How do I answer that question? How do I explain I paid my way here by fucking strangers and am now trying to pretend I enjoy teaching poor kids in Kolkata to make myself feel like a good person?
I say the first thing that comes to mind: ‘I write erotica.’ My second lie.
He inhales, nods slowly. He looks a little more closely at me; he seems impressed. ‘Wow,’ he says.
It feels like the closest thing to the truth that I can manage. His reaction is unexpected—it was a throwaway line in my head before I said it—but it makes me feel validated. My days back home were filled with erotica and writing. Not together, but those two elements were the main ones. But I know nothing about erotic writing, and I figure a theology major won’t either. I could not have been more wrong.
Cia and Tara come outside and say they are leaving.
‘I’m Chloe,’ I say.
‘Miles,’ he replies, holding out his hand, an act that makes me laugh. ‘Can I get your number?’
Tara raises an eyebrow, breaks into a smile, pulls a pen from her handbag.
Miles takes a book out of his back pocket. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. He opens the front cover and looks at me, pen poised over the page.
(All these years later, I still sometimes think of him. Before we parted ways, he gave me that book to keep. It now sits on the shelf in my apartment where I keep my most important books, my Indian number scrawled on the front page in his messy handwriting. We lost contact years ago; he was probably as frustrated by my facade as I was. But I’m curious about what he’s doing with his life. I have a feeling he’ll always find something interesting to do.
I sometimes wonder if we met again could I say: I’m sorry I lied. I didn’t know how to tell you I perform erotica and I write, but I don’t write erotica.)
A few days later, while out dancing at a club again, Miles invites me to stay at his place instead of catching a taxi back home alone. His place is in central Kolkata, not far from the club, while the place I share with Tara and Cia is a forty-minute cab ride away, in suburban Kolkata. I have to come into town the next day to meet a friend, so I say yes.
Back at his place, he rolls a joint and we sit in the windowsill of his bedroom smoking it, half inside, half outside the building. In India, it feels like there are no rules. Even at this late hour of the night, the air sits thick against our skin. It is like being submerged in warm water. Afterwards, I lie back on his bed. He talks about the history of India, tells me about the books he’s reading, why he finds the philosophy of religion so fascinating despite being non-religious himself. He has a curious mind, full of facts and opinions.
In high school, I felt intelligent, studying hard with a memory made for exams, and the discipline and drive required to do well in assignments. When my friends didn’t know something, they’d ask me and I’d pull together whatever scraps of knowledge I might have that were slightly related and present it to them in a way that made it look like I knew what I was talking about. More often than not, I didn’t. But being able to fluke exams and rely on heavy research to score well in assignments didn’t equate to intelligence in the world beyond high school. It isn’t long—first with Amelia and Seth, then with Miles—before I realise I can contribute very little to the conversations about politics, history and literature I increasingly find myself within.
(Only now, a decade after my fling with Miles, am I beginning to settle into my mind. I still often feel that I have nothing to contribute, but I am more comfortable admitting what I don’t know, and there seems to be a different kind of contribution that comes from laying this bare, from speaking about what occupies my heart even when it feels unimportant or unintelligent.)
I’m high now, on this Kolkata bedroom window seat, so my defences lower. Instead of pretending I know what he’s talking about, I ask questions as they come to mind. Miles seems to like this, enjoys the chance to educate me. When I comment on how smart he is, he says, ‘I know a little about everything and a lot about nothing.’ His voice dips in volume as he speaks.
‘I’m still impressed,’ I say, giggling.
He leans over to kiss me but stops before we touch. I open my eyes wider, performing the innocent wonderment the past couple of years have taught me to feign. Another sort of deception. But it causes him to hesitate.
‘Or maybe not then,’ he says.
I pull his face towards mine. I’ve known him for only a week, hung out two or three times. But I’ve been wanting to kiss him since we met. I’ve never had much restraint.
