Polygamist , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - William Irvine

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130 pages

English

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In The Polygamist, William Irvine explores love, sex, and marriage within the context of an unusual household. An exploration of sexual fantasy and desire, ultimately The Polygamist is a coming of age story with a strong spiritual theme. Set at the end of the seventies, a time when experimentation with alternative lifestyles and sexual relationships was rife, The Polygamist follows the fortunes of Omar Al Ghamdi, Saudi-born but educated in the West; a man who is the product of two irreconcilable cultures.After two decades he has come to experience philandering as increasingly superficial; but vehemently opposed to monogamous fidelity, turns to polygamy as the solution to his high turnover existence. His hope is that taking several wives will provide him with a more honest and satisfying alternative, allowing him to engage in deeper relationships whilst still giving a long enough leash to his sexuality. Having pursued his goal without compromise by entering into serial arranged marriages, he lives with his household on a remote house on Colva Beach in Goa. Does the reality live up to the dream? And, what is it like for the women? How can one man possibly satisfy multiple female partners?Written from an unashamedly male perspective, ThePolygamist will appeal to those wishing to understand male sexuality and the desires that shape all of our lives and relationships.

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 janvier 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785897764
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

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The Polygamist

William Irvine
Copyright © 2017 William Irvine

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 9781785897764

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
To Anthony, whom I last saw near Colva Village
in September 1979.
Contents
I. The Brides of Omar
1 – The Vow
2 – Missionary
3 – Open, Close
4 – Close, Open
5 – Violation
6 – Presence of Mind
7 – Bigamy
8 – Doubt
9 – Polygyny
10 – The Sign

II. Omar’s odyssey
11 – Partners
12 – The Faithful Husband
13 – Departure
14 – Sex, Lies and Videotape
15 – Entrails
16 – Desire and Reality

III. Humbled
17 – The Pig
18 – Guru Trail
19 – Wanting the Here, Wanting the Now

About The Polygamist
I. The Brides of Omar
1 – The Vow
‘What kind of a man are you anyway? I mean, what person walks out on someone without a proper explanation? Simply dumps her for no good reason?’
For a moment her outburst shook him, and yet he must have been here a thousand times before. He knew perfectly well that next would come the tears, then the name-calling – the display of bravado that always betrays such weakness. She would finish by storming out, and after that she would be gone, out of his life forever. Considering the benefits, a few minutes’ grief was a price worth paying – but despite his familiarity with the process, he remained uncomfortable with it. He still could not get used to this .
He tried to be conciliatory, knowing he would fail before he had started: ‘Look, try to understand, it’s not your fault – it’s mine. I just can’t do this thing. It never works for me, not with anyone.’ A flushed face, trembling lips, then tears trickling down inflamed cheeks – the absence of distress on his face serving only to exacerbate hers. Why was this part always such agony? He knew countless ways to initiate affairs, but not one good one with which to end them. I should work on that , he told himself, but there probably wasn’t a good way to get rid of someone, and he knew it.
‘You complete bastard!’ The abuse stage. He would keep silent, give her nothing to latch on to. It also meant she was nearly finished – these would be her parting shots. ‘You arrogant piece of shit! You think you’re something special, don’t you? Well let’s face it – you’re just screwed up, a loser. Goodbye and good fucking riddance!’ With that she did an about turn and marched out, slamming the door behind her.
A silence returned to soothe him like a balm. He closed his eyes to bathe in it, to let it work its healing magic. Disturbing, distressing, tiresome; no matter how brief the liaison, the break-up was always all of these things. He knew it went with the territory, yet for a moment her tirade had taken him aback. She had touched a nerve because there was something wrong. Something needed to change, and he knew it. He also knew that just suppressing his promiscuity was never going to work. He wasn’t made for ‘settling down’, for the straight and narrow. No. He would have to find a compromise with the forces that drove him, but the question was how ?

* * *

‘No.
I do not consent.
I will not kowtow before the altar of the false god, convention.
I refuse to prostrate myself before the hollow idols of others’ social norms.
Rather than suppressing what is natural within me,
I shall give it rein.’
Omar uttered these words as if in prayer. They would steel him against all opposition – the sly disapproval of the faint-hearted, the backlash of the mindless conformists. He would fall back on this vow in the future, rely on it to bolster his resolve, use it to prevent himself from departing from the path he had chosen.
‘But, nor will I skulk around like a liar or a thief,
I shall not live dishonestly.
I shall not live shamefully.
I shall not waiver from this course.’

