Silence and the Word (18 page)

I am too aware that this fantasy is only a
fantasy, one which bears a certain weight, a sexual charge lent it
by a dark period of history. It is possible, even likely, that I
would resent such a fantasy if it came from people I did not care
for—these fantasies of exoticization and the dreams of colonial
domination, are safe primarily because I do know these people. I
trust them to keep any such fantasies in an appropriate mental
space, and to not allow them to infringe overmuch on our
interactions outside a sexual arena. If I felt that any of these
white men actually felt they had a right to dominate me and my
brown body in the world outside the bedroom, if I believed they
thought less of me, as a person, because of such fantasies, then
I’m sure my reaction to the whole idea would be very different.

Frankly, I’d want to slap some sense into
them.

I could try to avoid engaging with such
fraught material at all, but I find it more rewarding, personally,
to take what pleasure I can in it, even to (carefully) play with
the power dynamics, push them further, and see where they take me
and my lovers (and while I have talked primarily about
race/ethnicity in this essay, I would apply the same argument to
what I find even more fraught issues of gender politics). I admit,
engaging with such dangerous material poses risks, and is certainly
not the approach for everyone—but it is the only one which feels
honest for my own sexual life. I am tired of ignoring issues,
problems, desires, and hoping they go away. And despite what some
may argue, it seems naïve to imagine that such a subtle internal
sexual exploration can in any way legitimize or justify actual
discrimination or oppression in the world.

But even if I can justify my own deep desire
to be exoticized (or, if not justify it, at least be willing to
work/play with it), can I justify my racialized attraction for
others?

Question 8. It is almost certain that at
least in part, I desire(d) you *because* of your pale (to me) skin.
Did you know that? Does/did it bother you that your skin color
is/was a factor?

Question 9. Does it matter *why* your
paleness is a factor in my finding you attractive (i.e., pure
aethestics vs. American cultural conditioning vs. South Asian
desire for whiteness aka colonialist remnants vs. the appeal of
difference, etc… .)?

I did desire their white skin, because, as
I’ve said above, it allowed me to indulge in the fantasy of being
the exotic Other, the object of desire. Undoubtedly for other
reasons as well—because white skin is a cultural norm for beauty,
and I am in part a product of my American culture. Even more,
because as I mentioned earlier, dating white was simpler than
dating brown-skinned men, since it doesn’t come with the same
cultural weight, the expectation that dating will inevitably and
quickly lead to marriage. And I admit, I probably even desired
these men, when I was young, because it would upset my mother. I
desired my lovers’ bodies
because
they were white, even if I
didn’t realize or acknowledge it at the time. And for the first
time in this essay I have discovered something I find
upsetting—because as it turns out, it upsets some of them:

EL: I never really thought that my
pigmentation had much of anything to do with why you were/are
attracted to me, so that is news to me. Does it bother me? I
suppose it depends on the reason(s). Certainly the notion of being
reduced to set of physical characteristics (or one particular one)
is not an appealing notion. Just as I don’t want to objectify
people, I don’t want to be objectified myself.

WS: I have noticed that you almost avoid dark
male lovers. I have noticed that you have had levels of conflict
over the years about your “Sri Lankan” and family identities with
your sexuality…Does it bother me? It makes me feel weird… .

I find it distressing, the idea of myself
with racialized desires, as someone who might make decisions of the
mind and heart based on what should be irrelevancies, like the
color of skin. I find it hard not to feel like a racist, just as
many of my old lovers, when I first sent them these questions, were
distressed to think that I might consider them racists in their
responses. I am particularly upset that these people I have cared
for might now feel injured, damaged, seen as less than themselves,
as a result of my openly exposing my desires to them. I want to
protest, to explain to them that I never thought less of them,
never saw them as only icons, representations of a desired
ideal.

I would argue that racial aspects are not the
only elements in my attraction, or the most significant. When I
think back to these people now, I do not simply picture their white
skin. I remember everything else that aroused me as well—the curl
of GD’s silky hair, the strength of EL’s hands, even the faintly
possessive look in RT’s eyes when he finally had me undressed—which
remembering now again makes me want to laugh—but in a good way.
Fondly. I remember the aspects of their personality that made me
desire them, and care for them—one person’s shy vulnerability,
another’s sweet openness, a third’s impetuous and delightfully
greedy assault on my body. If their whiteness was a factor in my
desire for them, and I admit it was, it was not the deciding
factor.

RT: I’d hate to think of your attraction to
me coming from some buried core of discomfort with your own racial
identity. But even this works out to a big maybe

…
if being attracted to whiteness was your
(possibly subconcious) way of working out internal issues of South
Asian-ness vs. white culture, and it helped you to do so, I don’t
think it would be a bad thing (or even would bother me).

WS: There are an awful lot of factors beyond
a person’s control as to what they find attractive in others… .Does
your attraction to my feature of paleness bother me, no… Not as
long as we have, and have had something more, even if it grew out
of such a desire. You don’t need to be concerned about my
perceptions of you, or your fetish—I am and have been only
concerned so far for you as your awareness of the workings of your
mind/libido may end up disturbing you.

I did desire my lovers’ white skin; I even
fetishized their white bodies. But rather than seeing them only as
caricatures of themselves, I claim that I did see them, as
themselves, entire. That any racialized notions were an overlay, an
occluding mask, perhaps, but one which never disguised the people I
knew in all their desirable particularity, in the height of their
bodies, the smell of their sweat, the fleshy curves of stomach and
hip and thigh, all of these at least as vital, immediate, and
imperative as the color of their skin, if less fraught with social
consequence. All of these bodily markers, in the end, were far less
significant than the words they said, the
way
they touched
me, or asked to be touched, the truth of whom they were.

