Winters.

Cozy cuddles and lazy risings, Warm quilts and hot tea. Oh winters how miss you And how much you, home !!

Bud.

That bud, winter born Now crippled and shriveled Tells a story of stubbornness.

Mosquito.

How could they not write for you, A poem ? On your humdrum, your marching song, And your crimson crippling death.

Almost barren Almost sold This heart of mine, spent.

There were no takers For when I offered And now I don't have That heart and that courage.

The receding winter Pulls my skin to alarming shivers. For another year goes by, For many a lovers wasted. For love which never blossomed.

I have a business plan in mind !!!

Gay, Sexual..and a pain in your ass.

I’m gay, so what is your problem? Ever since I can remember, I have mentally stripped men of their clothes when I see them. If I know you and you are a man I must have already painted a naked picture of you in my head.

I’m gay. I’m quite sure of it and I’m quite gay about it. Men and their crotches are fascinating. Why wouldn’t they be ? I’m not saying there is nothing else about a man that fascinates me, like his brain or abilities. Or probably, I am saying that.

What is your problem? I like hot women as they attract hotter men. I like hot men because they are hot and men. I like fair men. I like older men. I like those who are tall and toned. I don’t like men like me but I love myself. I like men who are discreet. They are more man-ish. I don’t like effeminate men. I don’t like over dressed men. I like those who refuse me more than those who pursue me. I sometimes eye married men.

I’m gay and how. Penises are what I think about all day. I drew one once on a paper with a body attached and got caught. It was a pretty good sketch for a child of my age. I was 14 then and oh how gay!!! Straight men get to draw all these women on paper at school – some against a sunrise scenery and some on dunes carrying water pitchers. Why couldn’t we ever draw men? And that too in the nude? I like men but I think women are easier to draw.

I had 30 boys in my high school class and I had touched atleast 15 of them, had seen their privates. They would do the same. Those were happy times with lesser judgements. Then something happened and everybody kept to their pants forgetting everything. I liked high school for the reason you now know.

I’m a very sexual man and why is that a problem? I’m awesome at my work and will be famous soon. I don’t wish to have sex with children, the nostrils of a bullock or a women. Just men of a legal age and in fact, the older ones.

I’m gay and a pain in your ass? You are probably jealous or are gay too. So, please, sort your issues out. Let me live.

The Fight for Invisibility

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

 

They told me I was different. I felt different too. But they also told me that I was an image of you, and you have many manifestations – some odd 30 million forms and kinds. I certainly believed that I’m at least one of them. But today these, them made by you make me feel like an artifact worth display and open to unjust criticism. They say I have absolutely no use for the society and its evolution.

You, the god made call me a "Homo." That is exactly where my identity starts and ends for you like there is nothing more worth elaborating about me. As if me and my kind are a single product of manufacturing with no features what so ever. My achievements and my accomplishments come much later (if at all) and my sexuality is being given away first as if in a warning. I do not have a problem with my sexuality coming first and then me, but I think you got the priority wrong. I am a minority category and thanks to you I feel exotic in my own home in a not so good way.

Today I am an item of undesired and wrong prejudices. Some tell what is right for me and some tell me what is wrong.  Some adore me today like a naive child, fallen or worse in such pitiful emotions they view me, the kinds triggered by a special child. I see such remorse and concern in the eyes of my loved ones. It comes across that today they feel sorry for what I am. Today they are made to feel that my own being isn't good for my existence. I cringe and I feel low.

You have gone to the extent of calling me names and by default I now have a criminal record. Your crimes are concealed and my virtues are soiled. 

Do you know what I never wanted? I never wanted to come out on streets with my kind bearing colorful flags and trumpets. I never wanted to be ridiculed for this little part of me, which is not a commonality. I never wanted to be a voice screaming and shouting for acceptance. I wanted to be invisible. Invisibility and the quest of it is what made me this feisty hurt canine. A private life is what I wanted with a man of my choice. To go out and come back without raised eyebrows. To share a bench in a park with my better half comforted by a spot on his shoulder. I wanted to live with no liabilities to “come out.”  Foolish me that sometimes jokingly I even entertained the idea of my parents finding me a boy and arranging the union. I wanted to be as invisible as the street cat. To eat, sleep and grow old just like the others but with a man consensually.

