(( A City full of Angels down here ))

Girls, Boys, Weed, Sex, Rock and a Birthday Party Gone All Wrong

2009-02-24T20:05:51Z

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 called Josefino on his cellphone only that morning. He laughed when he heard that I wanted (really wanted, would he please come?) to take him and a friend to lunch that day. He asked why, and I said just like that, because I hadn’t run into him all through the rest of the days (You run into people you know all the time during Durga Puja, because the entire city is out on the streets). I was nearly certain that he would say no, that he was busy with his own friends, but he said cool. I then asked if he could pick me up from home. He asked why was that necessary, and I told him the truth: that the other friend was actually my girlfriend Ankita, and my parents weren’t very cool about me having a girlfriend or spending time with her alone, but they’d be fine if he was around. Josefino laughed again and said fine, he’d pick us both up before we go wherever we planned to go.

When the wine-red Maruti Zen arrived at my place, about three hours later, Josefino wasn’t the only one in it. There was a girl in the passenger seat, and Akshay and another girl at the back. As I was sullenly put into the backseat with them, Josefino turned around and introduced me to Cecilia and Priyanka (not their real names, as usual, but close enough), their girlfriends. They were both older than me, in Josefino and Akshay’s own class, and came from the Catholic girls’ school practically next door to ours. They dressed stylishly, wore make up and high heels, had their hair streaked and ironed straight, and were more sophisticated than any girl I had interacted with before. They giggled and said hi to me, but underneath it I could feel that they were laughing at the little kid who wanted to hang out with older, cooler people. Aww, how cute, wasn’t I?

Josefino asked where next, and I told him the way to Ankita’s place in Ballygunge. Ballygunge wasn’t far from where I lived, but most of the roads were either blocked with pandals or crowds, and it took us about an hour to reach there. On the way it was explained to me, with a lot of sniggering from Akshay and a lot of giggling from the women, that the group already had a plan for the afternoon. Josefino’s family was away for vacation and his house was empty. The idea was to buy lunch and a lot of booze and have an afternoon of “fun”. I had a vague idea what kind of fun was being talked about. I had never been in anything like that before. That wasn’t what I was thinking of when I called up Josefino, but I wasn’t looking for the other people coming along either. If I said no now, they’d probably just let me go home and laugh about me for ever.

I felt apprehensive about Ankita too. We had dated when I was at St. David’s, my previous school. I only met her about once a month since shifted to St. Julian’s, but we somehow never broke up, I guess just because we didn’t meet anyone better and it was considered cooler to be taken than single. I had invited her to lunch on my birthday because it was the expected thing to do. We’d never been very close friends, we weren’t similar enough. Ankita was precocious and wild. She was considered cool in my old school, but it struck me how foolish and un-elegant she would look next to girls like Cecilia and Priyanka, who were older and studied at better schools and knew more about everything. Some damage control would’ve been possible if Ankita kept her trap shut, but that was just too much to expect from her. I didn’t want her to meet these people, I wished I hadn’t invited her, but it was just too late by then.

I panicked when we finally met Ankita. In the month that we hadn’t met Ankita had coloured her hair a strange shade of mahogany and pierced her nose. I thought both transformations looked horrible on her. I felt so angry and so embarrassed. I didn’t even want to know what the others were thinking. All I remember was that I wanted to slap Ankita, yell at her, tell her that she should just fucking go home. Stupid bitch, why couldn’t she leave the hair alone? Why did she have to pretend she knew oh-so-much about fashion when all she had was such obnoxious taste? How did she dare to make such a fool of herself and of me (of me, most importantly) in front of all these older, cooler people! All my efforts at building an impression gone down the drain just because of her!

Just as I had feared, as soon as the car had started again Ankita took out a packet of cigarettes from her handbag and asked if anyone had a light. Cecilia and Priyanka giggled and rolled their eyes, and Akshay gave her a nasty smirk and said, ‘No. We don’t smoke cigarettes.’

Ankita said a miserable ‘Oh, okay,’ and put the packet back in her bag. I didn’t know if she still understood that she was being laughed at. I just felt so embarrassed. Unlike some other “lesser” boys from their class Josefino, Akshay and their friends were never seen smoking in public, because the only thing they smoked was essentially smoked at homes and terraces and private parties. Before we picked Ankita up, Josefino had already asked Akshay if there was any of the “stuff” left, and was assured that there were five pouches, enough for the afternoon. I had never seen marijuana before that afternoon, but of course, everyone at school knew about it. Ankita, on the other hand, still belonged to a world where cigarettes were the coolest thing to ever happen to you.

We went straight to Park Circus to pick up biryani from Arsalan for lunch, and Sprite for mixing with vodka, which the girls were going to drink. (The men were all having beer. I had no say in the matter, not being a regular drinker; I would’ve drunk anything the others were having.) The booze didn’t need to be bought, it had already been stacked up in Josefino’s fridge, more than enough for two extra people to join in. When they were paying for the food at the counter at Arsalan, I shyly offered that it was supposed to be my treat really, but I had only brought enough money to pay for Josefino and Ankita.

