Flowers for the Tomb of Hafiz Part I
by James Street
June
The emotional storm was incredible
yesterday. All over the campus, faces
were contorted into sneers, grimaces. It
was also the day after an eccentric summer rainstorm. The sky was sultry and heavy with static electricity.
I decided to wear my London Fog trench coat over blue jeans and a blue,
long sleeved shirt. The one that is checkered
with tiny intersecting white, gray and black stripes. Women ogled the trench coat with blood fat faces
and watering mouths, and men eyed me suspiciously as if I were a spy or coming
out of the closet or both. It was unbearable.
I am tired of chanting the litany of
my woes. But this American Society
is an ugly thing. It is a terrible
winged monster with bloodied talons and an arrogant yellow beak gouging the
under belly of its toiling masses...
A very short, slight, Asian boy came
to my office today. He was doing an
assignment for one of his classes. He
was a freshman and must have been 18. His
assignment was to go to an advisor and ask questions. But he was painfully shy. I had to tell him what question to ask and then
I had to answer the question. He took
a few notes but not many. After about
five minutes that seemed like twenty, he blurted out, "I DO have a question.
I mean I want to be an intellectual but I also want to fit in with
my peers. I don't know what to do." His mouth opened in a kind of round smile that
reminded me of certain obsequious Japanese smiles. It carried all of the tension of his body, because
(as he explained) he was a stutterer and they made
fun of him for it. As I have noticed
with other stutterers, and with almost anyone who
has any real defect, the rest of his body seemed relaxed, almost perfect.
The stuttering carried
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It is Tuesday, 45 minutes before my BASIC class. There are fifteen students of totally different backgrounds. A Hindu, an African, a Frenchman, (is he Swiss?) an Arab, a young American girl who has had a sore throat for two weeks. Michelle Burns who is a beautiful 19-year-old who rarely comes to class.... They are a rich mine of personalities and I have not been able to connect with their richness. There is a Nordic beauty of about thirty who has a sharp nose, and who has been leaving at the hour break. I will make an attempt to break through to them. But how? Especially if they don't come to class and if they leave at the hour break?
Stephanie is her name. She was wearing a black tee shirt with the white
block letters Washington Post on the front. Stephanie Britain is the freshman with the sore
throat. She looked healthy today.
She related to me with her eyes and made several comments.
She battled with Michelle to see which one would be the last one out
of the class. Stephanie won easily. She is quite a bit older. Stephanie has a pudgy face. But she is a honey-blonde with a nice figure
and there is nothing irregular about her face so she thinks she is - beautiful?
The French Conversation class is full
of immature girls who think they can get a C without doing anything. Three of them anyway: Maria, Ghazal, and Rhonda. And
there is Robert. Robert who lived in
How different this French Conversation class
is from the one I took last Summer Semester.
Soheila was the highlight of that class. Well, I have to forget about HER! I actually thought she loved me! What a delusion. She is the kind of woman I fall for like a ton
of bricks. She seems extremely beautiful
but objectively, I am aware that most men think her homely. No. That's
an exaggeration. For sure. I mean, she
has very tiny breasts and she has black hair and looks like a foreigner. Her eyes are close together and her ears are
exceptionally tiny. And she always
wears the same clothes! I mean she
changes clothes, obviously, but it is always the same white blouse and blue
jeans. She's a kind of Sufi type. So she is just, well, sort of ordinary looking
and unexceptional to most men but to me she is extraordinarily, preternaturally
beautiful and sexually attractive. Naturally that drives me wild. But she disappeared like water on the desert
sands. I haven't seen her for three
months! I decided that forgetting about
her is probably the best.
I must cause my own birth. I must spring from the head of Zeus, like Athena.
The God in us all must awaken from his slumber or -- at least put on
his Nikes.
I suddenly got the bright idea that I can get
sick and not go to class tomorrow. I
am overworked with tests and preparations.
Fuck 'em.
This is war. That BASIC class
is almost a disaster anyway. Fifteen students. Three
of them never come to class and they did the worst - by far - on the midterm.
Michelle Burns. A ravenhaired beauty
with bedroom eyes who sits in the back row and stares at me - got 37 out of
a 100. She never comes to class. And two post adolescent boys who both wear braces
and never come to class got 25 and 36 out of a hundred, respectfully. And they've handed in no programs.
I'm certain that I recognize one of
my students as a star in a porno movie that I saw about a year ago. I couldn't believe it. She acted the part of an innocent lesbian and
did such a good job that she fooled me. I
mean, in the porno movie, I thought she was innocent - that it wasn't an act
and that it was the intention of the director. But in class she looks like a cynical whore.
