The Last Living Slut

by Roxana Shirazi

  Surinder would start chattering to Nasreen in their language, but all I could make out was chicken korma this or lamb bhuna that. The deafening thud of Hindi-Punjabi music signaled us to enter the hall. A harem of women danced in the middle of the room. Nasreen and I were instructed to go to the tables, to dance where the men were allowed to touch us, grab our hips, and grill us with persistent, sticky questions.

  “Do you do anything else?” They’d raise their eyebrows as their heads bobbed from side to side with leery grins.

  “No.” We had to say it with a smile and hold back the urge to hit them. When the Arabic music came on, mesmerizing through the thick smoky air, I’d make my way to the middle of the floor to dance. Slinking along to the music of my childhood, I shimmied, snaked, and rolled my body, sometimes putting the sequined veil on my head to get further nods and full-toothed grins of appreciation. The dance was pure temptation, wrapped in crushed vermillion saris, or belly-dancing costumes tasseled with sticky sequins and heavy beading with a promising veil drawn over the eye. It was more about the suggestion of flesh than the actual thing itself—a single raised brow, the lingering sweep of an eye, the shimmy of a hip.

  So I shimmied for money, with every curve, every snake-hip move, every quiver of the breast, belly dancing to perfection. In the corner, over by the decaying snooker table, dark-skinned and skinny as a sprig, Nasreen threw Bollywood moves at the ogling men around her.

  “Very skinny,” the men in turbans would say, shaking their heads sadly.

  “And a dark one,” others would murmur, as Nasreen forced her mouth to keep stretching for the smile she had to freeze on her face to pay the rent.

  The combination of me peering from behind the veil and my tits heaving out of my sequined top always caused a horny stir among the Arab men.

  One night, the disgusting, salivating oily men, with their faux Muslim beliefs and thick turbans, finally got to me, and I actually started feeling horny. I grabbed my heaviest head scarf, draped it over my head and mouth, went out into the middle of the dance floor, and removed my heavily tassled bra to go topless in front of the men. My tits jiggled, my nipples stiff as cherry pits as I played with them. But it was my covered hair and face, seen in this context, that was the most erotic to them: The symbol of Islam wronged with the taboo of a naked pair of breasts.

  If they had known I was still a virgin at age twenty-three, the men would have been even more infatuated with me. But I didn’t tell anyone that I had never done it with a boy—just a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl.

  I was concentrating on saving money for university and finding a nice boy who would love me. In time, the graduating-from-university bit happened, and so did the losing of my virginity. The love thing never did though. Instead, I fell hard for rock ‘n’ roll.

  Chapter 24

  Her Cunt Gripped Him Like a Warm Friendly Hand.

  It all started when I became homeless.

  It was August 2004 and I was forced to leave a beautiful flat in London I’d been sharing with a Finnish girl because she decided she wanted to be near her family and her two lovers. Unable to find anyone to share the rent, I couldn’t afford to stay there by myself. It was a Wednesday night as I stood in front of the gold-leafed and cherub-decorated hallway mirror and took one last look. My belongings were in storage and all I had was my handbag, stuffed with cosmetics and pajamas. That night I was going to stay with my friend Karen and her boyfriend, Tom, who worked as a record producer.

  I had graduated from university and had given a few speeches on gender and identity at conferences in Europe, which in turn started a battle in me: my inner dork was satisfied, but my urge to be wild was not. I had lost a little more innocence in that time, but I still felt I had to make up for my chaste and bullied teenage years. I don’t remember why I got so dressed up that night, but in the mirror I saw how high my hair was with extensions and how heavy my lids were with charcoal liner and lashes. With my fuchsia top and skinny trousers, I looked like some other girl. It was a balmy evening, the night before the rock magazine Kerrang!’s annual awards, when I rode the taxi to Karen and Tom’s house, my head full with curious thoughts of Thai food and my nose stuffed full of white lines. Karen wouldn’t be around until later, so Tom had booked a table at a Thai restaurant for us and his friend, Stuart Cable, the ex-drummer of the band Stereophonics.

