A Seperation

‘We said good-bye on one of the corners of the Plaza del Once. From the sidewalk on the other side of the street I turned and looked back; you had turned, and you waved good-bye.

A river of vehicles and people ran between us; it was five o’clock on no particular afternoon. How was I to know that that river was the sad Acheron, which no one may cross twice?

One day we will pick up this uncertain conversation again, Delia—on the bank of what river?—and we will ask ourselves whether we were once, in a city that vanished into the plains.’

Delia Elena San Marco by Jorge Luis Borges. 

On the evening of 27^th April of 2013, I went to pick up her goodbye present. There was this place on the north side of the town. The only time I had been on that road earlier was with her. It was a gorgeous post spring evening with a mild cool breeze, just like any other evening. The traffic was usual and slow. I was heading to a designer jewelry ‘gallery’. I didn’t think of it much. There was a queue at the entrance because the gallery opens up only for a few hours. I stood in the queue for 45 minute to get in, watching and observing women having such admiration in their eyes for the glittery gold. 

I finally got in. At the gallery, I was the only single male. I took my time selecting the necklaces that I liked and examined them one by one in my hands. I evaluated and imagined how much each one of them would look like against her skin. All the sales girls and ladies thought that I was picking up a gift for my girl. And it was partly true. There was this beautiful tall sales girl. She had marvelous skin, there were blue-green veins running all along her forearms and she won’t make eye contact with me. I selected one piece and couldn’t find earrings to go with it. So I bought just the necklace. The only time I have bought gold before was for my mother, so for a guy I am good at buying gold. Actually I am good at buying most things for women. That girl congratulated me and wished me and my girl happiness. All the ladies around looked at me with some admiration. I thanked them. I happily paid for the piece and went out to get a taxi. But until then I was thinking about her. She was going to leave. And this sadness started to sink in.

I sat in the taxi, everything looked beautiful in that evening. Colors were brighter, everyone looked fuckin’ happier and it made me sadder. I thought about the past three years. Three and half years ago, was the last time when I was in love and wanted a girl to stay. After that I had promised myself to be always happy. But here I was, eleven hundred days later, unhappy and sad. The taxi driver made small talk about politics and elections. I was thinking about eleven hundred days. It is a lifetime. So many people, so many girls, so much laughter and noise, so many things, so many cities, so much water under the bridges and here I was.

All the roads were familiar, but I had never travelled on them in such a state before. I got out of the taxi way before my home, before the taxi driver could figure anything out about my state. I started to walk home. I felt so tired that I could hardly hold my back straight. There was the usual bustle of summer evening. There is this park close to my place and it is always full of couples, families and children. I usually feel very fresh to see them. There are a lot of lovely girls down there but that evening no one there was pretty and I hated it. Maybe there were but it was different that evening, I felt a little bit envious of their dull and unchanging lives. Everything was making me sadder. 

I bought cigarettes from my usual kiosk. I wanted him to ask me about my day. And I wanted to tell him that it was absolute shit. But he gave me change and started to walk home. And then in the street there were these buskers, three guys, one guitar, one organ and one singer. I paid no attention to them. I had walked some fifteen steps ahead of them when he sang in this dark voice. 

“And in those times, it was a sin to fall in love.”

I froze in my tracks. I smiled and nodded. I didn’t listen to anything else they were singing. I walked back to the buskers. I gave them almost the same amount of money that was already lying in their guitar box. They nodded appreciatively with an honest smirk. I smiled as well. I stood there and lit up a cigarette hoping that they will sing something else nice. But the moment was gone.

I went home, humming that line. When I was all alone again, I held that necklace in my hands. That sickening feeling came back again. I was restless and felt powerless. I tried talking to couple of my best friends who were online. One of them went offline without a reply. The other called the story cute and told me about her date. My bff had earlier had told me that what happened to the beast whose life’s ambition was sex, drugs and rock n roll. I had gone out with two other girls while I was with her and each time I felt that I have made a mistake and fuck these girls, I want her.  And nothing else worked that evening and I gave up on how badly I was fighting this. I called my mother, she knows I never call at night. So she was alarmed and I couldn’t tell her anything. She, the girl, doesn’t drink and didn’t like my drinking alone. And I hadn’t had a drink alone ever since. So I poured myself one and then another. Two double lonely whiskies later, my senses got duller and I felt calm. Yet bitter that I had to resort to alcohol to fight the whole thing. I love living alone, it gives me time to work out and read but I never feel lonely, that evening I felt lonely. 