Some years back with the high court ruling I thought that recognizing my rights and decriminalizing my idea of love would make my kind and me invisible in the coming years- invisibility not of the kind that didn’t matter but like similar flowers of a single garland. A tulip in a field of tulips. No difference and discrimination between me and my lover and the couple next door.

Today you have insulted me enough. You took away what you gave me, which in the first place was never yours. A thief and a scoundrel you are. You looted me under the pretence of societal morals and ethics and trapped me in the technicalities of words. You stripped me off my soul and you enraged me.

I would not say that I wasn't sad but I feel revengeful and conspiring more than ever before. This visible fight for my invisibility is more throbbing than ever before. My heart is wounded and my veins ruptured. I shall rub it against the coarseness of your hypocrite standards to not let the bleeding stop for it reminds me of you and how you wronged me. Now you have given me a new purpose. The cultural weave that you blame on me to have loosened and bleached, I shall reinstate. I shall be human about it with all emotions in place. You, in the coming days of historic characteristics will see me cry, howl, screech and scream. I shall bend down if I have to and will snatch if needed. But you will never see me give up or weak.

I shall have a lover of the same sex. I shall foster a family in your seeming autocratic regime and hope the adopted offspring are gay too. I will be the most functional and focused criminal you have ever seen. I will kill you by my kindness and shall hurt you with my words. I in all my senses welcome your decision as a competitive game. A was making love to a man when you passed the "judgment" and only making love more to other men will get me through this.  This double standard and hypocrisy shall end before I do and I will make sure that my gay children and grandchildren will not have to see this. Quarter life wasted in coming out and fighting myself and probably another quarter to fight you. 

My fight for invisibility will be more visible than ever before. I know I will win. So good luck you and all the best. 

Bare Living.

Fictitious warriors of the wet season,

These survivors of a lonesome war, within and on the outside,

They struggle with a silent cry.

These, menacing men with sex on their minds,

Hopeless cherubs of a failed institution- the institution of love.

Some made to give up and some never bothered with.

Brothers united in incest.

Brother and brothers, some sisters and some mothers.

But all men.

These fictitious warriors, relentless and sexual.

They move on, conquest after conquests.

Defeated and fallen and yet again they rise.

They are me and I’m them

Breathing, living and gasping.

Meanwhile in a parallel Universe.

Dear Mom and Dad,

                              I tried a lot to get myself to talk to you in person but I failed in courage and guts. I’m 25 and I feel I’m living a lie, and I was. A lie that forbids me to be genuine in front of you. A lie which if lifted might scar my friendships and distance the dear ones. I should have done this a long time back. But till it seeps into you, I’ll be there while you decide to accept or not accept it. I shall wait till the verdict is out.Last few months have been extremely painful and anxiety filled– sleep and hunger depriving me. Suppressing the essence of me, muffing me to silence. Imagine what its like not to breathe, to be devoid of oxygen.

Shocking and shattering as it may sound to you, I’m straight.

I have written and rewritten this letter every week since a year now but never dared to post. It was never good enough and the words seemed always the worst assortment. But I guess they will never be apt and convenient. I have been in touch with my heterosexuality since quite a while now but always entertained it as a phase. I thought it would fade, thought it would rub off me.  I thought I’d also be normal. Everyday of my life since I can remember, it felt as if God was picking on me.  All those years of divine abandonment when you thought I had become an atheist was probably due to this. Why did God make me different? A question I’d ask myself day and night.

I couldn’t get in terms with my heterosexuality. I had no one to discuss it with. It was just me, and a foolish me. Cautious in my ways and conscious in my actions is how I always lived. I guess I was always attracted to girls. I’d look at them slyly while in a group, peeking. But could never have the courage to be out and be myself.

It’s not like I didn’t try. I did try to date two guys Alex and Manish. I tried my best to be like them but I couldn’t. I tried everything I could to not disappoint you, to not disappoint myself, but I failed. But that was a time when I was full to the brim in self-loathing. I hated myself for who I was. I thought of myself less than the others and had no motivation to live. I had secret affairs with these women that had suicidal repercussions. But now things are different. I have come to an understanding with myself and I think of me a fool to have not accepted myself the way I was. I love myself and do not think of me a criminal. I’m a good human and a kind heart, something that you had wished for me to be when I grow up.

