Queer As Closetalk

Queer As Closetalk

I'm not exactly your usual nut for television serials - my last regular was Friends, and even Will and Grace was more like a 'Ho hum, o, look what I accidentally channel-surfed to!' - so that's why I make a big deal about the series I've watched with serious and real enthusiasm. That's what prompted that very lengthy post on Sex and the City sometime back, and since then I've been meaning to post something on Queer As Folk (American version) as well.

To be honest, I've only caught Season Six of SATC on DVD, and Season Two of QAF, but that's been enough to label SATC 'profound' and QAF as, well, getting to 'profound'.



The DVD of QAF had been doing the rounds for quite sometime, and when I finally borrowed it, my Flatmate wanted to see the episodes too. So there we were, staying up late nights, watching successive episodes on our individual laptops. And drooling at different men.

Flatmate has the hots for the very enigmatic Brian Kinney. He strikes me as a Samantha Jones-wannabe, to tell the truth, but of course the Flatmate will hear none of that! Brian is rude, obsessed with sex, a chhupa rustum softy, and usually the guy who bails everyone else out in the end. Wiki says, "Heterosexual women and lesbians have often embraced the character more than gay men", and I think they've got it right to some extent - Brian is sooooo the gay guy other gay guys hate, but who they would want to be like, or so says the Flatmate! I started out with the last coupla episodes of QAF - II first, where Justin chooses the violin prodigy guy (cuuuutttee!) over Ice Cold Daddy Brian, and I hated Brian for treating Justin so offhandedly, and was quite glad when he gets dumped. But then, I saw the other episodes in order, and then changed my mind about the whole Justin-Brian drama. Just when you start asking, who broke the rules first, you realise that the rules are soooo lacking in gay relationships.

*gulp*

Ted is whiny. And so is Michael, though he's much cuter than Ted. I identify the most with good ole Emmett. I love the fact that he's a complete slut and unaplogetic about it. I love the little nuggets of wisdom that Wise Em spouts now and then, a la Ms Jones of SATC. And the ending of Season Two, with Ted and Em ending up together is simply too cute for words. Wise Em saves the day again, ra ra!



;-)

Hottie of the series: Without a doubt, Robert Grant, who plays the HIV+ Professor Ben Bruckner lucky Michael is dating. I guess, being whiny has its share of unexpected benefits!

Courtesy, an Angel...

Courtesy, an Angel...

tara vina shyam ekaldu lagay,
raas ramva ne vehlo aav aav aav jay



;-)

Boy is quite peeved that in his town, no one makes/wears proper kedias.

'Settle Down, Young Buck'

'Settle Down, Young Buck'

I was all set to blog about last Saturday's GB party at Velocity and my antics with the umbrella (OK, so it didn't quite make it to the front page of The Pink Paper, but hey, you had to be there!), until exactly two minutes ago. That's when I came across this profile of a guy on G4M which says, how this guy has worked on a cruiser, so he's met loads of hunky hot men, but now, he's looking to settle down with a guy. Nothing wrong with that, you might think, so what in the devil's name has made Closetalk get his thongs into a bunch?! Well, what bugs me is the damn tone: yea, yea, I've been hot and kinky when I was 24, but hell, now that I'm 28, I figure I need a captain to man my loveboat to shore, so rather than get eaten by the hot 'n' hungry sharks, I'd prefer to harpoon a nice solid whale who'll make sure that I'm cosy and dandy and all my emotional needs are taken care of! It's the tone I'm talking of: after I'm 28, I need to be serious and settle down.

Hell, you might as well get down to start scripting the gay version of Kyunki Sass Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, in that case...!



Apart from my personal bug, let's just examine the issue from a different light.

(A) It basically subscribes to that silly view of 'Gal, you can wear all the miniskirts and jeans you want before you get hitched, but once you tie the knot, it's kumkum for your hair and kanjeevarams all day through'. Now, there are actually people who buy that theory, but I've always figured that, hey, being gay automatically forces you to be non-conservative. You can't subscribe to that theory then, can you?

(B) It implies that younger guys don't hanker after relationships - that it's only when you're (gasp!) 28 that you decide that you 'should' find a (ahem, ahem) Life Partner (capital letters, please note), and that's downright untrue. I've known plenty of clingy eighteen year olds, who're quite willing to run away and get married as soon as you finish screwing. Then, again, there are loads of 28 year old, 35 year old, hell, even 45 year old and older, for whom, Marrrage With A Gay Guy (again, capital letters) is the punchline of any joke!

(C) The illustrious and most wise Brian Kinney once told his errant schoolboy lover that "Gay men stay together because they want to be, not because they have to be. It's not in them to be that way." Now, I'm not a 100% fan of Mr Kinney, though a quizfarm exercise did say that I'm a perfect mixture of him and hard-to-miss Debbie (gahhh!), but sometimes, he does make sense.



