Antiman

by Rajiv Mohabir

  After we arrived, I greeted Aji in my way: I bowed low and placed my forehead on her toes as she stood on the threshold of her house. “Jug jug jiye, beta,” she blessed me.

  “Beta, you come?” she said to both me and Pap. Her one-bedroom Brampton apartment was just as I’d last seen it, cluttered with pictures sent by her children and grandchildren. I saw a picture of Emile, Emily, and me when we were young and had just moved to Florida. Emile and I were wearing camouflage while Emily was tied up between us as though our prisoner of war.

  Pap sat on the crushed-velvet couch. Aji brought him some barah and achar. It was already night.

  “Aji, I have to tell you about India,” I said. I’d brought several things for her. I handed her an ordhni made of silk and cotton. “Here Aji, I got you this ordhni, handwoven in Varanasi.”

  Aji took it and opened it up and wrapped it around her head. “Dis is good, t’anks a lot,” she said. “Me go wear ’am to de nex’ jhandi.”

  Pap turned his head and narrowed his eyes.

  Aji’s eyes blinked at me through her thick lenses.

  “Also, I learned a song. I met a baba who lived in a Ram Mandir who sang a song just like the one you taught me.” I looked at Pap. He was watching to see Aji’s reaction.

  “True?” Aji asked. “Sing ’am na den leh abi hear ’am?” She asked me to sing.

  I began.

  kekahi mange bheje khatir

  raja ke jaan bachaiyal manchwa par

  ajodhya tohar hoijai

  je mango to mango rani

  ham mange, raja, tohar batiya

  ham mange ram banbas jaye

  aur bharat raja chalaye ho

  je mango to mango rani

  “You hear da a India?” she asked. “Da is like me one.”

  “I know, Aji, can you imagine? India-man still a sing dis kine song,” I said. I looked at Pap. “Aji is singing in Bhojpuri—it’s an actual language.”

  Pap looked at me and at Aji. “They sing that broken Hindi song in Varanasi?” Pap asked.

  “Yeah—it was an old, old man who recalled the oldest song he could,” I said.

  Pap looked away from me. “I thought it was broken Hindi,” he said.

  “No, Pap,” I blinked. “It’s a language called Bhojpuri.” Pap took another sip from his cup. “I’m collecting as many songs as I can.”

  “That’s a nice hobby,” Pap dismissed. “Ma, is what time Sonia go come?” He put his empty plate on the floor.

  “She go come jus’ now,” Aji replied. I picked up the plate from the floor and started to hum Dove and pigeon were two good companions—I said dove and pigeon were two good companions.

  The Last Time I Cut, A Journal

  12/4/04

  I’ve started seeing a therapist since I came back from Canada. Gainesville is an okay place, but it feels too small for me. I want to get out. I want to be in a city where there are more brown and queer people. I just don’t work here. At University Club every guy that I’ve ever tried to talk to shuts me down. I’m invisible. Well, there is Tom. But he’s not for the long term.

  We met at UC and have a friend in common. He’s getting a master’s in literature. We’ve made out plenty, but it feels like it’s just a way to pass the time—he’s on his way to Boston soon, so what does it matter?

  My therapist gave me a book today called Living the Mindful Life by Charles T. Tart. She thinks that I live in the future too much. I began it and it’s about being mindful—like bringing your attention back into your body. She thinks that I live too much in my house of anxiety, that my mortar and brick are laid with doubt and steel me against the hurricanes of self-loathing. Every time the text is punctuated with the phrase “the bell is ringing” you have to come back into your body.

  You have to feel your feet on the ground and slowly become aware of your calf muscles. Are they tense?

  Then feel your knees and thighs, the pressure from sitting in a chair against them.

  Your ass.

  Your breath. Is it deep or shallow?

  Your lower back and arms.

  Your mouth and tongue.

  It’s called re-centering yourself as a way to come back into the moment and to stop living in the what ifs and what happeneds.

  I am skeptical.

  A book about Buddhist vipassana meditation written by a white man in the 1970s?

  12/7/04

  Jimi is coming to visit me in Gainesville in March. He will stay with me and it will be perfect! We met at a queer Caribana party in Toronto I went to with Leila and danced to the old-school “Lotela,” by Sonny Mann. I had just changed out of my kurta pajamas coming from a nikkah—one of Pap’s friend’s daughters—and there he was inside the club with curly hair and a mole on his cheek. I thought he saw me, too, as I glanced in.

  The bouncer said to Leila, “Your cousin can come as long as he is an ally.”

  Leila laughed. I remember her leather boots up the knee and her curly hair gone mad.

  And there Jimi stood. He looked at me. I couldn’t breathe. His dark complexion was just like mine, round face, round eyes—eyes like a fish. His trainers were almost new, his T-shirt looked thin and blue.

  I pulled Leila over and asked her, “Who is that? He is so beautiful.”

  Leila said, “He just said the same thing about you. You should go and talk to him.”

  I put down my rum and Coke and walked up to him. At this very moment “Lotela” started to play.

