Behind the Green Veil Ch. 01

Nevertheless, there's the vulnerability that comes with admitting to someone your own specific kink that gets you off more intensely than anything else. Everybody has one, like a favorite flavor of ice cream. Sure, we can all enjoy some vanilla ice cream on a piece of pie but once you get out of the basic flavors of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry (missionary, oral and a few different positions)), then you get into those specialty flavors that are like heaven for some people but turns others off completely.

I had one girlfriend in fact that I likely would have married had our respective 'specialty flavors' not been so drastically different. I was able to go without fulfilling my deepest sexual desires for two years while we were together but I knew enough about myself to know that eventually I would need it so bad that I would be tempted to cheat, and I'm a man who actually believes in monogamous relationships. I don't want to cheat on the women I love. If I begin to feel unfulfilled in a relationship, and if there is no resolution with that person to fulfill those needs (and I'm talking needs way beyond just sex), then that's a sign that its time for the relationship to end.

All of this was going through my head as I opened up my laptop and turned it on. We both lowered our seat trays and I set the laptop down right between us so we would both share a good view. Orkideh was right on my shoulder, waiting eagerly. I was really enjoying her closeness and her scent filled my nostrils, really increasing the desire I had to be close to her. Her perfume was subtle, more musky than flowery, but it wasn't just her perfume that smelled so good. She had only put a little on. Instead, it was the chemical mixture between her perfume, scented lotion, and her own natural body oils. She had chosen the perfect scents to compliment her natural pheromones and her resulting smell was absolutely intoxicating. I could not help but wonder if she would taste just as good. I shook my head to clear it and thought again of her engagement ring. 'Fuck it,' I said to myself. Trying to avoid having her look would be even more awkward. I decided I just needed to man up.

I opened my "downloads" folder so we could look over the movies I had. I had downloaded a mix of movies and TV shows to tie me over for the trip. Boardwalk Empire Season 2, Contagion, Columbiana, the entire second season of Game of Thrones, Incendies, Beautiful Lies, The Last Mountain, the six episodes of Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, and finally Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. I explained each one, skipping over the few porn titles interspersed between those as if they weren't even there. She gave me shit about Columbiana and Spartacus -- "typical guy stuff!" -- and she had seen Beautiful Lies in its original French, but she got excited about Incendies: a heart-wrenching story about what happens to one woman over years of war in the Middle East. "I heard it will break my heart but that it's such a great film," she explained. I had heard the same.

"This 'Tucker and Dale vs. Evil,' what the bloody hell is that?" she laughed. It was a film I had found totally by accident but the online forums said it was hilarious -- an instant cult classic. I decided to take a chance on it. She gave me a skeptical look that said she doubted my judgment. Other than that she didn't say a word about the adult titles. I was near sweating in my seat as I enjoy some pretty raunchy stuff. We decided we would watch Incendies and then see what we were in the mood for afterward. We were going to share my headphones, so I gave one ear piece to her and put the other in my ear. Just before the movie got started I heard her mumble "Dirty boy" under her breath. I turned to see a slight grin on her face.

Throughout the movie she stayed glued to my shoulder. We were almost cuddling. Feeling her warmth pressed into my side while smelling her body's natural scents was sweet torture. I wanted to turn my head and bury my nose in her hair or wrap my arm around her. The arm rest between our seats was driving me crazy just for being there, as I really wanted to pull her into me. But resting there between us was her hand with the engagement ring on it, reminding me of her unavailability.

We were only 4 hours into the flight, with 10 more to go. If I read the situation wrong and made a move that got rebuked, the rest of the flight would suddenly become extremely uncomfortable and awkward. So I tried to stay cool even though she was driving me crazy. What helped was that the movie was incredibly tragic. By the time the movie was over there were almost tears in her eyes. Our playful mood had definitely grown somber. We talked for the next 45 minutes about the movie and about the different injustices women face in her part of the world.

Eventually we got up to take another walk and use the restroom. We snagged some more wine from the serving station on our way back to our seats. After we had both downed our small bottles, our playful mood had finally returned.

