Talking closets

Beautiful Stranger

2009-09-30T02:02:00.004-04:00

There's a boy in Bombay i flirt with. Online. On Facebook. He's a... ummm... 'friend', you see.

He's a cute boy. Very sweet and smart. Almost shy. Except when he tells me he's come out of the shower. Naked. And that he's got a very sizable... ummmm.... 'tool'.

We talk about random things.

His mixed heritage. (Yes, he's an CBCD - Canadian Born Confused Desi.) The extra pounds I put on in Amreeka. My fabulously svelte new figure. (Thanks to yogurt, instead of ice cream.) Sex. Love. And rock 'n' roll. (Fine, not rock 'n' roll that much.) He bemoans the fact that he's single in the big, bad city I love to distraction. And it brings back memories of how I used to gripe and groan about much the same thing when I lived there. (But, no, let's not go down that road again now.) I tell him (in quite a long-winded, flirty way) that I find him terribly handsome. Tall, dark and handsome, to be precise. He moans that the men in Bombay seem to prefer gora Punjabi braawny hunks, with buns of steel and brains of rust. I tell myself (and him, albeit in that long-winded, flirty way) that if we were in the same city, I'd probably jump him.

That's when he reminds me: Don't you have a boyfriend?

Ummm... yes. That's why flirting with a handsome (tall, dark, etc.) stranger/'friend' is so much fun.

Passion Fruit

2009-09-26T02:52:00.003-04:00

Ten minutes ago, I was in the shower and thinking about that big tub of strawberry yogurt ("creamy strawberry", the label announces) in the refrigerator, lying unopened since I'd bought the damn thing 3 weeks ago. A late-night blog post, instead of completing the Human Subjects Research Board test module, was the perfect occasion to say hello to it, I decided.

Lapping up yogurt in the dead of night, 3.15 a.m. to be exact, and I'm pretty sure I won't be waking up before noon. Suddenly, it's last year all over. Or perhaps, even earlier. It's as if the summer never existed. Nor does the window right over my bed, apparently, which always used to aim a sunbeam unerringly at my eyes. I've learnt to ignore it, it seems. And so I live the life of a vampire.

O, yes, it ties back to the 'Dracula' vintage movie posters framed atop my bed, its crazy lettering proclaiming: The strangest passion the world has ever known! And yes, he's chasing a group of panic-stricken men below the lettering. Of course I had to buy the poster as soon as I saw it!

Only, instead of blood or men, I get my strawberry yogurt. Mmmm.... creamy. :)

Some Big Words About... gulp Race

2009-06-01T13:37:00.008-04:00

So I've been following the news coverage on the recent racially motivated attacks on Indian students in Oz-land, and been suitably astounded by the whole situation. Irish Coffee remembers Australia as the ultimate chill place, full of beer and shags on pick-up trucks, but does acknowledge that race might well be an issue for the peeps down under. And that set me thinking, with due apologies to President Obama and his wonderul speech on the subject, what about race here in the US? More specifically, what's it like being an Indian grad student in the American Midwest.

And to make it even more specific to this blog: what's it like being a gay Indian grad student in the American Midwest?

The truth is: I've never had to face a racist slur (much less an attack!) here - and neither have any of the other Indians I know. Now, admittedly, I'm a really bad NRI-type, in that I don't attend bhajan-sessions organized by the Indian Student Organization when navratri rolls along every year, neither do I actively seek out the Durga puja community around here, I don't hug every single South Asian I meet on campus (even though most of them make goo-goo eyes at you when they see you're brown as well, and then look quizzically at you after you don't reciprocate!), and I don't attend any of the ISO meetings (formal or informal) either. Let's face it: Indians (not just Bengalis) are an intrinsically clannish species, especially when we're abroad. There's nothing really wrong in that - in fact, it's quite natural to want to ally yourself with like-minded people... but when that clannish-ness is on the basis on etnnicity or skin color or regional roots, can that be construed as racist?... and does that give the impression to the larger community (be it White, Black or Hispanic) that hell, these people don't want to mix with us, so we may as well treat them as Other and weird...?

The answer to both questions are decidedly problematic, and need constant negotiations and recognition. The answer is not to adopt an uncritically-in-love-with-White-people approach and abandon one's roots - and yes, I deny having done so! - and is most likely to be found in embracing Tolerance and Openness and Diversity. Big words, I know, if not in a dictionary sense then at least in real-world terms.

When I first came to my little Midwestern university town, despite my carping and bitching about it's decidedly non-big-city status, I was pleasantly surprised (and a little impressed!) with all the polite nods and smiles I got from random strangers, while walking downtown. Perhaps it speaks to my own unresolved issues (reverse racism?) that I wasn't creeped out if a random White/Black/Hispanic guy on the street smiled at me, but it's another story if a fellow South Asian did.

Being gay added yet another weird component to the whole mix. There's a strange feeling for some of us gay Indians, when we worry about how the whole queer thing will be received by other South Asians - given the lack of familiarity about the concept back home. There's an assumption - usually premature - that Americans understand what being gay/ lesbian/ bisexual means much better than South Asians do. Almost two years hence, however, my world-view has matured somewhat. I've come to realize that not every American is clear - or comfortable - about being queer, and not every South Asian is as clue-less - or as bigoted - about it, as I might have imagined. During the past two years, as I have slowly but surely come out of the closet to the people around me - both Americans and Indians/ South Asians - I've had to negotiate and re-negotiate all the different facets of who I am - male, gay, Indian, Bengali, NRI, grad student - continuously, both consciously and unconsciously, for myself as much as for those around me and those I have come out to. To use an awful pun, it's clearly not been a quick 'race' to the finish, more like a slow, important process, with often unclear dividends at every turn.

When I think of the racial attacks on Indians in Melbourne or Sydney or anywhere else, the first question that usually pops up is why. Obviously, that's not an easy or small question, by any standards, but it does deserve some conjecture on everyone's part. Are we considered soft targets, as so many in the media seem to suggest? Are we the new representatives of a resurgent Third World, and thus the whipping boys of recalcitrant White bullies? How many of us were queer, and how many of us were straight, in these attacks and did the perceptions of being queer play a role at all? Or is it primally because we are not White?

Bottom-line: none of these are good enough reasons.

Leather Lions

2009-05-30T22:34:00.005-04:00

So this past weekend, I was in the Windy City of Chicago, attending a hoity-toity academic conference. But during the preceding week, while I was chatting with the gay denizens of crazy-wild-Chi-town, the most common question I encountered, when I told them the dates of my visit, was: "O, you're coming for IML?"

Umm,... IML?

IML, as it turned out, was the mecca of all things queer and leather: the International Mr. Leather contest/ conference/ festival. The reason for using those three words and all that "/" is mainly that I'm not sure (yet!) exactly what it is/was. Not quite a festival like the Gay Pride marches, not exactly a conference where fancy-shmancy papers get presented (and ignored thereafter), and no, not merely a contest either.

For five whole days, leather afficiandoes (and yes, they were men, no women at all that I could see!) descend from all over the world to Chicago, in all their bovine (o, I'm sure most were faux leather!) adornments and glittery chrome attachments, to strut down Michigan Avenue. An entire five-star hotel is booked by the IML organizers, rooms are offered to attendees at special rates, conference and banquet rooms are booked for special 'sessions' (to put it most delicately) and a Leather-Mart that houses the most out-of-the-world apparatus, and a long-drawn-out pageant to crown International Mr. Leather is held.

My first reaction, when I heard the whole deal: O.M.G.... how frikkin' fantabulous! :)

Yes, so you always knew I'm a bit of a skank, didn't you? *grin*

Unfortunately, I had to balance IML and my hoity-toity conference together, so no, I wasn't exactly hanging for my life onto the slings suspended in the ballrooms, or screaming hoarsely in a sweaty hotel-room (well, not the IML hotel-room, at any rate! *giggle*)... I was trying to be a good nerdy academic at the conference, imbibe the High Arts of fabulous Chicago, and engage in some tiltillating voyeurism at IML - all at the same time. So, I visited the world-famous Leather-Mart with a hunky 'daddy', was suitably awestruck at the scope of the human imagination that could come up with all the wondrous inventions therein, and ogled at the furry/ smooth/ gleaming buttocks in full display at the hotel.

But my favorite intermingling of the three? Most definitely, when I hit the Art Institute of Chicago to check out its new Modern wing with a conference-colleague, and spied the many gorgeous leather-men in their boots and chaps milling around...

You've head of the famous lions at the Art Institute, right?...

Now imagine my roars of approval! :)

Spring Cleaning

2009-05-28T15:26:00.002-04:00

In the eons long past, I would have a little scrap book of sorts, filled with ticket-stubs, pamphlets, brochures and other knick-knacks from my holidays. A keepsake of the vacation and the memories, I suppose. Nothing too fancy - it was usually a blank exercise book with all those little what-have-yous stapled in, and little notes scribbled on the side. And then, Blogger happened. There was no need anymore to go to all that trouble - it was much easier to post about the things I'd seen, the places I'd been to, (the people I'd shagged)... you get the point. :)

And then there was Facebook.

I asked a friend the other day via chat on FB whether he thought it was behind the death of blogging. The answer I got was hardly conclusive, but it's something I haven't been able to shake off, either. Satori pinged me the other day (well, to be honest, this was a couple of weeks ago!) on FB that it was about time I went back to blogging, and while I did agree with him in my response, it took me this long to get back on the wagon. The answer as to why (or why not!) is fodder for another post - hell, I need something to keep me going, right?! - and I won't talk about that now. Suffice to say, this my most recent return to Blogger (circa: now) is as much a return to blogging, as it is a return to the root causes of blogging.

I write my self. Think about that for a moment.

On the events side of things, I've been a busy, busy, busy boy. I finished writing up my thesis (in all its 240-page verbosity!), then defended it successfully, said goodbye to my Midwestern university, got accepted at my dream school for a Phd program (due to start in August), presented a couple of great papers at a global conference, embedded myself with Irish Coffee's family (especially, his dad!), spent a gorgeous week in Chicago (arguably the most amazing city in the world), and bought my tickets for a long-awaited trip back home to India later this month. Is it any wonder that I haven't had much time for blogging, so that status updates on Facebook were all that I was capable of? :)

On the personal life side of things, I've been equally busy. It's been interesting, fabulous and tantalizing, living in with Irish Coffee for the past month or so, since the semester closed. I've been experimenting with strange cocncoctions in the kitchen, which haven't been all bad, really. And I've been growing (maturing, I'd like to think) in my relationship, both with my lover and myself. I've been exploring boundaries and central cores both, and I think I've been the wiser for it. I don't mean to sound like a tored old man here - o, you should have seen me party in Chicago this past week! - but I do want to stress on how important that peculiar juxtaposition of stability and mercurial flows is. Perhaps I need to book a spot with The View ladies to elaborate on that one. :)

For the moment, though, I'm satisfied. Scratch that - 'satisfaction' is a bad word to use here. It's more like: content to be here at this space, excited for the crazy new stuff that I know is right around the corner, and clearing up my closet from the past.

Hello again, Self. :)

Tricks of the Tease

2009-02-28T00:37:00.004-05:00

So I wasn't going to blog this week (you won't believe my jam-packed sked!) but then I sauntered over to Orange's blog, and saw the whole mess with the ex, and since I'm practically a Dowager Empress at the tender age of (ouch!) 27, it's pretty much expected I dole out expert advice on how to handle men. Bombay Style. :)

Expert advice on the 'ex', to be more precise.

At last count, it was 6, if I'm not mistaken. There's a way to handle such situations. It's a cool, calm, adult, easy, never-fails way. Read my lips. A-V-O-I-D.

That is, until you're looking drop-dead gorgeous, smoldering sexy siren, with a killer attitude to boot, and he's going to wish he was down on his knees in front of you, doing whatever it is that gets you off - the kinkier the better! :)

I jest, you think? Pah - amateurs!

Like I said before, there's a science to it. Essential items, of course, are fabulous friends who can tide you over while you lick those wounds, heal your pride, and are ready to claim your spot on the meat market again. Let's see, first there was the Call Center Boi in Delhi - broke up, moved away to Bombay, felt fag-ulous again, went back to Delhi for trips and had him splayed out on his apartment stairs... thrice! Salsa Guy? Same formula, works like a charm. Peacock Boi? Yuck. Too icky too even bother with, so I satisfy myself with bitchy smirks when I see him on-and-off in saddi dilli. Banker Boi - danced dirty all night long (lots of times!) at the bars with him, and left him high and dry every time. Nature Boy was different - he's my one best friend from all the dumb exes, but yes, the same formula applied. Avoid for some time, get back into 'fabulous' mode, hang around again, and have a steamy farewell fcuk (or two) in the shower. And as for the Gujju, I'm still playing him now and then - he's dying to get in my pants and I love turning him on, and it's extra-fun because he doesn't know that I'm with Irish Coffee, and he's never really going to get within ten yards of me. *grin*

I feel deliciously evil now. In a good way, if you know what I mean.

But fun and jokes aside - it's a cardinal rule. You bump into an ex when you're not ready - you RUN. There's a humanitarian twist in there, really. Why give him the satisfaction of knowing you're still broken up in there? Tantrums and scenes never really work, so you might as well forget all about them. Keep yourself intact, and put yourself back into your work and the next hunk who comes walking your way, and the rest, as they say, is easy as A-B-C. That's called the Tricks of the Tease.

Dear Diary

2009-02-18T20:24:00.003-05:00

Coffee mug in hand, here I go...

Christmas was beautiful. I fought tooth and nail with Irish Coffee and managed to keep the tree up for the better part of January, so his was the only house on the block which twinkled with fairy lights on India's Republic Day. :) We exchanged gifts on New Year's Eve and spent New Year's Day evening at the zoo, which was all lit up and looking spectacular. Yes, yes, very romantic and all that. (Though I'm not too sure if we held hands and did all that mushy stuff!) :)
Work has been hectic. Preparing and mailing PhD applications has been taxing, both mentally and physically. The good news is, I've been accepted into all the great schools I applied. The bad news, bureaucracy is being a bitch and it's the same old Indian 3-year university system versus the US 4-year one that is making me want to pull my hair out (...which is, a big deal, really, since you probably know my haircut is buzzed). So, yes, I'm waiting and watching and hoping things get resolved soon.
Talking about hairy issues, I almost stumbled in disbelief the other day upon spying not one but two (!) white hairs on my chest. Good God. So now it's official. I'm old. Not even 30 yet, and I've already been put out to pasture. Irish Coffee (smug bastard!) is thrilled. I, understandbly, am less so.
I might be headed to NYC again for a quick trip - as part of the recruitment weekend for one of the graduate schools who've accepted me. Haven't worked out all the details yet, but I am hoping things will fall into place :) (Not too sure I'm going to accept their final offer though, but that's another matter...!)
So I found out I have a lousy credit score. More accurately, I have a non-existent credit score.Which makes my obtaining a credit card terribly unlikely. Which makes my credit score remain perpetually low. Am I the only one who thinks the American credit score system is inherently flawed? Yes, Barrack, you do need change! :)
I have re-discovered Dr. Pepper after a hiatus of several months. Not quite Cherry Coke, not quite Pepsi, not quite anything really - least of all, pepper-y! Now that I've re-discovered it, it's time for me to shun it once more, of course. So there.
May is looking good for Chicago. I do love that city. I love the feel, the ambiance, the sky-scrapers, the Mag Mile, and Boystown. I'd love to live in Chicago some day. O, wait. Didn't I say that about Manhattan earlier? (And Pittsburgh? And Cleveland? And San Diego?)
So I defended my thesis proposal successfully. That makes me (officially) a Masters Candidate, ripe for the PhD pickings. I've given myself about three months or so to complete the thesis (even though the official deadline is early June - o, wait, that does work out to three months, doesn't it? Whoops.). So, no more doodling on separate projects and papers that have nothing to do with getting that darned thesis complete and graduating.
Is it strange that I find this random pic sexy - even though I can't see his face? Are tattoos and a hairy chest all I need to get intrigued? (Perhaps it's the shades?)

Season's Greetings... and All That Jazz

2008-12-29T22:25:00.005-05:00

So this is likely to be the last post of the year, if my lethargy is any clue to go by. To anybody who regularly comes here, and to anyone who may have happened to stumble over... a Merry Christmas to you.

I've always been a sucker for Christmas, ever since I was a wee li'l gay boy. I guess I got the right idea since way back then: men look fabulous in wings, angels be damned! :)

Despite my belligerence about sitting at home twiddling my thumbs last weekend, my Christmas did go nicely. (Well of course you knew it would - I'm just a little shriek-y at times, but I usually have happy endings!) Irish Coffee managed to pick me up, and I've been here at his place since last week - and will be for another 2 weeks or so. The Christmas tree came down, we played carols and decked up the fairy lights (is there any other kind? *giggle*), and hogged like pigs on some grrrrrr-eat food over at the family's. So this was my second year as the gay umm-something-like-a-sonny-in-law, and it went pretty, well, OK. Even though Irish Coffee feels everyone's always been very comfy with me, I detected a warmer tone, a greater degree of comfort, with me second time around, and that was good. It made me feel good. :) Suddenly, I'm OK with him not being the black sheep in the family! The best part, of course, was getting Presents. Frankly, I was surprised they even got me any - but they did: three boxes of chocolates, a game, and a card. What can I say? (They wanna fatten me up, Evil American Family!) So, now, I'm all choked up! *grin*

Anyhow, there's just about a couple of days till it's buh-bye to 2008, and hullo 2009. Irish Coffee and I are planning to head down to the fancy Christmas lights over at the zoo tomorrow, and even though it's bound to be chilly, I'm looking forward to it. The two of us are exchanging gifts on New Year's Eve, since we don't really do much of a partying binge in this Midwestern town-let (new word, something like pig-let, and yes, you heard it in the Closet first!) - man, I wanna head back to NYC or Chicago! - so that should be a nice, romantic evening for the two of us. Some great wine, good food, gifts, and a couple of mind-bowing orgasms... each! *winks*

So, yes, in the event that I don't get to blog again till after 2009 gets here... a Happy New Year to everyone!

And, in place of my usual Sexy Santa spread, since I'm a bit fed up of red suits and hats and have taken a new 'shine' to fluttery feathers, here's a Fantabulous Fairy line-up... :)

Crazy-ass FUNNEE :)

2008-12-23T16:55:00.002-05:00

OK, so I presume everyone here has seen the 12 gays of Christmas (if you haven't, GO SEE IT NOW!!!), but this one is another crazy-ass-hilarious must-watch clip !

OK, so that's what I want for Christmas now. Right under the tree in a bright red box with a pink bow. :)

Whatever happened to being the black sheep?!

2008-12-19T17:29:00.007-05:00

It's a blight most people probably wouldn't call a blight. The out gay man's family. You'd think that'd be so cool, wouldn't it? To have a family who's totally cool about you being gay and include you in every family occasion, birthdays, thanksgivings, christmases, whatchamacallits...! And if you're seeing such a gay man who's got such a happy-happy family, you'd think that'd be perfect, too.

So what do you do, when your boyfriend is this total family-nut and you're not?

Warning: this is a post where I play the Evil Scrooge Incarnate. Worse yet, I'm going to argue that I have a right to feel the way I do and ESI is actually much maligned. I'm not one to spit "Bah, humbug!" at Christmas - it's just this whole "we love our gay family-member" crap which gets to me. Why, do you ask? Well, frankly, because I'm not used to it.

I suppose I never thought of it from this angle before: the thing about being gay and fabulous in Bombay (or anywhere else in India really) is that you rarely come into contact with the family - the real blood-ties family, I mean, not the gaggle of gay gals your guy (and you have your own, of course!) hangs around with. Family outings then meant you getting your 4 gay friends and him getting his 5, and then all of you hitting the club Saturday night, moving onto someone's house at 3 a.m. for the after-party, some giddy fondling on the couch, followed by some mindblowing sex back at either his or your place. Brunch next morning is optional, but speaks volumes to the dgree of intimacy between your families. That I could handle, that I'm used to, that I like.

But what do you do when you're hoping to go away to your boyfriend's house for Winter Break, and your boyfriend can't do that because he's in another frikkin' city doing odd jobs for some much-loved family member? There's a part of me which cautions me against feeling all-too angry or indignant because blood is thicker than water (or so they say), and there's another part of me which feels... lonely. And honestly speaking, that second part is winning out right now.

Sure, I know the script. There's supposed to be laughter and moldy family-jokes around the dinner table, great food and nice people - and yes, Irish Coffee's family has been pretty nice to me, really. I know they're nice people who might be a little flummoxed at the new gay son-in-law (well, not really that new anymore!) but they're doing their best...! But what happens when the new gay son-in-law (yours truly) is not really used to this whole thing? My idea of a great Christmas season with my boyfriend is the two of us cozying on the couch, watching a great movie, sipping wine, eating some fabulous dessert, watching the snow flakes outside, and some log-burning sex. It's not my present situation: me growsing and grumbling at home, making coffee for one, doing my laundry, brushing out my tiny christmas tree from the hall closet, and expecting to be alone for the coming weekend... while he's doing house-projects in Timbuktoo. No, I'll still be spending Christmas Day with him, but that's not the point. Christmas is not just a day, it's a frikkin' season, a whole week (or more), and I'm stuck doing thesis work at home and grumbling to myself. (And no, just because I have plenty of thesis work to do doesn't particularly mollify me, either!)

No, the point, quite simply, is this: why did families have to get all "we accept you, come join the mundane-activities fold again, dear gay son" and why couldn't they just step away into the shadows surfacing for the odd lunch or two?

Yes, I'm needy. Bugger off!

Naughty or Nice?

2008-12-17T02:06:00.006-05:00

So Christmas is fast coming up, and most of the stuff I'm supposed to get for Irish Coffee are terribly unexciting gadgetry for his fish-tank:

A carbon dioxide reactor.
A cave. NOT a fabulous Disney castle type cave, but a boring ole grumpy cave with moss on it.
Sand and gravel.
Fish: a pair of black wellies OR 10 rummy-nosed tetras. I mean, what happened to good ole cute goldfish? (Though, I do like the sound of the rummy-nosed things!)
A floor to ceiling plant stand.
A pair of hair clippers.

My Christmas list goes something like this:

Sex and the City DVD-cum-Music CD pack.
A fabulously sexy light rain jacket.
Britney Spears' Circus.
A pair of zippered black boots.
A sharp new Fedora (to make up for the one I left behind in New York!)
Steamy sex from Sexy Santa and perhaps a couple of his Elves!

Yes, I know, I'm the 'shallow' one. Ain't that great? *grin*

Ring-mistress

2008-12-12T11:59:00.002-05:00

So Britney's back in the ring, and HOW! Circus has pretty much shattered all the records, following closely on the heels of her other hit single Womanizer. This is the part where I blush, shuffle my feet and admit that I'm one of the old-time Spears fans. I liked the masochistic school-girl with pigtails who liked being hit... one more time, and I loved her in Crazy, and I even liked her in that ridiculous poor-little-rich-girl Lucky song... And then I watched horrified as she spiraled down a horrible rollercoaster, amply helped in her smouldering descent by the media.

Let's not blame the paparazzi alone here. As someone pointed out on her Wikipedia page, Britney's a great example of how people become simultaneously valued/devalued as commodities rather than human beings. Suddenly, every little thing Britney did was news, every tantrum, every angry outburst was screaming at you from the front page - and yes, you were lapping it up! As Britney croons, all eyes on me in the center of the ring, just like a circus...!

Was she partly responsible for all that attention? Perhaps - but definitely not to the gruesome extent that it turned out to be. The Spears Phenomenon pretty much became a case study in media ethics on reporting privacy in my classroom - in fact, I encouraged my students to think about the media attention and whether it was merited even in the case of the most publicity-greedy celebs.

But this post is not about debating the pros and cons of media commoditification (yea, you probably won't find that word in Webster!). It's about how she actually came back from over the hill where she'd practically been hurled over and buried six feet under. It took more than one lunge from her, and several attempts to come back, fight for custody of her kids (an ongoing battle), fight to get back into shape, fight to get the right songs, and struggle to grow as a person. And I like to think she has. Circus is definitely a newer Britney: I see shades of her journey as a person through the awesome challenges thrown at her. And I like how she uses humor to channel her anger into some great ditties in the new album. Case in point: Womanizer.

K-Fed, duck for cover - she's opened the closet now, bitch! :-)

America's Finest City!

2008-12-11T16:38:00.003-05:00

So my first thought on walking out of San Diego airport was: I look odd all muffled-and-bundled up in my winter gear, while everyone around me is traipsing around without a coat or a care in the world. My second thought: so this is what Santa gives me for being good all year - a long weekend in sunny California! :)

So even though my friend Lo-retta (as my giggly friend in Cleveland will henceforth be known as, and if you watch Family Guy, you'll know where I'm coming from!) wasn't able to make it on the trip, practically everyone else of my academic discipline did! This was the most anticipated conference of the year, and a whole bunch of us nerds from everywhere in the US descended upon San Diego - "America's Finest City" - to question, analyze, problematize, showcase and many-other-things-besides our field! We had a lovely hotel downtown, bang across the gorgeous harbor, regular parties hosted by various universities practically every night, and some very touristy places to hop around-and-over.

(Like Balboa Park, which is supposed to be SD's version of central perk, oops, park - and its strange but surprisingly engaging row of miniature globes - all except the blue one which had bras etched on it for some weird reason: as every gay boy knows, bras are just plain eewwwww!)

The gaslamp quarter was amazingly alive with life - too bad I didn't take my camera along with me the times I went there for dinner, but it was a treat. Sunny sidewalk cafes for lunch during the day, and some great clubs and bars to visit once the sun went down. A colleague and I headed over to Croce's Jazz Bar, and though I was supposed to hook up with a cute gay professor for clubbing at Hillcrest afterwards, I decided to cancel that and stayed on for the jazz!

Hillcrest wasn't cancelled for too long, though. The next day, I was chatting online with another gay academic from my conference, and we decided to have a great night out. So, yes, there was good music, great drinks, fantastically nerdy conversations (for a gay bar!) and some jaw-tiring kissing. :) I've promised to stay in touch with my Californian gay academic, even though I'm half way across the world simply cuz we had such a great time talking and dancing. (OK, the kissing played a part in the decision, too!)

