# 57 - Pashinyan - The Other Side of the World

ՆԻԿՈԼ ՓԱՇԻՆՅԱՆ. ԵՐԿՐԻ ՀԱԿԱՌԱԿ ԿՈՂՄԸ
57. ազատություն եւ կրքեր
Ուզում էի Վարդանին ու նրա ընկերներին գարեջուր հյուրասիրել, բայց պարզվեց` դա հնարավոր չէ. սուպերմարկետ գնալ-գալու գործընթացը շատ երկար կտեւեր: Ստիպված էի նրանց հրաժեշտ տալ առանց գարեջուր հյուրասիրելու:

57. Freedom and Passions - N. Pashinyan
I wanted to treat Vardan and his friends to beer but this wasn’t possible. It would have taken too long to get to the supermarket and back. I had to say goodbye to them without treating them to beer.

I returned to the hotel, asked room service to bring up my dinner, and then rested a while after dinner. I had decided that at midnight I would go to the striptease club which was a few buildings away from the hotel as advertised on the billboard. At that moment it seemed to be the only way of overcoming the impression I had gotten about Tokyo. I hadn’t decided on my future journey yet, so I had not choice but to stay a few more days in this suffocating city.

At the striptease club there really was no rushing. On the contrary, Japanese and black dancers swirled around slowly around the aluminum pipes, breasts touching each other, touching their hips, with suggestive hands.

I sat at one of the tables set for a single person. There were already a lot of people in the club, and more were arriving. Pretty soon, there were no vacant tables around me. It turned out that the show for the evening was not just a regular show but a unique presentation called ‘In the Small Planet of Sex.’ Under this suggestive title, there appeared on the stage people from different parts of the world, burning with carnal desire and different expressions of sexuality. The presentation had many segments and was bold. And, regardless of the opinion the spectators would form about it, they were bound to remember it for a long time.

And now, a Japanese woman in a traditional kimono and with little steps comes on stage. The first thing you think of is this: what business does this proper lady have in this suspicious environment? But just then, she turns into a sex maniac, takes off her clothes and becomes a striptease star. During the dance she caresses her body and possesses, possesses all the men around her and devours them like a sexual beast. The multitude of men around her desires her, ask for more sexual devouring. But she refuses them, and continues to possess other, totally new victims, new and unfamiliar men. On the stage we see scenes of desperate Samurai committing mass Seppuku (a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment.) In another scene, the Samurai are engaged in mortal combat. Flames shoot out of their swords. You can’t tell the winner; the battle wages on, you still don’t see the winner. But with the slashes of the swords, their clothing has torn and is on the floor, in small pieces. And they now appear naked, almost naked. Then, tired of the battle and having lost all hope of victory, they begin to love each other, with tender caresses.

The greatest excitement, however, was created by the appearance of a girl in a chador. Only her hands were not covered. The beams of light focused the attention of everyone to her raised hands, which enacted a striptease with her fingers, for the time being only with her fingers. Then as she turns horizontally around the pipe, it becomes clear that she’s wearing nothing under the chador. Then this Persian or Arab beauty throws off her chador, creating mass excitement around her. But she soon spots her father (or husband) on the horizon looking for her, puts her chador back on, and, as if nothing had happened, follows him with obedient steps.

This scene unsettled me. But when half-naked rabbi, priests (you could identify them only through their hats), long-bearded priests, who were only wearing sadomasochistic sexual things, I was already waiting for some explosion, an explosion in the real sense of the word. But when there was no explosion, I started thinking that for sure in the next few days there would be an explosion of caricatures. But nothing like that has happened yet maybe because those scenes would not be written about, and those who would like to create a scandal would have a problem explaining how they knew that such horrible things were taking place in one of Tokyo’s striptease clubs. At first I didn’t know what to think about what was taking place. Everything seemed simple and understandable. But I couldn’t decide on the nuances the producer was trying to make. What was he trying to say, that man is the slave of his passions, or that passions make man free?

Or, was he offering the choice to the spectator? At any rate, I told myself that I had never thought about such a dilemma and it was obvious that I couldn’t get those thoughts out of my mind. So, is the man a slave of his passions or are passions the liberator of man? I didn’t want to answer the question in the way I wanted to, but was trying to examine it like a magistrate under oath, from different points of view.

