Hyphenated American

Trip to New York City A Novel hooshang danesh

Copyrights 2009. All Rights Reserved. All characters in this novel are fictional, any resemblance to reality is purely accidental..blah..blah blah..

Chapter One

Her aparttment had Tiffany-style Lamps hanging from ceilings, and posters of Graffiti and what seemed to be absurd pictures of robots, things entirely inhuman-a décor that seems nothing but insipid to me now. But back then, however, it seemed the epitome of all worldliness. I wanted to bask in it, and in the unusual complicity of our meeting, a little longer. -1-

But I felt bold enough to try my own observations: “I wouldn’t Hang these pictures of anthropoid metal-it might scare some people.” And then for the dumbest reason in the world I added: “You should only get married if you’re in love.” Anita looked at me dourly, as if trying to determine if I was being smart. In fact she called me smart from time to time, in her quiet style of undermining things. But I must have looked innocent enough. She said without emotion: “Well, sometimes girls have to get married. You know that.” -2-

“Oh, yeah,” I said. She was right. I knew about that. How many times had I myself escaped being caught by this one and that. The conversation was beginning to get interesting. I persisted. “Who tells the boy he has to get married? Is there a law or something.” I think unconsciously I had wished for such law, just so as not to be s forlorn much longer. “You really are a twit, you know?” “I am not.” But everyone knew someone would marry Anita. She had -3-

Once been a lawyer, and now was called a communication expert. Whatever that meant. I never was bold enough to ask. She knew an attractive prospect-she had her eyes on some wall-street or It type, she really measured them by the size of the Manhattan flat their income could provide. And of course Persians were out of question, we were beastly, brazen, conceited, arrogant. Though she took care not to use those descriptions, I was certain her promise to her folks had been like the banner on her twitter site: Hyphenated American, where clearly if she were to have been hyphenated anywhere, it would -4-

been hyphenated Iranian. I had digested her banner/bio on twitter with certain silence. I had been really looking for an old high-school girlfriend named also Anita, and had clicked on every Anita name without prejudice. Yes it’d seemed possible that my old girlfriend from high-school had gone off to law school somewhere. The world as I saw it was always full of unpleasant things. We became friends over twitter. It wasn’t quite that impossible. I lived in Paris at the time, and she -5-

sang the praises of where she lived somewhere in Tribeca, a place I had never been to myself. I had flown to New York city from Paris-she’d picked me up-we had bought a few cheap things which looked even cheaper and less gratifying once they were removed from the stores. It was near the sunset when we headed back to her apartment. I think we felt at the time a little shy about having enjoyed each others company so much, especially me who pretended to have no kinship, and seeing everything as representing some tribal barrier. -6-

When we reached at her building, something tall and ominous. I noticed men squatting on a doorstep not a hundred yards on the other side of street. They weren’t black ; they weren’t even old or unclean. But remember: I’d lived the life of being sheltered. I was a city boy only in a technical sense. I wasn’t inured to street games, and had no stock of tough words to save our pride. I looked at Anita to mirror her street wise response. But she was going to ignore them, the only -7-

tactic that came naturally to her when she was confronted with those on the margins of life, unseemliness, directness, etc. and that meant that she was going to ignore me too. I set my face like hers and matched her step. There was nothing else for me to do. We climbed the wooden stairs and didn’t speak on the way. She had her own apartment and didn’t share it with anyone. She’d already informed me of this little bit in the taxi, and in a hushed reassuring tone. The unwell-lit apartment was organized in an obviously tangible way. There were large wooden solid desks -8-

old-fashioned things, but their surfaces were crammed with tiny little drawings and water color works that were all compulsively tiny, and huddled against one another-like their swarm was to keep each others’ company for the sole purpose of creating meaning, meaning. The wooden floor was polished and bare. A hyphenated Persian rug was conspicuously absent. There was a computer set up just exactly where you expected it by the TV set looking more important. There really wasn’t a couch in the living room -9-

And I thanked God for that because I didn’t wanna have to sleep in one. She showed me the bedroom which has this unusually large beige bed, something too high off the floor and looked attended to like a shrine. I decided that’s probably where I sleep in as well. It looked outrageously comfortable. Girls were always taking good care of their beds, I think it had more to do with homing instincts than anything else. And it really wasn’t that I wanted to sleep with her for sex, in fact the opposite had been -10-