People always underestimate my emotions. And it was sad but with the help of liquor I got through the night. But when people and friends don’t work, chemicals do. It was also a fact that I had forgotten. We live what we have, we become what we will. And I had disappointed myself of my dictum that ‘real men never get sad.’ But I did get sad and I am proud of it and thankful to her that she made me feel that way. 

It was never about the sex. I had the illusion that I could be happy with her for a while. She was always apprehensive of everything I said, every move I made. She sort of always shrank away from me, into the corners which always eluded me. All the while, she would smile and never would take her eyes off me. It killed me each time. She had those eyes, dark brown and vain. I always imagined her standing there with an air being indifferent to me and singing that song and smiling.  Like listening to smooth fusion jazz and not having a care in the world.

The night before I would last see her for a breakfast date, a first of my life, I left work at 11 PM and there was this guy in the bus who was holding a bouquet of cheap flowers. I decided to buy her flowers next morning, also a first of my life, as I have never ever bought flowers for a girl in my life. But there were many firsts with her. I told my friends about her. All the girls at work knew about her and me, as she was from work and at a work party I was all over her. I got drunk waiting for her and I was being moody until she came, and then I lit up into my usual funny self. Everybody at work knew about it. Girls teased me about her. I liked it when her name was spoken at the floor.

Next day, I woke up at 8 to go to the best flower shop in the area to get her flowers. At our last date, I told her as much as I could about how I felt about her. We work for the same organization and working in other countries is an essential part of the deal. She was going away on a project initially for six months and most likely would never return as almost her entire family is already there. I am here for now but I will go 

somewhere else sooner or later. I told her that I am a professional and this has happened before that whenever I like a girl I have to go somewhere else, but this is the first time that girl is going away. She smiled a bitter smile and told me ‘yea we are professionals alright and maybe that’s our problem.’  I told her that maybe I will see her in this country or another or maybe never. My voice changed a tone, her face changed a color. I gathered myself quickly, she did the same.  

When we left the café, she picked up a fight with a guy who had parked his car in front of hers. I gripped her forearm and told her to let it go. She came to drop me and I told her to come in to give her the necklace and flowers. She accepted them with graciousness with awwwws, kissed me goodbye and hugged me and left. She forgot to take the box of the necklace and that’s the souvenir she left me. That sick feeling descended upon me when she left. I played Cat Power’s Bully and grabbed that whiskey on my counter. I had three mouthfuls of it at 11 AM, also a first of my life. I sat until I felt calm again. Then I brushed my teeth and went to work, like nothing had happened and nobody suspected a thing. 

At 10 PM, she left for the airport, I was still at work. I had asked her to let me drop me but she didn’t let me as she said she didn't want to say goodbye to me. She sent me a text wishing me the best of the world while en route to the airport. I sighed and replied something of the similar sort. Next morning I woke up and the first thing I told myself was that she is gone. I noticed I had no more clean clothes as I was spending each evening talking to her or seeing her. I noticed the dust on the tables and garbage to be taken out. 

We live what we have and ‘living well is the best revenge’. We become only what we will.

Foolish Fears

I have topped myself again. In past 5 days I went out with 4 different girls. Given that one of them was one of my close friends and it was all about stories since we saw each other last time and sharing feelings about relationships, still it's something. But then tonight I went out with the girl I mentioned earlier about having really pretty eyes. And I was actually nervous about it before going out with her. During the day, I asked myself, should I shave, which shirt should I wear, should I polish my shoes, should I workout so that my torso looks ripped,should I have a drink before I go out with her to calm my nerves? As I have only three weeks with her in the same city and I didn't want to blow it up. But once I was back home, the real me was back. After all, no matter how much I was attracted to her, she was just another girl and world is not fair.

