Courtney Justus

Cinta

“Supposedly, what's inside my body is more or less the same as what's inside yours […]
Follow my neckline, the beginning will start beginning again.”
-Kaveh Akbar, “I Wouldn't Even Know What to Do with a Third Chance”         
 

Summer-Fall 2018

I started falling for a Persian man on a quiet Wednesday afternoon at a small nonprofit in Houston, where I had just landed a job. I was immediately drawn to Darien: his bright eyes and dark hair, his easy smile, the aviators hanging from his shirt collar. He would soon become my co-worker and friend.

On a quiet, Monday evening at work a few weeks later, I learned that he was a documentary filmmaker, twenty-six years old. Back in Iran, his native country, he had studied medicine, then left it behind and come came to the United States to pursue his true passion, filmmaking. His current project was a film about the organization where we worked, which provided free ESL classes, with a focus on the stories of the people whose lives had changed because of it. As a former ESL student, Darien had experienced those changes firsthand.

“You could be in the documentary, too,” he said later that evening as we cleaned the small breakroom area, placing orange and brown mugs with our organization’s logo in the dishwasher.

“Really?” I asked. I had supposed that he wanted to focus more on current and former students of our organization, so his request surprised me.

“Yeah. I think your story is really interesting,” he replied, referring to my adolescence, spent in Buenos Aires, followed by a move back to the United States to pursue higher education.

Soon afterwards, we would get coffee together at La Madeleine, Darien shielding me from the rain as we ran inside to savor chamomile tea and soup, sharing stories of our travels and our ambitions to enter MFA programs, him in filmmaking, me in creative writing. He invited me to go running with him in Memorial Park, the two of us treading a well-worn path at near dawn, then sharing figs and bread at a picnic table hours later. I had never enjoyed running, I told him, but that morning, for the first time in years, I finally did.

On the day Darien filmed me, I sat in a burgundy dress and black blazer in my office, in the back right corner in front of two large bookshelves that came together, the shelves lined with ESL resource books, their covers worn at the edges from use. To the left of the back bookshelf sat red, yellow, and green plastic bins stacked in a wooden structure, like what one might use in a child's playroom. These, however, were filled with dozens of items for our classes, from a lavender can of fake money to mirrors and phonic phones, like those used by audiologists.

“Okay, so just face the camera. You can look at me if you want,” Darien said, looking through the camera.

“I'll just pretend I'm talking to you,” I replied, smiling. After years of musical theater, my work as a reporter and other leadership experiences in college, I was fine with being on camera. How many times had I recorded interviews on my iPhone, or written an opinion column, grasping for a story that would make people feel something? Gathering other people's stories, as well as telling my own, was what I did.

As I answered Darien's questions, anxiety slowly tightened its grip on my chest as memories of the past eleven years began to resurface. When I finished, I could feel the clock on the wall staring me down, like it was criticizing me for not having said more. Or, perhaps, for having said so much, exposed so much in the mere span of a half hour.

*

The decision to leave Argentina to earn a college degree was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made. My biggest dream was to be a writer, one who wrote in English, so I thought it would be best to go to college in the United States, especially since my family was planning to move back there, too.

My Argentinean friends remained in Buenos Aires. The ones who could sing “Happy birthday” in three different languages, who taught me to laugh and sang with me in musicals, and listened to my musings in youth group. With my undergraduate days behind me, those friends scattered to different corners of the United States., I [1] thought back more to my teenage years, much more so than the ones that had just passed.

In telling my story to Darien, I sensed how all the layers of my story came away, unraveling like ribbons, and with my anxiety came the sensation that, in choosing to return, in spite of my continued ties, I was so alone. I told him on camera that I had no idea when I would get to see them again, which only increased this sentiment.

I did not tell Darien that I felt alone. To do so would be to deny the presence of my friends and family in my life, as they are, right now.

*

One night in early November, several weeks after filming me, Darien invited me to dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant in uptown Houston. That night, he rolled up the sleeves of his clean grey sweater and shaved his beard and mustache. At the entrance, he took me into his arms, his body warmer than mine, despite the fact that I was the one wearing a long-sleeved, army green shirt and jacket, while he wore shorts. It was a Sunday evening in early November,  a light breeze catching my hair as we went inside.

After dinner, we rode to Memorial City Centre, gliding across the I-10 freeway in his silver Toyota Camry, listening to Persian music. I don't speak Farsi, but I could hear how soft and slow the music was, how the male singer lingered on his words.

