My birthday that year was on Dashami, the last day of Durga Puja. School had been closed for four days, and I still remember, that was the first time I resented the idea of vacation. I spent the first four Puja days going out limpidly with Ma, Baba, Didi and the other crowds of relatives who always come down to Calcutta at that time. For my birthday, I asked for my parents’ permission to take out a couple of friends to lunch. They were not very happy at the idea, but I was turning 15, and I had been a good kid. I deserved it. I told my parents that one of the friends was “Josefino dada”, in the way of assuring them that I would be taken care of. Ma had met Josefino once, and for about the past three months, I had spoken about practically nothing but how awesome and helpful he was. In her books, he had been put down under the “reliable kind”.

I never saw Ankita again. I was the one who should’ve called her up and apologised after that incident. I never bothered. She never tried to contact me either, but that’s only to be expected. When I met Akshay at school after the vacation he told me off for treating her like such a bastard. He said that she had cried all the way in the car, so badly that after dropping off Cecilia and Priyanka he had taken her for a coffee and told her that she looked fine and her hair was great and I was a fucking wanker and she should just dump me and date a better guy. I had never heard of Akshay doing anything half as nice for anyone. Should go on to prove what a disgusting piece of shit I must’ve been.

But by the time I was told this I had Josefino in my life and all the Ankitas in the world simply didn’t matter any more. I remember I had grinned cheekily at Akshay and said, ‘Thanks for having told her. Saves me the burden of going and breaking the news.’

Akshay had shrugged and walked off, but I still remember what he had told me just before that. He’d said, ‘Dude, you think it’s cool to be a fucktard but tell ya what, never treat your women like shit. It always comes back to get you. Always.’    

When he said it, I thought it was just his desperate attempt to sound wise and intimidating (I wasn’t scared of Akshay any more). A few months later, I came to know through school gossip that Ankita had been bitching about me to whoever would listen: saying things like I was hanging out with devious people who did hard drugs and threw orgies all the time. Most people who heard these also knew that she was bitter about being dumped by me so it was fine, but I had smirked to myself and thought of what Akshay had said. But these days, so many years since all those things happened, those lines just keep repeating and repeating in my head. I suspect that they meant much more than I knew, than probably even Akshay knew at that time.

I don’t even know what happened to Ankita after that: if she’s in Calcutta still, if she’s dating someone nice, if she’s happy, if she even knows what has happened to me. I wonder if we’ll ever meet, I wonder if she’ll talk to me.. I wonder if there’ll ever be a chance to tell her how truly sorry I am, and how I’ve been repenting with my life for it.

I’m back. Digha was dank, musty and stank of fish, as usual, and now there’s a pile of sand in my clothes. I told Didi a cartload of crap about things I’m planning to do in the future, just to stop her from giving me advice. Just as well that Didi has always been a student of Science, because I fed her a lot of pseudo-intellectual shit I’ve been supposedly learning at college that I’m sure has never remotely been in the English syllabus of Calcutta University. Well, that’s all said and done. Didi is satisfied. She leaves with Chittie tomorrow. One more trip to the airport and then I’m free. (Or whatever. Back to the same old routine.)

Funnily, I met a gay guy at the hotel we were staying at in Digha. I’ll call him Atul. Atul is about 35, a real estate lawyer or something (I know and care fuck-all about law), and has a wife of some years, an unsightly paunch and absolutely no conversation. I have no idea why I ended up giving him my number. He’s promised to get back to me once we’re back in Calcutta, and maybe we could get together for a drink. I have no intention to get together for a drink with Atul. I have no intention to fuck him. I may be gay, but that doesn’t readily make me a whore.

It’s funny and ironic how many gay men are here in Calcutta itself, and from how many different walks of life. A lot of them are closeted, a lot of them aren’t but still do a Rajarshi in the end, but there’s also a large number of men who don’t. I read journals of gay men across the world and all I feel is envy and a deep sense of injustice. How I have spent the best years of my life, ignorant and afraid and hurting! When I was with Jose, it was just the two of us against the entire big, bad world. We never held hands in public, never looked into each other’s eyes, there was absolutely no question of coming out, even to our closest friends. Activism for homosexual rights existed in Calcutta even then, but it wasn’t widespread and was hugely discriminated against. The people who took part in those weren’t people like us, they didn’t come from our kinds of families or schools. We didn’t want to be activists or role models. We were just two normal kids who were happy with each other, and wanted the world to acknowledge – if not celebrate – our happiness. All we could have done with was to let our guards off at some time, not feel sick and rotten and guilty for every little thing we did, and we would’ve been fine. How archaic, how completely trivial does that emotion sound in this time and day.. and how it completely destroyed our lives back then!

I’m writing about Josefino again because I realize it that has become the only part of the day I enjoy and look forward to, lately. What I write is insufficient and despicable – I’m no great writer, nowhere close – but when I’m writing it is the only time my mind is at peace. The first time I tried writing about Jose, I broke down into tears at the keyboard. It made for no great prose and conveyed nearly nothing of what I felt for him, but it made my insides feel cathartic.

