Close Too Close (18 page)

Romi has already been told there’s some sort of party game in progress; now she is filled in on the details because of course she has to play. No observer status allowed, in the changed circumstances. And she’s, well, game. This time I choose a spot nearer the fan. It’s been getting warmer as the evening progresses, helped no doubt by the rushes of blood induced in me from time to time. On again go the ties that bind, and we’re back in business. As the blindfold is tested, I realise I was too focused on Romi to make use of the opportunity to sneak-peek at details that might have helped. We began with my looking everyone over intently, after which I was meant to rely on memory, not to mention the fine arts of deduction, intuition and wild guesswork.

This continues to be my modus operandi as Number Four is called.

Either they’re getting better or I’m getting more and more turned on, or both. Inspired perhaps by the nose performance, this one’s all hand job and then some. Soft as palms and pads, sharp as nails. S/he goes from slow and gentle strokes to swifter and rougher, and every cell of my cheeks and forehead and scalp and neck and throat comes alive; s/he bunches portions of my hair and pulls and lets go like a practised masseuse and then it’s the outer ridges of my ears being raked in tandem by the nails; all of a sudden the fingers play fast and furious with my face, kneading it roughly, grabbing and jabbing at my flesh. Then with an unexpected return to tenderness palms cup my cheeks as lips descend to mine for a satisfying finish. We take a moment or three to break out of the liplock after time is called.

I lean my head back and allow myself a happy sigh. My body feels utterly relaxed and wholly aroused at the same time. I could go to sleep; I could go on for hours. But first I have to say my piece. It’s too soon for Romi to get into the act, I think. Abhay? I don’t know if Abhay would do that stuff with the nails. And Mandira doesn’t have nails – she once told me how she always stops biting them when in a relationship and goes back to chewing them out of existence after a break-up: making it amusing; making it seem like being in and out of relationships continually is the natural order of things for her; completely glossing over the heartbreak. Not all the people in this room know that she has been in therapy for over a year, in and out of clinical depression, mainly.

‘Wake up, Jo!’

‘I’m awake. Wide awake. Just savouring it all.’ Suddenly I’m convinced my last guess was wrong and that
this
must have been Vini. Not that I’m sure about any of my earlier guesses except for Tanu. I guess Vini again, and 6.75.

‘Vini aka India’s Most Wanted!’

‘Jyotsna’s Most Wanted, at any rate!’

‘Maybe you’ll get third time lucky, you two!’ This last is obviously said to confuse and mislead. And I do wonder, how well am I guessing? Am I going to be rewarded, or punished?

‘Will
anyone
score a perfect ten tod-ayyyy?’ Mandira sings in operatic style.

‘Or even eight-and-a-haaalf?’ wonders Tanu.

‘Let Number Fiiive tra-ayy the-ir luu-uck!’ concludes Vini, hitting the high notes on ‘Five’ and slipsliding down an octave to an incredibly bass ‘luck’.

Five snaps into it, and we’re back to the convention of good old lips. But what a tantalising and evasive pair – gliding all over the place, all across my face, sometimes coming oh-so-close to my own lips then darting away to settle on nosebridge or temple, pressed together but lingering delectably, or apart with their hot wet soft insides all engaged, letting teeth graze and warm breath scorch my skin, running an exploratory tongue in maddening circles over my parched, arched throat. Playing catch-me-if-you-can, hovering again for two split seconds at the corner of my mouth, doing a licky-feely dash right across my upper lip. If only my hands were free and I could hold that head firmly in place and find its lips with mine, but that easy luxury is denied me so I twist and turn my own head trying to catch them in motion. At last they relent and meet me halfway; as I lean gratefully into the full-on kiss my entire face is on fire and the rest of me is gathered into a tight explosive ache just waiting to be touched off. Through the haze within and without I smell gin, I think, and a menthol cigarette. Abhay, 7.5.

‘Oooh things are hotting up!’

‘Highest so far.’

‘How about a high-five, Number Five?’ Palms are lightly clapped against each other, once, twice, thrice.

Abhay, if that’s who it was, is a transman who’s just recently back in circulation after his top surgery. His parents and sisters never had major issues with his gender identity but they balked at the idea of actual irreversible change, while his sexuality was never even up for discussion. Although they’re supportive now, there was a period of estrangement after he left home with his then-girlfriend. Considering their running away from Jabalpur to Bombay was largely at the gf’s instigation – to rescue her from the regular thrashings by her brother after he read an incriminatory email that she’d been careless enough to leave accessible – Abhay felt both insulted and injured when she left him five months later for what she called a ‘real’ man. He also saw the painfully black humour of being caught in what he refers to as ‘such an unoriginal situation’. Today he wonders if it was an insecurity-fuelled self-fulfilling prophecy on his part, because she did precisely what he used to tell her she’d one day do. He wanted to hear her protest he was wrong, and protest she did, right up until the time she proved him right. Around the same time he quit the corporate job where they insisted on calling him Abha and where he couldn’t figure whether it was more uncomfortable to have to use the women’s loo, or the men’s. Now he’s with a new publishing venture that aims to bring out feminist and queer non-fiction, fiction – and poetry. I wonder if Romi’s one of their editors.

