The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5 (25 page)

Ruth was constantly on the move. The only problem was that she never had a purpose; she jetted chaotically, screaming, gesticulating, rushing the servers to be quick with her orders so that she could keep moving. She was quicker and lighter than a proton of helium circling around its nucleus, only Ruth didn’t recognize what rules she obeyed nor the center she gravitated around. Even her household was a mere waystation in her hectic agenda. She wrote down a schedule for the day, but as time progressed, she invented more tasks than she could possibly fit in.

She was the busiest woman in North America. She was always behind schedule, always late. Her mind raced ahead of her legs, trapping her in cycle of useless motion. Frustration was her perpetual condition, her permanent state of being.

She would storm into the second-story apartment, get undressed and jump on David. While making love she would look at her watch, planning her next step, or rather figuring out how to balance several errands, striving to squeeze them into narrow frames of limited time. So now even her orgasm became one of many tasks of the day. She even managed to calculate the time required to reach her climax. Ten minutes sufficed. She would throw her money on the bed and run away, without saying goodbye, already late to her next arbitrary destination.

Rene wanted to fuck. Immediately upon entering David’s enterprise, she began to vaporize her husband’s hard-earned money – as David liked to say, “one thrust at a time”. It felt damn good to her but she never had an orgasm. David had a big-time customer in Rene. Whenever she had a chance, she snuck out of the house on East 4th and Avenue U and headed her silver Mercedes straight towards David.

Rene, like an adolescent, experienced every act of intercourse as a brand-new adventure. She liked to try out new things, new positions. She had seemed to know of only one or two prior to her magical discovery of love outside her husband’s three-story palace.

She would have done it all day and all night if not for her responsibilities at home. Once, she begged David to come along on her family’s vacation in Florida. She asked him for many other perilous favors and she always paid with new hundred-dollar bills.

In his study, Rabbi Klum offered a chair to a yarmulked David. All around him was the graveyard of ancient Jewish knowledge. The past buried itself in written history prescribing codes of moral behavior.

Rabbi Klum held a Torah in his hands, an amulet against worldly evils. David envied him his naivete. How easily this religious man could twist reality, automatically adopt the system of his parents, take it for granted, believe in it to the depth of his soul.

David thought, “Rebels will always be rebels. It’s in our blood.”

Torah has answers for absolutely everything. All pain is explained and justified, taken out of context, put under the sanctified prism of the Divine. A simple application of twenty-two letters can vanquish existential doubts, reanimate the spirit, make everything right. Like a bottomless well, the Holy Scripture provides assistance in times of trouble, explanations to the most complex personal paradoxes, promises of never-ending life.

Torah is the world’s greatest psychologist; it has cures for every neurosis to afflict humankind. Dismissing rabbis’ assurances that it was written by G-d, David pondered the idea that the authors might have been a band of talented and very bright human beings. They never asked to enter this world and wandered around in a blind attempt to figure out their place in it. They were as lost and bewildered as David. Frustrated, they tried to grasp and throw their arms around a Higher Being. Their ultimate failure can be traced throughout the Torah – something rabbis choose not to address.

A primary mission of Torah was to protect man from man. That was what the Ten Commandments were all about. But now, generations later, the Chosen People have gotten themselves lost in linguistic interpretations encumbered by outdated laws that strictly prohibit almost all expressions of man’s nature. David was born into an over-civilized community of fear-stricken, super-isolated people of G-d’s choice.

Rabbi Klum interrupted David’s internal philosophizing, “You made the right choice. Julia is a good girl. She will make you a good wife.” David nodded thoughtfully.

Rabbi Klum continued uneasily, “I heard about . . . that woman business of yours.”

David stared at the rabbi, stunned, “How did you know about my business?”

Rabbi Klum shrugged his wide shoulders, “Women talk; that’s their nature. Women never stop talking. You must know that.”

David looked away at the shelf full of Hebrew and Aramaic tomes.

“Your secret will rest with me, David. I have just one thing to ask of you, to repay me for the favor I’m doing you.”

“Why do you think I owe you a favor?”

