"Love,"
[Plato] says, "is a desire for generation and birth in beauty." "What naivete!"
say the lady experts on love, while drinking their cocktails in all the Ritz
hotels of the world.
Jose
Gasset y Ortega
August
I could have stayed in the bookstore,
pretending to look at books, forcing her to acknowledge me. She was with a middle-aged woman who looked
Middle Eastern. She seemed unruffled,
innocent, either pretending not to see me or not seeing me.
I looked away after a few seconds. I was filled again with that passion which I
hated then. I wouldn't allow myself to
be overwhelmed by her. I gave her another
look, quick, looking for some sign of - - humanity? She was talking, pointing something out to the
woman. I imagined it was a souvenir of
some kind, something that the woman wanted.
But that doesn't seem right. Then
I walked out, but there was a turn where I could see them, about 20 feet away.
I suddenly thought that the older woman might be the one taking my Pascal
class. I looked hard to be certain it wasn't her.
Soheila was directly behind her, and her body
stiffened as if she thought I was glaring at her.
When I was certain that it wasn't her, I turned and walked out.
It seems that all possibility died
long ago, but my feelings became obsessive, pathological even, after the first
meeting. I should never have allowed
Judy to know about it, because that elevated it in importance and it changed
then from reality to obsession. Also,
telling Soheila that I loved her made my feelings
irreversible. Before that, they were
just feelings. Once named, I symbolized
something for her, and for the entire Iranian community. For or against: can
an Iranian woman be allowed to have an affair with an American, an older University
Lecturer? Certainly the Iranian men allow
themselves every sexual freedom. The flames of controversy were fanned, her ego
got involved.
It is clear to me now that, as I told
her, I might have backed off anyway. Knowing what I know about her now, it is
certain. If she had said yes, I might
have.... At a certain point I WOULD have, even now, out of curiosity.... But I know better. It wouldn't be serious. It would lead nowhere. That is, she is essentially conservative.
Even if she consented to marry me, why would I go to her from Judy?
And marriage is the only way she would allow love to exist in her soul.
I don't know if love has any meaning
for her anyway. She is in too great need
to feel love.
Whatever the case, I suspect that she
is lazy, indolent, that she is a hypocrite and conservative out of fear.
But she puts on a good show of virtue. I just don't know.
I need a heroine. And there aren't any. I imagined one because I needed one. For what? For love in a world of indifference,
materialism. I was seduced by
her purity. She seemed like a white sail
on a calm blue sea.
She was with an overly made-up Middle Eastern woman
who was wearing western clothes. But
she was wearing the same faded, white, long-sleeved blouse and jeans that she
almost always wears. Was it poetic justice
that as I walked out of the bookstore, with Soheila’s
eyes surely following me, a third world oriental girl burst through the door,
with exposed brown belly and arms, and gave me an open, sensual look?
I just wanted to find out who this
Iranian angel really is. She has remained
my dream. She wouldn't allow anything
else. But as Jung said, that can be enough.
Anima and animus know each other well.
Then a small miracle
of sorts. What else can you call
it? It certainly makes poor fiction.
There I am, the next day, with Hossein. Not talking
about Soheila, but the conversation is dead. I know that Soheila
is all I can talk about with him because we really don't have much in common.
We were in the cafeteria and had just moved outside.
The air seemed oppressive. I was
depressed; I had just given my last final, and had finished with the immense
burden of Pascal programming. It was
the last day of finals.
Out of nowhere, or, I should say, from
behind a concrete enclosement, she appeared.
I was overwhelmed with surprise. It
was the beginning of a moment that has destiny with it.
They passed three feet in front of
us. She looked around sternly, the way
I do when I am full of passion and disgusted with the human race: imperiously,
disdainfully, at some mere mortal sitting near us. Then our eyes met. I raised my hand in mute recognition. I was prepared to call out to her, but NOT to
run after her if she chose to ignore me again.
Our eyes met, and her face darkened
with passion. She didn't blush. During our the last
encounter, on the stairs, she was overwhelmed with unaccustomed passion and
she blushed. But then she ignored me. I think she wanted to confront me in some way
then, but our eyes flashed in an incredible exchange of passion in the afternoon
darkness of a shadow. She emerged into
the bright sunlight, turned crimson, and rushed down the stairs.
