A Bumpy Ride 01

Mes cheres amies, Soheir et Nafysa,

I’ve spent the past hour and a half preparing to write this letter. I had to find some photos, then scan and compress them. I’ve been listening to the Charlotte Church concert from Jerusalem. I have finally gotten over the shock of hearing such a voice on such a small person. Of course, she’s not so small any more. Her voice reminds me of my own soprano voice before it cracked at the age of thirteen. It became quite painful for me to sing after that. My multi-million dollar career ruined by puberty! I wonder if I would have been happier as a castrato. I don’t think so, but I’d still be singing! As lovely as she is, I’m listening to Sting and Stevie Wonder together in concert. Much more to my liking.

I was going to write a bit more about Rana, but I’m still looking for a few photos to illustrate the narrative. Besides, maybe you will understand better my relationship with her if you have a bit more of prologue.

After a few years of writing my diary, I discovered that I wrote mostly about the women who floated in and out of my life. I hadn’t intended it to be that way, but we care most about our obsessions, don’t we? I also never intended my life to be composed of a string of affairs ad nauseum, but, as I review my life, it seems to have taken on that aspect. But a pattern isn’t a pattern in the first instance, is it?

When I left Khartoum, I went home to California for about ten days. Then, I left for Bogota, Colombia, South America. Once there, I bought a bicycle and I rode it everywhere, up and down the mountains, in the rain, and at night. I would ride it back and forth to work at the embassy. I would ride it to parties, and back home again. I would go to the movies on my bike. The marines thought I was nuts. They also started picking on me because I didn’t have a girlfriend. So, I invited one of the embassy receptionists to go bicycling. It was a fiasco! This was good, because I didn’t really like her, but she had been pestering me. I figured we could have our date and she would realize that I wasn’t good company for her. Okay, so we went on two dates. She paid for dinner and a movie and she brought her 12 year old brother with her.

One of the marines wanted to go out with a girl, named Ruby. She wouldn’t go un-chaperoned, so he pleaded with me to be part of double date with her cousin, Dederly. They took us on a long taxi ride to a relative’s house. We repaired to the parlor. They served us some hors d’oeuvres and drinks. Then, we spent the rest of the evening wrestling. Well, at least it seemed that way. The girls wanted some romantic kissing, and we two marines kept trying to get to third base. The other marine and I took the long taxi ride home frustrated beyond belief. But, the girls decided they’d had a nice time, so they came to see us at the marine house again. There, Dederly found a marine she liked better, and it was all over for me. Hey, no one likes to be rejected, but it didn’t bother me too much. I couldn’t take another night of blue balls.

One evening, a young woman knocked on our door. She was having a party in an apartment across the street. She wanted to know if she could get some ice from us to use in her drinks. She was young. She was cute. She was laughing and smiling. Her name was Marcela. We gave her every ice cube tray we had. After an hour and a half, another marine and I had an argument over who was going to go get our ice trays back. He wanted to go, and I wanted to go. We decided who would go with a game of “rock, paper, scissors.” I won.

I went across the street, rang the doorbell to the apartment building and waited. She opened the door, I told her I was there for the ice trays. She invited me up to the apartment, where there were about fifteen guests drinking, talking, laughing, and smoking cigarettes and marijuana joints. Marcela was feeling no pain and she was very happy. She wanted me to stay for a while, but I told her I had to go to work. I asked her for a date instead. She agreed to go out with me the following week. I asked her how old she was. She said, “Twenty-one.”

The next week, I took her to see a movie. It was, “A Touch of Class” with George Segal.

urdarntootin says:

A Bumpy Ride 02

My dear Soheir,

I’m sitting here listening to the Oscar Peterson Trio. I first knew about them when I went to Nairobi and purchased a cassette of their jazz music. I really enjoyed them. I still have the cassette somewhere. I purchased this current album because I was collecting versions of the song, “I’ve never been in love before” from the musical play “Guys and Dolls.” When I saw that the Trio had covered it, I had to have it. I remember that I had asked the barman in the “Oasis” at the American Club to play the cassette while we played darts one evening.