"OK, I'm feeling adventurous," she finally said, "and I want to watch something funny. This Trucker and Earl --"

"You mean Tucker and Dale?" I corrected.

"Yes, this Tucker and Dale better be funny." So we pulled the laptop out and started another movie. Luckily it was, and we had a hard time controlling our laughter and not disturbing the other people around us. Why are things so much funnier when you are trying not to laugh? The guy next to us was sleeping, and so were the people on the other side of the isle from us. We were trying hard to be considerate but not doing a very good job of it. It didn't help that the movie was actually laugh-out-loud hilarious.

At one point we woke up the older guy sitting next to us, and he gave us a dirty look. We giggled together like little kids. Trying not to wake him again, Orkideh started burying her face in my shoulder to muffle the sound every time she laughed really hard. Every time she did I brought my face down toward her head to take a deep whiff of her hair and the natural body musk that emanates from one's scalp. She smelled so good that my mouth was actually watering and I was desperate to taste her.

To make matters worse, she had taken hold of my arm and it felt like her tender breast was pressed snugly into my side. She was driving me crazy but it all seemed so innocent. I really didn't think she was trying to tease me. I struggled not to get an erection. I decided to play it cool. With her engagement ring right in my face, she would have to give me an unambiguously clear signal before I risked making any move.

------------ Orkideh ------------

By the time the movie was over the flight attendants were coming by with another meal and beverage service. We were just past eight hours into the flight with around another six to go. They had practically flown by with how much Jackson and I were enjoying each other's company. The wine had helped keep things loose, and we both asked for more. I knew that there was an attraction between us and our banter was just on the verge of being flirtatious. He was devilishly handsome but in a very unconventional way. What really attracted me to him was his intellect and his wit. But he had seen my ring and knew I was engaged. So for me, it was good safe fun I was having with Jackson.

During the meal, I quizzed him more on his history. I wanted to know what he studied as an academic. He told me about the twisted winding road that brought him to a career as a college professor. Ironically, Jackson started college with plans to become an engineer and he had hated all the history classes he had before. I laughed at the strange irony in the fact that he had become a historian.

As it turned out, the political reasons that brought him to the study of history had also led me to the study of anthropology from a planned career in medicine.

"You went to medical school before this?" he asked, shocked. A mischievous look in his eye told me that he was tempted to ask me if we could play doctor. Some boy thoughts are universal.

"In Iran they start you in medical school after you graduate from high school," I explained, "so I completed four years of medical school before I decided that I had intellectual interests beyond the medical curriculum."

"But you never did a residency program?" he asked.

"No I did not," I replied. "I was quite certain by that point that I did not want to practice medicine. Plus, I had all this poetry dying to come out of me. I knew I needed something different."

Jackson thought for a second, contemplating what I had just told him about my intellectual journey.

"So, poetry is my artistic expression, I'm betting you have one too?" I inquired.

"Music," he said simply. "Music, and I also like to build things, but primarily music."

"You write music, Jackson?"

"I've written some but I have more love for playing."

"What instrument?"

"I was first trained on piano but I developed a true passion for the bass, and now that's all I play."

"What makes you passionate about it?" I quizzed him. "Why that instrument?"

"It's the low frequencies," he explained. "It's about how the low frequencies speak to your body. You hear low frequencies with your body more so than with your ears, and so they evoke a different kind of bodily response. They tap into something raw and primal, something deep... at least for me."

It was my turn to contemplate. I gave him a look with a sly grin. I saw his gaze shift down from my eyes to my lips for the briefest of moments, looking at them lustfully. His tongue peeked out to briefly wet his own lips, which were nice and full and seemingly crying out for me to kiss them. "I never thought about it like that," I said finally, "but now I really want to hear you play to test your theory." I tried to keep my tone light to distract from the sexual tension building up between us.

"As I also wish I could read some of your poetry. I don't suppose you have any..."