I watched her disappear from my life, really, forever.
I am more convinced than ever that
female sexuality, in its primitive form, oscillates between prostitution and
rape fantasies, and that only a "masterful"
man, or a quasi-rape could "capture" her.
It isn't that many civilized women
don't get past that condition. No, I
am talking about primitive, raw female sexuality.
Soheila is primitive yet noble, lovely.
She said "hi," and I just
looked at her, loving her, telling her to stop.
She was with an Iranian woman, a true prude, a short woman with an ugly
sneer, completely unsuited to Soheila; the worst element
of Iranian culture, and proof that it is the weakest, ugliest and stupidest
elements of that culture that uphold tradition in a world of science and change.
Her face remained enraptured, angelic,
perfect, showing no conflict, only love. Then she hesitated, looked down, and a kind
of fear and sadness seemed to invade her. The
feeling was hard for me to decipher because I am so involved with her.
I think it was principally fear.
Her companion looked at her sternly,
disapprovingly and muttered something in their language that must have meant,
"is he the one who bothered you, who tried to
seduce you?" Her back stiffened
then against my gaze but she made no reply that I could hear or see. I turned to Hossein
and said, "that’s Soheila,
that’s the girl I've told you about." I
looked in her direction and I said, hoping she would hear, "she's pretty,
she's VERY pretty, don't you think?" I imagined that she could hear me, I wanted her to hear me.
Then they disappeared behind a wall,
but Hossein said he could see them talking. He joked that my heart was "going pitter
patter." They talked for a few minutes,
and Soheila went into the cafeteria. It seemed like she was giving me the opportunity
to "take" her - - if I could.
After talking to Hossein
for a few minutes about the comparative inferiority of the Moslem world and
then slightly more graciously about the comparative superiority of the Chinese
culture to Western culture, I got up to leave.
"I wonder if she is in there,"
I said. Then I asked him to go into the
cafeteria for me, and, rather ambiguously, to "explain" to her what happened.
He answered, testily, that he would explain why I acted so foolishly.
I agreed that I had, but let him know that I felt it useless to continue
explaining myself to him. I knew it was impossible for an Iranian man
to understand that kind of love for a woman, and I knew that at bottom he considered
me to be a fool.
But I wanted him to talk to her.
I said "yes, I am older, more mature, I should have understood her better. Go in there Hossein.
Help me." By my sudden change of voice, he knew that I
wanted it badly. I was ready to tell
him that it meant more to me than anything else in the world, and that I would
never forget it, but he is my age and I knew that he would just see it as more
evidence of a ridiculous Romanticism. I
waited silently. He said, "I can't.
When I was younger I had no problem with women, but now, I get nervous...." He really didn't understand me, and looked at
me with an open sense of helplessness, as if he thought that at least he should
honor my passionate need with an honest admission of confusion and impotence.
Earlier he offered that she might have lied to me when
she said she was going back to
I watched him go around the cafeteria,
eyes blazing, searching through the large glass windows. I don't know if he went in the back door.
I don't know if she was watching us talk.
I don't know if she watched as I walked up the stairs and disappeared
from her life, probably forever. I don't know if she watched, passionately holding
back her desire to follow me, holding the weight of our separation on her shoulders.
This ends the story. The last word will be from Hossein who almost certainly didn't talk with her.
We can only
be brave in dealing with the woman we love by loving her less.
Lack of confidence makes a lover suspect
sinister things of his beloved
Stendhal
October
I saw her again! One might assume that an affair like this is
a sort of contradiction in terms. And
I suppose it is. I don't love her anymore. I am almost certain of it. But I am afraid of her, or of my reaction to
her. I'm afraid I'll see her and react
unexpectedly.
We had another hour-long conversation,
mostly me prodding her to stay and talk for the first fifteen minutes.
Then, when we went into the shade, with only a faint protest from her,
she began to respond. But I saw her too clearly: a weak, confused
woman, a woman who lies almost by instinct: an Iranian woman. A woman who feels weak vis-a-vis
the American culture, who doesn't know herself, doesn't know what is good for
her or what is bad for her. She is just
like the average person running after the bad and throwing out the good. She simply had nothing left to admire or love.