I kept the wrapper of that chocolate, along with other silly things Josefino touched or gave me, in a desk drawer for the next 4 years. I threw them all away last year, everything that had anything to do with him. I deleted every email he had sent me and all the photos of him I had in my hard disk. Josefino was out of my life. All he had left me was a life-long guilt and regret. I wanted that out of my head. I wanted to get over him once and for all, forget him, set him permanently in the past where he belonged. If only that worked, god.. if only that was so easy.  

I remember everything. I remember nothing. I read through all the things I’ve written till now and they seem like such weak, horrible trash, episodes from a flat, clichéd teenage drama. Not my life, never my life, my life wasn’t like that. I was reading the journal of taintedangelboy last evening, and his writing vibrates with all the hope, beauty, freshness of youth that is so gapingly missing from my own. All I write about are memories, dead things that have been stored up in my mind for ages. I cannot feel, I cannot recreate the youth, the optimism of my 15-year-old self.. I cannot feel the stars in my eyes, how the world felt like a soaring, wonderful place because it contained people like Josefino Ramirez in it. How a completely drab, boring day at school felt absolutely alright because he grinned at me while passing the corridor and said, ‘So what’s up with you, chomu fucker?’ Days when I could take on the world, days when I firmly believed that I was growing up to have a fun, awesome life. The person who writes these things knows that the world hasn’t been taken on. Knows that the life has fucked up so irrecoverably. Knows that there’s no happily ever after for him, ever, no hope or joy. How can you write a story when you already know its ending?
 

People around me keep pestering me endlessly to go out more, meet new people, hang out with old friends I have. I know I need to do that, I know. I am only 19. I cannot let my life come to a dead end. I need to start attending college, although I hate it, I sincerely hate everything and everyone there, I hate every moment I spend in that environment. I need to pick up my books and look through them, catch up on all the studies I’ve missed for the entire year. I need to start taking up people on the offers to coffee or drinks, I need to go back to attending a few parties before people get bored of my refusals and stop asking me altogether. I need to get back in touch with my school friends, try to hang out with them, keep track of what’s happening in their lives, before I lose them too, for ever.

It surprises me that there are still people who want to take me out on a date or sweet-talk me into sleeping with them. It surprises me that people are still dating at all, all those people, continuing with the dates and hanging-outs and parties and seductions and paper-thin relationships, just like before, just like back when nothing had happened. No matter what happens to you, life goes on like it always has, doesn’t it?

All I want is to lie down with my eyes shut and let it all fall away from me. This world, this reality, all these memories and scars and experiences and lessons learnt. What’s the point? It does not take me to some higher realisation, any startling new consciousness that liberates and exhilarates the soul. All it does is make me tired, so very tired. I want to go back to the beginning, the clean slate. I want to start all over again, in a different way, in a way that doesn’t end me up here. I don’t know if what I’m wishing for is madness.

I’ve been persuaded to accompany Didi and Chittie to a three-day trip to Digha. We leave early tomorrow morning, very early, because we have to drop Shashank off at the airport first. Rajarshi’s wedding reception is this evening (I won’t be attending this one either), and Shashank takes the first flight back to Bangalore tomorrow, because he cannot afford to miss another day at work. Didi and Chittie will be staying back for another week, and Didi wants to take Chittie to see Digha, and who else but the grown-up little brother has to join them for the trip? I hate Digha, it’s ugly, dirty and boring and filled with insipid childhood memories that I have no desire to relive. Digha is the last place I want to be in right now. But I hate this room and this house and this city and everyone and everything, so I guess it makes no difference where I am. If it makes Ma get off my back for staying cooped up in my room all day, and if it makes Didi have the self-satisfaction of having a secluded “talk” with me (What are we going to talk about? I’m not fucking going to tell her that Rajarshi is a hypocritical, cheating bastard who was sleeping with me before he dumped me at his convenience, and besides that, there’s nothing else that needs explanation), well, so fucking be it.

The play that was going to mark my stage debut as a woman never happened. I was an absolutely crappy actor. I could never memorize my lines or throw my voice, and I always got self-conscious when I was supposed to act. Akshay, who had written the script, finally decided that it was going nowhere and changed it into something else that didn’t require my role any more. But our names had already been registered with the British Council as the group representing our school. I couldn’t be dropped or replaced, although I was completely useless.

‘Can you dance?’ Akshay offered. ‘I can add a visual metaphor, a silhouetted dancer in the background as the action happens upstage. You have just the figure for it. No need to open your mouth, no risk of making us the joke of the century by calling an allegory an allergy. Other than that you’ll do backstage. Carry props. Manage sound effects. I’ll teach you how to.’

‘Uh, but I’ve never danced,’ I gulped and shuddered.

