Roxana Shirazi - The Last Living Slut - Born in Iran, Bred Backstage

My mother was ecstatic when I told her about the date. “Finally!” she said, beaming. “He is educated, dignified, and a decent man. I am so glad you’re finally getting away from low-class, disrespectful men.”

“Your place or mine?” was the first thing Mr. Politician asked me. We had met outside the Leeds train station, where he was picking me up for what I had assumed was a dinner date.

“Ermm.” I swallowed nervously. My hands were clammy. I still couldn’t quite believe I was going to spend time with such a huge personality, whom I’d seen only on the news. But I had imagined we’d be spending it at a public café, not his place or mine.

It was summer, yet he was wearing a heavy coat. In his mouth, a foul-smelling canoe-shaped pipe chimneyed away with pomp and ceremony, the plume of a man who defended the environment.

The politician and I had met briefly at a fund-raising party the previous year and swapped e-mails so I could send him some of the politically themed essays I was planning to deliver at American and European universities. It was only now, a year later, that we were finally meeting again to discuss politics.

The interior of this respected politician’s vintage Jaguar was a fairground of candy wrappers, empty soft drink bottles, and papers. As I tried to keep up with his political chatter, wondering if my university education was too flimsy for his rants about the prime minister and the lunacy of war, the foul fumes of the pipe he perpetually puffed on made me want to vomit.

We pulled into his driveway. Willowy and dusky, his house loomed like a shadow from the distant past. Persian carpets swooned the floors inside like seductresses, curvy and come-hither. Beautiful Arabic paintings and rugs roared from the walls and exotic lanterns hung from every face of the ceiling. Rich cushions with Middle Eastern motifs, curling in deep blushes and tawny yellows, writhed on the settee.

In the sooty black, he didn’t turn on any overhead lights—just a small lamp and candles. The flicker of the TV lit up the murky corners of the living room.

“Champagne?” he asked from the kitchen. “I kept it chilled for you.”

“I don’t drink, sorry.” I felt bad. So he came back to join me, and soon he was off on a rant about Tony Blair.

I was enthralled by his knowledge of the world: the Iraq War, Parliament, the well-known politicians he worked with, Islamic fundamentalists. He seemed to know it all. He was very charismatic, his savage alpha-male fighter’s spirit and rebel’s tongue crowned by a genius political brain. His monologues in support of the downtrodden were inspirational. But his love of the limelight and hero-worship gave him away as the frustrated wannabe rock star he was.

If he couldn’t be a genuine rock star, he seemed content to act like a Spinal Tap version of one. “When was the last time you were fucked?” he blurted, interrupting our talk about Hugo Chavez.

“Huh?” I was too shocked to answer.

“I fucked a nineteen-year-old Somalian girl on that couch last night. Just where you’re sitting.”

I glanced down, looking for stains.

“Met her on Facebook. It’s a great place for getting pussy, let me tell you.”

I nearly choked on my cranberry juice.

“I took her to quite a few sex parties. Have you ever been to one? There’s a beautiful sex club in Paris. No one knows me there.”

“Yes, I like sex, too,” I stammered. “It’s nice.”

I checked my choice of attire: Long skirt? Check. No revealing bosom? Check. Sensible shoes? Check. Nothing that revealed any skin. I hadn’t been this dumbstruck for a long time.

With a flick of the remote control, he hopped through the TV channels. The room was dark and cold. My drink was gone.

“Aha! There!” he stopped at the movie Braveheart. Mel Gibson’s Scottish accent hacked at the screen. He left the movie on, with the Scottish fighting the English in bloody battle, and moved on to me. Pulling up my skirt, he dove down between my legs to suddenly lap at my pussy with little bobs of the head like a terrier.

“I’m gonna pick a fight!” Mel Gibson snarled from the TV.

“Ooh. Ahhh,” I fake-moaned, trying hard not to laugh. I was frozen to the couch, wondering what the fuck was going on.

“Oh, yeah!” the politician snarled like Mel as he lapped ferociously at my pussy. I wanted to be kind to him—he was trying so hard to do a fantastic job—but he was nothing more than a barrel-shaped old man trying to be sexy.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he said when he came up for air. And I agreed, because I was curious.

The staircase was lined with photo after photo of famous politicians; his bedroom was enveloped in darkness. He switched on a tiny lantern by the bed and we were off. I lay there and stared into the faces of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as he humped me, crushing me with his dead weight until I couldn’t breathe. After a few minutes, he stopped, wheezing and gasping for breath. He had come. Rolling over, he re-lit his clunky pipe, talked a bit about Bill Clinton, and thrust a book about the Amazon rainforest into my hand. And that was that.

A few days later, the politician called to say he was speaking at a rally and was having a tough day. He asked if he could see me afterward, but I had plans with my family.

“One day soon you’ll be at my side when I’m campaigning,” he said proudly. “Would you like that?”

“Yes, that would be very interesting.” I swooned with genuine excitement.

The next time I saw him, he took me to an actual restaurant. It was an Iranian place where a weepy Persian singer curdled out grievings about love and roses. I ordered chelo kabab and rice with mast-o-moosir (yogurt with shallots) and various other dips, pickles, and fresh herbs, because I wasn’t worried about having garlic breath. I really hoped this time we could talk about literature and politics, and not about how many young Somalian and Middle Eastern girls he was fucking every night.

Velvety compliments dribbled from his purring tongue. His almond-brown eyes narrowed in a catlike slant. “I want you to be my girlfriend,” he announced. And before I had a chance to respond, he continued: “And I want you to come on holiday with me to Portugal.”

It was a lovely gesture, and I was touched. I swallowed divine apple juice and blushed apple blossom. “Thank you,” I stammered, shyly. “That’s very sweet.”

But there were other things about the way he carried himself that made me queasy—like the way he tossed off stories of how he fucked a different young Somali or Middle Eastern girl every night. Then he told me he wanted to take me to sex parties. “I wanna watch you get fucked by ten guys,” he said, bringing his face close to mine. “Ten big black guys with huge cocks. Would you like that?”

He spoke as if he were giving me the gift of a lifetime. The kabab was oozing grease in my stomach. Be his girlfriend? Was part of the deal going to sex clubs so he could watch me get fucked by ten big black guys?

By the time we got back to his house, I felt uncomfortable. Here was a man worshipped by untold thousands of people who voted for him because of the respectful, ethical image he projected—but who spent his free time trawling the Internet for young Somali and Middle Eastern girls to fuck.

“I’m going to New York next week for a conference,” he said as we lay in bed. “I’d ask you to come with me, but I’m meeting an Iranian girl there. We’ve been having phone sex. She’s got big tits.”

“So why exactly do you want me to be your girlfriend?” I asked.

“Oh, I would want you to be free also. Free to fuck as many guys as you want. In fact, I insist on it.”