The best part about San Diego though wasn't really Hillcrest - personally, I much prefer Chicago's Boystown in terms of ambience - but rather the fabulous ocean. Frankly, the land-locked Midwest doesn't have a patch on a beautiful, sparkling ocean, and that's where my homesickness for Bombay kicks in again...!

And though I spent some time walking along the harbor, I know there's much, much more to do/see here... San Diego deserves another trip - and this time, I know I have kiss-worthy friends, too! *grin*

Just another angsty post!

2008-12-10T23:58:00.003-05:00

Sometime back, I had a theory that I was (despite my sparkling wit and brilliance) after all just another white mouse running on an ever-whirling wheel. Nothing really has changed so far in my life to dispute that theory. I've lived through writing the proposal of my thesis, the horrendous terrorist attacks in Bombay (thankfully, everyone I know is safe!), the gorgeous weather in San Diego, the hideous weather in my Midwestern hamlet, and a crazed mailing of PhD applications.

*squeak*

The 'busy' motive doesn't completely cut it, of course. Somewhere along the way, the Closet lost its penchant for honesty: honest fear, honest excitement, honest trepidation, honest lust. Instead, I fell into the trap so many bloggers who get too conscious of their readership do, and tried to project the 'happy' face: devoid of fear, trepidation, excessive excitement, and (it must be said) lust. In an online conversation, Satori sighed and said, "No offense, but it's usually you under-30 somethings who go around starry-eyed with simplistic views of love and sex and matrimony." That's not to say that he's not a believer in all of the above himself - but perhaps he would define a more nuanced role for himself. And I've been doing the same for myself, I suppose. In the shadows. Away from the Closet, because somehow even that isn't very closed these days - and of course, that's all my doing, so no, I'm not really complaining or anything. I suppose I've been trying to deal with the fact that I'm all happy and domesticated, but still check-mark all of the above: fear, trepidation, excessive excitement and (again, it must be said) lust.

I'm a sucker for that Lust. *grin*

Lust for that cute gay academic with who I went dancing in San Diego one night after the conference, yakked 19 to the dozen about Obama, gay politics, doctoral programs and other scandalous tidbits that would make any self-respecting gay boy blush - and you could tell by the progressive ying around the two of us as the night went on and the conversation grew more... intense. A couple of drinks, some pretty sexy dancing, and a lovely lingering kiss before I said goodnight and disappeared a la Cinderella - only much later than midnight! *sigh*

Lust for that other cute young man I flirt with online, a senior at the university who grins o-so coquetishly at the camera with his shirt rolled up to his armpits to show off his fabulous abs! Surprise, surprise, he's actually intelligent, well-read, funny, and gets my craziness.

OK, and yes, I'll admit it: lust for that huge hunk of a Latino who doesn't get any jokes what-so-ever, probably doesn't even care (but then he doesn't have to, with a sculpted body like his!), and is simply in the mood for a fcuk. I'm not sure how long I can keep stringing him along with sleazy online sex-chats, instead of actually delivering the goods... but, I figure, as long as I can, that's good enough for me! *grin*

It feels terribly invigorating to admit to my lust here. I don't do guilt very well, I'm afraid. To tell the truth, I don't do guilt very often, either. :) But when I do, it's usually those quiet-and-alone moments lying in bed, followed by anxious soul-searching that lasts for a few minutes till a friend pours a bucket of cold reason on me. I'm not perfect. And I'm not asexual. (SO not asexual!) And just because I'm not a singleton anymore doesn't mean that I should stop feeling whatever I feel - fear, trepidation, lust, and all of the rest. I used to think that "growing up" meant you stop being naughty and become boring. I tried that for awhile. It made me cringe at the thought of coming here and admitting who/what I was and did. Instead, I realized that growing up means to reconcile both your stable relationship status and your naughty streak. There's a reason my guy is with me - he admits he loves me being crazy. And not being honest means stifling the craziness.

So where does that leave me, and the Closet? To put it fancily: in an enlightened state of being. *grin* I"m going to try to "grow up" from an under-30 something dimbulb to an under-30 something adult. Did I like my kiss in San Diego? Loved it. Do I enjoy flirting with the cute frat boy? Most definitely. Will I fantasize about hunky Latino Lover in bed? Umm...! Am I still in love with Irish Coffee? More than ever. :)

Does that make everything very complicated? As the song goes, I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose-garden! :)

Maa da laadla bigad gaya (Mom, your son's become... spoilt?!) :)

2008-11-13T18:45:00.003-05:00

So, I'm supposed to see K.Jo's new movie Dostana with Stephen when he hits New York City later this year. While the movie's been much-hyped about being the first gay Indian movie yadayadayada, to tell you the truth, I've kind-of thought the promos looked a bit... well,... homophobic. The usual stuff about "haha, laugh at the pansy gay guy!" crap. And that's felt weird, what with me being a long-time fan of K.Jo, even before his Koffee With Karan days - which was a fag-ulous show, by the way!

But then, I get an email this morning from SnowWhite's Stepmom with the lyrics of Dostana's newly released song. And no, even though my knowledge of Punjabi is terribly rusty as best (and non-existant at worst), I didn't need to really know the language very well to understand that this is K.Jo at his tongue-and-cheek best! :)

So, yes, I really, AM looking forward to NYC movie-time with Stephen in December now!

And, in more serious news, this was MSNBC anchor Keith Albermann's emotional reaction to Proposition 8 last week...

Nice, Keith... but perhaps a bit too late?

Next Up: Closetalk's shenanigans on Halloween '08!!!

KA-BOOM

2008-11-06T11:36:00.005-05:00

So it's like that Huntington guy said, the Clash of Civilizations... I'm far away from home, and Proposition 8 is a far cry away from Section 377, but am I really surprised that Californians, Arizonians and Floridians all voted overwhelmingly to ban gay marriage, and Arkansas won't let gay couples adopt children? Not really - well, maybe a bit on California, but only cuz I let myself do the wishful thinking bit. I know I've blogged about this before, but I'll reiterate again that America seems much more tolerant and open-minded from outside than from inside.

But then, perhaps the question is not one of tolerance - given that America now has its first African-American President - but, rather that basic brick wall that one comes across now and then (but which we academics paradoxically see as co-constructed and eternally shifting!): culture. That's the same excuse proponents of Section 377 back in India use: that homosexuality is simply not in our 'culture', society is not ready for it, and the majority should not be force-fed something by a minority group.

And that's the argument here in the United States by many as well: it's not 'our culture'. By 'culture', I mean that Barbie-Ken perfect marriage in the perfect suburban home with white picket fences, and large boisterous families replete with bratty kids. For so many Americans, the word 'marriage' has a special sanctity that they are loath to see embraced by non-traditional folks. And if that cultural block is the real deal here, then is it really fair to spew about minorities like the African-Americans and Hispanics who, because of their traditional stress on family values, have apparently been blamed by No on 8 activists for voting for proposition?... So there we are back again: the age-old tussle between traditional and not-so-traditional, culture the brick wall versus culture the shape-shifter that we academics (and it seems, not many others) believe in.

To be sure, there are brick walls on either side. There are many determined gay rights activists here who will settle for nothing short of Gay Marriage in capital letters. It has been suggested that activists should compromise for civil unions with similar legal benefits, rather than insist on the Big M - as was the case in Florida, for instance. There have been suggestions that perhaps with his new-found majority in the US Congress and Senate, Obama might be able to bring in a federal mandate on civil unions - something like they have in Britain. But, again, I'm not holding my breath for that. Not least because I'm sure there will be several gay activists who will oppose that too...

And I'm not sure I can blame them.

Isn't it just another case of (excuse my use of academese) Othering? Isn't it a case of "No, you're fags, and we don't care if you want to call your union a 'marriage', even though we all grew up in the same cultural space, believing that marriage was the be-all and end-all of life, but you still can't have it, cuz it's ours, so you have to be satisfied with a civil union"? The irony of the whole culture-thing of course is in that fictional retort of mine: it doesn't matter that marriage has been so completely sanctified (by religion, state policies, whatever!) for ALL Americans, gay and straight, but marriage with a capital M cannot be granted to anyone not... traditional.

Where am I going with this, and why do I care? To tell the truth, I haven't really ever looked forward to getting married - well, at least, not since I was 14 in Calcutta and dreamed of that fabulous garden wedding and me in a yummy sherwani (yep, the dominant theme of my dream wedding was my wardrobe!). The most I've hoped for in my adult life has been... to find someone to fall in love with, who loves me back, so that we can be happy for a long, long time. It's been the romance angle with me, not too much the legality - perhaps, quite simply, because I never saw any scope of that legal framework back in India. It's been some 1-year-three-months for me here in the US, and to be honest, I don't see a legal framework happening here either. Even though I would love to live in New York City, I don't see myself moving there just cuz I can get my Connecticut-sanctioned marriage approved there. But I don't count, since I'm an alien (legally speaking!) in the country.

The people who do count are those like Irish Coffee, who's infuriated that if he were to marry, he would not enjoy any legal benefits or rights. He rants about moving to Canada pretty much in the same vein as a bunch of people were, when asked about a seemingly-stupid scenario now, if Obama were not elected. People like Stephen, who emailed his friends' parents, trying to get them to vote no on proposition 8. And so many others like them.

To all of them, I say (cornily enough): lick your wounds, and come back to the ring boys; it's going to be a long haul. I'm Indian, I know all about waiting it out.

Yes, I'm happy... :)

2008-11-05T15:07:00.005-05:00

The next step? Use the complete control in the legislature to put into place a Federal Mandate that'll overturn Proposition 8, and extend full rights to civil unions for gay couples...

Do I hear a refrain of Yes, we can?

Let it be said...

2008-10-29T20:30:00.006-04:00

Sarah Palin is not a nice person.

O, believe me, when I said that sentence aloud awhile back, there was something else at the end of it, other than "...not a nice person". But while I'm not exactly too shy of calling a spade a spade (or a bitch a bitch!) my refraining from using some of the 10,000-odd colorful invectives that are at the tip of my tongue right now serves to make a point. A point of contrast.

Not only is the woman stupid/dumb/moronic/take-your-pick, the woman is one of the most aggressive hate-mongering creatures from that right-wing bastion of the Republic National Party. (Yes, what makes you think I'm a liberal now? Just cuz I'm gay? *grin*) At yet another rally, she called Presidential candidate Obama a terrorist - something which even her running mate has desisted from (or tried to, at any rate, even though the infamous robot-calls kept up the hate on his behalf!). And to make matters more laughable, the conservative camp cries shrilly that Obama is lampooning Palin and denigrating women! The focus of their fury? - this perfectly tasteful ad that simply shows you her lack of experience and knowledge on (let's not get into numbers now) a wide variety of subjects!

O, except hate - she's very qualified at that!

You want the real deal? Here he is...

And let's not even get into the debate on why an international grad student should even care about American Presidential politics... I'm damned if I know... except that, yes, he's the real deal.

Truffle/Trifle

2008-10-24T10:08:00.006-04:00

One thing common to love and stress is chocolates. When it's love, you're left panting for that next delicious mouthful of caramel from your main squeeze, and when it's stress, the squeeze-ball doesn't help much and it's all you can do to not pop the entire box of caramel down your gullet and directly to your waistline. *sigh*

Due to a host of circumstances involving both, I've been inundated by chocolates.

The love factor hasn't come exclusively from the boyfriend either. Several of my best friends back home are currently seeing people they believe (fingers crossed) to be the loves of their lives. They're doing the whole razzmatazz, so to speak: the bubbling champagne late-nights, the jet-setting holidays, the dancing-till-dawn and happy, happy, happy grins, and the jaw-dropping sex. Not too sure about the jaw-dropping sex, though, since my friends are by no means the kind of slut I was in my singleton days and even if they were, they know that if they tell me it's liable to end up here.

As for me, I've been indulging in the more homely kind of love-shove. As I told Vivian the other night, it's almost a shock to realize how domesticated my love life has become. I sit at the desk and write my academic papers while Irish Coffee potters around the fish tank and the television and his computer; we go for long walks together with the dog; we concoct fabulous (and not so fabulous) meals for dinner; I wake up in the morning and make a large pot of coffee for the both of us (OK, so he does coffee most of the time, I lied!); he slides a chocolate bar to me sometimes, a bottle of Diet Coke at others, when I'm busy working on my papers; we quietly watch his fish in the fish-tank swim in circles or ellipses or what-have-you; we go shopping for foodstuff, groceries and clothes (he hates the clothes-shopping part; I of course love it); dinner-time is followed by some snuggling on the couch and some late-night TV with the occasional white wine.

And no, I don't seem to part-ay any more.

My room-mate and his friends head out practically every Thursday and Friday, and I turn them down every week because I have tonnes of work to complete, books to read, papers to write, tests to grade, and basically be a melancholic old curmudgeon. My boyfriend tells me, I have much too much on my plate to be a frat-boy party animal like them, so it's OK to concentrate on my books and my studies. And while I do think he's right, and I DO try concentrate as much as I can on one other element besides the workload and the stress - that's my love - I can't help wondering sometimes: where did the party slut in Closetalk disappear to?

Where's that fagulous creature who loved to dance all night long, down his vodkas and shag a new guy practically every night? Why on earth did I have to turn *gasp* 27 - why can't I remain forever a "dancing queen, only seventeen"?! And, yes, how warped must I be to grumble at my comfortable life and yearn for that extra zing? Is this how married people get: all happy and complacent and whiney at the same time? But then, from my experience, that's also how single people usually are: happy and complacent and whiney about never meeting Mr. Right ! Trust me, not only have I been there/done that, I've seen firsthand so many accounts of that same avatar that it's quite... numbing.

You know what helps get rid of the numbing? Chocolate.

O, and porn comes a close second.

Nuthin' wrong with a bit of Brilliance...

2008-09-02T12:12:00.007-04:00

One of the virtues of blogging, in my book, is the self-reflecting and pondering that it affords you. Blogging for me is less of an anonymous confession to the faceless masses of the internet, and more of a process whereby one writes one's self into existence... if that means anything. To be honest, this has been more of a process for me than anything else, as I have come to realize: the understanding that a blog moves from being personal to confessional to communal, and then somewhere along the way, all of the above! It's a strangely cathartic journey, where one encounters a variety of people (readers, commenters, other bloggers) who become as important as the original blog-writer in determining the flow of the blog.

I know: I'm a nerd. I'm supposed to say, this is just an online journal, and that's it. Enough of the high-falutin' crap. :) I'm a nerd, though, cuz I really do believe all that high-falutin' ummm... stuff.

The immediate cause for this sudden reflection was the conferral of a blog award to Talking Closets, from two bloggers whose writings I have followed (pretty) compulsively for a loooooong time. Now, usually, I'm not one for blog-awards - some inane part of me thinks that you need to be a techie to really go for that stuff - but I guess the Brilliante Weblog Award is a bit different. For one: it's less of an award, and more of a vote of confidence by your readers, commenters and the larger blogging community one tends to inhabit. And it's a process of discovery, wherein you help that community enlarge, by discovering new writers and readers. By virtue of its sheer fluidity and its lack of a restricted organizational backing (that is, any particular high-profile site or blog that bestows awards), it becomes that extra bit more... brilliant. :)

So... all thanks to Pepe and Iz for thinking I deserve an award. Let me take my virtual bow now, and applaud both of you.

Pepe is an enterprising young Filipino (or was it Malaysian? Pretty sure it was Filipino...) settled in Chennai, who blogs about the "jumbled blah blahs" in his life. Between the terribly endearing stories of his love life and his shockingly brash takes on high-end consumption, his blog is a treat to pore through: you get the real deal from Pepe, and some heart-warming advice. Thanks, you.

Iz is, quite simply, audacious. She is survived by her terribly nice hubby Father A, and a pooch whose name I cannot recall for the life of me - or did she have to get rid of him? (Yikes, as I approach 30, the brain cells dry up, methinks!) I have no recollection either of how I originally bumped into her blog - or Pepe's for that matter! - but she turned out to be an old friend of an old friend - and the hilarious part is, she stll has no idea who I'm talking about! *grin* Iz chats about the wacky forces of nature, her screwed up take on life, and some random nuggets that are too hilarious to be remembered - so that's my excuse. :) Iz, thank you.

In keeping with the conditions of the Brilliante Weblog award and the whole communal nature of blogging, I'm to plug seven blogs which are, according to me, "brilliant in their content and design". So, here goes...

The Reluctant Observer is Mahesh, an immensely sensible, sensitive, interesting guy based in Bangalore, who blogs about his life, the world around him, and his interesting interpretations of it. The best part about Mahesh? - he inspires you to think. :)
Humming Bird in Hyde is "Elegant. Stylish. Quick. Colorful.", as he puts it on his blog. A London-based desi - at least, I think so - he's full of fabulous tidbits about the strange people who occupy his personal and professional life... And to read him talk about his gorgeous boyfriend is an awwwwww moment, if ever there was one (or several, for that matter!).
Satori Stephen is currently in... New York, New York! When he's not striding all across the globe, Stephen is writing about the people he meets on his travels, the amazing cuisine and places he scouts out, and yes, how can anyone forget those deeeeeep introspections on the nature of humanity? *grin*
An Actor in Search of his Stage, or Clockwork Orange as he's known on my blogroll, is your average bursting-at-the-seams-with-knowledge-and-great-style engineering grad student. We have quite a lot in common, he and I: we're both desi grad students in the States, but then he's in fabulous Pittsburgh and I'm in my Midwestern hamlet. :)
Confessions of a Rambunctious WhipperSnapper, or Whippy as I have christened him, is one blog that has most likely been nominated for this 'award' before: but knowing that he's "fat, alcoholic and gay" (his words, not mine!), it's doubtful that he's gotten around to actually posting about it - so maybe this is the nudge he needs! Whippy reminds me a lot of my fabulous friends back in Bombay - thanks for the nostalgia, you.
Bedtime Stories are not all about sleaze, really; in fact, if you're sharing beds with Paul, you're most likely to giggle yourself to bits rather than end up in a sticky, sweaty, sweet mess - O, but then, what do I know, I haven't really been pyajama-pals with him off-line! *grin* I've been following Paul's blog forever, really, though I'm not a very prolific commenter, and while his manic quirks alarm me at times, they keep inducing those fits of giggles!
The Gay Banker is, frankly, my kind of banker! I first came across his blog ages ago and have followed it ever since (though I'm a silent reader rather than an outspoken commenter most of the time), and his travails of poly-amory and his boyfriends numbers 1, 2, 3... have often entertained me, as well made me think more seriously about gay relationships. GB presents an alternative view of things: that it doesn't have to be all about heterosexualizing gay relationships with townhouses and picket-fences - but then, the final decision really is yours: what do you want? And take a moment (or two) to think about it.

While you're doing so, happy bloggin', y'all! :)

My Bel Ami Life

2008-08-30T13:45:00.006-04:00

So Georgia's not the only flashpoint in East European affairs, you know. Here's a strange situation. Closetalk recently moved into a brand new apartment with a brand new room-mate. The room-mate is an East European hunk, in his early thirties, married but his wife lives some six hours away so he visits her on weekends. Bit of a chatterbox, but then, in a fun way, and the two of us yak well into the wee hours of the morning, about university gossip and nerdy research stuff. Welcome to boring Gradstudentville. But then what happens when Pavel (that's my nickname for him, after the o-so gorgeous East European hunk I've lusted after since I was 18) starts talking about ummm... the dearth of romance in his marriage?

Here's a sample:

Pavel: After having having our second child, the li'l woman says she just stopped feeling romantic. And she's not in the least apologetic about it. Says that's just the way she feels. But then... my feelings for romance haven't changed, and I'm not sure she gets that!

CT: Aha. OK.

Then, again;

Pavel: O, she's really great with the guilt trip. She tells me before I head over for college: I'm a good wife, so don't cheat on me. But then, I'm thinking: why did you have to tell me that?! I mean, I wasn't even thinking of cheating but then by saying something like that, it just makes it seem all the more forced, you know what I mean...? You're supposed to be with someone because you really want to... not out of guilt. Now, if she really wanted to be that 'good' a wife, she should have said: you can go ahead, honey! *guffaws*

CT: Ummmm.....!

Scene Three -

Pavel: Do you think it's wrong of me to totally find my sister-in-law smokin' hot?! I mean, she's totally awesome, and it's all I can do to help myself! *guffaws even louder*

CT: *blank*

And then, of course, there was the 'confession'...

Pavel: So, yea, I wanted to screw my bitch girlfiend in college, so then I went and slept with all of her room-mates... in fact, my roomie in the fraternity and I did her best friend together! And she called back saying we took advantage of her friend, but yea, we knew she wanted some of that stuff too: she asked, can I come over to study? And is your roomie at home too? *cackle* O yea, I was quite good at sleeping around during my undergrad years!

CT, talking to himself mostly: So, shall I study Discourse Analysis tonight or Humanistic Audience Research, do you think?

So now... I'm left wondering lots of things, really. Number one on the list: am I turning out to be, of all things ghastly and horrific, a prude *shudders*?! Number two: is Pavel looking to cheat on his wife? And far more interestingly, Number Three: what with all the talk about how he believes sexuality to be fluid and not straight versus gay, and his insistence on spotting me on the weights at the university gym, is he perchance looking to me to provide him with some... aah... relief till he gets to meet his wifey next? I mean, not to sound like a mutton-headed egoist who thinks everyone wants to get in his pants, but the fluid sexuality speech is pretty much used by most guys who wanna play gay now and then, and the whole gym-thing is so out of good ole 80's gay porn... so it does give me pause to think... What the fcuk am I getting myself into?

And you'd think, this would be something I'd keep to myself and not blab to the boyfriend, right? Wrong. I go and tell Irish Coffee everything about the Pavel-thing, and of course his reaction is to guffaw even louder than Pavel, and growl that he'll tell him to "keep his filthy mitts outta my boyfriend's knickers!" the next time he meets him. (Yes, Irish Coffee can be quite the archaic speaker at times.) While I'm quite positive that that speech isn't going to happen anytime soon, I am looking forward to my newfound gym-routine and chat sessions with Pavel, if for nothing else than to explore where this goes ahead - purely research interests, of course *harrrumph*. As I recall, married men are usually lots of fun to play with - especially insistent and fired up! Aa, but then if I were a prude, I wouldn't be having these thoughts now, would I?

Hallellujah and praise the 'lawd' for something! :)

Another Ever-After Story...

2008-08-22T00:59:00.005-04:00

Once upon a time (it seems ages now!), in a gorgeous city perched by the sea, with neon lights and shining skyscrapers, a boy sat on his sea-facing verandah-flat, poring over his laptop and was going about his merry way finding a fcuk for the night, as all devastatingly witty and cute gay Bombay boys who're not very modest do. A chat-window suddenly opened, however, and it turned out to be an American. Older guy, but with a grin so impish that it made our hero grin back unconsciously to no one in particular.

CT: "So, are you here in Bombay for a vacation?"

Irish Coffee: "Nopes, I'm in the States. In TheCityWhereYou'reTravellingToIn4Months."

After the initial surprise had subsided, the boy decided that this was a great opportunity to make 'first contact', so to speak, with the people whom he was going to stay with for at least a year of his life, in the middle of the American Midwest. So CT and Irish Coffee chatted, they laughed and they talked, exchanged emoticons, and enquired about each other. Irish Coffee wasn't single, he was planning to visit Southeast Asia next month with his boyfriend of three years, but he was very amenable to befriending new people. He even offered to pick up CT from the airport and drop him to his university, when the time came, four months later, and CT actually considered it.

His friends however had other views. SnowWhite's Stepmum made an O with his lips, and charged that horrible horrible things might happen to the traveling Bombay boy: "You could get kidnapped, and then maybe raped and he could maybe do wierd kinky stuff to you in his basement!"

CT, pauses: "Ummm.. Tell me again, why that's a bad thing...?"

Despite the brevity, our hero decides to follow his friends' advice and not trust the stranger for a pick-up ride. "Plenty of time for him to pick me up later," CT grinned to himself. In fact, as the weeks drew close to his departure from the fabulous city of Bombay, he didn't come across Irish Coffee again. Till, finally, just a week or so before he was due to catch his flight, they bumped into each other - virtually, of course.

CT: "I'm dropping in about 10 days or so!"

Irish Coffee (paraphrased): "My asshole boyfriend dumped me, and I'm heartbroken."

CT (paraphrased): "Well, you can give me your number, and when I'm down there, I can cheer you up so that you can forget all about asshole ex."

Or something like that.

So, our hero lands in this sleepy Republican Midwestern hamlet, applies himself to loads of orientations and introductions, runs around helter-skelter in finding an apartment for himself, and lands himself with a most impolite form of strep-throat, so that he goes out of circulation for close to two weeks. When his birthday comes rolling around, though, he decides that he needs to take his mind off things - of course, he's also explored all the men in the hamlet by this time, strep-throat or no strep-throat - and that's when he discovers Irish Coffee's number, hastily scribbled onto a patch of paper, creased and crumpled in his wallet. Perfect: Irish Coffee lives in a nearby city, he might be willing to show our hero around a bit, which would be just the thing to get over his funk. So that's what he does: "Hello? I'm the sexy smart Indian guy you chatted with ages ago. I'm bored. Can we do something?"

Despite SS' brilliantly suggested itinerary, however, CT and Irish Coffee decided to start off with vanilla. So that weekend, Saturday to be exact, they met up: our hero standing at the corner of the road in front of the Subway, and Irish Coffee's car whizzing by twice, and then stopping on the third round, his head poking around, and: "You wouldn't be CT, would you?" Yes, I am, and off they head to the gay bars. They talk some more, tell each other about the kind of work they do, they laugh at silly things, Irish Coffee tells him about America and why he hates Evangelicals, CT tells him about gorgeous Bombay and living the fast life of a PR con and what he wants to study here, and while the drinks flow, the music thumps, and they dance (sort of), time somehow whiles away. They end up heading back to Irish Coffee's place. And our hero ends up staying the whole weekend there.