“He is saying 'I like you',” Darien explained, gesturing in circles with his hand. I nodded as the music filled his car. Outside the window, the overhead lights shone in long beams down into pools of light. Traffic had become sparser since our arrival to the restaurant, yet cars were ever present on the interstate, often blazing past us, disregarding the speed limit just as completely at night as they did in the daylight. In the warm, glowing space of Darien’s car, however, his face partially shrouded in darkness, I was safe.

“Now he is saying, 'I really, really like you',” Darien said as he merged to the right, toward the exit for Memorial City Centre.

“Do Persian people sing a lot about love?” I asked, keeping my voice just low enough that we could hear the music, but so that it didn't drown out my question.

“Yeah,” Darien replied, laughing softly. “We do.”

Eventually, Darien made his way into Memorial City, passing by restaurants and closed banks, the office buildings of nearly downtown Houston dark in the distance. White Christmas string lights were already hanging around the streetlights and shopped, giving a glow to the night that made it seem earlier than it really was. After Darien killed the engine and stopped the music, I couldn't remember any of the words he'd taught me, but I recalled their rhythm, like slow breathing.

We went to a bar near Memorial City Mall, its name faded from my memory, right behind a green courtyard with a large fountain constructed in the shape of stacked, metallic bowls, surrounded by limestone and smaller, smoother grey rocks. Seated at the nearly empty bar, under a row of full yellow lights, I ordered a cup of Malbec, then he did the same.

Despite our laughter and the sweetness in our voices earlier that night, Darien's eyes had grown dark and distant. As we waited for our drinks, he leaned one cheek into his right hand, staring at some indistinguishable point in the array of bottles behind the bar. The lighthearted air of our conversations in the car seemed to have sunken, leaving us with the background jazz music in a half-empty bar, the yellow lighting reminiscent of a saloon. Behind the bar, the slender bartender turned her back to us to pour our drinks, her long, blonde ponytail swaying.

Somehow, we got on the topic of relationships. I knew little about his, mostly that he had not dated anyone for the past three years, since he had first arrived in Houston.

“How did you know?” he asked me, regarding my past boyfriends.

“I think you just know. Like, with my first boyfriend, we were talking, and he looked at me and I just... I just knew.”

I drank my wine sip by slight sip, keeping my eyes focused on him. I wasn't especially drawn to the taste, the bittersweet grape with something almost sparkling underlying it, but it somehow made listening and talking easier. Darien continued to look at the rows of bottles behind the bar.

“Have you ever been in love?” he asked me.

This time, I was the one who struggled to look at him. “Yeah... sort of,” I said, gripping the wine stem between three fingers. “Like, I said those words to him, but I don't think I truly know what it meant to say them,” I continued, taking another small sip of my wine. Talking about that boyfriend, whom I'll refer to as Brian, was something I didn't do often. I had thought of him almost constantly while we were together, then hardly at all as soon as I entered college, leaving the memories of our travels and nights together behind.

At first, Darien didn't reply, so I asked, “What about you?”

“Yeah,” he replied, sitting just a little taller. “My ex-girlfriend, who I was in love with, and am still in love with, actually.” He paused for a moment, hand on his face, before continuing. “She was my co-worker. In the medical lab.”

Now I could not look him in the eye. I saw his face, the way an expression overtook it that I had not seen in all the months I knew him. The Darien I knew was happy, always greeting everyone he saw, offering to help others in any way he could, whether it was at the office or a social gathering.

“That's why I haven't dated anyone. And my friends tell me that I need to move on, they try to introduce me to other girls, but I don't want them.” He drank from his wine, nearly finishing his glass, while mine remained mostly full. “And I feel like when I look at them, I am looking for her.”

Fall 2013-Winter 2014

Brian and I met on a budget tour through Europe, my very first trip alone, in the autumn of 2013. Towards the end of that year and the beginning of the next one, I would move from Argentina to the United States, while he would finish his Master's degree, then take on teaching job in his home country of Indonesia, provided by their government.

I loved the misty smell of his dark hair, the way he held my pale face in his soft hands. Soon after learning that he was a teacher and scholar, I talked to him about language, books, grammar. On the long bus rides through Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, I took photographs from our window, then fell asleep on his shoulder.

On the final night of the trip, after we had said our goodbyes to the tour group, I let him come to my hotel. He kissed my breasts over and over again, moving slowly downward. I thought I had wanted him to do that, to go further, but now I was uncertain. The sensation that shot down through my spine and private parts was more a burning wire than any sort of pleasure. My entire body was tense; I suddenly wasn't sure how to move or how to make him stop. It wasn't until he started pulling my pajama pants down that I said, “Wait. How far do you want to go?”

