{"id":172515,"date":"2025-12-19T10:04:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T15:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=172515"},"modified":"2025-12-19T10:56:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T15:56:39","slug":"nobody-loves-anyone-as-much-as-adelaide-faith-loves-caveh-zahedi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2025\/12\/19\/nobody-loves-anyone-as-much-as-adelaide-faith-loves-caveh-zahedi\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobody Loves Anyone as Much as Adelaide Faith Loves Caveh Zahedi"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Photograph courtesy of Adelaide Faith.<\/p><\/div>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

Ever since I was five years old, I\u2019ve been obsessed with finding a romantic partner. I believe that the purpose of life is to join with others and my main goal in life has always been to find a life partner. Unfortunately, this quest has proven elusive and I have been divorced three times. After my last divorce, at the age of fifty-seven, I found myself dating mostly twentysomethings, not because I was especially drawn to twentysomethings but because they were the only ones who seemed drawn to me. My last several girlfriends all approached me as fans after a film screening or messaged me on Instagram. They\u2019ve been the only ones who have seemed interested.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t had a boyfriend for eight and a half years. In all that time I\u2019d only had two dates. They were both with the same person, but they were a girl on the first date and a boy on the second. I found that interesting, but nothing else about them. On the first date they told me they liked to wear odd socks. Between dates they sent me a selfie with a sock on each ear. I don\u2019t know why I agreed to the second date. It was something to do, and maybe I wanted to experience not being the needy one for once. Maybe I thought I\u2019d enjoy acting cold, but I didn\u2019t enjoy it at all. It was easy to get rid of them in the end. I told them I didn\u2019t believe in romance. \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody really loves anybody,\u201d I said toward the end of the second date. \u201cThey just pretend they do to secure backup. They want someone on their side in case they\u2019re struck down by misfortune.\u201d I believed that was true at the time.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

After my breakup with Kathy, who had been twenty-four when I met her and twenty-seven when we broke up, I was lonely and single again. I was more famous than I\u2019d ever been, so getting laid was a little easier than it used to be, but not by much. After a few demoralizing one-night stands, I met Kate, who was also twenty-seven. She emailed me asking if I could teach her how to appreciate poetry. I googled her. She was cute. So I offered to meet her over Zoom and read through a poem together. My main motivation was romantic. But I wanted to meet over Zoom because I was worried that (1) she might be crazy (I attract a lot of them), or (2) that I was projecting my own desires onto her. But I enjoy close readings of poems, so I figured the worst that could happen was that I deepen my knowledge of poetry.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

It was hard to find anyone I was interested in. My capacity for being interested in someone had been absorbed by my therapist for so many years, and this had been all projection. Since I wasn\u2019t able to get to know her, she couldn\u2019t fall short of my ideal. Whenever I told a friend I\u2019d been single for eight years they acted like I must be mistaken. It seemed an impossibility to them, just unthinkable. But what did they mean? Was there some specific practical thing they would have done that I hadn\u2019t, which would have prevented my being single? Or did they think interesting people had been appearing right under my nose but I\u2019d refused to really see them? Nobody had interested me in all those years. I\u2019m sure my friends could easily imagine experiencing one single day of not meeting anyone they wanted to date, so why not three thousand consecutive days? That\u2019s what had happened to me.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

Kate suggested we read a poem by Sylvia Plath. I don\u2019t know her work very well, just the two famous ones\u2014\u201cDaddy\u201d and \u201cLady Lazarus,\u201d both of which I had memorized when I was in college. But the poem she chose, \u201cBerck-Plage,\u201d was difficult to make sense of, and we only made it halfway through the poem by the time I had to leave for my next meeting. But I enjoyed the experience of analyzing that poem, and she seemed not-crazy, so I suggested we schedule another Zoom session to finish the poem. She said she would love to.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

Last May, I flew to New York. I wanted to see my book in bookshops in America, where it had a better cover. In Tribeca, enjoying myself for the first time in a really long time, eating at the restaurant from the cover of Bright Lights, Big City<\/em>, I looked up what was on at the Roxy, the cinema down the road. The Trees Were Spelling Love Backwards<\/em> was showing that evening, a film by Caveh Zahedi.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