I told her that I didn't feel the same
about her. That I couldn't meet with
her again, that I wasn't able to, that I would think too much about her, before
the meeting. It was a double message,
but if she is sensitive enough, she will realize that very delicately, I let
her go. It was painful. I don't believe that I deceived myself. I think I loved a part of her that she has suppressed,
is suppressing.
Suddenly, she has decided not to go
back to
She said, looking askance, that her
brother leads a completely independent life, and that she isn't talking to him
anymore! She said that her sister is
very immature, even though she is a year older.
She looked at me significantly as she said this. She said she is becoming Americanized. (As she flunks her classes?)
She looked so pleased to hear me tell
her how I tried to seduce her. That she
wasn't to blame, that I did everything. It
was my lie, to make life easier for her. I told her why I loved her, but as I talked
I could see that I didn't really like this woman, that
I was in error. I could see clearly that
she was choosing a false path, the path of pride and ruin. I even accused her of causing me to chase her
just for her "ego" - - incredibly,
she said she didn't have an ego! Then
I asked her if she were a Sufi. She looked
shocked, as if she doesn't expect me to understand her so well. She said, "maybe
I am," but looked like she wanted to change the subject. In short, she seemed like a rather inept coquette.
Very pleased that a handsome teacher was still in love
with her. Lying about everything and anything, pretending
not to believe what I was saying so that I would repeat it.
She said so many contradictory, even
stupid things, that I could hardly follow her.
She said she has changed now. She
said that she will go out on a date, or see me now! But then she quickly added, with a meaningful
glance, "I WOULD, IF we were meeting for the first time." She is just a coquette! But I played along with
her. Why shouldn't I? I asked her WHY she wouldn't go out with me.
My question was in the form of an answer:
"It's because you think I would think about it too much?"
"Yes." "Well, you are right."
She would like a date with her teacher,
coolly, calmly, like any other whore. What
I loved is disappearing, she is turning into a whore.
Slowly, to be sure, but certainly.
I am powerful but powerless. I
don't want to make an exchange: good looking 38-year-old lecturer for good looking
25-year-old Iranian woman. She accused
me of not loving her but just loving what I imagined she was. I said, "this
time, yes, I agree with you. I don’t
feel the same this time, I don’t know what it is, something
is different."
Maybe when she said she would go out with me IF we
were meeting for the first time, maybe then I should have told her I didn't
love her anymore.
When my books fell, she picked them
up, carefully, noticing the titles and authors, discretely, but in that Iranian
way, where everything is secretive and intrigue.
I said, "I think some things only
happen once. I believe that in life some things only come once and you have
to do something then, otherwise it is too late."
I still made some protest, as she was
leaving, about seeing her. She looked
happy. She said, "it was better this time." She said "goodbye", as if for her,
it was good, and I just said "bye", self-consciously leaving out the
"good", not knowing if it really communicated anything to her.
I said, earlier, "you should have told me you didn't love me. You never should have said you didn't know what
love was. Then I could have gone home
and cried and forgotten about you." I
smiled to mask my hurt, and she smiled and said she didn't believe that.
She is just a coquette. I am a fool.
It's been played before.
It is necessarily finished. Now she's on the level of dating me as an exchange.
Little does she know that she isn't worth it, even as a whore. I could do much better. Leila was three times as good in every way.
I don’t want a fling, an affair. I
wouldn't do that to Judy, I don't want that kind of life.
That little fool! I would help her if I could but I can't. She is on that fateful path to destruction.
Well, that's just Hilaire Belloc speaking! But she isn't the Unique, the One, the Other. She is just another
one of the many. And that's a disappointment.
Perhaps
the wisest course to pursue is to make yourself your own confidant.
Write down this evening, using fictitious names, but with every characteristic
detail, the conversation that has just taken place between you and your mistress,
and all the difficulties that are vexing you. In a week, if you are suffering from passion-love,
you will have entirely altered; and then, by reading over your deliberations
your will be able to give yourself good advice.