***

A story I recounted to my friend in Cleveland, when she asked me at the fantastically romantic Italian place we were at: "Tell me the story of how you and Irish Coffee met!" And so I did. And, seeing that we crossed our first-year anniversary a couple of days back, I decided to re-tell it here. If only for myself. :)

Society Lads

2008-08-17T21:23:00.006-04:00

I've wondered aloud earlier about the politics involved between tops, bottoms, and those in between, even when I hadn't morphed into this strange social sciences nerdy academic I am now. Wondered about the power strategies used by both tops and bottoms to get what they want, and the accompanying typecasting that even the most adroit of them cannot help but get mired into. The other day, however, I revisited that contentious lane, while chatting with SnowWhite's Stepmum who'd phoned in to wish me well on inching that one-step closer to the grisly morass of the big 3-0... namely, turning 27.

*CT shudders, as he hears the Ghosts of Gay Death creep up behind him*

Getting back on track, SS and I were talking about his new crush and my boyfriend (should I be all politically correct, fag-itistically speaking, and call him my partner? *giggle*), and his old crush and my old fcuks, and that's when the strange phenomenon of being a social top versus a sexual top cropped up.

You know what I mean: the social top is the swaggering guy who brags to all and sundry about how he had last night's trick squealing giddily with his legs apart, who spits regularly in good ole rustic Punjabi fashion, and who has zero imagination on the dance-floor...

... While the sexual top is the one who actually does the whole making-squealing bit (and not very gently at that, either), who doesn't brag about his exploits too loudly, who spits into bodily orifices rather than on pavements, and who can actually do a trick or two on the dance-floor not related to pelvic gropes... And there are many a times when the two are actually not the same person: the sexual top isn't really very top-ish when you first meet him, and the social top often turns out to spread his legs wide when he finally gets to the sheets.

And of course, that opens a whole-frikkin' can of beans: if there's a social versus sexual top, there's bound to be a social versus sexual bottom - I'm not sure versatiles qualify for this categorization, though. Unless... you consider power bottoms as both social bottoms and sexual bottoms - and the sheer intricacy of all those permutations and combinations simply leave one gasping for breath... not in a good way, if you follow my drift! *wink*

CT: "Would you believe me if I said I'm a sexual top, though not a very convincing social one?"

SS, squealing: "Never!"

CT, sulkily: "Well, don't give yourself too much credit either, dearie. You can be quite the hoity-toity drama queen, shooting looks and glares that can freeze the balls of the most horny stallion out there. You're quite the social bottom yourself!"

SS, falling off his chair while giggling: "O, you know I can! But then I'm quite the sexual top too! If one of those idiots try manhandling me in bed, they'll soon be missing their balls!"

CT: "That's true; you're also quite the aloof social top at times, as well, you know... I wonder if that makes you a social versatile...?"

SS: "You are so not writing about this on your blog...!"

Right. As if that ever had a chance of happening. *grin* I mean, come on: a boy on his 30's deathbed has to have some joy in life, right? I resolve hereafter to stop having birthdays once I reach the Big 3-0 mark. I'm going to be the one with the older boyfriend (or partner, however you like it), always in his 20s. *sigh* Social wishful-thinker, that's me.

Whirlwind

2008-08-12T23:25:00.005-04:00

The world has been turning (as ever), I've been busy with a gadzillion things, and even when I thought things would just kinda settle down, either they didn't or I didn't let them - and it's taken me this long to reclaim this space. I have a theory that I actually like being all busy and buried under a pile of books and responsibility - and of course, the bitching that comes with it. It's a theory that Irish Coffee won't dispute too much, seeing that he's usually the hapless victim of my bitching! :)

It's strange to think that it's been more than a year now since I hopped on that awfully long plane ride, snarled at Heathrow officials, marveled in Chicago, and then dropped my jaw on arriving at my Midwestern hamlet. From initially looking at a one-year stint and then planning on running back to good ole Bombay, here I am doing the Whole Nine Yards, falling in love (I'm the hapless one, really!), and quite at ease with the whole poor-grad-student routine. Mind-boggling. As that fabulously profound facebook one-liner goes: I can afford to be a Humanities scholar, I'm marrying rich! *grin*

Cleveland went by all too fast, though. The Little Italy historic district was a dream: lazing on the sidewalk patisserie munching on cannolis and licking white chocolate gelatos, and then that amazing dinner with violins playing in the background, the laughter of friends, and a blurry picture on my digicam to make it all perfect. Gawking at the Terminal and Key Towers downtown, bracing in the cool Lake Erie air, shimmering in front of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, doodling around the Western Reserve Historical Society, drawing patterns in the grass of International Park, and hushed silence at the Cleveland Museum of Art... A strangely harmonious, whirlwind weekend which sped by with crazy laughter, heart-stopping tenderness, and a strange buzz.

But Cleveland is over, and I'm back; graduation ceremony was the other day, and a very close friend is leaving soon, and while I'm feeling a bit sad, I'm also a bit excited because it's a whole brand new year, a whole new thesis to catch up on, and that hunt for graduate schools starts all over again.

Told ya I had a theory... :)

On the move...

2008-07-19T01:11:00.006-04:00

In the morrow, I'm heading for Cleveland... :)

Yes, yes, I know that the city's economy really isn't doing too well and that it's been labeled the poorest major city in the US... but I can't help feeling excited about visiting the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, the Terminal Tower, the Key Tower, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Old Stone Church, Euclid Avenue, University Circle, the Playhouse Square Center, the Cleveland Browns Stadium, the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, and the Steamship Mather Museum... I don't have the energy to provide links for all of that, so if you're that curious (and one would have to be quite jobless, really, to plumb those heights), hit Wikipedia. It's great to make that long a list, it's another matter altogether whether I'll be able to make all of them though, but then I'll probably die trying - and kill Irish Coffee and my Clevelander friend while doing it! :)

Shucks... 1.30 am now, and I have to be up and outta my place by 8.30 am. How does a grad student survive in the harsh world 'out there' anyway?!

***

In other news, I hit the camping trail with Irish Coffee last weekend. No bears to scare away, and the 'skeeters were pretty godawful, but then camp fire nights and tent-sex are quite the thrill, I discover. Of course, being the sole Indian/Asian in the camping heartland of the American Midwest, I constituted quite the spectacle for your everyday-"normal" White folks, so I'm guessing they would have been quite shocked/stupefied/mortified/horrified/terrified by the "Cowboys 'n' Indians" game going on in our tent!

*grin*

Bollywood masala and Irish tom-foolery

2008-07-12T13:38:00.003-04:00

A week or so ago, there was this end-of-term party at a professor's place, and I asked Irish Coffee to come along. This was going to be the big one, I decided: let's be clear and honest about who I am - a brilliant young gay scholar-in-the-making, and there's no denying it. According to my long-suffering boyfriend, of course, there was no need for any such grand gesture - as far as he was concerned, my "gayness can be seen from space", and everyone I come into contact with knows it. :) After all, my close friends and the profs I most interact with know I'm a flaming fag and all that jazz, but somehow, I guess I wanted to make it... official in some way.

Blame it on Pride Month!

So there we were, on a brilliant summer evening, over wine and amazing Indian food (yep, the prof is your quintessential NRI), me and the boyfriend talking with the prof and his wife, a bunch of other faculty members and grad students and their spouses, about all sorts of things under the sun. As is usually the case in such shindigs, after the booze and the great food, the host takes us down to his entertainment center, and shows off his collection of Hindi movies and Bollywood songs for his overwhelmingly White guests. So we all sit down, watch Ash dance around her hubby and dad-in-law to kajra re, Preity shake her booty asking where the party is, and Rani doing her balle-balles on a Sunday.

When the host announced that several Bollywood movies frequently depicted not just two women dancing steamily with each other, but also two men, Irish Coffee who was sitting in the front row let out a very audible Yay!

Of course, the room erupted into laughter. I guess I got my little "official announcement" after all. :)

Just some belated Pride on I-Day... :)

2008-07-08T23:04:00.003-04:00

So last Friday, on the 4th of July, Irish Coffee and I headed down to the waterfront in his city, to join in the celebrations of America's Independence Day.

Back home in Calcutta, the Indian I-day wasn't really a cause for fireworks, as it is here, but we'd still get into the patriotic mood, dig out the national flag and fly it from our terrace, catch bits and pieces of the parade (did they have a parade for I-day, or am I confusing it with Republic Day?), and maybe head out for a special dinner later at night... A nice, relaxed day when the whole family would be at home, we'd just chill, take it easy, and feel... content, I guess. Isn't that the meaning of independence? - feeling free enough to be content? Anyhow, fireworks were reserved for Diwali - not for I-day.

Not so here in the US of A, evidently. Here, they're crazy for their fireworks to loudly (and dazzlingly, I might add) proclaim their independence? So, come July 4, Irish Coffee, his sister and I headed down to the riverfront, to stroll through the celebrations, listen to the bands, eat some of the fabulous food, and yes, watch the fireworks. Not too bad a display, given that this isn't a very large city here, not like SF or NYC - hell, they don't even organize a Pride here! (damn)

Anyhow, the fireworks were fun - lasted for a good 30 minutes, loads of oohs and aahs, honks from all the people in the cars parked around, kids clapping, and I'd be lying if I didn't say I felt like a kid myself! :) Brilliant to see the sky all decked up like that, so yes, Happy Independence Day, America. Now go and elect a President next year who'll legalize gay marriage (or at least, won't change the constitution to ban it altogether!), or is that too much to ask?!

*grin*

The next day, after his sister went back home, Irish Coffee and I headed back to the waterfront festival with the dog. It felt fabulous to walk through the grass, watch the water lap next to us, drink sparkling wine (yes, I mixed!), listen to music, smell (and eat) the amazing food, and swap sweet nothings. Walked under the bridges, made out a bit, laughed and ran around with the dog, and god, I felt like a silly gay boy from a silly gay novel! *grin*

The best part? Between the smoked ribs and the choco-caramel ice cream, when a boatload of Evangelicals unloaded from across the river, Irish Coffee and I showed them the finger and kissed. Cue to swoon. :)

Just a li'l Pride in the Midwest, y'all!

"Divine Decadence..."

2008-07-01T23:33:00.007-04:00

So I rented possibly the camp-est and most fabulous movie in ages (forgive me, Carrie Bradshaw), popped open two bottles of sauvignon blanc, and settled in to watch Liza Minelli in Cabaret (1972)...

What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret.

For the unlucky few who haven't seen it, I'd advise you to rush out and rent! Welcome to 1931 Berlin, when a beautiful world of glitter and glamor is about to erupt into Nazi ugliness. But till that time, there's the ever-eccentric cabaret diva Sally Bowles at the Kit Kat Club, her British bisexual lover Brian, playboy Baron Max, and star-crossed lovers Fritz and Natalia...

I started out thinking how fabulously similar to Holly Golightly Sally Bowle's character was, albeit smuttier, given that Holly played the Manhattan society girl and Sally the Berlin bar dancer... But there's a special flavour to Sally's risque "divine decadence...!", her penchant for fur and money, and her irrepressible ways with men, that Breakfast at Tiffany's simply did not have. Seriously... this gives Gloria Gaynor a run for her money - the song every gay man needs to listen to after a break-up, mein herr! :)

O, and as expected, my ever-so-straight boyfriend Irish Coffee detested the movie. :) (Though he did appreciate my "divine decadence" in the sheets after the movie was done, owing to both Liza's fag-ulousness and copious amounts of sauvignon blanc. *grin*)

Existantial Angst...

2008-06-27T19:19:00.003-04:00

So there I am chatting online, when a window opens up on my screen. It's from Wandercock, who has a very appealing picture of himself pressed up against the wall, wearing some kind of stretchy tight pants, and that furry chest and clipped beard is kind hot, really.

Wandercock: 7'' here, lookin'? Need a tight ass to ram.

O, my. Very nice, I think to myself, saying that it can't hurt to be civil, but then a bit weirded out also that here's another guy who automatically assumes I'm a "bottom" without even bothering to ask first - must be the pic of me in the humongously sexy shades. Anyhow, just as I'm about to reply to Wandercock that I think his pic and his measurements are both abso-fuckin-lutely charming, what should happen, but...

*PING*

Assbanger27 pops up, with full frontal nudity, and very impressive apparatus of his own, proclaiming that he's Russian, wants to do exactly as his chat nickname suggests he should, and that I should get myself right there at his apartment in 20 minutes.

I mean... do I wear a sign or something around my neck that says B-O-T-T-O-M?! I have nothing against bottoms, and I think that's a fabulous way to get laid now and then, but I hate being typecast into either "top" or "bottom" roles. Especially, even before the guy has even spoken to me.

More importantly, how come I get hit on by Russians and Lebanese hunks (o, yes, did I mention that about Wandercock?) when I'm all cozy in a relationship, but none of these assholes give me the time of day when I'm single and actively lookin', as they say here in the Midwest?

***

Onto other, more important news, Queer Pride is marching into India: simultaneously in three cities: Delhi, Bangalore, and Calcutta, this Sunday afternoon, June 29. :) I am so frikkin' thrilled, and wish I could be there...!

'Fraid I couldn't find any logo of the Calcutta Pride march on facebook, where I took the Delhi and Bangalore pics from... But then, Cal was the first Indian city to have started the march thing in India, so hat's off to those guys! :)

I left my hat in... New York City...

2008-06-23T11:07:00.004-04:00

So I don't have Tony Bennett's magical croon, and I worry about leaving my gorgeous fedora back in New York, New York much more than I do about my heart, but there it is: second time I've misplaced my headgear, after losing my cap in Chicago last year. :( In any case, I still have pictures of me wearing them, and that's one of the reasons that led me to post the picture below. That, and the fact that I'm finally breaking the ban on pictures of myself here (even though this one is suitably darkened via Photoshop), and also that I wanted to make a sort of "Fag-ulous Guide to the Big Apple in Pictures" kind of a post. So there you go - Closetalk, at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And when you're done with imbibing the arts, head over down to Broadway, rub shoulders with the pretty people and catch them on the stage. Now that you have to watch Mary Poppins in particular, but I mean - flying through the air with a magic rod... how fag-ulous is that?!

Time to hail a cab and walk down the meandering little streetways and not-so meandering avenues out at Central Park West. Stop for lunch at one of the gorgeous sidewalk cafes, and expect Carrie Bradshaw to pop out from one of those beutiful brownstones any second now...

Next stop: The American Museum of Natural History. So there was me and this Chinese chick in the Greco-Roman Sculpture Court, both of us looking for Hercules...

... Both of us moved in for the wide-angle kill. First, Hercules as the young man about town (what's with the teeny penis, though?!), and the second as the buff older guy in the lion skin. Now that's the kind of beast I like. :)

... And how strange is that... out of the sight of hunky young men (albeit, marble ones) and into the bedchamber.... *sigh* Look at me, going all ga-ga about satin sheets and brocade partitions and gorgeous gilted wood carvings... Get me a bed like that, baby, and I'm never surfacing for air! *wink*

When you finally get yourself out of the arty environs (despite the most stimulating visuals), head over to catch the most phallic statement of them all - the Empire State Building.

Imagine my surprise, though, when I spot rickshaw drivers in Manhattan! Thought they were a purely Asian phenomenon, but wikipedia informs me better now. Wowee... there really is a recession, huh?! Kidding aside, let's be honest: if they had yummy drivers like him in Calcutta, I would be ALL for keeping them around! Every city needs to look pretty.

And if you're wondering what to do, once you've mounted his machine, get a clue from this poster art I picked up from the Lexington Street Fair...

If it's the less carnal entertainment you're looking for, and Broadway is a bit too far for you to hike it, head over to the Winter Garden Theatre and catch the latest showing of Mamma Mia, the hit show. A whole play based on ABBA's songs - and soon to come out on the big screen... fag-ulous!

... Or, if you're more into the leg-kicking, soul-shrieking variety (Not that ABBA won't do that for you, too), come back in December to watch the Rockettes in action at Radio City Music Hall (love the costumes!)...

Towards the end of the "Fag-ulous Guide to the Big Apple in Pictures", so make sure you get your own cheesy pic of the biggest queen in the world - Lady Liberty. Just to let you know that phallic symbols like the Empire State aren't all they're cut out to be: grab a fancy hat, swishy robes and a torchlight, and you're all set for the good times! :)

Wanted to close the guide with a pic of the good ole Indian flag, on a nice mushy note. At the Rockefeller Center, with all the other national flags... It's amazing, to think that Calcutta, Bangalore and Delhi will have their official Queer Pride Marches next week.

Jai Hind! :)

Weight and watch

2008-06-20T21:20:00.003-04:00

Alright then, so I've bitched here before about my propensity to gain weight unless I check my food intake and exercise regimen. But the thing is, I have a tendency to fall of the wagon, so to speak. Took an online quiz sometime last year that proclaimed I was one of the sad individuals who would forever be fighting to maintain their weight. *sigh* Such a tragedy for a cute gay boy like me. :( And though the boyfriend is terribly sweet to say he doesn't really care, somewhere there's that lost bit of Gay Thin Pride that's resurgent....

So, here I go again.

Realized the other night, that a large part of my keeping-trim strategy back in Bombay was thanks to the don't-give-a-damn nights of dancing at least once a week. And now that I'm this stick-in-the-mud academic who's up to his eyeballs in "Participatory Development..." and not really boogeying his way, it's no wonder that those ole skinny jeans are presenting an obstacle these days. *sigh* O, and the other thought was that, single boys get way more exercise than doubletons do - it's all that wham-bam-gimme-more-sam sex that Single Me used to have in those days that burnt up sooo many calories. Calorific sex doesn't happen quite as much, what with my being able to catch Irish Coffee only over the weekends! *double sigh*

It's like a curse, something like what supposedly happens to those Punjabi women after marriage. They have babies and eat a lot of dal makhni, and get fat. Gay academics don't have as much sex or dance as much as they did, and get fat. The sheer tragedy of it all.

(Can you believe I actually couldn't find a single pic of a "fat Punjabi woman" online to post at this spot, after hunting Google images for forty-fuckin-five minutes?! Damn Ekta Kapoor and her stereotype-busting, exercycle-running Punjabi bahus!)

But now, I'm on a Mission. Renewed my pledge to take my PHAT plan seriously, and really hit the exercise mats. No more fries with that burger. Get rid of the burger altogether, in fact. No more popcorn in the movie hall. Cereal in the morning - only, and no sugar. Lean chicken breast sandwich. Buy loads of those Lean Cuisine meals. Make sure to walk everyday. Buffets are bad, and sit-ups are sexy. Learn the new mantra. Dance everyday. Even if I'm the nerd who dances in the bedroom.

... O, and with the boyfriend due to return from his sister's place tonight, I can look forward to some calorie-burning sex, too! :)

How Cliched could my Lust Life get?!

2008-06-17T15:37:00.008-04:00

Honestly. I never thought the day would come that I'd be this cliched! Of all the things/boys that could happen to me, this one did. How predictable. Sheesh. The Hot College Boy Lawn Mower. (in capitals, in case you fail to see the enormity of the porn-movie-touches-reality irony thing.)

So, no, he wasn't in a black tank top and cut-offs, but he was wearing a torn blue sleevless tee and some pretty nice tan shorts. He was hunched over his noisy machine and chug-chugging along outside my window, mowing the damn grass. Lucky grass. His motor kept giving way now and then, and he gave the sexiest curses - "Damn! Fuck!" - and it was not very hard imagining him saying those delicious things doing something else in here with me, loads more energetically. He grunted and kept up a steady sheen of sweat on his fabulous body, and wiped his face now and then with his wet (and strong!) forearm, tossing his dark brown hair back now and then. Again - "Damn! Fuck!"

:)

My reading of "Participatory Development Communication and A Thesis for Empowerment" didn't stand a chance. I was feeling empowered in quite a different zone of my body, rather than my cerebrum.

Now, I know I'm in a relationship right now, and I'm not really supposed to be naughty or anything, but Santa Claus, can I have that for an early-Christmas gift? I'll be extra bad, I promise! *wink* And as these (and other) idiotic thoughts went through my head, I sat there on my couch, book held open, trying my hardest to read while peeking out, not being able to prevent some doodling happening down there in my pants, and kinda hoping that the lawnmower hunk would notice... What would I say or do if he did? I dunno... maybe I'd do something corny like open the window, and call out to him - "Hey, that looks like hard work you got there! You wanna come in for a quick beer... or something?"

(Oops. Note to self: remember to stock fridge with beer for future imaginary encounters with hot lawnmower boys.)

... and of course, once I got him inside, there would be the suggestive POP of the beer bottle, the frothing on the top as I handed it over to him with another suggestive wink and then quite clumsily (but charmingly) proceeded to spill it on his pants, obviously necessitating their prompt removal... "O, maybe it'll dry faster if I blow....?"

*sigh*

He finished his noisy chore, packed up his trunk and left. And I went back to "Participatory Development..." How come they don't discuss the really important participation stuff (the kind with your hunky lawnmower) in these books...?

Wanted: Sanity

2008-06-14T15:30:00.003-04:00

So, yes, I tend to be a bit... over-the-top, as I revealed in the last post. I tend to be a bit... insecure, for the silliest of reasons, when I'm with a guy. And that's why having a gay best friend is so bloody important for me. And this silly present situation, where SnowWhite's Stepmum is halfway across the world in frikkin' Bombay doesn't really help. It's tough being in a situation where your boyfriend is your gay best friend, as is the case here with me. I tell him things I should probably not, and I don't tell him things I probably should have... and God only knows what he thinks of me, then. Thankfully, as I realized last night, he doesn't think I'm too weird. :)

So this is how it all unfolded:

Irish Coffee's supposed to go to his sister's place some 5 hours away, and that means our usual weekend sojourn isn't happening. While he was initially supposed to go yesterday, that plan got postponed to today. So... I proposed that he come pick me up, and we spend the night together. All good and fine, till he has this really hard day where he had to travel all over the city, so he returns home at night and asks me on the phone if he can put off the trip down to my place, and we just meet up later today. Ummm... that actually sounds pretty reasonable on hindsight. So then, why on earth did I get all whiny and try my very best to coax/persuade/pressure him to shrug off his tiredness and drive 45 minutes to come fetch me...? The charitable answer is, I don't know. The less charitable one is: I'm a needy prick.

*sigh*

So he says then, that he'll call me back in about 30 minutes and decide, and I go back to folding laundry... and then reason hits me. Hard. (Thank God.) I'm a dummy. He's tired. He's had a long day. Why on earth am I getting on his back and forcing him to make that long trip all the way here, and especially so, since he has to leave town in less than 24 hours?! O good gosh, I'm like one of those horribly nagging wives who want everything done their way. I've probably already irritated him, now I'm going to completely annoy him with my crap. Where on earth is SnowWhite's Stepmum, with all his brilliant advice on playing it cool in relationships and not throwing oneself at him... O, damn.

So, I called Irish Coffee back, told him I'd been acting like a dunce, told him why, and that I was sorry, and that he should understand I'm a flake, but usually reason does shine through (though it may be a bit late), and since he's got to make that horribly long trip in any case, it doesn't make sense for him to come by. He laughed, said I wasn't too weird after all, that he understood, and we ended up having a nice long chat over the phone, till we both got sleepy. And yes, he's coming over for a late lunch here, on his way to his sister's place.

All's well that ends well, I suppose, but see - flakes like me NEED gay best friends around in my immediate vicinity! *sigh* Perhaps I should put out an ad in the local paper or something.

Confessions. Confusion. Connotations. Conundrums... And, Closetalk.

2008-06-11T14:29:00.003-04:00

Whippy wants to know ten secrets about me. Now, while I have done a me-me of this sort earlier (I think it was six secrets in that one, not ten!) I haven't been able to find that post in my archives, and since it's been absolutely ages since I've done a me-me (partly because I used to get inundated with them in the early blogger days, so much so that I hated them after a point of time), I thought I'd give it a shot. Not very sure about how "secret-y" they are, though - I pretty much do spill all the beans here in the closet...

I love to dance. I do, I do, I do. I always did. Ask any of my friends of boyfriends. I don't care much either whether what I'm doing is the right way or the wrong way. As far as I'm concerned, it's all just about expressing that I'm likin' it! *head jerk* So, I tap my toes, move my shoulders, wiggle my body, thrust my pelvis, and then we have lift-off. MY specialties: steamy dances in the gay clubs, to which SnowWhite's Stepmum will attest to, and a peculiar motion that Irish Coffee calls the "happy jig". Hint: the "happy jig" is performed without pants on. *giggle*
I love "dressing up". Ummmm... yes. That means, owning clothes in fabulously weird fits and patterns. That means, having an authentic pair of black tight overalls that I wear to the gay club. That means, buying Irish caps, leather duds, a fedora, a cowboy hat, pointy shoes, cloth mojras, silver dogtags with pink pigs emblazoned on them, tee shirts with wonderfully suggestive slogans and a host of other delightful accessories that I could never do without. :)
I'm histrionic, they say. And if you want an objective opinion, check out the results of the online quiz I took ages ago. I'd like to say I've improved, but I was never very good at lying. Why do ya think I switched from PR to Academese? :) In my defence, I have to quote good ole Willy: the world's a stage, guv'nor, and all of us got a part to play, so gimme more drama, blimey!!!
I can actually do without Indian food for an appreciably long amount of time. Not that I don't like Indian food - much to the contrary. But the thing is, I can actually survive on burgers and fries and salads and chicken breasts and American Chinese food for a loooong time, without turning green and sickly. That comes in for a lot of perplexed looks flashed my way from the Indians here in the midwest whom I may chance to meet - and that leads on to the number 5 below.
I'm persona non grata in the South Asian community in my teeny midwest hamlet. I don't become "best buds" with every Indian/South Asian around me, regardless of whether or not I like the person, have anything in common with him/her, have a reason to know the person. I don't take every opportunity to yak in either Hindi or my native language, and even dream in English. I don't try to flirt with Indian/ South Asian girls (and the boys are too yucky here). I take every opportunity to head off to the "big" city where Irish Coffee lives, rather than stick around for "desi" parties in the midwestern hamlet with the rest. Ergo.
I'm lazy. I'm lazing right now. I'm supposed to be doing a million other things. I'm supposed to be making coffee. I'm supposed to be researching my final term paper. I'm supposed to be rehashing scores of my earlier papers for publication. But... I like to vegetate. O, and surf porn. (Which is actually a fabulous way of vegetating...)
I write fast. I'm doing it right now. It's my saving grace, given my many deadlines and my tendency to procrastinate and vegetate. Irish Coffee says, my typing speed is in BPS - Bullshit Per Second. :)
I love being gay. Is there anything really to add to this? :) And yes, this isn't really a secret, since it's pretty clear in almost every post on this blog. Yet, it's a truth. An undeniable one. And so it bears mentioning.
I do care about the comments. There. I said it. I do, I do, I do. I told myself at first that this blog is about catharsis, and it's about me. That part is true enough. But I'm also honest enough to realize now that no blogger is an island. The comments and feedback that every blogger receives is so frikkin' important to the whole blogging process. It's about holding a mirror forth, it's about dialogue, it's about thinking how one blog post could be interpreted in so many different ways. And yes, let's be honest, looking at that surge in numbers on google analytics does feel good! :)
I've often toyed with posting a picture of myself here on the closet. But I guess that defeats the idea of "the closet", doesn't it? I mean, it's not that being in the closet in the conventional gay sense is all too important for me in the my current situation, but being faceless and nameless in the blogging community does afford you certain.. privileges. And yes, part of that is you get to be catty and melt into the darkness! :) But the picture idea is always tantalizing...