According to my calculations there’s Romi left, and Ruchi and Mandira – well, three people anyway – after which the two lowest scorers will have the option of a second chance.

What can I say about what follows except offer up thanks to human evolution which has led to such wondrous nerve-endings and to human creativity that works such wonders with them? Either this is somebody who’s been here before, which narrows down the field, else I just got lucky. Whose mouth is this I do not know, pleasuring my right ear; whose hand caresses the back of my neck and moves to give my other ear a foretaste of things to come? This for me is erogenous terrain all the way; I am dissolving and my juices are in full flow as mouth and hand change sides and ears, sucking darting teasing biting, burrowing deep and delicious. I can no longer hold back the sounds of mounting bliss, I feel I’m about to come, I cry out inside – don’t stop please! But of course it has to end and I’m left wet and shaken and breathless and yearning as time is called; exquisitely a forearm accidentally-on-purpose comes to rest on my breasts at the last moment, surreptitiously and briefly greeting my achingly hard nipples while a tongue still flickers rapidly inside my ear – a spot of cheating there, but I’m hardly going to be the one to point it out.

Silence. I probably have a silly smile plastered on my face but what the hell. It ended too soon and I can no longer separate torture from pleasure, delight from a kind of childish resentment.

Hoping hard this wasn’t one of the three non-competitors, my voice is ragged as I manage to utter, ‘Ten, that was a ten!’ The silence eerily continues for two more beats, then there’s a smattering of applause, surprisingly thin. And then Tanu’s voice, ‘Hang on, Jo, sorry. Guys, Mandira just had a call, her sister’s taken a turn for the worse. She has to leave asap for Cal.’ Oh no. Mandira’s sister has lung cancer. A non-smoker, married to a heavy smoker who quit the day she was diagnosed. It was already fairly advanced and there’s never been much hope, but this is sudden. When is it not, even when it’s not? Tanu removes my bonds, and I see there’s only Romi and Vini in the room besides her. After a while the others troop back in from the other room. Mandira, red-eyed, smiles at me bravely.

‘You heard?’ I nod, open my arms and give her a tight wordless hug. She sobs once, then collects herself. Everyone gathers around her, comforting, concerned.

‘Jo gave the last one ten, Mandira!’ Mandira smiles wanly. ‘Oh damn! We missed the action.’

‘And who did she guess?’ Neerja wonders.

‘Still waiting for that, but now she knows who was still in the room.’

‘We can go into all that later . . . You better get going, sweetie,’ I tell Mandira.

Ruchi and Neerja decide to accompany Mandira. There isn’t any flight tonight, but they’ll stay over at her place and see her off early morning. The three of them leave and we sit on soberly, sad and connected, speaking of cancer, sharing Mandira’s imminent grief and recalling our own, older perhaps, yet tangible still. Then we have a last small drink each, serve ourselves some food, and Vini says, ‘Okay, that last one – who do you think?’ I’m totally at sea, but I guess Romi.

‘It was Hothead!’ says Vini, and I am nothing less than stunned.

‘Then who . . . how . . . wow!’

‘Oh, she dashed into the bedroom as soon as I called time. She must have realised something was up with half the people having disappeared in there, and also wanted to fool you maybe.’

And now it turns out that Number One was Mandira, not Bins – Mandira wasn’t drinking, true, but she’d deviously run an ice cube over her lips. Two was Tanu, sure enough – nobody wore a wig to try and confuse me. Three
was
Vini, as I guessed, and not Neerja as I later thought – but when I tell them my reasoning about the nose, Vini laughs and says, ‘Well, who do you think I acquired that special skill from?!’ Four, right after the break and Romi’s grand entry, actually
was
Romi, so I got that wrong too but I’m delighted she was so quick off the mark, that finally after all these years I got to kiss her, and that maybe we’ll make up for lost time yet. Five was Benaifer, though I guessed Abhay, since I’d already guessed Bins at the start. So Abhay and Ruchi were the only ones left when the game broke up.

‘But wait! You don’t smoke, Bins, and I got this definite menthol ciggie whiff – that’s why I said Abhay.’

‘Yep, she took a couple of drags from me just before. You didn’t think we were going to make it that easy for you?’ Abhay laughs.