No Way Out
Ten o'clock, probably time to go home. I think I've had as much marine systems engineering as I can take in one day. Oh shit - that's - that's that bird from the Iranian Society - and - shit - it's all of them! What are they doing in here? Cap down, hood up...hardly an original disguise, but what else can I do? What if they see me? Maybe I should listen...oh. Perfect. Their weekly meeting...shit, just my luck. Still, can't take too much longer. I'll just ride it out till it's over. For fuck's sake...look at yourself - hiding in the corner of the library like you were at school again, hiding your lunch money from the bigger kids...but seriously, how much longer is their meeting going to take? This is all Jess's fault. If she hadn't introduced me to those damned Iranian Society people outside the International House...they were so full of shit, "Oh! You're Iranian! And you're English! Oh that accent! It is too cute! Talk some more for us!". Even worse than the normal Americans. As if the constant comments from strangers asking "so where are your parents from?" after they saw my skin was a little darker than most of the "white" friends I hang around with wasn't bad enough...as if the inevitable "oh - you're English!" when they heard the accent wasn't bad enough...now I have to spend every morning slinking around the edge of Sproul Plaza or creeping round the walls of the Student Union to avoid being collared and harassed by The Society while they advertise on their canvassing table, alongside The Asian American Jehovah's Witnesses For Peace In Palestine and Kappa Flappa Slappa Co-Ed Gangbang Fraternity and Real Jews For Saving Trees In Northern California and the Multi-Ethnic Society For Persons of Undecided or Multiple Ethnic Origins. I should have just told them I didn't give a fuck from the start. Maybe it's my own fault for pretending to be interested. I thought Jess was joking when she threatened to introduce me, but she wasn't...god, I made such a tit of myself when she did. The society tried to get me to go to some bar with them to play pool, so I tried to excuse myself by saying I couldn't go because I didn't want to drink. They were very understanding, and said I didn't have to drink - most of the people there wouldn't be, being religious and whatnot. I laughed - maybe a little too loudly - and said no, you don't understand, I'm English - put me in an establishment that sells alcohol and I'll end up getting shitfaced and dancing on the bar and getting my dick out and mooning people and crapping in the pockets of the pool table and fucking one of the barmaids. Jess was crying with laughter while all the various members of The Society were shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, saying they were "sure they would see me later". The next day I bumped into Nima, the president, who relished his introductory kisses a little too much and then spent twenty minutes touching my arm and coercing me into a picnic that weekend. I managed to get out of that one but then I bumped into him a few days later again, when he tried to get me to go to a 'disco' in the city on Saturday night with The Society - "a great way to meet great Iranian people!". He has a way of speaking where every word is so loud it's like it's being branded onto you. It wasn't till I started getting emails from the society that I started to get seriously scared. I didn't even give them my email address...walking round campus has started to feel a bit 1984 - every corner I turn it seems like Nima or one of Them is there, waiting to pounce on me and try to get me along to one of their weird, cultish gatherings... "No fucking way, you little bitch! Like - give it back!" God, could her voice possibly be any fucking higher or fucking louder? That little bitch Darya and her fucking sorority sisters. Why do they all talk like squealing girls? Maybe time to stick my headphones in...ahhhh - dammit, I really need the toilet - why can't they hurry up with their meeting? Ok, scan the library for other exits. There are none. Improvise: mmm, empty bottle in my bag, bottle, beer, liquid bursting out and oozing down my legs ... come on, hold it in - oh shit, there's Saeed - don't stop and chat, come on, don't you have somewhere else to go? Oh, and there's Nima too, perfect... I mean, maybe I wouldn't mind going and hanging around with them, but they're all so fucking bitchy about everyone, like that fucker Saeed, financial director or whatever he is, fucking typical macho LA Iranian male with his crispy Ralph Lauren shirts and that little bitch Aisha who he can't let out of his sight for more than five minutes without calling her on his cell phone - "Where are you? Who are you with?". He's such a dick. I remember when I met them, he was so rude to Aisha, spoke to her like she was a child - "bah-chehjoon", folded her into a barbed-wire embrace, snorted and stamped like a jealous huffing prize cow at a cattle auction when we were introduced and she started squealing about my accent. It's not even as if I'd go near her, Jesus, she's hanging - the last time I saw those girls out at Henry's she had so much makeup on it looked like she was wearing someone else's face. Still, bend her over and I suppose the face doesn't really matter, does it? ...God, these seats are uncomfortable, but if I move I might make a noise and then they might look over and see me...what are they talking about? If they were a little closer maybe I could listen...That's the problem with the Iranian girls, they're all such a fucking stereotype - straight from daddy's money into boyfriend's bank account, they come across as so moralistic and out of your league but it's only to make you pursue them more. They know how to manipulate boys properly. I haven't met one yet that doesn't have that underlying vindictive bitchy desire to just screw you up and fuck you over. I tried to explain myself to anaa and baba when I went to Iran last summer, but they weren't having any of it. I was such a novelty to them - the Westernised youngster, with my baggy jeans - "shekleh Rashti shodhi!" - and my tattoo. At least my piercing isn't in a place that members of your family normally see past puberty, I'm sure they'd have had something to say about that too. Anaa was cool, she's a battleaxe alright but she's so strong, so fucking tough. And it was cool to talk to her but she's just from somewhere else entirely - she blamed mum for everything wrong with me, of course. Not openly but I could tell. Blamed her for not making me go to the mosque and for her getting divorced from dad and setting a bad example and not teaching me how to write Farsi or cook Persian food. Poor old mum; she never says anything, but it blatantly gets to her, and maybe it's the fucking typical macho Iranian male in me but I hate knowing she's upset. Sometimes I wish I'd grown up dutiful and obedient and willing to be part of all that displaced cultural bullshit, like the rest of them seem to subscribe to so