Stephanie decided to be her old self in class.  She was happy and smiling.  I am captured by their fantasies.  The skinny Indian bitch just glared at me in my Computer Architecture class, as if I had put my hand on her leg in my office.  I had to pretend not to notice.  I won’t see either one of them after the final examination.  It is seductiveness and running away.  Off and on.  If I ignore them they chase me and when I respond they flee.

            I saw the Iranian woman this morning, and I gave her a kind of friendly look, I think I said hello with my eyes.  We both saw each other coming and so we had a chance to compose a reaction.  We looked at each other with scientific, curious eyes.  She looked away first and when I looked away, she looked back at me. 

            Our eyes met again and I was overcome with emotion - a kind of searing sadness and I narrowed my eyes as if I could cry.  And now, whenever I am alone, I am sad.  I think she reminds me of Judy, of the pictures of her when she was young.  And I fear she despises me because I won’t take her. 

            Maybe I am just sleepy, tired.  The quarter is over and I only slept five hours last night.  I'm off for the entire Fall Quarter.  I can write and think now.     

 

 

            Now that I am on vacation, I hardly think of any of them.  It is clear that I am simply captivated by their fantasies.  And their fantasies consist, for the most part, of me seducing them.  And yet, if I try anything they will consider me a lecher.  The hypocrisy of these women in incredible.

 

            She works in the library.  Her name is Leila Zahra.  She's 27.  She works in the Music Department.  I was returning Wagner's Ring Cycle.  The Furtwängler version.  She said she was an Art Major but now that the Shah has fallen, she has to change her major to computer science or the Iranian Government won’t pay for her education and she'll be forced to go home.  She is afraid she won’t be able to do it.  She said she has always been terrible at mathematics.  She took a BASIC class last quarter and Programming Methods class and is afraid that she didn't pass either one.  She hasn't received her grades yet.  Everything is different now between us.  She asked me if I am married and I said, no.  I told her that I was breaking up with Judy. 

            Judy will be back from her trip in a few weeks.  It's the age difference that bothers me.  She's 49 and is going through the menopause.  I'm 37 and I still look young.  And Leila looks so much like the picture hanging in the hallway, of Judy, when she was young.  I should show her the picture.  I'm not hallucinating this similarity but it is true that I noticed the resemblance for the first time today, when we talked!  She looked surprised when I told her how old I am.  But it didn't seem to change anything.  We are both wary now, realistic.  I have to bring my relationship with Judy and her daughter Andy into the cold light of reason.  I have become Andy's father.  We've been together for eight years now.  We've lived together for six.  Andy's almost eleven.  And I spent weekends and Wednesday nights with them for two years before we left for Paris for a year.  I refused marriage because I wanted the free life of the philosopher/artist.  I told her that.  It was one of the major conditions of our relationship.  And the age difference.  I was 29 and she was 41.  She accepted that but now it is as if we are married.  She expects monogamy without saying it.   And so do I.  But she knows she has no right.  I said that maybe I wanted my own family once.  But now I have one.  Andy has become my daughter.  I don't have to pass my genes on.  But my existence seems to be tied up with philosophy and literature and with this goddammed writing.  Leila said she understood that.  So the romance continues.  But reason is there too.  I hope.  There are responsibilities. 

 

 

            God, it feels good to be away from teaching.  To be away from State.  I can deal with the library and the cafeteria but even THEY can be oppressive.  But last summer was worse than it has ever been.  I suppose it didn't help that I was all alone.  I haven't been alone since Judy and Andy went to Canada for a month.  Over a year ago.

 

            I told Leila everything.  She said she understood.  I mean, I told her everything except the real nature of my relationship with Judy.  She said that she will always be an artist but that she has to study computer science now or be forced to go back to Iran.  She is also afraid for her family because they aren't religious.  Her father is an art professor at Teheran University and there is a purge going on there and she is afraid for her entire family.  She had a look of terror in her eyes.  She seems to think that I can get her into the computer science program.  That I can help her somehow.  I told her that I'm taking the Fall Semester off.  She doesn't seem to know that I don't have tenure, that I don't even have a Ph.D. and that I can't get tenure; that they consider me to be part-time even though I usually teach a full load.  I was afraid to try to explain any of that.  She said she is separated from her husband.  She implied that it is because she can't have children.  It isn't like Wai.  The passion is still there.  I haven't been able to stop thinking about her.  We're going to meet for coffee on Friday, in Berkeley, at the Cafe Med.