Ali Eskandarian
Golden Years 5 (a serialized novel)
“I won’t play any Stravinsky but I’ll play you some Schubert,” she says while getting up and going over to the piano. “Now, this is a piece I’m learning so it won’t be perfect,” she says before plunging into it full force. She has incredible technique, powerful fingers yet delicate hands, and is deep inside the music. She plays eloquently and with intense feeling. She looks very sexy in her tight jeans, high rising brown boots, and tight long sleeve sweater. Her short blondish brown hair sways back and forth as she pounds the keys. I laugh out loud uncontrollably at some of the passages in the composition. I’m drunk and stoned, the coke has probably worn off by now.
She’s taking me out of my diminished self and into the phantasmal world where kaleidoscopic images sparkle in all directions at once. Her back arched, her mind alert, she toys with my senses, imploring, cajoling, ridiculing, ostracizing. Electromagnetic waves oscillate longitudinally in the free space between us. My thoughts flow freely and drift towards optics, seismology, telecommunications, wave propagation, magnetic fields, vectors, amplitude, phase, sinusoidal waves, angular frequency, harmonics, timbre, synchrotron radiation, length contraction. The music retards suddenly and gives way to new thought streams. Now I’m in Ciudad de Mexico walking around Centro Historico. I’m in the floating gardens of Xochimilico. I can see Zocalo in the distance, castle of Chapultepec, Coyoacan, Frida, Diego, Trotsky, ghosts. I am swimming in the music, bathing in it, drinking it all in. Watching her now, young, vibrant, independent, comfortable in her own skin. The music ends and leaves me stranded in the middle of an imagined cathedral. She looks over at me smiling.
“That’s it! I’m still working on it,” she says.
“God Carrie, that was beautiful. You are amazing,” I say.
“Thank you,” she says as she gets up from the piano stool to walk over and sit beside me. She looks at me and smiles, her eyes bluer than lapis lazuli, then puts her head on my shoulder as if we’d known each other for years. I let her keep it there for a while then lift her chin up with my forefinger and kiss her on the lips. She kisses me back passionately. We are in no hurry.
My thoughts are flowing again. Predynastic Egypt, cuneiform script, Grand Anicut, Sumer, Elam, Babylonian captivity, Achaemenid commoners. Her thoughts are her own and I have no way of knowing where her mind is. She is becoming more and more aroused. My hand is under her sweater now and feeling her pale skin. I kiss and bite her neck. She moans as a wave washes over her body then stops suddenly.
“Wait… OK… wait a minute… now I like you… I do, but I’m not gonna fuck you tonight… if you want though, we can go to the bedroom and get a little more comfortable?”
“Sure, whatever you like,” I say knowing exactly what’s going to happen if we go to her bedroom. We lay on her bed with our clothes on for a while and continue to go at it slowly. I am not in a great hurry to jump to different levels but rather let her lead the way. She takes off her sweater and asks me to take off mine, then the shirts, her bra, our jeans, and eventually the underwear. After a while I ask if she’d like for me to go down on her and she nods her head yes, eyes half way shut, her tongue rolling over her lips, her teeth biting her lower lip, she’s ready for it. I start to make my way down calmly, meticulously kissing and licking her body on the way before making final contact. I look up at her, her body is squirming with pleasure, her back is arched, nipples erect, head back, her eyes are closed, she’s moaning. I reach up and squeeze her left breast, then play with her erect pink nipple in between my fingers. After a few minutes I stick a finger in gently and move it in and out while I massage her with my tongue. She’s going crazy now.
“Stop!… OK!… let’s stop for a second…” she says, completely out of breath, pulls me up and makes me hold her.
After a moment I disengage to rest my head on the wall behind the bed, pour myself a drink from the bottle of Single Malt Scotch on the mantle piece, and take a long sip. “I’ll be right back,” she says and goes to the bathroom.
Why I’m in bed with her is a mystery me, when the loft door opens anyone could walk in from anywhere in the world. I didn’t even notice her until the end of the night. It’s always so dark in there. She came up to me, asked for a cigarette, looked good enough, we talked for a little while, she flirted with her eyes, I kept my cool, wasn’t in a very good mood, didn’t want to talk to anybody, just wanted to do my coke and hang out with the kids. Carrie went away after a few bumps of my coke and I saw her giving the same kind of attention to a few other guys. I’m not falling for their shit anymore, I was thinking. The nicer you are to these girls the worst they treat you. Gentlemen, it seems, get the short end of the stick. I just let her do her thing and didn’t even look at her for an hour or so until she came back and started talking to me again, said she’d found a pack of cigarettes in the bathroom, and gave me one before accepting another bump of coke. We started talking again, this time about music. She’s a classically trained pianist. We talked about Schoenberg and Stravinsky, Strauss and Satie. After a while she disappears again and when I locate her, it looks for a second as if she’s kissing some guy. Next time I see her she’s asking if I want to go to her place and smoke some pot. Now here we are. I pour myself another scotch neat and wait for Carrie to come out of the bathroom. She comes out stark naked and smiling.
“Hi…” she says.
“Hey…” I say. She gets in bed and slides close to me. Her left hand slips down and grabs it.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Just waiting for you.”
“Waiting for me ha?”
“Yeah, what were you doing in there?”
Girl stuff.”
“Hmm…”
“Come on…”
She’s turned on, starts to stroke it harder, I slip a finger into her and she’s ready for me in a flash.
“Get a condom,” I say.