"Unfortunately I don't," I answered before he could finish asking. "But if you google me you can find my poetry blog. Most of my poems are written in Farsi but there are a few in English."

"You know," I continued, "Persian dancing has a lot of hip movement in it, but it is the percussion in our music that speaks to our bodies, not the bass."

"Percussion and bass are first cousins" he told me.

"Really? Did they evolve as cousins or are you just saying that?" I asked, skeptically. The anthropologist in me was clearly piqued, though.

"The drum was first instrument that humans invented. The men drummed while the women danced. The beats and the rhythms spoke to their bodies. The dances were all about the metaphysics of fertility: the fertility of the people, the fertility of the earth, or the fertility of the gods. Over time, people started to make drums with different tones to communicate differently, a way of adding melody on top of or under the rhythm, depending on if the drum was small or large. Larger drums have deeper tones that resonate at lower frequencies. The bass evolved as a way to further add tone and melodic structure under the beat and the rhythm."

"And I thought I was the anthropologist," I said, playfully challenging him.

"I told you, I'm really into music" he said as a way of explaining the nerd-like amount of knowledge he apparently carried around in his head about all things musical.

I asked him about his favorite artists and so we talked music for a while. I am really into music too, and our interests had some overlap but not much, as so much of Western music was banned in Iran as I was growing up. There was an extensive black market for all kinds of Western media, but most of it that got through was the most popular pop stuff. He explained that he hadn't been into much pop since he was in high school, so a lot of the music he had was new to me.

The fact that we had different musical knowledge, though, was a good thing, as before long we both pulled out our Ipods and started playing music for each other, introducing the other to what songs really moved us. It was a surprisingly intimate way to continue to get to know each other. Some of my music was in Farsi, and I explained what some of the artists were saying, but it was actually more interesting when I asked him to guess what the songs were about from the melody, the rhythm, and the tone of the singer's voice. Impressively, he guessed right most of the time.

After little more than an hour of this, we discovered three things about each other: that we both loved to dance, we were really turned on by music with a strong political message, and that we were both hopeless romantics. These commonalities were solidified as we started singing Bob Marley and Al Green together.

"You can't carry a tune to save your life," he teased me as my pitch oscillated back and forth to hit every other note but the correct one. I knew I couldn't sing but I was feeling free enough not to care.

"You're one to talk!" I shot back, elbowing him in the ribs again. "I would expect better of a musician."

"That's why I play an instrument," he laughed.

We went on like that for about another hour until we got up to stretch again and use the lavatory. After we both came out of the restroom, we went to stand over in the opening by one the cabin doors, where we would not be in anyone's way. We took a second to look out the window. We were passing over the eastern coast of Canada which was covered in snow, making our way south down to New York. I had learned a while ago that if the flight destination was far enough away on the other side of the globe that airlines would take a flight path over the North Pole because the distance is shorter that way due to the fact that the earth is wider at the equator.

------------ Jackson --------------

Since I was considerably taller than her, I stood behind her so we could both look out at the same time. In order to look down, I had to move in close. I put my nose close to her hair to take more of her scent inside my lungs. It was like her smell cast a spell on me and I just couldn't get enough. I drew closer, bringing our full bodies in contact with one another, and I put my left hand on her left shoulder as I peered over her right. I was taking a big chance. It was a position I could only get away with for a few seconds. I reminded myself that I didn't want to make a move on her if she really didn't want it, and make the rest of the trip awkward for the both of us. On the other hand, her intoxicating scent was driving me crazy with desire. She felt so good up against me, so right. It took all my willpower to resist completely wrapping my arms around her to hold her tighter up against me.