Now it was the rabbi’s turn to look at David in amazement. “Because if it gets out you will be excommunicated.”

“And who says that’s not the reason I’ve been doing it in the first place?”

The rabbi smirked, thought for a second and said calmly, “Look, David, you are not a threat to the integrity of our community. Even if you were discovered, it wouldn’t change our traditions. Our community is like a dynamic swamp. If you try to move too much you’ll get submerged. You have to move carefully, according to the rules. If you go public, we’ll drown you. Eventually no one will be on your side – not your father, nor Julia, nor your lady friends. In the end, you’ll have to go live with the Gentiles, but even they won’t be interested in your story. It will die with you and your rebellion will perish unnoticed.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because it has happened before to no avail. We are bigger than life. We are untouchable. Our actions are justified by G-d Himself. And that’s why I can be so sure.”

Rabbi Klum took David by the hand, “I want to be your friend, David. It’s politics. It’s money. I want you to understand the truth of your situation. Either you do it our way, or you’re out. You want your freedom? Here’s your free choice. The favor I need you to do is to terminate your illicit enterprise immediately. Excuse me David, but I have to go to pray now. Hope to see you soon. Shalom.”

The rabbi hurried into the sanctuary to don his talith and enter a directive trance to inch closer to the Divine Being.

David tossed his yarmulke away and headed for the street.

So how’s Dubai? friends ask over the phone. Dubai. How can one possibly describe this mixed-up parcel of sand that’s part Arab, part British, part Indian, with some Lebanese, Malaysians and Iranians thrown in for added spice? Have I left anyone out? I’m sure that I have.

Hot and sandy, I say. I don’t say it’s a sand beneath which nothing grows . . . except perhaps, fundamentalism. How long will it be? I wonder. How long will the freedom last in decadent Dubai? In the neighboring emirate of Sharjah a man and woman can’t hold hands in public, nor can a woman wear short sleeves. They can get great rugs, though. The winds of change blow close, I fear.

I don’t tell my callers about the smell of Arabic perfume that has made a permanent home in my nostrils. Oudh, amber, sandalwood, rose. These are the scents that fill my nose, seep into my skin and the skins of everyone around me. Arab perfume is a great equalizer among men and women; there are no His and Hers sections at the perfume counter. Eventually they stop asking about Dubai. Stop ringing to see how I am. Leaving me on my own, a foreigner in a foreign land. Forgotten by the West.

Citizen of the world, that’s what I am. What would my American friends think if they saw me now – a woman caught between two cultures? Their only reference points being harems, white slavery, religious fanatics. They know so little about this part of the globe. Only what they see on the news – the extremists, the haters of the West. The
Death To America
coalition. They would not know this beautiful Arab man on the prayer mat, his long limbs bent in supplication as a muezzin calls out the afternoon prayer through a loudspeaker hitched to a minaret, his smell of oudh, amber, sandalwood, rose teasing me, making me desire.

They would think I’m not safe here. Yet I am probably safer than on the street of any American city or town. (Crime is low in the United Arab Emirates; Sharia law makes a powerful deterrent.) They do not hear the lively Arab music coming through the open windows of taxicabs. They do not see burka walking alongside tank top, both of which have breasts bouncing beneath them. They do not taste the salt on the air blowing in from the Gulf. I hear and see and taste all of these things. I love them all.

Especially his prominent nose. We are in the land of prominent noses. Ah . . . but that is a superficial thing to say. An American thing to say. The cliché springs to mind of big noses and big—. No. I won’t even go there. Dubai may be a lot of things. A cliché isn’t one of them.

We met over the pastry table at Spinney’s supermarket in the Mankhool district – the Spinney’s with the Filipina hooker who hangs around outside the glass doors day and night, her skintight pants splitting her crotch, her painted face devoid of expression. Perhaps she isn’t a hooker at all, but only looks like one. No matter how many times I go to buy my groceries, she’s there. Alone. Standing. Waiting, her mobile pinched between her long painted fingernails. Just as the Latino hustler in his tight black T-shirt and jeans is always there on my way home, cruising up and down past the hotels, day and night. Though mostly at night when it’s cooler. After all, it can get up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, and Gulf winters aren’t exactly Zurich either. I’ve often wondered who his clients are – wealthy Arabs for whom homosexuality might be punishable by death, or lonely sunburned Englishmen working for the big tax-free bucks in Dubai. Probably a bit of both.