‘Yes, yes, we know you’re the supreme commander of dolthood,’ Akshay waved me away. ‘Get Jose to teach you a couple of moves, he knows some ballroom dancing. Practise like mad. Do it now, kid, or I’ll make you wish you were never born!’

‘Can’t Josefino do the dancing himself?’ I said miserably.

‘And who will play Destiny? You?’

‘Maybe if you change the role to Density he can bring us the Best Actor award,’ came the lazy snigger from the corner of the rehearsal room, where Josefino was sprawled on the floor with his back propped against the wall. ‘And anyway, if I have to coach this little jerk in dancing too now, he’s going to flunk his Maths test so bad he’ll make zero look like a distinction. How did you come so far without knowing how to multiply, kid?’

It seems very stupid to write of it now, but at that instant I broke down into tears. I just started sobbing and shaking and couldn’t stop. I knew I was a loser, I didn’t even want to be in this, why did all these super-talented older boys bring me here to make such cruel mockery of me? I continued crying for a while, furious that I didn’t dare to yell or throw a tantrum, like I always did at home. (I am the younger child and the only son, I grew up always getting my way.) They watched me with bored expressions. Nobody came forward to say a consoling lie. After some time, I felt foolish and stopped, still sniffing furiously. ‘Done for today? Can we go back to the other drama now?’ said one of the boys simply when I finally wiped my face off on my shirt sleeve.  

 The first day when Josefino dropped me home, Didi had opened the door to receive me. Didi used to study Engineering in Bangalore at that time, but she had returned home for a few days, I can’t quite remembered why now. I introduced Josefino to her. They didn’t talk much but the next day, on our drive back, Josefino gave me a mischievous sidelong glance and said, ‘Hey, your older sister? She looked quite chilled-out yesterday. What does she do?’

A flash of something like envy ran through my head, like a bolt of lightning. ‘Studies Engineering,’ I replied gloomily, and added, ‘in Bangalore. She’ll be leaving tomorrow.’

‘Too bad, eh?’ Josefino grinned. ‘But still, I can ask for her number. Maybe we’ll catch up sometime if I go to Bangalore.’

‘She has a boyfriend,’ I blurted out desperately.

‘God! Chill, okay? I’m not planning to hit on your sister,’ Josefino began to laugh. ‘I have a girlfriend myself, and I’m quite happy with her.’

‘So do I,’ I said defensively, and realized how ridiculous and completely irrelevant that sounded the moment it came out of my mouth. Josefino rolled his eyes and said dramatically, ‘Oh, do you? Who’d have thought,’ and continued to laugh harder.

I was too mortified to talk for the rest of the journey, and heaved a huge sigh of relief when it was Ma who opened the door this time. I introduced Josefino to her as well, they exchanged a few pleasantries, and then, with a mocking grin deliberately thrown at me, Josefino got into the wine-red Maruti Zen and left.

I woke up at 8 in the morning at the first sms: ‘Paulie boy! What’s up, have you dropped your pretty ass off the face of the earth? Party at so-and-so’s place today.. don’t you dare to miss out! Reply.’ I turned the phone off, because the calls and the smses will keep coming in, and I’m in no mood to party or meet any of them today.

No one’s at home. There’s no whiskey left, and I smoked up the last pouch of weed just before dawn, before I went to sleep. I went downstairs to the kitchen, made myself a breakfast of toast and honey, ate it, came back upstairs, showered and shaved. I’ve started looking like the pathetic wino junkie that I am. My eyes have prominent red veins (or whatever!) running through them, my cheekbones stick out as if the sallow skin is just a sad excuse to cover the skull and I’m losing hair at such an insane rate that by the end of this year I might develop bald patches. I don’t know if I care, or care enough. I can’t find it in myself to go completely crazy if a single strand of hair dared to come loose, like I used to be even a year back. All I can feel, as I look at the mirror, is a strong urge to laugh out aloud at the irony of it all. I don’t laugh. Starting to laugh would be stepping the border to the other side, and I don’t want to go mad.

 The biggest irony of all is that I must start writing about Jose on today of all days, on Valentine’s Day, on the day Rajarshi is getting married. The biggest irony is to start writing about Jose at all. Can these things be expressed in writing? Pallav and Josefino. Paul and Jose. Pauline and Joseph Ramirez. Pallav and Josefina Sengupta. Josey and his Pussycat. ‘I am Sodom and you are Gomorrah, you bastard! Live with it!’ Live, Jose, just live. Like that stupid Shakespearean poem I had to study at college, I’m trying to make you live through my writing. And I keep writing and deleting and writing and deleting the lines because they’re never sufficing to bring back all of you.

I’ll stop here today, because it’s very late in the afternoon and I’m ravenously hungry. I’ll have to go out to grab some lunch. I also have to dump the empty bottles from my room somewhere outside, and get myself some more whiskey. I’m running an all-time low on cash. But I’ll have to spend the night alone at home tonight, and though I can go downstairs and watch the TV, god, these lonely nights, they frighten me.