I decided to wear an ordinary shirt, the one that doesn't hide my protruding whiskey-belly. I decided not to shave and wear my joggers, which by the way have radium colored soles and are like mighty comfortable. I decided to maker her wait for me. I decided to be sort of lascivious and not the sweet cute guy. I decided to blow smoke in her hair as she hates smokers. I decided to take her to restaurant of my choice and not of hers. I decided to be THE MAN. I did push-ups, I showered for twenty minutes while she waited for me outside. Everything went according to the plan. She was cautious of my moves and date was becoming sort of insipid. And then I woke up from this douche-baggery and started talking to her. And I talked and the only thing I am really good at, is talking. They say about Oscar Wilde that it is fortunate for the world that no one can live only on talking, otherwise no one would've ever read him. Well, I do have a job that pays the bills.

And I made her laugh. It was easy to tell that it has been a long time since some man made her laugh so much. I told myself earlier to not make eye contact as her doleful brown eyes intimidated me. But this time around, I was the man. I never took my eyes off her eyes. She told me about the time when she was eighteen and her first boy over and her father walked in and she hid the boy on the balcony and . She had just been to that city which I love and abhor so much. I told her that I can walk around in that city blindfolded. I mentioned all the favorite hangouts. She told me she will leave at 11 pm but after dinner I took her for a coffee. She stayed till half past midnight when the waiter told us that it was closing hour. Somewhere when the topic of alcohol, I told her that I have these bouts when I drink every night and then stay dry for weeks and even months. She kept asking me how can I have alcohol when I'm alone, that is the road to alcoholism. And she also complained that I smoke too much. And I asked her to keep it between me and herself with my charming look that I get drunk and practice dance moves so that when I finally hook up with a pretty girl I can seduce her with my dance moves.

But obviously that wasn't the truth. You don't expect me to tell the truth to a girl I fancy, do you? Bukowski drank alone for three years for Jane, Nazim Hikmet to forget this world, Orhan Velli, I don't precisely know why, Capote for the excessive amount of tears shed over answered prayers than on unanswered ones, Hunter S. Thompson for being a misfit in a society of shark ethic, Sinatra, little did he know that a song will be written with the metaphor of eyes so Sinatra blue, Churchill was drunk all the time to bully the Nazis with the Dutch courage (in his youth when he was in Africa, he used whiskey to make dirty water drinkable), Hemingway used all those drinks to build up the courage to blow his brains out by his own hands, that character Jack Nicholson played in 'As good as it gets' who tells a bartender to keep pushing the least legal drug to him, Humphery Bogart was always few drinks ahead of the world, George Best's 'I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered' was the only reason to respect football  and didn't you read that couplet 'hearts full of joy, hearts full of youth - six part gin, one part vermouth.'

For other nights I have had good reason to drink alone. But tonight I drink for another man. The man who feigned love to a girl for a year and half and then told her that he needs three days to make up his mind about her and never called. Yes that man, a man I will never meet or will see, put fear in my heart that while I was walking her to parking was afraid to hold her hand let alone touch her or kiss her. Brother why would you do that to another brother that he will get drunk for a gorgeous woman so much so that his body will be numb but his actions so focused and his hands so steady that he will smoke an entire cigarette without letting the ash fall and make him late form work. Brother, you could've gotten laid lot easier, don't you know.

Precarious Pretenses

Posing nude i was expecting something like this.

This is what she drew.

I mean WHAT THE FUCKKKK!!!!
I was like draw me like one of your French girls, baby. But well, whatever. Posing nude was no big deal for me. I love walking around in my undies, even outdoors, only if this stone-age-ic society was ready for me. And i have been living alone for a while, and once, this married friend of mine suggested me to share apartment to save me some serious money. And i was like, no man, i gotta do my thang. Without a second thought, he was like yea i miss walking around in underwear too. Life, one thinks it'll get easier but it never does. The thing is sometimes when people suggest marriage or other forms of commitment, the thought of living with a woman freaks me out. Wearing clothes all the time at home, ewww.You know, how i love women and found them to be really pretty and stuff, but you know they are still weird at the end of the day, with their so many little bottles of magic potions and their tiny little things all over the place. And women's lovely flowing hair, the serpents that enslave the oriental poets (there are million other metaphors, but let's just stick with Medusa, ok?), they fall all over the place. One time I had some friends over, and then they left and I opened my freezer to get some ice and there was a girl's hair in there. WHAT THE FUCK woman?, how did a woman leave her hair in my freezer. And I mean if i count all my cosmetics (200 earswabs, couple of colognes, one moisturizing cream, one shampoo and a shower gel) i think i will still be outdone by any given lady's purse. Fuck, it feels good to be a man.

