The First Story

Now that I have started blogging, I am going to use this space to take everything I have ever written out of my system. Through this I am hoping that I will be able to look my work in a different perspective. The following is my first attempt at 'writing'. I was 21 and being 25 was the biggest melodramatic concern hovering around my life. When I read it again and again, I realized how naive (don't mean it in a patronizing manner) but in an almost nostalgic tone of having 'lost' that. It also makes me think about what I was then, with whom and how. Ah, well, so much for the trip down the memory lane.

I don't even know what to call it. So, well, The first story it is then.

Evidently so, I had a problem with endings even then.
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The First Story

Prologue:
“I am not drunk,” I said in a slurred manner well aware of the fact that I had transcend the boundaries of being sober long ago, “just please hold me once, just once. You don’t even have to pretend to love me. Just let me feel you and sleep. I swear I will sleep. Trust me. Please, do just this little bit for me.”

“You are fucking drunk and fucking crazy. Why did I ever get involved with you?” he shouted pacing hastily around the small room, his legs arms and hands all wandering in different directions. He looked very sexy to me then puffing onto to his cigarette in a nonchalant manner. I wanted to feel his warm tobacco-beer laden breath puffing on my being. My neck. My mouth. My hair. And did I not desire that, now and always? Suddenly realizing that the situations demanded much more serious and insightful thought than these, I closed my eyes and rubbed them hard in disgust and searching for my stars. I had lost both, my stars and my capacity to feel disgusted. To feel anything at all. I opened my eyes as instantly as I had closed them scared by the realization and desperate to feel just anything. What was it for me, a power game? What was it then and what was it now?

“Will you fucking go off to sleep or simply walk out that door,” he shouted getting perturbed by the eerie silence I had fallen into. I know it now and I knew it then, he was restless. He was feeling awkward and uncomfortable in his own body, he wanted to burst open and spill all over the floor. I could feel it and deep within felt satiated. Why? Because, for me relevance of anything existent is the reaction it provokes. And at that moment, his reaction told me I existed and that I was real. “Hurraah,” I thought to myself. So much for the existential angst! “Why, why,” I said as I usually did when I am restless, in that tone of fluctuating monotony moving my hands in wayward directions which usually had very disturbing effect on the other, “if I ask for a bit of love, affection, care and appreciation. Why can’t you give it to me, when you promised you would?” I shouted at the top of my actually attempting to sound helpless.

“Love you, love an alcoholic, a psychotic and a liar. You don’t deserve it. At least not from me. Go and ask for that from one of your boys, who would give it to you,” he said in a flat-icy cold¬-nerve-shattering manner.

Yes, yes, I said to myself a million times, I would go to one of my boys. I had many of them and knew exactly how to keep them there at bay, where I could reach them any time I wanted, use them and abandon them as and when I wanted and desired. I was the puppeteer who knew exactly how to hold the strings; not too tight, not too loose. In spite of knowing all this, I said in a very impotent manner, “I have no one, you know it. I don’t have a family, friends, nothing. I have you and only you. Please, please, do not deny me like that. Please hold me and sleep if only for the last time.” I concluded my speech with intermittent sobbing and howling. I think it was out of sheer tiredness that he lifted his hands in the air, those sexy hands in that rhythmic motion of conducting an opera.

“Okay. Fine. Done. You want to hold me and sleep. Here you are, come we will do exactly that, hold each and sleep,” and hurriedly proceeded towards the bed which lay on the floor and on which we lay together few minutes, centuries or lifetimes ago entangled in each other’s grip culminating the act of passionate, horrendous love making. Or was it? Graphic images of the event, which had happened moments ago, flashed in to my mind and for a while I forgot where I was. I stood there he laid over there and in between was the screen, my screen on which I saw it, the two of us together completely consummated by passion and pretensions. The most primitive of the acts being re-enacted in exactly the same manner. But I enjoyed it, the way it was the act of devouring each other completely without any shame, any fears, any commitments or any conservation’s. At one point of time I thought it would be nice if we conversed, muttering those restlessness into each other’s ears, but then it had to be only till the foreplay after that any words spoken diluted the passion. And that was the way we were when in the act, oblivious to even each other’s presence. All of those nights and days of restrained passion had perfected us in the art. Now we did not have to tell each other what we wanted, how we wanted, both of us knew exactly what we wanted. The act was always abruptly ended as if both of us did not want to be caught unaware of exposing ourselves completely and totally.

