Behind the Green Veil Ch. 05

When I would ask him to wash my back I began wiggling my ass back against his erection, moaning as his hands went lower. But inevitably he would always stop. One day I got up my courage and moaned to him to go lower and wash me completely. I finally got his fingers in the cleft between my cheeks but still he never attempted to push inside to wash my tiny hole.

One Saturday morning after he had spent time working my nipples and getting me all excited with his erection pressing into my back I whispered to him that he should wash me thoroughly, inside and out. He took the hint and did it as I leaned against the shower wall with my eyes closed, almost cumming from the long neglected stimulation. It was all I could do to not start rubbing my pussy and let my fingers dance over my clit while he cleaned me. I needed to know his reaction first, if this was turning him on. He stopped and I turned to thank him for his gentle care of my body and pushed myself into his arms. The throbbing erection he had a second ago from washing my breasts had depleted. My mood went from sexy to feeling dirty, and not in a good way. My heart sank.

I never asked him to do it again. I couldn't enjoy it if it didn't turn him on as well. I appreciated him being a willing lover but I knew that the only way our expanded love play was going to work was if I got him to take the same pleasure out of doing things to my ass as I did in having them done. For a while I wondered if I had become some kind of sick pervert. After all, why should any rational person enjoy sticking their finger or their tongue in someone's anus? In the end, it didn't matter. I had a thirst that wouldn't go away and it wasn't going to be quenched at home. The battle was on to see if I could live the rest of my life without ever getting that hunger fulfilled.

I lost that battle on my 35^th birthday in the third year of our marriage. It should have been a beautiful day. I had just completed a successful third year review with my department chair who proudly told me that I was on a good pace to receive tenure. But Brian and I were fighting because he really wanted to start a family and I was starting to think that I didn't want to have kids. Perhaps I would adopt one day, but I really wasn't feeling like making the total life transformation that brining children into the world requires -- at least not yet. There was something in me just not ready to give up my current life just yet and make the transition.

There was a broader context to this fight. Back in Iran, the government was trying to reverse the trend of declining birth rates and had decided that the best way to do so was to ban women from studying certain subjects in university. Around sixty percent of students in Iranian universities are women, due to how well women typically perform on the national college entrance exam. The government felt that by banning women from majoring in things like engineering and accounting that they would be less career focused and have more babies starting earlier in their lives. In all, women were banned from over seventy majors. It had made me so angry that I became even more insistent that I did not want to give my life over and put my scholarship on hold to start making babies.

On top of the fight I had with Brian, I received a letter from the Iranian embassy that day. Word of my dissertation's publication into a book had reached the Irani government. Since the war had broken out with Israel and the United States, our government had become even more intolerant of dissidents, if that was even possible. The Western aggression had, as predicted, strengthened the political standing of Ahmadinejad and increased the appeal of Islamic fundamentalism. The war had brought to pass everything we had been struggling against in the Green Movement.

It had put myself and others like me in an impossible position. I was living comfortably in the U.S. after completing my Ph.D. at an American university, but I was angry at the false accusations made by the U.S. of an Iranian nuclear weapons program that helped start the war and angry at my own government for how it had treated those of us who wanted to achieve change without fighting, without violence, without war. Now that my dissertation research, (which offered a critique of Islamic fundamentalism as a response to Western neo-colonialism), was published into a book in both English and Farsi, the Iranian government was trying to do everything it could to retaliate.

The letter warned me that there would be consequences for any Iranians who worked with me and also notified me that my permission to travel back to Iran had been suspended permanently. This I found pretty devastating, as a part of me had always hoped that since the Iranian government had gotten the war it wanted that their anger with me would blow over, and I may someday get to travel back there. My exile meant that the place where I grew up was now completely lost to me. I hated the Iranian government but I loved the friends and family that I left behind. The thought that I may never get to see some of them ever again just crushed me.

I also received the news that one of my dearest friends and a fellow poet back in Tehran had committed suicide in protest of his living conditions. He had been under house arrest and banned from writing publically or teaching in the university for the past five years, and finally he had just had enough. He had been a supporter of the Green movement and a dear mentor to me. The government had not outright killed him because he was so well known and well liked, but living in isolation had got to him over the years.

Trying to process all that had happened to me that day, tears ran down my cheeks as I sped home to meet Brian for my birthday dinner that he was planning. I was so lost in my thoughts that it took me a minute before I noticed something in my rear view mirror.

"Bloody fucking hell!" I yelled upon seeing the flashing red and blue lights behind me. I pulled over, continuing to curse under my breath. My heart was racing. Illinois had become a "proof of citizenship" state, meaning that the police were cross deputized as immigration enforcement. The officer took my license and read my name, fumbling the pronunciation. I tried to correct him, and that seemed to just make him angry at me. He asked if I had proof of citizenship and I pulled out my green card and handed it to him. When he saw that my nationality was Iranian, his attitude took a further turn for the worse. Ultimately he decided to write me two tickets: one for speeding and one for an expired inspection sticker. I was pissed off!

