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EXCERPT TWO: "SPEED DATING"
The heat wave was baking all of northern Europe, and it was having an unsettling effect on Imran, in London. He wrote anxious messages to me all through the week.
From: imranbegum@gmail.com
Date: August 25, 2003 06:45:00 AM GMT+02:00
To: claire@berlinski.com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Booked!
Old Dear Friend,
I'm 39 and 7/12 today. My mind makes me sad about this. Something to do with still being single and not yet having found a woman, age 33-37, to marry within 10-12 months. (Children 6-8 months after that.)
But as I may have told you, I designed two pairs of shoes to celebrate my birthday! Both will be made to the shape of my feet. The first pair arrived this week, a heavy walking brogue in grained cordovan, an American wingtip style. I hope you see them one day!
One of my birthday resolutions is to give up talking about money and expensive purchases. I find it alienates me from people with less material ease. Or rather, they alienate themselves. So. No more talk of weekly averages, workshop revenue, or the latest Triangle Magellan concerto amplifier and bass driver (equipped with a perforated shield fitted over the motor's cylinder head in order to provide thermal dissipation!). Suffice it to say that I'm enjoying my burgeoning jazz collection more than ever and that treble definition and bass clarity are adequate!
News from you, I hope, prontissimo!
Distant as ever, devoted as usual,
Immie
From: claire@berlinski.com
Date: August 25, 2003 06:45:00 AM GMT+02:00
To: imranbegum@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Booked!
Why ten to twelve months? And why age 33-37? Christ it's hot. Too hot to write more, sorry.
xxxC.
His reply, as usual, came at the end of the 50-minute analytic hour.
From: imranbegum@gmail.com
Date: August 25, 2003 07:51:00 AM GMT+02:00
To: claire@berlinski.com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Booked!
Dear Distant Friend,
In my experience, for at least ten months my judgment of any woman to whom I'm attracted is thoroughly queered by fantasy and idealization. I would prefer someone my own age, since partnerships between men and women separated by more than five years in age are inherently neurotic, but considerations of fertility are paramount, so I'll have to make do with a compromise. Younger women are rather attractive to me and I still dip my toe in periodically, but I'm very clear about the context. I''s like dining out at a special restaurant. A yearly treat but not like the daily eggs, bacon, bread and beans that we must live on. Conceptual caviar, we might call it. The wise person knows where the edge of the ledge is and doesn't fall off the mountains. Next patient is Anna, 55, judgmental and abusive. Like doing therapy with Goebbels. Must run.
As ever,
Immie
On the following scorching hot day, Imran had an anxiety attack.
From: imranbegum@gmail.com
Date: August 26, 2003 06:45:00 AM GMT+02:00
To: claire@berlinski.com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re. Re. Booked!
C. Quite frightened about my upcoming foray into speed dating. Thinking about it brings on hollowness in stomach, tightness in chest, sensitivity to noise and light, breathlessness, loss of appetite (70%) and loss of sexual desire (45%). I have an unpleasant fantasy of facing twenty painful romantic rejections in less than an hour. Must run to buy new shirts, braces, socks, bowties, colognes, and cufflinks. Love, ~I.
I was not particularly worried on his behalf, however, and responded right away to tell him so. Imran was unusually attractive to women, partly because he was a fine-looking man, but in larger part because after years of practicing psychotherapy, he would by habit immediately ask any woman he met about her emotional life, then, also by habit, arrange his body and features to suggest he was listening compassionately, actively and without judgment. This caused approximately forty to forty-five percent of the women he dated (according to his statistics) to unburden themselves to him with unusual candor and then to fall in love with him, although when he wrote about this, he placed “fall in love” in quotation marks, for he found the sudden intensity of their emotions suspect.
That said, Imran was lovable. A more curious student of human nature you could not hope to meet, nor a man more touchingly devoted to the ideal of curing pain and easing suffering. I was certain that for the woman — an extremely punctual one — he would make a wonderful husband.