  Lotela khub lotela

  Lote bhauji haan lote bhauji khub lotela

  Not the modern version with all kinds of instruments and electronic sounds—the one by Sonny Mann with just tassa drums and his voice. The kind that Aji used to play on her tinny record player, the kind that we dance to at family parties. It was so weird to hear it here where almost everyone was some shade of queer.

  We danced and I leaned in and kissed him. He asked me to go home with him and I felt like I couldn’t—I hadn’t seen Leila since I came back from India and I wanted to spend time with her and her girlfriend. But Leila said that we should just go to her apartment together and that she and Yessinia would meet us there later. The music played on.

  Bhauji leke sabun khub nahayela

  daru piye lagale bhauji khub lotela

  We held hands and walked down the road. I’m not sure which one—Dundass, Queen? I was still feeling a little tipsy and very giddy walking hand-in-hand with Jimi. A car sped by and a man shouted “fucking faggots.” I withered and took my hand out of Jimi’s. He held my elbow and slid his palm down back into my hand.

  That night he said I was bad. In my head, a symphony.

  Lotela khub lotela

  Lote bhauji haan lote bhauji khub lotela

  Did he mean that I was bad at sucking dick? Did he mean that I was bad as in good or surprising? Did he mean that I was bad because I was doing this in my cousin’s home? Did he mean that I was a bad Hindu? Did he mean that I was a filthy fucking faggot who needs to go back to my own country? Did he mean that my parents would never accept me and that my entire extended family will disown me?

  12/12/04

  I asked Andrei and Autumn whether they thought that if I were bad at sex it would be enough to make someone not love me. There are so many reasons I can think of that make me completely unlovable. For one, I am very hairy. I see people look at me when I have to take my shirt off in public. I try and try to love myself, but I just can’t seem to make it work. This hair is like a hindrance to self-love. If only it would go away forever and then the boys at University Club would look at me and think I’m attractive.

  Another thing that makes me unlovable is that I am thick. It seems everyone wants to be with a rail-thin blond boy—the complete opposite of what I am. I remember the old Baptist woman in Oviedo warned her daughter against me, telling her to stay away from that “big hairy Hindu monster.” Oviedo and Chuluota are filled with this kind of thing. I am a monster—especially after 9/11. There’s a white van with th
e words BOMB THE RAG HEADS painted on it that drives around and tailgates me every time I’ve been home since. The bell is ringing.

  I feel invisible as a homo. I try to smile when I walk down the street so that white women are not afraid that I am a terrorist, or that I will try to harm them. It’s like starting from a negative space. Gainesville is so close to Oviedo, only about an hour and a half away. I know that there are a lot of queer people in Toronto and there must be in New York, too.

  12/24/04

  I came back to Chuluota for the winter break. I don’t have to be back in Gainesville until the 28th. They gave me all the time off I needed from working the counter at Hollywood Video. Tonight, I sat across from Pap at Denny’s after the Christmas Eve service, alongside Emily and Ma.

  Pap’s nose sloped into a dagger point and he thinned his lips.

  “Na, na, na, na, na. I don’t want to hear this.”

  Ma looked at me. Two years ago she told me to never tell him, that it would give him a heart attack—he’s very sick, don’t you know?

  Emily looked at me. She has known since I’ve known.

  “It’s an abomination,” Pap scowled. He looked at Ma. “This is your fault. You want me to be nicer to the kids. We never should have moved here. This never would’ve happened!” Pap slammed his fist on the table. The water in his glass trembled then erupted, spilling on Emily’s red silk.

  “What about Girlie and Dado? Didn’t you say that there were two gay men that lived in Guyana that you knew?” Emily tried to come to my rescue. I was drowning.

  “That was different. They were cured and married women and now have families,” Pap retorted.

  “But that doesn’t mean they are not gay anymore—it just means that they are lying to their wives and children,” Emily continued. It didn’t matter. I looked down, imagining I could see my feet through the table and uneaten tuna melt. I tried to breathe deep into my stomach. I deserved to—

  “Don’t ever call me father again,” he said, pointing his finger in my face.

  Boys who fail their fathers deserve nothing.

  1/1/05

  … bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The …

  1/2/05 3 a.m.

  My legs aren’t legs. My eyes aren’t eyes. My feet aren’t feet. My fingers aren’t fingers. My palms aren’t palms. My skin isn’t skin. My wrists aren’t wrists.

  You are nothing.

  No one will ever love you.

  You are fat and hairy.

  You can’t even fuck right—an ass virgin at 24.

  You will be disowned and then what will you have?

  You can’t even think for yourself.

  You are so miserable, a good-for-nothing.

  You deserve to be disowned.

  I can’t scream with my mouth. People will hear. So I make mouths on my arm to scream their red for me.

  1/17/05

  Today a package from Leila:

  pepper sauce

  stickers from Toronto’s women’s bookstore

  a rainbow pin

  a handwritten poem

  a book of poems by a gay Guyanese poet

  Is it possible that there are others like me? Could gay Guyanese boys write poems people take seriously? Jimi is close—he’s South Indian and I have Tamil ancestry on my mother’s side. I sat down and began to write.