The older people laughed at the little kid trying to be chivalrous. Someone asked me why did I think it was supposed to be my treat. I blushed and told them it was actually my birthday. Ankita gasped, ‘Ohmigod, you hadn’t told them? Paul, you idiot!’, and the others laughed some more, the two older girls falling over each other gushing about how unbelievably, ridiculously cute I was, and I just blushed deeper and wished I could be invisible at that moment. Josefino and Akshay finally decided, charitably, that I could pay whatever money I had and they would pay they rest. After that we drove to Josefino’s house.

We sat down on the floor at the hall, rolling away the carpet, in case anyone got sick later. Josefino spread an old magazine on the floor, gave me a small polythene pouch of a dark, dried substance, and told me to start crushing.

‘How?’ I asked, staring in surprise at the thing I had heard of so much but never seen up close.

‘Tear them up to fine pieces with your fingers, you dolt,’ he said. ‘They’re dried leaves on a stalk, can you see? Tear them into very small bits. The finer the better.’

‘There are seeds in there, make sure you take each of them out and throw away,’ Akshay added with a diabolical wink, ‘or they’ll throw away your seeds.’

Alarmed, I got down to crushing the weed with utmost concentration. The girls sat and waited, while the boys went to the kitchen to bring back the booze. Cecilia and Priyanka only chatted with each other. No one spoke to Ankita, who must have felt more than a little miserable, and I am ashamed to confess that I only realized that later.. years later. At that time, I was too mad at her to give a shit.

Akshay suddenly rushed out of the kitchen crying out ‘Haha, so who has a birthday today?’ and before I could turn around or get up, he turned the bottle of beer he was holding over my head. The beer splattered out before I could move away, soaking my hair and clothes and everything. Priyanka yelled out, ‘Akshay, you bastard! You spoilt all the weed!’ and Akshay continued laughing and started to sing ‘Happy Birthday to you’ with an exaggerated flourish.

It all happened too fast for me to react. But I hadn’t probably even drunk beer before and now the bitter, sticky liquid was all over me and stinging in my eyes and probably ruining my hair (I have always been impossibly proud of my hair!) and I remembered that the clothes I was wearing were the best and most expensive ones I had received that Puja and my parents would absolutely kill me if I went home that way.. and as it always does in my case, all the fear and indignation burst out as tears. It was stupid and humiliating, but I began to cry.

Akshay was still of the opinion that it was all in good fun but the other three agreed that pouring beer over me like that was quite nasty, especially because I was so much younger and new to all this and it was my birthday, after all, and it was just unforgivable to make someone cry on his birthday. Cecilia and Priyanka petted me and Josefino said that go to his bathroom and change into some of his dry clothes. I still remember that I bawled something about my hair and Josefino said I could use his shampoo too, if I wanted, and Priyanka told me that it was okay, beer was actually good for hair, it added gloss. (I have followed that little tip that many times since. Beer as a rinse after shampoo. Amazing what it does to your hair!)

The t-shirt and the shorts were entirely too large for me. But I still remember, after giving myself a quick shower and drying, I put the dry clothes to my nose and took a long whiff. Josefino’s clothes, Josefino’s towel! They were all laundered and smelled of washing powder, but there was still a faint hint of the way his body smelled in them. Did he sleep in these clothes, had he ever jerked off in them? It was crazy that I could touch them, it was crazy that I was allowed to put them on!

When I returned the crushing of the weed was returned to me. The bottles were already opened and the drinks mixed and everyone had started drinking. Akshay even called me brother and apologised to me, saying that he had really meant no harm. My heart was singing. The boys sat next to their girlfriends. I sat as far from Ankita as possible without making it too obvious that I was avoiding her. Some music was put on. (It was Snow Patrol’s Final Straw, the CD of which Jose would give me later, but I didn’t know it at that time. Yet I still remember that the first song made me vaguely aware of Ankita, sitting there and sulking and not drinking her vodka. And when it came to the song “Run”, by which time we had finished the first joint and the first round of drinks and opened our packets of biryani, I still remember thinking of Josefino, jealously, miserably, because he was sitting right there and making out with Cecilia, hardly ever looking at me. All these were vague emotions, of course, because the first-time weed and booze had already hit me, and I was hardly registering my own thoughts or the lyrics of the songs.)

After lunch we had another couple of joints and some more drink. (Ankita and I would’ve passed out already, being complete first-timers, but we kept a check on how much we were having. I was surprised that Ankita restrained herself, but by this time I guess she was aware that she was in much more “wilder” company than she was used to.) When everyone was sufficiently high, Akshay took a packet of condoms from his pocket and grinned, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, before we get involved in “accidents”, eh?’

They took out two and Josefino and Cecilia disappeared into Josefino’s bedroom, and Akshay moved away with Priyanka to Josefino’s parents’. Before he left, Akshay threw a sachet down at Ankita and me, still sitting on the floor, and said, ‘Have fun, kids!’

