Parts of Desire

Soma99 gave this story a proofread before publishing, and I thank her for doing so.

*

Even though I'd known for some time that the company hadn't been doing well, it still came as a shock one midsummer Friday when we were all herded into the boardroom and informed that we were out of business. Losing your comfortable mid-level job, even when it's not your fault, is traumatic, and even more so when it comes a month after your former long-term girlfriend finally moved out of your apartment. I went from working 60-hour weeks and spending my scant amounts of free time fighting with Jocelyn over petty garbage, to having all the free time in the world in an empty, quiet apartment. But hey, life goes on, I qualified for unemployment, and since I'd completely fallen into my previous job and still didn't know what I wanted to do when I "grew up", I had planned to take some time to figure out what I wanted to do next before actually going out and doing it.

Jocelyn and I had dated for ten years. Our relationship had started passionately when we were both grad students, and evolved into a mutually loving and caring adult one. For years I had thought we'd get married eventually, but as we grew up we also just grew apart. I'd supported her through law school, and she supported me through my useless M.A. in history, and after graduation she landed a good partner-track position with a local labour law firm. But she gradually grew to not be able to switch off the ass-kicking bitch mode she developed to succeed in her job. It had started with developing a tendency to order me instead of asking me to do things, and eventually ended with two proud and stubborn people discovering that we no longer were able to compromise with each other. I dug in my heels at her as she became more of a tyrant, and while she was never violent or abusive or crossed any lines in that respect, eventually we both realized that the relationship needed to end. When it finally did, it was as mutual as a breakup can be. We said our goodbyes and she moved out as soon as she was able to find alternate housing. We were still friendly enough to chat with each other as needed, but the love had been gone for a long time.

So at 34 I was pretty much starting over. I was single and had tons of free time for the first time in almost a decade. I was an only child and my parents lived in another city, and apart from a few friends in town that weren't "couples friends", I was alone. I spent the rest of the summer hiking and cycling, watching the Blue Jays, cooking elaborate meals for one, playing video games and practicing my guitar. I put in half-assed applications for a few jobs way above my level, and I repainted my bedroom to get rid of Jocelyn's lavender walls. I tried dating, but the app-based dating scene just confused me, and I didn't get beyond a few cups of coffee with a few women I wasn't that interested in. I was far beyond my days of partying and clubbing, and the women my age I met online that I actually met up with in real life had either kids or serious emotional issues, or sometimes an entertaining mix of both. I thought I was a good catch, still, with most of the dirty blond hair I grew up with still attached to my head, a trim, fit six-foot, 165-lb figure and an easygoing personality, but it was hard to get past the "gainfully employed" checkbox on most women's list of boyfriend requirements, and it was difficult to talk about "finding myself" on a first date without coming across like a hippie. I'm sure I came across as a bit of a jobless loser, and I wasn't interested in being anyone's stepfather, so none of my meetups went anywhere.

As summer moved into fall, the daily quiet started getting to me. My apartment was centrally located between downtown and the local university, a two-bedroom loft in an old factory building with a great view of a local park, and while I could easily afford it even without Jocelyn paying half the rent and utilities, it was expensive enough that unemployment cheques weren't quite maintaining my lifestyle the way I'd been used to. Plus, as an extrovert I longed for company. And so, on a whim, I placed an ad on the local housing website frequented by university students, looking for a quiet, studious graduate student. But, I decided, I didn't want to be tied down for an entire year with a subletter in case it turned out to be a big mistake -- I had never lived with a complete stranger before -- so I advertised that I was ideally looking for a four month sublet only, for the fall semester.

Within a couple of days, the only response to my ad came from Saudi Arabia, a guy called Iftikhar Al-Badawi. His English was poor, but I gathered that he was a M.Ed. student coming to study the education system in Canada, and was only planning a single research semester abroad. His schedule worked perfectly with mine, and best of all, once we agreed on terms, he wired me first and last month's rent for a lease starting September 1, no questions asked, even though he wasn't due until late September -- something about needing to start the term at King Saud University in Riyadh before coming here. Sweet!