"Come out, come out, wherever you are...!"

2008-06-07T18:11:00.006-04:00

Sometimes, you build up the coming-out thing way so big that you tend to scare yourself much more than you really need to. Not really the great words of wisdom you'd expect (or even want) to hear from the ole man of the mountain, I know, but there it is. Take it from me - the guy who writes behind the moniker of Closetalk/CT/what-have-you from a place called "Talking Closets" - coming out has its comedy of errors, as well as its fair share of melodrama. When I read accounts of how younger (gasp) gay South Asians manage and negotiate their gay-ness, there's a strange sense of "O, wow, I suppose I went through all this at one time too!", mingled with the curiosity of the external onlooker. That's especially true in the case of someone like me, who's "out" in almost all senses of the word - my friends know, my colleagues have no excuse to not guess at least - and yet, like so many other South Asian gay men, I'm not "out" to my family. Well, not officially, at least.

I mentioned in an earlier post, how I'd come out to brother, while we were in the Big Bad Apple. Now, I've had reason to believe for quite some time now that my brother knows I'm gay. Let's see: there was the instance, when I was seventeen, that I confessed I liked both guys and gals (I was lying, I never did have a thing for broads, no offence intended); then there was the completely intimate knowledge of fashion trends and styles, Bombay clubs and pubs, the glitteratti and all that jazz that no normal hetero guy can ever hope to pull off; the various smirks and jokes from dah-ling brother that indicated he knew I'd lost my (ummm..) cherry (?) and planted my own sapling (?) here and there; and of course, the insinuation that I was "busy" every night whenever there was a GB party underway... So... yep, I knew that he knew that I knew that he knew that I was gay. And the world is wonderfully knotty/naughty and comes full ellipse.

But sometimes, the thing of coming "out" is that even though you know that everyone knows, you want to spell it out explicitly. Kick of the sneakers and try out the stilletoes brazenly, as it were. You want to talk about the fact that you're a fag, that you think other fags (well, some of them) are hot/cute/delectable/whatever, and perhaps even that you're in love. And for sometime now, I've wanted to grab that bull by its horns, jerk it around a bit (no pun intended, believe me), and basically come out - officially - to my bro. Here's how it happened...

Plans were made, before leaving for NYC, on how, where, when etc to break the news... perhaps over a coffee, perhaps back at the hotel after a fun day out, perhaps on the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building (hope he doesn't jump!)... but all those planned events came and went, and I didn't say a word. In my nightly phone-calls to Irish Coffee, I said, there just hasn't been the right time, the right moment... it has to be natural, I don't want to force it... yadayadayada. So, anyhow, on day 3 (I think), we head to the Met and after a glorious three hours of exploration, I realize that we're separated. I don't have an international phone card on me, so I can't call him. Whoops. So I call Irish Coffee, instruct him to call up the brother and inform him where I'm waiting for him - and I settle down. As simple as that. He eventually does find me, many more hours pass, we carry on our New York tour, and suddenly at around 10.30 pm, on the walk from the subway station back to our hotel, something unfathomable seizes me, so that I turn back towards him and say, "You have known, for quite some time now, that your younger brother is gay, have you not?"

Bro (without skipping a beat): "Yep."

CT: "O... good."

CT (after walking in silence for 30 seconds, and then spills out in the rush to catch a hurrying train): "Cool, cuzIreallywantedtotellyou,becauseI'mactuallyprettymuchouttoallmyfriends,andIthoughtitdoesnt'treallymakesensetonotbeouttoyou,butthenyouknowhwatyourmumanddadarelike,soIkeptquiet,butthensinceit'syou,Ithoughtyou'veprobablyknown forquitesometime,andthere'sreallynoreasontokeepquietaboutit,sothereyouare."

Bro (smiling in the dark): "Ok."

CT: "O, and my friend who called you at the museum today, he's my boyfriend."

Bro: "Ok."

Ummm... ok, then. I must say, I was a bit pertubed about the lack of questions or queries or whatever from him, but I did call up Irish Coffee excitedly from the hotel and broke the news of my coming-out (officially). Was a bit puzzled about the lack of reaction from brother dah-ling, but since he went to bed early that night, there was no room for me to pursue my queries. As it turned out, however, I had little room to worry. The next day, over coffee at Starbucks, he grins at me, and remarks, "So... how come I'm not being introduced to Irish Coffee? Isn't this supposed to be Meet The Family?"

Well, at least I didn't get the coffee-confession thing totally wrong...!

Sex in Another City

2008-06-02T21:58:00.006-04:00

Alright, so it wasn't exactly New York, New York, but it was the SATC movie nevertheless, right here in my Midwest town. (At least there's the pic of the NYC bus stop poster I clicked in the big city, so that's a littel something...!) Had an early shower, dragged Irish Coffee, and there the two of us were at the Director's Hall section of the theater. Was a tad disappointed to notice the poor turn-out in the hall (six fags and twelve-or-so-gals), but I can't say I hadn't expected that really, where I am. And besides, once the absolutely kooky-crazy-sexy brand new theme song by Fergie started, I frankly couldn't care less - I wanted MORE!!!

Too bad, the official video of the new theme song isn't out yet, but let me list out Top 10 Takeaways from the movie... and I'll try to not disclose any spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet:

LOOOVE Carrie's Vivienne Westwood wedding dress - it is to DIE for!
Would have loved to see a bit more (if you get my drift) of Smith Jared.
Steve's fabulous ass is still in fagulous shape - but again, a la Smith, some more exposure would have been much appreciated.
Carrie's corsage dress is simply stunning!
Mr. Big aka John James Preston is looking a bit... ummm.... tubby. But is still the Mr. Big! The one we love to hate!
Monogamy doesn't suit Samantha. *sigh* And no, this doesn't mean I'm making a statement about myself here, even though I have said on previous occasions that she's my favorite lady (but of course!).
I'm glad they showed as little of Harry's naked body as they did.
Sam's sexy next-door-neighbor in LA is to DIE for - comes only marginally behind the Vivienne Westwood dress in terms of dying criteria. And yes, it's a full frontal frame.
Charlotte is adorably prudish. About everything. Thank gawd they kept her the same. :)
Carrie actually looks fabulous as a brunette.

So... what happens in the end? As can be expected, it's a happy ending for all the gals. (But did you really expect anything else?) And in case you still haven't seen the official trailer on your TV network (wherever you are), enjoy...

Still Star-truck by the City...

2008-06-01T21:26:00.003-04:00

So I'm back home in the Midwest, and (surprise, surprise!) I still have a NYC hangover. Apart from the long-awaited coming-out story, these last few days have been so amazing in so many ways. Walked out of the 42d street subway the other day, and found a great street fair in progress on Lexington Avenue, amazing street food, posters and artwork, and some fabulous scarfs and stoles. Picked up some swishy pashminas for mum and myself, and a I *heart* NY for dad, gulped a corn dog in true NYC style, and paddled over to Rockefeller Center. St. Patrick's Cathedral was amazing, and even though it felt so cheesy to snap pictures while some people were praying in the aisles, it didn't bother me too much. *grin* My feet tingled for ages, much after we got back to the hotel, because of our walks all across the city. Mmmmm...

And that's where the drink with the hunky Italian made up for sore feet. Yummy man, fabulous conversation, a dry martini and a happening bar. Now, that's NYC for you.

My trip ended with some other great vignettes: walking down Wall Street and contemplating the oncoming (?) US recession in front of the the NYSE; gazing up at Trinity Church reverentially; munching on some amazing lasagna and tiramisu at an authentic mom-and-pop Italian joint in Midtown; cursing the UN building authorities for taking down the world flags at night when we got there; walking through the lobby of Radio City Music Hall; eating chocolate softee ice cream cones at the Rockefeller Center; sorting through Prada and DKNY and pressing my nose against the Tiffany's glass window on 5th Avenue; reading the inscriptions on the WTC memorial wall and looking at the busy cranes working on the forthcoming (new and improved) WTC 2.0; hogging on some fantabulous Vietnamese fare at Chinatown (the one in Manhattan, not the others); sipping coffee in a funky Soho cafe; exploring Broadway and checking out the latest releases (again); wondering when I get to ride in the back of that marvelously white stretch limo snaking its way through Manhattan...

But it's good to be back here, with my baby. :) I missed yakking nineteen to the dozen with my Irish Coffee, missed snuggling with him on the sofa while watching moronic stuff on the telly; missed our long evening walks with the dog, and I'm certainly looking forward to cozying up in bed tonight! :) All those Jamaicans and Italians have got me horned up for the Irish tonight! *blush*

"Hello Loverrrrrr...!" - LIVE from the BIg Apple

2008-05-30T14:09:00.004-04:00

It's terribly appropriate to start off this post with the opening lines of the spankin' new Sex and the City movie: here I am, in Carrie Bradshaw's backyard on the day of the movie's release. If ever there was an occasion to yell Hallelujah!, then this is it, bab-eh! :)

O my, o my, o my... where do I start from, and how do I stop feeling like a ditsy school girl writing this blogpost?! I've been spending the last couple of days drinking in Manhattan, and I suppose why I feel so... intoxicated. The boys here are unbelievable, really. All those fables we heard around the winter fire when we were wide-eyed eager gay bunnies with bushy tails/asses in Bombay, about the wondrously shining world of Manhattan, all the stylish young (and older) men looking divinely gorgeous, all the designer wear and the designer attitude, the bright lights and the big city - it's all true, me-dearies! The fairy tale is so fabulously fag-ulous, it's enough to lose your sense of being grounded - and thank gawd for that! Welcome to the Big Apple, where the men are simply too cute and sexy to be anything but gay, and the labels scream out so amazingly rich and loud.

OK then, enough with the hyperbole, already. So what have I been up to then? Mmmm.... it's all a whirl of sensations, emotions and excitement, really... Walking in Central Park, remembering the scene where the SATC girls have their picnic; sipping divinely rich mocha and crunching on raspberry rolls at this tucked-in-a-corner Israeli cafe near the Empire State; watching the city spread before me, while up high on the 102nd floor of the Empire State; floating down the Hudson river, watching the harbor lights of the city twinkle in the sunset; Lady Liberty holding her torch alight and me getting an idea for my Halloween costume this year (giggle!); drooling through the Tiffany's window at Fifth Avenue; counting the days/years/decades till I live in a high-rise overlooking Central Park; partaking of Vietnamese food in the original Chinatown and remembering that episode where Carrie freaks out on Big for taking her to a discreet Chinatown restaurant; doodling hours over at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and contemplating Picassos and Renoirs; sipping Starbucks coffee and blowing cream while watching bare-chested Adonis' jog past me out on the street; munching on sidewalk cafes on Broadway; letting the lights of Times Square shine on me like crazy freakin' diamonds; dancing my sexy tush at the Splash bar (and trying not to feel too ugly in front of the semi-naked perfect Gods go-going there);... and all this is just three days. *whew*

So I get an invite to head down to Manhattan's Splash bar for their Sex and the City movie launch party, and I meet this gorgeous Jamaican who's a friend of Sexy Older Guy. The good news is: the Jamaican is realllllly into me. The bad news is... ummm, well, not really bad news, more like the dampener for the unabashed sexual rampage I would have had in mind, was the fact that I'm already "taken". :) So, the Jamaican and I did some hot and heavy dancing, loads of flirting, innuendos and all, lip-licking heart-thumping thoughts and stuff, but when push came to shove, I did a Cinder-fella and scooted from the bar, leaving my glass slippers behind and keeping my undies up where they belong. Well, it wasn't a very a timely exit, seeing that I got back to the hotel at around 4.30 am, but you get what I'm trying to say. That's called Domestication. Capital letters.

O, but the SATC movie is going to be HUGE! Everyone knows that the gay community is waiting anxiously to see it - click here for a firsthand account of the NYC premiere - and I'm dying to get back home and watch it for myself. Will force Irish Coffee to come with me - hell, this is what he gets for having me keep my undies up and not take them off for sexy Jamaicans! *giggle*

In other news: I finally came out to the older brother. :) But that's for another post. This has been a busy couple of days for me in the Big Apple!

Update: Not sure whether it has anything to do with my presence here right now or not, but NY state has just decided to recognize the legality of gay marriages conducted in other parts of the country/world. Perhaps it's a small step away from being the third US state to legalize gay marriage? A teeny bit of wishful thinking never hurt anyone, in any case...

Bad Boy in the Big Apple

2008-05-24T17:08:00.003-04:00

I'm excited. Frikkin' excited. That's cuz, come Wednesday, I'm going to be in that cliched yellow cab in sexcitingly fantabulous New York City! There'll be the big, beautiful lights of the big bad city, dancing and theater and music and ear-splitting, heart-thrilling New York City! I can hardly wait.

So I spent the last couple of days hunting for that perfect deal on air tickets, and that made-for-me hotel room booking. If any of you fag-ulous queers live in the Big Apple, I'll be just across the bridge in Long Island at Greenpoint Avenue, and I'll be there for almost a week! Man, this beats the blogging action live from Delhi anytime! This is the big time, bab-eh! :)

I mean, let's face it: I was meant for better things than Small Town, USA. My facebook profile has this quiz I took that says how I'm meant to reside in a Manhattan penthouse, for Chrissake! I'm meant to tip-tap through the East Village, grin at the hotties on Times Square, and put out for the moneyed millionaires of the champagne and caviar kind. :) First things first: time to dust out those skinny jeans and slip in a Madonna CD...

How about... a Leather Woody?

2008-05-19T12:48:00.002-04:00

Take a rocks glass,

pour 1/7 part vodka.
pour 5 parts tea - unsweetened.
add 3 drops of lemon concentrate.
drip Log Cabin syrup - depending on how rich you wand it.
add sugar syrup (optional).
crown with 4 cubes of ice.

And, you have...

In case you're wondering where the fag-ulous name came from, let's play a word association game: tea has tannins, which are used to tan leather; Log Cabin syrup contains maple syrup, which is a tree, and of course that also ties in with your... ummm... woody. :)

Just another Sunday night...! :)

Airing out the closet

2008-05-17T15:51:00.006-04:00

More than four years ago, I began posting on this space with

"This is my gay blog. It seems funny to put it like that. This is my blog where I post about myself: the emotional, ethical, sexual, spiritual, hilarious parts of being gay. An overall experience that is so intrinsicaly not just a matter of sexual preference, but so much a type of being... Most of all, the gay blog is a statement to myself: I'm gay. I like being gay."

It's amazing how inspiring nostalgia can often be. Like when you (read: I) haven't blogged in more than a month, either because you/I haven't got any time or because there doesn't seem anything worthwhile to say, and then it takes a stroll through memory lane to get you/me all fired up. If I were any good with machine-stuff, I'd use a mechanic-car-engine quip here but since I'm not, I'll skip that. Getting back on track, though, four years of the closetspace hence, I wanted to kickstart this blog again, and so there's a new template and a read of my very first post.

Voila!

Regular visitors would know that my favorite screwed-up apple has been around here for donkey's ears - almost since the first day the blog started, I've had the apple template, despite loads of entreaties to remove it or modify the template. I've resisted that because I always felt that the apple was so frikkin' perfect in this space: it explained all the "emotional, ethical, sexual, spiritual, hilarious parts of being gay" that the first blog post talks about. But, as anyone will tell you, four years is a helluva long time - hell, that's way more than most gay relationships last! So, I guess it was about time the apple got dumped. :( And the rainbow-jumping boy leapt to take its place.

Yesterday, in a phone conversation with SnowWhite's Stepmum, he told me, "You know, there are other kinds of activism, not just gay activism!" and of course he was totally correct. On one level... On one level, it seems silly that when there's so much screwed-up in the world, with hunger and poverty and child abuse and war and destruction, with all of this going on, that the world should sit up and listen to a bunch of people who're quite well-satisfied in other respects, who want to be gay openly. Is the closet really such a big deal? Why does gay activism have to make it into this weird do-or-die situation, where being out of the closet is absolutely essential to being free? Even I, in an earlier post, bitched about gay activists and activism, saying I absolutely did not want to have anything to do with it. Instead, my mantra has been: I'm gay and I like being gay, so let's just blog and bitch and rant and rave about the fun stuff, the cheesy stuff, the emotional stuff, the weird stuff that being queer entails. Just because there's a brain in the closet, doesn't mean that it has to be worn on the sleeve: Prada and LV are still much more pleasant to ogle at, than a mass of pink jelly.

So then, why does it feel so frikkin' great to hear about the California Supreme Court's judgment on the unconstitutionality of banning gay marriages? Why does it feel sad to hear that Sexy Old Thing has broken up with his boyfriend of fifteen years? Why is my work suddenly so important to me, where I talk to gay Americans and ask them about their coming-out experiences and how it felt to be marginalized and silenced while growing up? Why should I care for any of this, really? As I keep telling Irish Coffee, I'm not American, and I'm really in no hurry to become one...? So then, why does all this touch me so deep?

The California case is, of course, making news across the world. They say, what California does today, the US does tomorrow. Sort of something like they used to say about Bengal earlier: what Bengal does today, India does tomorrow. I'm not too sure about that, though. As I've said so many times before, the US seems a highly religious-ized society (yes, I invented a new word), and the polarization between sex and religion seems too great to bring about gay rights for Americans any time soon. It's strange to think that while the "original" (if I may say so) gay movement started in the States, so many other countries have beaten the US in this regard... But again, getting back to the topic: why does it matter to me?

The answer is really in that part I quoted from my first blog post, and I guess I never really recognized it as such. "An overall experience that is so intrinsicaly not just a matter of sexual preference, but so much a type of being." And there you have it. That's the part which really calls for all those "standard" arguments that activists offer for gay rights. That's the part which really ensures that a fight for gay rights in California or Massachusetts is also a fight for gay people and their allies everywhere across the world - Bombay or Lahore or wherever. That is immediately obvious when you consider how many of the strategies of gay activists around the world are interconnected. When I talk to some of the people here, and hear their stories about being in the closet, I can't help but remember my own experiences - of not one of "the boys" playing football or cricket during lunch break in school, or not being able to tell my mum about Irish Coffee when she asks me over the phone whether I've met any cute girls here - and I know that even the teeniest amount of work I can do, to help young people understand their sexuality and realize it's nothing to be ashamed of, will somehow find its application somewhere in my backyard. And I also know it's about love - something that is quite universal. News of a 15 year old relationship gone sour saddens me - it would, even if it were hetero love. Hell, if the anti-gay brigade can get up on their damned soapbox and screech so incessantly, I can do the same!

For me, nostalgia is important because it inspires and reminds me of the things that are really important. Which is not to say that Prada shades don't require their fair share of spotlight, but what I really mean is this... a blog is supposed to be personal. My tiny little closetspace in cyberworld was always supposed to be about the real and the personal. Four years down the line, I guess it's important to reaffirm that to myself. So, welcome... welcome to a brand new closet. Where the boy jumps over his rainbow, and he spills his soul, and he writes words that he hopes will mean something. Something important.

I should be working right now...

2008-04-13T12:57:00.004-04:00

I should be working right now...

..... instead, I'm preoccupied with Irish Coffee and wondering whether he's ok (...he's obviously not!) and what I can do for him to help him along... A rational voice inside me says there's really nothing there for me to do. It's his baggage - whatever it is - and he will take his own time to get over this... situation. But the part that is unrespitilingly whiny me keeps hoping/thinking/wishing/wanting to do something... he has to know I love him, doesn't he? He seemed so fine on Monday, when he left, tooting his car-horn after me... and then, when I finally saw him on Friday, he told me he was alright now and he'd be fine... I guess that wasn't true, though. I don't know what to guess, really. All of it seems so... strange to me. Why do people get tired... why do they get depressed? It seems so idiotic of me to admit that I don't know... The other day, someone told me that people should learn from me how to "be happy"... or does he mean blissfully ignorant...? I'm wishing I could go right up to him, put my arms around him and tell him it's alright - whatever it is - but the sane part of me tells me he needs his space. Americans are like that - it's all about space. I still don't understand that concept completely... So this is what I've done: I've set a deadline; a deadline that is (kinda) of his own suggestion...

In the meantime, what I don't understand is this: how come I get to be the whine-pot of the century, and every one else gets away scot-free???

Low on heart

2008-04-12T04:04:00.004-04:00

Low on heart...

Someone told me a couple of days back, that I was the kind of person who fell headlong into the "moment" - I did what I had to do within the situation I was in, carried forth and all that jazz, and usually did it well... and she was right, of course. I realized how right she was (is) so very acutely just now, when I leafed through face-book and saw Goa-pics one of my "boys" had posted... and I'm nowhere on the scene...

Penguin, Diamond Choker Baccha (who's soon leaving Bombay...!), Vivian, SnowWhite's Stepmother (who's smiling even!), Guppie, Helen of Troy, and some random chick... in front of the cake shop at Potpourri at Bandra... and I so miss my life.

Happy Birthday, TalkingClosets - you're now officially 3 years old... but Bombay sadly is so fcukin' far away that it breaks my heart.... :(

Jesus and Gravity

2008-04-05T15:32:00.003-04:00

Jesus and Gravity (?!)

The other night, I watched Dolly Parton ("Backwoods Barbie"?!) perform her latest single at American Idol. Now, I'm a huge fan of Dolly, despite that weird voice, and think she'd make a simply fabulous fag-hag with that giggle and all, but seriously... Jesus and Gravity?! WTF is that all about?

Apart from the crazy song lyrics, looking closer into the general scheme of things, that's actually part of some of the things I find ridiculous about America... and by extension, gay life here. Think of this as an extension to the last post if you will, but this is something that's been on my mind for quite some time now. I suppose it's inevitable, really - living in the Midwest as I do, I was bound to come across possibly some of the most contrasting aspects of gay life in the US: a very open gay culture in university towns and cities, but also what Irish Coffee labels "The Christian Taliban". (And no, I'm not saying this just cuz I do research in my academic life about sexual scripts and gay presences online.)

To me, the entire presence about the "Christian Taliban" is symptomatic of a much deeper issue: the absolute polarization of sexuality and religion in the United States of America. For most of the people here, their faith is very important to them. That's all very well and good - but what happens when faith is vehemently opposed to anything beyond good ole procreative sex? The answer: your soul goes to hell. As simple and concise as it may be, nevertheless a far-fetched conclusion that I find ludicrous.

The other day, I wondered aloud about this in one of my graduate classes. Why does America place sex so angrily against faith? Seriously - what is the link here?! I'm not saying that everything is hunky-dory about sexuality back home in India (god knows, NO!!!), but for the life of me, I have never heard (first or second hand) anyone in India complain that he/she has been told that he/she is going to Hindu/Muslim/Christian/whatever hell because he/she is gay/lesbian/bisexual/whatever. For some reason, that's just not done. Don't get me wrong: I'm sure the really conservative elements must be all up in arms about you being "deviant", but the common protest is likely to be "O, this is against Indian Culture" (that demanded capital letters!) and not "O, you're a bad Hindi/Muslim/whatever"...

And don't tell me it's a Christian thing, cuz it's not. One of my classmates is from the Caribbean, the daughter of a Christian priest, and she chimed in with her own musings on the subject when I voiced my opinion in class. Even in her country, she argued, there was none of this weird divide between sexuality and religion.

More importantly, what does it do for the people caught in the middle? Both online and offline, there are so many stories of gay and lesbian people who scramble desperately to find a faith that will not cast stones on them for their sexuality; stories of people who try to "change" because they want the support of God and their church; so many people who have been alienated by their religion because of the venomous treatment meted out to them by its ministers; so many people who have to struggle being "good Christians" and good brothers/sisters/parents to gay people. How do any of these contradictions make sense? As an outsider, I see a weird balance here: the price I have to pay for being more 'open' about my sexuality than in my home country is a very clear condemnation that I am going to Hell - wherever/whatever that may be.

This was not meant to be a tirade against America or Americans (gay or straight) - as some people who read this might be prone to think. I'm essentially an optimist, in that I always tend to believe in the very best as far as people are concerned, and I think that some of the people I've met here are amazingly kind, friendly and helpful. And yet there's so much antagonism, distrust, and undue marginalization - and all out of completely unrealistic expectations and standards. The funny part is, the world over, GLBT movements have operated (and still do) out of the basic skeletal framework of that in the US... and yet, the first thing I realized almost in my very first week was that the US is not quite the liberal "land of the free" it's billed to be. Not for gay people. Not for anyone really who doesn't fit the "mold".

Is America a Christian nation? Yes. Angrily so.

Split Personality

2008-04-03T13:43:00.004-04:00

Split Personality

The other day, Irish Coffee told me something over the phone in a drunken slur (he's terribly cute when he's drunk - or should I say cuter?!) that struck me for the first time in any real way: "I know you're Indian, and you identify yourself more as Indian than with Americans, but after getting your PhD and all that, you're going to live here... you're going to be an American. So you might as well get used to that!"