On my mind all the way from Paris. It wasn’t that she was unattractive or undesirable-just the opposite in fact. She had a brooding small face like a Persian miniature, with her features all standing up still and delicate like a porcelain doll. And they way she brushed her dark easy hair off her face with just one quick tilt of her head was almost endearing too in a tribal way. My tribe. But the blooming apartment looked like an art class in some old air-locked high-school building.. Even though the summer night bloomed around us outside the shut windows like some enormous -11-

Blue-black rose. Even over the dust of the apartment I could smell its fragrance. Everywhere invisible in the world locusts must have shrilled and swelled. But the apartment looked like all it needed was a swarm of cats. I believed she be a cat lady in a year or two. From the four story above al the New York seemed to be not sleep, but sunk in a dream of summer. I practically tied my tongue in knots trying to be enthusiastic and complementary as if one big slab of bed was that different from any other. I think things were going swimmingly that I wouldn’t have –12-

Been surprised if she were going to prepare us some dinner. It would have been a great scene . We would have had a chance to show how polite we could be to another, and how pleasant , and to demonstrate that people of different backgrounds can learn to transcend stereotypes and communicate, and all that warmhearted human affirmative-jazz. But what she really did was order Chinese from the corner place. The order arrived in nearly minutes and we almost ate standing up. I had known a lot of her psych features from communicating -13-

On twitter. I’d known she could be cold to a lot of different emotions. But I suppose I’d imagined that all she needed was for someone to poke under the hood like a dentist checking someone’s mouth and things would whiten or re-arrange themselves and we be on our own romantic way. It still hadn’t occurred to me that some human engines might not get fixed at all. She let me sleep by her side in the massive bed that night. In the morning I woke up before her and walked into the living room to see if things had changed at all overnight. -14-

But no, everything was quite as impersonal and indirect as last night. My neck was stiff from all night trying to stay away from her side of the bed. And I must have smelled like the crushed flowers she’d spread all over the covers. But I put on my straightest, most noncommittal clothes (clean jeans and a striped cotton shirt), and I thought I looked unremarkable, if not exactly unobtrusive. I wanted to go snooping through her things. On twitter her character Had always been built on some bedrock of exaggeration, and mystery, -15-

She either only sang her own praises indirectly, tirelessly, or would withdraw from communicating for weeks in the false pretence that her “tender” feelings had been trounced. She made these dramatic departures from scenes regularly. In trips most shrinks would have called hysterical. I really had made the trip not to enamor her, but to unravel her falseness to the core. But this was probably an unnecessarily mean thought. But it had occupied the recesses of my mind. Anita always seemed to require this sort of shifting of equilibrium from me, guilt replaced by scorn -16-

With fondness leaking through seams. Her sketchbooks were packed with water colors of people one must have heard of somehow, but couldn’t have had for they apparently had to have obscurity in common to be sketched. They appeared to have some unhappy communion of ailments. One’s breasts hung low like a leaked balloon. Another titled: George Kloonny resembled him if he had to have suddenly aged 20 years. On and on. Were these somehow her fellow sufferers and how were to recognize each other from another. -17-

Anita was beginning to stir. I could her the massive bed making, sounding bells. Instead I started to look out the fourth floor buildings window. Something innocuous. There was a cigarette and magazine stand down in the corner of the street-even a fruit and vegetable stand, frightened with pumpkins and bushels of apple. I began to feel mildly hopeful. Live in the moment! Visualize joy. New York from a distance looked like a place where age and imperfections are cherished tributes. Where beauty shines best when its slightly faded. -18-

Its timeworn elegance felt more like Paris or New Orleans, and not at all like Los Angeles, the city I preferred to all these others. I barely heard her bare footsteps behind me, lingering by the door to kitchen to really observe me. I doubt that she entirely trusted me now. What with sleeping with her and not having even touched her, with nothing having been tactile and still apparently waking up in a good mood she clearly found my behavior odd then. “How about some coffee?” She sounded flat, self-possessed and indifferent as a cat. -19-

