Complicated Closets

Complicated Closets

A lot of strange things about gay men. Why do so many of us find vampires sexy - as evident from the widespread approval to the last post. Why do so many of us aspire to look beautiful? The word was beautiful, not attractive, mind you. What makes so many of us think we're the cat's pyjamas when it comes to taste - and are careful to say that vertical stripes are very Last Season. Why do so many of us long for love - while quite happy with shady couplings in the dark every three to four days. Why are so many of us complex, with severe complexes of our own.

Full stop. No question-mark there.

This past week has seen me mending bridges with a close friend whom I threatened to rechristen ComplexBoy. Of course, he balked at the prospect, even though he acknowledged privately that he fitted the job description. But, I thought, rather than bringing an unwilling participant into the limelight, let me take the opportunity to be honest, and present some of my own complexes:

1. The ego. It looms large over me and is often the master source of several of my other complexes. The good thing about Boy and I is that we both recognize the other's ego, and we know how to work with/around it.



2. One night stands are fine by me and do not affect the ego, but if I am made aware that I am placed/displaced because of someone else, the ego kicks in and I in turn kick the ONS goodbye. Have bid adieu to several such ONS' in the past.

3. Sometimes, I switch off. Just like that. Don't mind me, please. I'll be fine in about thirty minutes or so. But for those thirty minutes, don't bug me.

4. I love money. I always calculate the cost behind a thing. Horrible habit, but I do that. Not that I was severely deprived of money while growing up, but... I always tell myself that you can only not give a damn about money if you have a lot of it - and I don't fit that category. As a result, when I've gone out on a date with a guy who's rich and who loves spending a lot, I always feel very self conscious.

5. I don't go for guys who look very young. Twinks don't do it for me. On the other extreme, I actually don't go for guys who're very old - though I must confess, I once slept with a fifty-eight year old.

6. I usually don't relate well on a date with someone who's too chatty. Then, it feels like I'm chatting to the Cheshire Cat, and I feel like breaking his teeth. People who presume too much about me at the very onset also end up being discarded by the wayside usually.



7. I always think I'm gaining weight. I probably am. But that doesn't stop me from pigging out, either. White and dark chocolate mousse are my faves. O, but no, I would never go for a fat guy. Over the years, however, I've reconciled myself to the fact that there are loads of hot men with pot bellies, and I have taught myself to ignore a pot belly if it's marginal and the guy is cute. *cue for a sigh here.*

8. I hate the classification of tops and bottoms, and that ridiculous habit of calling someone 'dear'. At the very onset I tell the ONS that I don't like classification by 'top/btm' and he is not to ever call me 'dear', if he doesn't want broken balls. Boy, thankully, doesn't do either. ;-)

9. I hate eating before sex. I would much rather have sex on a keen, hungry stomach, and then pig out afterwards. That's why, whenever Boy and I went out on a dinner date, after coming back we would dance and talk or go on a long walk or something, and only then get into the mood.

10. Am a maudlin at heart. When I fall in love, I give it my all. But then, anyone who reads these posts will probably already know that.

PS: Apart from the complex crap, there's good news: Karma passed his 'kindergarten' level of doggie training school yesterday, and Boy and I are quite thrilled!

Welcome to Nerdy Land

Welcome to Nerdy Land

Lazy Sunday, and I went to see a movie with Straight Buddy of Goa infamy. ST wanted to see Cheaper By The Dozen 2, a Steve Martin movie, and since I had loved The Pink Panther earlier when we went to see it (though ST's hopes were apparently dashed by the movie!), I had no objections. The tickets were all sold out, however, and what we settled for in the end was Underworld: Evolution. I was delighted.



Underworld: Evolution is part two of the Underworld series, that started out with a movie of the same name. It is essentialy a saga of war between two races, the Death Dealers (vampires) and the Lycans (werevolves). Part one of the saga sank at the box office without a trace, and I was kinda surprised that they even brought out a sequel, but when I found out that they did, I knew I had to see it.