What else am I doing? I’m making tea and doing my laundry. I expect the water will be boiling soon, but the laundry is having problems. I just checked it, and one of the washers didn’t go. It had been unbalanced from the get go, and so never got started. What a rookie mistake!

Well, speaking of unbalanced from the get go, as well as rookie mistakes, I suppose I should continue on about Marcela and me.

One evening, some of the marines had been drinking in the bar at the marine house. I, too, who normally didn’t drink, had had a beer. Marcela came over to visit. Three marines wanted to go to the movies. One marine wanted to go see his girlfriend. We all agreed to call the embassy van and go out to our respective destinations. When we dropped the one marine off at his girlfriend’s apartment, as we were leaving the parking area, a red car cut in front of us and our driver had to slam on the brakes. The drunken marines yelled at our driver to cut the other car off. The Colombian driver, feeling up to the macho challenge, did so. Then the other car, which contained a male driver and a male passenger, cut us off again. Then our driver did the same again. It was all quite dangerous and stupid. The other car dropped behind us for a while. Then it started to gain on us. One of the marines called out, “Hey, maybe they’ve got guns!” Since we carried mace (spray tear gas) in our car in case we had to wade into a riot, someone shouted, “Grab the mace!” Everyone got handed a can of mace. I told everyone to put the mace back because, if they had guns, we would have seen them already. All the marines but one put away the mace. The marine in the front passenger seat was the most junior, and he was the newest member of our detachment. He was also the most inebriated. When the red car came up alongside of us, that driver rolled his window and began to shout at us. The marine “riding shotgun” sprayed him in the face with mace. The sprayed driver immediately pulled over and stopped. We continued on our way and came near our embassy. Some of the marines wanted to go straight to the embassy to hide. I told them we should keep going, because if they see us turn into the embassy, we’d be in trouble for sure. Our van had diplomatic plates, but they didn’t indicate which nationality. A short while later we ran into some heavy traffic. We were inching along. As we came abreast of the National Police Academy Barracks, the two men in the red car drove up on the sidewalk and stopped next to an armed guard who was stationed in front of the barracks. They jumped out of the car and shouted and gesticulated toward us. The guard told us to halt and aimed his weapon at us. We kept inching forward in the traffic. He told us to stop again. Our driver kept inching forward. Then, bbbrrrraaappp, he shot out our front right tire with his automatic weapon. We stopped. The drunkest marine grabbed the radio handset, pressed the broadcast button and shouted, “Help, we’ve taken fire.” Then he put down the radio as the police ordered us out of the vehicle. While the rest of the marines were filing out, I picked up the radio and quickly explained our location. Marcela and I got out of the van with our hands up. Two policemen were pointing their automatic rifles at us. A couple of the marines started to pull out their wallets. Marcela told them not to show their ID unless they were asked to do so. They put their wallets back in their pockets. The police lined us up against the wall. In the meantime, the two men in the red car drove away. After we had been lined up for a few minutes, one of the marines asked if he could go pee. He had to get rid of some of the beer he had drunk. After he pleaded for a few minutes, two policemen escorted him to another wall away from the street. As he passed by me, he said, half in jest, “If they shoot me while I’m back there, tell Edna I love her.” He went and did his business, then came back in one piece.

A few minutes later, our detachment commander, Gunny Ski, arrived. He looked like he’d been shot out of a canon. Then the RSO (Regional Security Officer) arrived. They somehow managed to get us released. We changed out the ruined tire, and drove to the Embassy to make our statements to the RSO. Luckily, during all this time, the Colombian police never got our ID’s, so when they later wanted to kick us out of Colombia, they didn’t know who we were, only that we were from the American Embassy.

Finally we made it back to the marine house. Marcela was glowing. I asked her what she was so happy about. She said she was the first one in her class to be arrested. This was a badge of honor for her. She, the other marines, and I spent the rest of the evening talking and laughing and re-enacting the events of the evening. I even took a picture of Marcela holding three marines at gunpoint against a brick wall. All of that helped to relieve the tension of a serious situation.