A few days later, I texted Kate to say that I would be open to doing our next session in person if she would prefer that and she said that yes, she would. I then offered to have dinner together beforehand and she said that would be great. I suggested my place and said I could make dinner. Again, she said great. This was all promising in terms of her potential romantic interest, but there was still enough plausible deniability that I couldn\u2019t be sure.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

I felt interested. I knew his name; I\u2019d been coming across his name for ten or twenty years now, and each time I heard it I felt my interest grow. The growth didn\u2019t feel like it was happening on a human schedule\u2014every week or every month\u2014but on a timeline more suited to trees. Artists I respected would mention him in interviews as someone they respected. Each time I heard his name I noticed I felt confused, like I should know who he was but didn\u2019t. And my interest was bound with this mysterious sense of defeat. It felt too late to know who he was in any genuine way, since I hadn\u2019t known who he was from the beginning, hadn\u2019t followed each of his steps as he took them like a real and genuine fan.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

When Kate came over I asked her about her motivations in meeting me, and we had a long and honest talk. She said she wanted me to mentor her. I told her I was more interested in a romantic relationship. She said that while part of her felt some physical attraction, another part wasn\u2019t sure, and couldn\u2019t we just read poetry together? I said we could, but that I was looking for a romantic partner, and if she wasn\u2019t interested, that was where most of my energy would inevitably go.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

I went to the Roxy and watched the film. When Valerie, Caveh\u2019s love interest in the film, suggested that Caveh wasn\u2019t cool enough to fit in with her friends, I filled up with indignation. After the film, Caveh came on stage and sat on a red velvet chair. I took a photo. He seemed able to take questions endlessly; he seemed to see no need to stop taking questions from the audience. Now that I was finally seeing him, had finally seen one of his films, I saw I wasn\u2019t too late to know who he was, as long as I was still living. That\u2019s the thing about being human. All you have to do to make sure you\u2019re not too late to do something is make sure your heart\u2019s still pumping, make sure you\u2019re still alive. For the most part that\u2019s done with no conscious effort at all: an electrical impulse is generated by the sinoatrial node, your heart beats, it\u2019s automatic \u2026 Autonomic, that\u2019s the right word.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

Kate and I got stoned and she ended up spending the night. We started seeing each other. But she still had mixed feelings. She said she really wanted to have a kid, and given our age difference she didn\u2019t think I was the ideal choice to father her children. I could see her point, but argued that there was no reason not to continue to see each other until such a time as when she met someone she thought would make a better life partner. She seemed convinced by this argument\u2014as long as we were in an open relationship, which I was perfectly fine with.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

In the airport on my way home, I ordered Caveh\u2019s book of collected writings and then followed his Instagram page. Just a few days later there was a new Instagram post: an upcoming screening, on a boat, of his work in progress, Ulysses and I<\/em>. And the boat would be docked in London, not in New York! I wanted to go, and because I wanted to try to speak to him afterward, I invited Alice. Out of all of my friends, she had always been best at egging me on.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

And then I took my twelve-year-old daughter to London to see some musicals. We saw Matilda<\/em>, Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em>, The Phantom of the Opera<\/em>, and Evita<\/em>. To help pay for this extravagantly expensive trip, I decided to organize a work-in-progress screening of my Ulysses<\/em> film while I was in town. It was at a place called Theatership, where I had done a live podcast event a few months earlier. I had taken a liking to the age-appropriate proprietress and was wondering if she might be a more viable romantic partner. Things with Kate had been less than optimal recently, and I was worried that we weren\u2019t unequivocally sexually compatible.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

Waiting on the docks, drinking a Coke, I saw him walk past and go aboard the boat. Alice didn\u2019t notice, but I noticed. I looked over, and when he briefly caught my eye I felt a mild terror. Belowdecks it was hot. There was only one giant fan, and Caveh sat his daughter in front of it. I\u2019d brought a copy of my book to give him and tried to fan myself with it, but it was still only out in hardback, and it\u2019s completely impossible to fan yourself with a hardback book, I discovered that day. When the screening was over I waited for all the fans waiting to talk to him to finish talking to him. I wanted to be last, to be the special one.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