“No, no sex.” She says. No sex you fool? You liar, I think to myself as I move my middle finger in and out of her. A few more minutes of that and she’s ready for anything, leans forward and opens a drawer to get a condom out.
“Put it on me,” I say to her and she does, then grabs my cock and fits it into herself slowly while sitting on it. I grab her waist and move her up and down. She leans forward and sticks her tongue down my throat. I bite her lower lip then grab a breast and suck on her nipple. She leans back and arches. I move up and grab her upper back then bury my face in her tits. A moment later she’s on her stomach and I’m fucking her like a dog. There is not an ounce of love in my soul. I have no sympathy for her vulnerabilities nor my own, or anybody else’s. I know her kind, she will not be in my life past tonight, nor does she want to be. Hell, I don’t know a god damned thing about her really past what she’s told me at the party. God only knows who else she does this with and how many times a week? I am pounding away as she moans and groans. I turn her around and give it to her missionary style with emphatic repetition. She comes after a few minutes but I don’t stop to let her take a breather. Fuck you! I think. I know your kind. You get it while you can and so will I.
I hammer away and feel the pressure building, feel the little soldiers on the march, see the Hanging Gardens of Babylon pulverized by the cannon of a gun ship. I am now a beast, should be sacrificed to the gods, just a brute with nothing but commoner blood in his veins. My ancestors were raped by Mongols! Kill this vermin if you dare! If you know what’s good for you! I will fuck your mother, your daughter, your sister, I’ll fuck you till you bleed, you son of a bitch! I will act domesticated but just as soon as you turn your head this little pet will turn into a scavenger, a molter shedding my outer skin and darting for the bleeding flesh. I ain’t no purebred but a stayer never the less. Fuck you, I’m a mutant! I am the opposite of whatever you think I am. If land proves too difficult then the sea is where I’ll go. If flesh is scarce, then a herbivore is what I’ll be, insectivore even, an acrodont, pleurodont, a microorganism, a conceptus. I am cruel Carrie, I think to myself, much more cruel than you, but you win, you win.
She seems to have enjoyed herself. I feel like a wretched fool. We fall asleep together for a few hours until day breaks, then I wake up and leave. It’s brutally cold and I’ve got a long walk back to the loft, the kids will want to know the story when they wake up in the evening and will have a few stories of their own. We’ll talk about who fucked who and who didn’t, then the day will pass into night and into day again. I feel pathetic. There are all kinds of proposals on the table, tours, projects, shows, and what not. I need love. I don’t want this jumping from branch to branch, don’t want to become what I’m becoming.
“Hey man, can I buy a cigarette from you?” Some rat faced bastard with a nice smile and an expensive haircut asks me.
“Don’t have any man, sorry,” I say while walking past him.
Too many confounding questions haunt me on this useless walk. There isn’t a drug in the world that can cure my ills. All change must come from within but my insides feel rotten and disturbed. I feel like a softheaded screwball or an impractical eccentric walking down a peculiar looking corridor with hanging curtains in my face. I slowly brush the curtains aside with a quixotic look and discover nothing but absurdity and ridiculousness.
“Just a little farther,” I say with an idiotic grin and keep on. “Hello!” I croak, “Is there anybody there?” If only I had learned to be more provident. When will I find a way out of this deranged corridor? Is there nothing else? How many peaks and valleys must I traverse? Is there a meaning to it all? There is so much I wish to convey to the people around me, some inner significance that I grasp with every fiber of my being, but cannot put into words. There must be a correct gesture, some subtle nuance or symbol to help me communicate my intent.
“Explicate, damn you!” I scream into space. I desperately need clarity and resolution. I feel like a stowaway on my own ship and after wondering out from the bowels of the vessel find it devoid of passengers. Upon closer observation I begin to have doubts regarding the seaworthiness of the craft. The steerage seems shot, the bilge well is overflowing, the sternpost is broken in half, the stokehole is without fire, and worst of all the escutcheon does not display a name. An ungodly wave is swelling out there, the dark sea is vociferously angry, a sudden great rise is building, and a billow is on its way towards my broken ship. The sky turns black as storm clouds roll in, heavy rain, lightning and thunder. The wind howls a menacing tune, and overwhelms my senses. I brace myself for the final end, but somehow know that it isn’t coming any time soon. I know that the ship will surely capsize, but somehow I will not drown. No, it will not be that easy. After the vessel is gone there still remains the sea, and thousands of islands to wash ashore onto. So brace yourself sailor, we’ve got lots of swimming ahead of us.
From: Golden Years (uncorrected text)
Ali Eskandarian is a musician and author of the novel Golden Years, which will be serialized on his medium page. Eskandarian’s transnational upbringing makes him a prescient voice for our era. The Iranian-American troubadour draws upon influences as discrete as American folk, rock and traditional Persian music to craft songs about love, travel, politics and loneliness. The results have earned him comparisons to greats like Bob Dylan and Jeff Buckley. Ali was born in Pensacola, FL, on September 11, 1978. Growing up in Tehran, during the Iranian Revolution, Ali found strength in music and the arts. The family left Iran and was granted political asylum in Germany before relocating to Dallas, Texas, where Ali experienced an arts-filled adolescence. Ali has been living in New York since 2003. His debut album, Nothing to Say, was released on Judy Collins’ Wildflower Records, he has toured the States several times including as opener for Peter Murphy (Bauhaus) and with fellow Iranians The Yellow Dogs. Golden Years is his first novel, and describes the lives of young (artistic) Iranians in Brooklyn, New York.