I cannot and do not want to change anything about my sexuality, as it has made me, me. I wish to settle with a girl and have a family and I really hope you stand tall and proud besides me that moment. I hope you are there when I raise my unusual family. I hope you support me. I might have shattered some of your dreams but trust me I am that same boy, your son. I hope your understand what I have tried to put in this letter and it is my heart in there. Mom and Dad I must have caused a puncture or two in your heart but I hope you will come over it. I am ready to wait. Take your time, no matter how long. I will explain and re-explain if you are ready to listen. I hope you call me Mom and I hope you see me in the same light Dad. I’m finally happy and living life.

Your clumsy son

******* 

Plead.

Take a chance on me and hit me with it then 

This magic wand of love, or whatever it is.

But do sprinkle some dust and add the effect.

Make me a believer, dazzle me.

My disposition makes me an easy target.

My cloudy mind so easy to paint.

Dab on me, Stab on me,

Paint some color,

Ooze some blood.

Show me I’m alive

Show I can be saved.

Show me I’m worth saving.

If all these while you do fall for me,

Be not bewildered or upset,

If I reciprocate not.

For it’ll be your fault alone,

You my tamer, you my druid

Brew me to perfection and take your time

But not too much for I’m too impatient

And I like too many things.

Therapy.

And when I'm sick today,
They are not letting me out,
On a sympathetic road,
Or just by the window.
To catch in the air,
A grain touched by you,
Or just steal a sniff,

Of your feel in the air.
The musk suspended
after you pass by.
And after three days they wonder,
"Why aren't the medicines working ?"
How could these- "the manmade" work
Without me drenching,
In your infectious elixir ?
Or derive from you,
The oxygen to heal me.
You are essential in ways,
Mysterious to the science of allopathy.
You my darlings are above understanding
Logics and reasonings.
You are to be felt,
And I'm being refrained.
Three days and counting.

The 9:40 Slow.

That stranger in the train,

A pretty face and a handsome stature.
Always seeming casual, yet cautious.
While watching me and being watched-
An impish game of glancing, pretending and hiding.
The 9:40, our playground,

And in what harmony we were always there-
You never early, me never late.
A fortnight it played out.

But now the empty platforms,
Or so they seem ?
I have been coming early and leaving late
But no sign of you like the winters, last.
Have you changed times ?
Or have you moved away
from the city and me ?
I hope its neither,
But I'm sure its one.
And yet everyday I reach early, 

and leave late.
I let the train of our dreams pass,
And five more too - plus one,
And another one in a hope.
Now as I wait

To catch a glimpse of  thee,

The descending stairs- expecting you,
I catch smiling strangers looking.
Not you, not like you
New muses.
I think I will fall in love again.

My friend, Pain.

Pain my friend
Is a wretched fellow.
I share my room with him.
My clothes,
My soul too.
Yet we never talk.

Pain, he was there
While I was making love.
Sitting transparent,
Turning opaque silently and slowly.
As if in a warning.

Pain, your tricks of making
Yourself feel important.
You go out of your ways
To make me fall in love.
And then, when these paid jugglers
Of yours reecede,
Im thinking about you.

Pain, I loathe you.
You cause me misery
You also bring out my best verses.
I did long for you when I was happy.
O it was so monotonous.

I wonder at times
If more than my men, me,
It is you who I crave for.
Im in love with pain.
And I know you love me too.
My grumpy roommate.
Who never talks to me.

Cravings.

The mood of the mind
Was altered gently
And worsened.
What I book it was, on love and defeat.
One dwindles the hope perpetually,
To gain the drama.
To let hair down and mourn.
Rain outside and by the window sill,
I sit.
I wish my pain was extreme.
I wish there was a book on it,
And men read it and sob.
Even the most stone hearted ones.
But my language all faultered,
And my story, fragile.
Wish it were the victorian times,
Of supression and greater liberations.
I have to do with the mediocre.
The trains they provide me
With short fictions, not worth elaboration.
The love stories of real consequence,
End up in sustainable arrangements.
And now I have too many friends.
Im in pain,but its not the epitome
I shall wait for the one.
The one to enter the dingiest alcoves
Of my heart,
The one to make it blossom and then rupture it,
Destroy it with such force, fatal.
Gift me the pain I long for,
Pain which I shall write a book on,
Which men will read and sob.
Even the most stone hearted ones.

