My Big Fat Farsi Funeral – Part 1

In December of 2008 my beloved friend Jinous succumbed to lung cancer.  She was the healthiest person I ever knew.  She ate healthy foods, she took healthy vitamins, she practiced yoga, she meditated, she wore magnets in her shoes, and she was religious in that mysterious and exotic way that Muslims are religious.  In typical Persian fashion, her apartment contained ornate gold filigreed statues, intricately woven rugs, and bowls of exotic fruits.

Jinous was my friend, my intimate friend.  Our relationship grew out of necessity.  She was my bikini waxer, you see, and I was intimate with her – on a regular basis – the way that I had never been before and never will be again, I assume, with another woman.  No paper panties here.  After I had been seeing her for at least a year for my eyebrows and upper lip, I timidly inquired about the bikini line.  I was pink with embarrassment.  (On my face.  Shut up.)  She explained to me in great anecdotal detail that honey, she’s seen everything.

And so, ostensibly as a perk for Stewart, I began the painful practice of regular bikini waxes.  It was during those sessions that I learned the art of dissociating my brain from my body.  As Jinous pasted and ripped the cloth and hair from my nether regions, she would act as a relationship therapist, analyzing whatever was going on in my life that week, while I dug my thumbnail into the opposite palm and pretended that I was elsewhere.  Over the next months I got used to it – sort of – and I became able to withstand more and more hair removal from that area.  Together we slowly worked up to a maximum clearance for my wedding and honeymoon weeks in 2002.

And it was all downhill from there.

Not only did I not have as much of a reason to go full Brazilian (we never did get that far because I am – ahem – a pussy when it comes to pain) but also, I had moved from my apartment in Santa Monica which was just down the street from Jinous’s, to Stewart’s house in Northridge.  For those of you outside Los Angeles, that’s like a road trip’s length, one for which you pack the cooler and fire up the portable DVD player for the kids.  By LA standards, it’s a quick jaunt.  However, one gets sort of provincial about “the other side of the hill,” whichever side one is on, and after a while a journey to that place becomes such a hassle, and one that is undertaken only for special occasions, or for work.

And so I visited Jinous less and less, and then I started having babies, during which time I learned that a bikini wax during pregnancy is a very, very bad idea, at least for me.  I found a local artisan to handle my facial regions, and that was that.  I did visit her once after Kyle was born, and that was when I discovered that she was ill.  The last time I saw her was in early 2008, when the cancer had spread, yet she was calmly managing her therapies, confident that she had another five years to live, and intent on living them to the fullest.

She died within the year.

I was so pissed at cancer then.  I hadn’t seen or spoken with Jinous in months, and when the phone rang that day and her daughter was on the line, I knew it had to be bad news.  The poor girl is only in her twenties, her father is estranged, and she understands Farsi but doesn’t speak it very well.  Friends and relatives from around the world descended upon her with offers of help and lots and lots of weeping and wailing.  As one of Jinous’s long time clients and a friend, I was invited to the memorial service.  It would be held at an Iranian-American cultural center over the hill, and be conducted entirely in Farsi.  Stewart was out of town on that day, and I’d have to find someone to watch the kids.  Would I come?

Of course.