The Secret society

“Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships.”

 - Sharon Stone (Basic Instinct)

 

Once in Germany, I was standing outside a watch showcase drooling shamelessly at some magnificent timepieces of ‘Rado’ when my American colleague and friend came up to me and taunted “There you go Mr! Always going after things you can’t afford…” 

Ferraris, Rados, Vertus, Armani glasses, Louis Vuitton bags and hot straight men!  She couldn’t have been more accurate about me.

 

 

Scent of a man 

“You may break; you may shatter the vase, if you will, 

But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.”

                                                                 - Thomas Moore

 

I was sitting in my cab with the rest of my colleagues. They were all busy planning for the newly released movie and the restaurant they hoped to take their girlfriends. It was Friday night. But I had no plans. All of a sudden, the message beeped on my mobile and I could feel my heart beating louder than the cacophony of the fellow passengers and the blaring car audio. What does he want from me? Who is this guy? Who can it be?

 

It had been a month since I started receiving anonymous messages. He would wish me ‘Good morning’ every day and compliment my style; an extremely romantic, unpredictable and impetuous person who knew the art to pamper and make you beg for more. One day he asked me what brand of perfume I applied. I was certain that it had to be one of my colleagues playing a prank and tried to call him from a public booth. He never answered. So I messaged, “I don’t apply perfumes, I smell good naturally.”

 

One night I lay on the floor, as advised by my doctor, engrossed in chat with my secret admirer until I fell asleep. At around 1:00 am I was woken up by a beep. In a moment my soporific eyes dilated as I glared at the blue screen. As streams of sweat trickled down my forehead, I jumped off my bed and ran to my window overlooking my room and stared the message again. It read: “Hey u asleep? Wish ya good night. By the way… Y r u sleeping on the floor?!!”

The next morning I changed my phone number.

 

It had been almost a month and I had forgotten about it, thanks to my new object of affection, a handsome man in his mid twenties with long wavy hair and Asian eyes like Keanu Reaves. He had a very attractive countenance, delicious body, jaw dropping rear and an insouciant attitude. And he was living with his girlfriend.

They made the perfect couple, an imperfect design for the perfect equilibrium. He was beautiful, she was plain ugly; he was dressed to kill be it in body tight white shirt and blue jeans precariously sagging below his white under wear or just in a towel wrapped below his pubic line while she was determined to smother a guy in pure shock. Nevertheless, they were a happy couple who lived beside an unhappy jealous gay neighbor.

 

It was a rainy night. Having devoted myself all evening at the bar to save my soul from the niggardliness of an official party, I was now sitting at the ground stair of my apartment building too inebriated to take the next step up. I had almost dozed off when a hand jerked me up. It was my hot neighbor. He picked me, wrapped my hand around his broad shoulder and mumbled something I never cared to listen. It was the first time he spoke to me; the first time he touched me. I wished those stairs never came to an end. His warm breath and powerful arms… I thanked the man who invented alcohol and blessed the one who built the apartment without elevators. As he gently laid me on the ground (bed) he was right over me for a moment and I could feel the water dripping from his hair on my face. He got up and I closed my eyes; I didn’t want to see him leave… I didn’t want him to leave. As I heard the door shut, I reopened my eyes hoping to see nothing more than emptiness. Instead, he stood right across the room like a porn star bathing under a waterfall, the tiny water droplets wriggling through the curves of his bare chest right into his belly button.

 

As we both lay motionless, hesitant to touch one another, I carefully placed his hand on my chest. Immediately I could feel his arm tightening around me. I could not see his face; his wet hair swarmed all over like honey bees. He got over me, cuffed my hands right above my head with his and began smelling me ‘like a carnivore sniffing its prey before taking the first bite’. Although he had the same virile body as in my fantasies, there was something discernibly uncanny about his smell. It was sweet, soothing and submissive. Despite my breath of alcohol and the odor of two men involved, a girl’s presence was overwhelming. The smell was undeniably feminine.

“What about your girlfriend?” I asked.

