We met on a rainy night, just like tonight. I know it sounds clichéd, but that is exactly what happened.
It was around 3 am, and I was on my way home on my motorcycle when the city decided to give one of its famous rainstorms out of the blue. I had to find a place to park and hide from the torrential downpour; a bus stand appeared and I took it, parking and running under its meager cover.
He was there already. I had fleetingly seen another bike parked near the stand, but had not focused on it much as I wanted to stay as dry as one can under such circumstances. I was in the process of unsnapping my helmet when he spoke.
“Hey.” His voice was deep, but audible above the rain drumming on the roof. I was startled, turning with helmet held like a weapon.
He laughed, but held up his hands as if to show me he was not a threat. A smile split his face. He was as soaked as I was. Our eyes fell to checking out each others’ bodies presented via soaked shirts and wet jeans. Our eyes returned to each other faces at the same time. And he smiled even wider.
“Hey,” I answered. I lowered my helmet to the stand bench and ran my hand through my hair. He was dressed in a light t-shirt and jeans and a backpack on his back. “Coming from work?” I asked.
He nodded. “You?” It sounded like a text conversation.
“Yeah.” I sat down beside my helmet. “But then this….” I gestured at the pouring rain.
He sat down beside me. “It’s a rainy, stormy night and you pass a bus stand in your car.” He spoke slowly, as if telling me a serious story. “You see three people inside: A sick old woman, a friend who once saved your life and the perfect partner you have been dreaming about. Who do you help?”
I stared at him for a few minutes, partly trying to figure out the puzzle and partly trying to figure out why he was asking me. “Am I the friend, or the partner you’ve been dreaming about?” I do not know to this day why I blurted this out into the rain-punctuated silence that followed.
But it seemed to be the right answer because he leaned closer to me and whispered in my ear, “Both.”
The rain is slashing viciously at the hospital window, the world outside dark and chilly, the world inside dim and smelling like medicine, unwashed bodies and wet ceiling tiles. They are operating on him. They had rushed him from the ambulance to the operating table like we see in hospital shows.
I am covered in his blood. Everyone is avoiding me.
I will die without him. When did it come to this? When did he become as important to me as my own life?
After that night, when the rain had stopped and we had both gone our ways, I figured I would never see him again. We had exchanged business cards. His was a handsome ivory colored note, declaring him to be John. He worked for an IT company. Like I did. Like many of us do. I never really saw him clearly in the rainy darkness, but he was charismatic. Nearly all of us have met people to whom we feel an instant attraction. That was how I felt about John. Those few minutes that we shared under that bus stand had been electric.
But that was a few minutes in a rainy night. Life established itself soon after. His deep voice still lingered in the back of my mind, but customers and cases and late nights were in the front of my mind.
It was early Saturday morning a week later as I was leaving the office, that I got his call on my mobile. I was in the office parking garage putting my helmet on when the phone rang, a number I didn’t recognize. I answered it impatiently, wanting to be getting home to start my weekend.
The voice on the other end of the line was deep and full of that smile and brought back the smell of rain and queen of the night. He was outside my business park. Did I want to go some place and talk?
I thought, “What the heck? Why not!”
John knew a tea stall near a bench where we could sip tea and look at the stars and talk. And that’s what we did. Our second date (John always insisted that the rainy night under the bus stand was our first date) was spent over hot tea, the cool breeze in the African tulip tree, the occasional honk of a cab plying people home in the wee hours, and his slow, deep voice.
He made me laugh. Me. Serious, overworked, constantly worrying me. Laughing. His body was a warm glow beside me. Had he asked, I would have gone home with him in a heartbeat. But he didn’t ask. He said that was for another date.
They have been operating on him for over two hours. I don’t know exactly how bad things were because it was dark and wet. Like the night we met. Only this time, we decided to ride out the storm. This time, a lorry with no headlights turned a curve in the road into a bowling alley, and we were the pins.
A nurse comes up to me, asking me to change clothes. She thrusts a set of doctor’s scrubs into my hands. She says she knows I am worried, but I am scaring the other people waiting.