Lately most evenings, i have been reading, sipping whiskey with night lights on. But on that bright sunny and breezy spring afternoon, buzzed up on brandy, sitting on the floor, i felt like lighting some twenty candles and watching them flicker and shimmer in sunlight. I think she has almost appropriated that inextricable feeling in her sketches. 

Cat Power - Bully [Later Live..... by eidurrasmussen

The Testicle Test

“Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.”
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens.
 

Yea, that's right. Yours truly is going to write about his testicles. And now you, dear reader, are wondering that why on earth, would anyone ever write about his testicles and wouldn't it be like disgusting in like a massively gross way? Dear reader, allow me to prove you wrong because tonight you will have fairly amusing time reading about a man's privates.

So back in the day, when we were pubescent and looking Kool was the biggest deal despite of our croaky voices, super awkwardness around girls and terrible stubbles, there was this thing we boys used to do, when one had to diss someone, one would cup his crotch (over the imperative grey trousers obviously) and do a lip bite or another menacing facial expression of the kind, which would basically mean 'fuck-off bro, I got balls.'

But the thing about lesser men is that they are usually happy. They have simple joys knowing that they don't stand a chance at bigger things, like suffering, sacrifice, love, leadership or even hope. If you really want to judge a man, buy him a lunch for no reason and observe him closely. Even if he is aware of the fact that there is no such thing as a free lunch(among people who are not friends), he will be overjoyed that wow look at this fool buying me lunch. Oh and such men are usually religious and love money. You need an absurd amount of faith to love and save money. So there was this man, from a decently affluent foreboding one would say, with whom I had the displeasure of spending an evening. This worm of a man complained over how much her daughter’s barbies and schooling cost, how much his wife spends on groceries, how the fluctuations in USD price are affecting his stock holdings. A fact that shouldn’t be ignored is that he had a very decent sum of money in his bank account. At this point, I interrupted him and tried to steer conversation to other dimensions and when we landed on the subject of women, he confessed to me through a repulsive toothy grin, that he chats random girls up from facebook community pages and asks them things like what is her favorite position or if she has ever administered a blow job. At this point, I felt like my sperm count was falling and I was becoming less of a man just by sitting there. Since he was my guest, I couldn’t ask him to leave as much as I would’ve loved to, however I stealthily cupped my testicles and let out a sigh of relief that my manhood is intact. And then I realized what makes me a better man is not the pair dangling.
And then there was this boy. I was living in a studio apartment with mini-bar size refrigerator and a two stove cooking range for a kitchen. I had stopped making myself my omelets or even fried eggs. I would leave that place in the mornings without a morsel of food, which is not very me. And there was this small French bakery just at the corner of the street where I would stop for a piece of bread. They served fantastic fresh croissants and cheese breads fresh off the oven at 8 AM. It was a small establishment with two tables and four chairs around them on curb for anyone who would like to sit and eat. I tried a couple of combinations and this cheese topped bread with ketchup somehow became my daily breakfast. There was the owner and two young boys were helping him at the oven. They boys were basically the waiters, cashiers, servers and bakers. One of them was a usual boy but the other one had something about him. He was probably 5’10”, cropped hair, round slightly chubby face and brilliant blue eyes. Somehow everything about him screamed of intelligence. I am not a morning person and never chatted him up. When I showed up at the place and said good morning, he would just nod approvingly. Like I said, we never talked, but he always treated me with great respect. It was as if he wanted to tell me that look at me, I am bigger than this, I am better than this yet do you hear me complain. I would feel belittled. And I used to think about his life, will he go to university, will he secretly fall in love with a girl and will be unable to tell her, will he start his own bakery and make lot of money, what will become of him, or will the daily grind and abuse of a mundane life start to gnaw pieces of his soul until he gives up. Will he defeat Kismet or slip away into the herds of still-borns of fate? Such thoughts haven’t done any man good. Actions do. I would take my taxi and go to work. And even if I would grasp my testicles, I would feel very little compared to that boy’s existence.
I know that Sophocles who wrote that to ‘live greatly is to suffer greatly died on his own bed’ and someone later commented that writer of the greatest tragedies died happily. There is an Egyptian legend of a sand ridden ill smelling stream of mud in a desert which is the elixir, the promise of ever-lasting youth, yet no one touches it because of its form. Borges dreamt that Homer has become immortal and lives with Amazonian aborigines and can’t understand a word of Greek anymore. Raga Des has heptatonic descent and pentatonic ascent has a peculiar impact on travelers. Antara, the Arab warrior poet, wrote of his horse more affectionately than any of his living subjects, Neruda gave up his wife about whom he wrote the most beautiful poems only for the communist cause. Sufis called the world the house of temptations, Templars called it the house of pain. There is death and misery of all kinds, all ages and all shapes. And I don’t have any alcohol and have only five cigarettes for the night. 