Was I naive before, or am I naive still? I'm not sure. Suddenly, all those academic readings on diaspora etc make scary sense to me. I'm not sure what I was thinking of earlier - a good degree, a great job, back to Bombay? back to Chicago? - and I'm still not exactly sure. I'm so used to thinking of myself as a Gay Indian in the Midwest, that frankly, it's scary to think of myself as a Gay... Indian-American (there, I said it!)... or even a green card holder... Because frankly, there's a lot of stuff I don't like about gay life in the Americas... give me Bombay any day, closet and all...!

Made me chuckle

2008-03-22T20:34:00.000-04:00

Something that made me chuckle...

:)

Go, Steelers!

2008-03-20T01:22:00.003-04:00

Go, Steelers!

Loads of stuff was going on... tons of work, and not much play made me a very dull boy to say the least... but this li'l trip more than made up for it...!

Pittsburgh is a fabulous city! City of Bridges, indeed, as Irish Coffee and I roamed up and down, in and around, out and about, taking wrong turns and wrong bridges, but despite his curses and my giggles, we did love the city...

O, and I was a hit at the conference! :)

That kind of a mood...

2008-03-12T12:06:00.002-04:00

In that kind of a mood...

Baby look at me...
And tell me what you see.
You ain't seen the best of me yet
Give me time, I'll make you forget the rest.
I got a story, and you can set it free
I can catch the moon in my hand
Don't you know who I am?

Remember my name... Fame!
I'm gonna live forever,
I'm gonna learn how to fly... High!
I feel it coming together,
People will see me and die... Fame!
I'm gonna make it to heaven,
Light up the sky like a flame... Fame!
I'm gonna live forever...
Baby, remember my name...
Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember,
Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember.

Baby hold me tight,
'Cause you can make it right.
You can shoot me straight to the top,
Give me love and take all I got to give.
Baby I'm in love...
Too much is not enough.
I surround your heart to embrace,
Learn I got what it takes...

Remember my name... Fame!
I'm gonna live forever,
I'm gonna learn how to fly... High!
I feel it coming together,
People will see me and die... Fame!
I'm gonna make it to heaven,
Light up the sky like a flame... Fame!
I'm gonna live forever...
Baby, remember my name...
Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember,
Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember.

- Fame, Irene Cara (1980)

I was going to make this song my goodbye post, last year when I was thinking of shutting the blog down. Yes, I'm an egoistic prick. Always said I was. :)

Up Close (and personal?)

2008-02-29T15:18:00.004-05:00

Up Close (and personal?)

For some inexplicable reason, while in the shower this afternoon, I was thinking about gay relationships and how they start. I'm going to try to not generalize, but it does seem that for most of us in relationships, it starts off with sex and then the date. Just another thing to make straight people think that all we 'really' care about is sex: if the sex is good, well then, maybe we can have a go at the relationship.

I remembered my own Carrie-Aiden incident some months back. You know, the one where Carrie drives herself crazy wondering why Aiden the big sexy boyfriend doesn't try to get her pants off (is he gay? O my!), and then he gives her that big spiel about "doesn't anyone in New York believe in romance anymore?" What's with the rush to get into bed... why not take the time to know someone a bit better over a couple of dates and then kick your shoes (and clothes) off? Why was Carrie in such a hurry to get the "fuck-me" dress on (and off!) for Mr. Big?

Let's start from personal history then. All my relationships or flings - except one - so far have involved either a hook-up or sex on the first date.

First Ex and I wanted to get into each others' pants as soon as we laid eyes on each other, and our very first physical gesture was in a (ahem ahem) foursome romp.
With the Fashionista, it was a roller coaster first date with loads of schmoozing in Delhi and Gurgaon night clubs, culminating in sex on a dentist's chair. (Long story, look uo the archives if you're that interested!)
In the case of the Nice-Guy-No-Chemistry, we locked eyes on the dance floor, flirted all night long, and met up for a real date a week later - fun date, and yes, so much fun that we hit the sack. :)
With Ponytail Boy, it was bombastic chemistry on the first date which led to sex in the hotel elevator.
Salsaboy didn't jump me on the first date - in fact, he had to literally push me away, cuz I was ready as ever to hump him - but there was loads of sexual chemistry in our very first meeting, when he saw me at a party (I was dating Fashionista at the time) and started slow dancing, complete with ear-licking, hip grinding, soul shattering moves!
With Boy, sex preceded the date that then preceded round 2 of sex. (archive!)
And then there was NatureBoy - arguably, the one with whom I waited the longest to get laid: almost a week or so, really. Aaa, but the sex was great - and maybe it's a crime for me to say so, but the sex we had after we broke up was even more fabulous! :) Maybe cuz it was so fcukin' unplanned and in such a taboo environment - my big bro's apartment when no one was at home. *smirk*

... all of which brings me to Irish Coffee. Which was a very long first date, but it started off on the premise of a fun no-strings attached weekend and sight-seeing a new city and generally freaking out. So of course, sex was on the agenda from the start. Might not have started out as a hookup, but it did lead to very good sex at the end of a fun first date.

SnowWhite's Stepmother would probably shake his head, mutter "dugga dugga!", and tell me it's all me, and not really a gay 'thing' per se. I'm the slut who sleeps with men on the first date. I don't listen to all the sage advice, which clearly states that men who get first on the sex date don't come back for seconds. I'm too narcissistic, and believe that after they get sex on the first date they keep coming back for seconds, thirds, fourths,... you get the point. And maybe I shouldn't really pontificate about gay men in general, because, as everyone knows, SS would never contemplate getting into a relationship with someone he slept with on a first date. And then, of course there was Mr. Responsible here, who gave me my very own Carrie-Aiden incident some months back.

So this was in the days when Irish Coffee and I weren't serious at all, and Mr. Responsible comes in: kinda cute, with that North Carolina twang that just drives me crazy, saying all the right things, and intelligent to boot. Mmmm.... so we head out for a late night date, it goes about ok, and here I am thinking, aaa, well, maybe things will get nicer once we get those jeans off, and that's when he lets me know that he's content to get physical the next time around. Ummm.... ok. I think that's when I realized I was bored with him. All that niceness, all that responsibility, all that intelligence was actually boring. O my. That was a jolt, really. So I did the only thing I could think of doing: I reached over the car seat to him, and locked lips in the longest kiss I've probably given anyone since coming to the US of A... smiled at him and bid him goodbye. The Aidens of the world aren't really my thing, I decided. I need some Big in my life - no pun intended.

After all, as any SATC afficiando will tell you, what on earth did the fluffy dress get Carrie?

A swollen face. She went to Paris and got slapped.

Bottom-line: I like sex (or at least some dynamite chemistry) on the first date. That's because, for me, a hookup with great sex is different from a relationship, which needs so much more than that great sex. But hey, a guy has to start somewhere, right? I look at it as just another way of getting to know someone...

And yes, the "fuck-me" dress did get her Big in the end.

The Queen's English

2008-02-21T01:57:00.008-05:00

The Queen's English

Surprise, surprise, I seem to have been nominated "gay spokesman" in my Queer Theory class. Not really that surprising, if you take into account what Irish Coffee says about me: apparently, my gay-ness can be seen from space! I feel like doing a salute or something now! :)

Back on the track of my de facto nomination (only guy in a class full of gals, so waddaya expect?!), the other day we were dissecting the notion of "gayspeak". And while we pored over research and remarks galore about whether there really is some fabulously mystic language exckusively for gay people, it naturally came to the point that the gaggle of females who make up this particular class looked pointedly at me and asked, so , what do you have to say? Spill the beans!

To my surprise, it wasn't really as easy to deny the accusation as I thought it would be. I mean, I don't think that all gay men look and sound the same - even though some of us do have the infamous "voice" - and then there's also the fact that if there's such a thing called gayspeak, where the hell is lesbianspeak? Hell, here I am, in a relationship with a guy who doesn't come across even remotely gay... so where does that leave the grand theory of "gayspeak"?! And then... there's me. I have the "voice" - if Irish Coffee is to be believed, even the little green men up there who're surveying the planet right now want to get my pants down. I also have the lingo: I refer to my very best friends on this blog in feminine terms, even though they're both men - case in point, SnowWhite's Stepmother and Vivian. And yes, all of our gaynesses can be seen from space - and I honestly don't think we'd like it any other way!

*cue for Pride music*

In the ole days back in Bombay, when I'd get a phone call from SS in the middle of my shoot with the (obviously straight) camera guys, I'd slip into "straight voice" mode without a thought - it would just happen, no conscious move required, really. And SS would snigger at my fake manly laugh - and induce me in every which way to get me tittering in front of the butch camera guys. Just your typical HO!HO!HO! over the more intrinsic HEEHEE, you understand. How's that for "gayspeak", then?

But where "gayspeak" really scores in my opinion, is not so much in the intonations or the voices or the giggles, but in a shared global identity - as corny and a la gay.com as it may sound. Gay men everywhere in the world don't share exactly the same slang, but let's admit it, they come pretty close! Thanks to the internet, porn and gay men holidaying all across the known world, "gayspeak" really isn't very isolated. I may not have been conversant with what "basket picnic" or "call house" or "playing checkers" or "jam fag" or "tea room" meant, when I first came to the States, but even back in good ole Bombay we know the really important stuff like flamers and daddies and aunties and P-n-P and the value of muscle marys!

So, does that mean we speak a wholly different type of language from the rest of humankind? All said and done, that does seem to be stretching things a bit. As SnowWhite's Stepmother exclaimed, when I told him all about "gayspeak" and its connotations, "What rubbish! We're not a bunch of Zulus with all this nonsense about a strange indecipherable language, you know!"

And even though the Zulus might not appreciate it the way he put it, he does have a point. You see, it's like this: there's English... and then there's the Queen's English. :)

V-day Weekend Update: Had a delightful time, up at Irish Coffee's, and despite my gruelling workload of readings etc, we did have time to cuddle on the sofa, cook up some effing fabulous food, drink loads of booze, have mindnumbing sex, and crack some really tough crossword puzzles. Not necessarily in that order, but you do get the picture! :)

What makes the world go around

2008-02-13T21:09:00.007-05:00

So what makes the world go around, again?

I was going to begin this blog by announcing it as my first V-day post, but then I recalled this particular one a couple of years ago, in good ole Bombay. Technically speaking, it's V-day already in India, even though it's still Feb the 13th here in Midwest America. And even though I won't be seeing Irish Coffee tomorrow, it's still going to be a disgustingly mushy V-day for me, because I'll be chatting on the phone eating heart-shaped candies.

That's right. You heard me correct. Heart candies.

*giggle*

Irish Coffee says they're a stupid American tradition, and I kinda believe him. Little heart-shaped multi-coloured sugar bits, with stuff like "Hot Thing" and "Kiss me" written on them, and he says that millions of Americans will gift them every year to everyone they know - classmates, parents, cousins, the works! I sincerely can't think of anything much more saccharinely Hallmark-y than that! So... he went and got a couple dozen of the ridiculous packets and put them outside my apartment door, so that I'd find them when I returned from class. I called him up to tell him he was mad.

It's been about six months now, by the way, with him and me. I like it. It's kooky and grown-up at the same time. Ridiculously ribald. Quite mad. And, comfortable at the same time. If I sound weird and nonsensical, then it's because it seriously has elements of all that. It's got to the point where I've introduced him to my straight friends here, and even the odd faculty member, and that feels kinda... different. So here I am, feeling all happy and buzzed, 15 minutes left to the V-day countdown, and I've made a terribly over-the-top V-day Closetalk avatar over at the side there, and I've hunted online for a sexy Cupid to post here.

But I think it's also important to play down the mush factor, what with the boyfriend and all, in noting that for us gay guys, while some of us go ga-ga over V-day (most of us hate it, of course: most notably, SnowWhite's Stepmother is celebrating "Thank God I didn't end up with the wrong guy" Day today!), we can't really let ourselves go totally as far as PDA (public display of affection) goes - at least, in the straight sense! Hence, that great pic which I posted up there with the L-O-V-E sign and the guys smooching is actually just a NYT stunt pic for their article on censure over gay PDA, and not real guys kissing - and that's a horrible lie to tell on V-day! Of course, I've thought often, since coming here, that the US of A isn't really the great "land of the free" it's billed to be...! *sigh and despair* But that's fodder for another, longer, and much more sensible blog post. For now, to all the bigots out there who can't stand the rainbow, this is all I hafta say...

Affirmation

2008-01-31T21:25:00.000-05:00

Affirmation

I believe the sun should never set upon an argument...
I believe we place our happiness in other people's hands...
I believe that junk food tastes so good because it's bad for you...
I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do...
I believe that beauty magazines promote low self esteem...
I believe I'm loved when I'm completely by myself alone...

I believe in Karma; what you give is what you get returned...
I believe you can't appreciate real love 'til you've been burned...
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side...
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye...

I believe you can't control or choose your sexuality...
I believe that trust is more important than monogamy...
I believe you're most attractive features are your heart and soul...
I believe that family is worth more than money or gold...
I believe the struggle for financial freedom is unfair,
I believe the only ones who disagree are millionaires...

I believe forgiveness is the key to your own happiness...
I believe that wedded bliss negates the need to be undressed...
I believe that God does not endorse TV evangelists...
I believe in love surviving death into eternity...

- Savage Garden (1999)

Be Gay Today

2008-01-29T02:08:00.000-05:00

Be Gay... Today!

:) When it's this fabulously packaged, who on earth can say no?!

Welcome, newcomers, to the Closet!

Cock-a-doodle-doo

2008-01-25T02:12:00.000-05:00

Cock-a-doodle-doo

From my readings...

"McWhirter and Madison (1984) found that 73% of their male couples began their relationship with an understanding, sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, that the relationship would be sexually exclusive. Yet, 100% of those couples who had been together 5 years or longer who start a relationship with intentions of being monogamous either change their intentions or fail to live up to this standard."

- from J.H. Harvey, A. Wenzel & S.Sprecher (Eds.) "The handbook of sexuality in close relationships".2004.

Wow. I guess I always knew the truth. But seeing it right there, in black and white, supported by all the raw data etc was still... strange. Whatever happened to the girlish notions of everlasting love and undying fidelity that SnowWhite's Stepmother and Vivian and I cherished and hoped and prayed and longed for...? Not very sure, really.

SS and I would sit and talk and we'd try to think of at least one or two completely faithful gay couples and we'd have to admit we didn't really know any. And that would lead SS onto his diatribe about "all gay men are chuts!" The romantic in me would make a last-ditch attempt and argue that it's really all about the intimacy between a couple, and if they think fooling around on the side is ok, we shouldn't be quick to judge... and while I still do believe that, I must admit that the naive little gay boy inside me still hoped... Still hoped to find one - o, at least one! - gay couple who was completely monogamous.

And that's why that para from my reading hit home as much as it did. There was statistical certainty there. Not just of the fact that there aren't many monogamous gay couples out there, but also that even they are exclusive now, you can be pretty sure they won't remain so in a couple of years - if they're even still together then. I know that's really not earth-shattering news for any of us gay men - or straight people who have close gay friends... and yet... the naive little gay boy inside me feels awful. It's like a pronouncement: don't you even dare hope for a cozy twosome - because before you know it, either you or your boyfriend will be found fellating the TV repair guy/ gardener/ UPS guy/ Wal-Mart check-out guy/ what-have-you. And even though I know there are probably millions of gay couples who are happy in their extracurricular arrangements, I'm crushed on hearing this kind of a message even as I start a new relationship. I have half a mind to go and show this article to Irish Coffee and ask him up-front when he's going to cheat on me - and then I'd better go and cheat on him a day before that, just to save face. I'm quite aware of how stupid I sound here... and yet... *sigh*

The same article goes on to state: "... there seem to be no significant differences between gay men in exclusive and nonexclusive relationships on measures of love or liking for the partner, closeness, satisfaction, commitment, or relationship longevity... Research suggests that for gay men, agreement about exclusivity versus openness is more important to relationship satisfaction than any specific type of behavior."

In other words, it's just a matter of getting your rocks off. And then it's fine. As long as Prince Charming tells the Beast (so, yes, I have a thing for chest hair) about his one night stand with the Frog Prince, all's well in fairyland.

Whatever happened to the fairy tale, though?

First hockey, now QT

2008-01-24T03:35:00.000-05:00

First there was hockey, and now it's...

Queer theory. I'm getting addicted to studying queer theory. *sigh*

How utterly cliched, I know, I know...

What the puck

2008-01-19T15:20:00.000-05:00

What the puck...?!

As surprising as this may sound (perhaps most of all to me), I've become a fan of college hockey. At first, it began with curiosity, mingled with the promise of freebies that no grad student can resist: ooo, free entry at this grand spectacle I've never been to before - maybe I should go! So, I asked Irish Coffee whether he'd be interested, and of course he roared his approval, and off we went.

Of course, my perspective on hockey is a teeny bit different from that of Irish Coffee's and the other hardcore fans who thronged the ice arena... so, while I was definitely checking out the game, I also had some other fantabulous observations:

1. Hockey players aren't really as sexy and chiseled as I expected them to be. Personally, I think the hunks of college football are... hunkier. Irish Coffee assures me, though, they're usually dumber and duh-er than footballers.

2. The playing band was awesome! I loved the little ditties the band would suddenly come up with, trumpets and drums and all... and some of them were even jiving up there while playing! :) I'm not very sure whether their knowledge of the game per se was any better than mine - and let's not even go that far. *sigh*

3. Loads of sorority sisters were there, clapping their hands to the school anthem, and generally squealing in delight. Irish Coffee says, there's a whole organization of "hockey whores" (I actually like that term!) who go big time for the hockey hunks! When I asked him whether there were any groupies for the gay hockey players, he looked at me as if I'd just uttered blasphemy. But then, he pointed me in the direction of the playing band. :)

4. Hockey game food sucks. Big time. The pizza is cold, the cheese on the hot dog is artificial goop which gives you a tummy-ache barely three hours later, and the less said about the bread sticks the better.

5. And I do like the silly sound effects the announcer comes up with - the jingles, the spoofs, the crazy bursts of popular oldies like The Final Countdown and Bad boys, bad boys - very corny, but very entertaining. Of course, while I found the whole ambiance wildly fun, it all served to annoy the hell out of Irish Coffee who was there for the game. (ho hum)

OK, so I'm not a very sports-friendly gay person, and I liked the spectacle of the hockey game more than the game itself, I suppose. I chatter a lot while watching the game about things hardcore fans would probably think inconsequential, but here and there, I did pick up some ideas like the 'face-off' and the 'penalty'. O, and yes, the testosterone activity was phenomenal: and that always gets a rise out of me! :)

So, I wasn't bellowing "KILL HIM!", and "BREAK HIS LEGS!" at the top of my lungs like a very charged-up Irish Coffee was, and my loudest whoops probably sounded very gay, but when the two teams started thrashing and punching each other at the end, I felt like a very happy Roman emperor (all of them were bisexual, anyway!) egging them on.

All said and done, we left the arena, after watching a great game (our team won, of course) and an even better fight... and I even groped Irish Coffee a bit up in the stands. He didn't complain of diverting his attention from the game when that was happening! :)

I feel pretty

2008-01-17T02:09:00.000-05:00

I feel pretty...

Oh so pretty,
I feel pretty and witty and gay,
And I pity... Any girl who isn't me today.

I feel charming, Oh so charming,
It's alarming how charming I feel,
And so pretty... That I hardly can believe I'm real.

See the pretty girl in that mirror there:
Who can that attractive girl be?
Such a pretty face,
Such a pretty dress,
Such a pretty smile,
Such a pretty me!

The other day I cajoled Irish Coffee in TIVOing West Side Story for me, and Natalie Wood's little number had me in splits of laughter! Now if that isn't a fabulously fag song, I don't know what is! Even Irish Coffee, all grumpy-gus straight-gay man that he is, had to chuckle when I did a little CT impersonation and almost broke the wine glasses with my such a pretty meeeeeeeeeeeeeee! (Completely worth it, I tell ya!)

Not very sure I liked the movie - o, much too over the top in the melodrama department, though I did like the Puerto Rican dance number - but that little ditty was amazing! If you haven't already, then take a look...

Post-holiday Trimmings

2008-01-09T00:41:00.000-05:00

Post-holiday Trimmings

Came back home the other night and started stripping down my Christmas decorations. The holidays are over, my three-week long stay at Irish Coffee's place is done, college has reopened, classes have resumed, and there seems to be a sudden lack of romance. Well, till I make my midnight phone call to Irish Coffee, that is. :)

There's a veritable mountain of work and academic papers to be written just waiting for me, and yet the largest, arguably most important project on my plate this semester is literally that - on my plate. The Happy Holidays are gone, and the pounds I put on during those fabulous times have to be chased away too. Re-enter, the PHAT (Pretty Hot and Tempting) Plan.

Of course, being a college student in the US of A, you're almost expected to put on weight. A friend of mine here calls it "the freshman fifteen". After all, when you're running from class to class, and from paper to paper, it's all you can do to grab a piece of artificially cheesy pizza, or extra-greasy burger with fatty fries, and some fizzy soda pop... And when you don't know how to cook and don't have the patience for it either, like me, you're pretty much doomed to put on those excess calories. And then, of course, it was Holiday time. Loads of great food in Chicago, lots of eating with the Irish brood, and before I knew it, I stood on the weight to realize I'd gained (gasp) ten pounds.

So, the other day, Irish Coffee and I sat on the love seat and pored through this diet book, looking at the loooooong list of banned foods - all the while, munching on low-fat brownies. (Yes, such an unearthly thing actually exists!) Turns out, the genius who wrote the book says that diets should be determined by blood groups, and so an O+ guy like me should stay away from lentils, corn, wheat, bread, pork, cabbage, cauliflower, potatoes, cheese and a whole host of other foods that formed my staple diet a week back. Now, even though I don't completely buy that blood-diet logic, and am scouting around for copies of the South Beach diet, a lot of those aforementioned foods probably are bad for me! *sigh*

So, this evening for dinner, I popped over to the dining room and helped myself to salad. Not the yummy decadent Bombay salad with its dripping meats and pasta and corn, but a rudimentary American-style one: lots of lettuce, beets, carrots, spinach and broccoli, with some lean turkey strips on top, and low-fat balsamic dressing. O, and yes, Diet Coke.

Some time back when I called up Irish Coffee for our nightly conversation and told him about my evening meal, he chuckled and said I shouldn't worry...

My reply? "Thank God, he made boyfriends to say stuff like that!"

TONIGHT in the Closet

2008-01-04T19:10:00.000-05:00

TONIGHT in the Closet...

*background music: drum rolls, which give way to jazzy tune composed of loud trumpet and electronica version of We Are Family, while graphics play scenes of Closetalk's life*

Hello again and Welcome to The Tonight Show with Closetalk.

Our Top Story tonight...

*graphics swipe*

Politics takes center-stage tonight, as the results of the Iowa cockus (did I spell that right? Feels much nicer this way, anyhow...) finally came through, throwing up winners Barrak Obama from the Democrats and Mike Huckabee from the Republicans, and now the action shifts to the next state, New Hampshire. Now, according to the polls, the most important deciding factor for Iowa was econmic policies and changes envisioned therein, but it's no secret that the Rainbow Brigade is pinning it's hope on a Democrat President to get elected - either Obama or Edwards or nutcracking Hillary - and push through gay marriage laws, while Huckabee's a Born-Again Baptist minister who thinks fags steal babies brains at night while they sleep. Funny thing, really, that the election action now shifts to a state which became the fourth in the Union to legalize civil unions for gay men and lesbians. It's also a strange and sad coincidence that while all this happens, the first governor to sign a statewide gay rights law (in sleepy ole Wisconsin, no less!) passed away. *sigh* Looks like a long battle ahead, boys - time to emigrate to Canada, you think?

*graphics swipe*

Well, maybe not. Not, if you're a goody-goody sap who likes to donate blood, cuz the Canadian Blood Services has a ban on accepting blood from gay men who've been sexually active since 1971 (ouch!), and that's what student groups there are protesting against now. The surprising part here is that even the American Red Cross which, till recently had a similar ban on accepting blood from sexually active gay men (their limit was 1977), is lobbying to lift a similar ban this side of the Great Lakes! Will wonders never cease...!

*graphics swipe*

When it comes to the "long arm of the law", some of us may well have a fetish for this sort of thing *giggle*, but for others, like this South Korean police officer, it takes on a (no pun intended) deeper meaning. :) Private Kim Hyun-jong is the second police officer in South Korea to publicy come out, and he has vowed to fight social prejudice against LGBT minorities in his country. I'm looking for my pom-poms now to cheer him on!

*graphics swipe*

Meanwhile, here's gay prejudice of another kind... in the UK, a female bouncer of a gay club has won a suit against her old boss, the gay owner of a gay club for harassment and ill-treatment because she was, well, straight. Sharon Legg, 33, who worked at Dreams in Bournemouth, said that her manager repeatedly called her derogatory names such as “breeder”. Legg is, of course, a self-confessed fag hag... and I am being completely politically incorrect and loving the term she was called. *giggle* Breeder!

*graphics swipe*

And, finally, we end this fab-u-lous episode with the news that my boyfriend has long suspected, but never really had the proof to throw back in my face, during my driving lessons: a British study has concluded that women and gay men make lousy drivers. Moreover, gay men rank behind women in terms of navigational skills. Behind a wheel, that is. Cuz everyone knows that we know how to navigate the club circuit better than anything! So there!

Well, that's it for tonight, lovely people. See you again soon for another edition of the Tonight Show with Closetalk. Adios, sayonara, al vida, and don't forget to buckle your seatbelts... as if that helps! :)

Prettier than Russel Crowe

2008-01-01T13:48:00.000-05:00

So I'm prettier than Russel Crowe, really...

It's the close of the holiday season with the start of the new year, and it's been an interesting week, really. I've been "meeting the family", you see.

So, the last time I found myself in a similar situation was back in Bombay, when I first met the Wicked Witch of the West, Natureboy's gal Friday. WWW was witty, bitchy and pretty - just the sort of person I gel with o-so completely, and we ended up being great friends even though the Natureboy-Closetalk romance didn't last too long. Aaa, but last last week was different. Last week, I was introduced to a 20-member strong immediate family and a 35-member strong extended family. Irish American. Whoa. And I'm horrid at fake accents.