He looked up, then into my eyes. “Do you want to make love to me?”

“I... I don't... We don't have a condom, so I don't think we should do it yet. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said. I buttoned up my shirt, then held him into the early hours of the morning, falling asleep on his shoulder on the taxi ride to the airport. He ended up paying for most of the ride; all I had left was change.

*

Despite my mother's dissuasion and a feeling deep in the pit of my stomach, I insisted on flying back to England to see Brian after my high school graduation in December. During the first few days of the trip, Brian and I went to London to celebrate New Year's. He had already planned the trip with some friends and decided to include me as well. When we arrived at our hostel, I found out that everyone else staying there was Indonesian. The first night, as I got ready for bed, Brian came into my room.

“Hey, so, this hostel is for Indonesian people only, so technically, you're not allowed to stay here,” he said. “But I talked to them and they said it's okay.”

My chest felt tight. Had he not thought of these things before inviting me? It would have been better, I thought later, if he had just gone by himself and I had flown in a few days later. I would have spent New Year's with family and friends in Houston instead.

On New Year's Eve, we were out with his friends for most of the day. The sky was overcast, the temperature bordering on freezing, with the occasional drizzle descending upon us. Brian's friends, whose names I have forgotten, barely acknowledged my presence. Mostly, they talked quietly amongst themselves in Bahasa Indonesian. Occasionally, Brian would translate for me. The few times I chimed in, he either told me to lower my voice or didn't say much at all. I reached for his hand, tried leaning in close when his friends walked ahead of us so as to tell him that he could kiss me.

“If you want to kiss me, just do it,” he said, annoyed. I kept his hand in mine, mumbling “Okay” without getting any closer.

*

During our two-week trip, I paid for most of our food and transport, plus our stay at the London hostel. Brian insisted that we would be splitting costs evenly because he had paid for another hotel, the Ibis where we would stay for most nights of the trip, but that didn't sound right to me. So despite the little money I had, I paid for what I could, mostly at fast food restaurants, including a Chinese place that wasn't much more than a hole in the wall with only a bar for seating. When I asked him to pay for some of our bus passes, he insisted that he couldn't.

“I need the money for my plane ticket because I don't know if the government in Indonesia is going to pay for my ticket. They haven't paid for it yet.”

I suppressed the sickness in my stomach, as well as the tears. My father had held a government job; I knew they were going to pay for his ticket, but didn't dare say anything, out of the fear that Brian would leave me stranded alone, with my burgundy overcoat and foreign credit cards, so clearly American with my accent. He nearly did a few days later, as we departed our final hotel. For some reason he refused to vocalize, he walked quickly out of our hotel, heading toward the bus station, as though he were trying to leave me behind on purpose. Occasionally, he would look behind him, hands stuffed into the pockets of his grey overcoat, only to look forward again, sometimes shaking his head in the process. I followed him like this all the way to his friend’s house, hours away, where we would spend the final night of our trip.

Despite all of this, I still let him touch me. Most of the time, I liked it, thought whenever he moved between my legs, that hot wire came back, a tension like waves rippling through my body.

“Relax. Just enjoy it,” he said, but I couldn't. Even when I tried to, I couldn’t fully do so. The sensations were more of a shock, almost painful, leaving me more agitated than relaxed. At times, he would grab my face tightly, even bring it down to his crotch, leaving my mind paralyzed. I had loved his caresses on my cheeks, my neck, but the tighter he latched onto me, the more I wanted to escape.

Going into the trip, I thought I wanted him to touch me, my fear from the first night at the hotel suppressed and simmered into desire. No boy had ever wanted to touch me like that, much less a handsome one who cared about words and books and travel. I had finally found someone to call me beautiful, who praised the parts of my body and wanted to run his hands delicately over them. In turn, I had loved the soft, honey-brown skin of his face and back, his smooth hair, the feel of his arms encircled around me. I actually liked that we were the same height; at moments, it made me feel like we could be equals. I’m not sure he ever thought the same.

In conversation with Brian once, I told him that, in Spanish, cinta means ribbon or tape. In his native language, he explained it meant love. I imagined a long piece of tape, sticking to your skin, the sign of someone else's love. Now I imagine how much it must sting, to take it off, to watch it hang limply from your fingers. We name things differently in our languages, but what happens when the things we are naming, the ones we suppose to be so different, are one and the same? Stuck and woven together, like two sides of a single ribbon?