We heard the clicks of the doors locking on two sides. We sat there, not talking. Ankita finally reached out for the condom and picked it up. ‘So,’ she was looking at it with awe and embarrassment, ‘are we going to use this?’

‘No!’ I said sternly, and added, ‘No. I don’t want to. We’re too young for all this shit.’

‘You decided to come here,’ Ankita said miserably, looking at me, hurt. ‘I thought we were going for lunch at some restaurant.’

It irritated me to have my naiveté pointed out. ‘I will go wherever the fuck I want to,’ I growled. ‘It’s my birthday.’

‘Didn’t look like they care much about you, either,’ she said.

‘Fuck-all you know!’

‘You’ve changed so much, Paul.’ She sounded like she was going to cry, and it got even more on my nerves.

‘So have you!’ I yelled back. ‘For Chrissakes, look at your hair! Look at your stupid nose-ring! You think that’s cool? Don’t they use mirrors in your house or something? You look like a fucking whore!’

Ankita started to sob. I picked up a bottle of vodka that lay still unopened. She ducked, I’m sure she thought I was going to throw it at her. But I put the bottle to my teeth and started trying to break open the seal.

‘Don’t drink that.’ She was still crying.

‘Shut up!’ The seal gave away and I just poured the vodka into my throat, not knowing that it would be too strong, not knowing that it was only beer that you drink like that. (I’d just seen Cecilia and Priyanka mix it with Sprite, but I had assumed they only did that because they were girls.) Still raw from all the smoking and beer, it felt exactly as if someone had carved a layer of flesh out of the insides of my throat.

I retched and controlled myself with some effort, and Ankita was still saying, ‘Look at you! You were never like this back in school. You never hung out with people like these..’

I lost my head and began to yell, my throat burning, ‘People like what? What are you trying to say? That I was better off hanging out with people like you, is that what you mean? Hanging out with wannabe sluts who dress like they’re on some cheap strip show and smoke cigarettes and tried to make out with me when I was fucking fourteen and..’ I threw up. All the raw vodka and beer and half-digested biryani came spluttering out of me in a gush on the floor, and Ankita started bawling aloud like a baby.

Josefino came running out of the bedroom, still zipping his pants. ‘What the fuck is happening..? Ohmigod, what the hell is this!’ he cried. ‘You! Just go the bathroom, go to the bathroom now! Run! And you! Stop yelling! Oh god, I’m not being mean, just stop the noise, okay? It’s splitting my ears! What a bloody mess! No, it’s okay, we’ll clean it up, just move away from here and stop crying, for Chrissakes! Cess, just see if there are lemons in the fridge and squeeze it and give it to Paul! The asshole has gotten himself fucking drunk! What the hell have you guys been doing?’

I wrapped my hands tightly over my mouth and ran to Josefino’s bathroom, reaching the basin just in time for the next surge of puke to hit it. I puked and puked till my head hurt and my eyes were burning and I could hardly hold on to the basin any more. As I puked I became aware that I had thrown up all over Josefino’s clothes, and what a mess I had made for everyone, and how Josefino’s room – which I had run through – was still dark and smelled of sex, and the bed sheet I couldn’t see must still be crumpled and I would never know the things he said to Cecilia when they had sex and I was stuck, so fucking suck with Ankita for eternity. I wished I could die, just obliterate myself from the face of the earth.

And then they came in and held me up and made me wash my mouth and take off the t-shirt I had puked all over and someone poured the terribly sour-bitter lemon juice down my throat. The light in Josefino’s room was turned on and the bed sheet straightened and I was carried over and laid down on Josefino’s bed. I was so delirious I couldn’t see or hear half the things happening around me.

I think Akshay came and told Josefino that the girls needed to be reached somewhere before the evening crowd set out into the roads and Ankita was in a bad state, it was a good idea to send her home as well. Josefino told him to take the car and drop them off, and that he would stay back to keep an eye on me. Then Akshay left the room.

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.

Returns and Regrets

2009-02-23T04:05:43Z

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.

It seems funny to look back and remember how long it took for me to realise what it was I really felt for Josefino. It is justifiable though. I was 14, I had grown up in a very conventional Bengali family, I didn’t have a cellphone or internet yet. I had never met anyone who was self-admittedly gay. As far as I was concerned, it was only a term you used to make fun of weak or cowardly boys.

But Josefino had become a kind of hero for me. I worshipped the ground he walked on. I don’t know why I chose him instinctively, from among the others. Akshay had been equally handsome and popular, and he was the “arty” guy of the group, more along my line than Josefino was. But there was a cold, ruthless self-centeredness in Akshay; all he truly cared about was himself and his own success. Nothing was too sacred for him on the way of achieving what he wanted. It would be years before I saw a real demonstration of that nature, but I think I sensed it, unconsciously, even back then. They all looked the same: handsome, successful, self-assured boys, but Josefino was the only one among them who was also a true gentleman.

