Just as my colleagues at ElectronicsHut had some idea of India but had never come into contact with an Indian, I had heard of homosexual people in India but had never actually worked with one or even met a person who was openly gay. One evening, Ron’s wife called to tell him that something important had come up at his home. It wasn’t normal for his wife to call him at work. Ron didn’t give us the details of the crisis—he just wanted to leave. Cindy let him go, but she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of me closing by myself. The checklist for closing the store had too many things for just one person. Count the money in the till, gather and sort out the sales receipts into three different stacks—cash, credit cards, and checks—vacuum the floor, turn off the TVs, lock all the expensive merchandise in the cage, take the money to the bank . . . it was a long list.
Cindy called another store to see whether she could borrow an employee for the night. A few minutes later, a round-faced, blond man walked in, swinging a key chain attached to his index finger. There was something awkward about his walking style, but I couldn’t tell what. He smiled at me as he walked by—in the way a newly married woman does to her husband on the first day of her marriage—and checked me out top to bottom from the corner of his eye. Some of his fingernails were painted pink.
He walked back and knocked on the backroom door. Cindy came out and hugged him. “Howyadoin’?” she asked him.
“Hot,” he said, and fanned his face with his hand with fingers stretched apart. He then smiled and moved his torso left and right without moving his feet. Cindy introduced us. I said hi and Kevin smiled again, blinking a few times.
He looked at Cindy and said, “By the way, I am straight today.” He opened the two top buttons of his shirt and revealed a black T-shirt that said Pussy in bold letters.
“No way,” she said, and laughed hysterically. I stood there watching the two of them laughing with wicked expressions, without a clue what was going on.
Cindy went home soon after, leaving Kevin and me alone. I didn’t know what to think of the guy; he was different from the other American men I had met so far. He didn’t talk for the first fifteen minutes and kept playing with his phone. After a while, a young man wearing tight jeans came in to inquire about a product.
When he walked out, Kevin said, “Ooh, look at his cute ass.” He took me by surprise. I’d seen men admiring other men’s biceps, broad chests, or shoulders because they were envious that they didn’t have them, but I’d never encountered a man admiring another man’s buttocks in such a manner. I was amazed and curious at the same time.
I tried hard not to say anything, but when we were alone again, I asked him, “Kevin, do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Go ahead,” he said.
“I am curious to know why you thought the man’s ass was cute.”
He smiled. “It’s because I thought it was cute,” he said and started playing with his phone again. He hadn’t answered my question; I stood there in need of more explanation.
“I mean, Kevin, why do you like a man’s ass?”
“I just like it,” he responded without looking up from his phone.
“Why do you prefer a man over a woman?” I asked again.
“Oh, a man’s ass is much tighter—” he said in the way one talks about a favorite dish and in the middle of the description starts craving it. His eyes sparkled with excitement as he finished the sentence. “Oh yeah,” he said after a brief pause, nodding his head up and down in conviction. I didn’t say anything and just looked at him.
A few seconds later, he smiled, clenching his teeth gently, and said, “And sometimes, it smells real good.”
Kevin’s mannerisms, walking style, and body language reminded me of hijras in India. Hijras have male bodies, but dress and act like women. Some of them have very masculine body shapes—broad muscular shoulders, big biceps, facial hair. They move around the city in groups and knock on people’s doors where there has been a marriage or birth recently. They dance and sing and bless the newly wedded couple or the child, and demand money. Of all my encounters with hijras, none have been pleasant. They are known for shouting obscenities.
I had seen hijras who did not hesitate to take their clothes off—I mean all their clothes—if their demands were not met. I had seen them grabbing men’s genitals in public, feeling their buttocks, and planting a kiss on a young boy’s freshly shaved face. The sound of loud drums beating, and the echo of forceful clapping and singing, signaled their presence in the vicinity.
Once, in Lucknow, I was waiting for a friend by the side of the road. A wiry traffic policeman across the street was swinging his stick at the rickshaws to suggest that they should not enter that road. Rickshaws were not allowed on it during certain hours of the day. Most rickshaw pullers obeyed, and let their clients off near where the policeman was standing. The cop seemed happy and waved his stick majestically after each poor man turned around and pedaled away. A few minutes later another rickshaw arrived, but this one did not stop, and ignored the stick. The policeman ran after him and hit the hood of the vehicle with his stick. The rickshaw stopped, and the man who was riding on it got off, gesturing with his hand at the rickshaw driver to stay out of the confrontation with the policeman.
The cop was offended because they hadn’t listened to him and had instead kept going. I watched the rider—he was a foot taller than the man in uniform—talking and explaining something. The policeman didn’t care that he was much smaller in stature. It seemed as if the rickshaw driver were caught between two people who wanted him to do opposite things. It clearly hadn’t been his decision to break the law. He had been forced to keep going by the client and the policeman wanted him to stop. After a few minutes of squabbling, stick-waving, and finger-pointing, the scene took an ugly turn. The tall man pushed the policeman, throwing him on the road. The cop got up quickly, swinging his stick at the guy, but before he attacked, the tall, broad-shouldered, muscular man took his shirt off. I had been watching all this from the other side of the road, glancing away every minute or so to look for my friend.