The next moment he was putting on his T-shirt. I guess reminding him of his girlfriend dragged him to the altar of guilt and self-resentment. He stopped at the door expecting a return call but it was not meant to happen. Before exiting he uttered something, and those words hung in the air long after he was gone like the wind chimes clanking in the soft breeze. He said “You were right, you naturally smell very good. Good night”…

 

 

Sleeping with the Enemy

 

“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’

Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.”   -   Charles M. Schulz

 

While in my 2^nd year of college, I was frustrated not having a single eye candy around. Finally a junior came to my rescue; a tall, well built, gym toned hunk. Despite his charming looks, he displayed no signs of arrogance. Soon we became friends till the day he shattered my incipient hopes by inviting his gorgeous girlfriend to dinner. That night I could not stop fantasizing his girlfriend nibbling his beautiful body while he lay still, enjoying every move of her tongue and fingers. I had started to envy her…

 

Few months had passed but I failed to accept my truce to a woman. It was after our post semester vacations; I had returned to my hostel while my roommate was scheduled next week. Later that evening my junior friend knocked at my door. He requested me to let him stay for the night as his roommate had the keys and had postponed his arrival.  We had dinner together although we never spoke much. Pretty tired we retired for bed without the slightest anticipation of what the night had in store for us.

 

It was the middle of night when I felt a pleasant wet sensation on my neck. In a state of trance, unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality, I kept contorting. But the confusion faded away when a large warm hand began sliding inside my boxers. I woke up startled to find his virile bare-chested body lying beside me, his tongue and fingers relishing me in the same fashion as I had fantasized him with his girlfriend.

 

I was 20 and never had sex before, not even kissed a man. In the last 5 years there had been numerous nights when I fantasized sex and rehearsed those kinky stuffs and dirty talks. But tonight as he lashed his tongue on my left ear I could do nothing but feel the tremendous rush of adrenaline through my body. As I lay speechless he whispered something into my salivated ear “You are so hot. I love you babe!” The first thing that came to my mind on hearing those words was the scene from Barbwire where Pamela Anderson shoots a gun and says “Don’t call me babe!” And so I gathered enough courage to utter my first sentence, something that I had never rehearsed in my wildest fantasies……. I asked “What about your girlfriend!”

 

He didn’t respond, instead shut my lips with his and got over me. At first I found it difficult to breathe because he was heavy. He covered my face with one hand and pulled down my boxers with the other. Even after he had removed his palm from my face, I kept my eyes closed. May be I was feeling shy being naked for the first time in front of another man or may be I was afraid to look into the eyes of someone who needs a woman to love in life but wants a man to f*** in bed. After a while I heard him unzip.

“How can you love me, you have a girlfriend? I asked. He looked at me with a pitiful smile, a silent gesture that spoke more than he did. I realized that someone had misinterpreted the word ‘love’ from his mouth; I was just a substitute to his girlfriend to satisfy his hunger. As he shoved his powerful hands between my legs and forcibly spread it, it never appeared that he was awaiting my consent. He grabbed my pelvis and tried to get in between. I told him that I want it to be safe but he threw a haughty glance. I tried to release his hands but in vain. He was hurting me with his fists and I had to decide whether to give in or give away.

 

He lay on the floor and I wasn’t sure of his next move. He was strong and a sense of rejection after been toppled down from bed could have aggravated his malevolence. Without a word he went to his bed. The next morning when I woke up he wasn’t there. An hour later he returned with a tiny packet, lifted my legs over his and examined my thighs. Before I could say anything he squeezed out an ointment and massaged my pelvis. I couldn’t believe that those were the same gentle hands that tried to ravage me last night.

