Year I Learned to Text

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Synopsis

Whoever said "politics and religion don't mix " forgot to throw hot sex into the equation. When Julie, a celibate postmenopausal conservative, reinventing herself in Hollywood as an actor/comedian/realtor, takes on a handsome Persian Muslim twenty-two years her junior as her boy toy, she eagerly takes flight on a magic carpet ride into the addictive chemistry of unconditional love, which eventually consumes her. Between auditions, working on television sitcoms and movies, driving lookie-loos about the city, caring for her two dogs and one persnickety cat, performing her stand-up routine, and attempting to keep her familial relationships from collapsing, Julie, a retired court reporter and mother of three, slips into her busy life erotic meetings in her basement with Ali, who claims to be an Internet marketing entrepreneur. In the light of scented candles, Julie comes of age and is awakened sexually by the black-eyed bad boy, who does not want to touch her in certain places, and who ritualistically washes his penis in her bathroom sink immediately after vaginal contact. Too soon he becomes her life, a life she senses has come and gone too soon. Late in life, she has learned Ali is always two hours late to their trysts. He is on Persian time. The Hollywood bungalow mews, in which Julie lives, is a recurring character; each resident having his and her opinion of the goings on at Julie's Spanish six-hundred-forty square-foot brothel. However, no one has ever witnessed Ali's comings and goings, which leads Julie to wonder if, in deed, she hasn't simply invented him, in light of the ongoing political climate and The War on Terror. When he invites her to join him to live in a cave in Afghanistan, she begins to believe his anti-American pillow talk. An American citizen born in Iran and an honor graduate from UCLA, Ali bemuses our heroine with the contradictions of his Islamic religion, his hypochondria­­­, and the exact whereabouts of his apartment. Julie feeds her bewilder