Ode to Lata (3 page)

Once inside, you are immediately struck by the number of people anticipating new arrivals through the door.  You want to go to the bathroom, but there are a million people waiting in line and someone is already grumbling about what the hell might be going on in there.

“One person at a time!  Don’t they read?” You hear a man complain to someone standing behind who simply shrugs, clearly embarrassed by the theatrics.

You decide to come back after a walk, so you join the dance of the whirling dervishes around the dark rooms and corners, which have ceased to be a mystery anymore.

Frantic at first, you calm down after making a few rounds.  Oddly enough, you hear the strains of a Hindi film song in your mind as you walk.  Some song that film star Rekha sang as a courtesan in
Umrao Jaan.
 
Yeh kya jage hain, doston. Yeh kaun sa dayaar hain…
Christ, of all the things that should be going through your mind!  Strange phenomenon, but even Salman has admitted to singing some classic
filmi
songs to himself while wandering through the labyrinth on his own.  You wonder if this is a South Asian thing.  A way of steadying yourself, as you swagger through this lair of carnality.  You want to hold on to something culturally rooted as you stumble your way through the uncertainties of rampant salacity.  Or maybe you’re just feeling tragic again.  Aware with much regret that despite all of your apparent potential, you are still here in
this
place.  Dateless.  Nothing but an empty bed waiting for you at home.  Apparently all the blessings and prayers from Mummy have come to no avail.

Up the staircase you go.  Into a musty room.  Doing this dance of the blind.  Not quite able to see.  Not really wanting to either.  Only touching and feeling.  Limbs.  Hair.  Mouths.  Tongues.  Fingers.  Cocks.

Someone brushes your hand rudely off them.  You feel momentarily startled.  As if you’ve just been slapped across your face.  Broken from the erotic spell you were in.

He has just reminded you that even here, away from the nightclubs and mushrooming coffeehouses, rejection awaits.

How dare he?  How fucking dare he?  Can’t he see that he cannot do this?  Not
here!
  This is the “blind” room tonight.  The darkest one of them all.  The room that most revert to when the dimly lit rooms downstairs fail to reap any interest.  No picky-choosy behavior here.  Press up.  Feel up.  Leave your selective behavior at the door.  Or at the nightclub you came from.  Here we are only to yield and derive pleasures.  Indiscriminately.  Unflinchingly.

This kind of behavior is unacceptable here.  Just a little squeeze on the probing fingers.  A pat on the hand before gently pushing your hand aside would be sufficient.  Anybody who persisted after
that
deserved what they got.  But not
before
that, you asshole.  Not before that.  Why be so rude?

Your expulsion agitates you enough to want to find the manager and get the s.o.b. kicked out. 
You know, some asshole up there is being really obnoxious!  I mean, he’s just like, rudely pushing people away and I think he’s going to start some trouble.
..Paint him up to be some repressed homosexual that’s slipped in just to get ugly with others.

Maybe you could tell them you felt him trying to pick your pocket.  That would really do it.  Sounds less like some rejected queen.  More like a conscientious faggot.  That’s always a problem here.  Every few hours that announcement. 
Watch your pockets! Pickpocket in the house!

You just decide to let it go.  There is no more alcohol, and the last thing you need is to get overexcited and blow the little high you are riding on.  The next time you see him though, you vow to push him down this flight of stairs.  For now you call him an asshole under your breath and go back down and into another room.

Downstairs there is a little more light, and you recognize some people from the last club.  There, they had been acting conceited and too self-absorbed to entertain just anyone’s advances, posing like art pieces you may look at but better not touch.  Here, they are panting around like dogs in a pound, all gropes and grinds.

You attempt to walk all the way to the back of the room, gently, yet persistently pushing your way through warmth and sweat.  There is a strong odor here.  A stench of urine, semen, stale cologne, poppers and perspiration all mingling into one.  But it’s not so bad.  You’ve smelt worse.  Without even thinking, you stifle your breath and inhale spasmodically until you’ve gotten through the throng of people.