I see a few other waiting people: Their eyes are red and raw like mine must be. They also saw their loved ones vanish into the swinging doors of the operating wing. They stare at me like I am the new enemy and not the accidents and disease that harmed their loved ones.
I take the scrubs and go to the nearest bathroom. The window is open, and I can hear the rain, still falling like a waterfall. Just like the night we met. Why hadn’t we just waited it out under a bus stand?
After that night, John and I met at least three times a week for as many months. Always outside somewhere…a park, a restaurant, a tea stall he knew of. By now he knew that my family didn’t know I was gay. By now I knew he lived alone, his family in another part of the country. We had finally seen each other under light – in restaurants, in the sunshine on a Saturday afternoon in some park.
He was tall and thin, but broad-chested. He was three years older than me, but already had laugh lines around his eyes. They lit up his face whenever he smiled, which was often. He had dark skin, and his arms were covered with thick, black hair. Even his head hair was thick and loosely curled except for a spot about the size of the top of a tea cup where he was starting to go bald, right on the top of his head. He was clean-shaven. His eyes were a rich brown, large and covered by long lashes when he closed them. He was infinitely alluring without uttering a word: when he spoke in that slow, deep voice, I felt myself falling for him like I had never fallen for anyone in my life.
What he saw in me, I didn’t know. I was an ordinary looking 25 year old IT professional. I was of average height, thin, with wheat colored skin, with straight, short black hair above a serious face. My eyes were brown and often pensive. I worried about everything, and this showed on my face, in my posture, in my gestures and the careful way I spoke. He sometimes teased and said he would not call me by my name, Sachin; rather, he wanted to call me ‘Professor’. He said he never saw a guy my age worry so much.
But I didn’t understand how he couldn’t worry. He was alone in a city that was far from his native. Everyone he had ever known his whole life was thousands of kilometres away. My parents and my younger sister and I were not close – in fact, they didn’t know me much at all. But the thought of living without them, their familiarity and security, was hard for me. How did he do it, I asked John.
He was silent for a few minutes and then answered, “We all need something to hold on to in life.”
“Like what?” I wanted to know.
“Like sunrises and the wind in the trees, like good books and those moments you see between lovers that others miss because they are walking by too fast.” He was looking at me intently. In my mind, I imagined this as a movie scene, only with two heroes and no heroine. He reached out with one of his long fingered hands and curled it around my arm. “Like holding on to you.” His voice was just above a whisper, somehow still audible in the clatter of the coffee shop where we sat.
His words gave me the jolt he probably intended, though knowing John, he meant every word. Even as a part of me thrilled to be thought of that way, another part worried. I was falling in love with someone my family, my society, my country wouldn’t approve of.
They have been operating now for over three hours. I have discarded my blood stained clothes for the green scrubs and sit alone in the waiting room. The other families have left, either in tears or in relief. I feel neither emotion yet: I won’t know until I see him just how I should feel. For now, I am simply terrified.
We had been spending hours of the week together for some months, and still not made much physical progress with each other. It was not for a lack of desire. It was clear to us both that we were attracted to each other. In the rare moments that our hands touched, we wanted more. When we sat thigh against thigh, we wanted more.
Motorcycle rides were torment for me. I rode behind him, our bodies close, sometimes needing to hold onto him as he navigated the pot-holed streets in the darkness we often met in. At those times especially, I wondered what he was waiting for. Why didn’t we express these pent up desires in some way more fulfilling than deep talks, of which we had plenty? Don’t get me wrong – I loved our talks! He really got me, all my worries, my deep thinking, my questioning mind. Our talks were relaxing and invigorating. But not like sex!
One night, riding along our usual route, my body pressed against his, we went over a speed breaker and the bike swerved in a dip in the road. As usual, my hands fell onto his thighs to gain balance. Suddenly I reached further around him, and let my hands fall between his legs. I was not surprised to feel him hard, straining against his jeans. I propped my head on his shoulder, my cheek pressed against his helmet, and held him through his jeans. I heard his breath catch.
Suddenly he swerved the bike from our usual route, and it wasn’t long before we parked in the garage of a high-rise apartment complex with darkened windows. I realized he had finally brought me home.