And with all that in mind, I was completely unprepared when, at about 10 PM on a Friday night in late September, I opened the door to find a bedraggled, exhausted-looking young Arabic woman, dressed in a white hijab, black abeya robes, and a light jacket, surrounded by luggage and staring suspiciously back at me.

"Iftikhar?" I asked, bewildered.

"No, Iftikhar is my father, he arranged this flat for me", she responded in excellent English, with just a hint of an accent. "I'm looking for Marion Kershaw?"

"I'm Marion Kershaw", I responded.

The woman stared, processing what I'd said. "Forgive me, but is Marion not a woman's name in English?"

"Technically, if it's spelled M-A-R-I-A-N it's a woman's name, and if it's spelled M-A-R-I-O-N it's a man's name", I repeated for the thousandth time since my parents saddled me with my great-grandfather's decidedly feminine moniker. "I usually go by Ryan."

The woman stared blankly.

"But Marion is a man's name. Even John Wayne's real name was Marion Morrison."

More silence.

"You know, John Wayne, the Duke... cowboy movies..." I trailed off.

The woman grabbed the handle of her suitcase and made a turn towards the elevator. "I cannot stay here. It is not appropriate for me to live with a man who is not my husband. I must find a hotel. I am sorry for the mix-up, Mr. Marion, but I must leave."

"Hold on", I commented. "It's late on a Friday night and it's homecoming weekend. I don't know that you'll find a hotel, and even if you do, how long has it been since you slept?

"About thirty hours", she responded. "Riyadh, Bahrain, Heathrow, Ottawa, then here. I couldn't sleep on the airplane."

"Well, you've paid for this room anyway. Your bedroom is just over there. It's private, and it has a locking door. I promise I won't bother you, and no one back home has to know I'm a man. Why don't you sleep here tonight, and if you want to move out, we can figure something out when you're rested and thinking clearly, and I can help you find a place. I mean, do you really want to spend an hour or more in your current state looking for a hotel when you have a room right here?"

I could see the wheels turning in her head, and finally she caved in. "Okay", she answered. "I will sleep here tonight and then tomorrow I will figure out where I am to live for the next few months."

"What's your name?" I asked.

"I am Rania Al-Badawi", she responded.

"Pleased to meet you."

I helped Rania with her suitcases, and I heard the bedroom door lock behind her as soon as she was safely inside.

It was afternoon the next day before I finally heard stirrings in the guest room, and another twenty minutes or so before the young woman finally emerged, hijab and abeya neatly in place, and perfectly-applied makeup covering a face that was showing a look of some desperation.

"Where is the toilet?" she asked.

"Down the hall, last door on the right."

She wordlessly sprinted and I heard the door slam. Momentarily there was a flush, and eventually she emerged again, now holding a laptop and some official-looking university documents.

Over the next few hours I helped her scour the classified websites. While I was not thrilled at the possibility of losing my renter, I had no intention of returning the security deposit or September's unused rent, so at least I had made a little money without having to do anything. While I didn't know much about Saudi Arabia, I knew vaguely that Arabic women would not consider living with a man who was not a relative, so I was resigned to losing my tenant. A full afternoon's work, though, convinced me was I had already suspected -- Rania was too late. All the decent apartments were taken, and at the very least, there were no fall term sublets available. The remaining options were either seedy basement apartments in run-down neighbourhoods, places that were an hour by bus from campus on the city's appalling public transit system, or required a full year's lease.

Finally, Rania slumped in her seat in depression. "It's hopeless, Mr. Marion. There is nothing left and nowhere I can live. At the very least, I would have to tell my father I needed more money and that he set me up to live with a strange man, and that would shame him and me both. I cannot ask him to do that, and I cannot find anywhere else that I could live alone or with another woman."

"Why did you have your Dad set up the arrangements anyway?" I asked with some curiosity.

"I would not know how. In Saudi Arabia, women cannot sign leases or any legal documents. My father must sign for me until I marry, at which point my husband will do it for me. If I have a son someday and my husband dies, my son will sign for me. It has to be a male relative."

"And what do you think about that?" I asked, shocked.