At the end of the room, you allow your hands to carelessly wander over the chest of someone standing against the wall.  He doesn’t move or seem to mind so you move closer and then up against him.  Your lips search him out, and he responds with the same urgency.  Although you can’t see his face in the dark, you like the way his body feels.  Strong and reciprocating.  He will do just fine.

You ask him if he wants to fuck you.

“What?” He asks.

“Do you want to fuck me?”

“Yeah,” he says.  “Sure.”

Even as the words left your lips, you are aware of how cold and vulgar they sound.  But what you know more assuredly is that because your behavior is devoid of any bullshit, it is quite apropos.  These are the only words that have been spoken with any genuineness tonight.  Here, in this place, everyone has been reduced to a cock and a butt hole.  Trading pleasantries is not only impractical, it’s unnecessary.  In the cold light of day, nothing else that two people will have confessed or revealed through the course of the night will matter.

A week down the line, when the two of them run into each other at an ATM somewhere in West Hollywood, less will be remembered.  The chance that either one of them will even want to recognize each other is still more questionable.

As they say in Hindi,
Raat gayi, Baat gayi
… The night is gone, the affair is over.  So you might as well get the show on the road.

You don’t get to go to the bathroom, where the line is still long.  The man you saw having a fit earlier is at his wit’s end and is now talking to someone who works at the club, gesticulating dramatically.

You bump into Adrian and tell him that you must both leave right away.  Adrian eyes the guy standing beside you and doesn’t question your decision.  He knows better.  Salman, even in his drunken stupor, had insisted on driving separately so you don’t even bother looking for him.  Besides, it would be a feat to find him buried under someone’s legs in the dark.  You’ve considered yourself pretty good at hunting down your friends down at the Vortex, but Salman has challenged this gift repeatedly.

Within minutes, you have walked out of the club and are racing in Adrian’s black Acura down Wilshire Boulevard and into the heart of Santa Monica.  On the way, you don’t look back to make sure he’s following but ask Adrian frequently if he can still see him from the rearview mirror.

“He’s keeping up, baby,” Adrian assures you more than once, his voice tinged with excitement.  “He’s right behind us.” 

After sex, I lit up a cigarette and lay on his bare chest.  I didn’t generally smoke, but at times like these it felt glamorous and appropriate.  The amber glow illuminated his beautiful young face, and for a moment I felt caught up in a film-noir moment.  Everything was black and white.

“You’re
so
passionate,” he said.  “So intense!  God, what were you on?”

“Don’t you mean, what
am
I on?  I could still be on it, you know.”

“Oh yeah, I know,” he laughed nervously.

“Well, I’m not on anything,” I hissed.  “Why do I have to be on anything?”

I realized my inflection was tinged with hostility.  That the wonder in his face and the naiveté in his eyes came from what he had been accustomed to all his life.  What most Americans knew as sex – the orgasm oriented, routine, blow-me, jack me off, “you got some poppers?” kind of sex.  A means to an end.  Not the kind of sex where people simply fed off of one another’s bodies for hours without ever satiating the hunger that brought them together.

Then again, did anybody else have a need for that kind of sex?  Was there any point to it but to foolishly extend the torment of unfulfilled urges? 

He told me that the incense that was burning reminded him of Paris, and that he loved the “classical” music playing on the stereo.

“It’s a film score,” I told him, suppressing the “for Chrissake” part.

“Oh, it is?”

“Yeah.” I exhaled.  “
Bugsy
.”

“I think I saw that movie.”

“Mmm,” I responded, unimpressed.  “So you’ve been to Paris?”

“Yeah, a couple of years before I joined the military.”

“Did they know about you there?”

“Where?  In Paris?”

Oh, God, please don’t let me roll my eyes around.  “In the military, of course.”

“What, are you kidding?” He laughed.  “
We won’t ask and you don’t have to tell
, remember?”