I think all this introspection took a very long time as he suddenly burst out deafened by the blaring silence, “you wanted to sleep? What happened now? Are you going to stand over there with that sick look on your face”. Too tired to counter the rhetoric, I slid into the bed next to him my hands finding it difficult to be contended at feeling only a part of him, so I moved them restlessly all over him attempting to arouse him, I think!

Whisky, my liquor, does this to me, makes me delirious yet very perceptive. I was not drunk at the moment I was simply free of any sorts of inhibitions, the shackles of ego self respect and agony bundled and kept carefully in a corner. He lay next to me breathing itself an arduous task for him. That moment I thought was the apt for my long one hour monologue, which I had given before to myself and others and had successfully aroused the kind of emotions I wanted to so I started in that pre-empted and premeditated tone with tears trickling down my cheeks and breathing controlled for the pauses and effects, “I have seen everything and been everything. Done everything and rejected everything. I can quantify for all the emotions there are to be spoken about. Nothing and nothing would scare and shatter me. You know, you know, how it feels? No, you don’t, you never will because you haven’t gone through it. I have and I will tell you how it is. I will tell you now because I am drunk and not bothered about my ego. The ego is going to take over me the first thing in the morning and then I will be something I am not. So, please let me tell you, please let me talk. I am not being pretentious at the moment. No, this is me, with a battered and blistered soul. I don’t like my body and my soul. I detest and hate it. It has been violated so many times by everyone I know and everyone who knows me. My father’s molested me, my brother shagged on my thigh, my sister made me give her a blow job, my mother slept with other men in front of me, I saw my father mounted and well placed between the thighs of an unknown woman, I was raped by my uncle and I have lost my stars. How bad can things get? Do you now understand what I am going through? Now, you know why I have no regard for my body and soul. Because it is no longer mine. What is mine is well embedded and lost in the fuzzy logic I have developed to comprehend the world around me. What is the world around me, I wonder? Is it a fabrication of my own imagination or is it real as it should be? In either situation it is grotesque. You don’t believe, do you? No, I will tell you what I see. I don’t people, I don’t see things; the people are reptiles gross and horrendous all charging towards me with full speed eating into my body brain and soul. They are like maggots, which have grown into my body, and there is no way I can get rid of them. There is always a pair of eyes staring into me, No, they are not mine. I don’t know whose is it. But it is there always. I dread being alone because then things take their shape and haunt me. I close my eyes and eyes glow into me. There is no solace for me. I have no directions and ambitions in life. I cannot feel anything, nothing at all, I mean it. About feeling. I want my independence, I want my mother and father and brother and sister and life. I want my love, anger, passion, I want myself. Can you help me get it?”

Act I Scene I

In the room lit by bright halogen lamps, it was very difficult not see things but I did not. I did not see anything, I just felt it. I clenched my eyes hard so as to see something after the concentrated effort but saw my stars. My stars, they are mine, and only mine. At that moment, my stars came to me like the way they did all the time, charging with great speed, velocity and momentum and for a brief moment of time transpose me to a totally different world, my world. Then suddenly as if somebody had cut the electric power everything darkened and though I should have kept my eyes close so as to find them there, the sudden jolt of losing them made me open my eyes and brought me back to where I was. He was sprawled over the floor, too drunk to even be shameful, exposing everything, himself and his organ. For a brief moment, I was awe struck by the sight of it, the organ. It hung on to one side of his thigh lifeless and limp. Shrivelled and shrunk. Dead, I thought! Realizing the audacity of my thoughts, I lifted my gaze from the ground and saw her standing tall and erect, like the way she always did. She was short, very short but when she stood it had an intimidating effect. Just imaging what he might be seeing of her lying down on the floor, I got jittery. I wanted it to come to an end and soon. But I knew I was the protagonist there, I had to act and react. I had to take stands and soon. They both from their angles of vision stared at me; she with hope and he with difficulty. “For heaven’s sake,” I thought, “is one supposed to take stands like this in a flat two seconds. Give me a break over here, I am having severe performance pressure.”