I was not a virgin. Not only had I messed around with college mates in the PG where I had stayed, I had even been with a girl once to see if I was somehow mistaken about what I was attracted to. But these experiences had been fleeting, secretive, short-lived. Within minutes of being with John in his dark flat, I realized he was no virgin either, nor had he been oblivious to the tension that had been growing between us all of these months. He took control as soon as the door was closed behind us.
His lips pulled at mine as his hands removed my clothes. When he pressed my body to his chest, I fit perfectly against him as if made for only him. He sat down on the couch, his hands loosely around my wrists, and looked up at me. I pulled free and slowly began to undress him. For once I was not worried about what I looked like, if I would do something wrong, if I would please my partner or not. In his eyes, I saw no expectations, only passion and longing.
That moment when our bare bodies finally touched is indelible in my mind, duplicated thousands of times over the years we would be together, but never quite like that first time. Our passion started out as if we were two bodies yearning to be one. And every time we laid together, we achieved that unity – mind, body and soul.
It’s been four hours now. A nurse tried to tell me to rest. I cannot rest until I know he will be okay. My hands are gripping the arms of the chair where I sit. I need something to hold on to, but this chair is not what I need.
“I needed to know you were ready.” That’s what John told me when I asked him why he had waited so long before making our relationship physical. “And when you finally touched me, I knew you were ready. I was ready the first night we met. But I am not in this for a short walk. I’m in it for the long run.”
Lately, I had been having what months ago I would have called dangerous thoughts. I was thinking I should tell my family that I didn’t want the bride they were planning for me. That I didn’t want the life they were planning for me, with or without the bride. I had done as they had expected from practically day one. I had lost sleep and lost weight slaving over exams for as long as I could remember, until finally I had landed the IT job they had charted for me on their long list of expectations. I was 25 now, and the long list continued: In my personal world, they expected a bride from a suitable family and at least two children – a boy and a girl if god was willing. In my career, they expected me to climb the corporate ladder until maybe one day I was the director of an IT company somewhere. Money, status, reputation. These were the constant ingredients expected for each and every milestone in the life they had decided for me.
What I really wanted was John. A job for basic needs. Maybe to travel. No kids, no corporate stress, no worries over money, status and reputation.
John never told me I should tell my family about him, about what I really wanted in life. But I knew he had told his family. They had disowned him, of course. They had thrown him physically from their home into the streets at the age of 16 when he had decided to confide in them. Then he had no home, no security, no money, no future. He could have gone back and denied what he had shared. He knew that was what his family had hoped he would do.
But he had not. John never told me all that he had been through to come from that distant city as a 16 year old to now, 28 and living comfortably. But I knew the journey had been hard.
But somehow, John had made it through without becoming hard himself. He was strong and confident of himself. But still vulnerable enough to confess his love for me while we laid in the dark, our arms and legs tangled, his lips in my hair, his words falling like bougainvillea flowers into my heart.
I can’t believe it’s been over five hours now since that terrible screech of tires, that scream of metal against metal, that clash of machines, bodies and road. I had been thrown from the bike as soon as John had tried to brake to avoid the oncoming lorry. I landed with minimal scraps in the bushes along the road, somehow managing to not crack my head on the curb.
My John had not been so lucky. Though the lorry had not run over him, it had collided with him, slamming him from the bike which it then crushed. A nearby tea walla had seen it all and had acted fast, calling an ambulance service on his mobile before rushing to try to help us. I had been dazed, my head ringing, my mouth forming a scream that never quite came out as I dragged myself in the pouring rain to John’s bloodied body. The lorry driver ran away. The tea walla tried to stop me from touching John; by then I was crying and calling his name. But he neither answered, nor opened those brown eyes.
There was no sign of life in him at all.
I started lying to my family, trying to figure out how I could balance what they wanted with what I wanted. I had never thought in my wildest dreams that I would meet someone like John. I guess if I had thought about it at all, I would have married whoever my parents found for me and continued to have fleeting, secretive meetings with other men trapped like me in marriages and lives they had never designed.