The next thing I saw was the policeman running away, through the intersection, through the red light, amid the moving traffic, as if he didn’t care if he got hit by a scooter, motorcycle, or a car. I looked back to see if the big man was still there. He was standing there, calmly buttoning up his shirt, straightening the collar, rolling the sleeves back down. He got back in the vehicle, and gestured for the rickshaw puller to move. After several minutes, the policeman came back to his post.
I was curious to know what had made the policeman run, so I crossed the street to talk to him. He was sweating profusely and panting as he looked around for his stick, which had fallen from his hands when he ran off. I asked him what had happened, and why he had run away like that. He looked at me, swallowed, and waited to catch his breath. He wet his lips with his tongue, and peered around as if he were trying to make sure the guy was gone.
“That man had boobs, real boobs. If I had known the motherfucker was a hijra, I wouldn’t have messed with him. I stay away from those people.”
Although Kevin wore men’s clothes, men’s shoes, and worked in the same capacity as me, his behavior, language, and style only brought hijras to my mind—I couldn’t think of any other comparison. His graphic description of how a man’s body appealed to him and his openness about his sexual orientation were disturbing to me. In India, I had gone to an all-boys’ college, and had never, to my knowledge, encountered anyone who was attracted to the same sex. My two good friends were A.J. and Pinto. I shared everything with them—problems, happiness, money, food, and sometimes we lazed around in the same bed. We would often hold hands or have our arms around each other’s shoulders when we walked. Such intimacy was not looked down upon by society, and no one ever thought of us as homosexuals.
I had heard of gay people, but didn’t know any personally. There was a park in the very center of Lucknow that was “infamous” for homosexual activities. It was believed that men who were looking for other men had certain signs, gestures, and body language to communicate to those with similar interests. They would come around the park after sunset, and hang around looking for what they wanted. Sometimes, when my friends came to play cricket in the park, we would notice that the gathering of families picnicking—children playing with balloons, ladies chatting and nibbling on food, listening to the music on a cassette player—would slowly be replaced by single men, fidgeting and hovering in various corners of the park.
We would continue playing until it got too dark to see the cricket ball; when it took too long to find it around the park, we would start winding up. It seemed that the darkness caused us to stop playing, and set the scene for a different kind of a game. Every once in a while the local newspapers would run a headline like “Cops Nab Men Engaged in Nefarious Activity in a City Park.” I didn’t know then that I would meet gay people in America who didn’t need to go to a park and be clandestine about looking for partners. Throughout the evening, Kevin volunteered information about his past love affairs with men.
“I was married to someone much older than me, but I found out the person was cheating on me, so I divorced him.”
“You were married to him and divorced him?” I asked, trying to take in the information.
“Yes, I was married to him for almost two years. We lived together, but you know, things don’t always work out.” I looked at him in amazement. “I am very picky,” he continued, “when it comes to dating. I only date white men and you know what? I’m going on a date tonight. We are going to a club, I brought party clothes with me so I can go right after I get off work.”
Soon, it was time to close the store. Kevin went to the bathroom and came out wearing a body-hugging round-necked pink shirt and equally tight black pants. He dialed a number on his phone and said, “I am ready, baby, are you coming to pick me up?” He ended the phone call with a kiss.
A plump, short-haired woman called Leslie, who had smoker’s voice, used to come and meet Cindy at work almost every day. She dressed as many men dress—button-down shirt tucked into her pants, a big round watch on her wrist and a fat brown leather wallet sticking out of her back pocket. She was a friendly person and Ron and Jackie seemed to know her well. She would often tell Ron in her deep voice, “You need to stop taking smoking breaks, or I am gonna kick your ass,” and then laugh raucously.
She would bring food, drinks, and do other favors for Cindy. They seemed to be good friends; they would giggle, tease, and be tactile with each other. I had gotten used to her being around. Sometimes she would come to the store and hang around in the mall while Cindy worked. I thought it was really nice of her to do that—a friend helping a friend.
One day Cindy invited all the store employees to her home for dinner. Ron said Cindy did this once a year. I thought I was lucky to get the chance since I had started working only recently. After driving for twenty minutes and twenty miles, I arrived at the place. It was a big house. I saw Leslie on the front porch, standing in front of a steel stove-like structure, moving her left hand to clear the smoke rising from it.
When I got close, I saw she was cooking round flat cakes of meat on the grill. Cindy came out of the house, greeted me, and took me inside. After a few minutes, through the large glass window, I saw Leslie getting into Cindy’s white Honda Accord and driving away. Out of curiosity, I asked Cindy, “That’s your car, right?”
