’t feel like bringing myself out of “the West” right now. Although, I am tired of being understood in a certain way… But, I do not want to live somewhere where I cannot communicate with so much of the population.
Men in dishdashes look sexy to me…these long silouettes with the headdresses and the sandals, looking so damn relaxed and walking so slowly from the inhibiting range the clothing allows for the legs.
All the different signs that can be sent through cloth around the head. And the women are another topic. So many nakobs and women draped in back. What do you call it, exactly? Oppression? Protection? Submission?

And I propose a wet dishdash contest… I enjoyed objectifying the men here, exoticizing them. Who, after all, would have more power in whatever situation? A Kuwaiti man or an American white woman? Would money be the ruling factor? The strength of one’s country? Whose life is worth more?

The use of homosexual relations to get over the strict hetero-social boundaries, relations between men and women, girls and boys. Strategies for achieving sexual fulfillment in the face of restrictions on heterosexual relations.