Tangled Life Lines & Post-Modern Passions

Relationships, affairs, memoir, healing.

Lest you think we’re done with Matt, I’m about to make things complicated. Not hugely so, but definitely diverging from the sequential telling of things. When I remember Matt now, my thoughts and heart land with all I just recounted.

Our meeting, our hot-cold ride with sweetness and explosions, my young twenty-something self coming of age in a “real adult relationship” with living together and sex and black coffee.

Also coming out as queer. And coming out as someone, in the end, who wanted more than Matt and “us” could offer, despite my love for him.

In short, I remember Matt and my then self mostly with tenderness and just a teeny measure of: What the fuck was I thinking? I can’t believe I let a guy treat me like that Oh my god have I changed!

Even this latter thread of remembrance is full of genuine gratitude. I harbour no anger or resentment towards Matt. I harbour no anger or resentment towards my then self.

I do recognize and take full responsibility for cultivating and indulging in my victim story. This dance took two.

And somehow, with time and space, I’ve become thankful to Matt and to my twenty-something self. They helped shape my being and becoming. They helped shape the person and relationships that came after.

That is now. Back then, something else was equally true. In the thick of it, my story with Matt was confused and tangled. It wove through other storylines, with other people and places.

This entry is for one those ones. This chapter includes Matt, but is less about him and more about intersecting plot lines. We’ll start with Muhsin.

As a first-year grad student at Georgetown, before meeting Matt, I was obsessed with a particular professor and mentor. Muhsin’s brilliance, creativity, and post-modern, non-conventional charm were intoxicating.

I fell hard and was his star pupil, sometimes writing entire sections of his articles and entire chapters of his books. He was married at the time but his wife was living abroad.

I have zero doubt I’d have slept with him, married or not; I was enraptured. But, though he flirted with me during that time, we did not sleep together. Then I met Matt, replacing one infatuation with another.

The story of Muhsin, however, was not over.

In the midst of my time with Matt came an uncertain, still hopeful pause. After finishing my Master’s, I left for a year-long, intensive Arabic language fellowship in Cairo.

I hated the thought of leaving Matt. Through tears and goodbyes at the airport, I told him once again that I loved him — willing him to feel the same and to finally, finally say so.

He did not. So we left things without decision or closure. Put differently, we left wondering whether Matt would hold out until my return or find something shiny in my absence.

Upon settling in Cairo — my second time around, having spent a semester there as an undergrad — I followed Matt’s lead. For the time being, at least, we seemed to remain a couple.

I pined for him, hoping against hope he could hold out as I completed my year away. This was before everywhere internet and Zoom and smart phones, mind you. Our communication was through old school email — all black screens with blinking green type in tiny campus computer labs.

Once in a great while, I made a pricey, long-distance phone call. Mostly, our “relationship” was a stretch of blank spaces and wondering.

During this time, Muhsin passed through Egypt — likely for work, but he was also born there, in southern Aswan.

He contacted me, wanting to meet. We spent a beautiful, magical Cairo evening with one of his friends, hanging out in a tucked away local spot full of populist colour and empty of foreigners.

We drank cheap Stella beers and what I think were shots of whiskey as the soulful voice of Umm Kulthum filled the space and my entire being. As midnight came and went, we eventually spilled out onto always awake city streets.

The friend took leave. Muhsin asked me back to his room.

Finally, after much fantasy, I had my chance! I could barely believe it as he pulled me close on his 5-star balcony overlooking the Nile. But as he fumbled the kiss, I pulled away. I said I could not do more.

As much as I longed to, I was “dating” Matt and would not cheat on him. He pressed himself on me anyway, convincing me to climb into bed where we would “just sleep.” There, his pressing continued until, eventually, I simply had to leave.

Returning home to my own apartment in the near dawn hours, I called Matt. In tears, I confessed to kissing Muhsin while insisting there was nothing more and I was so, so sorry. I begged him not to leave me. He didn’t (and was likely, I later discovered, dating someone else anyway).

Refusing Muhsin’s advances after years of soliciting them was excruciating. And yet, something about how he pushed erased the allure.

It was very sloppy. Very ordinary. Very disconnected.

The version I’d imagined didn’t go that way. My fantasies were less coarse, less clumsy, less…male.

Still, I don’t like leaving things unfinished. And though my crush on Muhsin deflated that night, we ultimately did carry through — still incompletely and even more unsatisfactorily.

When I was back in the states for winter holidays and Matt dumped me (neither the first time nor the last), I contacted Muhsin, went to his DC condo, and let him guide my head down to his lap.

The whole thing was exciting at the time but also not really. I was thrilled more by the idea of finally being with my professor and mentor than by Muhsin himself.

This was no longer my fantasy. He was so off the pedestal.

I was also grieving Matt and freshly heartbroken. What’s more, the entire arrangement was demeaning and basic. As we sat on his condo couch, Muhsin had me read his own writings aloud to him, pausing periodically to gush over his brilliance. Then he ushered me briskly and unceremoniously out the door.

Months later, I learned why.

A friend and former classmate invited me for dinner. After a lovely evening, she asked point blank whether I’d slept with Muhsin.

Turns out, she’d been having an affair and staying with him during that time. Turns out, she’d come home shortly after I left. Meanwhile, he was cheating on his wife with both of us.

I was back with Matt and over Muhsin by then, but my friend was heartbroken. Upon leaving the restaurant, we went to his condo (he was out of town) and trashed it (without causing actual damage).

Mostly I remember her crying and both of us laughing hysterically. It was horrible and hilarious and fantastic.

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