Stendhal
It feels like I am allowing something
obsessive to occur. Love and obsession
are related to one another as attention and anxiety are. Anxiety begins to observe itself instead of
the object of attention. They are a kind
of declension of one another: sometimes they are difficult to tell apart. After all, one may be attentive and anxious
at the same time. It is exaggerated attention
that gives rise to pathology: the too finely tuned machine. The athlete always gives his best performance
when he is relaxed; any striving or self-consciousness gives rise to "choking",
or slumps. It is the centipede problem:
freezing up, stage fright, etc.
Well anyway, that has happened in my
relationship with Soheila. It’s as if I have forgotten how to walk. I feel like I don't love her any more. That she is capable of allowing - -
or no - - she just
Anyway, I have allowed myself to dwell
on her "case" almost continually for the last few days, and that feels
obsessive, even pathological. But those
are relative terms. I WANT to think about
our conversations. I love to think about
them. A simple conversation has so much
significance. Yet it is just as easy
to forget as a dream. Just as a dream that is so rich and significant
can be seen as a kind of prodigal event, so also can experience be seen as a
hurricane of sensation, pleasing or painful or boring, but essentially fleeting,
without significance or continuity.
But obsession is related to this kind of chaotic disorganization
just as abstinence is related to alcoholism. They are symptoms of the inability to organize
and control oneself. The common trait
is the rigidity, or lack of suppleness, delicacy, inventiveness.
I think Soheila's
unwillingness to have another meeting with me is related to her inability to
control herself. As well it might be.
Now she is putting the burden on me and I am admitting my incapacity:
I can't control myself. Even more, I don’t WANT to control myself.
I WANT passion.
So her challenge was turned down. I
am almost asking her to beg ME to see HER.
She said she had changed,
she is going out on dates now. I said,
"good." I
hinted that I was responsible for her change. She said if we were meeting for the first time
she would go out with me, but not now. Well
that was her challenge. She wanted me
to promise to be nice, etc. But I won’t
be. I don’t want to exchange her 25-year-old
Iranian body for my 38-year-old professional position.
She is saying essentially that she
is afraid of passion. Without knowing
it, she is saying that she wants me to seduce her. She wants me to masterfully.... Really, just to fuck her. To
break open her precious cherry, but surgically, without passion.
I'm not a surgeon or Don Juan. And
I would obtain no special pleasure from such an operation.
It might satisfy my curiosity, yes. I've
never "made love" to a virgin. I'm not sure it is possible! It might be interesting, but it certainly isn't
my purpose. So I assured her she was
right. I said we couldn’t have a meeting because I would probably think about
it and be nervous, etc.
My conversations with her are necessarily
slightly odd because I have to suppress my natural choice of words to find stark,
clear expressions because of her English. So I'm sure I said something like, "I would
be nervous and difficult," or something equally simple and clear, and of
course, essentially true.
I find it interesting that I have been
writing like crazy for about an hour, and I feel slightly obsessed even now,
as everyone else reads the paper. Just
now, two women finished their conversation about tennis. A conversation about nothing
else except tennis that lasted for at least 20 minutes. It was truly innocuous and stupid, completely
centering on ways that they could improve their game. I heard NOTHING else come from them. The antithesis of passion. Why should I be so passionate!?
She is very right. I said I felt different. I hinted.... I said that I probably couldn't stand another meeting either. It is true that my English always gets simple, even childish when I talk to her. I said, "I believe some things only happen once, and you have to do them then, or never. You have to accept or not accept because they won’t ever come again. If you wait, it is too late then."
The obsession is with the coquette
now and it is embarrassing. Certainly
I have had enough of that kind of experience.
Haven’t I?
The moment he falls in love, even
the wisest man no longer sees anything as it really is.
Stendhal
As usual, nothing is really that simple.
In truth, I am almost certain that she too is passionately in love with
me. But she hardly knows it, and certainly
won’t admit it to me, and possibly not even to herself.
I didn't sleep at all last night.
It is
I am a lover of beauty, form. I love to gaze on classical features, velvety
skin. I love passion, ecstasy. I am a connoisseur of the insignificant defect.
