Infinite love
Lessons from three temporary lovers

Laleh Banoo
January 25, 2007
iranian.com

1.
You did nothing but infuriate me when I met you, picking fights and being an asshole, and I was three seconds from slapping you while we were smoking outside of a bar when you pushed me against a wall and put your hand up my skirt. I slapped you anyway and you groped at me, tearing my underwear as I fought with you. Until you put your mouth on mine, your cigarette still in your other hand. Then I kissed back harder as if in defiance and we went to the alley behind the bar. I hated you so much but I needed you to know I was better. I lifted my skirt and pushed your head down.

2.
You were my kinkiest lover. Blindfolds and a belt, then such tenderness, I'd almost cry from the confusion of that contrast. You knew just how to take my long hair in your hand, twist it into rope and pull me back into you. You'd leave handprints on my shoulders from gripping me so hard, then when I was on my back and you were inside me, lick the sole of my foot in one long stroke that made me gasp in surprise. Everything ugly was beautiful and your impeccable manners in the daytime made me jumpy and nervous because they were the inverse of the you that I craved. You broke me, hard, and when you made it so I was nearly broken apart, you almost always stopped to put me back together. Once you went too far and I did start to cry, balanced on my hands and knees with my face in a pillow to muffle the sound. You heard, though, and you turned me over and just looked at me, long and hard and with so much of something that resembled longing that it was better than any apology.

3.
You spent three days with me, my legs and yours entwined, your tongue against my neck to start and every iteration of pleasure to follow. Something about it being finite made it hotter. Of course it did, as neither of us could stand to stand still and there's something so still about infinity. Just that it goes on forever makes it depressing. And so is love depressing, love in the traditions of longevity and monogamy and matrimony. I much preferred you to love, I preferred the desperation that comes of only three days together. Ironic that we chose the desert as our meeting point; the choice of such vast, open space may have been a sublimation of our true desire for each other, a geographical manifestation of a physical impossibility. And it was like you were the only man on earth, or at least the only one I wanted. At the end of three days, I would have to go, and so would you, and so for that time we clung to each other like it was the last fuck we'd ever have. Then as I stepped out on the evening of the third day, my bag slung over my shoulder and bus ticket in hand. I did not turn around though I knew you were standing at the door of our motel room, watching me leave. I like to leave, and I like to be watched. I've never been so close to anyone. Comment