Because, beneath all these supersexy layers of sluttiness and homosexuality tripe, I'm a.. ahem ahem.. Nerd (capital letters). I love fantasy. I adore fantasy. Throw me a vampire or two and I will be your willing slave. Perhaps that's why I never find anything odd with S&M. *wink*

My tryst with Dark Fantasy (read: vampires and mummies, ghouls and demons) started with that beautiful blonde from Sunnydale, Buffy. Sarah Michelle Gellar exemplified all that was beautiful and sexy in this world and the fact that she used to battle ugly vampires, while falling in love with two gorgeous vampires herself (first Angel, and then Spike) was simply too yummy to not fall for. SMG was Gorgeous Decadence personified, and her cheesy one-liners were everything any devotee of sordid American teenage dramas could hope for.




Next came the slightly literary phase with Anne Rice. I first came across Rice when I picked up her book on the Mayfair witches and the vampire Lestat. Here was the story of how this particularly sexy and devious vampire evolves through the ages, told in a number of books, and how his fate is intrinsically linked to the lives and blood of a coven of witches, the Mayfair family. And of his attraction for Rowan, the most beautiful and talented Mayfair witch, the leader of the coven, and Mona, the briliant young rebel... A Mills & Boons potboiler that goes beautifully blood red, complete with much gore and fantasy and legend. Salivating stuff.



And finally, Underworld: Evolution. Model Kate Beckinsale turned actress for the role of Selene, the vampire rebel, who discovers that she has been lied to all her life by the vampire leader, and she kills him when she finds out that he was the one who murdered her family. In the course of this adventure, she discovers Michael, played by the simply delicious Scott Speedman, who is a hybrid - part Lycan, part Death Dealer and part human. They must join forces to battle Marcus, the First Death Dealer, who is trying to awake his twin brother William, the first Lycan. And of course... they must fall in love.



Sigh... if I were "joining forces" with Scott Speedman, I'd fall in love too.. *grin*



Poor Straight Buddy didn't get much of the movie though. Bah, imbecile!

Tamarind Tales: The Net Experience

Tamarind Tales: The Net Experience

I used to live in a part of Chennai called Kodambakkam. A quiet part of town, and possibly the only notable thing about it was that a lot of Kollywood film stars and singers lived nearby, and the place was also supposed to be inhabited by the most famous Thunder Thigh Madams of the south Indian porn industry.

Very colourful neighbourhood. And of course, I thought it was my solemn duty to add to the colour with my own special brand of Rainbow.

Closetalk in Chennai was quite the shy persona. The hidden chap who used to have sex furtively, rush out to the neighbourhood cyber cafe to get online and search out possible mates. In those days, I hadn't discovered either gay.com or gaydar.co.uk, and so was stuck with Indiatimes.com. There was a chhottu Chennai room in the website's gay section, and this is where all the denizens of the Chennai gay world congregated. To talk about asls and prefs and mushes and available places and likes and dislikes. Your average profile description would go something like:

28 yo, hot guy with mush, look like Rajni, I like smooching, kissing, body sex, no annals, I like to get sucked but don't like doing, will fuck if you want, have hairy body, 5'7", 75 kg, nice lips, 34 wst, am handsome guy looking for cute boy.



Concise. When a puzzled Closetalk would ask what having a mush meant, that would result in some even more puzzled respondents getting back with: Mush? A Mush is a Mush, da! You know what a mush is!

Trouble was, I knew that da was the local lingo for friend, but I still had no clue what mush signified, till after about six to seven meetings when the genius tube light brain of mine figured out that the puzzled respondents had (in amazing brevity) shortened Moustache to Mush. Sometimes, the results were alarming, as I would stare horrified at the Veerappan clone standing outside my door, expecting me to indulge in "smooching, kissing, body sex, no annals..." with him.