It Rained Dry.

Second class notorious compartment,
O what a disappointment you are today.
Its the first shower and I'm loveless, lover less.
While drops liberate sweet romance
In the smell of wet mud,
And leaves sparkle
Everytime love is felt somewhere,
I stand here alone at the door,half wet.
Even in the most horrid sticky sun days,
You are always there,
Violating and vigilant.
Always busy in testing feedback of touches,
Like a pervert doctor from a fantasy.
Where are you today
While I scribble your name
On the fogged doors ?
Come before the clouds run out
Of the precious water pristine.
Come before the reasons
To be happy dry up.
Come, we shall dance and love
And moan and cry,
And no one will come to know about it.
I'll swing with you to the movement and jerks of the slow train and the undulating tracks.
We shall hold hands in a pair,
The other pair out in air
Feeling the drops pinch us.
We shall make a memory till either of us has to get down.
A memory to last the entire season.
Just fill the first page of the my monsoon diary,
And let me rest in peace.

One Night Stands.

I visit the unknown land,
Of a familiar terrain.
A new address,
And its explored resident to be rewarded tonight,
With gifts of wet and the wild.
Growing wilderness - tamed
One vague serpent - tamed.
A course of exotic tastes and experienced consistencies,
Whelming bonds, some slippery slides,
In sessions of adult amusements and private passions.
In a never before musical,
Dancing in patterns to unknown moves.
An attention span of a night-time.
You are my lord tonight, my all
But tomorrow I'll ignore you.
Think of you non-worthy and virtueless.
Coming thursday I'll forget you.
Till friday I'll forgive my self and
Saturday I'll find someone new.

From my new apartment.

Rain makers are far above
The muddy puddles unreachable too.
Stuck in the middle,
On the nineteenth floor.
People look like ants
In different shades and textures.
Homes are rectangular patches
In blues and greys.
Wind is the only element
That my fingertips feel,
Blowing chirply or violated ?
My home doesn't belong to the scape.
A tall something in the middle of nothing.
Hushed tails of passing by motors below,
Whispering, killed by the breeze.
Picked up and positioned
Earned well it seemed.
This altitude, this detachment,
This difference of a degree.
Men pretty and tall,
Ugly and short.
Big and small dots,
Dots in dots.
Is this the beauty
And the vision that god intended
I wonder ?

Homeland.

Return is rejoiced
I look down from my ride,

To marks and blotches of a civilization, mine.

Trashcans and people many,

Some painted yellow black motors,

And pedestrians dotted.

The potholes like cake dishes

Full with muddy batter.

Waiting to be baked in the sun

A thrill I’m experiencing,

A longing to get trapped in the traffic below

To inherit a muddy stain or two

To smell the sea

And the muck too, inevitably.

In that foreign land

How happy I felt

When I said

I’m from Bombay.

I missed you home,
And now Ill merge in you.

First Impressions.

Sun please stop,
Your show of suppression.

You make the sea angry.

The poor coast without a fault of its own

Is being lashed upon,

A sentence of beatings for a lifetime

Until the crust of the coast

It Crumbles.

And it shall still continue.

Winds, must you engage yourself?

In this juvenile fest.

Who runs the fiercest and the fastest?

The sun is just a provoker

Condemned to eternal burning

Irritated and jealous,

Of the peace prevailing on the lands.

He is the sly fellow, the mean one,

And so rightly punished.

You must not listen to him,  

Let the sea be still.

Pray the wind dies down.

Or you get bored while I write.       

And so I’m not forced to enter the sea.

I’m a shabby swimmer
And you my first date.

Mr Dimello from Colombo.

There is this old Mr Dimello ,

He lives at 5 Rosemead place, Colombo.

A place of tasteful decor in wood

Stone, glass and marble

All aged.

Big windows spilling in white

And faux on the columns -fake.

A contemporary colonial setting

Befitting his wise age.

