The Year I Learned to Text: Why Am I Having Sex with a Muslim in My Basement?

ISBN-13: 9781541038264 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 438 str.

Juliet Montague

Opis

Whoever said that politics and religion don't mix forgot to throw "hot sex" into the equation. When Julie, a celibate post-menopausal conservative reinventing herself in Hollywood as an actor/comedian/realtor, takes on a handsome Persian Muslim twenty-two years her junior as her boy toy, she eagerly takes flight on a magic carpet ride into the addictive chemistry of unconditional love, which eventually consumes her. Between auditioning, working on television sitcoms and movies, performing her stand-up routines, driving lookie-loos about the city, caring for her two dogs and one persnickety cat, and making vain attempts at keeping her familial relationships from collapsing, Julie, a retired court stenographer and empty-nester mother of three, slips into her busy life erotic meetings in her basement with Ali, who claims to be an Internet marketing entrepreneur. In the light of scented candles, Julie comes of age and is awakened sexually by the black-eyed bad boy, who does not want to touch her in certain places, and who ritualistically washes his penis in her bathroom sink immediately after contact. Too soon he becomes her life, a life she senses has come and gone too soon. Late in life, she has learned patience; Ali is always two hours late to their trysts. He is on Persian time, all clocks now facing Mecca. The Hollywood Bungalow Mews, in which Julie lives, is a recurring character; each resident having his or her own opinion of the goings on at Julie's six hundred and forty foot Spanish brothel. However, no one has ever witnessed Ali's comings and goings, which leads Julie to wonder if, in deed, she hasn't simply invented him, in light of the ongoing political climate and The War on Terror. When he invites her to join him to live in a cave in Afghanistan, she begins to believe his anti-American pillow talk. An American citizen born in Iran and an honor graduate from UCLA, Ali bemuses our heroine with the contradictions of his Islamic religion, his hypochondria, and the exact whereabouts of his apartment. Julie feeds her bewilderment with hours spent Googling everything Middle Eastern, always a Cuba Libra and cigarette to steady her. Quickly she learns more about Islam than she ever wanted to know. Her new knowledge of Female Genital Mutilation has her legs crossed in a clenched position. Ali's hatred toward anything American begins to frighten Julie, who dreams of contacting the FBI or the CIA in an attempt to save him from himself, Natasha Fatale and friends close at hand. Her immediate family-a sympathetic successful model and television actress daughter; a successful know-it-all divorced sister; and an obnoxious, Pollyanna mother on the edge of dementia-each have their own advice to stir up the cauldron of Julie's frustrations. In an effort to loosen from his grasp, Julie buys a second home to renovate, a foreclosed vintage cabin in the mountains, to which she runs in her feeble attempts to find herself in between mini-breakups from the Muslim sociopath, who continually bounces back into her Hollywood bungalow basement. Julie at last frees herself, and after one year of soul-searching and never-before experienced depression, she finds him once again on her doorstep asking for her hand in Marriage Islam Style, the threat of three more wives looming on the sand-swept horizon. Trapped in the hopeful hopelessness of sexual and emotional addiction, the Oxytocin Love Drug flooding her veins and the dumping dopamine addling her brain, can Julie walk away? Or will there be peace in this world beginning with one wannabe terrorist and one romantic fool?