To tell the honest-to-goodness truth, I don't know too many gay couples who've stuck around. Even those who I thought were rock-solid split up, after spending 5 years or so. That's a very real worry that all gay men who are seeking relationships have to deal with - hell, that's something I've agonized over and over myself. That's why, this simplistic logic: now that I've hit 30, I'm going to start looking out only for relationships, this logic smarts of idiocy to me. Not that simple, dude, not that simple. If you're meant to, you're gonna get lucky when you're 19, and if you're lucky again, you might get it at 52. NO shelf life for gay men - don't believe what the queens gossip in the GB loos.

PS: O, and when I told Boy about how I used the umbrella at the GB party, he smirked and said, I'm to use him as my pole/umbrella next time I wanna perform. *blush*

I Spy With My Little Eye...

I Spy With My Little Eye...

So there I was, waiting outside the examination room, reading a tabloid I'd picked up on the way over. I'd called Dr Dustoor over the phone, and he'd told me to come in a bit later for the appointment, but by the time I arrived, I found there were three other patients before me. I sat there in the lobby waiting for an hour, the patients finally left, and finally the eye doctor stuck his head out and said, in his beautiful baritone, "You can come in now, Closetalk."



The doctor smiled at me, and indicated I sit on his high chair. "So, I notice from your last name that you're not from Bombay?" he says, adjusting his instruments.

"Nopes," I grin back, immediatelly liking this tall thirty-something doctor with his ready smile, "Actually, it's going to be just around two years now, this month."

"Aha..." he says, coming closer and removing my spectacles... *god, he has a beautiful smile.... and those arms are enormous... Parsi ophthalmologist who's a regular the gym? Now how many times has that ever happened????*... "So, do you always wear your glasses, or do you have lenses?"

Brushing away the sudden dryness in my throat, "Ummm.. actually, I wear lenses all the time."

The doctor edges closer and places an uncomfortable contraption on the bridge of my nose, snaps it shut behind my ears. "Now can you read the letters of the second line on that screen?"

Some silly part of me is thinking about that part in America's Sweethearts, where the movie star is at her eye doctor's, and she reads from the chart: I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U; only in my case, I was hoping for I-W-A-N-N-A-S-C-R-E-W-Y-O-U-S-O-H-A-R-D, but of course, it didn't, and I only saw a bland succession of hazy figures.



So I turned towards Dr Dustoor, but he was right there against me, his breath hot against my neck, as he placed a thin piece of glass in the contraption, before my right eye: "Now, is this better for you.... or thiiiiiiisssss?"

I almost groaned aloud, as I felt him rest one hand on my thigh, that any way with him was better for me, but I stammered that it was all pretty much the same. That's when it got better, and he removed the contraption from my head and said in as forceful a voice as would make me melt into butter, "Your eyes are watering from the strain. Let me massage your sides for a while", and his strong fingers were on my temples and my eyes were locked into his. Did I fancy a smile there, I wasn't sure the first time, but I certainly was the second, when his fingers carried on pressing the sides of my face, and his voice whispered hoarsely: "Better?"

I was just about to croak out an affirmative, when I felt... it.

There. Against my knee. Almost unobtrusive the way it had crept up. The way he had crept up. Putting on contraptions on my head. Whispering throatily into my ear. Fingering my face. And all the while... coming closer. Pressed against my right inner thighs was one of the largest, most monstrous erections that the medical fraternity has ever seen in its examination halls, and I gasped with the knowledge (confirmed by his unmistakable smile now and his light caresses stooping from my brows to the sides of my neck) that this was going to be the most exciting Eye Examination I had ever undergone...



***

*sigh*

In reality, Dr Dinshaw Dustoor was aged forty seven years (or thereabouts), had framed pictures of his old father, wife and two sons arranged daintily on the ancient desk in his cabin, and sent me packing with a bill of Rs 500 after an examination that, though it lasted for quite some time, was nowhere as exciting as the movie star's must have been. No S-C-R-E-W at all.

The most ridiculous part was when I paid up, and he gave me his card. I noted the details therein, and as soon as I left the building, I called up Boy.

"Guess what?" I laughed across the seven seas, "I just saw a doctor whose email address is Dicky69@hotmail.com!"

Boy grinned a million miles away - and he has a beautiful grin, mind you (blush!) - and said, "O, really? Was the bawa cute?"

Closetalk hails a cab and gets in. And then replies: "Amazingly so! If his dentures hadn't left so many scars on my neck while he was kissing me, I would have asked to hump his walking stick!"

One-two, chachacha, three-four, lechlechlech

One-two, chachacha, three-four, lechlechlech

It's been two classes so far of my ballroom dance classes, and I'm really into the whole thing. I have this cute li'l ole Parsi lady teaching me, and she dutifully signs all her sms' with "ma'am" (spelt exactly like that with the apostrophe), and while some of my friends giggled and called it 'eccentric', Heaven knows, I've always found 'eccentric' cute.

