He slips into the dressing gown suspended from the hook of the coat stand that is part of the minimal mis-en-scène. He settles into the chair placed on stage for him, reaches for the hot water bottle resting inches away on a stool like a prop. Finally, with the air of an aristocrat, he pours himself a glass of Scotch. Words fall into place: the anonymous quote on the invite—A dressing gown, a hot water bottle and some whisky, if you can procure it, are really all you need. They are the absolute essentials for a writer.
If only that were true.
There isn’t a single vacant stretch of space. The audience spills over, the exits have to be unlocked to contain the crowd of listeners and worshippers. I park myself on a step that is a member of the staircase that connects the stage to the exit like a clogged artery. I’m here on a one-point agenda; to have him inscribe his signature on my copy of his book, a pocket-sized collection of fables gifted to me by an ex-lover.
In between silences, I peep into the first page and re-read the dedication:
Ms Chocolate Truffle,
Gardez en memoire les moments que nous avons passé ensemble. Continuez d’ecrire. Je croire en vous. Julien. (Preserve the moments we have spent together. Continue to write. I believe in you. Julien.)
You can’t but appreciate the choice of words, his attempt to downplay our intimacy. Gardez, he wrote, using the imperative. It must share roots with the word ‘guard’.
He loosens the dressing gown and after fielding several questions is too fatigued to continue the conversation. The crowd begins to shuffle towards the exit. I hurry instead to the foot of the stage, draw his attention and place the book in his hands.
‘Should I address it to you?’ he asks politely.
‘If you want to. It doesn’t matter, really,’ I assure him.
He opens the book, like etiquette demands, to arrive at the page on which he would have to sign after carefully crossing off the printed version of his name. But he stumbles instead upon the page that bears the ex-lover’s inscription.
‘This is a revelation,’ he says.
‘An ex-lover,’ I explain.
‘There’ll be others.’
‘There already are.’
I’ve never cared much for labels. In fact, the first thing I do after I’ve bought a brand new dress is rip off the tiny strip of cloth that’s attached to the back of the collar. It makes me itch, or pops out at the wrong times to reveal too much and signify too little. Even my kitchen shelves are lined with bottles I’ve rescued from the imprisoning arms of paper labels.
I prefer ambiguity.
Given my disdain for categories, I find myself struggling for a term that would adequately describe all the men who’ve ventured inside the folds of my body. The momentary men, the beads on my rosary of conquests, the subjects of my dated affairs; these one- and two- and three-night stands that meant everything and nothing; the ones I was careful not to fall in love with for fear of interfering with the intimacy of the immediate.
Would it be inappropriate to refer to them as lovers?
A lover is one who loves in ways that are yet to be anthologised.
An ex-lover is one who has had the privilege of having once been my lover.
I keep returning to Botton, whose words I’ve scribbled out on a scrap of paper and blue-tacked to the wall beside my bed. It’s an excerpt from The Romantic Movement. To date I cannot say for sure whether I agree with his philosophy or am vehemently opposed to it. To go to bed with another is in some way to collide with the memories and habits of all those they have ever been with. Our way of making love embodies the mnemonic of our sexual history, a kiss is an enriched model of past kisses, our behaviour in the bedroom filled with traces of past bedrooms in which we have slept.
I’ve always approached my lovers as present-tense beings. Each unique in matters of the body, each with their own philosophy of lips and touch, each an individual adventure with a different plotline. At best, I see them as fragments of a patchwork quilt held together by delicate threads.
You do not belong to this tapestry.
Not yet.
J was a sleep-fucker.
Our affair was brief. I met him four years ago, just a few days before I was to leave university to return to my city-by-the-sea, in keeping with my rule of meeting at least one person on the brink of departure who I could regret not having encountered before.
We met at a house party where he spent all evening circling around my periphery, dipping in now and then to incite me with some callous comment or a suggestive statement or with his quick-witted touch. He had a presence about him that stemmed from pride. He could disarm and destroy you with his charm. That’s what he did during the course of that first evening; he whetted my appetite, and when I was ready to indulge, withdrew the feast. I spent more time there than I wanted to, looking for scraps to chew on. He turned indifferent. So I went up to him to say goodbye.
‘I’m sure we’ll see each other again,’ he said.
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘I’m leaving the city in less than a week.’ I hoped at least now he might understand the urgency of this passion.
‘Well, too bad,’ were his last words.
So I found him online and explained to him I didn’t have time to play. We fixed a date.