I called Brian to let him know that I was going to be late and told him how pissed I was at what happened. He explained that the second ticket I could get dismissed if I showed the court proof that I got an inspection. But for me, that wasn't the point. I was angry because it was an instance where a person has discretion as to how they will treat you, and the officer chose to try to screw me over as much as he could and I knew it was because I was Iranian. Brian sounded sympathetic but he didn't get my anger. As I hung up the phone I had a powerful flashback to a conversation I had almost four years ago with someone who would perfectly understand my anger and frustration.

I didn't even think it through when it happened. For the past four years I had often been tempted to call his number but I never did. I often told myself that I should delete his phone number just to avoid temptation but I could never bring myself to do it. That day, sitting on the side of the road after receiving two citations, I scrolled through my address book to find Jackson's name. I typed "miss you so much right now" into my phone then hit send.

I didn't even know if the number was still valid. I knew he had likely moved on yet my heart was racing nevertheless. When I didn't get an immediate response I figured that the number was probably no longer good or that he was probably married and living his life and really didn't want to be bothered. I told myself that I was relieved not to have started something that could only turn into a mess but honestly my heart sank not to hear back from him.

I went to dinner with Brian but my mood was really low. When I told him the other things that had happened he just took a minute to hold me. That night he made gentle love to me, our fight put behind us -- at least for the time being. I went to bed that evening with a weird mix of emotions -- grateful for Brian, depressed about my country, sad about the loss of my friend, and heartbroken that my Jackson was truly gone. I tossed and turned all night, unable to sleep, and thought about all the things that had brought me to this day.

When I woke up the next morning I went to call my parents. It was just their bed time in Malaysia, and I needed a good cry with my mother. I went to where the phone was charging on the dresser and saw it blinking with a message. My heart stopped as I punched in my password and read it.

"Thought about u every day for past 4 years. Never thought I'd hear from you again. Couldn't stop shaking since I got your txt. Sorry I couldn't respond right away. U ok?"

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

For the first six months after we left each other in New York, I thought about Orkideh every minute of every day. I found her poetry online and downloaded all of it, even the poems in Farsi, and read one of them every day as a way of trying to be close to her and be in her head. Something in my heart always knew that the love we shared was too powerful for her never to come back to me. It took me two years to figure out I was wrong; two years to fully open my heart to another human being; two years to trust love again.

I came to that realization quite by accident. As it turned out, Orkideh and I have a friend in common, a woman who is also an anthropologist. One day while looking at this friend's facebook page I noticed that she had posted new pictures of herself with a group of other friends all dressed up. I began scrolling through the pictures to see that they were at a wedding. My heart stopped and my breath caught in my throat as I realized that it wasn't just any wedding, but Orkideh's wedding. I didn't even know that they knew each other so I was doubly surprised. I shouldn't have been given how small the academy is -- probably less than three degrees of separation between any two of us. The pictures of Orkideh were absolutely beautiful. More disturbing for me was how happy she appeared exchanging vows with Brian, the man she had chosen over me. It looked to be a small wedding but a joyous one.

That day a small part of me died. In its place, something else was reborn. A new will to move on with my life and cherish our short time together but let it go. I continued to think about her all the time but it wasn't with the longing and expectation that once consumed me. Eventually I met Aisha, who turned out to be really special. We dated for two years and then got engaged.

Hearing from Orkideh caused me to go through some serious soul searching. We made plans to talk on the phone on a day where we could both find some private time on our calendars. I think we were both nervous -- I certainly was. My hands were sweating and shaking as I found her name in my phone and hit the talk button.

Hearing her voice for the first time in four years brought all my memories of our two days together flooding back into my mind. My emotions overtook me and I couldn't help but get aroused reliving the intimacies we shared. Orkideh seemed to feel the same way. We talked for two hours catching up with what had taken place in our lives since we left each other in the New York airport.

"It was harder to say goodbye to you than I thought it would be," I told her, "a lot harder." Admitting that broke the tension and signaled that the time for small talk was over. Catching up was nice but we needed to deal with our emotions that were still there and obviously still intense. Before we could get into it, however, she announced that Brian had just pulled up in their driveway and that we would have to continue the conversation later. I hung up the phone frustrated.

Late that night at around 2:30 AM I couldn't sleep. I snuck out of bed laying next to Aisha and gingerly tiptoed up to our upstairs closet to retrieve an office box labeled "files," tucked away in the very back. I took off the lid and lifted out the stacks of random papers that filled most of the box. At the very bottom I located a manila envelope that had "GREEN" written on it. I put the envelope aside, tucked the other papers back into the box and returned the box to the closet. I grabbed the manila envelope and headed into the upstairs bathroom and locked the door.

Inside I pulled out all of Orkideh's poems, the pictures I took of her getting dressed in the airport after we had sex for the last time, and the pair of her tiny green lacy panties that I kept from that occasion. I kept them in a small ziplock bag though they had long ago lost her scent. For the whole first year after we met, I would spread out her pictures before me and masturbate with her panties pressed into my face. Smelling her always got me off. Once I decided to move on, I put all my Orkideh memories in that envelope and tried to tuck them away. Once I had decided to marry Aisha I should have gotten rid of them but I just couldn't -- that was never an option.