Of course, it wasn't always like that. There are loads of cute and hot gay men in the torrid city of Chennai, nee Madras. And they would be all kinds - Palakars, Iyengars, Mallus et al, who would line up to have sex with what they perceived as a 'North Indian'. I used to find it all very funny actually, their enthusiasm for anyone who enters the chatroom and declares boldly that he is "North Indian, da" - within minutes, the guy would receive hits upon hits and would probably have his share of Veerappans and cute South Indian Brahmins to last a whole week. What was funnier was that anything and anyone north of the Vindhyas would be classified as a "Northie", even though he may not be strictly speaking from the Hindi heartland.

Prospective Mate: "So, you're not from Tamil Nadu, are you?"

CT, typing and praying that PM doesn't have a Mush: "Er, no, I'm from Calcutta. Living here in Chennai for awhile."

PM, with renewed interest: "O-ho! So you're a northie? That's good. You must be expert at sex!"

CT, pleased that his expertise has been recognized, but still puzzled: "Er, thanks. But no, I'm not North Indian. I'm from Calcutta in West Bengal. That's in the east."

PM, not bothered: "No matter. You're a northie. So what all do you like in sex?"

The Bangalorean exports came a close second to the 'Northie' in terms of the hot' factor for most Chennai gay men. But Bangaloreans did not mean Kannadigas. There was a difference here. Meanwhile, Malayalis were supposed to have sensual lips and be tigers in bed. So, as soon as you mentioned that you'd recently alighted from a train coming from Bangalore, or anywhere in Kerala, or anywhere north of the VIndhyas, you were automatically invested with the powers of a sexual demigod.

I believe, the correct expression to use here is: Wheeeeeeeee!

A song I used to sing

A song I used to sing

There are times when you're walking along the road, and a piece of the past stops by to show you how different things could have been. Was strolling in the office complex earlier today, when I bumped into Purana Sexy One-nighter. PSO saw me, grinned in happy surprise and pumped my hand in great glee. Where on earth have you been, he asked me, and I must confess that I felt a certain degree of joy in spotting him as well.

CT: "I saw you the other day, heading towards Gym-in-office-complex the other day, but had passed by before I could shout. Looking pretty hot in your sleeveless and shorts!"

PSO, preening, as all Sexy One-nighters of my generation do: "Hehehe... you should have stopped, in any case! So who're you screwing these days, whore?"

CT, preening as all... ummm.... well, preening: "Aaaa, I'm a One-guy guy nowadays."

And that elicited a round of hems and haws. PSO met this young doctor many moons ago last year, while I was still pretty much single, and the two of them seemed to hit it off instantly. I had had the fortune(?) to sleep with PSO's young doctor even earlier, at a mutual friend's house after a night of drunken revelry, and of course I know for a fact that the young doctor bites a lot and is what is known as a 'pure top' in gay.com lingo. *sigh* So when PSO announced that he was seeing this young doctor, I grinned, wished them all the very best, and lightly ran my hand over my shoulder where the brute had left me a scar that lasted a week after!

PSO: "O yes, well, that's over now."

CT, hands cup mouth Sushmita-Sen-style, but not really surprised: "I'm surprised! Didn't last?"

PSO, shrugging, as all Sexy One-nighters of my generation do: "We were on holiday in Goa, and I couldn't resist the cute firang in the deck chair next to mine. Doctor walked in to find me conducting an examination of my own."

CT, shrugging, as all... ummm, well... shrugging: "He bites, you know."

PSO looks at me with newfound admiration: "Wow! I didn't know you'd done him. Before or after I was seeing him? Can you give me anything I can nail him with?"

The conversation veered off to different directions then, when I informed him that my dalliance with the biting doctor had been well in advance of his eventual affections. We stood under the shade of the trees lining the driveway, and reminescenced about the good old days in the old flat, when I would call him over while Punju Flatmate was at work, and we'd have an excellent two-hour session. I always made sure to keep the refrigerator packed with cold water bottles in those days, so very necessary for post-coital chit chat. (I guess the lack of a refrigerator in the current flat heralded the fact that the Slut days were to soon draw to a close.) You sure you don't want me to come with you to the flat now, he asks, and I grin and reply to the negative. It's a serious thing, I tell him. Too serious to fuck up for fun. He laughs, because it's the first time he's heard me say something like that.

