I’ve been acting for so long that sometimes I forget where the act ends and I begin. I learned early how to look like the man people wanted: the right tone, the right posture, the right kind of silence. No one asked why my eyes stayed on certain boys a second too long, or why a laugh in the hallway could sting.
I grew up in military housing — straight lines, clean corridors, watchful neighbors. Even happiness had rules. Boys wrestled and played war; I hovered at the edges, never fully inside my own skin. With the girls there was breathing room. I remember cheap lipstick that tasted like plastic and the click of toy bracelets on my wrist. For a few hours I felt… not brave, but safe.
Then safety ended. My mother’s look turned sharp. My father’s silence filled rooms. I understood what was allowed and what would be punished, so I packed parts of me away. At night the same thoughts came back: Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m sick. But desire doesn’t vanish just because you order it to.
At school there was Navid — quiet, sealed off, like a door you couldn’t open — and Sasan, loud and always mocking. We argued in public, but sometimes, when no one watched, his hand stayed on my shoulder too long. To others it meant nothing. To me it meant I wasn’t imagining everything.
High school taught me another truth: being touched isn’t the same as being loved. Amir Ali walked around with a hard face, like the world owed him something. I hated that I wanted him. After a stupid game and one long look, we slipped into secret kisses and quick meetings — the kind of relationship that survives only in shadows. He told me I calmed him down. I believed it, with my whole body. Then he married. The door shut as if it had never existed. I carried him anyway, like a photograph you never show.
After him came Hooman — bright, restless, always chasing an exit. We met to study; studying turned into late-night talks and reckless closeness. It was thrilling, but it didn’t change our lives. We drifted apart, and I learned how compromise tastes.
Living with male roommates felt like being close to a fire. Some nights ended in strangers’ beds — not love, just hunger. Around that time I saw Reza, a friend of my roommate, and my chest tightened. I couldn’t approach him as myself. I found a photo, and on the back of it an address. The idea came — wrong, but tempting: write as someone else. I made “Niloufar,” a girl stitched from my wish and fear, and hid behind her name just to be near without being seen.
Military service left me tired and hollow. Later I lived with Nariman — young, curious, not yet hardened. I tested the line again: a joke, a look, a touch that pretended to be accidental. For a short time we became more than roommates. Then it ended quickly. He moved out, and the apartment sounded emptier afterward.
Then Shahrouz entered my life — older, steadier, running from a family that would never understand. At first we spoke carefully, like people used to being punished for honesty. One night it simply happened: no speeches, just two men in the dark reaching for warmth. With him, briefly, I didn’t have to perform. But nothing in my life ever stayed.
By thirty, my family’s pressure turned into a wall. “It’s time.” “A man has to.” The wedding felt like a play staged to calm everyone else. A child came later. I loved the child, and still guilt sat in my throat because the child was born inside a lie. Night by night I slept farther from my wife. Intimacy felt like drowning. We tried fighting, silence, therapy — anything that could fix what was never built right.
Eventually she found love elsewhere. When I confronted her, she didn’t deny it. She only said, tired and plain: “You were never really mine.” She was right. We separated without screaming — no heroism in it, just emptiness. Our child went with her family. I left with a suitcase and the quietest kind of defeat.
Later, in a chatroom, I met Saeed. He was patient, gentle, uninterested in proof. “I don’t want you to be just a name on a screen,” he said. With him it started to feel real: morning greetings, goodnights, songs shared, memories traded like small gifts. His voice notes carried warmth. In his voice there was no mockery, no bargain — just a simple steadiness. For a while I caught myself planning a future: a real meeting, a real hand held in daylight.
One day he asked, “Can I come see you?” My heart dropped. I wanted it so badly I could taste it — and I was terrified. What if the real me didn’t match what he’d imagined? I delayed — sick, busy, later. Saeed didn’t pressure me. “I’m here when you’re ready,” he said.
But I never became ready. His messages shortened. The voice notes stopped. The mornings emptied out. Then one day there was nothing at all. I didn’t blame him. I only carried him like another loss I wasn’t allowed to mourn in public.
By fifty, I stopped chasing — bodies, names, approval. Not out of drama. Out of survival. I began writing again, not as Niloufar, not behind a mask, but as myself. I listened to santur and daf, music that demanded nothing. Some nights I lit a candle and sat by the window and let my thoughts come and go.
People said, “You’ve changed. You’re quieter.” I smiled, because they didn’t know: this silence was no longer emptiness. It was a room I could finally live in.
And when I look in the mirror now, I don’t see someone broken. I don’t see shame. I see someone whole — in his own quiet way.
Seyed Mohsen Parsa is an Iranian writer whose flash fiction explores identity, self-denial, and the quiet damage of growing up where desire is policed. His work often follows characters who mistake fear for normality—men who don’t yet have the words for what they feel, and who learn too late how much silence can cost. In stories set against everyday Iran, love appears as something ordinary and dangerous at the same time: a glance held too long, a name borrowed online, a life arranged to satisfy family and survive society. He writes in English and Persian.
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