*

He would miss nowhere else in the Kingdom once he was gone. To be alone in this place, with the low moan of the wind, its whispering chant, was to be truly blessed. Yet, he had company of sorts, for he shared this rocky hilltop with a great gathering of spirits. Nearly half bore the Al-Ghamdi name, and some twenty of those were descended from his own great grandfather and his wives. He wondered if they took as much pleasure in the commanding wilderness views as he did, but whatever the interred did or did not see, today they had something else to observe. Possessed at last of the means, and not solely the will, this was his turning point – and they would be witnesses to the oath that would steel him for the direction he now embarked his life upon, a direction that for too long had remained only a dream.
The eternal desert, cradle of his ancestors, expanded below; and at his feet was a grave, the body interred in it his father’s. Unimpressive beside his mother’s marble slab, the plywood marker read: ‘ Farouk ibn Tariq ibn Khalid Al-Ghamdi – 21 st April 1979 ’. Death having separated them for two decades, husband and wife were finally reunited. Gazing at the recently disturbed ground he was transported back to that day when, aged nineteen, he admitted to having switched courses at the University of California. ‘Did I spend all that money on an overseas education for you to squander it on such nonsense?’ Farouk had raged. Omar had justified his disobedience by declaring that social anthropology interested him whereas business administration did not, provoking more vitriol. He had never been what Farouk had wanted him to be. He had never been a second Suleiman.
It wasn’t the beatings. I accept they were normal for the times, just the way fathers thought they should raise their sons. It was the put-downs, your constantly telling me I wasn’t good enough, that I can’t forgive. I should spit on your grave, urinate on it, for the way you made me feel. Such profanity would not be unjustified – but he knew such acts would succeed only in demeaning him . He also had to acknowledge the efforts at reconciliation Farouk had made later on, particularly after he had learned he was dying. There was no doubt that having time to get used to the idea – his father having suffered from cancer – took the sting out of this death. Being less close had also helped.
His mother’s passing, which had been sudden, had been far harder. They had hauled him out of some lesson at Harrow to put him on a plane home, for Omar to spend the entire flight in a tearful state of despair. Younger then, he had also been weaker.

*

Mellowing towards his wayward child later in life, the father used to give thanks in his prayers for having one son who was everything he wanted and another who was – if nothing else – not a complete failure. His second son was not a drug addict, a compulsive gambler or a drunkard. What Farouk never cottoned on to was that Omar was hooked, but not in any of the ways that he feared; for whilst the common vices held little sway over him, when it came to women it was a different matter. The father used to ask his youngest son when he would marry, but Omar always evaded the question. He was ‘too busy growing his business,’ or ‘could not find the right one’. It was better that way, better that Farouk only knew the half of it.
Tall, slim, with thick dark hair and an olive complexion to offset his green eyes, he had proved highly tempting to the fair-skinned women of the West. Good looks were, however, the least of the factors in his success, for Omar was endowed with an adulterer’s charm that went beyond the ordinary. He had worked hard to hone his craft, ironically being taught most by his many partners, always taking heed when they commented on their likes and dislikes, whether great or small. He knew when to be authoritative and when to take the reins, when to be playful and when to be silent. He was diligently attentive to his quarry, hanging on every word, and he knew how to make a woman feel briefly that she was the centre of the universe. Experienced now, able to ‘feed’ almost at will, he was like a tiger shark amongst minnows.
Omar’s womanising career had, unsurprisingly, been at the expense of his professional one. Despite graduating with first class honours, he had not gone on to make any use of the anthropology degree he had fought so hard to study, and after UC proved deaf to his father’s pleas that he train further and take up a profession. At the time, Omar could not have cared less. All he wanted was a means to live, any means. After drifting around from job to job, first in the United States, later in England, he ended up running a small travel goods business in London’s West End – his by then increasingly forgiving father even putting up the capital with which his errant son was able to establish a shop on fashionable Kensington Church Street.
Selling suitcases had bored him rigid, bu