I have had this book lying on my bedside table for the past couple of months, providing me with some much needed, albeit infrequent, distraction from my thesis writing. The book is called The Imperfect Enjoyment and is a memoir written by Dewan Gibson, an American novelist.
I don’t know where to start with this book. The language is so inappropriate and the view on women at times so demeaning, that I have no idea why I find the book so good. I am pretty sure that the book will not make it to the Middle East because of its interesting vocabulary and then of course the forbidden love story between the writer and a young exchange student from Bahrain. But you never know – it might. The book is really funny, sometimes in a very boyish way, but still, but it also contains serious matters and perspectives for interesting discussions.
By boyish I mean boyish. This is definitely a book written by a guy, and it is so honest that it sometimes makes your toes crumble: “(…) this motel in the stronghold of conservatism offers free access to the Playboy channel, but I’m just too tired to watch moaning blondes with landing-strip pubic hair”, and sometimes it even makes your stomach turn like when he describes his nightly adventure with a girl who all of a sudden gets a very bad stomach and floods his toilet with s***…
The subtitle of the book is a bachelor’s memoir, and indeed it is, or maybe a more correct title would have been the story of my women? The book tells the story from the author’s first kiss in the seventh grade with a neighborhood girl with a fancy Jheri curl, through his first sexual experience with a plane Jane with a recurring rash on her upper lip, to his first relationship with the curvy Puerto Rican Rocio, to his first one night stand and then on to Haniyah.
Haniyah is an exchange student enrolling as an undergrad at the university where Dewan is starting his graduate program. She reveals her background on their first date going to the movies, telling him that she is from Bahrain. But in the beginning things are simple – “…I don’t really care where she is from. What is on my mind is asking her to hide a Pepsi and a pack of Skittles in her purse before the movie and having the opportunity to get to know her better afterwards”.
So the relationship develops and grows, and for a while everything is bliss. But also in this open and liberal setting the latent problems reaches the surface. Haniyah’s brother gets protective and mad, her mom is about to keep her in Bahrain after being back for a summer vacation, Dewan has troubles accepting that Haniyah can never tell her family about their relationship, and then there is the constant struggle with the cultural differences and trying to understand each other’s point of view.
When Haniyah comes back to the States after her first summer break devastated because her mother almost wouldn’t let her leave, Dewan doesn’t get it: “Just do what you want to do. She has her own life, you have your life. I don’t get it”. The typical cultural gap.
But they stay together in spite of the obvious obstacles – but in the end the relationship is ill-fated. I know it is a memoir, so if it happened in this way it can’t be changed, this is what happened. But I still feel a little bit sad about the turn out. The story supports the general assumption that culturally mixed relationships in the end are without happy endings. They always seem to end in breaks. So I am left wondering…
). So in it came – 2 bottles of Arak, some water to mix it with (nice Lion’s milk…) and then cheers.
).