At first, they believed my lies that a late customer call had made me spend the night in the office’s sleep room, when in reality I was staying with John. But the more I wanted to be with him night and day, the more irritable and moody I became at home. And rather than discussing it with me, they decided that they just needed to find me a bride even sooner.
“How did you tell your family?” I asked John one night as we lay under the fan in his bedroom.
“I just … told them.” His voice was low. “I knew what they had planned for me, and I couldn’t do that to me, to any woman they made me marry, to them even. I knew what they planned would make me unhappy, bitter, even suicidal. I wanted free.”
“Were you free?” I asked softly, tracing with my finger the outline of his hand on my thigh. “After you told them, did you feel free?”
John was silent for some time, perhaps remembering all he had been through after he had been kicked out of his family’s life. “Sachin,” he said at length. “When I left my family, I had no one. But you have me. Whatever you plan, whatever happens, you always have me.”
Of course I kissed him for that. Who wouldn’t? He was always saying these sorts of things, but better than that, he always meant them. I wondered if he meant this one too.
Days later I told my family. I screwed up courage I didn’t even know I had, I sat them down, I told them I was gay, had known I was gay all my life, that I didn’t want a bride, that I didn’t want the life they had planned. I didn’t tell them about John. I wanted them to know this was me talking, my decision.
Their reactions were inevitable: They ran the gauntlet of anger, disappointment, disbelief, horror and back to anger. Deep and hateful anger. We like to think that the people who are our families would never hate us, but things like this somehow trigger hatred in some. I know there are people out there whose families accept them. Here and in other countries too. But my family made the choice to not be part of those statistics.
When I stood on the street outside John’s flat, what few possessions I had cared to bring with me when my parents told me to leave packed in a bag, I did feel free. I really did. I had no idea what the future held. But I was free.
Somewhere behind those swinging doors, I can hear someone crying loudly. I wonder if it’s a family member or someone waiting to be operated on. Or someone waking from an operation. I wonder if it’s going to be me soon, crying over someone who didn’t wake up.
When John opened the door for me that evening, he knew right away that something big had happened. He shut the door after I stepped inside, and watched me, not saying anything. I was shaking from the adrenaline of standing up for myself, from fear of what I had just done, from the sheer exhaustion of trying to live two different lives all these months: one with John, one for my family.
I collapsed on the couch while he made tea. He still didn’t talk as I finished the tea. Later, he led me to the bedroom and we sat in the dark. Suddenly, he pulled me against his chest tightly and whispered, “Thank you! Thank you!” like a mantra.
It was not until that moment that I realized how much he had stood to lose if I had not found courage. I realized for the first time how much he had wanted me to do this, but that he had respected my right to choose.
It was the first time in my entire life that I had truly felt needed.
I got up and walked onto the balcony, feeling all the emotions of the day. He followed and stood behind me. His body fit along mine as if we were interlocking puzzle pieces. I could feel the entire length of his body holding me, his arms around my chest, his neck against mine, his cheek against my cheek, his breath my breath. “What do you feel, Sachin?” he whispered. “What do you feel?”
I clasped his arms with mine as I answered, “Something to hold on to.”
We have been together now for over 13 years. We have seen our first grey hairs in the mirror together. We have shared the death of family members from afar, still not allowed to come home. We have seen the country’s attitude change, though not as much as it needs to. We have seen the stares of others when we kiss in public, but we do not care. We have united our bodies in passion countless times and still feel like it’s the first time. I cannot imagine life without him.
The doctor has come now. He looks grim and tired. I taste my heart in my throat. But he is telling me John has made it out alive! He is saying that the injuries were severe, and that they had almost lost him on the table. He is saying that John has a strong will to live because somehow, against all odds, he survived. He is saying John will need a lot of time and help to recover. They are leading me to his bed, trying to prepare me for all the tubes and repairs they have made.
But in my mind I know whatever I see will not be as terrifying as the thought of facing this world without him. And whatever medicine they give him, whatever therapy he will need, I know what I can be for him. That which he has always been for me:
Something to hold on to.
