by Bitsi Shar
I decided on an offense so I asked in my most serious tone—“what are you doing here and here?” pointing abstractedly to the house and my bedroom.
Instead of replying, he takes my hand pulls me on to the bed and by his reclining side. With our faces inches away from each other and him staring me down like he is memorizing the lines on my face, I can only manage to look at his jean clad thighs. His thighs look good in denim is all I can think of at the moment before he tilts my chin up and plants a soft kiss at the corner of my mouth while also licking away at some errant drop of frosting there. He does the exact same thing with the other end of my mouth and then does this exaggerated smacking of his lips as if he just tasted something heavenly. I was surviving on the air remnants in my lungs. None was getting in through my nose at this point.
“You need to go,” is all I could manage.
“Why, Ms. Sharma? Why would you want me to go? I am just sitting here eating my delicious slice of cake though I prefer the one around your delicious mouth. It just tastes better.” Ok. So what am I supposed to say to that!
So like a broken record I say again—“Why are you here? You seriously did not come to eat a birthday cake? Did Sabadoh invite you?”
“Well, he did mention it and I thought what better opportunity to see you again, to taste you, so here I am and I am so glad to be here.”
God! This man knows how to use words to ignite every single fiber in my being. Where is he learning all this seduction stuff from? Who is he practicing on before me or am I the practice field of some sort? I just cannot find a way to trust him with his words and his actions.
He is no novice—a fumbling, unsure, pathetic Indian male who is forever condemned to adolescence because his mother will not allow him, her precious son to become his own person—deciding, desiring, doing everything for his own sake and not as a service to his clinging parents who see everything through him and do everything for him. He doesn’t seem to be a prisoner of such culture, for one, he is acting like he is at the behest of no one. His is a private desire, privately acknowledged and selectively unleashed. In other words, I didn’t seem to be repelled by him like I am by every Indian boy just because they don’t seem know how to be around women forget about talking to them and least of all cherishing them. They are pathetic and perpetual fumblers when it comes to women but he was not. His blatant and brazen pursuit of me was pleasing, not off-putting.
I like a man to take charge but without being obvious. I like a man to take the reins of my buggy and direct its course but while listening to me good, never deciding without knowing what I want/desire/need. And right now my desire for him had perked like my nipples. It was obvious. I saw him reach out and slowly circle the contour of my left nipple like it was the most fascinating protrusion he had ever encountered. With his index finger he skirted the middle button of my shirt and hooked it so his finger was now touching my breast and he pulls me again to his waiting lips. This time he bites, sucks, sucks again in varying degree of savoring noises, inserting his tongue through the contours of my lips in order to taste the inner recesses of my mouth. His tongue swirls around the walls of my mouth, replicating as if the feeling of a penis wedged into the tight walls of a vagina. His tongue is desperately licking away at the moisture in my mouth as if this is the only source of water in a desert. And then suddenly his teeth pull at my bottom lip with enough force that my lip felt elongated by an extra inch!
And then he was getting up and walking out the door! What the fuck? Why does he keep doing that? Render me helpless with his relentless seduction and just when I am rendered speechless, he leaves! And then I hear him talking to someone who I immediately recognize as my brother. Shit! He left because he somehow heard my brother coming up the stairs and rightfully so, interrupted our rendezvous. Any second later we would have been in deep trouble. I knew my brother was going to finish speaking to his friend and then come in to check in on me. He is not stupid. He could smell hanky-panky from miles away. And I am sure he was smelling one now, enough to walk to its possible source.
But why was I acting so guilty? I had nothing to be guilty about, except for maybe my throbbing, blood red lips! Yikes, lips! I quickly took the remaining frosting atop my cake and smeared it across my lips. Hopefully it would seem like I was really bad at eating cake or really sloppy eating a very good cake! My brother entered, saw me and burst out laughing. And that was my way out—of an inquisition about a bad, bad boy who was getting a little too obsessive about me.
Chapter Sixteen
My mother was shaking me to wakefulness. I knew that voice and stylistic of bringing the dead to life—a pulling on the shoulder and that constant “wake up, wake up,” till it sounded like the drone of a blood-drunk mosquito. And the only thing you wanted to do was to take a fly swatter to that blood bloated gnat. But hey, this was my mother, who was just doing her due diligence in the Sharma household.
“Hi, mom” I rubbed my eyes sleepily and gave her a reassuring smile.
“Baby, he is outside, waiting for you. ‘Says you asked him to give you a ride to work today?” I didn’t know if she was stating a fact or asking me a question. My eyes probably gave me away.
“You didn’t.” She confirmed.
“So why is he here?” I needed to save this situation like right now.
“Oh, I must have said something. I forget now. Mom, could you tell him to wait for another five? I will be ready soon. My bus has probably left the station by now.”
I threw all this back at my mother as I ran to the bathroom, locked the door, and then ran to the window to see him sitting on his scooter, his green jacket shining in the sun, his aviators sitting well on his nose, his black slacks betrayed his formality that his green jacket tried to hide. Dear lord, I was in so much trouble!
