“That’s a goddamn pimp job,” Joel objects, and Richard and Mike agree.
“Bullshit! We all pimp ourselves a hundred times a day no matter what we do for a living. You just provide fun, while you’ve nothing to do with what happens between two consenting adults. You receive your seventy-five percent of the proceeds, tax free, and before you know it, you’ll be filthy rich.”
“Well, what do you say, Joel?” Richard asks anxiously.
“It sounds so simple, yet so ingenious,” Joel approves.
In an effort to better sell his idea to his buddy, Kevin goes on, “Look at its enormous benefits, man. You don’t have to deal with state workmen’s compensation insurance, state and federal taxes, Social Security, or any other government scheme to siphon all your profits from you. And, of course, most importantly, you’re not being dealing with perishable products. When there are no customers, you can use the “product” (he makes quote marks in the air with his fingers) until your heart desires, or you get so sore that you will walk like you’re disabled.”
“What name do you suggest for this business?” Mike asks. He is so wrapped up with Kevin’s suggestion that he has forgotten his embarrassment of having been conned less than an hour ago.
“Man, you got lots of choices: pussies on wheels, whores on wheels, pleasure on wheels, or just fun on wheels. Take your pick,” Richard gets involved.
“One more thing, you have to consider a good percentage of commission for me, because the great idea is mine,” Kevin states his condition and bursts out laughing.
The total strangers of less than an hour ago, with the help of a few drinks, forget their problems temporarily and they all laugh. Kevin, Joel, and Richard leave, and Mike remains to kill more time before going home where a mixture of a little pleasure and a lot of grief is waiting for him.
When nothing except a few chunks of ice is left in his glass, he asks for another. By the time he has two sips of his third drink, he is under the influence of alcohol enough to cause him to leave the harsh realities of his present life and take a quick tour of his past―a past that when he visits it selectively, he has noticed, momentarily brings him more pleasure than he has been having lately. One foot in history, one foot in the present, his soul is tired of the harsh realities of his current life and his heart’s constant desire is to visit the past. He is concerned that the details of his bygone days are getting hazier with the passing of every year. He is becoming addicted to looking backward, leafing through the glittering pages of his past again and again, and even more so when he is depressed. What is eating him the most is the awareness that even the worst day of his bygone days was filled with more quality of life than all his days combined together have been here in America. Often, even thinking about those days brings him more joy than the days that pass in front of his eyes like the freight cars of a speeding train hauling wagons loads of despair. He now understands his father’s mindset―his loneliness, his loveless and unadventurous boring life in America―when he said, “I’d rather be an undernourished dog, muzzled and leached by my government, living in Iran, than live in America like a fat bored pig, wallowing in a pool of shit people in this country call it individual freedom.” He continues on thinking and wondering.
Quite loaded, while driving home later in the evening, he half seriously toys with the idea of going into the business of providing fun and game for men and becoming as rich and famous like Hugh Hefner of Playboy Enterprises. Wouldn’t that be considered an American success? He asks and wonders more.
He misses his last position in Iran, where all he had to do was be subservient to one man above him, the minister, and have the fear-based respect of all the people under him. And he wonders how unpredictably the 1979 revolution in Iran irreversibly changed all that.
Chapter Five
An Unforgettable Past
February 22, 1979, an ominous day when the revolution triumphed and toppled the Shah and his thirty-seven year dictatorial regime. His brutal regime crumbled down so quickly, as if it were a house of cards; and the men who supported the cards to keep them upright all morphed to ghosts, scattered to the winds by the savagery of the revolution. That gloomy day will undoubtedly remain in the minds of all Iranians as an unforgettable event―for only a few months after the revolution, in contrast to all other revolutions, except for the opportunist mullahs, who right away seized the power, no one was spared from its devastating effects. It also altered Mike’s life irreversibly.
From February 22nd to June 25th of the following year, which was the gloomiest day of Mike’s life, when he was forced to escape the country, he had to lie low by hiding from the notorious Revolutionary Guards, staying in different houses with relatives and close friends, those whom he could unquestionably trust. Possessed by fear and suspicion, he moved from one house to another, almost every night, while remaining incommunicado with his family. Like a gambler in a high stakes poker game, he was fatalistically risking his life by refusing to leave the country, not because he was emotionally unable to break with his family and his homeland, but because he was historically convinced that Iran was strategically too valuable for the United States to tolerate it being governed by a bunch of backward mullahs who would eventually make Iran chaotic and unmanageable enough that it would inevitably fall into the Soviet Union’s lap. He was certain that history would definitely repeat itself, that sooner rather than later, the events of the C.I.A. coup d’état of 1953 would be repeated and the Shah would return to his throne once again. But the political events that followed the revolution demolished his hope. When 52 of the American embassy personnel were taken hostage by a group of radicals, and with the war between Iran and Iraq raging, Mike’s optimistic prediction evaporated into thin air; and his hopes for the return of the good old days were dashed. This awakening to reality coupled with the fact that he was running out of people whom he could trust forced him to reluctantly make his move sooner than he was prepared to, both logically and personally.
Oh what an unforgettable night! That sleepless night of unbelievable tantalizing pleasure blended with teasing guilt that he had spent with his thirty-two-year-old cousin, Parisa. If he hadn’t married Noshin, Parisa was the girl he would have been predestined to share his life with. Their parents chose them for each other when they were only toddlers. But Mike has never denied to himself that he disregarded tradition and his feelings and married into a class of fame and fortune to secure his future. Miraculously, his social and economic class also changed overnight. It was common knowledge among the Yazdy clan, friends and associates that Mike’s marriage to Noshin broke Parisa’s heart, drove her to a deep depression. The unpredictable event was so overwhelming for Parisa that it forced her to leave Iran. She went to Vienna, Austria for a new life shortly afterward where she attended university and achieved a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern literature. She remained in Europe by accepting a teaching position at the University of Vienna where she taught and became a political activist against the Shah’s regime for many years. Only when the message of personal freedom and social justice for all promised by the revolution reached Europe did idealist Parisa return to Iran with the intention of making a difference in the lives of her people in the absence of the toppled despot.
Mike hadn’t seen her for many years, and most of his memories