Steve came to my dorm room in January, after
we’d spent Christmas break together and pleasurably divested
ourselves of our virginities. We’d been dating since September, had
met standing in line at Orientation, exchanging the usual hellos
and discovering that we’d be living on the same floor, a few doors
down. We kissed over a calculus textbook in October, and spent much
of November falling in love, fooling around, and getting yelled at
by our respective roommates. Christmas, with the roommates gone,
was pretty much perfect, as far as I was concerned, or as perfect
as could be reasonably expected. Then he came to me in January and
said,
I’d like to see other people
. I said
okay
.

Maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to say.
But I figured I might want to look around too; this way, I’d have
the option. Besides, he was a tall, skinny geek, at a school full
of the geekiest geeks. It’d been sheer luck that he and I had
managed to hook up – what were the odds that he’d find somebody
else? Someone willing to put up with him having a girlfriend? I
didn’t have anything to worry about – and hey, I got to be the cool
girlfriend, the mellow, relaxed, totally non-clingy chick. Which
was a nice thing to be. For about a week.

A week later, Steve was saying
Shefali,
listen – you know I love you
, and I said
Sure
, all calm
and casual though my stomach was twisting itself into a granny
knot, and he said
I don’t think this is working. Maybe we should
take a break.
There wasn’t much I could say to that. But he
still loved me, so it was okay. He just needed a break, a breather,
and I was going to be calm and sensible and rational about it – he
was a physics major, a rational kind of guy, and he needed a calm,
rational girl, not some hysterical English major with her head full
of Shakespeare and sonnets.
Love is not love which alters where
it alteration finds
… Besides, we were still having sex.

Then it’s February, and Valentine’s Day
coming up, and maybe it’s the pressure. ’Cause the bastard feels
the need to roll his naked body away from me, which is not easy to
do on the incredibly narrow crappy dorm beds, leaving me cold and
shivering, just so he can say,
I’m sorry, Shefali. I’ll always
care about you as a friend. You know that. I just don’t love you
anymore.
And I can’t breathe.

Friendship is more important than love. I
tell him that, tell him,
it’s okay
. It is so not okay. We
keep having sex, off and on, because even though he’s looking
around, he isn’t actually finding anyone else looking at him – as I
suspected, way back in January when all this started. So we’re
friends who have sex and sometimes that doesn’t hurt at all.

Later Steve will tell me that he doesn’t want
to talk to me, doesn’t want to see me again, but that isn’t for
months yet, and by that point, I can’t blame him.

But now it’s mid-March and spring break in
other parts of the world. My best friend comes to stay with me for
a week. Sarah likes horses and science fiction and we became best
friends in fifth grade and it turned into a habit – one of the ones
where you’re not entirely sure it’s good for you, but it’s too
comfortable to break. So she comes to visit, and I introduce her to
Steve and they hit it off, and get this right, this is important –
I set them up.

I don’t just set them up. I throw them
together; I sing their praises to each other; I leave them alone at
strategic moments, until a day comes when I walk back into my dorm
room and they’re kissing and pulling apart guiltily and I say,
Hey, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it
. We pretend nothing
happened. Later, Sarah asks,
would you mind?
And Steve asks,
is it okay with you?
He’s not as much of a bastard as he
sometimes seems. I say,
I’m happy for you guys. Really. Go for
it.
My skin is aching for his hands.

I wrap virtue around me like a blanket, but
it’s an old smelly holey blanket that just pulls the chill deeper
into the bones. It’s not at all the comfort one would expect it to
be. Not that you would necessarily expect it to be much comfort,
not unless you too were a girl who grew up wanting to be one of
King Arthur’s noble knights, or even better, King Arthur himself,
watching Guinevere and Lancelot and pining away. (Or maybe it’s an
ex-Catholic thing; salvation through mortification.)

I want them both to be happy. I want to be
calm, rational, unmoved. And maybe I secretly want to be
self-sacrificing and noble and miserable and most importantly, make
sure they know it, so that any happiness they find is poisoned by
horrible guilt. That might explain what I do next.

On Sarah’s last day she asks,
Do you mind
if I spend the night in Steve’s room
, and I say,
Of course
not
. They go off to dinner together; I eat in the dining hall
and go to the library and try to study. It’s maybe eleven when I
can’t study anymore. I go home, but I’ve forgotten my keys. I knock
on the door a couple times but my roommates aren’t answering.
Either not there or fast asleep. I contemplate sleeping on the
couch in the lounge but instead I walk down to Steve’s room. I
knock. No one answers. He never locks his door. I go in.

I lie down on his empty bed and fall
asleep.

A couple of hours later, they come in and
wake me. I explain the situation. I move to his couch, which is no
more than three feet away from his bed. It’s a dorm room. I lie
down on the couch and they lie down on the bed. They do not ask me
to leave. Apparently, they can be noble too. We’ve all read King
Arthur.

I fall asleep immediately. I wake up again,
maybe fifteen minutes later. They’re curled together under his
blankets, not moving. I watch them for an hour. I get up and get a
book from the hallway and sit on the tile floor in the bathroom
with the door closed and light on, trying to read. I read the same
page over and over until after about twenty minutes I give up. I
lean my head against the toilet, try to decide if I need to throw
up. Then I get up and put the book back. I go back to the couch and
watch them sleep.

They sleep with her curled against his back,
both facing me. Once, they shift, so that I can see the planes of
his face tilted above hers. I want to kiss the bones, to curl my
body into the bed. A little before dawn I move from the couch to
the hard desk chair. I stare out the window and think about the
first and only time I stayed up all night and watched the dawn. It
was with Steve.

My face is dry by the time Sarah opens her
eyes. I get up then and walk out the door and watch the rest of the
dawn from the lounge. Then I bang on my own door and wake my own
roommates and go to sleep.