I’m having my tea now. I just moved half the laundry to the dryer, and the other half into my apartment. I’ve changed the music. It’s Angelique Kidjo now and her album “Oremi,” featuring “Voodoo Child” by Jimi Hendrix. It’s a great album. I know it’s a CD, but I still call them albums.

Marcela was a communist. She was opposed to government of Colombia. She told me she hated all Americans except me. She told me that the reason she had come to ask for ice that first evening was because she had been told that the house was full of American soldiers. She said she had heard a lot of screaming and yelling coming from the house. She thought we might be torturing women in there. She would watch us through the front windows of the house from her vantage point of the second story apartment window across the street. Little did she know that she would do her fair share of screaming and yelling in the marine house.

I was worried that she was a communist. I talked to a Colombian who worked in the Consulate about it. He told me, “Don’t worry about that. Every Colombian is a communist when they’re 18. Once they get married and have a family, they change their mind. It’s just a form of rebellion.” I felt better about that, because, as you know, we Americans are sworn enemies of communists. At least we were back in those days of the cold war.

I mentioned in my previous chapter that there had been a national strike. Because of it, the Colombian government had declared martial law in the city. There was a curfew for two weeks. When they finally lifted the curfew, everyone went out to the movies and restaurants on that first weekend. I had a date with Marcela. We took the first class bus from the bus stop just a block from our street. It took us downtown to the theater district. I forget which movie we saw. It could have been “King Kong.” Then we went to a pizza restaurant. When we went back out onto the street, there was an enormous crowd out there. They were all looking for taxis and buses. I wanted to take the first-class bus back home. Marcela insisted that we take a taxi. While we were waiting for a taxi, the first-class bus came and went. I was upset that we were still fighting to get a taxi, when we could have been riding in comfort directly to our destination on the bus. Marcela didn’t like the bus, because every time she rode alone, someone would feel her up. I told her that wasn’t going to happen with me right there. We were waiting for a taxi still when I felt a tug on my left jacket sleeve. I looked down expecting to see one of the young beggars that would always accost me in the street. Instead, it was a big beggar of about 15 or 16 years of age. He snatched my gold-plated watch from my wrist. It had been a gift from my parents. The thief ran out into the street and I ran after him. We dodged buses and cars while crossing the four lane street. Then his accomplice tried to block me. I hit him once in the face and he fell in a heap. I leaped over him and continued running after the thief. I was screaming. I was about to tackle him in the street when he threw the watch to one of his other THREE accomplices. They ran up a dark alley, at which point I had to make a quick decision. Do I follow them up the alley, fight them all, and maybe get killed; or do I go look after my girlfriend? I stopped, turned around, and ran back to Marcela.

I was winded and my hand hurt from the punch I had landed. I was exceedingly angry! I started storming down the street yelling obscenities with Marcela trailing after me. She caught up with me from behind and grabbed my arm and tried to calm me down. I shook her off roughly. I was mad at her, I was mad at Colombia, I was mad at the Marine Corps, and I was mad at myself for allowing this to happen. Marcela finally convinced me to be quiet because she was afraid that the Military Police who were patrolling the city that night would take notice and arrest me. I had, after all, assaulted a Colombian national in the middle of the street. We finally found a taxi. Marcela kept ministering to me, and I finally calmed down a bit. When we got to her apartment it was about eleven-thirty. No one was home. She invited me up to her bedroom where we made love in a rage. Afterwards, I was quite docile. I suppose that was all I needed. That was the first time for us. Whenever I see the movie “Westside Story,” and the women talk about how they love to be with their boyfriend after a “rumble,” I know what they’re talking about. There’s nothing like getting the blood up before a roll in the hay.

urdarntootin says:

A Bumpy Ride 03

Soheir! Ezzayik ya habibi? Inti quaysa elyom?

I had to rest for a few days since my last letter. Doing laundry, writing, and making tea, all at the same time, did me in. On Tuesday, I went to the chiropractor’s to get my back realigned. Yesterday, I felt fine, but today my bad disk was acting up. I’m sitting in my special executive chair right now, the one with the nice lumbar support.