Suddenly disrupting the placid monotony, she shouted at him looking at me, “You have ruined my life, my career, my family and everything that was mine. Why can’t you just get away from my life, from our life? Just walk out that door. No one will stop you. No one will plead and no will bother. Just go! Make it easier for me and for others. Go wandering about the streets but please let us live in peace. See, can you see, what you come down to? You are drunk and helpless. You love your bottle. You love yourself. You love no one. Do you even love yourself? If you do, then what are doing with our lives and your life? Who will pay for the next car instalment? Who will take the car for servicing? What will you have for desert?”

He lay over there with his eyes twitching, still trying to adjust to the light or attempting to comprehend what she said. Then he turned towards me with his eyes wide open and absolutely clear and said, “I did everything for you, whatever I could and what did you do? You went and slept with another man”. His tone was shrieking and shattering but he was not loud.
He said that and slid back into his slumber, as if going back into hibernation after brief interruption. I stood over and I knew I had to react. But react to what and how? She looked at me with hope and he slept snoring in a very comfortable manner. The picture wasn’t perfect; the action was not over yet.

“Why is he sleeping yet? It is not the two of us but the three of which complete the frame. How can he sleep? He should not”.

I thought to myself and realized that here is where I was needed. They needed me desperately for their own selfish reasons I stretched my hands to the table near me, not looking for anything specific and not sure if in the suspended state of mind and body, I would be able to get a hold over anything. I managed to pick up the water jug. I was not sure what I am going to do with it. I looked into my sea, the waves were hitting on to the walls, desperate to be let loose, to flow and feel. I knew then what I had to do. I have never had such clear insight on any matter. I had to free my sea, the sea, I had to unleash the energy. I picked the jug, while staring into it all the time walked towards the door and as a matter of fact splashed the water of the jug on his face, while going out of the room. He got up with a jerk sat upright and straight, she looked at me with gratitude and my sea which I had released from it confines lay scattered not able to adjust to the new confines or lack of it. I did not turn to look back, I did not even bother to pretend but while transcending into a different world I felt their eyes piercing my soul attempting to stop me. That day when I walked away I left a part of me behind, never to find it again. The world which had created my universe ceased to exist in that instance.

Act I Scene II

The ceiling was moving at full speed and the fan was still. I was lying nude on the bed with a battered blistered soul and a numb body. My body was no longer mine as every part of it had risen in revolt against me. My hands wanted to walk away, my legs wanted to swim and the eyes were fervently trying to jump out and get stuck to the ceiling and mock at me from that height. I could not open my eyes for the fear of losing them. I could not move my body for the fear of dismantling it. I felt him there standing nude at the edge of the bed with a battered hanger in his hands supporting an erection. My mind was operating as an independent entity then, defying all the limits of comprehension, perception and intelligence I had set for myself. I could feel the weight of it compared to weightlessness of my dismantling body. My eyes still closed, my mind refusing to comply with my wishes I was trying very hard to look for my world, my stars. I saw my stars faintly at the horizon moving towards me. I was almost beginning to forget where I was till the time I saw him. I did not feel him, I saw him. His image was blurred because he was too close to my face and was moving his hands on something, which was no longer, mine, my body.

