 Honeymoon In Poughkeepsie
Short story
By Ali Sadri
August
6, 2003
The Iranian
Per Mergan's instructions, I arranged for a room at a
charming bed & breakfast in Poughkeepsie, a compact town;
more like a village, about two hours north of New York City
by train. The town was completely rural, inhabiting
blue-collar workers and most of them spent Saturday evenings at
a single pool hall. Hard to believe that only a short distance
away from one of
the largest and polluted cities in the world, a
complete contrasting of a place existed. It reminded
me of the small towns I've been in, lived in, got
stuck in for long arduous years.
Drained from the urban jungle, and depressed in
the aftermath of September 11th, Mergan needed relief. We
stayed at the Copper Room of the quaint Copper Inn,
situated by a large body of blue-green water, a quiet
river carrying ducks and geese softly down stream.
In our master
suite, Mergan sat on the brass bed, nude. With her ankles tucked
beneath her, she looked
like a mermaid resting on a solitary rock in the
middle of the sea. Her torso erect, her small breasts
firm, her abdomen slightly round. There she sat with
waves of hair draped onto one side -- the same soft
curls prominent in Persians having been exaggerated in
the ancient figures carved on stone, where the hair
and the beards are immaculately twisted into
perfection.
Mergan was bleeding profusely onto a snow-white hotel
towel strategically placed beneath her. While gazing
at me she said: "You don't have to make love to me
if
you don't want to." I wanted to say "HIV",
and how
much more at risk one was with direct exposure to
blood, but I didn't. I said, "I love you," instead. In that moment, where the contrast of red on white
seemed so vivid, I felt as though I were in bliss and
drew Mergan's splendor into the depths of my soul. I
was not the least revolted by the sight of blood,
quite the contrary; it felt as though a curse had been
lifted from me. The warm fluid flowed from her like a
message, like pomegranate seeds falling softly onto
white linen. It was as if I were directing a film,
creating something beautiful, carefully setting up my
most critical shot, perfecting my camera's viewpoint.
"I've never had sex with a woman in her period," I
said. She looked surprised, and expressed deep
sympathy not so much by words but by a sigh, and by
the way she looked up at me with penetrating dark
eyes.
Mergan made all my inhibitions seem frivolous. She
was just the opposite of me; had had many experiences
I will never know and wouldn't want to know. I
envisioned that many things happened in Mergan's life
without much thought before they actually happened.
But despite my ambivalence, I surrendered to feelings
that seemed poignantly real; love, passion, and strong
sense of belonging intertwined in a single setting and
for one person.
"I want you," I said.
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