It's been about four and a half months now that Irish Coffee and I have been together, so when his family moved back for the Christmas holidays, it was quite inevitable that I'd meet them. My first encounter with the aliens was when one of them - his older sister - came over for a midmorning coffee some two weeks back, and so I sauntered out from the bedroom, trying to not look guilty as the gay whore from the subcontinent who seduced her innocent-as-a-babe (yea, right!) brother some twenty minutes ago. We drank coffee, ate slices of pie, chattered about this and that, and by the end of the conversation, I found myself invited to a great prime ribs party she was throwing for the whole family a week later. I gulped and accepted.

As it turned out, I got a chance to meet the Family even before the big prime ribs party. A day before that was scheduled, Irish Coffee got a phone call that the whole family was already assembled and there was a demand that he come right over. So I dressed appropriately (no Boystown tee) and got into the car, and soon found myself surrounded by sisters and brothers-in-law and nephews and nieces and bawling babies and a father. Ummm... okkkkkkk then... So yea I was pretty nervous, not moving much, trying to be very polite and all that, and I kept thanking god for the talkative niece and the cute (if bawling) baby who deflected attention away from me. I got some questions thrown at my general direction and tried to answer them as nicely as possible, trying not to appear as (a) the uppity grad school student who's going to become a high-brow academic who doesn't give a shit for Midwestern middle class people, or (b) the gay tramp who's trying to infiltrate our good Catholic family. *sigh*

Russel Crowe had nothing on me! :)

There was a short break that evening, and then I found out that everyone was then going to pack into their cars and drive over to another bigger party by 'Uncle Dave' in his house. The extended family... ooo, goody.

Uncle Dave's house turned out to be this lovely old mansion-type, overflowing with Irish bric-a-brac, and his son kept on talking about good ole Ireland with me, trying to convince me to go there the very next season. There was booze, loud music, even louder people and interesting artifacts all around, so I actually had a pretty fun time. Before we headed out to meet the family, Irish Coffee had told me he was going to introduce me as his 'friend' and not 'boyfriend', because he didn't want the "o, you slut!" looks from some disapproving elements right after they'd come to terms with his ex, and though I'd agreed, I don't think anyone really bought that story.

Anyhow, the big prime rib party went off quite well, too. I decided to get on the family-pleasing offensive and baked a batch of brownies for the lot. There were party games and yummy food and great wine, and I probably gained five pounds that evening.

By now, most of the Family have departed for their respective homes, and it's back to me and Irish Coffee here again. We brought in the new year, watching the second part of the Godfather trilogy and eating a fresh batch of brownies (that's the only thing I can cook, really), and some great snuggling on the couch. :) I missed my Bombay boys and remembered the great New Year's Eve party we had last year, but was quite content with my Irish Coffee here. I'm not sure whether we'll last forever or not, but it does feel great to be here with him, to cuddle and snog and do up the Christmas lights. And to watch the Godfather over my excellent brownies.

Happy New Year, netizens. :)

Closetalk in Chicago

2007-12-26T22:57:00.000-05:00

Closetalk in Chicago
(sounds like one of those Asterix comics... 'Asterix in America'...!)

The ole Midwest is hardly the place for you, if you're a Bombay boi, who's used to 13 million teeming and pulsating around you, so you can imagine how eager I was to finally get my ass out to Chicago for a quick pre-Christmas trip. I'd heard all about the "Windy City" from Irish Coffee, who lived there for ten years earlier, and I was dying to see a real city finally in the States - with all due respect to Indy. So we packed our bags, put the dog in the car, and drove down to Chicago.

We found a motel right off Halstedt Street, Chicago's Boystown, and Irish Coffee and I traipsed down the street. I, of course, found the Rainbow Pillars of Boystown quite freakishly fabulous and got straight down to posing for snaps! Also drove over to Lakeshore Drive, which is supposed to be quite the scenic cruising area, and then back to Halstedt Street in time to catch the play we had tickets for.

Once that was done, it was time to visit yet another icon of Boystown - Gay-Mart, which I can only describe as a thoroughly kooky curiosity shop! Picked up a completely nonsensical Stewie angel ornament for the Christmas tree, and then ambled into the Leather Shop and Cupid's Treasures to check out the merchandise. Was sorely tempted to buy the handcuffs and edible underwear, but then decided I could be quite devilish in Chicago without them! What can I say... I get my inspiration from Stewie! hehehe!

After we finished checking into the motel, Irish Coffee and I hit the bar - the straight bar, that is, where his friend's the bartender. The idea was to get loaded on free beers and (yuck!) whiskey. Anyhow, it was fun chatting with the straight folks (as SnowWhite's Stepmum says, or used to, at any rate: "Straight people are normal too!"), but then I forgot that my boyfriend is Irish whereas I get high on a single malt, so after seven beers I ended up puking my guts all over the floor. Mortifying start to a fun holiday, but there I was. In my defence, we were at the bar for a good six hours till I gave my virtuoso performance.

*sigh*

Anyhow, by the time morning came, I was raring to go again and we dropped by the Magnificent Mile. I drooled at the sight of Prada and Tiffany's and given my Holly Golightly affliction, just had to pop in, much to poor Irish Coffee's vexation! :) Walked downtown some more, posed for cheesy pictures and then into the Millenium Park to watch the city's skyline reflected in the Big Bean. :) When the Traveller first recommended I head over to some place called "the big bean", I must admit I sniggered, but hey, it was actually loads of fun, standing by and watching the skaters whizz by.

Did loads more sight-seeing in the next two days, and we headed down to the gay bars in Boystown each night. Time to show of my Bombay togs, so out came the sexy pink Benetton tee and tapering black leather shoes, and I was ready to sashay. Roscoe's was fun and sexy, great cosmopolitans; Cocktail was amusing with its pretty boys; and Hydrate was fun too, with all the hunky shirtless guys boogeying on the dance floor. I'd been poring over the Gay Chicago reader during the day, over my Starbucks, and noting where all the fun parties were, and though I missed the Wet Bear contest (damn!) I had fun nonetheless. Nights of white wine for me, no more beer (thank you!), and it felt nice, standing and chatting and laughing with Irish Coffee, while he whispered terribly sweet nothings in my ear... :)

There are two different joys in exploring a fabulous city with (a) your boyfriend, or (b) your friends... and though I only have (a) right now, and I miss my (b) terribly, it was still a freakin' fun time in the Windy City!

What did I bring back? Mmmmm... apart from the wicked Stewie ornament, a great Boystown football tee that I plan to wear during the summer and a very shiny Pink Pig dogtag. :)

O, and a bunch of great memories!

White Christmas

2007-12-26T02:28:00.000-05:00

White Christmas

Back from Chicago, and it has been a very lovely Christmas, if much more quiet than last year's. :) The streets outside are lined with snow and I took the opportunity to snap a quick picture. Spent the whole day cleaning house with Irish Coffee, since he's expecting relatives later this week, and relaxed at home for a quiet meal. Tried out my culinary skills, cooked some noodles, laid out some marinated chicken from Chicago, popped a bottle of wine and some assorted chocolates for dessert.

A very white Christmas.... which was abso-fcukin-lutely great, because for as long as I can remember I've always wished for one! From my youngest years, Christmas has been a special time for me - we used to spend it at my grandma's home and I would sit up a week before Christmas, listening to Jim Reeves croon, while decorating my grandma's tree (yes, in sub-tropical Calcutta, no less!) and then the whole apartment... What can I say? - I was made for mistletoe and holly! :)

Innocence recalled! *grin*

So, anyhow, this year I didn't get the great big party, and I didn't kiss random boys in closets, and I couldn't even find any hot santas to post pics of for the blog, but I did find this old gem in my laptop that I thought I'd put up here. Just a sexy, smutty X'mas for everyone...

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-19T22:34:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas!

It's been snowing here in the ole Midwest, and I've been lapping it up excitedly. You don't get to see snow in gorgeous Bombay, after all! :) So I was there playing with the snow on the pavement, while waiting for the college bus, and the Chinese student on the other side of the road flashed me a queer look (not the good queer look, mind you). And there was me bursting into class, 10 minutes late, with a verybeatific smile on my face, announcing: "It's snowing!"

And then my prof snorts, and says I can have the snow anytime - she wants the sun! :)

But it's snowing and it's going to be Christmas soon, and I've always been a nut about Christmas, so... I'm off the BIG city of the Midwest tomorrow - Chicago, here I come...!

And before I hit the Windy City, I thought I'd post this funny one someone emailed me...

Library Brew

2007-12-13T02:47:00.000-05:00

Library Brew

It's hard to believe, really, that four months have already passed since I got here in the ole Midwest. I haven't really been that great intrepid explorer of the new land as I thought I'd be. :) Just Indianapolis and one other city in the Midwest and that's it. Yikes. And I haven't been very adventurous in the last couple of months on the men's side either, as the complaints from my sex-hungry freaky commentors will inform you. :) Well then, what on earth have I been up to here, millions of miles away from good ole Bombay?

Ummm, well...

I've been attending my classes, and writing reams of papers for them, and the general verdict so far is that I seem to be fairly talented here. :) So, while I'm already dreaming up PhD plans (mum always did want a 'doctor' in the family!), I'm also submitting papers and articles to conferences. The good news is: I've already been accepted at a couple of them and come March, I'm going to be in Pittsburgh and then at Detroit, waxing eloquent about my sheer brilliance. Aaa, well, not really, but you do get the picture. Suddenly, I seem to have become (gasp) the academic. As a prof informed me, I'm quite the FOB PIG about town - Fresh Off the Boat Poor Indian Grad (Student). :)

So, last semester saw me calling Famous Activist Guy and asking for pointers on a project I was working on, about sensitization toward gay men and women in the corporate workplace. FAG was a great help, of course, but he did assist me in realizing that I'd turned into one of those gay NRIs (Non Resident Indians, for the uninitiated) who turn toward good ole India for research work. *sigh* To think, I actually dated one of those for some time - o, but then he was cute, so it really doesn't matter that he turned out to be a prick. Anyhow, my project happened to be a great hit here, and then I started on a second one: gay-friendly curricula in US colleges. Of course, when I broke this piece of news to SnowWhite's Stepmother, he huffed and said I was as original as Om Shanti Om, with my o-so-cliched little faggoty research topics. :)

Nevertheless, I am being quite true to my faggoty self. *giggle* In a way, it's the whole "coming out" thing. I'd always planned on being more "out" here than I was back home, and I guess that's showing more in my research projects at grad school than anywhere else. I've already declared my intention to focus on Queer Theory to my professors, and they've been quite gung-ho. I don't think they've had a fag in the department in quite some time, so they seem to be quite excited at the prospect! :)

On the man-activity front, there's a reason for not posting about brand new scintillating sex-ventures, aside from my harried nerdy grad self. And that's cuz I've been getting progressively serious about the thing with Irish Coffee. It's not completely smooth sailing etcetera over here, because there are complications involved: I'm not very sure about my future, and he's not sure about his, plus he came out of a long-term relationship two months before meeting me, so there's "rebound-baggage" involved as well... so... *phew*... it is complicated. But it's also nice. It's fun being with him, and talking with him. Spending a lot of my time with him. He's been my sounding board for all my academic (and not-so-academic) yadayadas, and it's been great finding an intelligent, funny, witty (and patient) person in the Midwest to cuddle in bed with.

And he's a funny foil for me. I'm this weird flamboyant gay guy whose scarf has to be flounced over his shoulders just right, whose leather gloves must gleam, whose hat must be tipped just perfectly, who can only wear well-fitting jackets despite the freezing weather - and he's so butch he might as well be straight. We do make a funny pair. He likes his coffee black, straight up, no sugar, no milk - but he still makes mine for me, the way I like it: plenty of sugar, plenty of milk. India ishtyle.

I'm getting used to my Irish Coffee. :)

Here comes... the SATC Movie

2007-12-08T03:31:00.000-05:00

*drumrolls* Here comes... the SATC Movie

So I was all set to write a post on a somewhat 'serious' topic here, and then I discovered.....

...the all-new Sex and the City MOVIE trailer... yeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaa! :)

And that's when you think about the great stuff they ended with:

Carrie: Later that day, I got to thinking about relationships... there are those that open you up to something new and exotic... those that are old and familiar... those that bring up lots of questions... those that bring you somewhere unexpected... those that bring you far from where you started... but the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself... and if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous!

O, and I just realized, they show Mr. Big's name on Carrie's phone in the last scene there: John!

Hot Turkey

2007-12-06T21:45:00.000-05:00

Hot Turkey

I've been making excuses for quite some time now to my friend the Traveller for not blogging, excuses mainly dealing with work. It's the end of the Fall semester here, and I had tonnes of paperwork to do - theory and term papers to write, presentation proposals to make, etc, and now that I have a kind of respite (one more due Monday, but that's the very last!) I did want to come back here and blog about what a fun time it's been since my last post.

The best thing to ease me into the tough study schedule I find myself in now would be, I decided, a holiday over the Thanksgiving break. So a phone call was made to the Traveller, bus tickets were purchased, and I found myself in Indianapolis. I'd asked Irish Coffee when he dropped me at the bus station, whether there were any cowboys there, and he laughed. I didn't think so, but it doesn't hurt to ask. :) Anyhow, my trip to Indy was simply fabulous. Traveller took me all around downtown, we gawked at the phallic symbol the city prides on, we walked in and out of museums, we snapped pictures of fabulous old buildings and we dined on some amazing food at English pubs and German rat cellars (The Rathskeller was the name of the restaurant). There was even an attempt to change the template of this blog, but I got cold feet at the last minute when the HTML codes started bullying me. O, and yes, we partied. :)

I haven't partied like that in ages! :) Not since Bombay, at any rate! :) Traveller's gay cousins were in town, with their respective partners, and all of us hit the Indy gay scene with a storm. Great music, loads of alcohol, and dizzying dances that ended with the fabulous circle jig. Mmmmm.... even waking up with a (teeny) hangover didn't dull the fun!

So, Indy was fun.

Understatement. :)

A/S/L?

2007-11-15T14:58:00.000-05:00

A/S/L?

Back in Bombay, there was this one time SnowWhite's Stepmother and I went across to Bandra to buy tee-shirts with gay messages, and I picked up one that went with the title of this post: "A/S/L?" (Age/ Sex/ Location). I was thinking about that episode right now, when I looked in on my blog traffic after ages tonight. And that's when I thought, I've never really written anything about the people who come in here to this space. Never really said anything about all the guys and gals who come by, scroll up and down, and pass a verdict whether I've done good or sucked royally, and so I thought this would be a great time to do that.

So... where are you from? :)

Well, according to the statistics, TalkingClosets got 969 visitors from 48 countries in the last week. While I expected people from India to bag the top slot here, given that I am a desi boy and all that jazz, I was a bit surprised to note that it was the US of A which was Number One here. Ahem, USA - 374, compared to India's 335. Of course, you can probably shave off 5-10 of those views from that tally, when I logged in myself to check/answer comments, but that still leaves the US in the top slot.

So, now I was a bit curious to find out where my viewers in the States come from. Turns out, California, land of the free, bags the most votes - 89. Strangely though, the centers that I thought TC would be most popular in - LA and West Hollywood - didn't do too well, with only about 7 views from there this week. Nopes, the big daddy of the lot was Piedmont in the San Francisco Bay Area, with about 38 views. Now I was stumped. I mean, I've never even heard of this place before. A bit of googling tells me, however, that it's quite a posh piece of suburbia in SF with a HUGE Asian population - 16% - and well, I guess that's how I got my 38 views this week! :) All the cute and rich gay desi doctors and lawyers in piedmont, I love you, so please come and take me away from the Midwest! :)

The other biggies in the US turned out to be the Big Apple (predictable, I suppose, but YAY, I *heart* NY) with 34 views and Chicago with 27. A place called Blacksburg in Virginia also figured high here, with 30 votes, and I was a bit surprised again, knowing Virginia is God-fearing anti-Christian territory. But then I realized that that's where VirginiaTech is. Hehehe. So, the college boys like me. Nice! O, and Princeton loves me to - 11 votes from there! :)

Back home in India, good ole Bombay wins hands-down, with a whopping 170 views over last week! Funny to think that SS used to tease me earlier, that my dragging everyone to the GB parties was a clear indication I was getting kickback from them! :) O, but I do miss the cit dreadfullyy! Anyway, Delhi came in second with 65, and Chennai third with 26, but my hometown Kolkata saw a lousy 2 views. *sniffle*

This post feels like a horrible lesson in statistics by now, but I did do a little bit more detective work to see where else, other than India and the US, I got page-views from. The next largest is the UK with 60 votes, of which London hogs the majority with 26, and then Canada with 41, of which Toronto claims 25. Mmmm... and I might actually be heading up to Toronto sometime the end of this year. :) Australia gave me 25 views, of which gay mecca Sydney accounted for 15.

O, and I get no views from Africa, and my showing is pretty poor in mainland Europe also - Germany, France and Norway gave me only around 10 views each last week. China hates me - only one lone ranger logged in and I'm going to discount that as a fluke - but Hong Kong made up for that gaffe and logged in 9 times last week! :) Down in Southeast Asia, Malaysia gave me 10 views, and o, I do want to go see the Petronas Towers now. :) Closer home, I was kinda glad to see I got 10 views from Pakistan. Cool - especially since I thought that blogs were not accessible from there. :)

O, and funny thing: stupid Google counts Russia as part of Europe, when everyone and their mother know it's in Asia. Dummies!

Desi Dinner Time

2007-11-14T02:57:00.000-05:00

Desi Dinner Time!

So I'm going to pop the corn quotient to 100% and say a silly like like: you can take CT out of Bombay, but you can't take Bombay out of CT! Sitting here in the middle of the sleepy Midwest, Closetalk calls on the all-powerful Youtube.com to take him to the bright gay disco lights of Bollywood to spy on the two brand new releases all of his facebook pals have been chattering about, and he is not disappointed. Nopes. Astounded, maybe, by how wonderfully gay friendly Bollywood heroes have turned out to be, but never disappointed. :)

It seems such a long time ago that Vivian and I were squealing our appreciation of yummy King Khan in his dapper Don look, but nothing could really have prepared me for the sight of SRK's 8-pack abs in his latest release Om Shanti Om. woof! No, no, I mean, nothing at all. There I sat in one of the computer labs on campus, innocently in front of youtube, and when SRK starts throwing his shirt away, gets his brand-new pecs and abs wet in true Mandakini style, you really can't blame CT for getting a woody. Suddenly, all those Irish boys can go hang - give me desi beef any day, baby! :)

And if you think that's yummy, go check out the actual video - Dard-e-Disco - on down here. The drool is inevitable. Quite a different type of drool, though drool nonetheless, for that hot new fireball called Ranbir Kapoor, in his debut Sawariya. O, ok , fine, his heroine is kinda pretty too, but when that hot studmuffin is in the frame, you don't really have eyes for anyone else. Imagine my glee (girlish giggles and all) when I discovered what I think to be the most delicious, gay-est pic of him ever on the net.

Mmmm... just what they needed on that ole Moulin Rouge: sexy Ranbir smouldering the stage in his sailor outfit. yummy! Simply love his dance number in the movie with his o-so false shy act with the looooong towel/sheet/dunno-what-it-is, but despite the thing's ambiguity, you have to love the part where the hottie falls onto the floor and single, slender, o-so-well-waxed leg peeks out. O shucks, now I'm in the mood for some tandoori chicken here...

Wanna Nach All Night...

2007-11-08T19:43:00.001-05:00

Wanna Nach All Night...

I guess it's partly the Diwali fever, but here I am in the ole Midwest, and I've been missing amchi Mumbai. I had a formal dinner the other night with the Dean of Graduate Students, and there was the usual introductory round and I do my "I'm the international student from Bombay..." routine, but then he interrupts to ask, "Bombay? Don't you mean Mumbai?" And I'm like: "Nopes. It's Bombay to Bombayites, Mumbai to the rest."

*sigh*

So this weekend, there's a little Diwali something at my li'l Midwestern university, and I'm dragging Irish Coffee over with me. Thought I'd show him some of the desi moves. He's already heard some of the Hindi stuff on my computer and makes a face whenever I play Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, and so now I thought I'd torture him with the sight of some ABCDs and College Curry Bois dance to Where's The Party Tonight. :) (actually, he may like the dance performance more than the music.)

And that's another thing. I am soooo completely behind what's current in the Bollywood scene right now that I still listen to Where's The Party Tonight! Just now, I was so overwrought with nostalgia of the great parties at Guppie's house, and Vivian and SnowWhite's Stepmum dancing to Beedi, that I started listening to the Omkara album on my ipod while studying in the library. While walking to campus this morning, I was playing my five-month old Bollywood collection and snapping my fingers. I miss letting go on the dance floor when they play those fabulous jhatka tunes. I miss seeing the Bombay gay boys do their horrible rendition of the bhangra, and my joining in with my own topsyturvy version.

And the other night, when I found myself alone at the gay bar, I missed o-so much my GB parties and my gang of silly, fabulous queens. :) I missed all the lousy drinks, and bitching about the lousy music, and doing the borderline porno moves with SS, and squealing about the horned-up Punjabis on the dance floor. I missed having friends to dance with. I really want to dance. Just step out there on the dance floor and go wild like I used to in Bombay. With someone (friend or trick) who dances back with me. And while Irish Coffee is so terribly sweet to offer to go to gay bars and clubs with me, he just hates dancing and I know that. It seems somehow terrible to admit that I haven't slipped on those dancing shoes of mine in almost three months!

Ok, so this is the part where I realize that I've been moaning and groaning this whole post. Is life really that bad? Ummm... no. That's just the drama queen in me griping. Halloween was fun, for instance. And even though I was just one cowboy among the 200 others in this Midwestern town, I'm happy that Irish Coffee whispered in my ear that I was the cutest among them all! :)

Things are actually going quite nicely on this end. We still haven't had the "chat" and someone told me the other day that I was a whore to still have random hook-ups now and then if I was seeing someone, regardless of the "chat" having happened or not, but in all truthfullness, the randomness and the frequency of the hook-ups has descreased. Hell, it is true: graduate students don't have time for much else but work! :) And, more than anything, it's fun to talk about Irish boys and college boys and all the other different kind of boys that I bump into here.

That, and Bombay. *happy sigh*

Fairyland's Redheads

2007-10-30T15:46:00.000-04:00

Fairyland's Redheads

Sitting here in the ole Midwest, I realize that there's one type of game here which seems especially drawn to me: the Irish American buck. I didn't really notice it much, the first time around. I mean, as far as I knew, there was only Irish Coffee, with whom I shared a fantastic equation. I mean, we ate, we drank, we drank, we drank, we shared conjugal relations *titter*, we drank some more, and we bitched about the British, and then I really didn't think much more about the Indo-Irish connection.

Till I found out, Bearded Boi was Irish American too. Aha. That made me think the world was a small place. Bearded Boi and I drank a lot too (sheesh!) and ate Mexicano food, and drank some more again. And anyone who's known me in real life knows I'm what they call a cheap date: I get drunk after one-and-a-half beers. So, of course, Bearded Boi and I had fun.

And then, I met the Scriptwriter, we had a great date dancing all night, got drunk beyond ourselves, bonked like rabbits till the early morn, and then he tells me at the door while leaving that he's (surprise surprise) Irish American!

So, now I'm left wondering what that special connection between moi and the Irish Americans of the Midwest is all about. It's become a joke for me to ask my hook-ups during the online chat, whether they're Irish or not - and six out of nine times, they are. I mean, back home, I didn't really have much of an idea (or opinion) about the Irish laddies. I knew all about the conflict with the Brits, I knew about the poor ole peasants who had to migrate to America, and I'd seen Ralph Feinnes look very sexy in a variety of Irish roles on the big screen. O, and yes, there was that soppy soap opera movie with Tom Cruise (ages ago, when he looed human) and Nicole Kidman (who is simply gorgeous) playing Irish American immigrants, and that hideous movie with Leo DiCaprio in NYC as an Irish hoodlum. Ahem, ahem.

So... my notion of your average Irish man hasn't really been dripping in style (except, maybe Ralphie). No, they're mostly the rough men-of-the-soil, who drink and belch and fart and laugh, but don't really know much of the finer things in life. But then, neither do I. :) When I tell Irish Coffee this, he has his standard reply ready: "The British stole it from us!"

There are of course, lots of gay men who like swarthy men-of-the-soil. Like me, for instance. :) Like my friend Diamond Choker Baccha for another. O, also Vivian. When you come to think of it, a lot of Indian guys go for that kinda MAN'S MAN - ok, well maybe not SnowWhite's Stepmother, but then, that's not catastrophic. Had sauntered over to an Irish American Festival sometime back, and it was quite fun, watching all the cute redheads fanning around, drinking Guinnes and swearing loudly. I'm no leprechaun, but I do like my redheads! :)

D-I-S-C-O-C-T

2007-10-11T13:35:00.000-04:00

D-I-S-C-O-C-T

You won't ever see me in an Afro, or wearing shiny pants (ok, well you might see me in thos e sometime), or doing coke on the dance floor (though prior posts have found me snorting in the bedroom), but don't let this mistle you - I am a Disco Queen.

So last weekend saw me at Irish Coffee's place, and after the episodes of Sex and the City, I force him to sit by me and watch Studio 54. Ryan Phillipe. Yummy. OK, so he's awfully skinny in the movie, but I completely loved the idea of disco-dancing in a great big amphitheater, under a giant shining ball or two. May not be any sort of Ghetto Superstar, but hey, I can do a meeeeaaaan disco! :)

And what bugs me is the complete lack of disco in the gay bars these days. I can't even call it a Midwest thing, because Bombay was the same. Well at least Bombay used to play the odd Shakira and Justin Timberlake which might not be exactly disco, but are gay as gay can be. You can do the sexy shake here and there, raise your arms and scream, get down and dirty with your partner and do everything else that makes a gay man live on the dance floor. And hell, at least they used to play the odd Madonna and ABBA and Cher... sigh. Not so here in the Midwest, though. The staple here is trance. Dance music, they call it. Which means a lot of DJ intervention. Which means that I can't do all my bumps and grinds and tricks with the umbrella that I did back in Bombay.