THE END
(First published on Gaylaxy)
It was around 3 am, and I was on my way home on my motorcycle when the city decided to give one of its famous rainstorms out of the blue. I had to find a place to park and hide from the torrential downpour; a bus stand appeared and I took it, parking and running under its meager cover.
He was there already. I had fleetingly seen another bike parked near the stand, but had not focused on it much as I wanted to stay as dry as one can under such circumstances. I was in the process of unsnapping my helmet when he spoke.
“Hey.” His voice was deep, but audible above the rain drumming on the roof. I was startled, turning with helmet held like a weapon.
He laughed, but held up his hands as if to show me he was not a threat. A smile split his face. He was as soaked as I was. Our eyes fell to checking out each others’ bodies presented via soaked shirts and wet jeans. Our eyes returned to each other faces at the same time. And he smiled even wider.
“Hey,” I answered. I lowered my helmet to the stand bench and ran my hand through my hair. He was dressed in a light t-shirt and jeans and a backpack on his back. “Coming from work?” I asked.
He nodded. “You?” It sounded like a text conversation.
“Yeah.” I sat down beside my helmet. “But then this….” I gestured at the pouring rain.
He sat down beside me. “It’s a rainy, stormy night and you pass a bus stand in your car.” He spoke slowly, as if telling me a serious story. “You see three people inside: A sick old woman, a friend who once saved your life and the perfect partner you have been dreaming about. Who do you help?”
I stared at him for a few minutes, partly trying to figure out the puzzle and partly trying to figure out why he was asking me. “Am I the friend, or the partner you’ve been dreaming about?” I do not know to this day why I blurted this out into the rain-punctuated silence that followed.
But it seemed to be the right answer because he leaned closer to me and whispered in my ear, “Both.”
————————————————————————————————
The rain is slashing viciously at the hospital window, the world outside dark and chilly, the world inside dim and smelling like medicine, unwashed bodies and wet ceiling tiles. They are operating on him. They had rushed him from the ambulance to the operating table like we see in hospital shows.
I am covered in his blood. Everyone is avoiding me.
I will die without him. When did it come to this? When did he become as important to me as my own life?
————————————————————————————————
After that night, when the rain had stopped and we had both gone our ways, I figured I would never see him again. We had exchanged business cards. His was a handsome ivory colored note, declaring him to be John. He worked for an IT company. Like I did. Like many of us do. I never really saw him clearly in the rainy darkness, but he was charismatic. Nearly all of us have met people to whom we feel an instant attraction. That was how I felt about John. Those few minutes that we shared under that bus stand had been electric.
But that was a few minutes in a rainy night. Life established itself soon after. His deep voice still lingered in the back of my mind, but customers and cases and late nights were in the front of my mind.
It was early Saturday morning a week later as I was leaving the office, that I got his call on my mobile. I was in the office parking garage putting my helmet on when the phone rang, a number I didn’t recognize. I answered it impatiently, wanting to be getting home to start my weekend.
The voice on the other end of the line was deep and full of that smile and brought back the smell of rain and queen of the night. He was outside my business park. Did I want to go some place and talk?
I thought, “What the heck? Why not!”
John knew a tea stall near a bench where we could sip tea and look at the stars and talk. And that’s what we did. Our second date (John always insisted that the rainy night under the bus stand was our first date) was spent over hot tea, the cool breeze in the African tulip tree, the occasional honk of a cab plying people home in the wee hours, and his slow, deep voice.
He made me laugh. Me. Serious, overworked, constantly worrying me. Laughing. His body was a warm glow beside me. Had he asked, I would have gone home with him in a heartbeat. But he didn’t ask. He said that was for another date.
————————————————————————————————
They have been operating on him for over two hours. I don’t know exactly how bad things were because it was dark and wet. Like the night we met. Only this time, we decided to ride out the storm. This time, a lorry with no headlights turned a curve in the road into a bowling alley, and we were the pins.
A nurse comes up to me, asking me to change clothes. She thrusts a set of doctor’s scrubs into my hands. She says she knows I am worried, but I am scaring the other people waiting.