“Oh, you’re going to fix some?” Somehow I slyly wanted to give the impression that she were about to order some from outside. I hadn’t yet forgiven her for cramming my stomach with noodles the night before. But I moved to the kitchen door to watch her from behind. She’d never revealed her age, but I guessed she was in her early thirties. And I thought if one looks harder, one can see more lovers than were strictly necessary trailing behind her like a parachute. The girl hadn’t simply lived by her wits alone. -20

The sight of her bare delicate feet on the cold floor stirred in me the way warm coffee in the morning stirs the senses. I suddenly had a longing for her: physical, lustful, indeterminable. The way she moved quickly around her kitchen would turn any man domesticated. Nobody said anything for a while. It was the exact thing I’d been afraid of. Her physical sense, her steam, her fragrance, her odors. I wished with all my heart that a branch or something would fall and knock me out. I wouldn’t like -21-

being vulnerable with her. Instead I heard myself saying: “Do you always look so sensual in the morning?” The words had escaped my lips. It was what I’d been afraid of saying all along. She was by the stove and didn’t utter a word. Didn’t even turn her head. Like she’d always expected them.But I know her body leaned toward mine in the way a body doesn’t listen to a word. But catches the scent of solace in the air and follows. And I grabbed her from behind, and she let me have her lips. Which were moist and soft as her other features and we kissed the longest kiss. -22-

And then we kissed with little dips and hesitations. Light hit her eyes and they looked nearly liquid. And then I was already inside her by sheer unstoppable propulsion. Then she said: “Eh.” About 50 seconds late. When I lifted her up and took her back to the massive bed. She cried when she came and it made the pollens fly to its golden cup. Something more stirred inside her then, something torrential, something tenuous in her arterial waters. -23-

And for some reason I felt I had run through the fire and come upon a wellspting. We had separated now, our bodies had, and I felt the tang of this. Its bitterness. And began to make an atlas of her body with my fingertips. Of her dew streaked breasts, classic diamond mouth. “ I think I know understand the lines you draw.” It seemed as if we ought to be having a conversation: it was part of camaraderie of sex. “ I thought you didn’t like my drawings?” -24-

“I loved them-I am here, amn’t I?” “ You are here because you loved my drawings?” “Do you know in just one of your blogs you use the words: erudite, vexing and transfiguration in just one sentence?” “Did I?” “ And why that wouldn’t that stop you from coming over? From making love to me like possession? “ “What you think I haven’t thought this through? I’ve studied you from every angle-there may not be a happy-ever-after option for both of us. -25-

I’m doing what I need to be doing to write. So quit asking me. You don’t to have know everything. Anyways it may just be a summer thing and not a way of life..” She quit asking, and the sweat dried out on our skins. And later on we made love again like one of us was going to war next day. I was beginning to fall in love and hoped she knew nothing about it. First she was kind of cranky. Two she didn’t know how to cook, the second night we’d lived on pizza with bits of box stuck to the crust. -26-

Three she went on putting blogs that made no human sense at all. They all read like the dialogues inebriated people have in expensive bars. Full of semiprofessional conceit and things generally no one cares about. And us bloody Persians are supposed to be metaphorical, but you couldn’t read in between her lines if an old wise Persian sat by. By the time I woke up next dayshe was cranking at the keyboard like speed or intelligence is measured by how quickly you hit the board, and never mind momentum or the powers of uprooting. -27-

But I had to think positive. I had to believe there was something she was good at that may be nobody else was, I took a look at the monitor for a quick inventory: science fair projects, music arts reports, nope, nope, nope. Academic achievement, back in the day, better not go there. Big financial success, still coming up for craps. May be they talked each other into going out after work each night for threes same reasons.. Happy hour they’d say: I think I could get all the way up to happy. It was getting to me, and I felt, no lie, pretty dismal. -28-

All over her apartment you would find these matches with some fancy bars name on the cover. The matches almost always had some poor souls’ numbers. I could just imagine the places, they would steer each other into, little tables, low lights a piano playing lush cocktail music. She probably left the matches around to piss me off. I picked one of the matches off the crowded table, and said: ”nice place.” I said being totally sarcastic, but of course she didn’t get it. “Yeah, very uptown.” -29-