They have a pork counter at Spinney’s for the foreigners, the heathens, though I’ve yet to see anyone make a purchase. It’s expensive to buy pork in a Muslim country. Not sure I’d want to either. You tend to get away from the taste of pig flesh until it becomes a distant and unmissed memory on the tongue. Booze – well, that’s another matter. You can always get booze. Westerners wouldn’t come here if they couldn’t. Not the Brits, anyway. When I was still the new kid on the block, I asked the waitress at a Chinese restaurant if the dumplings in the won ton soup had pork in them, concerned as I was for the spiritual wellbeing of my Muslim dinner companions. They’re chicken, she said. Of course. What else could it be?

Meanwhile, back at Spinney’s. I was in the process of selecting some baklava to have with my meal that evening. This is very important business, I should add – food in general being an important business in the Middle East. I was dying to pop a piece into my mouth right that minute, but it was Ramadan and the sun was still shining. Not that I would have been led away in handcuffs, but the consumption of food or drink during Ramadan is frowned upon. Everything goes on behind closed doors – stuff your face as much as you want, but not in public, please. Unless you’re at a hotel, where Islam vanishes the moment you step inside the refrigerated lobby. Even a drink of water on the street is prohibited, though you might see overheated English tourists going about with a plastic bottle of mineral water, their faces running the gamut from lilac to pink to lobster-red. The same English tourists whose ultimate calamity in life is the absence of liquor for the holy month. It’s the major topic of conversation – hear an English accent and you can guarantee it’ll be complaining about the lack of booze. They’d have happily gone without food and sex for the month, providing they could get a drink. Abstention isn’t so hard once you get used to it. You can get used to a lot of things in Dubai.

In my modern air-conditioned apartment in Mankhool it took some getting used to the cold water taps running hot. The water boils beneath the desert sand, and a cold-water wash in the washing machine comes out hot, shrinking all those beefy cotton T-shirts you brought with you from home. The water in the toilet bowl simmers when you sit down to take a pee, the heat from the tank radiating warmth better than the radiators in my old New York apartment. It’s hot here. Too hot. The sun’s always there, burning into you, judging you like those lamps the cops shine in suspects’ faces in those old black-and-white Hollywood movies. Where were you on the night of—? Did you murder—? Movies where women were
dames, tomatas
. God, how I miss those movies! We get plenty on television here, but they’re nearly all Bollywood films. Or rather
fil-ums
. Lots of slender women singing in high-pitched voices, lots of slim men with smoldering dark eyes and flashing white teeth. Sometimes I’m not sure what country I’m in. I see as many saris on the streets as dishdashas.

He
wore a dishdasha. My partner in crime at the baklava table, that is. Pristine white against smooth flesh bronzed from generations of Arab blood and unrelenting sunshine. You see a lot of dishdashas here, especially in the swanky lobbies and restaurants of the
Bladerunner
city center hotels. Conducting business. Dubai is all business. All money. Slippery with oil. If you don’t hold on tight, the dirham will slip out from between your fingers.

He must have seen the hunger in my eyes as I perused the staggering variety of pastries laid out on the large table – honeyed and walnutted and pistachioed sacrifices to those who’d spent the day fasting. Yes, there’s plenty of temptation here. When he looked at me, he too, had hunger in his eyes, and it wasn’t for the trays of sweets. I felt that familiar little tickle of desire between my thighs as my face heated up from his gaze – a heat which shot all the way down to my toes. The eyes beneath his ghutra were as black as his neatly trimmed beard and mustache – in fact, as black as the agal that held this head covering in place, and they seemed to darken as they studied me, burrowed into me. I’d later learn from resident foreigners that this is called
The Look
. They’re a horny bunch round here, my English friend in Abu Dhabi told me. I should have taken that as a warning, though it was surely not meant as such.