I was trying to remember when I first injured my back, and I realized it was in the Chicago O’Hare airport in 1975. I had been home in Los Angeles on leave from Embassy School, then I was to return to Arlington, VA to pick up my orders for Khartoum. The luggage I had was for a 12-month stay. I left Los Angeles on the “red-eye” flight at about midnight. Fifteen minutes into the flight, we had to turn back to Los Angeles. One of the engines had lost power. We didn’t get another flight for three hours. Because of that, I missed my connecting flight in Chicago for Washington, D.C ... When I arrived in Chicago, I had two suitcases, a sea bag, and a carry-on bag. They told me I had fifteen minutes to check in for the next flight to Washington D.C., but I would have to carry my bags to the opposite side of the airport because there wasn’t time to check them in. They told me if I ran, I could get there in about ten minutes. I took off running, carrying all of my luggage. When I finally made it to the flight gate and put my luggage down, I had a cramp in my back. There, they told me the flight was delayed for about 45 minutes because of mechanical problems. I did all that running for nothing! I was 19 then, and I shook it off. My back problems started there, however, and they would visit me more frequently as I aged and later gained weight. Now, I consider my back to be my “delicate friend” who is always looking for attention.

Since I’m nearly finished with my story about Marcela, I started reading ahead in my diary. That’s where my “magnum opus” begins: Bernadette. I started typing that section of my diary so I can cut and paste it into my future letters. It’s interesting now that I’m so far removed from that time. I’m starting to think that I was a little bit crazy for a while. At one point, I was keeping my journal in English, French, and Spanish. I wrote in Spanish in case Bernadette ever got a hold of my journal. I wrote in French to keep my hand in it. And English, that’s my mother tongue. I can express the full extent of my lunacy in it.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

One more aside, though. Since you have inspired me to walk down memory lane, I have been dredging up more memories from Sudan. I never wrote them down at the time.

I remember being fascinated with Samia O. She was so smart. She treated me like a bug. One day she was sitting at the American Club reading a book. I wanted to know what the book was. It was Claudine by Colette. It was in French. I asked her if she understood it. She said, “Of course.” “But it’s in French!” I said. “Well, I read French,” was her reply. I was very impressed. I had studied Spanish, but I had never read any Spanish language fiction, and especially not for my own amusement. I was in awe of Samia, who spoke English and Arabic, and read French. Maybe she spoke French, but I never heard her do it. She actually became an inspiration to me. When I went to University later, I forced myself to read both Spanish and French novels. By doing that, my abilities in both those languages surged upward. And, I especially enjoyed the Claudine series, and other books by Colette. Thank you Samia!

Another memory of Khartoum and the American Club keeps bubbling up. As you know, I love to swim. I spent many hours on many days in the pool at the American Club. If work hadn’t gotten in the way, I would have been there every day. I used to swim both night and day. I had even brought goggles with me from America on the off chance that I would find a pool. I always wore goggles (I still do) to protect my eyes from the water and to see better. I remember that I was always trying to get Iman to go swimming with me. She didn’t want to go swimming in the daytime because it was too crowded. She didn’t want to go swimming after sundown because nobody went swimming at night and because everyone would look at her. I asked her, “What do you care?” I didn’t care. I went swimming in the evening plenty of times. Of course, the question is, why did I want her to go swimming with me? Well, why does any man want to do anything with a woman? It’s just that simple. Iman said that she wouldn’t go swimming at night unless her friends did it too. She and I goaded several of her friends to go swimming together one night. We all jumped in the shallow end and swam together to the deep end. Iman and her friends hung on to the deep end wall, breathing heavily.

Here’s where my memory has lost detail. I’m sure that you were swimming with us, but I don’t think Nafysa was. In my mind, I can hear one of the girls swimming with us ask me, “Did you have a good look?” I didn’t know what she meant. The voice that I remember is Nafysa’s, but the face that I see is yours. I finally figured out back then that my use of goggles implied that I was ogling the girls. Of course, I was, but the question cut me to the quick. I felt uneasy after that. I felt guilty. Was I that transparent? Did others know me better than I knew myself?

