Khashayar J. Khabushani
It’s 2019 and I’m desperate to escape the complicated man I’m dating, the two jobs I’m juggling, my shoebox apartment in New York City. I convince myself I need to be in the arms of a woman, and I know exactly who to reach for.
I first met Lana in Vienna, where we spent one fulfilling and devastating weekend together in 2015, ended by borders and visas. Still, I’m stubborn, and want more of her. “Dearest Lana,” I write, summoning the courage to ask to see her again. She is now married, and I know I should be happy for her, but Lana insists I come to her anyway, that her marriage won’t prevent us from continuing what we started—that our summer will be the Before Sunset to our Before Sunrise.
Our romance takes place in the Serbian summer light; a string of charged and tender days in Belgrade, her girlhood city, where she rents a quiet Airbnb for us with a balcony from which it seems summertime hues never stop shimmering. To me, Belgrade—its smoggy air and sidewalks packed with street vendors—feels as close as I’ll ever get to experiencing my ancestral land, Iran; the place where I belong but can never belong to. I fall in love with the city, our version of it, and I fall for Lana too. We drink sweetened iced lattes under the bright Balkan sun and eat mediocre fried food at a strange American-themed diner and spend nights together in bed, our chests sweaty and sticky. On one warm, moonlit evening we sit at a riverfront restaurant, where mosquitoes feast on our arms and legs, until her brother arrives, chain-smoking Lucky Strikes, and drives us home so recklessly that maybe Lana doesn’t notice how my eyes radiate with want: that I’d like to do to his tall and muscled body all the things she loves to do to mine.
On our last night together, as Lana whispers her final need into my mouth, I search for a word to call what is ours—how it’s blossomed in full but, tomorrow, will be left ripe.
Naoise Dolan
I can’t say exactly when or how the voice notes started. Probably she sent the first one, on the impulsive basis that it was easier or more pleasurable than texting.
The idea of “just” sending a voice note is not generally a sentiment I relate to. I express myself maybe three percent as well orally as I do via keyboard. I’m almost too fluent a texter: because I can instantly compose several paragraphs for anyone about anything, I risk seeming more romantically invested than I am. In short-term entanglements I have found myself consciously suppressing the brio with which I reflexively approach any written form. I nearly type a semicolon, then opt instead for a spliced comma to intimate what a chill gal I am.
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