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Napoleon mon amour
Part 7: They all fall in love with you when they realize they can be easily replaced

 

January 23, 2006
iranian.com

It has been a while since I wrote about Napoleon.  But that is because I was busy with the holidays and preparing for my new job.  Not, god forbid, for lack of material to keep you entertained.  In general things are going much better.  For one I seem to have become more confident and the relationship seems to have found its own meaning which after all is essential for us women.  Somehow I feel we need things neatly labeled so that we can compartmentalize them better.  For me to keep the emotional and sexual adequately separated I really need to have an ‘agreed to’ common denominator. I need to define the relationship with the other’s consent so as make sure that I am on the same page as the other and not some delusional freak like in Fatal Attraction.  To become like the Glen Close character in that film, as misogynist a character as she is, is the worse nightmare of a woman like me. 

No matter how cool I try to be at some point in every relationship that I have, of the sexual kind-- needless to say, I some how bring the question up, “what is it that we are having?”   I have a feeling that most women are this way.  I am not sure.  There are better and worse ways of bringing this up.  It is a delicate question especially in a relationship like mine and Napoleon where I am really just the mistress.  So I wrote him a letter after one of our nights and defined what I thought we had: a friendship that is deep and a sexual affair that is an affair but one that I hope will last and one in which my feelings as the second woman in his life are respected and treated with the tenderness they deserve.  I never thought that I would bargain to be the ‘second woman’, but hey, maybe it is extremely mature where I am now.  Anyway I wrote him, that while I tolerated his serious girlfriend it was not easy to be the second woman, that if he did not have feelings similar to mine and that if I was just a late night fuck-- I expected him, as an old friend, to spare me and break up with me because the relationship would certainly hurt me in the long run.

I am much more assertive, as you have perhaps witnessed already, in written than in spoken language and have found that emailing/writing people is the best way to hash out problems and tell people exactly what I feel and want.  Although I know Napoleon does not love me like I love him it is still important to me, as an ex-woman studies student, to at least have him know a little bit of how I feel, what I want and how I want this relationship to continue.  All this is scary talk for sex.  You start talking about defining a relationship and the man goes half limp.  So it was very crucial to neither intimidate nor appear needy.  How was I going to do it?  A situation presented itself that provided a perfect space for an opportunity to present Napoleon with my “declaration of need for definition.”

The week before Christmas we saw each other six nights in a row.  The sex was good and all went well.  I was planning to take my kids to the mountains after Christmas day and Josephine,  had her daughter with her until then so I got to see Napoleon every night.

Friday night was the night before Christmas Eve.   He had his girlfriend and her daughter and a friend of his over. They were supposed to all leave early and he was supposed to call me around the usual time eleven thirty to twelve. I was invited with a friend to a bunch of younger guys' party in a restaurant.  I was glad to be busy and not have to wait for his call watching TV at home. Also because I was invited to a party I could deck out properly without looking like I have done it for him.

The guys who invited us were a bunch of Algerians and Moroccans who were second or third generation French.  They were all young and mostly men.

I had been drinking and talking and having fun.  We all sat at a big table in a restaurant.  But Napoleon did not call. Ten minutes past mid-night and I could no longer take it. I did a big no, no.   I called him and hung up. He called back and told me that he was with Josephine and Amir his old friend.  It was obvious he was talking in front of them.  I told him I was sorry to have called and told him that he could tell his girlfriend that I had called this late because someone at the party had offered me grass and I wanted to see if he wanted to buy some.  The fact that the girlfriend knows we are friends and pot smoking buddies saved the situation.  So even at mid-night and drunk I still came up with a way for him to avoid the girlfriend’s suspicions! Truly I must get the mistress of the year award!

I got off the phone and felt terrible.  I did not know if he would call at all or when.  I did not know if we were still going to see each other.  So I did something that was perhaps the most empowering act of my life.  I recommend it to anyone who feels dejected or feels doubt about her partner or is in a relationship like mine in love with a man who belongs to someone else.

I came and sat down at the table.  The guy across me two chairs down was cute.  I had been talking to him on and off.  But he was geographically too distant from me.  The guy on my right was sweet enough around twenty-nine or thirty.  I had been talking to him as well but did not find him attractive.  But since he was sitting right next to him I decided to go for it.  I reached under the table and slightly touched his thigh.  He looked at me and smiled and put his hands around my shoulder. I was in a hurry because I was not sure if Napoleon would still call and I was too drunk to hang around making small talk.

I whispered in the guy’s ear in French, “vous habitez seule?” (do you live alone?) He answered yes.  Then I said in his ear, “vous havitez loin?” (do you live far?) He told me that in fact he lived around the corner.  “Take me to your place,” I whispered.

We got up quickly and went to his place.  We lost no time once in his apartment.  He started kissing me and fingering me and I opened his zipper and grabbed his penis. It was not so great. Nothing like Napoleon’s but I was revenge-fucking and it did not matter.

We made love. It all lasted maybe twenty minutes.  I came really quickly I think because he was a stranger.  Whoever said women do not like variety!

I got up to leave.  I saw that Napoleon had called.  This was the first time I had not answered his late-night call since we began our affair. I said goodbye to the guy I had just fucked and walked down to my car calling Napoleon.

He picked up the phone and asked me were I had been.  I told him that I was at some guy's.  He asked me to come over not really believing me. 

When I got to his place I told him what I had done.  He went wild. My panty hose was torn not because the guy did it but because my thighs are big and that happens to panty-hose after a long night sometimes.  But Napoleon thought that this Arab had torn it and made violent love to me.  I let him think it.

He took me to his bed and tore the rest of the panty hose and entered me with a violence that was incredibly exciting.  He made me tell him what the guy did to me.  I, being a writer of erotica, had no problem obliging him with a little embellished story telling.

Injoori kardet?

Areh.

Kiresh khoob bood?

Maleh to behtareh...

Joonam...

That night I made him use the shower first.  Then I got dressed and left before he came out.  Once home he called and called. I finally answered. I told him that it all felt odd. That I had slept with a man in order to both make him jealous and provoke him and that it made me feel odd as good as the sex was that we had just had.  He was sweet and almost apologetic.  He understood the whole Lacloesque nature of my act.  He understood how much it was about him-- my promiscuity.  I told him that I was not good at saying things this late at night and that I would write my thoughts down and give a letter to him the next day.

I made my declaration of definition.  He accepted and was kind and attentive. Ever since then I have been feeling great.  He calls twice a day. He makes me feel loved and wanted and he sees me more and more.  He is still careful not to give me hope for anything more. 

But what I did that night showed him that I am not a whiny woman who cries at home waiting for her lover to call. NO, YOU CALL TOO LATE AND I WILL GRAB THE FIRST PERSON I CAN AND FUCK HIM/HER.  JUST TO AVOID WAITING FOR YOUR CALL!  Just to make time pass easier.  That was great for him to know.  They all fall in love with you when they realize they can be easily replaced.  It is so formulaic it is silly.  But with Napoleon there is an added twist. An incredibly erotic twist.  The guy does get jealous but it also turns him on. It was so sexy telling one guy what another did to me while the guy is moving inside me.

I, having some kind of meaningful employ, finally after all those years of being a mom chasing my stupid ex around the globe, feel much more confident and balanced.  It is so incredibly wonderful to think about things outside your own life.  Things more important than kids, and lovers and bills and groceries.  I missed that so much.

It is funny how when your mind is thinking about work people feel it and respect you more.   A woman who works and fucks with the ease of a man is sexy.  

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