I had hoped that doing the play together would make me friends with the popular crowd, but they dropped me the day it was done. Perhaps there would’ve been a chance if I was actually any good, but I had already established myself as a loser. Akshay and the others completely ignored me from after the play. It was only Josefino who came up to me the next day to ask how I’d done in my Maths test, and a few days later, when the result was declared, I went and told him that I’d passed. Josefino looked pleased. I took the opportunity to ask if he’d mind giving me Maths tuitions. A couple of hours a week would do. Any day he chose. His place or mine, whichever he found convenient.

He laughed at the suggestion, ‘What makes you think I have the time?’

I sulked. A look of concern came over his face. He said, ‘But look, dude, if you don’t have a Maths tuition it’s high time you get yourself one. Your Maths situation is honestly painful. You won’t be able to pass the ICSE if you don’t improve.’

‘But you don’t have the time.’

‘I don’t, and honestly, I’m no good as a tutor,’ he told me, ‘I’ll give you the number of the guy I took Maths tuition from, for my ICSE. Get enrolled with him immediately. Other than that, if you have any problem in class, bring it to me and I’ll show you how to solve it.’

A few days later Josefino asked me on the passing if I had got in touch with the Maths tutor, and I said yes. He asked if my classes were going alright. I told him of some problem I had at Algebra that day. He said he would help me with it if I bring it to him during recess, and he did. A couple of days later I took another problem to him, and then it became a sort of habit. Sometimes I took things that I didn’t even need help with, just to be able to sit with Josefino as he tried to explain it to me. All through he was busy with his own studies, fests, soccer practices and matches, but although he made me wait on some days, he would always oblige. He never invited me to hang out with him and his friends, during school hours or after, he never told me anything about his personal life, but he would always say hi to me every time we ran into each other (and I made sure we did very often), he would always ask how I was doing. Josefino did that to everyone. I’m sure he never once suspected how he made my day every time he stopped to smile.

One other day when we ran into each other, Josefino asked me, ‘Hey, you like chocolates with nuts and raisins and things in them?’

‘Uh,’ I said at the strange question, ‘sure. Why?’

‘Take it,’ he took a bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk Fruits and Nuts out of his pocket and thrust it at me. ‘Someone gave it to me. I can only stand my chocolates plain bitter. No adornments,’ he shrugged, by the way of explanation.

I took the bar of chocolate and looked at it. The wrapping was already torn and the corner of the first square nibbled. ‘Someone’s eaten this,’ I said.

‘That would be me. My girlfriend gave it to me. You know, girls!’ he rolled his eyes and grinned. ‘Just break that part off and throw it away. Have the rest. It’s good chocolate.’

‘Oh, that’s okay then,’ I put the chocolate quickly into my pocket. ‘I thought rats or something.’

‘How would rats come into my pocket?’ he laughed incredulously. I laughed too, so that he wouldn’t notice anything out-of-the-way.

I carried the chocolate home carefully in my bag, and stared at it for a long time, sitting in my room. There were marks of Josefino’s teeth at the place where he had bitten off. Little, square, straight teeth marks – he had strong, well-aligned, beautiful teeth. I touched the marks carefully, feeling each dent with the tip of my finger. Finally, when the chocolate had started to melt in the clamminess of my room, I brought it to my tongue and slowly licked off that part, trying to savour the taste, trying to store it in my memory for ever. I had often eaten Cadbury Dairy Milk Fruits and Nuts before, but that was the best chocolate I ever had in my life.

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.

Un-writing Everything I've Written

2009-02-15T19:26:03Z

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 Things You Say and the Things You Do Surround Me

2009-02-15T03:40:00Z

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.

Then the dance lessons began. Josefino wasn’t part of the school dance team, he called it “chomu shit” (it’s quite difficult to translate “chomu”, which is a word typically used in our school. I think “dickhead” comes somewhat close. You apply it for more or less anyone whose style and tastes you find wannabe, stupid, low-class, disgusting or that kind of thing), but he was a skilful dancer. I was equally hopeless. I stepped on his toes so many times that very afternoon that Josefino fumed with anger and threatened to make me buy him new keds.

I eventually did only backstage and sound for the play, which happened four days later. But for the next two days I learnt dancing with Josefino in the evenings, in his house which was within walking distance from school, because during the actual rehearsal hours he had to practise playing his own role. I had nothing to do while the others rehearsed, so Josefino would give me Maths equations to solve, which I struggled with all afternoon. After rehearsals, we would walk down to his house. For the next couple of hours Josefino would try to teach me to dance, with miserable results, and then he would put me in his car and drive me home.

