The Morning After and His Call

"Relax dude," said a patient Harvina the next morning, "everything is gonna work out, I'm sure there is some logical explanation for his behavior". I sighed as I wiped my tears and gently curled out of the fetal position I had been cocooned in for the past few hours as I howled and wailed about my first date ever being such a complete disaster. I didn’t know whether I hated my ‘date’ for the fact that he turned out to be such a sleazebag and a complete and utter tool for treating me this way, or did I just hate myself for having being put into such a position and not having said something when I had the chance. At this moment I couldn’t really decipher between the two as the logical half of my brain was probably clogged with the excessive phlegm that’s created when you cry.


I felt a sickening feeling at the pit of my stomach over the incidents that had passed. The images were bright and vibrant in my mind (at times they still haunt me till this day) and despite showering at least twice when I got home the prior night and once in the morning, I could still feel the essence of the last night on me. It’s like being sprayed by a gay skunk that smoked Marlboro Lights and drank cheap beer that he acquired via the ‘free coupons’ one receives at ‘Pearls n Petals’ after paying the cover charge - I suppose that is the sole plus point of that seedy joint – you just can’t get rid of the stench no matter how hard you try. The fact that I was so desperate to do so only made it all the more worse for me. Luckily I was sober as I hadn’t drunk anything last night (the glasses looked filthy and some had old lipstick stains on them) else that would have just added on to the sick feeling that was overpowering me. Although now that I think about it, maybe the intoxicating effect of alcohol would have made me more mellow and led me to actually enjoy myself a bit. Oh who am I kidding?


Last night was more than just a blow to my ego; it also shattered my personal sense of esteem in a way that seemed way beyond repair. I couldn’t fathom how someone could be so charming and classy online and over the phone turn out to be such a major tool in reality. Granted, it’s rare that people actually act like themselves online, but still, to just reveal their true colors so soon and on a first date itself confused me all the more. It hurt all the more because this was the first time I had actually developed feelings for someone – who was neither a celebrity nor a hetero guy I secretly crushed on à la Barbra Streisand in Yentl – and I felt all the more lame to have actually thought he could have been someone special in my life. I suppose this is the downfall for reading your mom’s stash of Mills and Boons novels as a child instead of playing cricket with the rest of the boys; it creates super high expectations and leads one to delude themselves into thinking the first guy you have a ‘spark’ with would sweep you off your feet and propose to you after an entire chapter’s worth of passionate love-making.


It depressed me even more to realize how crowd at the sole gay bar in town was far from fabulous. I mean, no wonder this country is so homophobic to begin with – look at the gay men here. I used to detest the typical Bollywood stereotype of showing gay men as effeminate queens or sleazy creeps who were greasier than a pepperoni pizza from Domino’s. However, after last night, I felt Bollywood was only too kind to them. For all you know, perhaps those writers and directors did visit Pearls n Petals occasionally to see what the crowd was like in order to get the casting right. Then again, maybe the Americanized portrayal of gay men had filled me up extremely high expectations causing me to believe they all looked like clones of Gale Harold from Queer as Folk or Kyan Douglas, the dreamy ‘grooming guru’ from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I suppose on some level I needed the reality check, although I wish it wasn’t so harsh. Then again, the quote “Life is a Bitch” must have been coined for a reason.


Melancholy had colored my aura in a depressive shade of grey as I began listening to almost every Barbra Streisand ballad stored in my computer’s media library. I curled up in one corner of my bed and began mouthing the lyrics of the title song of ‘The Way We Were’, as I mourned about what could have been a lovely relationship between me and the guy. Even though it was just in my imagination and last night had proved that such a thing was never ever possible, but, it was such a lovely vision that I didn’t have the strength to let go of it. One of my biggest fantasies was to have a love that was epic like the love Hubble (Robert Redford) and Katie (Barbra Streisand) shared for each other in ‘The Way We Were’ – no guesses needed over which of the two I envisioned myself as. After all, after spending more than twenty years single and leading a closeted existence, a part of my soul craved for a great epic romance that would have made up for all those years of waiting. It isn’t too much to ask for right?


Before I knew it, I had fallen asleep and was woken up by the fact that I had drooled all over my arm that was throbbing due to the blood circulation being cut off due to my head resting upon it. It was a quarter to five in the evening and I had just realized I had spent the entire day celebrating a pity party for one. Disgusted by how pathetic I was behaving (and much to my cousin’s relief), I jumped into my shower and with an extra dose of lavender scented shower gel, I scrubbed myself as clean as I could while belting out an extra empowered version of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ (no wonder this is considered a gay anthem). I viewed this as a cleansing ritual of sorts and as the warm streams of the shower splashed upon my body I felt this surge of energy fill me up with a jubilant sense of optimism. I figured that if this is the worst possible date ever, then others would only be better. For the first time in the entire day, I was smiling brightly, and when I got outta the shower I was dancing to every power anthem I had (from ‘I’m Coming Out’ to ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’). My cousin Harvina was thanking god that my TV set had cordless headphones with it, enabling him to watch one of the many versions of CSI, without having to neither hear my incredibly gay-themed music nor watch me shake my Latina-esque booty.


