Delhi - A Lonely Place for the Gay

A city of more than three hundred thousand inhabitants, the city of New Delhi is a vast ever-growing city where the cogs of progress and real estate development churn at superhuman speeds. With the boom of industry and the economy rising at rates that make the powerhouse nations of the west quiver, more and more people flock to the city in the search of opportunity, and to be part of the New Delhi dream – earn a handsome six-figure income, drive a flashy car with an impressive subwoofer speaker system to make up for pint-sized gentiles, dine at classy eateries where they spend a fortune on excessively marked up food while making an ass of themselves by trying to sound ‘high-class’ by ordering “champagne on the rocks”, and finally, drop top dollar (or should I say rupee) on a swanky house in the super posh South Delhi districts (or in the water-sparse concrete jungle NCR regions). And yet it can be such a lonely place, especially for those folk who live on the queer side of the rainbow.

At first, I used to feel that I’m just overreacting, and that the city of New Delhi was full of like-minded gay men who see there’s more to life than scoring a quick-fuck off the internet. For a lot of time, I did my best to believe in it. However, in the time that I’ve spent within the gay world of New Delhi, I’ve realized that the further one searches for a special someone, the lonelier they end up feeling. And it’s not just about meeting nice guys, because despite the numerous disappointments, I have come across a few genuinely nice people (who are indeed a rare commodity), but it’s more about finding people who can really become a part of our lives in a whole complete manner.


The first thing that presents itself as an obstacle to finding such people is the whole issue of “coming out”. A country, let alone a city, that has leaped the bounds of progress ever since we gained independence from the British colonizers more than sixty-years ago, still holds on to attitudes towards homosexuality that have solely been ingrained into our minds by the foreign invaders and the times in which they invaded (and proof can be seen in an old Victorian law stated in Sec-377 of our constitution). Hence majority of us still remain in the closet, and hence limit our gay lives to the sleazy pick up lines of the next horny wanker online. Being closeted also prevents one from having a proper relationship with another gay man, as one wouldn’t be able to openly declare their love for someone, nor even be able to hold hands while walking in public without being too paranoid about “what will people think?” Those who believe being in a relationship means having someone to screw on a regular basis in discrete places (such as parking lots of malls, or dark deserted gardens at night) or whenever they have a ‘place’ to themselves, are seriously delusional. Unfortunately, that’s the definition of a ‘relationship’ for almost the entire gay scene of the city – which is unfortunately filled with closet-cases.


Then comes to the ‘cultural’ factor of the gay populous – they simply aren’t cultured. True, the term ‘culture’ is subject to perception, however, this is the same city where someone actually said, “I can’t stand the ballet – I see no point in watching fat women scream in Italian”. Gay culture is severely lacking within the gay folk of this city. Very rare would one find someone who knows the difference between Patti LuPone and Patti LaBelle, Joan Collins and Joan Crawford, or even Stephen Sondheim and Stephen Schwartz. In fact, if one has even heard of them is an achievement on its own. Being brought up to believe Bollywood with its cheap knock-off plot lines and gaudy song-and-dance numbers to be the be-all-and-end-all of culture, they’re alienated from some of the more ‘finer things’ of gay culture. A minute percent has ever been able to see gaylicious movies such as Sound of Music, West Side Story, Singing in the Rain, Funny Girl, or even the camp classics like Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar, and even The Birdcage (although I prefer La Cage aux folles). Their idea of a gay movie is solely restricted to the direct to DVD releases from production companies like Falcon and Bel Ami.


The idea of a gay icon for them is someone like Whoriah Scarey, or Senile Die-on, or Hennifer Ho-pez, and even Shitney Beers – although Madonna is someone well loved, but barely known among the gay folk here. What about Barbra Streisand? Where are the lovers of Liza? Judy Garland anyone? (although ask someone if they’ve seen The Wizard of Oz or Meet Me in St.Louis, and they’ll look at you as if you’ve spoken an ancient alien dialect). Bernadette Peters, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor (‘I will survive’), Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman), Bette Midler, Lana Turner, Bette Davis, Debbie Reynolds, Julie Andrews, Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Madeline Kahn, Kristin Chenoweth, Idina Menzel, CHER?!?! Seriously, how can anyone claim to be gay without knowing and loving these lovely ladies of gay-icon-dom! But then again, majority of the denizens don’t even claim to be gay due to their closet-status. Hell, they call themselves ‘bisexual’ despite almost never having sex with a woman!