‘Are you going to let me read your work now?’ he asks.
‘No, I’m embarrassed.’
‘Can I look it up online?’
I panic at this question. ‘I write under a pen name.’ This is the third lie I’ve told since arriving in India. I laugh, needing to distract him, and pull his mouth to mine.
Miles and I have been hanging out for a couple of weeks when his contract at the IT company comes to an end just as mine does at the primary school. He is going travelling around India for a while. I have a month free, having planned to do the same, and he asks if I want to go together.
‘Sure,’ I say.
He points to places on the map of India he keeps taped to his bedroom wall: ‘Varanasi, city of death; Agra, city of love; Jaipur, city of pink; Jaisalmer, city of camels . . .’ And on he goes, drawing circles around the country with his fingers.
(Someone once asked if I felt any unease at his suggestion of travelling together. The question perplexed me. ‘Unease at what?’ I wanted to ask. Unease about going with him? Unease about travelling in a foreign country? No, neither of these things unsettled me. What scared the shit out of me was the question of how to be myself in his company. I was so intimidated, so awed, that I found the thought of being authentic around him debilitating.)
I nod, happy to follow along into yet another world I’ve not seen before.
My young self has not yet learned that travelling heavy in any country is ill-advised but travelling heavy in India is almost impossible. With its uneven footpaths and plenitude of steps, large suitcases on wheels are not ideal. Travelling through India involves climbing steep stairwells, ducking past horned bulls hoping they don’t turn their head as you pass, climbing over humans and chickens and sacks of grain to take the last empty seat at the back of a blisteringly hot bus. Later, I learn: you can travel a month or a year on the same number of things you need for a week. A square of soap, a bit of running water, and you never need more than a few kilograms on your back.
In my ignorance, I have accumulated a large collection of knick-knacks, souvenirs and books during my month-long teaching gig in Kolkata. I have metres of richly coloured sari fabric, painted wooden boxes, patchwork woven table runners, leather keepsakes and wallets for friends and family. And books. Thirty-four of them in total.
I cannot articulate it at the time but travelling heavy becomes a metaphor. Later, in my late twenties, while starting to shed my emotional baggage I begin clinging to principles of material minimalism. When my parents move house, I throw out any clothing I haven’t worn in three years. I send stacks of books to Vinnies, get rid of the high heels I admire but never wear. A year later, when my mother texts to ask if she can throw out my university books and study notes, I tell her yes, without travelling home to go through them first.
‘Wow,’ Miles says when I appear in front of him with my suitcase and bag.
We are in central Kolkata, a taxi having dropped me off at the bus stop where we agreed to meet.
I am deeply embarrassed, and eager to impress. ‘Books,’ I say, another partial-truth since they take up only half of my thirty-kilogram suitcase.
Miles nods slowly, inhales from his cigarette, says nothing. He is as lonely as I am.
While sharing a room and living alongside him for two weeks, this lie quickly proves another difficult one t
o keep hidden.
Nowadays, my mother doesn’t understand why I don’t buy many gifts when I travel. I bring back one item for her (elephant-print pants from Thailand, cushion covers from Cambodia), a magnet for my grandmother, and a coin and note in each denomination for a close family friend, a girl—now young woman—who’s been part of our family since her best friend Lisa passed away. Nothing else.
Carrying a thirty-kilogram suitcase up the Varanasi Ghats in sweltering heat will carve that lesson into your bones quickly.
I am fascinated by Miles’s knowledge and difficulty in finding his place in the world. He was awarded top of his year at university, memorised the history of India and its contemporary cultural zeitgeist from books. After I tell him I write erotic literature for a living, he attempts, many times over, to discuss erotic—Nin, Miller, Joyce—and cult—Camus, Kesey, Pynchon—literature. I nod along, until he says, ‘You’ve read it?’ and I have to shake my head no.
