Did you ever stop to think of all the men who are dying of loneliness? Men who are dying without ever having known a woman’s companionship, the feel of her skin, the pleasure of her body? I suggest you visit the lodges in Triplicane where you might get a better idea of what I’m talking about, but on second thought, don’t, because you will only come back with reports of how bad they are. Can you show me one woman in the selfsame situation as these men? If you ask me, I think the man is the slave of the woman. Don’t believe me? Go to a booze party and observe how the men tremble at the mere thought of their wives who might be waiting for them on the porch swing with divorce papers.
I am of the unshakeable opinion that women, the world over, are the same. They always want or need something, and men are their favorite human vending machines.
There was once a woman who was transferred to my office from elsewhere. I was her boss and she was fearless in her advances. She would wedge herself between me and any other woman who stood beside me, between my chair and my desk. For two days, I held off. On the third day, I pulled her onto my lap and we smooched around for a bit.
The next day, the brazen thing plopped down on my lap herself and asked me whether I was married.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Then why did you kiss me?” she asked. “The man who marries me would want to be my first kiss, wouldn’t he?”
That morning, I made some things clear.
“Listen, come tomorrow, and we will conduct our business outside the office,” I said. “Am I making myself clear?”
She did come to me during the evening sometime later that week when I was busy working. She kissed me on the cheek, said bye and she was gone.
The next day, I called her company with instructions to never send her to our firm again.
The bitch really had some brazen guts to play me dirty the way she did.
How about my encounter with Caroline, the Frenchwoman?
I belong to a certain club whose members are not supposed to stay in hotels when they go abroad. Instead, they should stay at the house of another club member. Similarly, if a member from abroad visits our city, he should stay at local club member’s house. The club members also organize get-togethers for their amusement. Recently, we all met at a resort in Mahabalipuram. Among those in attendance, there was a woman called Caroline, a French native based in Chennai, a real mantrap, around twenty-six. Midnight found the pair of us sitting in the beach-sand, an empty bottle of Rémy Martin between us. She picked up her guitar and launched into a French song, not that the situation demanded it. Once she was done, she said, her words slightly slurred “I want another drink!” God knows where and how she expected me to find her a drink. I ended up having to surf the streets with her. In the end, we found a shop that had only Old Monk and some lousy varieties of brandy in stock. After much deliberation, she settled for an Old Monk. It didn’t take as much deliberation to solve the problem of having no glass. Caroline just picked up a discarded plastic mug that was rejected to the side of the road, poured the rum into it and drank the rum raw, like it was the sophisticated thing to do. What she did next eclipsed what she had just done. She hitched up her skirt and squatted by the roadside like a child about to defecate and gulped the rum down like it was water in a desert. The woman who, not long ago, had the aura of a goddess now looked plain disgusting and obscene. However, these significantly alarming instances of her shameless public behavior hardly aggravated me as much as what had happened the following morning.
We had to return to Chennai. I had a car. She didn’t. I was wondering how she’d manage to get by with no working knowledge of the local language and a hangover. What could she do now?
“Kokkarakko, could you drop me off in Chennai?”
She asked me to take her all the way to Kodambakkam. Shit! I was stuck with her for longer than I would have liked.
Oh, a woman would expect a man to pick the stars out of the sky or pick whatever it is she drops out of a toilet just because she has two tits and a cunt. If they profess themselves to be staunch believers in equality, why do they exercise their cunning charm to render a man servile? I agreed to drop her off. We agreed to leave at nine. When she hadn’t appeared at ten, I went to her room where she casually told me that she needed an hour for her toilet. Once she was done, she would have to find her own ride into town as I had left. I am a man of principle. Unlike Udhaya, I am not wrapped around the finger of a “stunningly beautiful Frenchwoman.”
The world has women of Caroline’s breed in full supply. Last year, Udhaya and I were at Kaladi, a town in Kerala, to undergo panchakarma treatment. During our fortnight stay, we met a couple of women from the room that faced ours – Julie, a Frenchwoman, and Asya, a Russian. As Julie was rather unattractive, Udhaya ignored her. Had she been a ravisher, he would have launched into a diatribe on Georges Perec, Georges Bataille and Michel Foucault, and when he finished, he would leave one wondering whether he had been personally acquainted with all three. But since Asya was the better looking of the two, Udhaya approached her and started expounding on Tchaikovsky, Tarkovsky Dostoevsky and other ‘esky’s.
I disliked both women. Julie, especially, was an eccentric number. She stank worse than a roadside bum, making me wonder if the French had an aversion to cleanliness. Udhaya, in his books, word-painted France like paradise, but Julie and Caroline made me think otherwise.
Julie behaved like a lunatic. Panchakarma incorporates vasthi – an enema – to purge the body of toxins. Julie asked me if I’d had mine. I answered in the positive. The little imbecile doubled over, sticking her ass in the air and exposing her anus to me.
“I had a vasthi too,” she said.
Now what if I tell you she never did this in private? How about I throw in the fact that the ill-behaved stinkball was a schoolteacher in Paris?