She replied, “That’s our car.”
When Leslie returned, Cindy decided to give everyone a tour of her house. She started on the first floor and showed us the living room and pointed towards a large kitchen that was separated by a four-foot high wall from the living room. We moved to another section of the house, to a room which looked like a study area. It had two desks with computers on them. She said, “That’s my desk, and this one is Leslie’s.” She moved to the second floor, and took us into a large bedroom, saying, “This is our bedroom.” She turned towards another corner of the house and showed us the bathrooms. While everyone else was admiring the nice tiles and the bathtub, it occurred to me that she had missed something.
When we started going down, we had to go through the bedroom again. I stopped her and asked, “Did you forget to show us Leslie’s bedroom?”
Cindy gave me a smile that didn’t look natural, and said, “This is our bedroom.” This time the stress on the word our had an angry tone to it. I didn’t ask any further questions. When we arrived on the first floor, Cindy turned to me, while everyone stood around and watched, and said, “By the way, Deepak, Leslie and I are a couple.” She rested her gaze on me for a few seconds after she said that. I didn’t have much to say in response except a meek, “Okay.”
After a little while, she asked everyone to start eating. Ron decided he needed to smoke before he ate. He stepped out on the wooden deck. I decided to go and stand with him. He offered me a cigarette. I told him I didn’t smoke. Ron puffed smoke out of his mouth and then tried to chop it off with his hand to avoid sending it in my face. I was curious and disturbed by what I had just learned about Cindy. Also, I thought I had made her angry by asking about the bedroom in front of everyone. Although she’d answered my question, I was still curious. I didn’t have the courage to inquire about her living situation.
Since I was closest to Ron, and he had shared some of his personal life, I felt he had become my confidante, my sounding board. I thought I would ask him, but before I could say anything, he looked at me and said, “I thought you knew already.”
“Knew what?” I said.
He took another drag, exhaled the smoke, and said, “That they’re lesbians.” He had a look of disapproval.
I said, “No, I didn’t have any idea that was the case . . . I thought that she was married.”
“She was married earlier, but I guess she figured out she’s lesbian.”
“Those are her kids, right?” I asked to make sure.
“Yes, they are,” Ron said, looking at her kids. “It’s hard for the kids, y’know.” I listened, and waited for him to say more. “It’s hard to explain to a ten-year-old why your momma sleeps with another woman,” Ron said. “Y’know what I’m talkin’ about?” He looked at me with his mouth twisted in another direction to blow the smoke. Again, I didn’t say anything. It was too much for me to take in. I was shocked to hear all this. Ron rubbed out the cigarette butt with his boot and said, “Let’s go eat.”
I took a plate of food and watched Cindy and Leslie. They looked happy together. This was the first time I was seeing them in their home. They acted a little differently than the way I had seen them behave at work.
They both seemed to have a good understanding—a smooth relationship. When someone said to Cindy that he liked the wooden deck outside, she said with a glitter in her eyes, “Yeah, I know, that was Leslie’s project.” And when someone suggested the cookies were tasty, Leslie said, “I ain’t got nothing’ to do with that. Cindy baked them.”
I thought of a film in India that had featured two women who were in love. I remembered how many cinema halls were burned down, windows were broken, and posters were burned in all the major cities in protest of the film’s release. Some Indians thought it was immoral, and that it might suggest that women should give up their husbands if they were dissatisfied with them, and that homosexuality was against Indian tradition and culture. People also thought that it was an act of perversion and that it might set a bad example for the younger generation. As these thoughts flashed in my mind, I watched Leslie and Cindy giggling, joking, teasing, and dipping their French fries in the same bowl of ketchup.
The next morning, Cindy and I were working together. Ron and Jackie were supposed to arrive later in the day. At first, I didn’t try to make any conversation with her, thinking of what had transpired at the party at her house last night.
“Sorry if I upset you last night,” I said.
“You did not.” She smiled and went back to her office.
I felt I was getting to know Cindy better—not just as my boss and colleague, but also as who she was in real life. Before I had gone to see her at her home, I’d only known her as a store manager, someone who knew all about electronics and who was good at managing people. As she opened up to me and asked questions about my life in India, I inquired more about her life. We seemed to have developed an understanding that it was okay for us to ask each other ignorant questions—and that we would not be offended. She was very much my boss when others were present, but she often treated me as her friend when no one was there.
Over time, she started explaining to me how people thought it was not right that she was dating Leslie. She would often tell me, “I don’t understand what the problem is. She is just like my husband. You know, we do normal things that a husband and wife do, we have a family, we have a house, we care for each other—”
After spending a few months with Cindy, my perception of people with a preference for the same sex had changed. I had a few more opportunities to work with Kevin, and I didn’t feel so alienated from him anymore. We had become friends.