Back home at work, it was easy to fake confidence around someone when you only had to spend an hour with them. Also, there was the sex, a sure-fire way to escape any conversation I might find intimidating. There was a sense of my clients being much older, of me playing the innocent and naive girl with lots of questions. And, ultimately, I didn’t really care what they thought of me. But it is different with Miles. Travelling with someone is like living with them, only more intense because you don’t have jobs to escape to. I wanted to relate to him as an equal, not as an uninformed youth who needed to be educated by him. But I could not find a way to do this and so I fell into my old patterns of behaviour—using sex to short-circuit some kind of genuine connection.
In response, he says, ‘Are you going to tell me your pen name?’
And again, I shake my head no.
A dozen touts are waiting when we get off the bus in Varanasi. Without consulting me, Miles chooses one to follow based on the photos the guy shows us, and we follow him down some stairs and into the alleys that spread out around Mother Ganges. I am in awe of how he moves through the world so easily.
There are no cars in this area, only pedestrians and scooters, and it is a relief to be away from the horns and constant threat of vehicles unable to stay in their lanes. But a few minutes into the journey, we are walking single file along a thin alley, several others ahead of us, when everyone stops and we are forced to do the same. I look ahead to see what is the hold-up.
A bull takes up three-quarters of the laneway’s width, and the human traffic is backlogged as we wait for each person to slowly make their way around the animal’s torso.
I am nervous. I’ve already admitted to not having read another three ‘classic erotica texts’, as Miles calls them, and am too self-conscious to admit I’ve never walked past a bull in an alley before.
(Why couldn’t I tell him I was afraid?)
Miles and our tout go ahead, leaving me to follow. The animal’s hind is facing me, its head and horns pointing towards Miles, who is looking back, waiting for me. I understand the hold-up now. Before anyone passes the animal, they have to wait to make sure its head is facing down, munching on the garbage at its feet, to ensure it doesn’t turn its head right as they are passing. If it does, there’s a high chance its horn is going straight through someone’s torso. The bull seems unfazed and unaggressive, but even a curious or indifferent turn of the head wouldn’t be pleasant.
I hold my breath, grip my massive suitcase, and dash past the animal. I look up at Miles, smiling.
He nods, turns, and keeps walking, as though nothing happened.
That night, we get drunk on the rooftop after dinner.
Miles says, ‘People show their true personality when they’re drunk. It releases all inhibitions.’
‘Like what?’
‘All the insecurities the ego masks.’
I ask what his biggest fear is.
It takes some time to get it out of him, but eventually he says, ‘Coming too quickly.’
If only he knew there’s nothing worse than a man who takes too long to come.
The thing I first enjoyed about Miles’s company quickly becomes a repellent: he is worldly and knowledgeable, but in that show-offy, persistent way of the deeply insecure. One day, we each spend the morning doing our own thing. I’m not supposed to meet him until four but we pass each other on the ghats at three and he asks if I’d mind him joining me for lunch.
I want to say: Yes, I do mind. I’m tired of pretending.
Instead, I say: ‘Sure, sounds good.’
The more I listen to him, the more I see he hides behind his knowledge. We sit down for lunch, and I ask him about this.
‘I have an ego,’ he says.
The next morning, I walk alone along the ghats, towards a bookstore I’ve heard about that stocks cult and classic literature, in English, at the top of a long stairwell. It’s on the other side of town, and although the ghats are a straight-lined walk from one end of the city to the other, the backstreets are a lace doily—an infinite network of thin, interwoven strands of cobbled pathways snaking between buildings falling over and into each other. I walk three-quarters of the way along the ghats until I have to turn inwards at Assi Ghat and find my way through the alleyways for the final third. Almost as soon as I enter them, I am lost.
The first person to pass me is a man who looks to be in his thirties, and not in a hurry. Although here, ‘hurry’ seems to have a different meaning. ‘There’s Western time and Indian time,’ an Indian friend once told me. ‘The second one is usually an hour or two behind the first one when arranging to meet somewhere at a proper time.’