*

After returning to Indonesia in late January 2014, Brian ultimately decided to stay. In one extensive email, he told me that, now that he was back in his home country, he couldn't imagine leaving again. And I could not follow him, not to another foreign country where I had no family, did not speak the language, to which I had no ties other than a man I thought I loved.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not fold myself around Brian the way he wanted me to. I could not open in ways that were painless for us both. 

Fall 2018

The night of Memorial City, when I arrived home, I paused at the back entrance of my house, my conversations with Darien replaying over and over in my mind, the words repeating themselves. Deep down, I knew that something had changed between us that I couldn’t change back.

I knew I would see Darien at work the evening following our Memorial City outing. I still remember the dress I wore that day, a blue lace one with a tight bodice, almost too small for me. The minutes seemed to ooze by, even with the work I had planned for that day.

When Darien came in that evening, I expected some acknowledgment of what had happened. Some kind of darkness in his eyes, flitting about under the light. Instead, he merely went, “Hey Court,” then took his usual place up at the front desk.

My heart sank. Does he not know what happened? Doesn't he understand? It occurred to me for the first time that maybe he had not perceived the incident in quite the same way.

I knew I had to say something, once no one else was around. Later that evening, as I started to leave the parking lot, I saw that his car was still there. Against the sinking, tight feeling in my gut, I put on my hazards, got out, car keys and keychains jangling in my hand, then rapped on the window of his silver Toyota Corolla. He rolled down his window. Call it intuition, a sixth sense of sorts, but I knew that he would reject me. Still, I stayed, studied him as he stepped out of his car.

“What's up?”

The night air was humid and warm, even for November.

“I, um, I wanted to talk because I was a little confused after last night, and... I'm still hurting...”

A glint of concern sparked in his eyes. “Why are you hurting?”

It was then that I started to realize he might not feel the same way. Still, I kept going.

“I mean, after last night, when we talked about your ex...”

“I thought we were just talking.”

“I mean...” I sighed, jangling my car keys as I looked toward the parking lot exit. Nearly everyone had left, save for one volunteer, a curly-haired young woman I recognized as she moved toward her black sedan in the half-darkness.

“Nothing,” I said. “It's nothing.” I turned toward my car, opened the door, then closed it again. For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to get inside.

“What is it?” he asked.

I found that I couldn't look at him. I kept trying to walk away, but my feet kept me rooted to the same spot. I jangled my car keys in frustration.

Finally, as I had my back turned once more, he asked, “You have a crush on me?”

Staring ahead, at some point beyond the parking lot, it all came rushing at me, all at once. I could feel, then, how any flimsy, slim ideas I had of us ending up together had now dissolved into the air. I turned toward him again.

“Don't be sad,” he said.

We kept on talking, me on the verge of tears, while he remained wide-eyed and mostly still. Sometime in the midst of all that, he took me into his arms. It was only then that I realized I was barely taller than him in my kitten heels. Though he was about my width as well, the muscles of his back were tight and hard. In my right hand, my car keys felt like an extra weight, a hindrance; I wanted to feel him, his lean muscle, with every part of my hands.

“You smell nice,” I mumbled into his shoulder. It was a light smell, like some kind of watery cologne. I wasn't sure if he hadn't heard me, or if he did but just didn't say anything.

After pulling away, we looked into each other's eyes, wordlessly, without saying anything. When he leaned his head to the side, I mimicked him, trying to find something in his gaze that did say, I want you. I just don't know how to say it.

“Courtney, if I kiss you right now, it will change everything.”

“Of course it would,” I replied, my voice still heavy from crying, from the tears. “A kiss does that.”

“I am like an animal. I will hurt you.”

I almost laughed. “You are not an animal.”

“If I kiss you, go out with you, have sex with you, I will hurt you. Listen. You are cute, you are beautiful, your mind...” He gestured toward his head, hands moving in circles, perhaps to signal brilliance. “There is nothing wrong with you.” He put his hands to his chest, almost in a prayer position. “There is something wrong with me because I am still in love with someone else.”

We looked at each other for a few moments, the reality of our new situation, our clarified feelings, settling in for both of us.

“You are going to find so many people who are going to love you.”

“Yeah, and you are too,” I said. “You know, I told you about my ex, and I didn't know... He was controlling and abusive and I didn't see that.”

It was the first time I had ever said it to anyone. I had told others briefly about Brian, and some of them had pointed out his controlling nature, how something could have happened to me when I stayed with him over in England. In all those years, however, I had never fully admitted to myself what he had truly been: controlling, judgmental, verging on cruel.