His house is full of antiques,

Shells and loads of books.

Old faded pictures,

In greys and off whites,

Of his mom riding a pony,

His dad at the club,

Their first car the beetle,

And their third dog, shaine.

The rooms are four

And a suite- his mom and dad’s.

The east room is early,

Bright with dark colors.

The west room in whites,

Lively and bright,

Failing all expectations from its name.

But the north and the south,

Are pastel patches-

Somber and soothing.

The suite is a secret,

Probably with a wandering ghost

Locked shut after his moms demise

Where moths and spiders live rent-free.

An old Englishman,

Seemingly slow and mute,

Retired in a sea town so quaint,

His thousand stories, muffed.

A surprising national capital

No rush no hush,

The laughter is loud,

And courtesy spills,

The dirt contained,

And a prevailing charm.

Dimello the army man,

Today in his chair,

A rather comfortable looking thing,

Looks around and fidget a bit

He thinks and then he gnaws,

On The end of his old specs wise.

The pretty resemblance of his self

And the city in which he resides.

Then he goes back to his routine,

Re-reading books and watering orchids,
And staying invisible in his large mansion.

Pleading.

And what are you looking at mister ?
You can have what you see,
I just want something in return now.
But how will you, in your uninviting posture,
And your careless luggage
Give me what I demand ?
You are all igniting and covered,
In a game of barter.
Hurry, only three stations left now
And the people few.
Visibility now easily piercing
Through legs and crotches.
Drifting to the farthest end of the coach.
All movements and hands easily tracable.
Give to me what I want.
For I let so many pass
So many who came that close.
Im being practical now.
Mark me and give me a hasty memory
Or an embossed impression atleast.
Relate to me and hear me right
Come to me.
I order.
I plead.

Pain Constant.

In love the sky told fables
In tattered chalky clouds
In love the lake resonated
In ripples far and loud
In love there were the butterflies
And in love the rains.
In love the treasured rainbows
And in love the pains.

 

Without love the sky all sallow
And the lake a dead kill.
No butterflies dance the love song trance
Only the boring moths still.
No love and the rain it pinches
And urges you to cry
The rainbows all forgotten
And pains proclaim the cry.

Pain forever accompanying
The happy and the weak
Pain the only constant
In solitude and in the beat.
Pain, O pain, the virtuous
The greatest friend there ever will be.
Id never wish for love or hate,
And shall only summon for thee.

The Compromise.

The atmosphere of love.
The revolution of the sane.
You have been summoned
By my entire being.
You have been evoked
By my every hair strand.
You pour desire,
From your every inch.
Wrapped on your skin,edge to edge
And an inch deep.
Resistance today is a failed institution.
I feel lost and wandered.
Hallucinating caravan of thirsty men.
In spirit and soul
And body.
Im not trained in words, fancy
And artistic love and expression.
I do not understand
These dabs of reds, and streaks pink
The abstraction, so subjective.
Give me what I ask of you directly
Your body.
Make me feel wanted.
Give me a prose.
In this famine and drought,
Even you shall do again today.

My Own.

These are not the shadows
Of the things that have been won,
These are but the residues
Of real people and things that survived.
Shapes dark and light
Defined and blurry
Pinching and comforting
Some friends and foes
Some wasted partners
Seconds of ecstasy
Hours of repentance
The forgery of emotions
Forced pity and sympathies.
The truth that killed
The marks that burned deep.
Its a fable worth trashing
In coats of fur and fawn
My story, my pain,my misery
Non moving and mediocre
Its all that I have.

Self exploitation.

Hunger, now that you are tackled
And I'm warm in my bed,
Let me remind myself of the lovers
And how I failed them,
And cry myself to sleep.

Memoirs.

Leftovers of a pudding once fresh,
Some sweet something sticky.
Reminders of happy morsels.
Of uncontained gaits and naivety,
Encounters with part strangers.
Of a time of plush love,
And tears in excess.
Marks on bodies,
Blood clots on skin.
His one hair,
Wrapped curiously around the soap.
And one tshirt,
Bleached to death in the sun.
His one slipper -
Only one,
The other ripening memories
Hanging on that mango tree.
The unfinished tea bags,
The finished cigeratte packs,
Countless lighters.
The pillow still sick in your sweet smell,
The stained bedsheet of a romantic night.
These are my morsels, my pudding
Some by the nightstand I keep
Some discarded, kept.
A hoarder of some sorts
A romantic gypsy.
A warehouse of mindscapes
Forever expanding.