When the film ended, the usual very sparse throng of well-wishers waited to speak to me. One of them was a British woman who impressed me immediately with a certain touching vulnerability in her manner. She told me she had been inspired by my film to finally read Ulysses<\/em>. She asked if I had any advice on how best to go about that, and I told her it was complicated but that if she emailed me I would be happy to steer her in the right direction. She then asked if she could give me a copy of the book she\u2019d written, and I said of course. I wasn\u2019t expecting much. I was just trying to be polite.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

When it was time, I approached him at the ship\u2019s bar and reached in my bag for my book. I thought he might worry I was going to bring out some kind of weapon, but he didn\u2019t look worried at all. The book seemed to impress him. A completed novel would probably impress most people, as long as it wasn\u2019t self-published. After we\u2019d confirmed that I had written the book and that he knew the clown on the cover was Pierrot and that we both loved the Pierrot character in Children of Paradise<\/em>, we started to talk about Ulysses<\/em>. I told him I hadn\u2019t read it, despite having a copy on my shelf for years. He said this was probably true of a lot of people. I asked if he could start a Ulysses<\/em> reading group. He said though he\u2019d love to, he didn’t have the time. So I asked if he could help me to read it, just me, just by giving advice.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

I was taken with her right away, and tempted by her suggestion that I start a Ulysses<\/em> reading group just with her. I was hoping she would join us for dinner but she said she had to leave to catch the train back to Hastings. When I found out that Hastings was next to Brighton, I introduced her to Ralph, with whom I had done the live podcast event a few months earlier, because he lived in Brighton. He seemed underwhelmed by what struck me as an extraordinary coincidence and was polite but reserved. I was definitely attracted to her, even more than to the age-appropriate proprietress. I hoped she would write to me, but when she said goodbye and left, I assumed I would never see her again.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

I\u2019m recounting this exchange like it was smooth, like I found talking to him easy, but it wasn\u2019t, and I didn\u2019t. I\u2019d kicked myself for not thinking to take beta blockers twenty minutes before. I was shaking, I stuttered, every now and then I blushed. I told him I was relieved to have published a novel before I was fifty, since this had been my goal. I was turning fifty in just a couple of days. Caveh said, \u201cFive-oh?\u201d to confirm I meant fifty, but what else could I have meant? I couldn\u2019t have meant fifteen. Walking back to the tube with Alice, my excitement levels were high, a level I really liked. I thought: He smiled a little, but not as much as most people smiled. He laughed, but not in the places I\u2019d expected. He finished his words very carefully; everything he said seemed important. He didn\u2019t seem fake at all.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

The next day I got a long and very touching email. She told me that she was turning fifty the next day and said, \u201cI wanted to do one other thing, other than write a novel, before I was fifty, and I didn\u2019t get to do it.\u201d That phrase haunted me. What could the other thing be? Was it something sexual? Was that why she wasn\u2019t just coming out and saying what it was?<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

I only waited one day to email him. The subject of my email was \u201cPlease help me read Ulysses,\u201d but that wasn\u2019t the main thing I wanted from Caveh. I told him I liked what he said on the Ion Pack podcast, that while success strokes your ego, failure brings you closer to God. I told him it reminded me of something my favorite author, Sheila Heti, wrote: \u201cOnly in the pursuit of failure can a person really be free. Losers may be the avant-garde of the modern age.\u201d I said it was nice that we both had daughters the same age. Then I told him I was scared to be arriving at fifty, in just one day\u2019s time. I\u2019d wanted to do one other thing, other than write a novel, before reaching this age, but that thing I hadn\u2019t achieved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CAVEH: What was the other thing you wanted to do before you turned fifty?<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE: I wanted to find a nice man that would be happy doing certain things but not others: lots of kissing, lots of blowjobs one way, and lots of hands both ways, but nothing else. But I think that’s impossible for men.<\/p>\n

