We no longer need to be pious because we have become all too good in play-acting piety. Billboard piety, hyper-piety, piped piety. But under the veneer of this denial of the sexual and the rapturous, Tehran Avenue is swelling with desire, a countercurrent that threatens the embankments of the mainstream at every turn. Let no one be surprised by the announcement recently of the head of the Cultural Organization of the Municipality of Tehran about rising prostitution, drug addiction, and other such debaucheries. This is the only way the social can manifest its desires under the terror of external signs.
Nothing offers greater freedom, in fact, or greater sovereignty, than justified contempt.
And the Iranian society today is free. Signs of amorousness circulate to the tune of accordion and chinking glasses. To be young, and in love, and in Paris. The literature of Love is rife with cases in point. Tehran Avenue provides for the lover a crucible within which the pyrogenic forces of freedom and desire are be put to test.