Close Too Close (6 page)
My phone rang. Mahmood’s name was blinking. I excused myself and took the call inside.
‘How’s it going? Having fun with the baby?’
I was defensive. ‘He’s good company. He can talk about more things than before. He’s
mature
. We went out on the lake and now we’re hanging out in the back. But no, I’m not having
fun
. Not yet. Very soon.’
Mahmood was taken aback. ‘So you
are
trying to get him into bed.’ There was a hint of scorn in his voice. ‘You want him.’
‘Let me put it this way, honey love. I’d eat his ass, swallow his dick, and drink his piss if he asked me.’
‘You’re depraved.’
‘You’ll see how much tomorrow,’ I taunted. ‘But don’t worry about tonight. He was talking to me about the girls at his college when we were out on the lake. I’m sure he’s not gay.’
‘But curious,’ he countered.
‘Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll do my best recruiting.’
‘Dirty dog.’
‘Woof. Now put your dick back in your pants and stop masturbating over me. Behave, and tomorrow you get the real deal.’
‘Bloody fool. You wish. Have fun.’ I thought he’d hung up. But no, he’d only hesitated. ‘And bring me a good story.’
I wanted a story, badly since the meditation on his cock. But the affection Shahid and I were sharing could well have been understood by him as the simple camaraderie between mates which Kashmiri men are known for. But the twist here was that he knew that I liked guys.
As a teenager I fell madly for an ‘older’ man of 27, a traveling German who let me hang out with him for a weekend. He was my first love, or so I’d imagined, though there was nothing physical between us except an honest embrace when we parted. Dishonest, but sexy embraces didn’t start until a few years later at college. Fast-forward three decades and I wouldn’t be able to guess how many men I’ve been in and out with since bachelor number one. Though an old hand at the game of seduction, I felt like I was driving without a steering wheel now. With Shahid I didn’t know what to do.
I sank back into the sofa with him. The moon and stars shot streaks of light across the water. Few pictures were sexier than this. I closed my eyes and drifted. I saw Shahid place his left hand on my right knee, over which I placed my right hand. Our hands clasped instinctively. I saw myself rest my chin on his shoulder, breathe deep, and lightly brush my mustache across his cheek. I saw him turn slowly until his parted lips met mine. The tips of our tongues met. There we stayed, in the slightest of slow-motion movements, measurable in millimeters. I brought my left hand up to his shirt buttons, undid them, slid my hand in, and reached for the luxuriant black chest hair. I brought my lips to his neck, which he extended as I kissed and nibbled, collar to ear. He let out a resonant sigh that seemed to come from both of us.
I saw myself letting my hand fall into his lap. He was hard. I saw Shahid rise, grab my hand and lead me to my room. I don’t know how the clothes came off. The video running in my mind skipped that scene. We were naked and he was on top of me. He put his tongue into my gaping mouth, grabbed a nipple with a fist, and slid his cock between my thighs and under my balls. I licked his neck with a wet tongue, pulled at his chest hair with my lips, and buried my face in the pit of his arm. I inhaled his sweaty musk. He pressed me into the bed, straddled me, placed his dick to my lips, pushed down to the balls, and face fucked me. I licked and sucked as if I were tasting cock for the last time. He sat on my face and I lapped the hairy crack of his butt like a dog in heat. He rocked back and forth and his dick slapped against my face. His sweat and my saliva ran down my cheek. I was slobbering like a madman. He repositioned himself, lifted my legs, licked his middle finger and put the tip in my ass. I was bucking like a horse. He held me down, and joined his tongue to his finger. I caught my breath and told him to wait. On went the rubber and lube.
I saw Shahid mount me and dive in. I turned my head to one side and groaned. Unlike the wild stabbing of many novices, his pace was slow and steady. Twenty years old and he was a pro. Within half an hour of his rhythmic fucking I was exhausted. I grabbed his hips and pulled him into me. He picked up the pace and I licked my hand to whack my dick, which he never touched. I like mutuality, but that didn’t matter tonight. Shahid was a volcano. I serviced him with joy.
I slowly opened my eyes as if emerging from hypnosis.
‘Everything ok with Mahmood?’ Shahid asked, awakening me from my trance.
I took a breath and leapt, not knowing where I’d land.
‘Mahmood’s jealous.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of you. He thinks I want to sleep with you?’
‘Do you?’
I felt a rush of adrenaline and my heart skipped a beat. I stammered. And then I remembered who I was. ‘No. I don’t. You’re a great-looking guy, smart and sexy too, but you’re my friend and I guess you’re not gay, and even if you were, you’re young enough to be my son. It would never work.’