CAVEH: I\u2019m not sure I agree with you about that being impossible for men. It\u2019s an arrangement that I, for one, would be quite open to.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE: Really, you wouldn’t be like, And now let\u2019s get to the main course?<\/p>\n

CAVEH: For some people, that is the main course.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE: OMG.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

I found what she was saying very arousing. This sounded great to me. Ideal, even. I felt we were weirdly not only sexually compatible but a perfect fit. Like we were made to be together. I got very excited not only at the thought of having sex with her but at the thought that we were somehow supposed to be together. It wasn\u2019t just sexual or even romantic. It felt somehow metaphysical. Like it had been ordained by God.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

He offered to do a Zoom for my fiftieth birthday, to read the book together. By \u201cthe book\u201d I assumed he meant my book; I kept forgetting about Ulysses<\/em>. On screen, he was in a fancy hotel bathroom. He looked so good I secretly took a few screenshots, creeping my fingers to the three correct keys whilst keeping my eyes on the screen. As well as himself, Caveh looked like the crime writer James Ellroy, my teenage boyfriend Nick, and my Old Icelandic tutor. These had been three of my most powerful crushes. He\u2019d told me in his first email that he had a girlfriend, so he wasn\u2019t sure how to proceed\u2014\u201chow best to thread this needle\u201d\u2014but I already felt in love. Who would take an hour out of their day to give someone they\u2019d just met a Ulysses<\/em> lesson, for free? He was a busy man from New York with millions of projects and a twelve-year-old daughter in tow.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

And then we had a Zoom meeting to read the first page of Ulysses<\/em> together. I tried to keep it as businesslike and professorial as I could, partly out of fear and shyness and partly because of Kate, even though we were in an open relationship. But that openness had never been tested, so I was worried about how Kate would react to my rapidly developing feelings for Adelaide.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

We chatted before making a start. He asked if the father of my child was still in the picture. He checked that I didn\u2019t like penetration during sex. I couldn\u2019t believe my ears when he said that word; I could never say that word, in any context, ever. I sat on my feet on the sofa and rocked from side to side. I hadn\u2019t realized that being spoken to by a man in a hotel bathroom\u2014so openly, over Zoom, in preparation for a Joyce lesson\u2014had been an option, or something I would enjoy so much. We started reading Ulysses<\/em>, alternating sentences. Every time he asked if I understood a reference, I didn\u2019t. I only knew what \u201cuntonsured\u201d meant, since I\u2019d been researching Saint Francis of Assisi. I was actually enjoying my birthday. I honestly couldn’t believe it.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

Right after our Zoom call I left for the States, even though what my heart wanted was to see Adelaide as soon as possible. I started fantasizing about what being with her would be like. I started imagining kissing her and touching her and having the kind of sex she was suggesting. I was starting to obsess, and I could feel that I was becoming salvational about this relationship. It seemed to promise an end to all my problems.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

I thought about his face and his voice for the rest of my birthday. I emailed him that I hoped to get to do those things with him, even just one time. Maybe if we did it just one time it wouldn\u2019t hurt his girlfriend too much, but would make me feel taken care of for the rest of my life. I couldn\u2019t tell how I felt about his girlfriend. I was trying not to think about her. They were in an open relationship, something I couldn\u2019t comprehend, and she was twenty-seven.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

That summer, I had been invited to show my films in Belgium, Macedonia, and Kosovo, and the thought of going alone to all those places struck me as potentially depressing. So I had invited Kate to come along, and she had already bought plane tickets. She had also finally told her mom about us, which was a big deal for her. She had been worried her mom would be horrified by our age gap, but she didn\u2019t seem to be, and Kate was both hopeful and relieved the next time I saw her. Which was when I told her about Adelaide.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