“ Do you want me to fix some coffee?” “Its already fixed pour yourself a cup.” “What are you exactly doing?” “I am planning our Sunday.” Didn’t even blink an eye. “What are you exactly planning?” “ A visit to an exhibition about robot-generated music!!” “ I can play guitar and piano!!” “ That’s not what this is about-its about me-my interests!!” -30-

“ Don’t you prefer to go with one of your boyfriends??” “I thought you were my boyfriend?” She looked daggers at me, like I’d complicated a simple arrangement. If I responded in any way. I’d be sleeping in some hotel somewhere. “I am sorry about shooting off my mouth, but robot music is just not my idea of goodtime!!” “Well, that’s too bad because you’re coming with me.” “What should I dress like?” “ Something inconspicuous.” I came up to her shoulder -31-

I wished I was a little closer to eye level for what I was going to say. “ You mean I should dress like I don’t exist, or have no gender.” “You are simply being stupid now.” “One thing,” I said business-like. “If it doesn’t work out we can go to Central Park-or even stop by a Persian restaurant and have something substantial for dinner.” She smelled of starch and, very faintly of perspiration. “I can cook Persian food quite well—I was taught by my mother.” “Splendid.” -32-

“By the way, when can I meet your parents?” “You are never going to meet them.” She said with a sneer and got up from her chair. “I am going in the shower-gotta be ready in 45 minutes.” The sneering was the best front she could put on. Hearing things like that made me sick and afraid. Just then the phone rang, it was a friend of hers, it was a female friend and they spoke in the most convivial terms. That aroused a suspicion in me. I was always real keen to the way a woman dressed. -33-

And Anita had greeted me at the airport in a white shapeless shirt and drooping black pants. I had attributed this to the way professional women dressed in a mans’ world. I suppose I really didn’t want to think of her as being bi-sexual or anything radical like that. I stopped listening to them, and looked out the window not really caring anymore what was there. New York was looking at the moment like one of those cities in a monopoly game. I was beginning to think I was never going to get out of it. -34-

But small towns have a worst effect on me, theres’ nothing in the world quite as stupid-looking as cattle. She was in the bathroom, I could hear the sound of water dropping on her head. And the apartment which had managed to smell of airlessness, now felt trapped with perfumes and a dozen different soaps. Her eyes flicked sideways over me when she walked out of the shower. I think the usually sweet after-taste of sex had left her, and created a scary vacuum in there. Something like she was about to -35-

lose her identity in mine. And of course every fiber of her body was jumping to rise in some rebellion. “So what do you think I should wear.” “Why are you so set on pretending you’re stupid? I don’t think you are, really.” “Thanks. Why are you so set on pretending you’re smart?” She let that pass for now. I said, “I just think you haven’t met a lot of men like me before, and you don’t want to admit it.” There didn’t seem any pressing reason for arguing with her. She was being her indifferent person, indifferent and careless as a cat. -36-

“If you’ve changed your mind about things,” I said, “I mean, about having me here and all. That’s OK. I’ll just get off here. You don’t even have to take me back to the airport, I mean I’ll get a hotel room, and hang in the city for a while.” As soon as I spoke she swerved herself over to her closet and began to dress in the same shapeless outfits. “Aren’t you going to wear a dress?” “I never wear them.? -37-

Later on we were through the other end of city. Listening to robots playing music. I waited while she spoke to nearly everyone there. All along managing to look sour. And her friends pretended to be gracious to me. Her female friends openly flirtatious. I think I smiled idiotically at everyone, the way I smile at mirrors. I must have peered into a million different mirrors in my life with the same stupid flirtatious smile. Some things never change. I wondered how I came to stand in front of -38-

these people, rubbing my head in my nervous fashion, I couldn’t think of a reason. Oh, I knew I was there because of her and, before that, because she’d picked me up at the airport, before that, because we’d made friends. But I couldn’t get much further. There were a lot of small reasons that branched off from one another, but no grand design, no roots or heavy trunks. I tried to remember why I’d wanted to leave home in the first place, why I had wanted to go out west. It had something to do with Anita, the hyphenated-39-

Persian girl, but I realized I hadn’t really thought much deeply about her lately. She was just part of the mess I carried inside my head. She couldn’t matter, not any longer. I wondered if I would ever do anything right. Then I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, and when I opened them, I had forgotten where I was.

(second draft-a novel)