One day, she put in a request for a favor. She had close to four thousand songs on her laptop which she wanted me to categorize by genre and put in separate folders. The job would have surely taken me five hours to finish and Julie had no remorse whatsoever about asking a man do her bidding. Just because she was a woman she expected a man to do her that favor.
Asya was none the better. She intended to go to the city to buy some clothes. For this, she requested Udhaya’s company, but he passed, saying he had much to write. I ended up going with her only to realize that I was a fool again. She bargained for close to an hour to save on ten bucks, sipping dishwater tea like it was vodka. It took her another two hours to buy a nightgown.
Castigating myself for my foolishness, I went to my room.
The next day, Asya announced that the nightgown was two sizes too small. “Let’s go back to the shop!” she said, like it was going to be a joyride.
No man with his senses about him would indulge her.
I call this unacknowledged slavery. If you, woman, could stop treating your male counterpart like a dog on a leash, I would receive your kind more warmly than I do.
Kokkarakko
P.S.: Udhaya, deceiver that he is, lied to me that the novel was over. Sometime later, he called me to say that he had written another thirty pages which, quite unsurprisingly, featured him doing something that was equal parts crooked and heroic to rescue Anjali. He asked me to read it and call him upon finishing so that we could have a discussion. And this time, unlike before, he sent me a read-only file. But cunning has to be met with cunning, so I took him unawares and shot those thirty pages to the publisher with a note to make allowance for them in the novel. And that, Dear Reader, is what you are now reading.
PART – II
“Gaunt, wasted, lame, deaf, sunken-eyed, tail-less, worm-affected wounds, body wet with pus and insects, starving, feeble voice. A dog suffering from all this wretchedness will still chase a bitch.”
--- Bhartrhari, Sringara atakam, 78
One day, Anjali was pottering about in the
room, her breasts sheathed from view by the scarlet satin of her nightgown. I gathered the little temptress in my arms and laid her on the bed. With my middle finger, I sensuously caressed the hardened bumps of her nipples under the satin. My finger smoothly traveled the contours of her bosom, like it was being guided across an Ouija board by a spirit.
“What is your finger doing?” Anjali asked, derailing my train of thought. “Don’t you ever get tired of sex, Udhaya? This is the third time we’re doing it today.”
“Unlike other women, every inch of your skin is erogenous. That’s why I never tire of having sex with you.”
“How many women have you known?”
“A couple, but you are the last,” I said glibly. That silenced her, thankfully. Once Anjali showed me a French film in which she had acted as a Srilankan Tamil. The film was good and Anjali too had acted well. She got lot of offers to act after that movie but I didn’t want her to act. What if she had to do a prostitute character in one of the films? So I just told her that modelling and acting would not suit her. She obliged and quit acting out of deference to my wishes.
Now suspend your moral judgments right there! It would please you to know that this seemingly old-fashioned fart does not interfere in Anjali’s choice of clothing. I let the woman wear her beloved skimpy daisy-dukes and mini-skirts that leave little to the imagination. However, I did lay down but one condition: she is free to wear as little as she pleases only when she is with me.
“When do I ever get to wear any clothes when I’m with you?” she teased.
“The condition stands only when you go out with me,” I clarified.
“All I ever do when I go out with you is lie on my back staring at the ceiling.”
There is truth in what she says. She is indeed compelled to stare at the ceiling for a good chunk of time as we are always in bed, I on top of her. Even when we went out, our sexual appetites would urge us to return to the room as soon as possible.
“Alright, if you want a different view, we could always try different positions. Malayali women are reckoned to be experts in what they call ‘peeling coconuts.’ Want to experiment?”
“I’d rather you mount me while I gaze at the ceiling.”
I told Anjali one day, “Sweet thing, should the day you despise me come, please don’t go to the media and tell them that I forced you to perform unnatural sex acts.” Women resort to this when they want to take revenge on horny godmen. “I just assumed you were tired of me fucking you missionary-style. Shouldn’t we try something new, something unconventional, for a change?”
“Of course.”
“If you want to have mindblowing sex like you’ve never had before, promise me one thing – that you’ll do whatever I tell you to.”
“Oh, you know I’m your slave in bed, Udhaya.”
“Good. Come here. Have you watched Catherine Breillat’s Romance?”
“Have not.”
“Are you familiar with the Marquis de Sade?”
“Only with the name.”
I gagged her, blindfolded her and bound her hands. After some intense foreplay, I fucked her hard, doggy style. I felt the lust rise like furious waves from within my body and crash within her softness. Her body tossed like a catamaran in a storm as she neared her climax. I untied her. She screamed in ecstasy when she came, clawing my chest and biting my shoulders.
Her attempt at pleasuring me in the same manner failed miserably. There was bondage – she tied me to a chair – but no sadism. Sex without the violent obscenities and the bestial frenzy with which I took her did not thrill me. I repeatedly called her a whore and a variety of smutty names in Tamil, English and Hindi: kuchchukkari, kandaraoli, koodhikaari, pundakkari, slut, cunt, bitch, and so on.
We began to film our frolic in bed with a video camera and when we watched our sessions, we understood why couples filmed their coitus. Watching our sexual union was by far one of the most exhilarating experiences we’d ever had. Anjali and I filmed our romps with abandon and resolved to destroy our cameras if ever they stood in need of servicing or repair.