“How old were you?”

“I was eighteen.”

“And how old are you now?” he asked.

“I'm twenty-three,” I replied softly.

“That's why,” he said. And you're so young. Only twenty-three years old.”          

I nodded, then he reached out and took me into his arms again. Lightly, so much so that I barely noticed, I felt his hand come up to my head, then rest on the small of my back.

“Text me when you get home,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. We then hugged one last time before I left and he followed. After I was home, he told me to take care. Just as he always did.

*

I knew why I approached Darien in the parking lot that day. I was lonely and hurting and wanting, so badly, to be with someone who knew what it was like to move from one place to another, find your place and then wonder if you could ever go back to where you had once been, after becoming the person you'd become with the move.

And what about you, Darien? I asked him in my thoughts, during the nights that followed this one. Aren't you so young, too?

*

One day, I would leave Darien behind. I would earn my spot in an MFA program, leave my nonprofit job and move halfway across the country. I would meet other boys, handsome and creative, who seemed to me to surpass Darien, for reasons I couldn’t quite explain, emphasized by their newness to me. I did not know these things at first.

When I first met Brian, I didn’t know what it was like to fall in love. I didn’t know what it meant to love a boy, or for him to control you. I like to think that, next time, I’ll know how to stop someone from shaping me into what they want, stop myself from trying to fold myself around them. One day, I’ll know how to revisit the past without bringing it back, without unraveling myself around it again.

*

Prior to our conversation in the parking lot, Darien had wanted me to meet his uncle and friends, most of whom were Persian as well. They were supposed to meet us the one time I met Darien for a morning walk and then breakfast, but didn't show up.

“They know some English,” he said. “And my uncle, he's been in Houston forty years.”

“Right,” I said.

“Some of them, they can come with their wives,” he said.

I wondered how exactly it was supposed to work. I knew maybe seven words in Farsi and was certain I wouldn't be able to master a basic conversation within the next couple of months. The thought of being in a group of people speaking a completely different language, with Darien paying attention to someone else, made me nervous and uncomfortable. In fact, I had been relieved when we didn't meet them that morning. I would get more time with Darien, without having to awkwardly make my way into the group. The thought of being white and female, the youngest one there, with limited knowledge of Farsi and Persian culture, made me squirm, then freeze up a little inside.

I wanted to know Darien's people, his tribe, but even the thought of being at the same party as all of them made me feel so isolated. I wondered if there would even be any girls my age and, if so, if they would stare at me, wondering why I was there. Even being “Darien's friend” didn't seem like license enough to be there and truly welcome.

I didn't know how to tell Darien this. From what little I knew about Persian culture— mostly from Darien's anecdotes, the memoir Townie by Andre Dubus III and the students I met at my job— people were generous and welcoming, providing you with an abundance of food and sometimes even gifts. I even read somewhere that, if you tell a Persian person that you like one of their possessions— a piece of art, a scarf, some other trinket— then they will give it to you. It is in their culture. Even knowing all of this, a part of me believed that I could never be fully accepted into this sort of life.

Time after time, I had tried to fold myself into the type of girl I thought Darien wanted, the kind of girl who appeared unblemished on the outside, unfettered. I thought I was far from the girl who would have done practically anything to see the man she wanted again., who would have changed to make him and his family love her more. Instead, I found her right inside me, folded into herself, wound up like a ribbon.

Spring 2019

One Friday afternoon in late March, Darien asked me to come to a barbecue that Sunday, with his family and friends, to celebrate Sizdah Be-dar, the thirteenth day of spring. I met him at a park in west Houston, my GPS directing me down a series of back roads and winding paths to the picnic benches where we would share the meal. At the gathering, he introduced me to his friends and family, one by one, as they arrived with platters of saffron rice and meat. It was unusually cold for March, so I donned the burgundy coat that had gotten me through so many other winters. The wind made me shiver, despite my layers, so I gathered with Darien, his friends and family around the steaming platters.

Young and old, Persian or of another nationality, they all shook my hand and asked me about my acceptance into graduate school, my travels and projects. I met three other writers, devising their own paths with their writing and education. Throughout the afternoon, Darien's friends and family offered me food and drink— black tea, kebabs, chips and more. They just gave, happy to do so.

Once the main dishes were finally cooked, I sat down at a picnic table with Darien and his friends. In front of me sat potted plants with tiny green leaves, symbols of renewal. Each one of us had been born in a different city, knew multiple languages, had experienced different cultures and parts of the world. We sat and ate and laughed.