We switched to talking on WhatsApp. I talked about Sheila Heti and the Cure; he talked about John Ashbery and A Course in Miracles<\/em>. I told him how much I used to like the scene in Cape Fear<\/em> where Juliette Lewis sucks Robert De Niro\u2019s thumb. I told him how much I\u2019d always liked his scene in Waking Life<\/em>. He told me I reminded him of the Emily Watson character in Breaking the Waves<\/em>. We sent each other photos of ourselves reading the other person\u2019s book. The feelings of love coming up when I thought about him started to get overwhelming. It felt like my life had started its heaven episode\u2014some coincidence that I\u2019d just started praying this year.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

Kate was bummed. She had just bought expensive plane tickets to travel together in Europe and now I was telling her I was having feelings for another woman, someone closer to me in age. She was tempted to cancel the trip, but the tickets were nonrefundable, and there was a guy in Europe she\u2019d always had a crush on whom she kind of wanted to see\u2014so we decided to go on the trip together as planned. But the whole time we were in Europe all I could think about was Adelaide, and I couldn\u2019t help wishing I was with Adelaide instead of Kate. I considered asking Adelaide to come to Belgium, but she had already offered to come to New York, and all of my Adelaide sexual fantasies revolved around her showing up to my apartment. In short, I didn\u2019t want to have to give those fantasies up. So I chose to delay our seeing each other so that the circumstances could better conform to my fantasies.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

Caveh said my book was making him more attracted to me. He was alternating each chapter with a chapter of Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em>. One time he messaged me: \u201cI was just reading the part in your book where you say \u2018I think sometimes I just want to be with another person. But like how it is in a novel or a play, where nobody is afraid to say what they want \u2026\u2019 I want that too.\u201d That\u2019s when I told him I felt like I loved him. He replied that he felt like he loved me too. A couple of WhatsApp messages later we moved from saying we felt like we loved each other to saying we loved each other. We both knew this was absurd; we\u2019d barely spent ten minutes together! Caveh thought there was evidence on both sides that we were love addicts but said that was fine by him.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

I was calling Adelaide on the phone from Macedonia and Kosovo, and Kate wasn\u2019t loving that. At one point, she asked me to stop talking to Adelaide while we were in Europe together. Adelaide didn\u2019t love that and neither did I, but I was trying to find a way to continue to see both women, and I was willing to forego talking to Adelaide for a few more days since I knew we would be seeing each other very soon. But then Kate suggested that maybe she should talk to Adelaide on the phone, just to normalize things.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

One time, his girlfriend asked if we could speak on the phone, and I said, Yes, I guess. She sounded sweet, like a friend I\u2019d had in my twenties, and when we said goodbye, I said, Message me any time. She told Caveh afterward that she thought we were much too different. I said, Who\u2019s too different, me and her? Caveh said no, and I said, Oh, she meant you and her! And Caveh said no. She had meant me and him\u2014me and Caveh. I felt like I\u2019d never heard anyone say anything so insane in my whole life, such terrible misjudgment. I decided I never wanted to speak to her ever again.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

Kate\u2019s conversation with Adelaide went okay, but when I told Adelaide what Kate had said about her afterward she took it badly. Our remaining days in Kosovo felt like an eternity. Adelaide seemed to want to be with me in a way that few women had. Her enthusiasm and commitment were contagious and a little intoxicating. Meanwhile, Kate and I started fighting more and more.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

One friend told me it would never work out because he liked girls in their twenties. One friend said, Be careful, he uses his girlfriends for art. Sheila Heti had just finished the third season of The Show About the Show<\/em>. She said, You don\u2019t want to end up one of those girls crying on camera. I watched to the end of the third season too, but it didn\u2019t make me scared; it only made me love him more. I started worrying about how unworried I was. But only for a second. My heart knew what was going on; it could easily sense his goodness. Other people were just using their brains.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

I was trying to help Kate find a new boyfriend and encouraged her to reach out to the guy she had a crush on who had visited us in Belgium. I also encouraged her to pursue a British filmmaker at the festival who seemed drawn to her. At one point, she threatened to spend the night with the good-looking young waiter at the pizza place we were eating at. I did not like this idea, even though I was carrying on an epistolary romance with Adelaide at the time.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