If Soheila doesn't have breasts, I don’t notice
it. I revel in the shock of black hair,
the thick luxurious tangle of life, the slant of the eye.
But it is the passion that I love above all.
The flashing eyes. Combined
with a kind of animal ferocity and the instinct to "lie", or to romanticize
the world! She is much more romantic
than I could ever have been at her age. She romanticizes her life, unselfconsciously,
without shame. But she is lost, confused.
She wants everything. She wants me rich, young, handsome, yet she
denies the one thing needful: passion.
I seem to be obsessed with privacy. To the point of imagining that people can read this over my shoulder. That is incredible. I am too private. Soheila is private.
I haven't really digested our conversation.
At bottom, it seemed that she was saying, "I can love you if you
love ME, not an image of me." There
was a point when I realized that she knew how old I was because I remembered
that I told Zohreh. Well, it's
too hot in here!
There is
no doubt about it being madness for a man to expose himself to passion-love
Stendhal
I said no woman who feared a father
10,000 miles from her was worthy of me. But
ONLY a woman like that can inspire love because only a woman like that has the
possibility of DEFYING such a father! The pretty, even glamorous Americaine sitting in front of me has nothing to rebel against.
There is no danger and therefore no passion.
We have our little indiscretions. Flashing
skin, catching a hot glance when we aren't supposed to. We are over-civilized.
There is a danger for Soheila that she is psychically married to me and thus won’t
be able to give herself to another man except as an act of submission to force.
That is, to an Iranian man!? No. She
has known the love of an American man. One of the best. I'm afraid she won’t be able to repeat that
but she will hold out for it.
When she said, "it's impossible
Jim," I replied, questioned, "are you a lesbian?" She seemed genuinely angry, not really emotional,
but angry with me. She looked over my
left shoulder, not in my eyes, and said, "we shouldn't
even be talking." Her tone of voice
frightened me and gladdened me at the same time. The implication was that I had totally misunderstood
her. I don’t even recall if she deigned
to deny it. I found myself almost pleading
for forgiveness: "I didn't really think you were a lesbian.
I just don't really know you. You
never tell me anything." I don't
think it was then but I think later that she said, "I admire the way Americans
are so open with each other but it is something I haven't been able to do YET."
(I underline yet) She went on to say that she had 50 friends that
she says "hello" to and knows on a superficial basis. She hastened to assure me that she had little
social life, really. "I stay home
most of the time you know," she said and looked at me with doleful, passionate
eyes. "I know." It is the way we make love.
The hatred she aroused in me! So clearly the obverse side
of love. And SHE hated and feared
me. Storming down those
stairs in her red blouse. I, sitting at the foot of the stairs in MY red shirt. What a pair!
When I asked her about that incident,
she used my word, the word "emotional." I had used it to describe a difficult interlude
caused by her. She said she was emotional,
and then in her Iranian way, and that is what it is, she lied passionately:
"I didn't see you." And her
eyes pleaded with me to forgive her for what she had done. It is the way we make love. My glance is love and forgiveness. It is our passionate kiss of reconciliation.
It is our sweet nibbling at each other's lips.
Yet it is her lie!
I thought that she is only a screen.
But I know that is false.
She still used the words "off
campus" with me even at our last meeting!
(I think!?)
I imagine the Iranian girls talking
about men. How logical and intelligent
American men are, they are just difficult. Iranian
men chase American women. THAT is impossible.
Iranian WOMEN are too smart to chase American men!
Well, maybe a few are POSSIBLE. Take
Jim for example...
There is a pretty, crass, dark-skinned
woman of indeterminate racial mixture sitting at the table just in front of
mine, and to my right. She is about 40,
and she is with a sexless (almost) 50 year old man. They are talking about business. She is drooling over me. He is repulsive looking and all the while that
he talks to her and drools over her, she looks at me and drools over me. She
can't look at him and she won’t take her eyes off of me. At one point I thought I heard an audible groan
of despair come from her.
I said that Soheila will
feel this despair one day. I said in
Teheran, but maybe it will be right here! I
feel sympathy for this woman. I even
feel an honest desire to fuck her well, and with care and animal lust.
But that isn't passion, it isn't love.
It is comedy, tragedy.