In the existential literature course that I took in France, we discussed the fact that we only come to know ourselves through others’ perceptions of us. Everyone else perceives us through the filter of their own culture and experiences. In the end, our self-perception is a reflection of a the fractured, mirrored mosaic of other’s perceptions. Each piece of the mosaic possesses its own distortion. If there is a “true” self out there, we never really know it, but we can get a sense of it.

I was trying to win the race between fatigue and creativity this evening. Fatigue has won. I will continue later. The countdown to Christmas has started. I’ll be very busy with work and social obligations. I don’t know how much time I’ll have in the next two weeks, but I’ll try to push on with my story about Marcela in the coming days. If you have any questions about what I’ve written so far, please feel free to ask them.

I’ve attached another photo.

urdarntootin says:

A Bumpy Ride 04

Hi Nafysa! Hi Soheir!

Ramadan Kareem!

Thank you for your letter, Nafysa. I was very happy to hear from you. I hope Soheir has forwarded the “a bumpy ride” series of letters to you, or you won’t know what I’m writing about today.

No, I don’t regret joining the Marine Corps now, but, at the time, I regretted the loss of freedom and the difficult life. My friends were all enjoying college. My experiences in the Marines matured me quickly and made me the man I am today. Sure, I would have become a man eventually, but without the tempering of a trial by fire. And besides, I never would have met my best friends.

I’m sorry, Nafysa, that my figure does not meet with your approval. It works for me, though. It keeps the women away. Ha!

I was watching a documentary about glass blowers last week. They showed how the glass blowers took the molten glass out of a big furnace, shaped it, inflated it, turned it, cut it, added colorful layers, and finished it. In the end they had a beautiful vase or bowl or pitcher or platter.

I look at my total life as the unformed, molten glass. The glob of molten glass at the end of the glass blowers pipe are my memories. The finished product, with the extra parts cut away, are these letters. I hope that they will be colorful and bright, and that, as I write them, I don’t smash them accidentally.

I’ve been listening to the soundtrack from “Titanic” this morning. I find it to be beautiful and evocative. The feelings of exultation and doom that I get while listening to it remind me of the feelings I experienced during my last months with Marcela.

After that first time together, Marcela and I talked about it in the following days. Of course, we wanted to do it again. Again, we had little opportunity. And, while it had been quite pleasurable, we had the feeling that we hadn’t connected all the dots just yet. Then Marcela reminded me that her birthday was coming up in about 10 days. I told her I would have our cook bake her a cake and we could have a little party at the marine house. Soon thereafter we found another opportunity to make love in her bedroom. Then, Marcela let it slip that her upcoming birthday would be her eighteenth. Aaargh! I started having a panic attack. Here I had thought I was having a relationship with a consenting adult. We had been going together for six months with that misconception in my head. If my boss had known that I’d been consorting with minor, and having sexual relations with her, he could have had me arrested, court-martialed, put in jail, and dishonorably discharged. If I had known she was only seventeen, I would have acted totally differently. I never would have done it. I told Marcela, that, now that I knew she was only seventeen, we couldn’t make love until after her birthday. I was also upset with her for having lied to me about something so important. She was upset that I was upset. We had a bit of a row. She took the whole thing as a rejection of her. We finally calmed down and we both decided to “be good” until after her birthday. We had a little party for her birthday; and the marines, my boss included, gave her presents.