We began talking on the phone once-a-week, laughing, catching up, lightly flirting, but never breaching the subject of taking it further. In hindsight, I think learning that I was engaged caused Orkideh to struggle with what she truly wanted. One day she finally blurted out that she wanted to see me. I was tempted but by the end of the conversation I made it clear -- I was happy in my new life and I did not want to do anything to jeopardize my relationship with Aisha. I could hear the excitement drop in her voice as I explained my intentions to uphold my commitments.

It was not an easy decision but I was nevertheless proud of myself for my strength. However for the next two weeks after our conversation my life nearly turned upside down. I couldn't stop thinking about Orkideh and it started affecting my sleep. If my waking mind was strong, my sleeping mind was weak. The memory of Orkideh invaded my consciousness nightly. I was strong enough to practice fidelity during the day but in my dreams I was a serial adulterer. I'd toss and turn all night and when I did manage to sleep I'd wake up aching with need for her.

Aisha got the best of it. Never before was I one to wake her up in the middle of the night for sex but suddenly I was doing just that every night. It never satisfied that hunger in me, though. On the contrary, it just made me feel guilty, making love to her while dreaming of Orkideh. Something had to give.

After three weeks of this it occurred to me that I had settled for less than true love in binding my life with Aisha's. I remembered the conversation I had with Orkideh when she was feeling guilty after we made love for the first time. After another week of soul searching, I picked up the phone.

"I'm thinking of doing something that I shouldn't," I said to her. She was silent, waiting to hear what I had to say. "It can only happen once, Orkideh, just once. After that, we can't stay in touch, we can't call each other, we can't email each other, we can't be friends on Facebook," I continued.

"Of course I understand," she said, excitement creeping into her voice.

"I'm getting married in June so after we see each other we won't revisit this and I need you to not speak of it again. Can you promise me that?" It was de ja vu all over again.

"Yes, my love," she answered simply. We began to discuss a strategy for seeing each other and finding a date.

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

Our only question was when and how. I had an idea, however. My family was planning for us to all get together in Montreal for my sister's wedding and to celebrate the Iranian New Year on the Persian calendar, what we call "NowRuz." As a little girl, some of my best memories were of our extended family gatherings every year for NowRuz. The Persian New Year occurs on the first day of spring, early morning on March 20^th in Iran and late night on March 19^th in the US. But since my sister was planning her wedding for late April, we decided to combine the two celebrations.

It had been 8 years since we were last able to be together as a family for NowRuz and I cried every year only participating by phone from thousands of miles away from everyone else. This NowRuz was especially critical for us to spend as a family because since the war had broken out all of our lives had become engulfed in turmoil. Because I had family in Montreal the Canadian government was easier to deal with in terms of getting a visa. We planned for everyone to converge on Montreal for two weeks. I couldn't wait to see everyone again.

My sister asked me to come a week early to help her with her last minute wedding plans. I told Brian that my sister needed me two weeks early -- it was the least untruthful story I could com up with. I asked Jackson if he could meet me there so we could spend that extra week together. He agreed, and his excuse was that he needed to go to Montreal for a conference. Since I knew the city, I told him that I would take care of the hotel reservations, making sure to find a place on the other side of the city from my sister's house. With our plans all set, the only problem was that it was only February. I feared that I may lose my nerve before April, that guilt may get the best of me. I feared I couldn't wait that long even more.

When late April finally arrived I was a bundle of nerves, simultaneously giddy with excitement and sick with shame. I reasoned that it was just one week, one week for myself in exchange for a lifetime dedicated to another. I didn't for a second believe that made what I was doing alright, but it was what I could live with.

According to our plan, I arrived in Montreal a day before Jackson to secure our hotel room and do some of my own personal preparations. I treated myself to a manicure and a pedicure, then visited a hairstylist. I wanted to look and feel my best. The impulsive urge also came over me to do something I never do: wax. I'm not particularly hirsute and I don't like the prepubescent look so didn't want to remove all my hair down there. I nervously told the woman to just remove the hair from around my labia and the hair just below that, lying to the woman about the latter and telling her that it was merely for the sake of appearance. In truth I was relishing the still vivid memory of the fiery sensation that his fingers, lips and other appendages brought to my skin down there. I wanted to experience all those sensations again, with nothing between his skin and mine.

I met Jackson in the airport the next day wearing a hijab and big dark sunglasses. I was trying to be as disguised as possible lest any of my other family members were arriving early as well. Plus, my sisters had so many friends here and we looked so much alike, I couldn't take the chance that anyone could even think that they recognized me. So nervous was I that I was sure the people standing next to me could hear my heart palpitations thundering through my chest. My stomach was growling too as I was far too nervous to eat anything that morning.

When I saw him emerge out of the crowd walking toward the baggage claim area where a group of us were waiting, my breath caught in my chest. His piercing gaze scanned the area and when he zeroed in on my form he made a beeline for me with a hungry look in his eyes. He tried to kiss me and I had to put my hand on his chest to stop him.