We sent each other voice notes. The sound of his voice made me crazed every time. On holiday with my daughter in Berlin, I left her on the phone to her dad in our hotel room when Caveh had a five-minute window away from work and away from his girlfriend. When he called me I had to lean against a barbershop to keep from falling down. I think I started drooling. I wish God had recorded a video of that very special moment and would let me watch it back.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

Kate was having heavy period bleeding and one morning the sheets were covered in blood. I was worried that the hotel would charge us for the sheets, so I snuck into the laundry room late at night to get new sheets and discreetly get rid of the old ones. What I didn\u2019t know was that there was a security camera recording everything that happened, and I was chewed out the next day for breaking into the laundry room after hours. The situation with the hotel staff remained strained until we both got sick and an ambulance had to be called. I think they felt sorry for me after that. I think they thought that the old man with the young girlfriend was dying and that they should be a little nicer to me.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t completely forgotten about my plan to read Ulysses<\/em>, though I\u2019d not progressed one page since my birthday. I had the idea of motivating myself by earning tokens each time I completed a chapter. The tokens would allow me to do the thing I wanted to do with Caveh. One hundred tokens could be worth ten blowjobs, something like that. The world isn\u2019t fair anyway; logic doesn\u2019t rule, so why not make my own logic, implement my own cause and effect, and dole out rewards to myself? And possessing lots of these tokens might help me stop worrying that I would only get to do that thing with Caveh one time, which had started to seem not enough. I suggested it to Caveh.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CAVEH: I love your token idea.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE: I\u2019m glad you don’t think it\u2019s moronic.<\/p>\n

CAVEH: I think it\u2019s brilliant.
\nAnd fun and exciting and odd in just the way I love.
\nAnd perverted in just the way I love.
\nAlso, I want to see you as much and as long and as often as possible.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE: OMG, it\u2019s like entering heaven talking to you.<\/p>\n

CAVEH: I feel the same way.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE: Heart emoji.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

Around this time, Adelaide said she had an idea she was contemplating. I asked her what the idea was, and she sent me a picture of her knuckles with my name written on them with a pen. She said she was thinking of having my name tattooed on her knuckles and asked how I would feel about that. I didn\u2019t know what to feel. Part of me was touched and flattered and part of me was alarmed. Is she crazy? Is that a crazy thing to do?<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

We tried to find a plan of action to deal with all the love. He couldn\u2019t hurt his girlfriend. I couldn\u2019t leave my daughter. But when it was okay to briefly leave my daughter, when she had a week booked in with her dad, I flew to New York to see Caveh. Caveh\u2019s girlfriend wasn\u2019t crazy about the idea, but she understood and accepted it, he told me.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

One fantasy I had involved something along the lines of opening the door to my apartment in the dark and immediately having the kind of sex we had talked about for weeks, right then and there against the door. Another involved guiding her to the bedroom in the dark with my hands on her hips. But when the moment came, it felt weird and creepy to open the door with the lights off, so I left them on. We hugged, a little awkwardly\u2014or maybe it was just me who felt awkward. I didn\u2019t know how long to hold her and I think I let go fairly quickly. It wasn\u2019t quite as electric as the coming-together moment I\u2019d imagined for weeks, and I was reminded of T. S. Eliot\u2019s melancholy line about a woman\u2019s breasts, that they offer \u201cpromise of pneumatic bliss.\u201d<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

I went straight to my hotel in New York, took a video of myself in the hotel mirror to make sure I looked like a person, then booked an Uber to his address. I did look like a person, a female one, and probably one younger than fifty. When he opened the door of course he was a person in real time, not an idea behind a WhatsApp message. It was just like his film that I\u2019d seen at the Roxy. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing that he\u2019d thought when he first met Valerie\u2014that I was taller and weirder in real life. I wanted to hug him for a long time without speaking, stop for a second to look at his face and remember who he was, then go back to hugging him. I could have done that for hours. I wanted to be in the light and standing up. But Caveh stepped back soon after the first hug started. He suggested we go to bed, and so we were prone in the dark.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