 

As the rays of the morning sun flooded our bed, he tried to hide his face while his eyes faltered… I wasn’t sure what was he shying away from, was it the sun that beaconed a new day or the face that reminded him of a tormented night. I had started to pity his girlfriend…

                                           

                  I love ‘You…rope’         

“They speak of my drinking, but never think of my thirst.” – Scottish proverb

 

The best thing about any official party is unlimited drinks for free. That’s why I have a reputation of being a team player who never misses any such occasions. So like any other day I had sorted out an impeccable plan on attending our annual event in one of the bars: reach the venue by 17:00, exchange kisses with the girls but unfortunately only smiles with the boys and rush to a hot bartender, drink till 19:00 and leave in anonymity. Little did I know that some parties could have a lot more exciting things to offer for free than just drinks…

 

I was enjoying champagne when all of a sudden I felt a drastic change in my vicinity. Like someone had just intruded into my forbidden kingdom and the tree leaves had started to whine as if beaconing an unforeseen storm. Assuming to be one of the cheeky colleagues, I turned around with the best possible smile to hide my petulance. As I looked up to his face, my annoyance weathered into thin air just like sand in the wind. I, my smile, my thoughts and everything else that belonged to me had frozen except the drink that had started to drip down my toppled glass…

 

I still remember his first day at work in our European office. A tall, slim, athletic body with a sharp chiseled face, he was trying to settle down at his desk unaware of a pair of eyes that lurked over him obsessively. It took me 10 minutes of meaningless conversation with my receptionist overlooking his table and an unprecedented degree of renunciation before I could refrain from staring at him. With his youth as fresh as morning dew, and blond hair like tiny wisps of gold and eyes as blue as the autumn Nile … he was a man which no woman or gay man except me could abstain from giving a second look …I never would have taken my eyes off him, had I not been informed about his recent attainment to parenthood with his girlfriend.

 

As the bartender was wiping the table, I was clearing my throat. He introduced himself as our Human resource. As I held his soft cold hands, I felt as if someone was pouring cold sparkling champagne all over me. During our conversation my eyes devoured his smooth white chest and curves. He asked me, what I loved most about Europe. And I replied “I love you the places, I love you the climate, I am in love with you the food and I just love you…rope! I went on and on unable to decipher who was speaking; me, my excitement or the third glass of champagne.

 

It was only after one of the colleagues barged into our rendezvous that I realized we had not socialized with anyone else. As the intruder kept wobbling about work we both exchanged looks. Our unwelcoming attitude drove the colleague away along with the morbid conversations that he had brought with him.

 

I resumed our discussion about night clubs. But as he steered the topic towards girls and his strategies of seducing them, my mind was being flooded with queer questions. Why do I care about the dos and don’ts of flirting with a woman? Why would he be seducing other women when he fathered a child with his girlfriend? 

I was involved in this parallel debate with my conscience when suddenly the unthinkable happened. He asked me “Have you ever been to Red and Blue?!!” with his eyes fixated on a glass of whisky that he continually kept stirring with ice. Was he there that night? Did he see me dancing in my underwear? Am I being fired? What the heck! I am not the one fathering a child and screwing in a gay night club!  I replied boldly “Yes, with my friend… and the music was great”. As every bit of the cathartic night flashed in front of my eyes (from le soir en rose), the gay erotic dancers, the sex and strippers, the cute dancer I fell in love with…. I forced myself back to the present and changed the topic. After a while he asked another mortifying question “While you were in R&B and you are not GAY, didn’t you ever ask yourself, what the f*** am I doing here!!” …This time it was his whisky ‘on the rocks’ that had started to speak. I reverted back “I don’t think much, I just do it”. He nodded uncertainly and said “Same here. I love that place and I often go there with my friends”.  )

 

Even this time the queer yet obvious question had come to my mouth “What about your girlfriend?” but I managed to swallow it back. Probably because I had learnt, by then, to be more politically correct and polite to these preternatural men, men who belonged to an inexplicable and hence unnamed secret society. Thankfully I wasn’t a member of it.

 

From birth till death, from morning till night, life offers a choice between honor and happiness, surviving and living, between believing and accepting. And these moments come in everyone’s life: Be it the son with secret addictions that fester his soul but refuses to admit, or the friend with maladies that breed in his conscience but decides to hide it, or the man with instincts that putrefy his existing relationships but chooses to live with it. And then it happens one night when they all give up the sublime angels of their nature for the temptations of their diabolic demons.

 

Yes, we are all capable of playing the game of ‘Pretence’ perfectly. The only catch is though we often succeed, the cost of winning is too high and the victory equally hollow.

 

 

The End