A Short Story About A Quickie
In and out.
Photograph: Prabuddha Dasgupta.You’re like a flash, in and out, I said. The sex was like a comet.
A short, cascading whistle followed its cameo.
Isn’t that a story for you? What if I came and stayed? There’s no story there.
The character had spoken. I tumbled next to his naked body so that we could look at the small whirring white fan above us and talk.
Right now all I can hear from your words is the confusion in your head, whether to be on top or bottom, he laughed.
He was right. He was reading at jet speed, unlike the slow fan. How did he do it?
He had walked in as the clock struck twelve. No fairytale there. Lots of men in this city are awake for that hour to get laid after a few drinks.
He walks in and sniffs around the hall. I waddle behind him like a neglected duckling. He grabs me and kisses me on the mouth. He tastes like lust, viscous yellow, shiny and ephemeral.
Where do you want to do it, he asks, standing in the doorway of my flat mate’s room, who is away, holidaying in Kathmandu.
Whoa, easy, I go. Let’s sit down and talk?
Ya sure, that also, he plops himself on the sofa in the dim light of the hall.
He smells of alcohol and the sweat of other people sitting heavy on his conscience. A malodorous tongue has grazed behind his gold-studded ears, I gather, as he keeps touching it, as if to wipe off a cold, beery lick.
I met at least five people today, and none of them interested me, he says.
Oh so you’ve had sex with them?
No, not even one, somehow all of them have so much attitude. Some come with a list of expectations. They don’t know who I am! These television actors whose names I cannot take.
He’s from Delhi. I got that from the above statement.
He says he was a runner-up contestant in Mr India some years ago. Didn’t do much after it, slept with several actors, designers, including a toxic boyfriend who modelled for Versace.
I am super impressed. My knees are giving in. I am definitely not letting him go without a lick behind his ears.
Wine, would you like some, I move over to the kitchenette, to fetch a Jacob’s Creek, not mine. Flat mate will not flip. He asked me to finish it when he was going on a vacation.
Yes, why not, he takes a swig and announces how desperate he is to have me inside him. It is a good start. The wine goes inside him, and then I go inside him.
This hottie, with straight black hair, rugged good looks, perfect white teeth that glows in the dark, who is slightly out of his senses, twinkles his liquescent eyes, throwing his head back, sitting on the bar stool, watching me move around like an android totally hypnotised under his spell and ready to perform any action he would like; my master, my sage.
Doesn’t everyone look good in the dark, I wonder.
I can read auras, he tells me when I join him on the table. Auras vibrate in dark places. He is on to something.
You are a writer. I knew it when you opened the door and I saw your hands. And although I have not read anything, I know your writing is sweet. You believe in a love that is unaccomplished. You write about tragedies, but in a romantic voice. The only thing that is stopping you is yourself. You don’t care for money. You are waiting for that little fame that will establish you. It won’t come until you are confident. You need to show it. You need to go out and tell people who you are. Your writing is worthy of it. Your heart has been broken. You must not fall in love again. Not until 2016.
He is an undeniably good smooth talker. More wine is poured for him.
And I thought, who is this prankster, who, an hour ago sent me a message on Grindr, asking me to call him. There was no photo on his profile, just a picture of a naked torso. The torso was curiously tempting. We texted. I saw his face on Whatsapp.
I quickly rounded up my meeting with another chap who was sitting on the same sofa, same spot, sipping English tea and talking about the math classes he conducts for Cambridge students. Impressive, I thought, Cambridge, sitting here in Bombay. RIMS the school, where I teach, is affiliated, he said. I wasn’t paying attention. Rims, is where I stopped him and sent the chap home. Kids should not have to Rims! Ghastly.
You are a single child, with a single parent, you need to look me in the eye and talk, and that is why no one is taking you seriously, Mr India runner-up continued.
He then went on to give me a brief about his life. There were modelling days for designer names I cannot utter, he said. Actors he slept with, whose wives are looking the other way. He is on to his third marriage, he said.
I satisfy my wife, and no one in my family knows about me. It would not be accepted. A cousin in the army was pulled out when the family found out he was fucking a guy. He was tied and beaten up for a month, and I could not help. He is married today, forced, and living in London with his wife.
But that’s better, no? London, free, I said, complicit in the lust for a double life.
He smiles, and chooses to not comment.
Can you please draw the curtains; I want to take my clothes off.
I move to drape the windows, and turn to look. He is taking his clothes off like we are here for jacuzzi and wine. He sits on the bar stool, in the faint pool of one dim yellow bulb in the room. His body is toned, glossy, and he beckons me to come sit with him.
Shall I switch this light off, I ask, because hell, he is hot, and me, I undress with the lights out.
Am okay with anything, he extends an arm and kisses me.
He slides a hand inside me trousers to check how big I am. He is happy to know it’s a saluting member of the horny regiment. I am stroking his perfectly arched spine; I fumble for the right musical instrument — cello, viola, or perhaps an avocado.
I want to lie down here; he walks naked like he owns the space. I watch, and watch.
How can this drunken clairvoyant angel not intrigue me? He is so arrogantly sexy, strutting around like a showy bird; I could have tried my hand at sketching.
After sex, he kisses me on the forehead. This is where you like to be kissed, he says. Is he drunk, or am I dazed?
Don’t fall in love with me, he says. I nod approvingly, I must not. Quickies are a remedy for that.
We cooed, we sighed, we laughed in the middle of it. I said I’m not sure I want to have sex with you when I was in the middle of him. He said he knows I haven’t met a top to satisfy me in years. We laughed through that too, his anal muscles clenching in hoarse laughter, nearly bursting a vein in my penis.
That hurt, like love, absent in its predictably seductive and angelic form.
In the end, there was that all too familiar fairy tale trope.
I have to be home before it’s too late, he said.
And just like that, in a flash, the charlatan wrote himself into a story and disappeared into the fading blue night. Forever.
Photograph: Prabuddha Dasgupta
