Porochista Khakpour - The Last Illusion

“You did. I see. .”

“And the boy was Asiya’s brother’s friend.”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been drinking here and there still, Zal? No more than that?”

“I was a little drunk,” Zal admitted sheepishly.

“Any drugs?”

“No, of course not.”

“Any chance anyone drugged you?”

“ Rhodes .”

“Any chance you had a dream or daydream?”

“Rhodes, this happened! I wouldn’t make it up!” Zal had noticed that since he had told Rhodes a while ago about kissing Asiya, Rhodes had acquired a new suspiciousness about his words. He jotted more things down, too. He had been so reluctant to believe Zal had even acquired a girlfriend; maybe suddenly he was wondering if the sex was made up, too.

For a moment, he was. “Zal, it’s just that I have to make sure. I have to admit to you that this is all very much above and beyond what I would have thought possible. Zal, tell me, how does making out make you feel?”

“Well, it’s great. I like it, I really do. Don’t you want to know about the sex?”

“Zal, I need to just make sure: how do you know it’s sex? Are you sure you’re having intercourse?”

Zal turned red, and Rhodes wrote registers significant embarrassment at idea of sex . “Look, I know some things! And so does Asiya, you know. If you don’t believe me, you should at least believe she’d know a thing or two.”

Rhodes sighed. “Zal, is she still having delusions about hellfire and all that?”

“No. I mean, sometimes. She is. But she’s not crazy, not crazy about everything, at least. She knew I’d betray her, for instance. Don’t ask me, but she did.”

Rhodes was silent, nodding away, writing things down, feeling very, very distant from Zal, even though just a desktop separated them.

“Tell me, did you feel real desire for the boy?” he finally said.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Do you feel real desire for your girlfriend during sex?”

“Maybe. Yes. No.”

“Which is it, Zal?”

He was starting to feel upset — at what exactly, he didn’t know, but the past few Rhodes sessions, sessions that used to seem essential to him, now seemed more and more like something he longed to skip, and did. “Can we stop talking about this?”

“Zal, you do understand that you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to? You can still be normal, still be a man.” His words echoed Hendricks’s, from his debriefing phone call.

“I know that.”

Rhodes’s face softened a bit, and he put down his pen. Zal could feel his eyes, intense with scrutiny, intense with concern, drilling at Zal’s forehead. “Zal, you also know this: that you are asexual.”

He had known it was coming — it had come the last time, the time before that, and the time before that, when he had first mentioned Asiya and his newfound boyfriendhood. “I really am done talking about this.”

“Zal, you know you have to face that.”

“Things can change. You know that’s possible,” Zal murmured. “I’ve become things people thought were impossible.”

Rhodes nodded furiously. “You really have, Zal. But sexuality, that’s a tough one. You can’t face it. Tell me, how does it make you feel, making love?”

“I really can’t discuss this today. Maybe another time.”

“Did you tell your father?”

“No. Please don’t.”

“I don’t tell him things, Zal. What did your father think of her?”

“I don’t know. I suppose he was concerned.”

“Zal, would it surprise you to know I am concerned?”

“About what?”

“About your involvement with that girl. I’ve known you for a long time, Zal.”

“What’s so wrong with her?” He wondered what he had said to Rhodes to make him think Asiya was off. Or was it what Hendricks had said to him? All along, foolishly, Zal had thought Rhodes would have rejoiced — selfishly or for science — at these major developments in his life.

“Zal, I, too, am human. I don’t know everything — I only have my theories. You are welcome to bring her. I do couples therapy too.”

“We don’t need that.”

“She might need help herself.”

“You don’t think I should have a girlfriend, Rhodes — that’s the bottom line.”

No inhibitions, straightforward anger, Rhodes quickly scribbled. “Zal, I am concerned about you having that particular girlfriend.”

Zal dropped his head in his hands. “I suppose you want me to ask what you would do in my position, like we always do, right, Rhodes?”

“Zal,” he said, pen down again, eyes like lasers. “I would isolate the problem, as we always do. If it were me, I would leave her, for a time, at least. But you are not me.”

Not normal yet, in other words, Zal thought glumly. But he knew he was getting warmer as the troubles, the offenses, the complications, the anxieties were appearing one by one, on top of each other, like bubbles in a pot of boiling water. It was something like he used to imagine life would be.

Their session had ended and picked up the next time with the suggestion Rhodes thought was the antidote to all this: a job. He rationalized that if Zal was ready for a relationship, then certainly he was ready for a job. Now, that is progress towards normalcy, with minimum chance of hurt, he had said.

Hurt. It was a strange sensation, that feeling — a very real feeling. The more normal he became, the more he felt it, as if it were some raw throbbing glistening organ inside him, something between heart and stomach, a type of core, but a vulnerable fragile one that could become easily swollen, irritated, wounded. He felt softer and softer as days went by. Sometimes he found himself uncovering mirrors and really looking at himself and really seeing himself and weeping. Other times, he thought he was so close to smiling, so filled with joy, that he worried the hurricane of happiness inside him would cause his body to shatter, and he wondered if laughter was like that — violent like the worst weather, like the best orgasm, and as brawny and urgent as anger, an eruption that could hurt as well as heal.

And the more Rhodes and Hendricks and even strangers in the street, it seemed, worried about him because of Asiya, the more he felt he loved her. Poor Asiya, who grew less normal by the day, who started to need him far more than he did her.

One sunny September day, a little over 250 days since their meeting on what they affectionately called the Day the World Didn’t End, Asiya woke up screaming. Zal was on the other end of the bed, mummified by her too many sheets, and he quickly embraced her and put his hand over her mouth. Stop, it’s okay, it’s okay, he said, assuming it was a nightmare, one of her many nightmares. But she bit him and got up, naked, pacing, crying.

“Asiya, what’s wrong? Relax!”

“It’s coming, Zal, it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming.”

She was unstoppable.

She flung her arms wildly, bumping into walls, doors, looking like she needed to jump out of her own skin. Once, in Hendricks’s home, to Zal’s horror, a bird had become trapped inside — confused, crazed, directionless, like the subject of his old nightmares. Asiya’s wildness resembled that bird’s.

She fell to the floor, foaming.

Zal gathered her as she struggled against him. She felt very hot, and her eyes were rolling wildly.

Nine-one-one, she started hissing, through all the froth in her mouth.

It was different from the other times, worse than the last worst time. Something was happening to her. Zal suddenly worried she was actually going to die, or kill herself, with all that frenzy.