In Black and White

In Black and White

I call them penguins. The birds, short and stumpy, cute and sweet, which like to live in the Antarctic, (but if Madagascar gets it right, they thrive in the tropics), can't fly and flip flop on the snow. Penguins. The nice, affable men you meet all the time when you're gay, with whom you get along fabulously with, have a great date or two, fantasize about a beautiful kiss or two with, and then they end up flip flopping on the... erm, snow, in front of you. Penguins. Nice guys, really, but you tell yourself that you can do without them. They just add to the muddled confusion in your head.

So let's count the penguins. There was Nature Boy, about whom enough has already been said, and since we're on good terms now, I shall refrain from being bitchy against (for some time at least!). There's my friend K, who recently found himself dumped by one more bird. Very lovable creature, fine plummage, great smile, and admirable intelligence factor. Two months later, however, the expected jitters came out. One fine morning my friend could hear the penguin squawks, and the writing was on the wall.

And then, of course, there's me. There was this tall, lissome bird I was seeing, and after around three weeks of dating, he turns around and says that he really didn't think we were 'seeing' each other: things had reached a very nice and comfortable 'platonic' stage for him, and he 'assumed' that things were the same at my end, too.

Penguin squawks.

I wonder if I'm being bitter. I wonder if it's a coincidence that the book I just finished reading was one which tries to describes why men leave women and women keep wanting more. Just substitute both 'women' and 'men' back there for 'gay men', and there you have it: the living proof of both why penguins thrive in subtropical Bombay, and how gay men are perpetual Old Cows looking to turn into New Cows.

But bitterness is frankly beyond me. Or perhaps, it empowers me. Isn't every gay man out there bitter to a certain extent? Every smart gay man? I know that my last penguin's a nice guy (heck, that's why he qualifies as a penguin in the first place, and not a jackal), and maybe I shouldn't really be so vocal about my disappointments, but hell, maybe that's just me - "bratty" and "childlike". Maybe I'm the stupid ass who needs his head cleaned of all the "intellectual blah" inside, because when one partner sees things all friendly, the other should certainly stop imagining the bedroom. Right?

Probably.

But then, I guess, I still let those damn penguins fool me.