If I didn't stay up against her for too long I could back away and we could both pretend that the contact was innocent. My next move depended on her reaction, and she knew it. If she snuggled her body into mine, those would be signs to let me know the intimacy was welcome. If she turned her head toward me in the slightest we would be kissing... deeply. For a few seconds she did nothing, seemingly thinking about what she would do. I could see the wheels turning in her head and I felt her breathing quicken a little bit. To the slightest degree I felt her lean back into my chest then she caught herself, as if thinking better about it. After what seemed like an eternity -- which truly only lasted like one minute -- she raised her hand to place it over my own hand on her shoulder. She rubbed it for a few seconds and then squeezed it before gently moving it off of her. I backed up. She turned to me and smiled, but her smile had a tinge of sadness behind it. I bravely smiled back as my insides melted.

"Let's go back to our seats," she said softly. Before we went back she walked up to one of the flight attendants standing in the serving station and asked if we could have two more of those small bottles of wine. Perhaps she sensed that I would need it.

Once we returned to our seats, she made a concerted effort to remain warm and friendly with me as if nothing had happened. I was thankful for that. The new bottle of wine went down faster than the previous three. Soon we were laughing again.

For the next hour we talked about every aspect of each other's lives that we possibly could. It was like we were trying to put the absolute most into the time we had together, knowing it would end when the flight was over. The one topic we avoided was current relationships. When we talked about relationships it was always in the abstract, never mentioning the current state of our love lives. It was on purpose for sure, not wanting to ruin the little bubble we had created for ourselves. Until the end of our flight there was no outside world, just us getting to know each other and becoming closer and closer. To talk about outside love interests would be to shatter the pure joy that comes in meeting someone new and falling in love -- which is clearly what we were doing -- and replace it with the sadness of our actual reality.

Is there value in meeting someone new and falling in love with them, even if you know it can't go anywhere? Is the euphoria worth the sadness? I don't know. For the moment, we had both decided that it was. So we went on, learning more about each other's lives and becoming closer.

It was at about that time that the flight crew came through the cabin to distribute the immigration/customs cards. I could feel Orkideh's mood tense up as she pulled out a pen from her purse. She was silent as she took out her passport and student visa and started filling in all the information. She handed the pen to me so I could fill mine out. When I was done I asked her about her mood shift. She took a big sigh before she opened up.

"I've been doing this for about 3 years now, coming back and forth to the US, and I get nervous because I never know how I am going to be treated going through security," she said.

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Can't they just look up your student visa and see that you are legit?"

"Yes, they can. But each individual immigration agent has an incredible amount of flexibility in how they treat you. They are given an enormous amount of discretion as to what counts as 'suspicious.'"

I got it. It was the way police had been treating Black men for years.

She continued, "the border agents always ask me to explain what I study as a kind of test, to see how comfortably I can talk about being an academic. They ask many random questions, but that is the main one. If I stammer in any way, they would take it as a sign that I might not really here for school. Obviously, after talking to me for the past 12 hours, you know I have no trouble talking about my work.

"So for some agents," she went on, "I am clearly a student and therefore not a suspicious person who needs to be investigated or interrogated further. However, there are a few border agents for whom just being an Irani makes me suspicious, no matter how well I can talk about what I do."

"What happens to you when they decide you are a person of interest?" I asked her softly.

"They may decide to give me a hard time in a number of different ways. They may take my fingerprints, search through my luggage, or make me sit for an extended interrogation of where I've been traveling and who I saw or who I talked to while I was there. It can go on for a long time, and a few times it went on so long that I missed a connecting flight. The most frustrating thing is that while it is happening the worst thing I can possibly do is to get angry or agitated, as that would only make me more suspicious. So I just have to take it."

"How often does this happen to you?" I asked.

She went on to share with me different stories of her treatment crossing the border into the US and I shared with her my stories about my treatment by the police. We bonded over our respective war stories of hyper surveillance, racial profiling and harassment. We felt the slight dimming of the engine noise and the slight drop in altitude that let us know we were getting close. Then the captain came over the intercom and announced that we had started our initial descent into JFK. Our fourteen hour date was coming to an end. She was transferring to catch a flight to Boston and I was flying to Houston. We both had about a 2 hour layover. She suggested we try to share a cup of coffee if we got through customs quick enough. She didn't want it to end either. I stowed my computer for landing.