This happened for two days, by when everyone had abandoned the idea that I could dance in the play, so I didn’t need to go any more. I felt a little disheartened when I heard the decision, because I had found everything about Josefino’s house and family impossibly fascinating. I loved all of it, the old colonial-style architecture with its high ceilings and dark corners, the antique furniture, the cupboards with their translucent glasses filled with dusty, mysterious books and show-pieces. I loved that Josefino’s mother wore skirts and jeans. (My own mother, a conventional Indian housewife, would only be found wearing a sari.) I loved how his father took a little brandy in his evening coffee, and how he listened to the Beatles on an old cassette recorder. I loved it when he offered me to share the coffee the first day I went, along with a couple of ginger biscuits. (At home I was still considered too young to have tea or coffee with the adults.) I loved their dog, Margarita, a large, musty golden retriever who I would end up becoming great friends with, eventually. I loved the hall we practised dancing in, and I loved the fireplace in it and the image of the crucified Christ hung over the mantle. I still remember each of those details like I’d been there yesterday, though it has been more than two years since I last stepped into that house. I doubt if I will ever forget.

I loved Josefino’s room the most, with its large antique bed and writing desk, the posters and cut-outs of rock bands and footballers and actresses on the wall, his exercise bike in the corner. I loved the careless untidiness of it, his clothes and books thrown around, I loved the way the room smelled of him and his things. I gazed with awe and envy at the tubes and jars and bottles in his bathroom - shaving cream (Gillette), aftershave (Davidoff), deodorant (Axe), hair gel (Brylcreem) – all those things that were part of an older boy’s world and were still strictly off-limits for me. Josefino was only two years older than me but he seemed like an inhabitant of a different world altogether. He owned a mobile phone, he got given money to go out and have drinks with his friends, he didn’t need permission to stay out all night. He was already a man, while I was only a little boy who cried at the drop of the hat and couldn’t dance to save his life. I wanted to keep coming back to that house, to have Josefino talk to me and listen to me talk, to want to feel like we were friends. I wanted him to flash that thousand-watt smile at me and tell me that I was pathetic, honestly, but it could be worked at. But there was no need for that after the first two days. I had finished writing my Maths test, and everyone had been effectively dispelled of any illusion that I be taught dancing.

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.

The Alpha and The Omega and Everything in Between

2009-02-14T12:37:37Z

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.

Josefino Ramirez was the first. Of everything. It was 2004 when I met him. August, middle of monsoon, still hot and intermittently raining and the school field was muddy and treacherous. I was a student of Class Nine. I had joined this school a few months ago – one of the oldest and most prestigious boys’ schools in India – because my father wanted his only son to have studied in his own alma mater. I was two months away from my 15^th birthday.

It was on such a day that I was hanging around on the corridor with some of my friends, eating lunch and chatting about girls or computer games or something, when we noticed a group of seniors standing in the field and pointing surreptitiously at us. There were five or six of them. The little rectangular badge of school captains or vice-captains reflected the midday sunlight on most of their shirts. We knew all their names, the whole school did. They were the stars of their batches, the ones younger boys looked up to with awe and hoped to emulate. None of them had ever talked to me or my friends before. We were regular, nondescript kids.

One of the seniors finally broke away from the group and came towards us. Tall, lean-bodied, handsome, with a casually arrogant face. ‘Hey, you. That one. C’mere!’

He was staring at me. You might be familiar with the name of Akshay Saxena – he has risen meteorically in the past few years. He topped the entrance test in English at St. Stephen’s College, went to Cannes Film Festival with a short film he made, and I hear is working now with Bollywood director Ketan Mehta on his latest film. Back then, in Class Eleven, Akshay Saxena was still a star: one of the best young faces in Calcutta theatre, insanely popular and pursued in the school circles.

You do not try to act smart with such seniors. I stepped up to him, wishing I could run away instead. I have always been thin and scrawny, never any good at sports or physical fights. I have always been the kind that’s easily bullied. I still remember Akshay Saxena’s thin lips pursed tight as his cold, impassive eyes measured me up from head to mud-crusted shoe. Then his mouth curled into a smirk, ‘What are you scared of already, kid? Have we done anything to you?’

‘Uh.. no. I’m just.. I mean.. sorry!’

‘Hmm. Name?’

‘Pallav Sengupta.’

‘Class?’

‘Nine.’

‘Don’t remember seeing you around for a very long time. New kid, eh? Where from?’

‘Uh.. St. David’s,’ I told the name of my previous school, and added, hoping that it would make me look acceptable, make them want to hurt me less, ‘Bombay before that.’

‘I see,’ Akshay Saxena nodded, thoughtfully, then looked at me, ‘Tell me, Pallav. Are you gay?’

I dropped my eyes to my shoes, my face growing hot with indignation and fear. I hadn’t been gay back then, of course. I even had a girlfriend in my previous school. I didn’t do anything that was “stereotypically gay”. But I looked thin and androgynous, with a mass of thick black hair and dark, long eyelashes that made me look like I was wearing kohl. I was also shy and quiet, with a weak voice. My cheeks were still smooth. In short, exactly kind of kid that is always the butt of gay jokes, especially at places like boys’ schools that more or less completely run on testosterone.

At this point, one of the other seniors came ahead and interrupted, ‘Aw come on Aksh, you don’t wanna scare the hell out of the kid. Just tell him what we need him for. If he can’t do it, we’ll have to look for someone else.’

