“Do you have something sweet in your mouth?” she asked, harried. I told her I had nothing sweet in the house. “You should really have something sweet in your mouth so your new year will be sweet,” she said.
“Fine, fine, fine…” I took out one of those mini-bottles of jam that you get for room service in hotels and I ate a bite of strawberry jelly. “Are you happy?” She was.
It’s been a strange and transformative year. I went to Azerbaijan to visit my dad who was on sabbatical there. I did Vegas with my ladies, where we ran into Paris Hilton and Lauren Conrad. I went to two weddings: One in Portland, OR, and the other in Port Townsend, WA. I saw Vampire Weekend at Radio City Music Hall (where I saw Lady Gaga in the American “2010” also). And I went to Fashion’s Night Out and saw chef David Chang and Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
I shot a gun.
I rode a motorcycle.
And I went on dates with 17 different Persian men (and three white guys), including five “physicians” (two generalists, two anesthesiologists, and a radiologist—all dumb as door-knobs), four bankers (one of whom used to play professional soccer and commenced to screw with my head), two watch/jewelry manufacturers (one of whom was Snoop Dogg’s personal jeweler and who gifted me a diamond-encrusted watch), and two pseudo-celebrities in the “Persian scene” (a pop star and a soap opera star). This is all novel because I've only dated white guys my entire life.
Dating Persian men after having been born and raised in the U.S. was—to use Persian-invented board games as an analogy—like playing backgammon with checker-playing skills: the pieces are the same, but the board and the rules and the objective are completely different.
In the end, I fell for another American in Persian skin just like me, and this did not end well--he had the same committment and wishy-washy issues of all the white guys I've dated in the past. If there is one thing I have come to accept about the differences in American dating and Persian dating, it is that American dating is individualistic while Persian dating is of a collectivist tradition in which one goes through with the deal for the good of the whole, for the good of pro-creating and extending family which is the goal above everything else. This is not the reality of my American existence. We are hyper-independent, we have no real need for other people (so we think), and ultimately, the choices are so plenty that there is no need to commit to any one thing (or person). It is a double-edged sword: For me, it means I am an independent, outspoken woman who lives by herself and makes her own living, although I am deeply lonely. For my paternal grandmother (whose grave I will visit in Tehran in a couple of months because, yes, that was another thing about this year: I found out what happened to her), it meant that her attempt to become an individual through divorce was the end of her life.
The last person to call me last night after the New Year was my cousin, who I have grown extremely close with through my transformation of becoming "more Persian" this year. After a year of laser hair removal, exorbitant clothing shopping, Brazilian waxes, manicures, growing my hair long and generally adopting the Persian “look,” I am accepted by the women in my family. What that means exactly, I’m not sure. I blew out the candles at the “haftsin,” and thought, “I have a whole other year to think about that.”
And then I did what came most easily: I picked up the phone and called for delivery from the place downstairs.
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