We watched a Bollywood flick at a shady cinema hall in RK Puram. A deliberate choice. Multiplexes are too mainstream.
He’s French but his Hindi is impeccable; not once did I need to translate a thing. We watched the film obediently, with controlled abandon, in the darkness of the hall. Not once did he lean across to touch me or have his hands callously graze against mine. He’s much too proud to make the first move. He’d rather I relented, surrendered gracefully to my lust. The credits rolled, we exited reluctantly, then walked the length of the road like two restless travellers afraid to go home. We found a brick wall around the corner of the street and parked ourselves there and continued to talk. He told me about his cat, his home in Chantilly, his ex-lovers, and finally, his inability to engross himself in ‘casual flings’. Later I would remind him of his reluctance. ‘What makes you think this is a casual fling?’ he would reply.
Hours passed. The sky broke down like it is wont to do in the peak of summer. But we didn’t care to honour the downpour. We continued to feast on conversation showed no concern for time and going well past 2 a.m.
His body was still too separate from mine. It had been three hours since we began and he hadn’t shown any signs of surrender.
I can’t remember much more of the conversation, all I know is that just when I doubted his intentions, the mosquitoes surfaced. They started to nibble at the flesh around my calves, my feet, and my neck. I’d carelessly slipped on a thin, flair cotton skirt before our date. I didn’t have time to take a shower and get dressed. Just an hour before, I’d been with another lover, T.
I continued to listen and listening still, reached into my jhola and fished out the roll-on repellent I carried with me at all times; a gift from the Swede. Without interrupting his monologue, I uncorked the repellent and rolled the ball against the surface of my calf and the insides of my thighs. When I looked up to punctuatethe conversation with a random reply, I found him transfixed.
I decided it was time I returned to university. It was the end of the semester; I had papers overdue. We walked towards an auto, negotiated a price. The driver revved the accelerator. I slid closer and pressed my lips against his. We kissed.
He lived just outside campus. But he was unwilling to escort me back home. He said he would if we first dropped by his place and had a drink. Old Monk is all he had. I willingly relented. We went upstairs.
In the five nights that followed, I discovered his sleep-fucking quirk. After the final moan, the twilight sigh, I’d fall asleep naked beside him. He had no bed, just a mattress on the floor. I’d be busy rummaging through dreams as I am inclined to do in the middle of sleephood until I’d slip out of sleep to find his lips burried in the niche between my neck and my collarbone. His body would rise to greet me. His pack of rubber was always kept strategically below the mattress. I began to understand why. Half-awake, half-asleep, he’d enter me lightly and cocoon himself until I took flight.
A week before J, I’d had my first brush with the Turk who redefined ‘cocky’. We had known each other before, had exchanged wit on several occasions, but had our first serious conversation at the same party where I’d encountered him. We spoke for hours, it seemed, until a French woman threw a tantrum because the Turk wasn’t paying her any attention. I left with T, the Turk tagged along, and we began our walk from Munirka to campus. Home was closer for T and me, our hostels only a kilometre away from the gate.
The Turk lived in Brahmaputra Extension, the hostel at the end of the universe.
So I lent him the keys to my bicycle. And then didn’t hear from him for at least twenty-four hours, during which I had been liaising with T.
It was a beautiful bicycle, a Hercules racing bike. Tall and gorgeous, just like A, the lover who’d left it for me when he’d returned to his country.
I resorted to email, the subject-line brief and stately: ‘Bicycle Thief’.
I offered to visit him at Brahmaputra to pick up the bicycle.
His reply was unprecedented.
You can’t just come and pick up your bike like that! If I was that simple, life would have been easier for many people. Come and we can decide on the terms.
Obviously, I had to go.
I knock on the door and find it is ajar. He tells me to come in. I do and find him busy at his desk, cigarette in hand, a can of beer on the table.
‘You’re late,’ he says as he turns to acknowledge my presence.
I examine his room. There are posters on the wall, of consciously tacky, ‘exotic’ things, there’s a mosquito net spread across his bed like a veil, a map of Delhi taped against the wall beside his desk, and in one corner, an ice bucket filled with cans of beer. I help myself to some beer and sit on the edge of his bed.
‘Did you really think it would be that simple? You’d come here, I’d treat you to chai and then you’d leave with your cycle?’ he says.
Before I can answer, he turns to his desk, retrieves my keys from under his laptop and places them on the desk, and gestures at me to examine them.
‘I could just take the key and go away. There’s no need for formalities.’
‘You can if you want to.’
I reach out for the keys and hold them between my fingers. I make as if to leave, then sit down again.