I looked up at my saviour and immediately became a lifelong fan. I knew who Josefino Ramirez was already. He was another of the stars of his batch: handsome, popular and an all-round talent, part of both the soccer team and the Science Olympiad team, and till then highest scorer of the season in school-level soccer in Calcutta. Josefino at seventeen was of medium height, broad-shouldered, with frank brown eyes and a sparkling smile. Later, when I came to know him well, I would learn that the smooth light-brown complexion was a legacy of his Portuguese ancestors. Josefino and Akshay were best friends; we always saw them hanging out together, surrounded by their less awesome cronies. I never expected him to come up against Akshay for the rescue of an inconsequential junior like me.

But Akshay retracted, and then all of them explained to me what they had called me for. I didn’t need to be afraid of being bullied or beaten up. The fact was that the British Council Drama Festival – which was the biggest annual event in school theatre in the city – was coming up, and the regular boy who played female roles in our school’s productions was absent for some reason, so they were looking for a replacement. I felt a little dismayed at being expected to play a woman on stage, but it was explained to me that the gay thing really a joke. The regular boy who played female roles was very much heterosexual, and while his friends did make harmless jokes about it, nobody actually believed him to be gay. And it was going to be an honour for me to be acting in the play with seniors, because in our school, as a rule, Class Niners weren’t usually allowed to take part in any inter-school event apart from sports.

‘I’ll explain the situation to the Father and make him grant you a special permission, no sweat,’ offered Akshay, and I knew he could do it too. Every rule in the school bent to Akshay’s pleading. Everyone knew he was the boy who was going to make it real big someday. They were all being reassuring and friendly to me, these popular seniors who everyone wanted to be friends with. I had a Maths test in the middle of the rehearsals, and they promised they would get permission so that I could come on that day, take the test and leave. I sucked at Maths, and Josefino promised that he would personally coach me for the test during rehearsals and make sure I passed. I had never done any theatre before, but I knew this was probably the best offer I was going to get in my life. I said yes.

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.

And If You’re Offering Me Diamonds and Rust, I’ve Already Paid

2009-02-13T16:55:11Z

How very apt is Friday the thirteenth! I have never felt so resentful about being around Didi. Didi has always been my favourite family member. I know she’ll continue to be so in the future. Shashank, her husband, is the most chilled-out heterosexual male I’ve come across, and their one-year-old daughter is the most adorable baby ever. Any other time, I would’ve been totally excited at the idea of them coming over to Calcutta. But right now, all I want is for them to go away, go back home. Leave me alone.

Ma had noisily announced my reluctance to attend the Wedding the minute Didi and her family entered the house, last evening. Didi pacified Ma, like she always does, saying that she would talk to me about it, but I’m sure she already knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere. No one in my family knows me better than Didi does.

But I didn’t want to hang about and listen to everyone making plans about the Wedding, so I went back up to my room. I came down later to join the others for dinner. I don’t always bother to have dinner with family when it’s only Ma and me (and Baba, when he’s here). But when Didi and Shashank are here, I usually eat with them, and I did it this time, to avoid more questions. After dinner, I excused myself and went back into my room. Didi followed me there after some time.

I was lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling (waiting for people downstairs to fall asleep so that I could roll a joint and smoke it in peace). Didi came in and sat down at my feet. ‘So, what have you been up to, Paul? Ma says you’ve stopped going to college. You stay cooped up in your room all day.’ The stale smell of whiskey and weed still hung unmistakeably inside the room. (The bottles were below my bed, the pouches and rolling paper in my desk drawer, the ashes collected and flushed down the bathroom drain.)

‘I haven’t stopped going to college, alright? I’ve been working,’ I grumbled back. ‘I got this designing assignment from a web-designing firm one of my friends’ dad owns. Been working on that. I need time alone to concentrate.’ It was a lie, of course. I can sketch a little, but nothing beyond that. I don’t even know how to use things like Flash or Illustrator or whatever it is graphic designers work with. I give a fuck about graphic designing. It is only my standard excuse for not doing well enough at my studies.

Didi sighed. ‘Glad you’re taking the art seriously then, little bro. Mum-dad are really worried about what you’re going to end up doing.’

I rolled my eyes, said nothing. We stared at the walls in silence for a while, feeling uncomfortable. Didi finally said, ‘I know you had.. uh, feelings for Rajarshi.’ She was trying to sound gentle and patient, but she was staring at her hands anyway, not looking into my eyes. Didi knows, but that doesn’t make her comfortable with the fact that her little brother is, well, rather interested in other people’s brothers.

I shrugged and grimaced. What can a man say?

‘Rajarshi is, you know, not that way,’ she said again, trying to choose the right words. ‘He did want to get married. I know.’

As if I didn’t. Of course Rajarshi wanted to get married, why wouldn’t he? He let his grandparents choose the girl, he let them arrange the wedding in whatever way they pleased, and why wouldn’t he? He did the conventional thing. He pleased his parents and grandparents, and made sure that they’d keep him wrapped in gold for the rest of his life. Rajarshi will never have to worry about another comfort as long as he lives. The total value of the dowry he’s receiving from this marriage is probably more than he would ever earn from his worthless job. ‘Sure he did,’ I muttered.