I did not feel anything except his weight, his immense weight. He was humping on me, in me with very controlled movements as if attempting to revive me from my comatose state. He stopped then just like that and slid next to me on the bed and murmured in my ear, “but…but, I still love you”. I heard it and saw it but did not feel it. I wanted to get up and sit up with a jerk up the body was up against me. I reached for myself I was fluid and transparent. I used the tissue lying on the bed for that purpose only to clean the white, vicious fluid flowing down the curvatures of my inner thighs. He used it to clean his sweat. Eventually, I got up not with a jerk but with slow carefully manoeuvred motions careful so as to not leave anything, any part of me behind. I stood in the middle of the room not sure where or what I was supposed to do. He got disturbed by the sound of my heavy breathing and opened his eyes. He was watching me from the corner of his eyes and I could feel the physical reactions I evoked in him. He stirred and shifted. He slid silently from his end of the bed to the corner where I was standing. He stretched his hands and as his hands infringed on my domain, whatever was left of it, I threw up. Standing there, standing nude, and standing erect I threw up without any effort or interruptions. My grime was all over him and me. I saw the reaction in his eyes, those beautiful big brown eyes, it was like suddenly they lost their focus, I could not see his pupil anymore it had faded somewhere within my grime on his face. He opened his mouth to speak but as he did so he tasted me. My grime sealed his lips.

With the resigned disposition of a Queen, I picked up my clothes each one at a time and went to cleanse myself of the layers of grime, which had accumulated. It took time and when I came out he stood there, still nude and still supporting his erection as his permanent appendage, tears trickling down his porcelain face.

“Trust me, you deserved it. Don’t leave me. I know your worth, nobody else does and I give you what you deserve. Love me please and don’t leave me. I will never hit you ever again, never again with the hanger at least”.

I briefly stopped turned back and looked and walked away still carrying the burden of his weight.

Epilogue:

“No, I can’t fucking get it. I can get anything for you. Just go, just leave, why don’t you?” he said in a hasty manner lifted his body and stood vertical to my existence. “You know, what your problem is. You are too fucking dumb and too fucking stupid. If you just did away with your attitude, everything would be fine”.

I lay over there not ready for this reaction, what went wrong. I knew I had not rehearsed the speech well. It had been a long time. But this is not the reaction I expected. My king lay bare and naked in front of his pawn. I did not know where to move and how. I lifted my weight but did not stand rather crawled towards him curled myself around his legs and pleaded, “what have I done? Why don’t you love me? Why don’t you desire me? You used to, we had magic between the two of us, what went wrong? I just want to relive the magic once again. Just once, I want my stars back”.

“What are you talking about? What is this shit about stars and magic? With you, there is no magic and no stars anymore. Can you keep this idealist-philosophical bullshit in your bag when you came over here. Listen, I will tell you what I want. I want my space and I want my life. I don not understand this bullshit and I do not even want to try. I want to make money. I want to be rich and I want to do well in my field. I want to come and watch the 9:30 movie on star or hbo. That is what I want. And if you want stars go to the terrace and look up”.

“But …but, that is not life. That is not love. Love is madness and love is stupid. I want you to see my stars. I want you to be you, I want you to be me. I want it to be pure, passionate unadulterated love. I want magic. I want music. I want to live”. I said still placed on the floor pulling my hair in a melodramatic manner, tears flowing uncontrollably without any effort.

“Look at your self. You are simply disgusting. The way you talk, the way you are sitting there pissed drunk. And trust me, take my word for it, you will never find what you are looking for in me or anyone else. Who will love you? Someone has to be crazy to love you and spend the rest of the life with you. I am sorry, please spare me. I cannot take it. Leave me or better still, I leave you”. He said and moved in to another room.

His voice echoed from the next room came to me in waves hitting me one at a time, “Learn to respect others – learn to respect things around you. Respect me. You have no respect for me. You think you can get away with anything, don’t you? Not this time-go and learn to respect me and then come, we will think about it-yes, the goddamn fucking relationship. If nothing else, go respect yourself.”