Rania sighed. "I have come to Canada for a number of reasons, but the biggest one is that I am studying co-educational learning in primary school. We do not have coed schools in Saudi Arabia, and women do not have rights the way they do in most other countries. I could have gone to Oman or Qatar or one of the neighbouring countries that has coed schools, but this is my only opportunity to travel alone outside of the Arabian Peninsula before I am to be married. I wanted to see what it is like for women in a land where they are truly equal. And then, maybe I can write a thesis calling for mild, incremental reforms that won't get me in trouble."

"You're engaged?" I glanced down, and confirmed that she wasn't wearing a ring.

"My father has selected a husband for me, yes", she said evenly. I wasn't sure how to respond.

"But", she said, seeming to make her mind up, "I wanted to see life in Canada the way that women experience it here. Tell me, is it common for men and women to live together when they aren't married?"

"Yep", I responded. "I haven't lived with another guy since college. And I've never been married."

"And your apartment is beautiful." She walked slowly over to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up my loft-style living room, and stared out at the fall colours, just starting to emerge as the nights grew longer and colder. The park looked magnificent illuminated under the late afternoon sun. "Your country is lovely, and I have never seen such colour." She took a deep breath. "My family is not going to come and visit, inshallah, since I am only here for three and a half months. No one has to know that Marion is actually Mr. Marion."

"Ryan", I corrected.

"Ryan", she agreed. "My family is fairly liberal, as Saudi families go. Privately, they believe in greater rights for women, and they interpret the Quran and the Hadiths in a more, how do you say, metaphoric sense than some. But they will still be greatly dishonoured if I am discovered, and my safety could be in danger from the religious police when I return home. At the very minimum, my future husband could disown me and abandon the marriage, which would bring great dishonour to my family. But you have spent this entire day helping me try to find a solution, after taking me in yesterday, when you stand to lose money by doing so. You didn't have to help me, and you have, and you have treated me with respect and compassion so far. I believe you are a good man. And lastly, I have come to Canada to do as the Canadians do." Rania took another long, deep breath. "I will stay here, if you promise to keep my secret."

"I promise", I responded.

The next month passed uneventfully. Rania was a perfect roommate in a lot of ways, quiet and studious when she was home, and gone entirely more often than not. She spent long hours daily at the university or on site visits to local schools, and usually wouldn't return until well into the evening. When she was home, she spent nearly all of her time locked in her room, emerging only for meals and bathroom breaks.

I tried making small talk, but she mostly wasn't having it. Our socializing was limited mostly to her making use of my car when we needed groceries, though she couldn't drive herself, as she'd never learned how. Women were not permitted to do so in Saudi Arabia. Even then, she insisted on taking her cart with her and shopping alone as soon as we got to the store.

As roommates go, she was the easiest one I had ever lived with, but while I appreciated her monthly rent cheque, her presence did little to assuage my loneliness. Our relationship never proceeded beyond bare-bones cordial, and I never once saw her without full hijab, makeup, and shapeless black robes.

It was after 11 on a Sunday night in late October that I saw my first glimpse through Rania's prim and proper façade. I was sitting on my bed with my Telecaster guitar plugged into my laptop, trying to work out a chord progression, and listening to the mix on my Bluetooth headphones so as not to disturb any of my neighbours. All of a sudden I heard my headphones make the "chirp" noise that indicated they had connected to a new audio source, and then, before I had time to investigate and switch it back, I heard the unmistakeable sound of porn in my ears -- rhythmic slapping, female moans, male grunting, and wet noises. I grinned, wondering which of my neighbours was having a wank. Then the sounds stopped abruptly, and shortly after a new movie started, still porn, but obviously a different clip.

I listened to the soundtrack change four or five times, as though the mystery wanker couldn't settle on a film to get off to, and finally, after a few more minutes of this, the sounds changed again to... Arabic pop music? Then, before I could think about what that meant, there was a knock at my bedroom door.