‘Paul, baby, it’s stupid for you to be upset at Rajarshi,’ Didi sounded hurt. ‘He.. well, not all men prefer that kind of thing. It’s wrong for you to blame him because he wasn’t, you know..’

‘I know,’ I put her out of her misery. I knew things that Didi would never know or imagine, but that was just the irony of the situation. I love Didi, but I’ve never been close enough to her to share my deepest personal affairs. I wasn’t going to tell her now that I wouldn’t have minded if her friend had been not interested in men in general, or me in particular. I wasn’t going to tell her now about who Rajarshi was, and what exactly he had made himself to me; although telling would make it easier, telling would make Didi see me as something more than the unreasonable, horny, morose bastard I was making myself out to be in her eyes. That was just the bitterness and the inescapable irony of the situation.

‘It’ll be very bad if you don’t attend the wedding, or don’t even convey your wishes,’ Didi said miserably, ‘You guys used to be such great friends. You’ve always meant a lot to Rajarshi, Paul.’

I wanted to say that it’s rather natural, when you’re fucking somebody regularly for about a year, for them to start meaning something to you, and point out that in that case, the attachment of Rajarshi the weasel seems to me to fall just a little short. Instead I said, with enough rudeness to put an end to the discussion, ‘I’m old enough to make my own decisions, Didi, you know? I don’t remember having asked for your advice on whether I should or should not attend Rajarshi’s wedding. When did you start being as obnoxious as Ma, or does motherhood do it to women?’

It was meant to hurt and it did, for Didi pursed her lips, apologised for her intrusion and left me alone. I know she hasn’t forgiven me yet for it, because when all of us went for lunch to Peter Cat today, all through the trip Didi didn’t say a single word to me about Rajarshi’s wedding or my plans for the future. She smiled and talked to me and did her best to make sure nobody noticed anything wrong between us, but the smiles were measured and the talk restricted to impersonal subjects. That’s just like Didi. I’m half-afraid that’s just like me too. We’re just too averse to drama, just too reluctant to expose our wounds. We would rather hurt ourselves than let the hurt touch the people we love, and hurt ourselves some more in the effort to hide that we did so.

After lunch, Didi, Shashank and Chittie (their daughter) went over to Rajarshi’s place in Salt Lake, where they were going to spend the night and help with the final arrangements for the Big Day tomorrow. Ma went to meet one of her friends in Ballygunge. She kept the car, so I walked aimlessly down the roads for a while and eventually found myself in Southern Avenue, past Golpark, by the time the sky was getting dark. On a sudden impulse, I took up one of the outdoor tables at Indthalia, just emptied as I was walking by, and bought myself a double shot of espresso. I was sitting and drinking the bitter liquid, staring at the steadily darkening treetops across the street, and I was hit by a sudden deluge of memories of Jose. The moment it came, it was so intense - I needed Jose right then, right then, right there. I felt like I would stop breathing if I didn’t have Jose with me that very moment. The moment passed, but it left me giddy and with tears stinging my eyes. I walked back home in a daze, went straight into my room, rolled myself a joint, and cried in bed as I tried to make myself fall asleep. I dreamed and Jose was in the dream, but now that I’ve woken up, I cannot remember the dream any more. It felt like every dream about Jose always does. That terrible stab of longing and fear and comfort and guilt. Leaves me empty as a husk, each of them.

I hate to admit it even to myself, but lately Jose has been in my thoughts more and more frequently. I know I must write about Jose, that’s the only way I can cope with him, but I don’t know how to put him down in words. How can I write anything down about Jose without making it took trivial, insufficient, somehow not quite right? I’ll try, I promise. But not today. Not today.

---

After Didi left me alone in my room last night, I sat around and worked out a few things about how to go about writing this journal. My plan is to write in descriptive details, so I cannot, evidently, mention people by their original names. I didn’t like to use initials either, because initials can be recognised by people who know (or are) the real people, and besides many people have the same initials as well. So I decided to make up fake names for everyone, like I’ve already made for myself, keeping something or the other intact from their real names: sometimes initials, sometimes ethnic backgrounds or some other detail. For two hours I sat and made a list of who to name what. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever done (I am tempted to write “queerest” and have a quiet, sardonic laugh to myself, but I’ll abstain). It feels weird to talk about people with names that are not their own, even in writing. It nearly hurts to not write the real name of Jose, a name I have repeated so many times in my head that it has become a kind of a personal prayer.

It also feels a little artificial to recreate speech and situations in writing. I have a good memory for words and expressions, but memory is never perfect, and often, I’m afraid, what I will end up conveying is the overall feel of a situation but not the exact description of things as they happened. Conversations happen in Bengali and Hindi as often as they do in English, and sometimes in a mix of all three, and I will mostly make rough translations as I go. Blame all of it on my obsession with the fictional style of writing rather than the journalistic. I cannot get rid of the fantasy that I’m writing an autobiography, a manuscript, that may be worthy of publishing some day.