Hell, seeing that Boy's still with me, so does he! *blush*
So, there I am at class every week, tap-tapping on the wooden floor, learning fancy names like the Suzy Q and the New Yorker, and the relatively fancy steps that have those names, and when I come back home, I practise a couple of those in front of my six-foot mirror. I love the way my Parsi 'ma'am' prances around in her twirling skirt and those gorgeous heels (red, she has red!) and whirls her butt here and there. From the way I look entranced at her swaying, some would think I'm turning into a hetero perv - but it's just so much... awe here on my side! I love the way she makes it seem all so simple - and her squeaky voice saying: "Don't worry about the hip movements - they'll come in time. Just do the steps. Soon you'll be shaking like a hula dancer!"

Felt like asking her to come watch my hula hips in action at the GB party this weekend.

*broader grin*

And then, apart from the dancing, I was leching at Shiney Ahuja this evening, on the telly. The man looks simply divine in both of his upcoming movies, Wo Lamhe and Zindagi Rocks. And, of course, I was bowled over earlier by his performance in both the looks and acting department in HKA.

Pure hunk of desire. Turned over to flatmate and said, "Would it be disloyal to Boy, if I said I wanted to run away with Shiney for a weekend?", and my guilt was assuaged when she patted my head and replied to the negative. ;-)

And surprise, surprise! another one who's looking abso-fuckin-lutely H-O-T in his new movie is SRK. OMG, I don't remember the last time I lusted after the man so much - I mean, even though, I've always been the great fan and all, the sexual attraction part really hasn't been there - except now! ;-) The Matrix look, or whatever his designers have fitted him up with, definitely works here!

Miranda and Gay? Yayyyyy!

Miranda and Gay? Yayyyyy!

The agenda for Saturday night was Anne Hatheway and Meryl Streep trying on Prada, Valentino, De La Renta, yadayadayada, and as Emily and I sat down for a cup of post-midnight coffee (ok, I cheated on my diet and ordered chocolate ice cream at the last moment *sigh*) at a Bandra hotel, we chatted about how Miranda Priestly is adored, worshipped, venerated and deitified by most gay men. SnowWhite's Stepmother may go blue in the face denying that, but I'm the one who sat next to him at the movie, and who heard his oohs and aahs each time Miranda dumped a spankin' new coat on Andy's desk.



;-)

CT: "I'm quite evil to my assistant at work, you know"

Emily, giggling: "Not as bad as I am, honey. I'm vicious with my trainers!"

CT, chortling: "They probably make fun of you in the canteen or something: Faggot! So what have you been doing to them?"

Emily, pouting: "Don't care if they do! Well, there was this time that one of the asses sped home early on a Friday night, even though he was supposed to do a training programme, so I called him up and asked him where he was. He hemmed and hawed and said he's just got on the bus - without missing a beat, I said: D, you promised the trainee a class, so I don't care wherever you are, get back here. And I hung up."

CT, goggling: "So, did he come?"

Emily: "Ew, ew and all that!"

CT grins happily: "You make me sound like a saint! My assistant is so dumb, the other day she comes up to me with a botched-up job, so I look at her dryly and say: A, correct me if I'm wrong, but if someone comes and does 'knock knock' to your head, the echo from within will probably sound all the way up to Nariman Point?"

Emily *cackles* as only Emily can.

CT: "And then, I tell her: Well, at least see the good side - I bet you've never had anyone insult you in such inventive terms before!"

Yes, yes, I know - deep down inside, we're really shallow. O, wait, actually, that's someone else's invention, but I pretty much swear by it (most days). Miranda Priestly as the new fasion icon - god help us all, if she were to be the all-new corporate icon. Imagine a bunch of queens breezing into office clackety-clack, in the soon-to-be-latest designer togs, snapping fingers for latte, steak and the latest Harry Potter manuscript, letting loose a volley of beautifully aimed invectives that would ensure a severe pinking of the cheeks.... *sigh*



Only bitches and gay men would survive the onsalught: straight men, run for cover!

Sleeping with the Enemy?

Sleeping with the Enemy?

Last week, I was on a fact-finding mission. So I cornerd my friends wherever I could find them and asked them that tricky question: Do you find your ex sexy? Which one? came the reply, and I retorted Any; do you find any of your exes sexy, and would you sleep with them/him?


The result: everyone has an ex they are still attracted to. But not everyone would sleep with him again, for fear of complicating things all over again. SnowWhite's Stepmother sighed and said, the one he still found sexually attractive was the one whom he detested the most, so there was absolutely no chance of getting in bed with him again. Emily said much the same about his two-week crush who broke his heart. And Hotelboy said his ex in Delhi was hunky as hell, and he would simply love to get down and dirty with him, but....! Ah, that fateful 'but'...!