vehemently. It's like the culture overgrows them and takes on a life of its own, it's obviously not what it was back in The Motherland, wherever that maybe - people end up distorting and changing old values that used to rule them, because places are different, times change. It's like Chinatown in San Francisco or New York - a whole new cultural space, like a weird hybrid of old and new, massage parlours jammed in next to Denny's and traditional Thai restaurants - language gets in the way and gets distorted as there are more and more words that morph, or that just don't translate properly - internet, homosexual, drugs. Like those horrendous Iranian disco-dances mum would make me drive her to back in London just after her and dad got divorced. All these busybody middle aged female types sitting around talking about what things are like back home, and how England just doesn't compare in so many ways - while they walk around with their short skirts and fat legs and their hair and necks showing. Maybe I should have played that game, ascribed to the overblown LA macho Iranian type, studied engineering or medicine and got myself a Good Muslim Wife or at least Serious Girlfriend so they'd back off and leave mum out of things, but I just can't - it's just not who I am, I suppose. Why should they be surprised I didn't have any Iranian friends? I make friends with people for who they are, not for where their parents escaped from twenty years ago. They're all so fucking superficial anyway, or they're hyper-religious, and they all like crap music and they all segregate themselves. The Indian students were like that back home. Would always hang around each other. It's all very well having societies like that for people to get together and share ethnic interests or whatever - it's just when that turns into their entire social outlet and they don't want to socialise with anyone else. It's like being in a gang at school, or being in a frat here - it gives you security because you've got instant family, but it's such bullshit. Yeah, try explaining that to your seventy-year old grandmother who's outlived a war and a revolution and a lifetime of hardship to support her children and grandchildren and who prays every morning and every night and goes to Mecca every year. She's probably seen more full on stuff than I'll ever see in my life, people dying right there, right in front of her face, cousins lost to drug addiction, her own children slip away and spread across the globe where they barely stay in contact with her, don't send pictures of the ever-increasing numbers of grandchildren. That's what made me feel so bad going back: all the time that I was never in contact with them before. She was cool about everything though, never complained, always held her head high and never said a word. While we sat by their swimming pool and she slapped my back where my tattoo then rubbed it afterwards and laughed, pinching my skin, she told me about what Tehran was like when she was younger, the freedom her children had, the friends she had, how she pierced my mum's ears when she was a year old because she knew she'd want it done when she was older and how my mum screamed and screamed for two hours afterwards. She asked me whether I'd met a nice Iranian girl yet, and when I told her I didn't like Iranian girls she slapped me again and started taking the piss, and told me to get a nice blonde girl with blue eyes because she'd always wanted grandchildren with big blue eyes, just like Paul Newman's. Made me think of Emily. Emily with her big blue ones and her blonde hair and her "I'll wait for you till you come back from Berkeley". I didn't think about Emily at all when I was in Iran. I haven't really thought about Emily while I've been here either. Which is bad, I know she's not having a very good time back home, but then what am I supposed to do? Anaa wouldn't believe me when I said I'd never be with an Iranian girl, she said now I was twenty three it was about time mum started researching into getting me married off and a big Iranian wedding organised back in Tehran. Which, when I think about it, is slightly pointless as most of the family isn't there anymore, scattered like so many seeds across the world. It's hard to find any girls that are cool and fit, never mind introducing limits of race or ethnicity or whatever on top of that. Actually - now I think about it I did fuck an Iranian girl once... at one of those ridiculous Iranian discos. She was pretty cool. Layla, mmm...she was a distant relative of someone, and had come over from Germany. She had a tongue piercing and a pierced nipple. She let me lick it while we fucked by the dustbins in the car park. Wicked. And I know with my accent and everything I could probably fuck a few more out here. Before I left everyone who'd been to America said "mate - with that accent you'll get loads of birds...it's a blessing ". And I suppose it was, to begin with - it was quite fun to go out to Kips and Henry's and get wasted and see how much shit I could talk to the American girls and get away with. John's a lot worse than me though, I can't believe the number of fit girls he getshe'd never get that many back home, they'd see straight through his bullshit. He can be a bit embarrassing to be around in public sometimes, like at that party we crashed last Friday - the smarmy Englishman routine just got a bit too much. I think by this point in the school year all the sorority girls have all been screwed over by enough rogue Hugh Grant wannabes to last them a lifetime. I don't think we went down very well. Who cares though, the party was shit and full of boring LA valley boys who've obviously never had to rely on anything other than fat wallets and good looks to get by...Jess was so embarrassing. She couldn't stop staring at them. Actually Jess is pretty cute, I guess, I wouldn't mind fucking her. But I think I said something about that to John that night while we were doing charlie in the toilet - did he say he liked her? I wish I could remember. Oh well. Plenty more, etc etc. Damn this seat is uncomfortable - what the hell are they doing out there? God Nima's a weird guy - maybe my gaydar needs checking but it really felt like he was giving me the come-on in the urinals in the library yesterday. I was trying to take a piss and he was blatantly staring, and I don't usually get stage fright but it really felt like he was fixing in on my dick, like I was prey. Why aren't they going? Maybe they know I'm in here...maybe I should listen...
"Arreh Saeedjoon, ham-oon pesar-eh Inglis-ee, Dariush...ham-in al-an deed-am-esh, ba- yad nas-dig eh eenjah bash-eh...boroh dombalesh, toh boroh dasteh chap man meeram dasteh rast - nemetooneh as mhah far-ar-kooneh, nah een vacht...lach-ash khaleh bama-ze- ast!" "Yes, Saeed, that same English boy - Dariush - I saw him just now, he must be around here somewhere - go after him, you go left and I'll go right - he can't escape from us, not this time...his accent is just so cool!"
|