I will start to write about Jose. I must.

I Must Lie Down Where All the Ladders Start

2009-02-12T20:14:36Z

They tell me this is meant to be winter, February. I don’t remember having signed up for a winter like this: finding yourself wide awake in the afternoon in your bed, suffocating in a sticky pool of your own sweat, drool and tears. This room is like the sixth circle of hell. I haven’t left it in… oh, the last four days. (You wouldn’t want to look at me. People who called me beautiful once would shudder at what I have come down to.) I am half-certain that this room will be my tomb, and half-frightened of the inevitability of that thought. Somehow, that brings my entire life to a perfectly fitting poetic justice.

But I am a coward, of course, and like all cowards, I keep hoping there’s a hole in the plan, some way to escape that no one had noticed before. Like all cowards I seek to justify and ask for sympathy. (Why else even make an effort to keep this useless journal?) Last night, I once again had a dream about a boy who has been dead a little over a year. He turned his cold, dead eyes at me and accused me of destroying his life. His life that was so rich, brilliant, untainted, and his future that could have been so much happier and more fulfilling than I can ever imagine. He accused me of cheating it all away from him. What can I say? I have been holed up in this room for the past ninety-six hours and there is more whiskey in my blood and marijuana in my lungs than my body can take and the inside of my head is a mess of despair and rot and I can see no joy in living and I’m too ashamed to inflict my death upon anyone: if he believes there’s anything he can wring out of this disgusting life of mine, oh god, let him take it. Let him take it.

I realize that I’m rambling. What I’ve written a paragraph back makes no sense to me. You must forgive me, because all this is very new and alien. I have never written my own private thoughts down before in longhand. I’ve never kept a diary, which often strikes people as surprising, because I’m told that I’m the kind of person that keeps a diary. (What is that kind of person, honestly? I never understood.) Besides, I am.. well.. not really in control of myself. My head hurts like thousands of needles are scraping through it, my eyes are burning, and I’m fervently hoping that this constant urge to throw up is only a result of prolonged substance abuse and nothing worse. I’m finding it harder to type out comprehensive sentences than you would realize from reading this. Where would I be without small mercies like the spell-check on Microsoft Word?

But I’m trying harder to do this than I’ve tried to do most things in my life. As a child, I had often been told that I could grow up to be a writer, if I tried. (The people who said this were always friends and teachers. Never my own family, who were just too disappointed with their only son’s complete disaffection with science. I would never follow the steps of my father and become a glorious, cash-minting engineer. Whatever else I became wasn’t very important.) Perhaps they were right. Or perhaps not, because I suspect I am first and foremost a narcissistic bastard. I was never interested in telling anyone else’s story but my own; not, by any means, of people who didn’t even exist in the first place. I never had anything else but my own life to offer to the world’s entertainment.

That show is now over, and all that is left is to tell the tale, so I’m finally exerting myself to write it down. It will seem a little precocious, perhaps, at my age (I am a little more than eight months shy of my 20^th birthday) to claim that the story of my life is at its end already. But you don’t know me, and if you did, you’d agree with what I believe. I’m not talking about suicide. (It’s the easiest and possibly the best way out for me, right now, but I’m too cowardly and too guilt-ridden to try to suicide. I wish I wasn’t. But then, I wish hadn’t landed up here at all. I wish for so many things to have not gone wrong. Who’s caring?) But although I may go on and live for another thirty, forty, fifty years, I doubt I would ever live as much as I have lived already. I doubt if there will be another story you’ll like to hear.

But now the clock on my wall says 3:30, and my mother has already knocked on the door two times before to remind me that I’m late for going to the airport to pick up my sister and her family. They are all arriving for the wedding that is on Saturday. The Wedding is the big thing, of course: the most wonderful, joyous occasion of the season. Excuse me while I proceed to throw up, shower, change into human habits, and perform my lifelong errands of a dutiful brother and son.

She only sleeps when it's Raining

2009-02-10T20:10:54Z

Call me Paul. (It isn't my real name, of course, but it's Close Enough.) Hello, how are You doing?

I have Nothing to say. I could've done with Not creating this journal. But then what is My Life, and what Dignity shall I pretend to Preserve by not uttering a Word about myself in a Public Forum? I am a kind of an Un-Person. After I die, every record of the fact that I really Existed - the Real Me - will be erased Forever. That is my Fate.

There is a Wedding on Valentine's Day this year - three days from now - that I shall not attend. I love Weddings. I will Never have One. I can't start to Imagine what it would have been like. I can't stop Reminiscing about Valentine's Day last year, when I sat at Oly with One of the two that are getting Married now, drinking Vodka together before we moved on slurrily to more Private quarters.. an Apartment. The apartment was filled with Yellow light and I think the Music that played in the background was Chopin, I can't remember.

Well whatever That was. So call me Paul.. and I shall try to tell you the Story of my Life.