Plus the people of Delhi tend to take a judgmental turn on things without even knowing anything about them to begin with. One such person claimed to hate Barbra Streisand because he hated the shape of her nose without even watching a single movie or hearing a single song of hers. It was only after Jordan Sparks performed “Woman in Love” on American Idol, did he limewire the song to discover Barbra sung the original. He ended up eating his words after melting at the sound of her voice and ordered Prince of Tides, The Way We Were, and Funny Girl on DVD. Another person claimed to hate Broadway musicals because he felt all they did was scream and shout and jump around. After I played a youtube clip of the Broadway smash hit Wicked, did he become an instant lover of all things Broadway! A third claimed classical music was only for losers stuck in time till he sobbed to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake ballet suite. Then again, the average gay man in this city thinks gay music are Bollywood ‘Item Numbers’ such as Beedi Jalayle and Dard-e-disco.


And speaking of Disco, let’s look at the options for Gay nightlife within the city. There is the infamous ‘Pearls n Petals’ that has been mentioned in depth in the very first blog post made here (My First Date), which has the same amount of class and sophistication as a truck stop in Manesar. A McDonald’s franchise is classier, with better looking patrons! Then there is the once-a-month Salvastion Star party that is held at a ‘secret location’, where the cover charge is excessive like the price of the bad quality drinks, and it is only open for barely three hours. The music played in both the places is sleazy Bollywood trash, the kind cab and auto-rickshaw (‘tuk-tuk’) drivers love blaring from their cheap stereo systems, and it’s not really the kind of place one would expect to meet someone soigné (if you have no idea what that means, it clearly shows where you stand). When I crib about this to others, claiming that I wish I could go dancing somewhere that plays good music, they ask, why not go to a straight club. I would, however the ones that play decent music are exceptionally few, and they have a strange rule known as ‘couple entry’. So hence if I ever feel like dancing to good music, I’m stuck to the privacy of my bedroom shaking my booty to Madonna’s ‘Give it 2 Me’. It’s the only place I can dance like a pussy-cat doll without worrying about either being groped by a slimey ‘uncle-ji’ or asked by a straight club in broken English that one can only dance on the main dance floor with a ‘female partner’.


Okay, so maybe night clubs and bars aren’t the best places to meet men of exalted quality, but where does one go? There are no museums worth going as they can’t really hold a candle to the Louvre, or the Met. The theater culture here is depressing – don’t expect Broadway extravaganza’s to be performed here. Opera and ballets are virtually non-existent – except for the rare times they have government sponsored shows at Sri Fort Auditorium, where the troupes that arrive are never really the kind one would ‘pay’ to see anywhere else. There are a few small activism groups out here, but they have this whole sort of ‘elitist’ complex where they think non-members are below them, so no point trying to join them unless and of course you have connections, or are willing to throw in a ton of cash.


So with a lack of ‘culture’ and a lack of watering holes to meet and greet, one might rationalize that perhaps one should look beyond that and search for someone who can make you laugh with their witty conversational skills. In this city, especially in the gay scene, finding someone who can carry of a conversation beyond ‘asl’ and ‘top, bot, or vers?’ is indeed a rare feat. If one does find someone willing to make pleasant conversation, it usually revolves around some sexual fetish of sorts, how much money the other makes, what part of the city they live in (that’s a whole different sort of class-disparity again), cock size and other measurements, Bollywood gossip, who slept with whom, and whether they spit or swallow. I remember this one time I went on a coffee date with someone who claimed he wanted to know me on a deeper soulful level, only to discover that he had no hobbies, no passions, no dreams, just a never-ending thirst to ‘stuff every hole I can find with my big 7in dick’. And those who do go beyond that, it’s almost hard to have a conversation with them as they’ve either never read any piece of literature that wasn’t enforced upon them by their schools, nor are they aware of anything remotely ‘cultural’ to discuss, except lame TV shows like FRIENDS (I prefer Will & Grace, better humor and wittier dialogue, and doesn’t revolve around corny cliché’s).


Now some of you might think that I’m just being too big a snob with too many expectations that are quite unrealistic, especially in a city like New Delhi, where the idea of being classy means being a slave to labels. However, at the end of the day, is it really too much to ask for a likeminded soul (who just happens to be cute to look at as well?)

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.