Over apetite.

The lovemaking session perished quicker than usual. The crisp course was inventive but not effective. He was still aching for more foreplay but had already been stirred in the deeper parts of his anatomy. His wetness could hardly evaporate off his lips and his legs were already enslaved. The sex seemed rough, almost non-caring and secluded; a vague thumping on the wrong door. It reminded him of everything not meant to be, but he did not intend to stop it. To exert his branding to the current setting was the last thing he would have done. It was already fading.

The urgency that presented itself dripped of only one conclusion - his lover trying hard to not stop abruptly, but to live every sexual stage with a greater velocity, so that the effect is silent and unquestionable, like he would not come to know of the ungrowing and the history of him inside him.

Rahul remembered the exact second they started. Not always did he keep a count (to pick up the best one on an anniversary or a birthday to excite and worst as weapons for the arguments and fights). These days he had to himself such less of Prateek and this just added to the memory cushion of his relation, making it less comfortable. He had seen the times of greater passions and undying conquests and yes he could tell the difference.

One done, the other longing and hurt. One finished quickly, the other just rousing from a slumber realizing he had been touched. It lived the fragile life of a moth. The sweat of labor, generated in the last hour of the sexual brawling would generally make them inseparable and they would embrace for hours.

“One’s own space,” to them was just a concept theoretical in nature. Why would one want to be separated from one's lover? Other than the usual liabilities of work, for which they would have to be away in different places, they would forever be spotted together. The films, the food courts, occasional dosage of theatre when drama in life dipped low, the dirty beach and the parties, would always whisper about their uncomfortable presence, for Rahul was a little effeminate for a man, his gait and gestures, the Prateek forever caressing him in a sort of encouragement. They were not the kinds who would like to be left alone in love in a setting. They hated being without each other and without people. People were their oxygen and they thrived on them. Sometimes it was the hard criticism they received on the displays of their affection, the other times the jealously they stirred among other insecure men- single or compromising. It made them feel good when people wished to be like them- to walk like them, to hug like them, embrace like them and no one had seen but assumed, to even make love like them.

Lovemaking was already over but today they didn't embrace after, like they usually did. In fact it seemed like a race to the edge of the bed, the finishing line on either sides. No words were expressed. Eyes kept to each its own, trying hard to not meet the other's. For if it did match there will be the questions, the complaints, the guilt and the shame and god forbid those tears. No Prateek couldn’t take his tears. They would make him helpless; he would at times let him win arguments and disagreements just with a dramatic “tear from one eye running down the side of his cheek.” Rahul actually knew about this power he enjoyed and at times even misused it. Not like a criminal explaining murder, but like a child faking tiredness to get to the mother's lap. Prateek felt guilt surging in him and the other hoped he did. There was so much to be articulated, but to shut up seemed a good resolution then.

Silence so understated was not so transparent after all at the moment. Here and there it left clues of disdain and discord- the proximity of the couple to the edge of the bed and the distance between them, the quilt stretched from the centre to its threshold for they were far away. Things had suddenly duplicated in the room - two water bottle, two ashtrays and two books. Silence; it was becoming more and more visual and unbearable; a guilty Prateek spoke aloud-

"You want to smoke? ”

"Yes please, in the lower drawer. Pass me the lighter as well."

"You know, if you want to..."

“If I could what I wished I would not be here”

“Are you angry?”

“ How does that matter? Would it change things?”

“Why are you so angry and cold?”

“I’m not or probably I have been transformed to this since a couple of months now. Maybe you stopped noticing.” Rahul suggested.

“Fine, if you say there is no issue to talk about, then I believe you.”

"Pass me my boxers."