“Our videos would make the best porn films in the world, wouldn’t they?” I asked her once, after two hours of watching. “No doubt people will spit shame at us, and our families will be ruined, but a connoisseur of porn films might tell us to sign on the dotted line.”
Anjali and I were having casual sex, my organ smoothly executing its task. In the middle of our sex, I picked up a book – Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Bad Girl – and began reading from where I had left off. Reading a book during sex is definitely something you could try if you know how to multitask, but reading a book is even better when someone is giving you a blowjob. If you don’t read books, you can always turn on the TV and make love to the sound of a news anchor’s voice or a volley of bullets, or to the sight of a peasant milking a goat or a tennis player whacking balls. You can write a story or an article if you’re a writer with a steady hand. You can have conference calls over the phone if you’re a businessman (just don’t forget that some questionable sounds might escape you when you climax).
In a Hollywood film, I saw a woman giving this thickset dude a blowjob while he was casually talking to a group of people like it was the most natural thing to do. An actor I know told me of a similar incident. He was looking to make his big break in the industry when a celebrated screenwriter asked to meet him in his Kodambakkam office. When he entered the screenwriter’s room, he saw a young woman on her haunches under his table giving him a blowjob. The man continued writing like it wasn’t that big a deal for a small-time actor to stand gaping in the doorway at a woman with her face between his legs. Bewildered, the actor turned around to leave when the scriptwriter called him back and adjusted his veshti. The woman catwalked out of the room like nothing had ever happened. When I heard this, I thought to myself, I should have been a screenwriter instead of a litterateur.
Anjali asked me one day, “How many times have we had sex in these two-and-a-half years? You come here and stay fifteen days in three months; we had it twice a day so that means…”
“Add one to your final answer,” I said, carrying her to the bed before she could finish her calculation.
Her body felt like desert sand, burning with the heat of desire, and yet so cool, as if springs of mountain water flowed beneath her skin. Can both fire and water coexist within the same body? I ask myself every time I make love to her.
The moment I enter the house, she would open both her arms like a bird spreading its wings before it takes flight. I would gather her into a tight, sensual embrace, my hands squeezing her ass, and my fingers slipping under her panty-line. More often than not, she would be dressed like she was on vacation in a tropical beach. I would slip my hand under her panties and caress her backside as we kissed passionately, our tongues like excited snakes.
The game of lust was a game with no end. The moment I set eyes on her, my whole body would metamorphose into one giant phallus. Lord Indra, the eternal philanderer of the Hindu pantheon, was once cursed and his whole body became covered with vaginas. In a similar way, Anjali’s body also turned into one giant vagina, sucking me into its aperture like a black hole. It was our good fortune that the pair of us possessed good sexual appetites and bodies that were capable of prolonged sex. On occasion, Anjali’s cave would become dry, so we stocked up on castor oil.
Though both of us were addicted to sex, the intoxication I felt was arguably different than hers. Everything signified sex to me – rockets, skyscrapers, keyholes, guns, ice-creams, fingers, trees, hot dogs, mechanical pencils, mobile phones, windows, doors, lifts, candles, brinjals, pillars, trains, buses, cars – any vehicle for that matter –, knives, pendulums, books – they were all sexual symbols to me. It was the same with language. Give me a word and I would turn it into smut.
Once, when Anjali went out, she warned me, saying, “There’s a hole in the ground, U
dhaya. Careful now!” I cast her a smug look. She got my meaning.
There used to be a time when she would never have understood; it was I who transformed her. And sometimes, the disciple does become better than the guru.
When I bought her a chiffon saree, she asked me, one eyebrow arched, “When is the inauguration ceremony?”
I never caught on, so I said, “Wear it tomorrow.”
“That’s not what I meant!” she said, a smirk playing on her face. “What I meant was, when are you going to unwrap me from this saree?”
My arousal skyrocketed and I suggested we do it as soon as we returned home. I made her wear the saree with no blouse or bra and inaugurated it.
Anjali told me that she used to avoid her sexual urges by overbooking herself with lot of work till she got exhausted at the end of the day, before she met me. That was out of the question once I entered her life, but I was still curious to know what she did for the two and half months in a quarter when I was India. When I asked her, she told me, “The thought of you envelopes me in peace. No, wait, I’m not exactly peaceful because the wait thrills me, fills me with excitement. When your thoughts surround me, my body becomes irrelevant. It does not torture me in your absence, but the moment I see you, the feelings I have bottled up overflow like a forest spring.”
Like an infant dependent on the lactating breast of its mother for nourishment, I was dependent on Anjali’s body for sex. It was difficult for me to suppress my sexual urges at first, but controlled myself thinking of that fifteen days. Desire would start burning me from the inside those two months. Once Anjali’s sex extinguishes that fire, all is normal again. To feed the fire in Anjali’s absence, I could easily go to a prostitute, but I couldn’t, not even in Thailand. My hand came to my sex-starved organ’s rescue when Anjali was not around.
Marginal Man Page 44