‘You’re right, it shouldn’t be so easy.’
‘So when do I get to read the erotica?’
‘Why would you want to?’
‘I’d like to know if it’s any good! This would be the perfect setting for a brand-new piece. I’m sure that’s why you came.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself.’
So I find something online that I’d written for a magazine. He sits on the floor right beside my feet. I read him something called ‘Lost and Found’.
When I finish, I return to my seat on the edge of his bed. He moves from the floor to the chair, which he brings closer to the bed. I lie down, mischievously, a Freudian slip. I’m now on the ‘couch’. He starts to interrogate me about my life, my work. I indulge him. I divulge.
Beer makes me pissy. I leave the room and turn the lights off on the way out so that the room is only half-lit by his study lamp.
When I return, I walk towards him, kiss him, then move away.
‘Now we have to pretend that didn’t happen.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’d like to have several first kisses, and I don’t want you to stop talking.’
We couldn’t pretend. What followed was the slow unravelling of clothes, breaths between kisses, an emergency, an urgent need to conquer and be conquered, then surrender.
I wake up to the feeling of cold metal against my navel. Bicycle keys.
He’s sitting beside me. He offers a smile.
‘You demolished my room.’
I look around. The mosquito net had fallen apart, the poster near the bed had come undone, the carpets have been tossed to the edges of the room.
‘I apologise. I doubt I’ll come again.’
‘Well, the next time you “don’t come”, could you wear a skirt?’
‘Why should I return?’
‘Because I got a very raw deal?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I just lost a bicycle!’
Fifty-four wooden blocks, each three times as long as it is wide, each one-fifth as thick as it is long. Three blocks are stacked at the base, to form a level on which seventeen levels of three blocks each are placed adjacent to each other, along their long side, perpendicular to the previous level, to form a wooden tower.
He was a random acquaintance who’d charmed me into inviting him over to my terrace. Above us, only the naked night illuminated by stars. I’m in no mood for conversation, so I suggest we play a game of Jenga. I erect the tower upon the wobbly table, place a chair on either side, invite him to take a seat. The stakes are unstated. I place one hand firmly against the table, to urge it into standing upright, to fix the quirky wobble. I make the first move, retrieve a block from the centre of the third layer and place it on the topmost level as the rules dictate.
Only one hand at a time may be used to remove a block. Either hand can be used, but only one hand is allowed to be in contact with the tower at any given point.
I avoid eye contact, keep my gaze firmly on the looming tower. I can sense his eyes travelling across my body, peering through the cloth of my dress. I say nothing.
Jenga isn’t the only game we’re playing.
Ten moves later, the tower is still in place. He’s about to make his move, I lift my eyes and watch him as his fingers tug at a tight block. He manages to dislodge it and places it on the top. The tower is much taller now and it blocks his view of me. I can no longer gauge his intentions. Right then, I feel the sweep of his fingers against my stationary left hand. He knows I cannot draw it away because if I do, the game will end. And the trick to Jenga, like with seduction, is to prolong the inevitable, to stretch the moment as infinitely as possible before the unravelling. The tauter the stretch, the stronger the intensity, the deeper the passion.
He makes patterns against my arms, then moves suavely across the canvas of my shoulders. I remain speechless. There’s no need for language.
Carefully, without upsetting the alignment of the table, he wraps his feet around my feet. His toes probe the texture of my skin. I feel the trickle inside me, my body has begun the process of meltdown, the weight of the tower starts to shift towards one side. Any moment now, it will collapse.
The rules dictate that the game ends when the tower falls in even a minor way or if there is a significant collapse where the tower crumbles exposing the base. However, if one or more blocks fall, but all players agree that they can be put back on the tower for play to resume, that is in keeping with the spirit of the game.
We persist. We continue to cast block against block, level against level, but the tower’s lower half is beginning to relent, it’s only a matter of seconds before it all falls down.
By now I’m ready to surrender. Now and then, between the blocks, I glimpse his gorgeous brown skin. I trace, with my eyes, the sharp outline of his face, the swell of his lips, the lure of his gaze. The brush-strokes continue, except his hand is no longer on mine, his fingers traipse along my thighs and venture further, deeper until he confronts the source of my lust.
Suddenly, I can’t see him on the other side, he seems to have disappeared. Then I feel the clean sweep of his tongue against my clit.
I play my last move. There are too many spaces between the blocks. For a second the tower stands tall. Then, just as his tongue makes butterfly strokes against my clit, the blocks collapse and spill over to the ground.