  I was bored by the time I got to the restaurant. I hated Thai food and didn’t have the patience for chitchat with some former rock star. I associated the rock music scene with the smell of out-of-date piss in a rancid workingman’s pub. Though I liked the music itself, I thought of rock clubs as unnecessarily loud, dirty, smelly, and full of stupid people. So I wasn’t really that excited about meeting someone from that world. I felt free to be relaxed and completely myself.

  When I first saw Stuart, he was standing by the bar and roaring with laughter—the kind of laughter I’d only ever seen exhibited by men who were either really confident or really mad. He was Welsh. He wore a purple shirt and clichéd leather pants. There was a billowing, frizzy mane of hair underneath the black trilby hat he wore. It looked wild and unkempt, but it entertained me. When Tom introduced us, I couldn’t help but notice that the rock star had incredibly bright blue eyes; even in the inky shadows of the rainforest-themed restaurant they stood out, ready to fuck or fight. He immediately struck me as confident, but also down-to-earth—funny and a nice guy all in one. He was charisma bottled, like perfume and wine.

  We soon found ourselves at a table in a setting that was somehow both a rainforest and a Bangkok whorehouse. Within the brew of luscious greenery and foliage, taped bird squalls echoed and red lights swelled around us. So I ate things that I was not used to, all too spicy and hostile. I wanted my feta cheese salad and lamb grill, but I was starting to like this guy so I swallowed the cardboard Thai food with gusto and relish.

  I had never met anyone like him. He was like puréed sunlight, fizzy sherbet, enormous love. I found myself caught up in the sexual chemistry between us, which hooked me in a fresh, new way. When he spoke, his words were drenched in candy. He fucked my eyes with sharp rock-star attitude. And the whole time I felt so beautiful.

  After dinner, back at Tom’s place, more white lines were laid out on glass. I called my occasional fuck buddy, Lizzie, a well-bred girl fresh from private school. She was tall and blond—very English and dry like toast in her look and manner. But Lizzie was dirty as hell. She may have seemed like reserved royalty, but in the bedroom she became a porn star. Her sexual appetite was insatiable and she was the only girl I had ever met who could match my openness. I thought she would add a bit of spice to the tender meat of Stuart and I.

  Stuart was in town to host the Kerrang! awards the next day, and he was wired. We looked at his script and I helped him rehearse a few acerbic quips. Afterward, he sat on a stool by the huge French windows that overlooked the Thames. On the cream sofa, Lizzie and I undressed and started making out—licking and biting each other’s necks and nipples. Then I sat her down and straddled her, rubbing my sore premenstrual breasts over hers and grinding myself on her lap.

  Looking back, I wish she hadn’t been there. I ate her like vanilla ice cream, and she helped me have sex by shoving a piece of bath sponge inside me to conceal the fact that my period had started to trickle down. But by then I was cursing myself: All I really wanted was to be alone with Stuart.

  When Stuart and I finally escaped to the bedroom about an hour later, my heart was jitterbugging in delirium. We were alone in the peach-colored spare bedroom on a single bed and we devoured one another like savage lions. The square, tidy room with its tall, rose-patterned pink curtains, Catholic in its simplicity, was ready to witness our carnality.

  Stuart climbed on top and held me down. He pulled my freshly extensioned hair, and it hurt like a motherfucker. I remember looking at his face, his eyes blazing, his bulky, tattooed drummer’s arms pressing over me. It was a new experience, and I felt myself become Harlequin-we
ak and wide open for him. His fucking was fast and furious, and in that bright room, he looked right into my eyes and his lust and beauty poured down onto my body. As soon as I said, “I want you to cum on me,” he decorated my tummy.

  I didn’t understand how Stuart found the energy and ability to fuck me so masterfully all night, nor how his testicles were able to produce such a huge amount of sperm. By sunlight, I was exhausted but also on a natural high. I remember thinking as dawn crept into the room that I’d never felt so alive or so pure, like an eagle flying over the mountains. And I wanted more. A Jim Morrison lyric lodged in my brain: “Her cunt gripped him like a warm friendly hand.”