I see a few other waiting people: Their eyes are red and raw like mine must be. They also saw their loved ones vanish into the swinging doors of the operating wing. They stare at me like I am the new enemy and not the accidents and disease that harmed their loved ones.
I take the scrubs and go to the nearest bathroom. The window is open, and I can hear the rain, still falling like a waterfall. Just like the night we met. Why hadn’t we just waited it out under a bus stand?
————————————————————————————————
After that night, John and I met at least three times a week for as many months. Always outside somewhere…a park, a restaurant, a tea stall he knew of. By now he knew that my family didn’t know I was gay. By now I knew he lived alone, his family in another part of the country. We had finally seen each other under light – in restaurants, in the sunshine on a Saturday afternoon in some park.
He was tall and thin, but broad-chested. He was three years older than me, but already had laugh lines around his eyes. They lit up his face whenever he smiled, which was often. He had dark skin, and his arms were covered with thick, black hair. Even his head hair was thick and loosely curled except for a spot about the size of the top of a tea cup where he was starting to go bald, right on the top of his head. He was clean-shaven. His eyes were a rich brown, large and covered by long lashes when he closed them. He was infinitely alluring without uttering a word: when he spoke in that slow, deep voice, I felt myself falling for him like I had never fallen for anyone in my life.
What he saw in me, I didn’t know. I was an ordinary looking 25 year old IT professional. I was of average height, thin, with wheat colored skin, with straight, short black hair above a serious face. My eyes were brown and often pensive. I worried about everything, and this showed on my face, in my posture, in my gestures and the careful way I spoke. He sometimes teased and said he would not call me by my name, Sachin; rather, he wanted to call me ‘Professor’. He said he never saw a guy my age worry so much.
But I didn’t understand how he couldn’t worry. He was alone in a city that was far from his native. Everyone he had ever known his whole life was thousands of kilometres away. My parents and my younger sister and I were not close – in fact, they didn’t know me much at all. But the thought of living without them, their familiarity and security, was hard for me. How did he do it, I asked John.
He was silent for a few minutes and then answered, “We all need something to hold on to in life.”
“Like what?” I wanted to know.
“Like sunrises and the wind in the trees, like good books and those moments you see between lovers that others miss because they are walking by too fast.” He was looking at me intently. In my mind, I imagined this as a movie scene, only with two heroes and no heroine. He reached out with one of his long fingered hands and curled it around my arm. “Like holding on to you.” His voice was just above a whisper, somehow still audible in the clatter of the coffee shop where we sat.
His words gave me the jolt he probably intended, though knowing John, he meant every word. Even as a part of me thrilled to be thought of that way, another part worried. I was falling in love with someone my family, my society, my country wouldn’t approve of.
————————————————————————————————
They have been operating now for over three hours. I have discarded my blood stained clothes for the green scrubs and sit alone in the waiting room. The other families have left, either in tears or in relief. I feel neither emotion yet: I won’t know until I see him just how I should feel. For now, I am simply terrified.
We had been spending hours of the week together for some months, and still not made much physical progress with each other. It was not for a lack of desire. It was clear to us both that we were attracted to each other. In the rare moments that our hands touched, we wanted more. When we sat thigh against thigh, we wanted more.
Motorcycle rides were torment for me. I rode behind him, our bodies close, sometimes needing to hold onto him as he navigated the pot-holed streets in the darkness we often met in. At those times especially, I wondered what he was waiting for. Why didn’t we express these pent up desires in some way more fulfilling than deep talks, of which we had plenty? Don’t get me wrong – I loved our talks! He really got me, all my worries, my deep thinking, my questioning mind. Our talks were relaxing and invigorating. But not like sex!
One night, riding along our usual route, my body pressed against his, we went over a speed breaker and the bike swerved in a dip in the road. As usual, my hands fell onto his thighs to gain balance. Suddenly I reached further around him, and let my hands fall between his legs. I was not surprised to feel him hard, straining against his jeans. I propped my head on his shoulder, my cheek pressed against his helmet, and held him through his jeans. I heard his breath catch.
Suddenly he swerved the bike from our usual route, and it wasn’t long before we parked in the garage of a high-rise apartment complex with darkened windows. I realized he had finally brought me home.