He laughed. ‘Thanks for saying those good things about me. I’m not gay, but we can still be friends, right? And I can say that you look nice too, right? You know, for your age. The guys must love you in Delhi.’
I smiled. ‘Some do, maybe. I’m not sure.’
‘Well I always liked you,’ he continued. ‘You were so nice to me when we went to Gulmarg three years ago. You bought me a ticket for the cable car without even asking me. No other guest ever did that before. They always leave me at the bottom. Remember when we were walking in those mountains and you were taking all those pictures of me. They’re in a drawer in my room. I still have them.’
I didn’t know what to say. My heart was stuck in my throat. At that moment I wanted to take him around the world. ‘Next time I come we’ll go again, or maybe to Pahalgam, or even Leh.’
Shahid was beaming. ‘After I get my youngest sister married it will be my turn. You
have
to come to my wedding.’
‘I will if you come to mine.’
He looked at me in amazement. ‘You’re getting married? I always asked you!’
I smiled. ‘Maybe someday I will. But if and when I do, it will be to a man.’
We fell over ourselves laughing. He took my hand, shook it, and put his open palm over his heart. ‘I’ll come!’
S
ometimes I smell her perfume from across the street where she Or someone who looks like her
Is walking
.
Seven months ago, I was 27. She was 34. I wonder if I’m going to walk with an air of all-knowing wisdom when I reach that age.
As part of an exchange programme, I had come to this place right at the northern edge of Vishakapatnam (or Vizag, the short ‘cool kid’ way to say it) to teach digital music recording. The management provided boarding for the teachers as well. We lived in the apartment complex next to the school. Our apartment had two rooms, with two teachers in each room. Both the computer teachers, Ms Neelu and Ms Vimal shared one room, while Ms Lakshmi and I shared the other. I think the management thought it would be more awkward to have me room in the men’s quarters and therefore just stuck me with the women . . . in the room with Ms Lakshmi. A square room with white square tiles holding up more than just the rectangle shapes of our low-to-theground full-size beds, the two box-like dressers and the small desk of thin sheet wood in the corner. This room held me together.
Ms Lakshmi (or Lux, as I called her because that was the nickname given to a cousin of mine) taught the children in the school how to read and, on her day off, she taught any woman in the area how to read.
But she did a lot more than teach reading. Anything. She did. She did anything. So yes, she worked for the people, she did.
Our beds were across from and diagonal to each other. Sometimes we’d sit up in our beds, facing each other from the opposite sides of the room. We’d talk. She told me that Ms Vijaya didn’t approve of how she taught children, and was rigidly opposed to being tender with pupils, regardless of age. She told me about the chai wallah and how he keeps hitting on her even after she slapped him for squeezing her left breast. She shared with me how she was dropped off at a temple when she was a baby, was brought up by one of the priests and his sister and how, even though they have passed on, she still loved going back to her village because it was so green compared to this part of Vizag. She’d ask me about how things worked in the States, ask how my family took that I was queer, ask questions that veered dangerously close to the other questions she desired to ask, but she always pulled back in time. Eventually, without questions answered, but by watching me daily, observing me, she understood my masculinity. We could talk until the cocks crowed, right at 4:23 a.m., and worry about how hot the day would get and how much coffee it’d take to handle a full schedule, full classes and the electricity for the air con. going out at noon. But we talked more, and more, to let the fears dissipate, and when our whispers had to get quieter as everyone else in the house started taking their morning showers, she’d ask me to pull up the plastic purple stool, scoot nearer to her bed and we’d continue.
I’d see her on lunch breaks along with everyone else. She loved watching me interact with the other teachers; she said that only someone like me could be so bold and talk about taboo subjects with humour and ease. Someone like me – the American queer on Indian soil. She and I were the ones Ms Vijaya looked at out the corner of her eye, but we were also the ones that every young teacher craved to be around, to share their daily disgusts and triumphs with. Ms Lakshmi was like my wingman in that; without her being ‘cool by me,’ I wouldn’t have had the perfect climate for everyone else to also accept me. My freak fetish factor was low in India.
Sometimes her smell preceded her, when she got home right before the sticky heat turned into cool sunset. She’d beg me to hit the rooftop with her. This part of the night was hers even before I came into the picture, and she would go without me easily, if I chose to stay put. But who would be that daft, to deny themselves her company
in those unfamiliar magical nights
they were for me
as she was