Throw the DJ out!

(Well, maybe not, if he's that cute!)

Strange to think I'm a puritan like that. I like listening to Donna Summers and all the rest. I like to wear something slinky and sexy and boogey on the dance floor. And I think D-I-S-C-O is the only way to go. Disco complements gay men like no other brand of music can. And it's no just about the tune or the tone, but soooo much more about the attitude! An attitude that you can't find anywhere else. *sigh* Gosh - listen to me: 26 and I sound like a 70s hippie. *grin*

So Irish Coffee watched me dance to the closing credits of Studio 54 with a very bemused expression - I can only imagine SnowWhite's Stepmother's look of chagrin if he had been in the room - but I didn't really pay any attention. There I was, in my cowboy hat, jeans and nothing else, and wishing I could head out to a gay bar right then and there.

Halloween is coming up: I was all set to go as Zorro, but I have a good mind to do a skanky disco queen instead. :)

If I could read your mind, Love,
What a tale your thoughts could tell.
Just like a paperback novel,
The kind the drugstores sell.

SSIs (Singleton Slut Infections)

2007-10-06T15:35:00.000-04:00

SSIs (Singleton Slut Infections)

Somewhere in Season Three, Carrie muses, "How many men is too many men? Are we simply romantically challenged, or... are we simply sluts?"

I've been watching a lot of SATC as you can probably tell. They show about five to six episodes a week here, and even though it's not in any particular order of seasons, it's still fun. So I flop down on the weekends over at my friend's home and torture him while I imbibe the girls - he calls them "trollops". :)

Getting back to the episode I quoted, Miranda is all crushed when she discovers she contracted chlamydia from an old lover, and of course that ties in perfectly with Carrie's reflection of what makes a "slut", when she's really hoping to sleep with Aiden but Aiden seems more interested in cultivating her enough to "care" for her. (Of course, watching the episode with my friend just reinforced his notion of the SATC gals as "trollops", but I didn't really care.)

And then, there's us. The gay boys of the world. Who are often accused of being sluts. The stereotypical gay boys. Who are often looked down upon for being sluts by those other gay men, who hate being thus stereotyped and hence look down upon the gay boys who do have sex regularly. *ulp* I once had someone who I was dating read this blog and decide I wasn't the "right kind of guy" for him via sms, and of course that pissed me off big time. Because that kind of thinking really gets my goat.

So, today, I was online chatting with this really fun/ cute guy and after some time, the conversation somehow turned toward matters of sexual regularity. He asked me if I were a "playa", and of course I've had this conversation before with Natureboy, and I tell him of my views... which is basically, I don't think that someone who's a slut while he's a singleton is necessarily going to be disloyal and bad "relationship material". The two are not mutually exclusive, so says CT's Law.

So then, Online Guy says, "I agree. There have been times when I've hated the periods of long abstinence and wanted to feel a body next to me in bed, so I've gone and gotten some. *grin*"

*sigh* My reply? "Abstinence doesn't do a thing for me, dah-ling."

Aside from the psychological infections a Singleton Slut might have to deal with, there's also the physical kind. Getting back to the Miranda issue, I once had the conversation about Sexually Transmitted Infections with Natureboy: he educated me about crabs, and called me the "cleanest slut in town" if I didn't know what they were with my track record. So, I took pride in my achievement, but when I hastened to pass on the information to SnowWhite's Stepmother, he had the fits and refused to hear anything about the ghastly subject. *sigh* Crabs. The skank's handmaiden. Poor Miranda.

Over here in the midwest, being "clean" is very important in the online chat room. That question may not have come up too often in the Bombay chat room, but three times out of five, it does here where I am. Of course, as I've posted about earlier, a lot more gay men unfortunately seem to have HIV and thus seem to either be in the dark or lie about their actual "clean" status, but the point is - that question does come up online.

Makes it easier to hate them when they say they are, and it turns out three weeks later, they're not.

Multiple Choice Questions

2007-09-28T18:22:00.000-04:00

Multiple Choice Questions

Grad school has been busy, and that's why I haven't been as regular on this blog as I should have been. So that's why I got Wicked Witch of the West play mommy on me and reprimand me online. So that's why I got SnowWhite's Stepmother play ummm... wicked stepmother (?) on me and say nobody really reads this and I shouldn't bother. *sigh* And then I bumped into my Delhi Twin online, and we had a fun chat about some of the people we know in common, and what the whole rigmarole of dating is all about. Complicated stuff.

I've been reading about Michel Foucault a bit for class, and that bugger used to talk about something called the "de-centered self": basically, there are multiples "selves" to every person, and everyone flits among those "selves", so there's no real "one person". How does all that mumbo-jumbo apply here? Mmm... think about it. So many of us gay guys are so many different "selves", we're continuously looking for a different person to cater to each "self". And do we get shortchanged in the process? Well, what do you think?

I started thinking about all this, after I told Delhi Twin that I was (kinda) dating someone. "ONLY dating," I hastened to add, "Nothing more than that, mind you." So he was a bit perplexed about what I meant by that, and I filled him in on a conversation I'd had with SS the night before:

SS: "*sigh* So are you doing other people, besides this guy?"

CT: "O yea. I had this cute Irish laddie in bed last night - and this morning, of course."

So... that's it, I explained to Delhi Twin. "Dating" is when we're meeting up regularly, so it's more than a one-night stand, and we're getting all cozy and cute and cuddly, but we haven't had the Exclusive Chat (capital letters) yet. When that thorny issue comes up, and we pass through without getting singed, that'll be the "seeing stage". I remember having a similar conversation a year or so back with that other Delhi boy, Soulboy, and talking about what's a relationship and what's not, and so this was a strange deja vu happening here. And, very much like Soulboy, Delhi Twin was not very convinced with my logical reasoning. I see perhaps a pattern here: are Delhi boys (Soulboy and DT) per chance more old fashioned in how they see gay relationships, while Bombay boys (SS and myself) are more... umm... pragmatic? Save that thought for later...

So, DT referred to a common friend and opined that people who date/ conduct one-nighters on an extra-regular basis aren't really giving either themselves or their potential dates a good enough opportunity to evolve. It's always a situation of "Yea, he was cute, but the sex wasn't all that great, and hell, I can make up my mind after I meet candidate number 2 who's ringing my doorbell right now." And even though DT was talking about our mutual friend in this connection, that description could pretty well fit me too.

"So what happens is this," types in DT, "A year or two later, he calls me up and says, you know DT, candidate number 565 has really grown up quite a lot now, and he's soooo my type! And I keep saying, why don't you just stop?"

I tried to put on a defense for both the mutual friend (and myself) and argued that well, it's not easy to know when to stop. So, when you're looking, and they all seem to be turnips, you don't want to end up with a turnip, right? So... you keep looking.

But then, DT had this to say: "Is it that tough really? I mean, my fear is: when you find someone who is sexy and cute, and smart and well-settled, and everything you ever wanted, will you be able to understand it - or will you be so used to looking that you'll just ignore him? What will you really do, when you bump into Mr. All-of-the-above?"

*ulp*

"All of the above". An elusive term.

Past Addictions

2007-09-18T19:07:00.000-04:00

Past Addictions

I used to love this song a long time back when I was in college, and then I heard it again this morning after ages - and then, I realized, this was exactly the way I felt during November-December, when things were breaking down with the ex...

(Try to ignore the 'she' part! *grin*)

She says she hates to sleep alone, but she'll do it tonight.
She wants to grab her telephone, but she knows it ain't right.
So if he won't call, she'll survive, and if he don't care, she'll get by.
Climb into bed, bury her head, and cry.

From the beginning he was all anyone could have been.
They were delirious with love; they were certain to win.
Now he's breaking plans more and more, and he's leaving notes on her door.
Took a trip out of town, couldn't turn this one down; He said, "I guess I
should have told you before."

She says she feels like she's addicted to a real bad thing,
Always sitting, waiting, wondering if the phone will ring,
She knows she bounces like a yo-yo when he pulls her string,
It hurts to feel like such a fool.

She wants to tell him not to call or come around again,
He doesn't need her now at all the way that she needs him.
She's on the edge about to fall from leaning out and in,
And she don't know which way to move.

She wants to be fair; she couldn't say he was ever unkind,
But if she could bear to walk away, she thinks he wouldn't mind
'Cause he just keeps himself so apart and there's no one else in her heart,
So she's taking a dive from an emotional high and coming down hard.

She's determined to try, but she'll still give in when he gives her a call.
She'll ask herself why, but in the end it won't matter at all.
Sure, she could sit at home, stay inside and sleep alone with her pride
And as she walks out that door, she feels as weak as before with nothing to hide.

She says she feels like she's addicted to a real bad thing,
Always sitting, waiting, wondering if the phone will ring,
She knows she bounces like a yo-yo when he pulls her string,
It hurts to feel like such a fool.

Man, it feels GREAT to have those days behind me now! :)

Collars and Cuffs

2007-09-11T19:49:00.000-04:00

Collars and Cuffs

The other night, I'm over at the Lesbian Cowboy's place before heading out to a party together, and we're discussing Employment Opportunities at the li'l ole midwest town I'm at.

CT: "I mean, I would love to meet someone who's not in either the retail business or the food business. I mean, where the eff have all the cute white collar boys gone?"

LC, a bit flummoxed: "Huh, say that again?"

CT, trying to organize thoughts: "Well, in Bombay I used to date all sorts of people with fun careers. There were journalists with big newspapers and television channels, there were rich stockbrokers and investment bankers, some great designers, interiors and fashion, some smart guys working with NGOs even, and you know... basically, cute, sexy and qualified!"

LC bursts into laughter: "O you poor thing!"

CT: "Well, here all I get are college boys or Subway boys or Wal-Mart boys or boys waiting at bars! I mean, fine, if I get a truck-driver for the first time, I can tell myself it's a gay porno fantasy so just shut up and have sex and enjoy it... but here I've been meeting 5 truck drivers online in the past few days!"

LC falls off her chair.

This is actually a topic I've chatted on with Irish Coffee as well. He's one of the few gay men here I've met, who have what can be considered a proper Bombay-ishtyle white collar job. And he's got a sad story to tell. He says, the city I'm in is dying away and every smart gay man over the age of 30 moves from here - so, it's not really a surprise to him that I'm meeting truck drivers and Subway boys. O, and nursing attendants. A lot of 37-year old nursing attendants here.

While this story didn't really trouble me too much at the time - I mean, every city rises and falls, right? - I got into a conversation some time later with this really smart and sexy artist here. Artist, yes, but he gets his money from his night-job, that's playing bouncer at a bar. Ummmmm.....! And when he heard me moan about how I wanted white collar hunks, he got a bit perturbed and said that I was being snobbish. I shouldn't be bothered about what my guy did for a living, he said, I should simply let go and be attracted/ fall in love. It didn't matter that I was white collar; I should just go ahead and do blue collar/ hippie.

Well, sure, I can do a blue collar, but I doubt I would be happy enough to settle down with one. I know I've blogged about professions and which ones are 'sexy', and while I never really thought about that in so much detail, I know I probably won't be happy 'living' with a guy who drives trucks, or even one who's going back to college at age 38. True, there's the cultural thing: guys here go back to college even at age 40 sometimes, but there's also my culture - and I don't set up house with pizza boys. Sadly enough, that does make me a snob in America.

He Man sings

2007-09-05T21:07:00.001-04:00

PInk Panther/ Adam

2007-09-05T19:01:00.001-04:00

Pink Panther/ Adam

The video up there was shown to me by a friend here in the ole midwest, and I just fell off my chair laughing. O, and of course it brought back memories. I used to have this massive crush on He-Man in the good ole days and despite my yearning for that tanned hottie, I also nurtured this li'l hope that Teela and He-Man would finally get together. O, and the gay fantasies had tonnes of scope for Prince Adam, of course. :)

I mean, look at Adam - he's blond, he's wearing a wide-neck skin-tight white shirt which is sooo gay, with a dark pink velvet jacket, pink undies, pink stockings, and pink boots lined with fur. Hell, you don't need Youtube to scream out that it's all fabulously homosexual. Of course, when I was ten, I didn't really get all the subtext, but I still had all the usual moony thoughts about Adam finally being brave, and sweeping Teela off her feet and the two of them fcuking like rabbits in the palace. (Castle Grayskull is too sombre a place for humping!)

And now that I'm a seasoned ole slut, I can imagine Skeletor with his mad ole grin pumping poor li'l Adam against the walls of Snake Mountain. *cue for evil laugh*

What prompted this little trip down Nasty Nostalgia, was bumping into this guy (not the one who showed me the Youtube clip and loaned me DVDs of Best of He-Man) who has a fetish for cartoon sex. I think it's called hentai, actually. So there we were, he and I, and he confesses that he's got a thing for watching cute furry cartoon characters sport huge dicks and start going at it with each other. I'm intrigued, because at one level this is something new, and at another, I'm thinking of my own childhood fantasies involving He-Man (and also the GI Joes, hehehe!), and so he starts showing me some of his collection. It's pretty impressive, really, some of it has great artwork. It's like imagining Superman fuck Spiderman - it's got all the improbable positions - but with maybe a Kryptonian Dog and a Tarrantula head affixed.

The thing is, despite my childish trepidation, hentai gay porn is a big business. I remember, while going through one of my favourite gay websites, how many of the galleries featured cartoon wolves copulating with cartoon foxes. And no, that can't be part of a Gay Parent Education Programme, right?

CT, stunned: "Wow, you're telling me there are loads of people out there who go for cartoon porn?"

CartoonKid: "O yea. Feel me - I'm hard."

O, he was. :)

Positively Prohibited

2007-08-31T12:13:00.000-04:00

Positively Prohibited

The other day, I was chatting online with this really cute Italian guy, and making plans to visit him. He was tall, dark and handsome, with wavy black hair, a strong jaw, shining olive skin, worked out in the gym two hours a day five days a week, and then mentioned something about being ‘poz’ in the conversation. He got question marks from me on the chat window on that one.
So he drops the bomb: “O, I’m HIV+. Check it out. It’s on my profile.”

Well, he was right. He hadn’t really dropped any bomb, I’d just neglected to lift the covers and see what was in there, do my homework before venturing into uncharted territory. He’d plainly stated that he was HIV+ there, and had even mentioned it in the conversation.

For a second, I was stumped. I’ll admit it; I didn’t know how to react for a few seconds. I’ve never actually talked with a Positive person before, even though I’ve familiar with HIV and AIDS and taken the test. But no, I’ve never actually come across anyone who’s contracted it, and I’ve certainly not negotiated a hookup with anyone like that. But then, I didn’t want to be the stupid guy who treats him like a leper and drops him like a hot potato either.

So, I asked him how he’d got the virus and how long it had been.

Hunky Italian: “Well, I don’t have AIDS. I’ve been Positive now for about 10 years. My ex boyfriend of three years infected me.”

Of course, that wasn’t it. It turned out, that he suspected his ex of actually knowing about his own Positive status before having unprotected sex with him – something which completely inflamed me.

“What an @$$HOLE!” I exclaimed in my indignation and anger. I mean, here was this completely healthy guy who was just about 35 now, who looked simply fabulous, and he’d been infected by his boyfriend. I recognized how it went, of course, the line with boyfriends – “O, honey, I love you, and I’ve been safe and I would never suggest it if it weren’t safe, and you make me so hot that I wanna do it raw” – hell, I’ve been in that position myself, and regretted/ tormented myself about it later. And while I’d thanked God fervently that I hadn’t ended up in a horrible nightmare as a result of that capitulation, it was clear that this gorgeous Italian had. He was living that nightmare, and yet making do with what he had.

The thing is, back in Bombay, we see AIDS more as an African or Asian disease these days, or hell, maybe a Big City Thing. But it’s shocking how the American Midwest here seems to ignore the problem in its backyard. Some days back, there was a top guy online here who wanted to bareback, when I told him I didn’t have condoms with me. He realized I meant business when I told him to go away and put him in my ‘ignore’ list. (Or else, more likely, he badmouthed me as the prissy Indian bitch to everyone else on the chat room.)

And tonight, I just came back from meeting this young man, who’s all distraught because (a) he listened to his stupid boyfriend and had unprotected sex with him, and (b) he cheated on his stupid boyfriend with another ass and had unprotected sex with him, too. I’m glad he stopped me before we got onto the serious petting, because as you know, I don’t have condoms here either. O, in all probability, he hasn’t contracted anything from either the dumb boyfriend or the dumb hook-up, but he’s rightfully distressed now, and I played the good Gay Counselor and told him he needs to get himself tested ASAP. He says, I was better than Oprah, so maybe I should just chuck my degree programme here and hunt out the television channels. I can see the headline in the Washington Post already: Indian Fag Starts Gay Counseling Centre.

The thing is, I know that living with HIV is a much easier option now than it ever was earlier, with all the medication that’s out there. But it’s still an expensive and wasteful proposition, and I’m amazed why anyone would want to even risk it. I’m an idiot myself, I’ve been down that road, and I know that one moment of imagined intimacy is simply not worth those weeks or even months of self doubt and questioning later – or the years of regret afterward, as in the case of the cute Italian. I’m glad he’s living his life with dignity, hell, he’s even having sex these days (though protected), but o yes, there’s regret, plenty of it. And even though I know I probably sound all preachy right now, I’m simply stunned by this stuff here, because I’ve been confronted with all three cases in the time span of just a week…!

These cowboys down here need to get their caps on straight!

Seasoned Sizzler

2007-08-27T21:47:00.000-04:00

Seasoned Sizzler

So the other day, I'm having pancakes over at Irish Coffee's place, and we're discussing the kind of men we go for. He's a rice queen, I tease him, and curry's lately become his agenda. He doesn't deny it, but counters it with a "And you go for older guys!"

CT, flinging maple syrup in his general direction: "No, I don't! I'm just looking for cute, smart men who can talk sense and fcuk great. I can't help it, if the majority of those happen to be above 30! I wouldn't mind spooning a clever and sexy 25-year old, you know!"

Irish Coffee, not buying my argument: "Above 30, eh? Liar!"

So I think about it, and realize he may have a point there. He's 45. The Latin Lover is 38. The Manager is 32. The Serious Guy is 35. And the other two grizzlies I've been flirting with online are both on the other side of 40. It seems I do have a thing for older men.

Cut back to an online conversation with SnowWhite's Stepmother some days back -

CT: "So I met this really great guy who's sweet and amazing in bed, and don't worry, I'm not falling in love with him so soon. He's 45 and works as - "

SS cuts in: "Excuse me?"

CT: "What?"

SS: "How old did you say he was?"

CT: "O, he's 45, I said. So anyway, he's interested in markets and everything and - "

SS: "45."

CT: "Yea... And we went to this great Indian restaurant the other day and I help him choose what to eat, and he's really so much fun to talk with - "

SS: "45."

CT: "Ummm, yea. So we talked about the new trends in India with the car industry and the IT boom and what all of that means here - "

SS: "45."

CT: "You still haven't got beyond 45?"

SS: "Honey, I'll never ever go beyond 30."

Ummm, so there you go. Some people find it strange that a 26 year old would probably find a 45-plus attractive. Hell, I've posted a singularly idiotic theory about gay Shelf Lives here in the past - to which thankfully no one actually subscribes to!

So there are some guys who find it absolutely natural to fall head over heels in lust with older men. Diamond Choker Bachha, for instance, has always had a fascination for older men, and we've teased him tonnes about this fixation earlier. Somehow, though, while I always kinda found older men sexy, coming here to the midwest has seen this interest of mine peak. Maybe it's cuz very few of the clever, sexy men here are under 35 - despite this being a university town. *sigh* Not that I regret falling in lust with the Pepper Brigade - personally, I quite enjoy discussing international policy matters, what movie to watch, what sexual position to adopt, all in the same breath.

And, yes, the sex is great...!

Interlude

2007-08-26T19:16:00.000-04:00

Interlude

So, last night, I was walking with my date, and then at the entrance of one of the night clubs, this cute blond guy smiles, waves at me, and addresses me by my name. Oops. I have no idea who this guy is, not really sure whether he's gay or straight, if he's gay I must have chatted with him online but I don't recall who he is, and hell I have a date walking next to me so it doesn't look very sensitive of me to start chatting up someone new in front of him... So, I smile awkwardly, wave and move on, after my date.

Am I settling in here? Ummm... yes, I think. *grin*

Getting OUT There

2007-08-17T15:02:00.000-04:00

Getting OUT There

Last night I was online, and met a guy who was there in my LGBT Safety Orientation Session. I didn't recognize him at first, and when I finally did, it was kinda funny. I'd seen him at the gay bar the other night too, as he was the guy chatting with Sweet Older Guy, and I'd been more or less ignoring him then. He spoke to me all of once that night, asking "So are you having fun?", to which I'd replied in a not-very-amused way "What do you think?", and turned away. Somehow, one realizes how stupid one acts/acted only after the deed is done - and I guess it was the same with me. So I see this guy the next day at the LGBT session and then again online, and I felt terribly embarassed. Picture me red. He asked me why I hadn't been dancing that night, and I said because I didn't feel like talking to strangers. "You should get over that", he responded, and I kinda think he's right. I should.

So, tonight, I have a date (sorta) with a guy who might take me aboard his boat. No pun intended there. And this weekend, I'm travelling to a neighbouring city with someone I'd chatted with online ages ago. The emphasis really is to go out there and make some new friends.

Hell, I bought myself new sneakers at Wal-Mart; can friends really be that tough?

So, the LGBT session was chaired by this venerable ole dyke professor, and we all gawked at and admired her tattoos. She said, her marriage of 22 years before coming out was what she calls "doin' my hard time", and we all giggled at that - the lesbians in the room guffawed, and us gay guys tittered. I got chummy with the gal next to me, a Masters student in Fine Arts, and we've made plans to catch up next week, and maybe go dancing. She's from Cowboy Country and said she'd bring back a hat for me next time she went home. :) I'm torn between asking for the hat or the big snakeskin boots. Both would be great sex-aids.

Getting back to what the professor said, she encouraged us to walk into class on the very first day of our teaching assignments, and make it very clear that in addition to not tolerating any shit about non-attendance and racism, we would also not stand for any homophobic comments. "You don't have to come out, necessarily, but by saying that you won't tolerate homophobia in the classroom, you instantly make the queer students in the room feel safer, and the straight students feel a tad more sensitive."

It's an interesting concept, but I wonder how many queer students there really would be in a class of, say, 20, people. And, hell, even if I don't come out outright, just by making that statement, isn't it very clear where my orientation lies? (Or is that the closeted Indian in me talking?) When I first thought of coming here, I reasoned I'd probably be a bit more open about being gay than I was in Bombay - but this is Redneck Country here, fairly Christian Conservative, so maybe being too 'out and proud' is not such a great idea. And then, there are counter-arguments - like the other guy I chatted with online last night, who's living here and is out, and has been out for almost three years now. There're no maniacs with pitchforks outside his house - yet.

So this is still a grey area for me. And I'm not sure how I'm really going to react. Even if I don't come out and make a statement like the professor suggested, maybe I'll step in with a "NO Homophobia" discussion on a case-to-case basis in the classroom. If I do come out of the closet in the classroom, I'd probably rush right here to the computer lab to change the blog's name. :)

On a more personal note, I feel midly happy. The ex contacted me last night, having finally realized I was in the States, and wanted to meet up. I told him, I don't think it's a good idea. I'm glad I did so, and I'm proud of myself. No looking back here; the doors have closed.

In Need of a Refresher Course

2007-08-15T17:19:00.000-04:00

In Need of a Refresher Course

I realized keenly how much I miss Bombay and 'the family' last night. Decided to hit the gay bar in town with the Sweet Older Guy who'd been showing me around and helping me get acquainted with the place, and so I got all dressed up - sexy Benetton tee, skinny jeans and a great cologne. I was ready to rock and roll. So we drove down there all the way, and I showed my passport to the bouncer (o yikes, yes, my passport!) and we were admitted. I think I expected it to be something like the Bombay bars, or at least a bit more chic, but what I got was this long saloon-like room, with a stage in the middle which had a drag show in progress over there. Yep, my first drag show. And I'm proud I didn't wince.

Actually, now that I remember, my first drag show was at a GB party - divas dancing at Velocity, and SnowWhite's Stepmother and I doing our little tango at the back, quite mollified that there were a sizeable number of people watching us boogey too! :) Last night, however, I didn't dance. I downed three beers, enough to get me sodden drunk, as my drinking buddies will tell you, but there I was - immobile and zenlike at one end of the saloon, cradling my BudLite.

What struck me the most was how casually most of the guys were dressed - so many of them were in three-quarters/ cargoes, and so many of them were (blech) fat. And by fat, I mean American overweight, not good ole Indian 'fat'. Possibly, I felt all standoffish in my sexy svelte outfit, but then I also started to feel a bit out-of-place. And then there were the women - loads of them. You don't get to see so many lesbians at an Indian gay party, so I suppose I was a bit taken aback by the presence of all the lesbians. And my own puzzlement regarding lesbians notwithstanding, I did find the large presence quite encouraging - cute, even. Finally, some good-looking guys did stream in, all well-turned out, buffed and great dancers. And yet, there I stood, all wallflower (Benetton wallflower, nonethless) with my bottles of BudLite.

*yech*

I'm not really sure what happened to me last night. CT came a-cropper. Here I was, all gung-ho about the outing, but there I stood all morose and silent in a corner. My friend found somebody closer to his own age to chat with, and I felt even more neglected and sullen. Drama Queen elements began to rule, and I was all 'out of it'. A cute guy, all tall and blond curls and a great dancing body (I know, cuz I'd spied him dancing by himself on the other side of the room), came and stood next to me for ages, before he got bored at my silence and walked away. Hell, even my older friend tried to hit on him and I didn't. Somehow, I was in this weird "I don't want to hit on people, let them hit on me" mode, and though it felt terribly constricting I couldn't snap myself out of it. I thought I'd feel better if I just got on the dance floor, but my older friend doesn't dance, and I didn't want to approach a stranger. (I'm strange that way.) Bumped into Goatee Guy from online, though, and the ten minutes we spent chatting was fun, but then he had to leave. Finally, I decided I would, too. So, I asked my older friend to let me take my jacket from his car and I'd walk home. He agreed, and I think that hit my ego again.