The sex that night confirmed for me that we were in fact unequivocally compatible and that I hadn\u2019t been delusional this whole time.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

Later that night he talked about how inevitable it was that we\u2019d have to deal with disappointment\u2014that it wasn\u2019t immediately salvational to be together, that it didn\u2019t feel like electricity to be next to each other and touch. Our emails had been so exalted that they\u2019d created that expectation. I was used to fantasy relationships, ones in my mind that I could control, keep pure and perfect, so my personality wasn\u2019t helping. I found it hard to let in real life.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

I tried to describe to Adelaide my experience of our encounter not being salvational, but I think she took it to mean that I was disappointed, whereas I was just trying to acknowledge whatever part of projection had been at work so that we could connect even more deeply.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

But when Caveh said that the real task in love\u2014our real task, together, now\u2014was to find a way to bring reality and the exalted place of our emails closer and find a real connection, I was sure I wanted to do it.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t until I did ketamine in her presence\u2014she was too scared, so she wasn\u2019t on it\u2014that I got more honest and more open and more able to look unblinkingly into my own heart. I could let in how much I loved her and wanted to be with her and appreciated everything about her in a way that I have never experienced with anyone else before. It was as if the one thing I\u2019ve wanted more than anything in life and that had eluded me for sixty-five years had finally arrived. I couldn\u2019t believe it. I was in awe and felt that all the years of spiritual work I\u2019d done were finally paying off and that I had, in some sense, earned this. That we must have both earned it.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

I had booked a hotel for my whole stay just in case, but I felt so good with Caveh that I didn’t leave his apartment, except to get coffee every morning. The second night I stayed over, Caveh got stoned, and the third night he took ketamine. When he asked which drug I preferred him on I chose ketamine, because on the ketamine night the nice things he said to me were on another level, and he said he wanted to marry me.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

That night I committed. I knew that there was something mystical happening and that God\u2019s hand was in this. Her love was so steady and clear, so open-hearted and pure. When I met Sheila Heti in Toronto, before Adelaide came to New York but after we had started corresponding, Sheila said something along the lines of, \u201cAdelaide\u2019s the most pure person I\u2019ve ever met,\u201d and I remember thinking, She\u2019s right. Pure is the right word. She\u2019s incredibly pure.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

It was hard leaving Caveh. I called him from JFK while waiting to board my flight, but he couldn\u2019t talk. It was a bad time, he said, Kate had just come over. When my plane landed in England I turned off airplane mode, but no messages from Caveh came through on my phone. On the train home I messaged how much I missed him. He replied, \u201cHow was reentry?\u201d I felt so sick seeing that message; it seemed so cold I was convinced it was over. I met my friend Catherine and cried, then I met my friend Alice and cried, then I collected my daughter from her dad\u2019s, and, though I tried, I still couldn\u2019t stop crying. I messaged Sheila. She asked her pendulum if Caveh really loved me, and the pendulum told her yes. He wanted to be with me long-term, the pendulum somehow said, but he felt abandoned when I left. Caveh messaged later that day and told me Kate had spent the night. Sometimes he said there was still \u201cenergy\u201d between them; sometimes he said \u201cthings were moving in the right direction,\u201d toward separation. It\u2019s just that every time he told me he\u2019d seen Kate I felt like I was being injected with poison. The poison felt cold, deadly, and destructive, and when it advanced up my arms, I felt like it might stop my heart.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

The question was, What to do about Kate? I still had feelings for her, but not the kinds of feelings I was having for Adelaide. Part of me wanted to keep seeing them both, and Adelaide had said things that made me think she might be okay with that. But it quickly became clear that she really wasn\u2019t, even if she wanted to be. So I promised her\u2014and got Kate to agree\u2014that Kate and I would stop having sex. But Kate was still spending the night, and even though we weren\u2019t having sex, we were being physically affectionate, which made Adelaide horribly depressed. At a certain point I promised no more sleeping in the same bed, which Kate wasn\u2019t happy about but accepted. But even talking to Kate or spending time with her would throw Adelaide into a tailspin, so I explained to Kate that I needed to prioritize my relationship with Adelaide and that I would no longer be available to hang out like we used to.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