I imagine that she knows that I recognize her, but how can I know for
sure? It must be a typical experience
for her. I've seen her eyes blazing
with unholy light and she doesn't come to class very often.
I try to pretend but what can I do?
There is a tall, beautiful Mexican
girl who sits in the back and looks at me as if she's a Princess locked in
a tower. Or as if she's someone who
possesses some great treasure that everyone wants, men, women, and children.
I wonder what she thinks it is? Her stare is a mixture
of invitation and "virtue offended." Her wacky little sidekick cuts through her hauteur
by pretending not to notice it. But
with secret glances, she acknowledges to me that she is aware of her friend's
arrogant, swollen narcissism. And she
lets me feel her vulnerability. She
teaches me that if the weak aren't consumed with jealousy and the need for
revenge, their weakness becomes strength.
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I saw a television program about an African tribe.
A group of older men were deciding whether one of them had the right
to divorce a young statuesque black beauty.
He had given partial payment of 24 head of cattle for her.
She was one of many of his wives but she was infertile.
He was an unattractive middle-aged man.
The men were all sitting in a circle, semi-naked; the camera discretely
hid their genitals. She appeared, once
or twice, in the foreground, charmingly unaware of the camera and probably
didn't know what it was. She looked
to be 17 or 18. She was a lithe and
thin, beautiful ebony woman. She pretended
to be unconcerned but her wide eyes betrayed her torment that seemed to be
caused by the chatter of the middle aged and frankly old men. One of the men was a squinting and grizzled
old man who looked like a salacious, cackling old monkey. It seemed like he might stand to get her if
the divorce was granted.
One of my students got up and left
class during a particularly difficult problem.
She left the whole class with the feeling that the problem was just
too hard, and also, that mathematics is so boring and so totally irrelevant
anyway, that.... well... now that we're doing this REALLY ridiculously abstruse
and absurd problem.... well it's just
They have their metaphorical heads
buried in each other’s metaphorical crotches most of the time anyway. Why in the hell they take mathematics classes
is beyond me. There ought to be classes
like, The ABC's of Pussy Licking, Cock Sucking 17A and 17B. And graduate courses like How to Masturbate
to Orgasm in Class without Being Detected, Intermediate Tit Sucking, Advanced Face Sitting Techniques...
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Fuck 'em
seems to be my new motto. The brown
skinned little mamma came to class again in a red slicker and blue jeans. She was among the last students to leave, and
she said something to me in a low sexy voice that I took to be "have
a nice weekend,” so I answered, "thank you" even though I wasn't
sure what she said. That means I am
her fantasy lover now because she is talking to herself. And the red slicker. How transparent? A large, wet, red vagina? But she WAS wearing a ring on her left finger.
It seemed smaller than the wedding ring that she didn't wear one morning.
Which morning was it? When she
left the room, I noticed her flick the ring slightly with her thumb but I
couldn't see for sure if it was a diamond ring not.
Well, married women have to have orgasms too. I hope I can be of some help.
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My algebra class meets tomorrow morning.
The class with the woman who wore the bright red slicker, the vagina
woman, the woman whose husband is having an affair and who wants to take revenge
and who wears different rings on her wedding finger, to each class meeting.
Occasionally she wears her wedding ring.
And the Porn Queen who can't stand my gaze, who hasn't come to class
lately. The baby blond who came to
class every morning and smiled primly until she got a good grade on a midterm
and stayed after class and said "that is really encouraging," and
batted her eyes at me. She wore shorts
all summer long and worked herself into a lather showing me her chunky, meticulously
shaved legs. I can't know but strongly
suspect that after that exchange, she went home and sat on the edge of her
bed and, imagining that she was still in class, lifted a very short skirt
up over her belly, and exposed her healthy steaming bush to my more than appreciative
eyes. Who knows anything, really?
But I would certainly bet a large sum of money on it.
After that conversation she has only come back to class once, and during
the whole meeting, her eyes blazed in girlish bedroom lust. I wonder if I will see her again before the
quiz on Friday? It
is odd how strong a girl's desire can become after only a couple of words.
I can't deny that fucking her would be pleasurable.
Why should I deny it? But I'm
not about to make a fool out of myself to do it.
Anne Anwar
(she must be divorced from an Arab, she looks California Aryan Blond) has
thighs that I would kill to get my head between but so do half the women at