I realized that it wasn’t so easy to be objective because if we’re going to study the relationship between man and passions, we should make choices between two theories that arise when discussion the relations between man and passions. The biblical theory, according to which, man was created by God, but man was thrown into sin by Satan, and the Darwinian Theory, according to which man evolved from the monkey and passions are the result of hormonal functions of the organism. If we are to rely on the truth of one of these theories, we can not be objective. That means, we’re either taking side with one, or the other theory. And if truth be told, in this case I don’t even want to be objective, I refuse to be objective, if to be objective, I have to doubt that which I believe in.

Darwinism and Materialism have suffered defeat in this case because the followers of this theory can hardly consider group sex or orgies as normal and natural. Even the most fanatical opponent of the biblical theory, as it was, for instance, in the Soviet Union, was preaching moral values. Under that empire, an indescribable storage of spiritual and cultural values was created in literature, cinema, arts and other fields. This is undeniable. But it was exactly the creation of such values that caused the collapse of that empire.

You can judge for yourself that when you accept the high moral values to love, to respect and to empathize with those around you, you actualize a propaganda of spiritual values, and with that, you retreat from the theory that man has evolved from the monkey. The Soviet empire was based on the theory of the monkey.

On the other hand, when Soviet writers and artists created works on God and Satan, on the spirit and the heavenly, communist authorities gave them the Lenin Prize. Then they exiled them to Siberia or out of the country. After giving them the Lenin Prize, they hounded the same artists. Then later, it was already too late.

I now understand the Soviet leaders. Hrand Matevosyan, Nodar Djumbadze, Chingiz Ahmadov, Vasily Shuskin, Vadimir Visotsky were destroying the proletariat behind the iron face and creating the spiritual man. On the one hand, it was good because they could show the imperialists the kind of art that was created in the fatherland of socialism. On the other hand, those men were eating away at the foundations of the socialist fatherland, because the soviet Union could not be the fatherland of the spiritual man.

And the leadership of the USSR didn’t know what to do. It couldn’t resist the power of art, and sometimes it didn’t even want to. As a result, that empire was entangled in its own steps and collapse became inevitable.

There, the history of the collapse of my vast former ‘fatherland’ helped me to refuse to be objective. But the choice can’t be resolved this way. It should be subjected to conscious reflection and finally find a solution: is man the slave of passions or are passions the liberator of man?

But now it’s already easier to make a choice, much easier. Isn’t it true that first there was Freedom, and only later the passions, and only because of Freedom man had been able to taste passion and become its slave? So, passions don’t liberate man but enslave him. This approach, however, brings up a much more important question, the answer to which is equally difficult to find. So what should be done with human passion? Should one stone those women who like to have fun, to burn lesbians and gays, or those who like group sex, at the stake? No, no; because lesbians and gays don’t threaten the life of others in their everyday relationships, and as strange as it sounds, they enjoy their own freedom. So then what? Should we hail lesbians and gays? No, no. So then, what should be done? To allow them to live their lives because they don’t trample on our freedom and rights but simply enjoy their freedom and rights. This is an instance which does not belong to the sphere of the relationship between man and the public at large, but to the sphere of the relationship between the individual and God. Therefore, the gay person is not responsible to the public; he is accountable before God, and people don’t have the right to execute God’s judgment.

You’re right, I just got caught. It was me, wasn’t it, who said that the revolutionary is to be like Divine judgment, but it is people who do the revolution. But don’t hurry, I’m not caught yet.

Yes, God has said don’t fornicate. He has also said, don’t steal. He has also said, don’t kill. Why, then, do we judge the thief, the murderer, but shouldn’t judge the fornicator. Let me try and explain. If the fornicator has committed an act of violation while fornicating, we judge him and that is called rape. But if people have passion for each other and perform that passion within their right for freedom, it is not us who should judge them; that is something between that man and God. For the same reason that we don’t judge a person for not liking the one near him. But we judge the murderer because he has violated someone else’s freedom. More accurately, we don’t judge, we separate him from the public. Again, God is his judge. We also separate the thief, as well as the one who accepts bribes, since it isn’t a lesser sin then theft. And so on and so forth. Who would have thought that going to a striptease would have has such consequences?