I waved back at my mother as I sat sideways on his scooter. I was careful not to circle his waist with my free hands as I adjusted my ass on to the heated vinyl of the seat. But as we rounded the corner of the street, his arm reached back and pulled my hands to circle his waist. When he was satisfied with its placement, he patted my hand like one would a puppy’s head and returned to guiding his scooter towards the interstate highway and our respective destinations.
The one-hour ride was wordless. We were both processing what we wanted to say and couldn’t decide on what really to say that was appropriate. And then the ride ended. I slid off the side of the scooter even before it came to a halt. I turned around to face him but knowing not what to say or do in the moment. So I just waited, staring at his helmet enclosed face. He took his time shutting off his scooter and then took off his helmet. He was smiling! I smiled back without thinking why. It was just so natural. And then I extended my hand to shake his. I don’t know why but it just seemed the most ridiculously formal thing to do. His cocked eyebrow told me exactly how ridiculous my outstretched hand looked between us. Then he actually took my hand as if he was going to shake it. Instead, he pulled me towards him such that I was only inches away from his face and then he took hold of my mouth. He bit hard and then sucked on it as if to make the pain go away.
My whole body went into shivers and I immediately pulled back, “what do you think you are doing?” I did sound very indignant about a kiss that shook me to my core. I saw two vegetable vendors at the corner of the street staring at us. This was nothing new. Everyone in Delhi stares at everything that moves, especially women. I could stare them down but that wouldn’t change the fact that I was being brazen in a sexually repressed public culture. Kissing a boy in public—now what could be more brazen than that? Hell, if I was already marked then why not enjoy it? So I leaned back into him and kissed him back, even dragging my tongue into his mouth to take a swipe off his minty flavor!
I then turned quickly to run into the building but he caught my arm before I could and in a voice that sounded so urgent said, “I want to go on another date with you and please just say yes. I know you like dancing so I want to take you dancing. We could go to G
hungroos at Taj Palace. My cousin knows the DJ there and can get us in. We can do dinner first and then work it out on the dance floor later! Please don’t say no. I need a whole night of extended access to you. These small, stolen moments are killing me. So please have mercy on this poor soul and say yes, Otherwise it will get ugly. I will come and find you. I will bang your door down, throw you over my shoulder, smack your pretty bottom till you scream all the way to dinner, understood, capiche?”
I could only nod my head in the affirmative, too dumbed out by his intense tirade. “Good. I will call you today to set up the date. Ciao, baby.”
He kick-started his scooter and then was gone in a billow of smoke and dust. The man and his scooter were environmentally dangerous. I was becoming asthmatic now—positively dangerous.
Chapter Seventeen
I didn’t hear from him, no, not a peep for the whole week. After the first two days of being jumpy every time my office or home phone rang, I began to settle my heart, soothe my frazzled self by getting a ton of work done at the office. I answered all my mail, even managing to squeeze in two elaborate lunches with Dipta and Jaya that I had postponed because of him. Yes, they both made sure that I knew that they were miffed about these postponements.
They let me know what an unfeminist thing this was.
They felt abandoned, them who were my friends for life, for a guy who I knew only for a minute of my life!
They didn’t like that they came second to a female hard-on!
Ah! All the existential dilemmas of our lives. I tried to bribe their angst away by buying each a Wenger’s to-die-for jam roll. We stuffed our faces with this heart attack inducing pastry from the oldest and most famous bakery in Connaught circus and then walked around Janpath, buying trinkets and t-shirts from the roadside vendors. We ended our day with cold and hot coffees from the famous DePaul’s. I could drink (and often did!) gallons of this stuff. Maybe the rumor mill was right. He put whiskey in his coffee and that apparently enhanced the flavor. The bastard was selling liquor in the name of coffee. And Delhi was hooked. And he was rich. I wanted to be his smart.
Doing NGO work was all about heart and no money. Poverty was my vocation, sadly enough, but it still paid no bills. We, in the development business, had well-do parents. So in a way didn’t need the business to survive. Our parents were our back up plan. In fact, because they were our back up plan that we went into this business in the name of altruism. However, this was the irritant. I didn’t want my parents to be my back up plan. I wanted to be my back-up plan. Hell, I wanted to make lots of money doing something that wasn’t this altruistic. But in a closed economy unless you had family capital and political connections, making money was a foreclosed option.
Capitalism was a bad word and profit was equivalent to smuggling. So you had two options in college: never graduating from college or graduating from college on time and remain unemployed. Then you are two options: get married or do NGO work till you find someone to be married to. This is how I lived each other. I also lived with guilt, a critique, and a hope—a trifecta of contradictions that I would somehow resolve someday. But tomorrow was more important. I was going to indulge in guilty pleasure. Yes, I can do pleasure while still swimming in this sea of guilt and critique and doom and inflexibility that I didn’t feel the power to change.