When his friend opened his car for me, so that I could retreive my jacket, she asked me why I wasn't going home with him. "He's a great guy!" she crooned, a bit drunk. I didn't know what to say. That he hadn't asked me? That I didn't want to? I knew that, at least, was a lie. I'd planned on spending the night with him, while heading out earlier that evening. The thing was... somehow, things just hadn't materialized between us. He'd been so helpful showing me around town and helping me get settled in, that I wasn't sure there was much else to talk about between us. We'd had a hurried sexual encounter at his place last week, but hadn't managed to get together privately again - he never asked, and I was too shy to. Last night, before heading to the gay bar, we watched two episodes of Will & Grace at his home in silence. I'm not sure whether we have enough to talk about, though I know he's been very sweet and everything, and I'm a bit attracted to him. Somehow, the attraction element has... faded.

I'm not exactly sure what this post is about. On my late night walk back home, I told myself I'm not going back to the bar unless I find a date/ friend who dances. I miss my dancing friends, I miss my group. I miss Penguin, who slides down onto his knees to do a weirdly funny dirty dance with me; I miss Diamond Choker Baccha, who goes all diva-like with his cigarette; I miss Guppie who's as mad and frentic a dancer as I am; I miss Vivian, who pretends to be all uppity but then gets down to do the steps for the most crass Hindi songs; I miss Flyboy who gets the attention from all the gay men in a ten-mile radius; and most of all, I miss my soulmate, SnowWhite's Stepmother and his jerky dance movements and his attempts (and failures) to not get drunk, and our very own brand of 'dirty dancing'. *sigh*

I need to dance at this place. And I can't dance alone.

Christopher Columbus, anyone?

2007-08-11T17:16:00.000-04:00

Christopher Columbus, anyone?

Back to basics. Here I am, at school, and while it's not quite the "new cultural experience" that my friend the Traveller told me it would be, it's still... different. For starters, this isn't Bombay. *sigh* But before I get all droppy at the thought of that, as I have been actually for much of this past week, I shall stand right up to attention, and do a quick salut!

Not quite Disneyland, but what the hell...! So, anyway, what have I been doing since I got here?

1. meeting the other international students. (social me)
2. exploring town. (not bad)
3. house hunting. (groan)
4. going through a whole lot of alarming details about insurance and phone services. (gasp)
5. having sex. (grin)

Class doesn't officially begin till another week or so, and till then, there're more orientation rounds, more 'mingle and socialize' events, and probably more sexual episodes. Given the size of the town though (groan), exploratory activities of both the town and its gay inhabitants will not take very long. Not at my rate. I've decided that American burgers are terribly dry and yechy, so spicy food is the only way to go - enter buffalo chicken wings and Taco Bell. I've also decided to be frugal, seeing that I'm quite broke, really - classic 'Indian Student in Amreeka' Syndrome. I'm supposed to opening a bank account next week, and I'm wondering whether the bank teller will start guffawing in my face when I show him my measly travellers' cheques I need to deposit. (cringe)

Before leaving Bombay, I'd spoken very loftily to Guppie that I'd quite decided to give up One Night Stands, and focus on dating from hereon.

CT, artificial halo blooming overhead: "I mean, even if it's inconsequential dating, just meeting the guy for the first time or something like that - a proper date is a must. At least, a coffee date. And that means, no running home immediatelly after the coffee to get laid. No Sex On The First Date. That's my new rule. From here on, I'm Dating CT, no more ONS CT. What do you think?"

Guppie, smiling, and reaching over to prick that grotesquely growing halo: "You won't last a week."

Ummm... and I haven't. Met this really sweet guy who showed me around town and helped me to find my apartment, so we somehow ended up at his place on the second day. :) And this afternoon, after recuperating from a horridly debilitaing fever, I decided I needed some feel-good sex. Which I promptly got. Hell, it's the weekend here, so cut me some slack! Especially, since this place doesn't have much of a nightlife beyond Taco Bell! (OK, so I exaggerate to serve my own ends, yawn yawn.)

Next week, I have the cute Chemistry undergrad and the Spanish grad student signed up. :)

2007-08-10T07:50:00.000-04:00

Testing, testing....

So Long, Farewell

2007-08-04T14:35:00.000-04:00

So Long, Farewell

There's a sad sort of clanging
From the clock in the hall
And the bells in the steeple, too
And up in the nursery
An absurd little bird
Is popping out to say coo-coo
(Coo-coo, coo-coo)

Regretfully they tell us,
But firmly they compel us,
to say goodnight...
To you

So long, farewell,
Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight
I hate to go and leave this pretty sight

Hmmmm... I do seem to have a Sound of Music hangover...

Gay Calcutta Chromosome

2007-08-01T13:54:00.000-04:00

Gay Calcutta Chromosome
- With Due Apologies, Mr. Ghosh

Back in the homeland, and this time I've been missing Bombay from Day One. The good things have been regular phone calls from SS and Vivian to keep me going, chats with Natureboy about Sex and The City, and some good ole-fashioned hogging! (I can imagine SS pursing his lip with a "I'd be horribly mean to you, but then since you're going away...!" whimper) The men, however, have been few and far in between.

Calcutta is not famous for its cute gay men - the author of this blog being the notable exception.

Somehow, with the barrage of Sushmita Sens, Rani Muherjees, Bipasha Basus, and even the sluttier Koena Mitras and Tanushree Duttas, the Bong men were left far, far behind, so far behind that no one ever stopped back to look for them. The Bong men, we're just usually the smart and witty ones, the arty-farty ones, who totally lack in the Body Beautiful department. I got hit on online by an otherwise great Bong chap this evening, and when I told him he wasn't my sexual type, he responded with a o-so-hurt "Aa, so you prefer the brawny hunks, eh?" - to which I replied, yes, Delhi's Jats and Punjabis have always done it for me, in a way that hardly anyone else has.

(O, ok, so there was the Mac sailor-boy I'd had just before leaving Bombay. O, and the Gujarati tall boy who liekd getting down and dirty. O, and even the hunky Marathi guy in his Andheri East flat. Oops, and the Sindhi cutestuff in Khar...)

But the point is, with the notable exception of Salsaboy in Delhi, I've never been really attracted to another Bong. The so-called Bong Connection has never happened with me.

So yesterday evening, I went out on a great date with this Multani Punjabi fellow, a dying species I know, and we had vodkas and beer and chatted nineteen to the dozen. The morning before that, I was playing wicked games with a Sindhi muscle-mary I somehow managed to find in the by lanes of the Calcutta chatroom. Tomorrow, I have a coffee date with a NYC Bong boy - but no, since he's spent 24 of his 34 years out of India, I don't consider him a Bong in any sense of the term. Hell, most of my childhood buddies would hardly consider me a Bong. SS for one, though no childhood friend of mine, habitually says I have no "cul-chaar" (culture), as befitting a true Bong. (I like my sex much too much, and I have no fashion sense, he says. :)

So, no, I haven't had much luck with the Bengalis in the city. According to a survey, Bongs account for only 45% of Calcutta's population, and even with those statistics, its gay inhabitants are by and large unpalatable. There was this hunk who buzzed me on Manjam's chatroom, and after ogling his pecs for five minutes, he told me he was Punjabi, recently moved to the city. Then there was another Salt Lake inhabitant who is a Bombayite, desperately seeking doable men. After a brief chat with him, I realized that the IT and Call Centre Boom in Calcutta has thankfully aided its gay fauna - we now have cute men from Delhi, Gurgaon, Bombay, Hyderabad and Bangalore in the City of Joy, all trying their very best to spread some gay cheer.

With four days left till I leave Calcutta, and only one sexual escapade since I arrived, I'm certainly cheering from the front rows here! :)

Raindrops, Rose and Bombay Dreams

2007-07-28T06:21:00.000-04:00

Raindrops, Rose and Bombay Dreams

This post was supposed to be written last night, but by the time I returned home from my white wine-and-telly farewell date with Guppie, I was a bit tired and decided to hit the sack since I had an early morning flight to catch (well, 10 am is early morning, isn't it?!). And here I am, back home in Calcutta, feeling a bit misty-eyed at my departure from Bombay - in case you missed the point, someone called this a 'ditsy bottom' blog many months ago.

In keeping the misty-ditsy mood, therefore, I thought I'd list some of the glorious events/ moments/ things I'm going to miss about Bombay... three years went by so terribly fast, it seems now, and here I am, aching to head back as soon as I can...! In no particular order then, either chronologically or emotionally, these are a few of my favourite things...

Chimneypot and I would sit at the Phoenix Mills Barista and talk for ages... she's bring her blind dates there, and I'd bring mine - and sometimes, we'd dump them and meet each other. :) The coffee-guy was very bewildered...!
Gateway of India - anytime, with anyone. It's simply gorgeous. Ditto for the Taj Hotel - of course, I've only been in that second one for conferences and hotel room sex. (The hotel room sex was better, by far!) :)
Driving down Marine Drive at topnotch speed, after watching a late-night movie show at the INOX theatre at Nariman Point - it was amazing when it started raining sheets this one time, I mean I know it wasn't the smartest thing in the world then to keep on speeding but it was so much funnnnnnnnn!
Carter Road, Bandra - another Monsoon memory - I called up SnowWhite's Stepmother, and we went to catch the rains and the wet boys at the Cafe Coffee Day. It stopped raining as soon as we got there, but the weather (and the boys) was quite unbelievable. :)
My first GB party - eventful only because it was my first party in Bombay, and marked the one and only time I picked up/ got picked up by a post-party stranger in the city. I don't remember his name now, but I do recall that he lived in Malad (I got dropped home, no worries!) and that I serviced him thrice (one that night, twice in the morning), and that I never saw him again. (grin)
The first time I met Vivian - the Barista at Worli Seaface (O, it's shut down now), we sparred verbally, then made plans to have a sex-filled weekend at Lonavla, and then canceled the plans - instead, we became amazingly good friends. :) I remember I walked him to his clothes-iron-wallah, after the date. :)
Another Monsoon vignette - driving past Worli Seaface and the waves crashed right onto the road - a gorgeous sight in beautiful Bombay.
Buying the brass nameplate for my second home - I remember what a thrill it was, getting my name engraved up there.
Setting up home has always been thrilling for me. So I remember buying those cane lamps and stools at Bandra, the cushion cover fabrics from Fabindia...
Coming out to my first Bombay flatmate, the Punjabi one I used to have a crush on. I told him, while we having a drink at Toto's, and he responded with such a natural "And so?" that made me want to hug him then and there. :) He's no longer in the city now, but I wish him all the very best.
Mmm.... o, of course, my coming out to Chimneypot. Again, at the Phoenix Mills' Barista, over coffee and cigarettes.
Chimneypot, me and another friend I will call the Mad Journo taking long and frequent afternoon breaks cuz we were all so fed up with the job - the three of us sitting side by side on the bench in the middle of the green space, and I was inevitably in the middle, not smoking, while the two of them puffed away to glory. We discussed our quarter-life crises then - or so we thought that was it then. :)
My first meeting with SS, of which I have already posted.
Riding pillion on the bike with Diamond Choker Baccha in Goa, singing "I believe in miracles" so loudly, while racing Guppie and SS who were on the other bike.
Singing karaoke with SS at Goa - complete with head shaking and dramatic hand movements, we did Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive so magnificently that the whole room full of drunken beach bums started applauding! :) O, and our only other karaoke session before that - at Jazz By the Bay, the two of us sang Pretty Woman quite horrendously, but Guppie and the Penguin still clapped for us, bless them! SS says, our real song is Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, and I agree. :)
A candle-lit dinner with First Bombay Ex. He came over, lit some candles, and we sat on the window-ledge, eating cake and necking. Some of the next door neighbours were peeking out and wondering why we were sitting out there with all the candles, so I started singing Happy Birthday To Me very loudly. (grin)
New Year's Eve with the ex, Boy - I was waiting outside for Chimneypot to join us, when I got an sms from him inside, saying "I'm falling in love", so I went in and we locked lips for quite a long time. :) O, and there was this time, just before he was supposed to leave Bombay when I sms-ed him that I was missing him - and he showed up at my doorstep just twenty minutes later. Mmmm... and no, just because I'm counting these as my good Bombay memories, doesn't mean I don't think he's a losah. :)
Dirty dancin' with SS. We do this every GB party - and we're just amazing at it. And yes, some people do think we're a couple because of that, but what-the-hell, it's too frikkin' great for us to care! hehehe
Goa with the Straight Guy - it was fun, in a way quite different than with the gay boys. :) We took the bike across several beaches, and even down to Panjim and Old Goa, and the old church was breathtaking! Beef Chilli fry and Bibinca at Soussa Lobo's was awesome!
Guppie's house parties - they're the best! And Guppie is Mr. Fixit - he's the one who dispenses all the important practical advice, Mr. Dependable. And yes, I love his new 42" TV.
Parsi food at Fort. I'm quite an expert on all the Parsi and Irani restaurants in the area, and I'm an avowed afficiando of the mutton cutlets, the berry pulao, the chicken salli, the caramel custard and the lagan nu custard. And, my lunches with SS at Brittania at Ballard Estate - two gay boys admiring the old-world charm and hogging on the berry pulao. :)
Chocolate tarts at Piccolo, also at Fort - Natureboy and I have bonded in a whole new way following our mutual discovery of the place.
This freaky movie called Madagascar which I saw with the Penguin - and the band of wily animated penguins there made us both split with laughter, so that's where the Penguin got his blog alias from.
O, and I hafta say here: I L-O-V-E the salad spreads at Just Around The Corner - of course, as SS and Vivian will tell you, my 'salads' are anything but healthy here, heaped as they are with eggs, bacon, beef, mayo, potato, pineapple, corn, and everything else least connect with the concept of Fat Free Food.
My Going Away Party - thanks, all you guys. :) Though, a hot Andheri hunk popping out of a wet cake would not have been unappreciated....! :)

Testing Times

2007-07-26T12:40:00.000-04:00

Testing Times

Some weeks ago, at a party at Guppie's place, I asked Famous Activist Guy (FAG) about places I could get an HIV test done. I'd been thinking about going in for one for ages, especially given my rampant sex life, and so here I was - thinking that with all the leaving etc, this was as good a time as any. Of course, I was quite the silly ninny, so I informed all my closest friends and begged them to accompany me. And then I asked FAG, "Don't really mean to make this sound like a Kitty Party thing, but the boys and I are interested in getting ourselves tested. Where do you suggest?"

God bless him, FAG immediately came up with a list of names, but his favourite was the PSI Centre at Cotton Green. Of course, SnowWhite's Stepmother heard the words "Cotton Green" and promptly declared that he was going nowhere near that (admittedly boondocks) part of town, and would only accompany me if we went to the posh Lilavati Hospital in Bandra.

And while I was weighing the cons of paying through my nose for a HIV test at the Lilavati (it's more of a boutique hotel than a hospital, really), FAG confounded me further by saying that the PSI conducted 'rapid tests', which yielded the results the very same day - while the Lilavati didn't, and apparently, the wait for the results the next day can be quite a scary situation.

So, here I was, thoroughly confused and confounded, when Natureboy came to the rescue. And yesterday, the two of us went to this private clinic at Nariman Point (not too far from where I work) after lunch and bared our arms for the lady and her syringes. Natureboy squealed his outrage ("She doesn't need two bottles of my blood! A drop will do, the vampire!") and I was surprisingly stoic. By six thirty that evening, we had our reports in hand and went to catch the train back home.

OK, so it wasn't as easy as that.

Natureboy and I pondered, on our way to the clinic, how we would deal with the outcome of the test. We promised each other that we'd be there for each other even if one of us were 'positive'. Then he looked at me, and said, "We are going to tell each other our results, right?" I couldn't help laughing at that one.

But it's true, that for a lot of people, getting an HIV test done is one of supreme privacy. Some of my closest friends have had themselves tested without informing anyone else, and the rest of us only got to know of it much later. FAG was actually quite surprised that I was asking around for a companion as publicly as I was. And though I told everyone (and myself) that I was doing this just for the heck of it, to be politically correct or something, I must confess that I didn't quite regard it as a picnic either. I wanted a friend with me, possibly because I was *gasp* shy, possibly because I was *gasp* nervous, and possibly because I didn't want to think of how it would be if I did receive a 'positive'. Heaven knows, I haven't exactly been Bombay's safest gay man, and even though I value the use of a condom, one tends to get a little... carried away in the course of pleasure. The balance between sexual pleasure and sexual safety is never an easy one, and like most gay men, I had given in and indulged in what some may call risky/risque activities, telling myself, "O well, if you want to be 100% safe, you might as well just sit at home, watch porn on the computer and jack off!" - which is true, by the way. A lot of gay men do that, get stupid like me, and say that whatever they're doing is a justifiable gamble with minuscule odds of contracting anything, so... bombs away!

So yes, I was a bit nervous about the test. Not knees-knocking-knuckles-clenching nervous, no, but a bit too breezy perhaps. I had silly thoughts springing in my head on our way back in the evening to collect the report: stuff like, "O, if I'm 'positive' here, I shall have to call up that guy I've scheduled for kinky sex tonight, and tell him I can't be quite as naughty as I'd like to be, because I have HIV...!" Of course, I never told Natureboy any of this during the cab-ride. Wisely, I kept my mouth shut - perhaps, like I ought to have done, during some tightrope-walking activities I'd indulged in earlier, but we shall not go down that road now...

I survived the test, though. Both Natureboy and I got our 'negative's and we were happy. Grinning from ear to ear. We made fun of the clinic and cursed the blood-collecting doctor some more, and got on to our separate suburban trains for home. Before leaving the clinic, however, I'd gone in to take a leak, and in my usual ditsy behavior, stood at the urinal, looked up at the bright tubelight overhead and said aloud, "Thanks, God!"

And yes, to celebrate, I kept my kinky date that night. :)

The Object of My Eternal Affection

2007-07-24T15:05:00.000-04:00

The Object of My Eternal Affection

Last night, I dropped SnowWhite's Stepmother to the airport, for his month-long Europe trip. Since I'll have left Bombay by the time he comes back, it was the last time we'd see each other for a long time. So, yes, it was hard. SS had refused to let me accompany him, because he was afraid the two of us would end up bawling at the airport, but we didn't. We went through the whole thing in a very non-bawling fashion, but on my way back home I did feel terribly alone and empty, knowing we wouldn't be having one of our loooong late-night phone chats for quite some time.

I first met SS almost two and a half years ago... at a GB party. A common friend introduced us, but I was too hung up on Natureboy whom I was seeing at the time, and even though he wasn't in town at the time, I wasn't really interested in meeting strange new gay guys. Then, a couple of weeks later or so, I met him again - for coffee - this time, through a blog buddy of mine, who turned out to be his best friend (small world!). We sipped coffee, decided there were no mutual sparks of attraction at all, and parted ways on amicable terms. I don't remember our second meeting though, or how we kept on meeting regularly... such that we quickly became good friends.

It was strange, that our friendship really started blooming after Natureboy and I broke up. That was a hard time for me, and somehow SS was there at the right time. It was also such a weird coincidence, that SS was dating a college friend of Natureboy at the time. It seemed so funny to both of us, that his relationship with the college friend took a progressively downhill path, just as my thing with Natureboy had. We joked, it must be the fault of that particular college they attended, that breeds these strange gay boys, and I laughed that his love life seemed to be following mine exactly, albeit with a one-month lapse.

There were other men here and there, in between. We grew closer, and also realized how different we were, chalk and cheese. I was the guy who had sex with multiple guys, he was the one who believed in the "once a month is good enough" rule. He was the one with an exceptionally great eye and appreciation for style and beauty and elegance, whereas I was less inclined to the arts. I was the jabbermouth, while he valued softspoken people so highly. And yet, despite all that, we became the best of friends. We realized, despite all the differences, we were both silly gay men who longed for love and companionship. We each wanted that Mr. Right, and we joked that we managed to jeopardize our relationships faster than we could build them. And we each spouted such great relationship advice to the other, which was never followed - by either of us. :)

O, we had our bad moments too. Somewhere along the way, we drifted into a horrible impasse where he thought I never listened to anything he said, and I thought he never gave me enough credit for what I did say. So there was this decision to part ways. We stayed apart for almost three months... and then, I decided to write him an email saying why I felt so hurt the way I had. He answered back immediately, saying he was sorry, and then I made my apologies in turn. We'd missed each other so terribly that we knew we wanted to resolve our differences, and I'm glad that we did. I told him, I'd try to be a bit less of the rattletrap egoistic prick that I am, and he promised to take me a bit more seriously. O yes, I cried on the phone when we made up. :)

SS saw me through my relationship with the Boy - both while it was waxing and while it was waning. He helped me through a very bad phase when I didn't know what was happening in the relationship, and helped me to not let myself completely break down. Finally, towards the end, he helped me realize that I was so desperate to hold onto a relationship - any relationship - that I was letting myself get flattened emotionally by someone who had obviously lost interest in me a long time ago. And he gave me the strength, however indirectly, to let go. A month after the break-up, SS sms-ed me, "I never thought he was right for you. You deserve much better." I sent him back a smiley, and a retort, saying that if people got wind of his being so nice to me, he'd lose his reputation. *grin*

And that's the great thing about my best friend, SnowWhite's Stepmother. Despite all the remarks about fat people and poor people and tacky people and his fickle fickle nature, he is so clearly the softy in the gang. I gave him his blog-name here, because, as I explained to him, "You have everything - you're young, successful, talented, good-looking - everything! And yet, you stand in front of your imaginary mirror and do the whole 'Mirror, Mirror, on the wall...' bit, imagining there's some wily Snow White afoot, who will ensnare what you want and deserve, and I don't understand at all why you do that...!" I don't think he does, either. We sit back and watch Sex and The City dvds together and sigh for Carrie, and he tells me how he hates Mr. Big, but I know he's in love with his own Mr. Big and is waiting for him to show up. Both of us believe in that "all-consuming, can't-live-without-you" love Carrie clings onto, despite our cynical protests to the contrary, and both of us wait, knowing it'll come by, albeit a bit later than the 'sooner' we'd expected at first...

Because we are, without doubt, the Finest and Nicest Young Men in the City!

(Take a bow, baccha - they're clapping for us.)

Harry Potter and the Treasure Trail

2007-07-22T03:58:00.000-04:00

Harry Potter and the Treasure Trail

Even as Friday night drew to a close, I finished reading Harry Potter Version 6.0, "HP and the Half Blood Prince". Satisfying end, and Madame Rowling really does know how to hook her readers, even though the entire 'Harry gives up Ginny to save her from his Mission' thing seemed very Spiderman, and yes, I'm keenly anxious to see whether Dumbledore does resurface and whether Snape (SO cool!) really is a good guy if wolf's clothing... But I haven't booked my copy of HP Version 7.0, "HP and the Deathly Hallows". O no, I'm actually even more anxious to see the film avatar of HP Version 6.0, rather than Book 7.0.

And, o, of course you know why. Daniel Radcliffe is quite simply... yummy.

I am tempted to make a "wand joke" here, but I'll pant it out instead. The fact is, good li'l 'arry has turned into quite a Brit stud muffin as of late, and I for one would looooove to get some private lessons in 'Charms' class from him. *snigger* So there we were, sitting in the theatre, watching the newly released "HP and The Order of the Phoenix" movie, and Vivian and I were gushing each time Daniel turned his gorgeous butt/face/crotch here and there. We like our men of action to be in action, Vivian and I, and we're quite vocal in our appreciation of the same.... much to the chagrin of the poor Penguin, who was seated between us, simply mortified by our ooohs and aahs.

CT: I wonder what it would be like to get a blowjob under an Invisibility Cloak.

Vivian, squeals: OMG, that Draco Malfoy is soooo hottttttt!!!!

CT nods head: Quite the Bad Boy attraction. I can easily see myself in detention with him! *wicked giggle*But OMG, even Ron is quite nice, na? The gangly Brit boy type, isn't he?!

Vivian: O shush, look, Harry's bending over now -

CT, after a couple of moment's deliberation: You know, I think, after losing some pounds here and there, even Neville Longbottom would be quite the -

Penguin, growling: O, for goodness' sake, is there anyone in the movie the two of you wouldn't like to have sex with?! You're making more noise than the giggly pack of girls behind us!

CT and Vivian , looking back sharply at the said competition of giggly girls: Bitches!

Penguin's discomfiture notwithstanding, it was quite clear that Vivian and I were going to go on lusting (loudly) after Daniel. I'd seen a pic of him on the cover of DETAILS magazine, in his new scruffy look, shirt unbuttoned down the front, and of course it was very clear that he was trying to steer clear from his goody-goody image. And then, everyone knows about Daniel stripping for 'Equus', and that's hardly prescribed behaviour for Goody-Goody Boy Wizard, is it?

(Unless he's got the kind of Wand we boys like...)

Nopes, the fact is, Daniel is enjoying doing a Britney here. When Britney came out with her slutty look post the first album, she got the attention she wanted - the li'l girl meets hot whore cross. And here you have Daniel doing his thing - shirtless, with obvious attention paid to the pecs and biceps, and in a gorgeous pair of fitted jeans (which do come off!)... he's making pedophiles of us Sensible Gay Men who swore we'd never lust after anyone younger than 20...

There's little hope of staying true to that resolve, as I imagine some brand new adventures involving Harry Potter's Treasure Trail...

Enough!

2007-07-20T15:23:00.000-04:00

Enough!

Clearin' this house out of joy
that I borrowed
from back in the day...
Threw away my old clothes,
Got myself a better wardrobe...
I got something to say!
I'm through with the past,
Ain't no point in looking back...
The future will be...
And did I forget to mention that
I found a new direction,
And it leads back to me!

I'm spinning around,
Move out of my way...
I know you're feelin' me 'cuz you like it like this!

I'm breakin' it down...
I'm not the same...
I know you're feelin' me 'cuz you like it like this!