‘Excuse me,’ I say.
He stops walking and turns to look at me without smiling.
‘Do you know where Harmony Bookshop is?’
He extends his hand towards me, and I shake it. ‘Yes, yes,’ he says. ‘This way. I am walking there now.’
This is a common occurrence in India. You ask someone for directions, they happen to be going that way, and will walk you there. Sometimes they leave it at that and go on their way. Other times they wait outside and attempt to strike up a conversation.
‘Thank you.’ I nod, knowing that refusing his company is not going to achieve much. We walk quickly, as though in a rush. This makes no sense, but I follow his lead.
‘Where are you from? America?’
I know this game by heart now. ‘Australia.’
‘Oh, Australia! You know Ricky Ponting?’
The conversation goes on, alternating between each of us, as we ask questions about the other’s life, until he stops and says, ‘Can I ask you something personal?’
‘Sure,’ I say, expecting the usual ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ and so on.
‘Are you a virgin?’
I freeze in shock. All around me, the chaos of Varanasi continues: people shuffle past our still bodies, pushing us out of the way. The dim but constant buzz of traffic hangs thick in our ears. The smell of so many people living closely together.
I turn and walk away without answering. How can I begin to explain?
Over the next few days, my relationship with Miles shifts.
As we walk the backstreets and ghats of Varanasi, and later sit in cafes overlooking the Ganges, a pattern begins to form. We wake in the morning heat, enamoured with each other, sleep having washed the previous day’s insecurities from our eyes. The mornings are slow and quiet. Eggs and chai at an Indian-catering-for-Westerners cafe. Twenty or thirty pages of a book each. By mid-morning, Miles suggests an activity for the day. I nod, and follow along, each of us carting a book wherever we go. By mid-afternoon, having grown tired of posing together while someone snaps our picture in front of that famous river, we retreat to the streets and wander them until we are hungry. The early afternoon meal inevitably leads to conversation and this is where problems arise.
He asks me questi
ons, his tone suggesting I should know the answers, and I have to admit that no, I don’t know what he is talking about.
As we talk, or walk the streets linking hands, or pack our bags to move to the next city, there is a constant but vague sense of distaste. I can sense his for me, and in turn develop the same for him.
Miles again probes about my pen name. ‘It reminds me of a Seinfeld episode,’ he says. ‘The main character won a running race but then refused to run from then on “by choice”, with his past eventually catching up to him. He had cheated, hence the refusal to run again, in an effort to maintain his reputation as a runner.’
‘Ha,’ I say, forcing a laugh. I try to conceal my hurt. To stop the endless conversation, I suggest returning to our room to have sex. This quells his desperation for talk. Still, he is as lonely as I am.
Afterwards, I suggest to Miles that we do Agra, then a night in Delhi, then head up north to go whitewater rafting together and split from there so I can do Jaipur alone. He says he’s been thinking of going to Kashmir so that works for him. This will give me about five days to travel alone before my return flight departs from Kolkata.
My bones feel like they’re vibrating, the ripples going out to my muscles and limbs.
During our last dinner together, I am re-reading a series of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, trying to learn about friendship and self-reliance and love. I underline passages, pretend I understand more fully than I do. Miles is reading Ken Kesey’s Sailor Song. We have begun reading during most meals. It is easier this way.
The next morning Miles and I rise early and barely speak. As I’m finalising a few check-out things, he stands behind me, waiting. I’m trying to avoid the part where he asks if I want to have breakfast. Eventually, I turn to him and say, ‘Oh, you’re waiting to say goodbye?’
He nods and gives me a tight but brief hug. We exchange a couple of goodbyes.
The last thing he says to me is, ‘The truth always comes out, Chloe.’
I nod and pretend I have no idea what he is talking about. He turns and walks away; I turn back to the reception desk to finish what I’m doing.
The Girls Page 19