Clinton’s face went through my mind.  And then, absurdly, Barbra Streisand at the inaugural.  

“Where are you from?” he asked.

I tensed up. 
That
question again.  I was unsure if he was asking me this because he was so taken with my passion or because he was just unfamiliar with South Asian men in general.

I stubbed the cigarette out on the silver condom wrapper lying at the edge of the bed and he seemed more concerned about the safety in doing so than I was.  The image of him savagely tearing it open with his teeth as he mounted me flashed through my mind, and I felt a stirring in the pit of my belly again.

I could feel his eyes on me, still waiting for my reply.

Where are you from?  Who are you?  Where have you been?

Such a little mystery I’d become to him.  Maybe he was trying to make sense of what had just transpired between us.  Of how I had compelled him to give up so much of his control and inhibition.

But I remained silent.  Evasive.  I didn’t want to answer him.  Maybe it’s because I didn’t think it should have mattered
what
I was or
where
the hell I’ve come from.  None of his damn business.

But maybe it’s because
what
I am mattered too much to me.  South Asian.  Indian.

I decided to leave him unanswered.  To spare myself from my shame.  I rolled off him and allowed Adrian to have his turn. 

In the morning we had sex again.  The kind when you’re drifting out of sleep and where the man you’re with could easily be imagined as anybody else.  Even Richard.

This time he fucked me vehemently.  He was brutal in his charged determination to reclaim some of the power he had relinquished to me in the night.  He cast himself over me like a punishment.  For making him feel so bare while barring his understanding of me.

I felt as if I might have been drawing blood from my lower lip as I bit into it, but I didn’t care because my whole body was convulsing with pain.

I looked over my shoulder to see his face over me, beads of sweat collecting on his forehead and his eyes closed in concentration.  At that moment there was nothing in the world that mattered more to him than being inside me.  I knew this.  And nothing mattered more to me than to know that I could command this from him.  It made all the pain worthwhile.

Suddenly he paused and looked down at me.  “Are you alright?  Jesus!  I’m so sorry… I… ”

I realized he’d noticed just a little bit of blood from my lips on the pillow.  I shook my head as best I could.  “No, no, go on.  I’m alright.”

“But you’re bleeding… ”

“Please,” I implored.  “Just go on.  I’m fine.”

“Okay.  Just tell me if you want me to stop.”

I rested my face back in the pillow, resenting his concern.  I didn’t want him to stop or to be gentle or even care if my lip was bleeding.  Didn’t want him to stop even if I asked.  Why couldn’t he just shut up and stop being so damn nice?  Force me down and take whatever it is he needed to fulfill himself.

Slowly he started to move again and pressed his lips against the nape of my neck.  I felt his kiss.  It felt tender and suddenly I wanted to cry. 
Shit!  It’s the last thing I want.  I know I shouldn’t let myself feel this way.  Too dangerous.  Still too soon.  This is meant to be nothing more than pure, uncomplicated sex with no room for emotions or heart. 
Then he started to pick up the pace, his body rhythmically slapping up against mine, the physical pain enveloping me again and me disappearing into it.  The surging in my heart started to quiet down.  I was shrinking into a ball.  Barbed but tightly woven.  Retreating as if into a womb where nothing else existed.  Into profound safety.  Emotional silence.

You see, this pain was so familiar.  It would not disappoint.  It was the only constant, in bed with him and once he was gone.  I knew that when this was all over, it would be waiting for me like an unshakable friend, grimacing at my futile attempts to momentarily alienate it.  But for a few moments, I had decided to embrace the pain because of its perseverance in tracking me down.

No man had tried that hard to find me.  And I wondered if any man ever would. 

I lay on my stomach, entwined in the soiled and crumpled sheets as he walked back into the room after taking a shower.  He hovered awkwardly around my bed – just a mattress thrown over a box spring.  I could sense that he was nervous and didn’t quite know what to do or say because I was making no effort to turn around.  I just lay there.  Not looking at him.  And more importantly, not letting him see me.