I lay flopped on my bed surrounded by blouses, skirts, stockings, dresses, under wear and junk jewelry. This was the manifestation of all my confusion about how to dress myself for a discotheque at a chic hotel in downtown Delhi. I had never been to a discotheque so didn’t know how to belong in this space, inhabited by possibly rich Delhi brats and maybe a few white visitors, also rich brats marauding through exotic lands of beautiful bounty. I didn’t know how to address myself in sartorial terms in order to belong.
So I decided to go comfortable. I decided to wear my black slacks, tights, and a brown checkered flannel dress, enough clothing to keep me warm inside and outside. I decided on my gold hoop earrings and tied my hair into a high ponytail. I hate hair around my face. This may be a matter of habit. My mother always insisted on keeping my long hair braided. I was always Ms. Pigtails. My hair was never loose for more than half hour and only after I had washed it, which was always after three days. As my hair would dry, I would oil it rigorously, often with coconut oil, great for a dry scalp. So even if I wanted to keep my hair lose, I had become habituated to binding it and controlling it in the true Brahmanical, Hindu tradition.
Female hair, in this tradition, is associated with sexuality and loose hair with unbridled sexuality. A good woman always bridled her hair, whereas a not-so-good woman left it loose. I decided on being the good woman that night. So I bridled my hair. I slipped my Indian style shoes on, grabbed my tote bag and decided to wait for my man in the living room. I had barely sat down when there was a knock on the door. Wow! Speak of timing! Someone is super-eager.
I must have been smiling stupidly because when I opened the door, his smile immediately changed to the grin and he reached out for my hand to drag me out of the threshold and into his body. I kind of slammed into his body with enough force to totter us a little but he stood solid against my impact, tightening his hands around my waist. Before I could exhale the big intake of my breath as I felt his rock hard body and spicy cologne, his mouth descended and he sucked out all my breath. He pulled back after what seemed like the longest minute in girl world and looked down at me, eyes intense and full of some “being-defined” need. But the look disappeared as his mouth descended again but this time he rubbed his lips against mine so hard that all my lipgloss was now on his lips and his pink shiny lips looked like they had been somewhere else like my wet cunt. He might as well have been there because I was leaking like a broken tap.
Through my fogged senses, I feel him reach behind me to lock the main door, drop the key in my bag, and was now pulling me towards a car parked near the street. Car? Wait a minute. He didn’t have a car. I then spotted someone in the back of the car. Shit! This was going to be a foursome? We had company on our first date. There go all the bad intentions on my agenda. He asks me to slip into the back seat as he decides to give his friend company up front. His friend has now turned almost three hundred and sixty degrees in his seat to watch me with a knowing smile on this face. I smile back at him. He is a petite man but well dressed. Too young, however, to be wearing a silk scarf around his neck that matched his light pink shirt and bomber leather jacket. Hmm! Into serious clothes are we?
“So you are the one?” he asks in his giggly sort of voice. I immediately love him.
“I am what?” I asked him to rephrase.
“The one, the one who snagged his balls and is holding them in a vice-like grip.” My face was all heat. I was sure that I was going to burst into flames any second.
But I managed to say, “Sorry, I know not of any balls that I would like to hold, vice-like or otherwise.” He laughs so loudly that my ears hurt in that tiny dinky car of his.
“You certainly have him by the balls trust me, and before the night is over you will have him following you around like a puppy in heat with his tongue hanging out. I can’t wait. So let’s get this dog and pony show on the road, friends!” He winks and off we go. Someone’s balls were safe for now.
Chapter Eighteen
Wady, that was his name, he said. I had my doubts. I could have bet my wet knickers that this was yet another Anglicized Punjabi name—like Parminder became Pam and Sukhvinder became Sammy, all in the name of making non-Christian names easy to say for those habitualized to recognizing only Christian names.
In Delhi, the simple equation to “cool” was speaking in English, living in rich neighborhoods, having parents who were either entrepreneurs or in positions of power in the government that automatically opened all doors, streets, pipelines of opportunity for you without a plea being made. If you lived in Vasant Vihar in South Delhi, went to Delhi Public School and planned to attend St. Stephan’s College after finishing high scho
ol (and maybe go on to study further at an Ivy League College in America) then you had nothing really to worry about. Your cool quotient was out of the water and hanging in the stratosphere as the brightest of the brightest stars. You were untouchable as in free as free can be in the worst way possible—you could be involved in a hit-and-run and even the universe conspired to give the devil its privileged due.
So when someone said, “what is in a name?” no-one stopped to think of colonialism’s impact on “native identity”—or how for hundred years “natives” began to strip themselves of the familiar, including their names, in order to belong to a foreign occupation of their “home” in every sense of the word. The colonial body snatchers then returned new bodies to a new context, ones who couldn’t recognize themselves or didn’t even want to.
New generations of body-snatched still don’t know or care to know. They act out a programming that is two hundred years old. Old, yes, that is a good word to use but only in its chronological inflection. There is nothing “old” about its vice-like hold over native balls, especially. I can see Wady’s balls are in a vice-like grip, even when the vice-like grip becomes as comfortable as a jock strap, is even welcomed because without it you feel bereft, rudderless and very native. There goes the work of generations of privileged oppressed—to not be that, to never be that.