I was not a virgin. Not only had I messed around with college mates in the PG where I had stayed, I had even been with a girl once to see if I was somehow mistaken about what I was attracted to. But these experiences had been fleeting, secretive, short-lived. Within minutes of being with John in his dark flat, I realized he was no virgin either, nor had he been oblivious to the tension that had been growing between us all of these months. He took control as soon as the door was closed behind us.
His lips pulled at mine as his hands removed my clothes. When he pressed my body to his chest, I fit perfectly against him as if made for only him. He sat down on the couch, his hands loosely around my wrists, and looked up at me. I pulled free and slowly began to undress him. For once I was not worried about what I looked like, if I would do something wrong, if I would please my partner or not. In his eyes, I saw no expectations, only passion and longing.
That moment when our bare bodies finally touched is indelible in my mind, duplicated thousands of times over the years we would be together, but never quite like that first time. Our passion started out as if we were two bodies yearning to be one. And every time we laid together, we achieved that unity – mind, body and soul.
————————————————————————————-
It’s been four hours now. A nurse tried to tell me to rest. I cannot rest until I know he will be okay. My hands are gripping the arms of the chair where I sit. I need something to hold on to, but this chair is not what I need.
————————————————————————————
“I needed to know you were ready.” That’s what John told me when I asked him why he had waited so long before making our relationship physical. “And when you finally touched me, I knew you were ready. I was ready the first night we met. But I am not in this for a short walk. I’m in it for the long run.”
Lately, I had been having what months ago I would have called dangerous thoughts. I was thinking I should tell my family that I didn’t want the bride they were planning for me. That I didn’t want the life they were planning for me, with or without the bride. I had done as they had expected from practically day one. I had lost sleep and lost weight slaving over exams for as long as I could remember, until finally I had landed the IT job they had charted for me on their long list of expectations. I was 25 now, and the long list continued: In my personal world, they expected a bride from a suitable family and at least two children – a boy and a girl if god was willing. In my career, they expected me to climb the corporate ladder until maybe one day I was the director of an IT company somewhere. Money, status, reputation. These were the constant ingredients expected for each and every milestone in the life they had decided for me.
What I really wanted was John. A job for basic needs. Maybe to travel. No kids, no corporate stress, no worries over money, status and reputation.
John never told me I should tell my family about him, about what I really wanted in life. But I knew he had told his family. They had disowned him, of course. They had thrown him physically from their home into the streets at the age of 16 when he had decided to confide in them. Then he had no home, no security, no money, no future. He could have gone back and denied what he had shared. He knew that was what his family had hoped he would do.
But he had not. John never told me all that he had been through to come from that distant city as a 16 year old to now, 28 and living comfortably. But I knew the journey had been hard.
But somehow, John had made it through without becoming hard himself. He was strong and confident of himself. But still vulnerable enough to confess his love for me while we laid in the dark, our arms and legs tangled, his lips in my hair, his words falling like bougainvillea flowers into my heart.
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I can’t believe it’s been over five hours now since that terrible screech of tires, that scream of metal against metal, that clash of machines, bodies and road. I had been thrown from the bike as soon as John had tried to brake to avoid the oncoming lorry. I landed with minimal scraps in the bushes along the road, somehow managing to not crack my head on the curb.
My John had not been so lucky. Though the lorry had not run over him, it had collided with him, slamming him from the bike which it then crushed. A nearby tea walla had seen it all and had acted fast, calling an ambulance service on his mobile before rushing to try to help us. I had been dazed, my head ringing, my mouth forming a scream that never quite came out as I dragged myself in the pouring rain to John’s bloodied body. The lorry driver ran away. The tea walla tried to stop me from touching John; by then I was crying and calling his name. But he neither answered, nor opened those brown eyes.
There was no sign of life in him at all.
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I started lying to my family, trying to figure out how I could balance what they wanted with what I wanted. I had never thought in my wildest dreams that I would meet someone like John. I guess if I had thought about it at all, I would have married whoever my parents found for me and continued to have fleeting, secretive meetings with other men trapped like me in marriages and lives they had never designed.