I felt pretty good when I was seventeen, learning about books and films and music in Nick\u2019s bedroom. It\u2019s only since then that I\u2019ve been unhappy. So for about thirty-two years. A weird feeling of not being a person, of floating in a void, longing for the feeling of being in Nick\u2019s bedroom again. I put Nick in my novel, and sometimes I wonder if he read it in heaven and was so pleased with how I portrayed him that he found Caveh for me to make me happy. He did this matchmaking from heaven so I could finally feel good again. Sometimes I really think that.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

Adelaide told me that Sheila and her tattooist both cautioned her to wait a year before getting my name tattooed on her knuckles. And this made total sense to me. But then I thought there was also something beautiful about doing something when you want to do it and not waiting a year. In other words, the gesture is arguably more beautiful if done sooner rather than after a more cautious gestation period. And I didn\u2019t like the idea of telling Adelaide what she should or shouldn\u2019t do, so I told her she should do whatever she wanted. So she went ahead and got my name tattooed on her knuckles.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

Whenever I heard Caveh\u2019s name I always thought it sounded like the perfect name. It seemed like magic\u2014his second name seemed to be doing a magic thing to his first. I wrote it over and over in my notebook. One time I wrote \u201cloves\u201d underneath his name and then wrote my name underneath that. I started calculating. I added up the number of L<\/em>s in both of our names, and then the number of O<\/em>s, and then I added the V<\/em>s and the E<\/em>s and the S<\/em>s. Then I did the sums I\u2019d learned to do as a schoolgirl until I arrived at two digits. The two digits would be the percentage that Caveh Zahedi loves Adelaide Faith, and the percentage was ninety-six. Never in my lifetime of doing this procedure had I come to a percentage so high.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

I have never been happier in my life. After Adelaide\u2019s second visit to New York, she wrote, \u201cI just had the happiest time of my life with you.\u201d This made me elated. And after her third visit, she said something along the lines of \u201cThat was the happiest time of my life again.\u201d<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not even having to use my tokens to do the things I want to do with Caveh. And anyway, we decided to read all of Joyce together, starting with Dubliners<\/em>. We\u2019re going to read out loud, alternating sentences, and it will take a really long time. I like thinking to myself, We\u2019ll be together at least until we get to the end of Finnegans Wake<\/em>.<\/p>\n

CAVEH<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how much longer I have left to live, but I feel so relieved to think that I may not have to die alone, which is something I\u2019ve always dreaded, especially whenever I\u2019ve found myself involuntarily single. It\u2019s hard being in a long-distance relationship\u2014I yearn for her constantly and imagine her beside me when I go to sleep. But I\u2019m mostly just incredibly grateful that I\u2019ve found her, that loving her feels so natural, that I\u2019ve never had better sex in my life, and that the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are so much easier to bear with her beside me.<\/p>\n

ADELAIDE<\/p>\n

When Caveh had told his girlfriend that I was way more into him than she was, she\u2019d replied, \u201cNobody loves anyone as much as Adelaide loves Caveh.\u201d And that was the best thing she said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Caveh Zahedi is an autobiographical filmmaker whose works include\u00a0<\/em>The Sheik and I,<\/em> I Am a Sex Addict,<\/em> In the Bathtub of the World,<\/em> I Don\u2019t Hate Las Vegas Anymore,\u00a0<\/em>A Little Stiff,<\/em>\u00a0and the web series<\/em> The Show About the Show. He is also the author of\u00a0<\/em>These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruin\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>What Rimbaud Said after the Amputation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Adelaide Faith\u2019s debut novel is <\/em>Happiness Forever, a fictionalized account of her yearslong obsession with her therapist. A fictionalized account of her obsession with her tattooist,<\/em> \u201cYou Look Like a Good Girl,\u201d was published online by Granta<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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