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way...
(- Mary Hopkins)

Hey, being almost-25 isn't so bad after all.

Talking Boundaries

Talking Boundaries

The other day, a friend called me from Delhi, and we got chatting about men, men, the things they do, the things they are, the things they make us feel, men, men and more men... Yes, so it was a long conversation, as you can well imagine. ;-)

And in the middle of all this, he spoke about something called the Emotional Fling.

And so I wondered how an Emotional Fling was different from a Relationship. And how a Fling was different from an Extended One-night-stand. And I thought, let's make the next Closet post yet another page from the hallowed portals of Gay-India-101. And even though I don't particularly like my spectacles, those who've seen me in them, say I look very high-brow boring teacher type, and so on they go again.

FreeSpirit of course has his own definitions, and I have my own. (Separate definitions come in handy in the gay universe, as anyone and everyone knows.) A one-nighter-or-nooner-or-eveninger for me is when I call up a guy whom I've met online and say, Hey, you look pretty cute, so why not come over for some coffee and a bada-bang - or if you're in a real hurry, we can always skip the coffee and head straight to my place for the bada-bang.



(Five times out of ten, they meet at the coffee shop; three times out of ten they meet me at the station and then decide to skip the coffee and head for the bada-bang; two times out of ten, they make up their minds from the very first that coffee is not what they're looking for, unless its dripping on my skin.)

And do I call the one-nighters/nooners/eveningers back? Well, I might, if they're good in bed, or if I'm bored the next time around and hunting for new meat will just absorb too much effort.

But, of course, that's still only an Extended One-night-stand, and not a Fling. (At least in my book, it isn't. FreeSpirit thinks otherwise, though.)

Meanwhile, the Fling starts with a real date. We're meeting on a date, we have a nice time, and we end up in bed. Good sex. But, it's clear on both accounts, from the very beginning that, hey, things are not going to get anymore serious than that: some great dates, some great sex, some great armcandy to parties. End of story. Draw the line after the paragraph. That's what you call a clean-cut Fling. When you're done, you 'fling' him away. *titter*



The real trouble starts, however, when you forget the rule you started out with. And after date no. 5 or 6, you start feeling moony about the Fling. You think: ok, he's smart, he's funny, he's sophisticated, I can identify with where he comes from, he can carry a conversation, he's a demigod when it comes to sex, so maybe there coiuld just be a teeny-weeny little spark of.... something?! That's when the Fling becomes the Emotional Fling. And that's when all hell may well break loose. Unless you know that the other person may also be thinking along those lines, it's best to nip things in the bud. And sometimes, you may just end up being as lucky as I was with Salsa Boy, who saw me going moony-eyed in the Emotional Fling mode, and firmly but kindly popped the bubble.

The Relationship, of course, is different. That's when both parties meet with the avowed intention of having a date. Which may or may not lead to sex. And the decision where you chose either A> Fling or B> Relationship may come either before or after the sex. That's when you decide, you're going to see where this goes, and cross your fingers for good measure. Extra tight.

***

And then, there are the exceptions. The strange little mongrels that sneak up on you when you don't really expect them to. I'm blushing here, because I'm thinking about that beautiful boy called Boy and me. Boy and I were supposed to be a one-noon-stand. I was free, and so was he, and when he called to say hi, he was in Bombay, I replied, hey I'm free this afternoon so come over for a bang. He did. He did. And, he did. The one-nooner licked at my toes like the cutest li'l shitzu you ever saw (I'm talking about Karma, of course) and I was hooked. Line and sinker.

Which just goes to show, for the umpteenth time, there are Boundaries and there are ummm... boundaries... in this jolly gay life.