  3/17/05

  Jimi finally came last week. I have been too busy to write anything down in a while. I wanted to be fully there in the moment. And now that he’s gone, I want to remember every last detail.

  “I need you to like me,” I said. In order for the sex to work between us I needed to be confident that he really liked me, that this was not just some kind of fling that brings a Canadian down to Florida. Autumn and their new partner Kelsey said it was cool if he stayed with us.

  We went to Lake Wauburg and rented a canoe. The day was bright, the sky’s blue clear and cloudless. Floridian humidity permeated the air, yet it was still too cold to swim. Jimi, I don’t think, had ever lake-canoed before.

  The water was dark and like cola when we climbed into the canoe.

  “There are so many kinds of animals that make homes in the water,” I said. “You can’t really see anything until it’s like a couple feet away from you.”

  “What kinds of animals live here?” Jimi asked, his neck bruised with hickeys.

  “There are herons, water moccasins, gar, all kinds of fish, frog and toad tadpoles, there are also alligators.”

  Jimi raised his eyebrows. The contrast of the dark brown, almost black irises with the eyes’ whites was surprising and alarming.

  “Don’t worry—if you are respectful and stay clear of them, they won’t bother you,” I chuckled. I was lucky to have grown up in this deadly and beautiful landscape. Like walking alone in the woods, I didn’t have to be anyone’s son or anyone’s Indian friend. I could see traces of animals, their telltale footprints, and then a white-tailed deer would leap across my path like a poem’s volta.

  Jimi splashed me with water from his paddle. “Holy shit! I think there’s an alligator there!” He pointed to a four-foot alligator afloat on the surface in the sun and started to back-paddle.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to worry. You can’t see what else is in this water very clearly. That alligator is tiny and most likely afraid of us. Its teeth look dangerous and its jaws are super powerful, but it doesn’t mean that it will kill you,” I said.

  Being unforgiven for something intrinsic to me seemed like it would be terrifying, like it would have sharp teeth that could dismember me in minutes and hide my torso in the deep water until it began to rot.

  As we paddled by, the alligator took a dive and disappeared into the dark.

  But there was so much I couldn’t see. Maybe the bad isn’t so bad. Maybe in the present moment I can look at the alligator and know its danger and behold it. It wasn’t biting me. It wasn’t approaching. I knew that it was there but so were the sun on my skin and the breeze that kissed my neck. I was sitting in a canoe with another brown queer in Gainesville. I was so happy not to be alone.

  We brought in our canoes and started to walk back to our car where it was parked along the road. We passed by a broad live oak tree. On the path a large swamp darner dragonfly fluttered on the pavement. It was dying. I’d seen this before. Dragonflies slow down before they die. But to die alone on cement seemed like a horror.

  “The poor thing,” Jimi crooned.

  I leaned over and picked it up. Its wings buzzed just a couple times then it calmed down, expecting that I was a predator most likely. It gave in to its fate. I placed it on my palm and examined its blue and green stripes, its many eyes, and walked over to the live oak. I placed the dragonfly with many eyes on the grass just under it.

  “Why did you do that?” Jimi asked.

  “If I were a dragonfly, I’d much rather die under that tree than on the cement path,” I said.

  We drove home, where I made roti and aloo. We sat South Indian–style on the floor and ate until it was time to go to the Iron and Wine concert. When we came back, I put on a Susheela Raman album. It was the first time I slept with a man. I don’t want the bells to ring. I want to linger here for a while. I want to remember this.

  3/20/05

  I saw the therapist again today and told her about how I wept when I took Jimi to the airport. I didn’t know if we would see each other again. She
remarked that my wrists looked great from New Year’s and that I was doing a good job of breathing. I don’t think I’m doing a good job. I’m just hanging on. I told her that there are brown faggots in the world and that I am not the only one. I could stay in the Orlando area and pray for a brown gay community or I could try to make my way to New York or Toronto to be closer to Jimi. Honestly, I could get a job at Whole Foods or something there and go be young brown and queer in a big city.

  I have been checking the phone almost every hour to see if it’s flashing with a voicemail. We talk on the phone and Jimi says that he is going to try to come back to visit me after pride. But what if he finds someone by then? June is three months away! What if he doesn’t love me? What if he thinks that I am too young for him? He’s 30 and I just turned 24. That’s not that big of an age gap. My Nana was seventeen years older than Nani. What if he thinks I’m stupid? What if he realizes that I’m no one, a nothing? What if he really thinks I’m bad?

  4/30/05

  I haven’t heard from Jimi in the last couple of days. The bell is ringing. He is coming in June. The bell is ringing. I’ve stopped seeing my therapist. The bell is ringing. I’m breathing deep. The bell is ringing. I graduate in a few days with my bachelor’s degree in religious studies and minors in anthropology and teaching English as a second language. The bell is ringing. When Jimi comes back, we will take a road trip to New Orleans. I’ve never been. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing. The bell is ringing.

  5/1/05

  Fucking faggot.

  Abomination.

  Coolie.

  Crab-dog bitch.

  Brown piece of shit.

  The world would be better without you in it.

  You are a failure of a son.