As the sun set, time came for Harvina to pack up and head back to his college hostel. I hugged and thanked him for being with me through this ordeal. He smiled and assured me that I will feel much better about all this, and after sometime, I’d be laughing about the whole thing. For a straight guy, he was incredibly sweet and understanding. I guess he’s one of the few exceptions who are secure with their own manhood that they can handle being close to a gay person without feeling threatened or intimidated – why can’t there be more men like him? Afterwards, in order to cleanse my room off all the negativity that must have filled it due to my pity-party-for-one this morning, I lit a stick of sandalwood incense within my room and begun tidying up while dancing away jubilantly. Nothing could possibly bring me down! I was feeling empowered and was on top of the world. It was almost as if last night hadn’t happened and I was completely healed from the experience. And then he called…


At first I didn’t want to answer it, I didn’t want to have anything what so ever to do with him. He was scum, and a total bastard for the way he treated me. And yet, for some reason, a part of me wanted to hear what he had to say. What can I say? I guess I was raised to believe that everyone deserved a chance to tell their side of the story.

“Hello” I answered my phone in my Ice-Queen tone with an air of casual indifference.
He responded with a groggy and very hung-over, “Hi”

We exchanged bits of small talk with me trying my best to sound breezy and calm, while my inner-self was screaming, “How could you treat me like that you worthless son-of-a-bitch!” Tired of the minutiae I decided to ask him about his ‘friend’ from the previous night in the most polite and possibly concerned tone I could muster.


Without an apologetic trace in his voice he began narrating his side of the story. Apparently, the toilet fuck-toy was a friend of his who had just gotten over a major break up. He was so overcome with grief that he had taken a few-too-many tabs of E and drank too much beer the other night that my ‘date’ had to take him to the loo and make him puke it all out, and hence couldn’t really pay much attention to me. Upon my asking about the way he was dancing about with all the random guys, he flatly replied that it was the way everyone danced in a gay club. And when I asked what he did afterwards, he replied that he dropped his friend to his home at Gurgaon (the neighboring city which in my opinion is nothing but a concrete jungle filled with classless hooligans and shopping malls – no offence), after stopping by at Yusuf Sarai market for late night parantha’s. Upon reaching Gurgaon, he realized it was past three a.m. and he was in no state to drive back all the way home, and hence he crashed upon his friend’s couch. It was only about a couple hours ago that he woke up and managed to drive himself back home where the first thing he did was call me.


My brain was determined not to believe a word he said and was trying to convince me that this was all just a convenient story to cover his shitty behavior. My heart on the other hand was going all ‘awwwww … poor baby!’ I guess the fact that he said it so blatantly and so frankly, without the usual hemming-and-hawing a person does when they lie, made his story sound all the more plausible. Plus he did say that the first thing he did when he reached home was to call me. Even if it wasn’t true, I guess it was something that I just needed to know in order to feel better about myself.


And towards the end he mentioned that he truly wished we could have had a better first meeting, and even though he wouldn’t blame me at all for hating him for the way the night carried out, he wanted me to know that he really liked me and considered me a dear friend and someone he felt incredibly close to as no one else understood him the way I could. Although I just said a casual, thank you, my heart was performing somersaults of sheer blissful delight. He liked me! He said he liked me! Sure it wasn’t the same as saying he ‘loved’ me, but it was the closest I had ever had to it. Plus he the fact that he wanted to reassure me of how much he valued my friendship made me feel that perhaps on some deep level, he did have similar feelings for me, but was a bit hesitant to say so because of last night.


We hung up and I fell onto my bed grinning away blissfully. It will only be much later that I come to realize what a complete manipulative and abusive prick he’d turn out to be and how it would take me almost five months to be able to get over him completely – including a shamanic cleansing ritual and soul retrieval. But for that moment, I was on top of the world. I finally had a guy who liked me for the way I was. He didn’t mind me being chubby, nor cared that I was a complete newbie to the gay scene. I felt that I was finally getting the epic love story I so badly wished for. He was going to be my Hubble, and I was gonna be his Katie, and our love story will be as beautiful as ‘The Way We Were’. In my moment of blissful illusion, I forgot that at the end of the movie, Hubble and Katie break up and move on with their lives, forever keeping the memories of their times together in their hearts. But that’s a story for another time.