I opened the door to Rania, dressed for the first time in my presence in clothes I would have recognized as normal. She was wearing pale pink button-up pyjamas, still conservative, but actually accenting her body instead of hiding it. For the first time, I could see she had a nice figure, slim and petite, but curved in all the right places, with an hourglass shape and perky breasts that I guessed were maybe a large B cup. She clearly wasn't wearing a bra, and her nipples, unusually large relative to the size of her breasts, were poking angrily through her PJ top. But in spite of her having such a killer body, my eyes were drawn to her face -- she was remarkably pretty with her soft features no longer obscured by the frame of the hijab. She had dark, lively eyes, a small, upturned nose, full lips, and her olive complexion was clear and flawless, though her face was deeply flushed. And most astonishingly, she was topped by long, luxurious coal-black hair, hanging loosely past her shoulders, and shining like the hair belonging to one of the girls on a shampoo commercial. I had had no idea her hair was so long. She was a vision of beauty.

"Ryan, I'm sorry to bother you so late, but I saw your light was still on", she said. "I'm having trouble with my computer and I wondered if you could take a look at it? I know you know more about them than I do."

"Sure, what's wrong?"

"I'm trying to listen to music in my room and I can't make any sound come out of my headphones."

I followed her into her room, the first time I'd been in the second bedroom since she moved in. She hadn't really decorated and the walls were still bare, though clothes were lying scattered around the room, including her abeya folded on the back of her desk chair. A stack of boring-looking library books about educational theory sat on the desk itself. A laptop was sitting on the bed next to an identical pair of Bluetooth headphones to the ones I owned. I quickly grabbed her computer, noting that the browser was open to what appeared to be an Arabic music site. I opened the Bluetooth settings, and sure enough, she'd paired her computer with my headphones. I switched the pairing over to hers, and then tested it. The same song I'd heard a few minutes earlier started blaring from the headphones on the bed. Rania smiled in gratitude, and for the first time, I noticed her smile -- mischievous, playful, blazing white. She had slightly crooked eye teeth, but the imperfection only made her smile more attractive to me. I had to consciously order myself not to stare.

"Oh, thank you Ryan, what was wrong?" she asked innocently.

"The Bluetooth pairing failed, so I rejigged the settings and it's working now", I semi-lied. I thought it best to save her the embarrassment of telling her what the real problem was.

"I can see why Western women like having men around the house", she winked at me. "Good night", she hinted, and turned towards the door.

I wanted to ask about her attire, but I also knew she probably wanted to get off, so I decided to beat a retreat and ask her about it in the morning. We wished each other good night and she closed the door behind me. I heard the lock click once I was out of the room.

A voice in my head was screaming at me to leave her alone and go back to my room, but I hadn't gotten laid since Jocelyn left, and my cock, now uncomfortably tight in my pants, was in control of my decision-making. I stayed at her closed door for a minute, straining my ears, and soon enough I began to hear faint, rhythmic wet noises along with the odd creak of the bed. I wanted to stay for the whole show, but something in my conscience finally got the better of me, and I retired to my room, feeling slightly guilty. I pulled my cock out and quickly jerked off to thoughts of my housemate doing the same on the other side of the hall, cumming fast and hard into my hand.

The next morning, I was making breakfast when Rania emerged. To my surprise, she still was wearing the same pyjamas I'd seen the night before, and her long hair was uncombed and messy. She looked the way any woman does in the morning, which was only a shock because up to last night I'd never seen her in anything less than perfect makeup and Arab dress. Hell, she'd get dolled up to go have a shower if she knew I was home. I offered her a cup of coffee, which she gratefully accepted, slinking sleepily into a chair at the breakfast table.

"You know, in Saudi Arabia we don't drink coffee the way you do here", she started thoughtfully. "If we have the time to do it properly, we make

kahwa

, Arabic coffee, and serve it out of tiny cups, with dates or

halwa

. If it's first thing in the morning, it's usually just Nescafé. But this stuff you make here is really good. I can see why Canadians take it this way, and the warmth is nice, what with it being so cold out."

"Thanks, though I warn you, it's only going to get colder out", I responded. I am a bit of a coffee snob and I buy whole beans from a Honduran wholesaler in town, so it was nice to hear she could taste the difference. I sipped from my own cup and tried not to stare at her luxurious hair, of which I was still in awe. "It seems like maybe you're starting to go native with some other things as well."