At first, they believed my lies that a late customer call had made me spend the night in the office’s sleep room, when in reality I was staying with John. But the more I wanted to be with him night and day, the more irritable and moody I became at home. And rather than discussing it with me, they decided that they just needed to find me a bride even sooner.
“How did you tell your family?” I asked John one night as we lay under the fan in his bedroom.
“I just … told them.” His voice was low. “I knew what they had planned for me, and I couldn’t do that to me, to any woman they made me marry, to them even. I knew what they planned would make me unhappy, bitter, even suicidal. I wanted free.”
“Were you free?” I asked softly, tracing with my finger the outline of his hand on my thigh. “After you told them, did you feel free?”
John was silent for some time, perhaps remembering all he had been through after he had been kicked out of his family’s life. “Sachin,” he said at length. “When I left my family, I had no one. But you have me. Whatever you plan, whatever happens, you always have me.”
Of course I kissed him for that. Who wouldn’t? He was always saying these sorts of things, but better than that, he always meant them. I wondered if he meant this one too.
Days later I told my family. I screwed up courage I didn’t even know I had, I sat them down, I told them I was gay, had known I was gay all my life, that I didn’t want a bride, that I didn’t want the life they had planned. I didn’t tell them about John. I wanted them to know this was me talking, my decision.
Their reactions were inevitable: They ran the gauntlet of anger, disappointment, disbelief, horror and back to anger. Deep and hateful anger. We like to think that the people who are our families would never hate us, but things like this somehow trigger hatred in some. I know there are people out there whose families accept them. Here and in other countries too. But my family made the choice to not be part of those statistics.
When I stood on the street outside John’s flat, what few possessions I had cared to bring with me when my parents told me to leave packed in a bag, I did feel free. I really did. I had no idea what the future held. But I was free.
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Somewhere behind those swinging doors, I can hear someone crying loudly. I wonder if it’s a family member or someone waiting to be operated on. Or someone waking from an operation. I wonder if it’s going to be me soon, crying over someone who didn’t wake up.
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When John opened the door for me that evening, he knew right away that something big had happened. He shut the door after I stepped inside, and watched me, not saying anything. I was shaking from the adrenaline of standing up for myself, from fear of what I had just done, from the sheer exhaustion of trying to live two different lives all these months: one with John, one for my family.
I collapsed on the couch while he made tea. He still didn’t talk as I finished the tea. Later, he led me to the bedroom and we sat in the dark. Suddenly, he pulled me against his chest tightly and whispered, “Thank you! Thank you!” like a mantra.
It was not until that moment that I realized how much he had stood to lose if I had not found courage. I realized for the first time how much he had wanted me to do this, but that he had respected my right to choose.
It was the first time in my entire life that I had truly felt needed.
I got up and walked onto the balcony, feeling all the emotions of the day. He followed and stood behind me. His body fit along mine as if we were interlocking puzzle pieces. I could feel the entire length of his body holding me, his arms around my chest, his neck against mine, his cheek against my cheek, his breath my breath. “What do you feel, Sachin?” he whispered. “What do you feel?”
I clasped his arms with mine as I answered, “Something to hold on to.”
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We have been together now for over 13 years. We have seen our first grey hairs in the mirror together. We have shared the death of family members from afar, still not allowed to come home. We have seen the country’s attitude change, though not as much as it needs to. We have seen the stares of others when we kiss in public, but we do not care. We have united our bodies in passion countless times and still feel like it’s the first time. I cannot imagine life without him.
The doctor has come now. He looks grim and tired. I taste my heart in my throat. But he is telling me John has made it out alive! He is saying that the injuries were severe, and that they had almost lost him on the table. He is saying that John has a strong will to live because somehow, against all odds, he survived. He is saying John will need a lot of time and help to recover. They are leading me to his bed, trying to prepare me for all the tubes and repairs they have made.
But in my mind I know whatever I see will not be as terrifying as the thought of facing this world without him. And whatever medicine they give him, whatever therapy he will need, I know what I can be for him. That which he has always been for me:
Something to hold on to.
THE END
(First published on Gaylaxy)
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