But nothing is sadder than watching a man you love and admire finish unfulfilled and unsatisfied. No amount of manhood reassurances or laurel resting makes up for that, sadly.


PS : On a slightly unrelated note, did you, dear reader, knew that sensitive males are likely to develop testicular cancer thrice more likely than insensitive men. And it got me curious that how many of my favorite poets died of testicular cancer? Curiosity kills cats, remember that. So a little research concluded that none of my favorite writers died of testicular cancer. Fuckin' insensitive bastards. They usually died of heart diseases, suicides, or liver failures due to excessive drinking. Yeats died of some STD as he became like super active sexually at the age of 69 (i mean 69, ironic, right?) and Poe died of fuckin' rabies. Seriously, who the fuck dies of rabies? Keats died of Tuberculosis. So did Chekov at a tender age of 44. Gorky was killed by Government at 68. One more year and he would've been 69. But Gorky had the most kick ass nom de plume ever, like ever ever, Gorky means bitter. Jonathan Swift is believed to have died of Madness, yep, Madness kills fuckers who dress in black and go in mourning on their birthdays. Shaw died at 94, fuckin' reformists,they just live long enough to suffer,one should say. Au contraire, the writers of homeland enjoyed incredibly long lives for artists but most of their writings can be encompassed within two decades of their life. Kinda sad, but still. 

Chicken Confesses

So after a long time of contemplation, I added her on facebook and we had a little chat. I was only through the preamble of asking her out, when she asked me to go with her to their little place in the mountains for the weekend with her family. Whenever family comes into the equation, things get weird but I was bored and I liked this girl so I said yes.

Apparently, this little place in the mountains was a bit of villa with a swimming pool, stable with two horses, three dogs and big fat SUVs. Although I am from a poor family, and whatever bit of luxury I have came late, money doesn’t intimidate me. Also those people were like super nice to me. So I was cool and in the zone. But lately I have gotten into this thing and I will explain it in a bit. Let me tell you about her first. I had the strict rule of never dating at work. That was compromised in early January this year. 3 months later I am dating the second girl at work. I know, my self control is kinda elusive and 'I can resist anything but temptation' but then again I never had such beauties at work before. 

So like I said, money doesn’t intimidate me but these days women do. She has the most ineffable pair of eyes. It’s fuckin’ indescribable. Dark brown, intimidating, taunting, mysterious, soul piercing, holier-than-thou, reduce-you-to-rubble kind, I can go against my rules and upload a picture of her eyes but it won’t do justice. The way she rolls her eyes, how she breaks eye contact, oh all the clichés of the book. (A colleague of mine told me that she has the eyes that say ‘fuck-me’. You just read what I think about her eyes, guess which one of us she liked to spend time with, tehe). And forget all this, there we were, playing like children with dogs and horses. I have always had a dog at home but horses, this was my first encounter. Let’s save the horse love for later, I mean this magnanimous, 7 feet high, 9 feet long, 1200 lbs creature can crush you in a minute but he stops when you ask him to, he trots, he gallops and they way he sits down, and the way you have power over it, it makes you feel more of a man than guns and giving a woman multiple orgasms. Anyway she was playfully giving one of the dogs a massage while I was like oh yeah baby, I am making out with you in my mind under the sun right now and wondering what your lips taste like.  