  In the morning, Stuart seemed pained and sheepish, with a look of guilt and inner turmoil about his girlfriend. But we departed as sweetly as we had met.

  The experience left an imprint on my existence and stained my flesh carnival-crimson. I was now hooked on the adrenaline rush of that euphoric feeling. The answer to everything I wanted in life was born out of that experience, so I followed it like Sleeping Beauty to the top of the tower. I started tearing through the pages of rock magazines as if in search of the Holy Grail. These rockers, I thought, would fulfill my hunger for a free-spirited life, for breaking the rules, for laughing, for knowing the meaning of it.

  Chapter 25

  By 2004, I hardly saw my family anymore, and it was better that way. Going back to my parents’ house in Bristol made me feel ill. It was permeated with the musty residue of past memories, reminding me of the silent bullied dork I once was. In London, I had a new flat in Camden and a new family in rock ‘n’ roll. I was determined to annihilate the past and save my life. The past as I’d known it was closer to extinction every day: back in Iran, the government had remained a strict dictatorship and free speech had become a crime punishable by death. My family was still a hotbed of political activity; none of them could ever go back to Iran.

  It was in December of that year that I officially entered the inner sanctum of rock bands. It was my mother’s birthday, and my present to myself was an all-night Kerrang! party where four new bands played—my first real rock-and-roll event. It was cold, and I didn’t know the meaning of too many white lines, so like an aardvark I vacuumed up fat lines of potent powder to help me deal with the cold and the pain of wearing eight-inch heels of shiny metal. Dolora—a schoolgirl friend of mine I called Lori—watched me like a curious kitten as I searched for slutty, attention-seeking clothes, each outfit begging me to pick it for this night, for this adventure. All the while James Douglas Morrison’s voice poured from the speakers as the Doors’ music filled the tiny room.

  Lori had never known her parents, and I didn’t ask her much about them because I could see a ring of pain darken the doorway of her eyes whenever I did. All I knew was that she was now staying with a distant relative and made a very long trek to her high school each day. Her seventeen-year-old buxom body was peach-soft, and so devoted to raging white that there were no tones or shadows on her skin. Just miles and miles of Antarctic snow. She had dyed jet-black hair fashioned like Bettie Page and a sunny giggle, eager to please. Though her sexual appetite was sky-high and she fucked with the ferocity of a wild animal, she’d never had an orgasm. Many girls of all ages in our social circle had tried and repeatedly failed to make her cum. I wanted to take her under my wing and look after her. She was becoming my dearest and most loved confidante—and, besides, I really liked fucking her.

  Outside, the winds and ice of December did not deter me as we searched for a cab. Inside the taxi, my head whirled like a cuckoo clock and my heart couldn’t wait any longer as we snaked through Hyde Park toward Kings Cross, the part of London spawned from vomit and cruelty, a nauseating zigzag of pollution and orphaned construction work.

  When we found the venue amid the bowels of this industrial shit hole, it added a taste of bitterness to my cocaine-numbed tongue. A cobbled pathway led to the tiny door of the club—a pathetic attempt to whisper, “I am surrounded by warehouses, but I have character.” So my ankles battled with my fucking high heels to balance my wobbly body on the little stones as I lagged behind Lori.

  Passing through the club’s tiny door, we entered a black hollow gut where strangers walked around, their eyelashes spitting neon-blue mascara, their clothes aggressive to the common man’s eye. In one lonely corner, over by the toilets, a Mötley Crüe tribute band conducted auditions. Vince Neils of every shape and size took turns at the mic: skinny and fat Vince Neils, pre-op and post-op Vince Neils came forward to “Kickstart My Heart” and “Shout at the Devil.” My ambition for the night had been to stand in front of the Crüe auditions and see if I could spot any potential for wild adventure. But my objective evaporated into the black night as, fueled by cocaine, decomposed by vodka and whiskey, I charged around the two-story club like a mule, looking, looking, with Lori at my heels.