Marcela was a Colombian woman. Colombian women are very serious about love. They are very possessive and jealous of their men. Marcela staked her claim on me. She suspected every woman who came around me. She suspected that I wanted to be with every other woman. She clung to me at every opportunity. One day, I went to see her at her apartment. She was there with a girlfriend from school. Marcela decided that she wanted to lose weight and get in shape. She wanted to come over to the marine house and work out with our gym equipment. We had free weights, a sit up board, and a bench press. She had never used the equipment before, so I had to show her. She decided to do some sit ups. I knelt down and held her feet while she did them. When she was finished, she got up to lift some dumbbells. When she got up, her girlfriend said, “Now me!” Her friend lay down on the padded board and I held her feet. She was a bit large-breasted, so, little by little, as she sat up, then lay back down, the momentum of her breasts pulled the bottom of her T-shirt out of her pants. Her T-shirt eventually rode up above her belly button. I was kneeling on all fours and looking straight forward at her abdomen. Marcela was lifting the dumbbells and watching us. Later that evening, Marcela brought this incident up to me and accused me of leering at her girlfriend and of wanting to have sex with her. She accused her girlfriend in absentia of having designs on me, as illustrated by her flagrant display in front of me. Boy, you could have knocked me over with a feather! I thought this was coming from way out in left field (That’s a baseball reference. Sorry!). Of course, we had to argue about this for a while, and I, of course, had to declare that I only had eyes for her. She was nonplused. That was the first incident of many to follow.

As part of Marcela’s effort to lose weight, she stopped taking her birth control pills. She had done this before we began to be sexually active with each other. Her abdominal pains returned. She told me that the pain only went away when I was lying on top of her. The rest of the time she was miserable. I finally persuaded her to see a doctor. Since she didn’t have any money, she had to go to a doctor who was a family friend. She insisted that I go with her because, in the past, she was convinced that the doctor was taking liberties with her during the examination. She wanted to station me outside the examination room in case she had to call me in. Marcela told me to pick her up at school one afternoon, and we would go to the doctor.

I arrived at the school. It was a girl’s high school. (note: Marcela had told me that she was in colegio, which, in my poor Spanish, I thought meant college) The girls were all milling about in their uniforms. The uniform was a white blouse, a gray sweater, and a salt-and-pepper, gray, pleated, plaid skirt. Their shoes were not uniform, but most wore sneakers. It was a warm day for once, so very few were wearing their sweaters, but rather had them tied around their waists. I had never seen Marcela in her uniform, because she always changed out of it before leaving school. This time, she was in a hurry to get to the doctor. It was apparent that all of the girls were wearing brassieres, except for Marcela. I only mention this because Marcela had told me that, while she usually never wore a brassiere to school, she had worn one once on a single occasion. All of the other girls, who knew her well, found it strange that she was wearing a bra for once. So, they made fun of her and spent the day coming up behind her and snapping her bra strap at every opportunity. She got tired of that and never wore one to school again. I was amused by this.

We walked quickly to the doctor’s office, where Marcela made a big show of introducing me to her doctor. She told him that I was her boyfriend. He examined her while I stood guard on the other side of the door, and then he presented her with a bill, something he had not done before. She got upset, but kept her mouth in check. She asked me under her breath, with her head down, looking at the floor, for 400 pesos, the amount of the bill. Luckily, I had them on me. 400 pesos at that time was equivalent to $12USD. 400 pesos was a month’s pay for someone in the Colombian army, but it was just walking around money for me. I earned about 600 USD per month. I was very rich. So, while the exam was inexpensive for me, it was huge bill for Marcela. I paid it. At least the doctor didn’t take advantage of her in other ways this time.

The doctor told her that she probably had an ovarian cyst, and that she would need an operation to be sure. He said that a cyst would explain both the pain and her irregular menstrual cycle. We talked about this. She didn’t want to have an operation until after she went to see her mother at Christmas. And she didn’t want to use the pill.

Marcela didn’t want to get a diaphragm either, because she would have to get it from her family doctor, who, she was sure, would tell her mother. While the pill could be taken free of stigma, a diaphragm was proof that you were having sex. Even tampons were suspect. In Colombia, and the rest of Latin America, women say that tampons “violate you.” They’re not for virgins. When Marcela explained this to me, I had a hard time understanding it. I saw a television program two weeks ago which featured a women who taught sex education for a predominantly Latino group of students. She confirmed that this is the prevailing attitude among Latinos. Her comments triggered my memory of Marcela’s.

Well, girls (I love saying that! It’s so anti-PC.), I’ve got to go. I have to do some shopping, get my hair cut, and get my car washed before I go to work at 5:00PM this evening. I thought I could finish the story about Marcela in one sitting, but I couldn’t. The best is yet to come.