Then we were with her family, sharing intercultural anecdotes, work and travel experiences and other mundane stuff and I would sneak a glance at her and all my boredom would be gone. I hadn’t felt this way with a woman for a very long time, almost two years. Heaven have mercy. So we went out for a walk, me, her, her cousin and one of the dogs. And the track was spellbinding, her cousin either moved way ahead of us or behind us as to minimize the effect of third wheel and when we turned towards the house, a big fuckin’ blue moon in an unnatural mesmerizing hue of some transcendental celestial yellow shows the fuck up. I mean, it doesn’t get better than this. But I was so tongue tied. I couldn’t say anything charming which is so not me. I just kept looking at her and I am sure it became pretty obvious to her that I am looking at her like a penniless kid in a candy shop and who doesn't wipes off the drool.

So we came back to the home, and she sat in the swing chair, me at the coffee table chair. And there was the usual awkwardness of pre-flirts of both parties. ‘What are you thinking?’ I ask her about her past relationships, she tells me everything. There is this rule that ‘playas’ have, don’t get involved in personal stuff. It induces ‘feelings’. Soft corners. Soft corners become liabilities; some things grow on you and become hard to get rid of. Every bond of affection brings suffering. Playas don’t like to suffer. Then she asks me about myself. I tell her my entire fuckin’ life story, sober, without talking about her once. Fuck me, right. The night gets heavy on me. Then we start drinking with the family. They have some cheap Italian wine, I go for vodka. I was getting drunk and going to gloomy place. It really did get heavy on me, I am a man now, I take control now. But I was becoming like this shy teenager I once was.

Anyway, after the dinner and post drink silly games, everyone was off to bed, she shows me my room. And then she comes back asking me are you sleepy. I was a million things other than sleepy. And we show each other pictures of our travels, friends, kids of cousins etc. We sit on the dinner table side by side, shoulder to shoulder. That was all I touched. I so badly wanted to put my arm around her but no, I was scared, what if she turns me away. Despite of all the signals and the sexual tension, I do nothing. And then the lights are turned off and I went to my room and she knocked on my door to say goodnight. Like a moron, I stand against the dresser and I wave her good night. I waved her good night. Yes, please don’t consider me a man anymore. I don’t know what worm I’d like to label myself.

The same story continued the next day. I couldn’t say anything, words failed me and all my charms left me. And then we returned to the city. I realized that I am a city boy, nature intimidates me. Meditations lead me to self-loathing. In the city, you live with your back against the wall. Now I know this conniving corporate turf. Alone in mountains, the wind sounds like a thousand footsteps, the rustling of leaves like susurrus of a woman's dress, I think I might go crazy in a day there. I don’t mourn my loss of faith or innocence, we become what we become. Only the toughest survive and the meek are fed upon. But this has nothing to do with her. 

What I realized about myself was that I actually liked her. I actually liked all of the girls I’ve been with but, you know, in a different kind of way. We adults don’t hook up and talk all night, you know. What really put me off game was the fact that in a matter of two months she is going to leave the country. Hell, I will leave this country as well, but she is going to leave before me. And once I leave, we will have no future. And she is a woman, a real sensible gorgeous thing. Not to be trifled with. She has been hurt before. She can do without the pain I can bring her. And when you love a woman, you have to stand by her through everything, through the storms, break the fingers pointed at her, spoon her to sleep no matter how much you hate it, you have to give and not expect anything in return, turn down every temptation and trust me temptations are always there, only then a woman gets the conviction of queens in her voice, and in return that makes you a king. ‘I know everything about the dresses and the shoes and loving a girl, I suppose’. And I have been tired of the soul murdering physical relationships.

But the bell that was rung, the noose that choked me was the realization that whenever I actually like a girl, my commitment issues resurface.And my self-esteem nose-dives and i don't feel very confident or like a man i conceive myself to be (not to mention being overweight).

Because I fuckin’ pussy out every fuckin’ time.

PS: back in the city, i did ask her out. She said yes. Fuck rationalizing and time constraints.