  A band called Poison the Well was onstage. It was basically a guy standing still and shouting with a demon-horror-movie voice while four guys clanged and banged instruments behind him. Even in my obscure state, I couldn’t stand the sound.

  I tumbled downstairs to the female toilets, and I could see the line was a foot long. If I joined the end of it, I knew my bladder would putrefy with all the toxins I’d put into it. On the other hand, there were only a few guys in the men’s toilets. So I squatted down in the urinals and took a much-needed piss with the guys. I’d been brought up with manners, so naturally I apologized to the men staggering in. Their double-takes jerked them awake from their drunken stupor. I looked up to see a row of limp penises dangling above me. The stench of stale urine wafted through my hair. The obliterated boys woozily nodded their approval of my vagina and my brazenness. Only when an old man with a battered leather jacket and no teeth looked at me like I was Satan did I suddenly feel ashamed. Still, I recommend that all females fuck the queue and take advantage of the gents’ washrooms.

  Walking around the club that night—with all the freaks with their illogical haircuts, the wrinkly punk men, the child goths, and the vibe of illicit chemicals—I felt at home. I was Cinderella at the ball flying like an eagle: eyes observant, sharp, marinating in the scene. My tits were Jelly Cones on show, firm and huge, my legs dying to spread open for a rocker. It was the same freedom of soul I’d felt running around in my cherry-print dress in the mud alleys of Tehran at dusk.

  Upstairs, I stood and watched a little emo band, InMe, all Essex energy and Bambi eyes lined with kohl, whining loudly as young Japanese girls with Hello Kitty backpacks went ballistic. Soon, it was two a.m. and time to go downstairs, where the headliners, a boy metal band called Bullet For My Valentine, were taking the stage.

  Their name seemed interesting, so I bulldozed my way to the front to see what the deal was. Next to me stood a girl with watermelon tits that would’ve whacked my eyes black and blue if she’d swung around. She was determined to make eye contact with the lead singer, a good-looking son of a bitch. I watched her technique and copied it. I hated the music, but I was looking for an adventure to water color my night. I held a condom in my hand and took off my lucky crotchless panties. While dancing, I threw my underwear at the lead singer’s feet.

  Then I realized: those panties were expensive. So when the band finished their set, I climbed onstage to retrieve them. He was standing there, the beautiful singer. The cocaine was swimming toward the pit of my belly, and grazing and gnawing at my crotch. So I asked him if he wanted to have a threesome with Lori and me.

  And that’s when I first went backstage. Backstage—that magical place where your dreams come true. Backstage. The word sounded like a delicious secret code, where decadent, exotic stories effortlessly domino into one another. Where there is only happiness and laughter, luscious lips and orgasms, loving friendships and chocolate cake. So I headed backstage.

  The security guy was a cliché: big and hostile.

  “I want to go backstage, please,” I announced, matter-of-fact, like I’d just arrived at a tea party.
>
  He looked us up and down as if we were on drugs, which we were. “You don’t have wristbands, so you can’t go,” he snapped, looking away as if watching a ball game in the distance.

  “What do you want me to do?” I said.

  A guy walking past stopped in his tracks and smiled. “If you suck my cock, I’ll give you a pass,” he said, as if this were a business transaction.

  I reveled in sleaze, and this seemed like the most typical of all rock clichés and I so wanted to do it. But I decided to take it one step further.

  “No. We’ll both suck your cock at the same time,” I said, motioning to Lori, who looked at me with a naughty glint in her china-doll blue eyes. I was a bad influence on her, but she was like a curious kitten, eager to devour any new sexual experience.

  The guy with the passes led us both through the doors. Just past them was a tiny room. He took us in there and unzipped his trousers. Getting down on my knees, I started the most perfect deep throat I could. Feeling bad, I decided to push Lori away, not wanting her to get involved. After thirty seconds, I stopped.

  “There you go,” I said.

  “Is that it?” he looked at me, his eyes pleading like Oliver Twist for more.