With the boxer deported to the other side, the ownership and boundaries were clearly demarcated now, possessions like the eyes- to each his own. Rahul did not want to address the issue of careless lovemaking right now. If Prateek had insisted more he might have probably said a point or two, but would have eventually given up and forgiven him- for today and for the past so many days, of his ignorance, his selfishness and his every move that had strained him. Rahul loved him more than his books and his stationary, somewhere ranking at par with his family, and that was the truth. He had to fake anger at times, to retain his self-respect and his stand. But it was very short lived but believable. It wouldn’t have taken much for him to get back into the game but Prateek never asked.

Now the cigarettes were lit. The smoke generally added to the intoxication of the atmosphere. Prateek loved the way Rahul held his cigarette with straight back, stiff necked; one arm folded the other supported at the elbow, while the wrist seemed to pivot the hand flexibly, almost like an anxious spoilt ballerina dancer, relieving his self before an act. The nature of the smoke puffs and trails from the cigarette tell a lot. The content lovers that they were some months back, would be tried by the end of the sessions (always in plural). Supporting themselves with a terrain of pillows they would lazily light up cigarettes and hold still, the room, the air and even the silence. The smoke from the tip of the burning stick would daintily drift up in the most French fashion in a straight line and fade into nothingness. Even the mouths would be left open for the smoke to escape. Nothing would be forced, everything effortless. A perfect setting where Rahul would manage to make a ring or two out of smoke. Nothing would move in the room, for they were content and tired and anything that stirred in the moment was deafening.

Today the smoke did the wild swirling dance before melting. There was silence in the room but no peace. The puffs were deep and the exhaling stronger. No shapes and ribbons, just a hazy obscure drill of smoke befitting their clouded hearts. The heavy panting, the cough and the impressionist backdrop; guilt arose in Prateek again -

"I’m sorry. If you want to say anything you can," said he in the most non-committed conduct.

"I want to have a muffin," Rahul dodged.

"I meant more on what happened right now," as if it weren’t lucid enough.

"If you didn't notice, things barely happened for me," in finality.

"There we go" he dared not to say it aloud.

Prateek didn't feel particularly good about being thought a sloppy lover, incapable. If there were a choice to stretch the love workout for long he would have. It tired him today- more physically than mentally. Nothing changed visually. Rahul was still his slender, delicate lover with mortal marks on his body and a mole above his lip. Still as beautiful as the first time he saw him, technically. Inside, he was saturated with him. He did love him, but failed to be excited by him now. Also this he could always get on demand any time. The sadistic disapproval and the chase to turn it into an approval was something Prateek missed. The sense of achievement everytime he got someone into bed was something that he would not get in this relation, or any for that matter, and he craved for it.

"I'm just a person, and sex is enjoyed impulsive, not robotic," Prateek tried to half convince himself. 

His mind was diverted and the reasons ran deep and low, and more than being just bored with his partner, it was a problem of plenty today. This distraction came in the form of this tangible other boy. He, who impregnated him with a fond erotic memory, was something that Rahul now failed to provide him. This beautiful colleague he had been eyeing since days. He managed to play a similar game of love with him this afternoon. It was fresh, pickled in pure lust. He felt he actually blacked out in sweet pain today.

There was a break at work, a public wash room and too much desire to steer. A heaven driven coincidence and these two boys found each other in the washroom at the same time. A little peek-a-boo and a faint smile, smeared with a literature full of lust led quickly the incidents voluntarily, and they settled in one of the cubicles. What happened then was pure art, yielding and moving. It simmered of hot passion and eclectic imagery. Not even once did Prateek think of his partner who might have been thinking about him at that instant. He enjoyed the best sex of the past few months and it didn’t last long- the rush of it and the fragility.

Suddenly a rash on his own triceps caught his attention and the same wooing smile of the washroom appeared again. In an instant Prateek went through the full course of the sinful indulgence of the late noon in his mind in his bedroom. Like the moon in all its imperfections shines in the night sky, his smile brazenly lit up the room of mourning. 

He caught the eye of Rahul catching the view of his scared arm, slowly flowing up to meet his eyes.

"That doesn’t seem to be a mark of my doing. Mine are less red out of concern and more defined out of perfection." this Prateek thought he could read in Rahul’s eyes.

He then saw him light another cigarette and pull deep puffs, exhale slowly and drift off to sleep, as if some heavy burden lifted from Rahul’s head and on to his. 

The morning will define the incident now, and Prateek wished the night carries on incessantly.