PART 1 - MEET BOBBY

No matter how many years I filled, there is a hole in my heart that marriage couldn’t mend. Could he do it? Though he’s more robot than a Romeo? I’ll give him my all if somewhere in that composite chest has space for me. There’s an urge to fight or even die for it, like The Iranian people. Changing the flag of the future has never been so difficult, but necessary.

Is it a problem of doctrine? Is it not feeling? Indoctrinated in relationships as I was with my ex-husband, you’d think I wouldn’t feel a thing. But I still need to. That’s why I’m sitting in this airport now, watching men of all shapes fit themselves into air travel’s compact box of scans, screenings, and security procedures. What a metaphor for romance, huh?

“Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.” - Matthew 7:24-25.

First principles are life’s bedrock. The divalent nature of truth— permitted or forbidden applies, especially in matters of desire. Scripture is less flexible. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife. It doesn’t say act or touch. It says want. 

Yet I still wander. Does he feel that way? I wonder. When people say the heart wants what it wants, I hear laziness. Want is unexamined appetite. However, it flashes red like a pulsing phone notification, alive, begging to be pushed. The IranRevolution is not an aesthetic choice. It is a call for complete recognition and unrealized potential among an oppressed majority. I felt that way when I saw him walking toward me in the terminal.

Oh my nerves! For some reason I had no idea what to do with my hands so I sat on them.

“Anne? Anne Covenant right?” he asked.

“Uh yes, it is. It’s B…B—” 

“Bobby! Bobby Crystal. But Bob’s just fine.”

“Right! Hey Bob!” He moved in closer. The range was handshake or hug. I had about 2 seconds to decide which one. Handshake meant revealing cold soggy palms. A hug was risky, too. This was a quick time event and missing meant an awkward wait before boarding.

Before I knew it, I was on my feet embracing him like a sports teammate, a hard wrap with odd jostling.

“Nice to see you Bob!”

“Uh yeah it’s… good to see you too Anne.”

Judging by the tone in his voice I’d failed the QTE. But it was worth it, feeling the heat from that hard frame of his immediately warmed my hands, or at least made me forget that always on social anxiety.

“Can I sit here?” he pointed at the empty seat between me and a very fat foreign guy immersed in a movie on his phone.

“All yours.”

The first five minutes were logistics and serendipitous coincidences. Same flight, same destination (Las Vegas), same reason: work of some kind. Each revelation linked us closer and gave my body that good constriction feeling— when the muscles rumble under proper strain between release and rupture. All except one. 

“You know how much of a cyborg I can be these days. I use AI for everything, have a metal tibia. I’m becoming more machine than man at this point.”

“Mhmm.” I wanted to lift his pant leg up and run a finger over the skin to ring with that metal skeleton. That was the bomb though. Truth blows up even the most vivid fantasy.

“Yeah my wife hates when I talk like a robot. She’s not so into all the tech.”

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.” Exodus 20:17

Though it doesn’t mention ‘husband’, the commandment still applied.

Bobby was married.