What seems stranger, though, is the larger number of exes we don't find sexy anymore. I mean, these were the guys you shared starry dreams with, spent long nights of passion with on wet sheets, woke up in the mornings with to smile 'good morning' to, so there should at least be some teeny-weeny remants of lust... and yet, there's not. If it's true that most gay men go for Looks, with a capital L, then at least the Looks factor should ensure that you still get a rise in your pants when you spot your ex - and if it doesn't, what does that mean? That he's let himself go to pot after you guys broke up, which means that your relationship meant a whole lot to him than either of you expected? Or, that you didn't fall in love with him because of the Looks factor after all, so you're really not that hot a playboy you imagined yourself to be? Or, some completely different reason I can't think of?

In my case, I find only one of my exes attractive - SalsaBoy. The others are discardable: First Love has two many freckles now and is clingy like hell on the phone when he calls up (which is quite icky!) and besides, I can't stand his guts; Fashionista who came next looks hideous these days and was always woefully inadequate in the 'member department': if they're right on Size Doesn't Matter, then in Fashionista's case it's all immaterial; Ex With Paunch's paunch is simply too grotesque presently to get a 'rise' out of me in any way; and while NatureBoy may still be cute (ahem ahem!) there's been an unfathomable fullstop to my sexual interest in him - I think it went away when he snipped of his beautiful curls. So that only leaves Salsa Boy.


SalsaBoy is sexy. The other day, he emailed me his latest snaps - seductive ones of him in a shower stall, water droplets dotting his skin, skin gleaming in the yellow light, muscles looking good enough to eat, yadayadayada, and I got turned on. Very much so. I emailed him back, and informed him he still has that effect on me, and we both laughed in cyber space. I'm glad we share this easy relationship - glad that we can still be friends and advisors. I've spoken to him so many times about Boy and my work, and he feels close enough to confide in me as well. And the fact that we're both sexually atracted to each other?

Aaaa, well...

Would I sleep with SalsaBoy again? The sex was always good. Better than good. The answer to this one is: I would. I would, if I were single again. This blog is all about honesty. Do I regret not being able to sleep with him, though?

Aaa, well...

Have you seen how sexy my Boy is?

*grin*

Playing Second Fiddle Today

Playing Second Fiddle Today

Saw a neat post over at Chimneypot's, and I thought I'd reproduce it here. That's the closest I come to reproduction of any kind. Haha - sad joke, fine, stick your tongue back in now, and read:

I don't know you and you don't know me, but honey I know what you like to drink when you are feeling sad, I know where you like to walk when you are thinking, I know how you love the way a new book smells, I know you spent whole of yesterday reading your ex boyfriend's mails..I know it all..and I don't own a pair of binoculars, I don't stalk you (literally), but I know it all, because I read your blog baby.

Confused? Well here eat this.. X met her love on the internet on ICQ and then the conversations between X and Y flourished on MSN and Yahoo, they broke up a year later of actually meeting each other and helping many restaurants and hotels in Mumbai with their business.

They broke up on an MSN chat window that was supported by meebo.com, since X's office space did not allow messenger services directly. When X and Y both logged onto Orkut, they had their profiles listed with relationship status at 'single', soon Y was 'committed' but X could not believe that her lover was now sending 'smoochie' emoticons to someone else. X then started tracking Y's blog and comments on blog posts everyday, and found out that Z was Y's new love interest.

X also read Z's blog everyday, and even went through different scraps left on Z's orkut profile in this way X knew what Z liked in terms of colours, food, books, films etc. X also found out where Z worked and it was an information overdose and it fed X's jealousy to new dizzying blogger login heights.

All this drama took place in front of a computer screen, the lives of X, Y and Z and a few IP adress routes marked out, it was all a stage, the innocent computer screen. X then took on a new identity and started chatting with Z's friends and got friendly without actually meeting them, and asked about Z and knew even more interesting details like Z's past.
All this in a matter of weeks.

X knew when Y and Z were having a fight and that is when X would send out cute mails to Y in a hope that Y would realise that Z was not the right person, and that X always loved him more than any number of Zs every would.

Did it work out? Well, all this and more in the next edition of Bloggly wise.

Blogs are the key instruments in this whole drama, where online diaries give out so many clues that you could know everyone anywhere in the world. It is all about using the words right, and then again, as the famous line from Spiderman, 'With a lot of power comes a lot of responsibility'. Where does networking leave you and me? Am I X? or are you Z? But you know what..I know what you did last night, and the night before that because (thanks to orkut and blogger.com) Baby! I am your eye in the sky.

Comments/ Opinions/ Real life stories to share/ All of the Sideways?

Weight/Wait and Watch...

Weight/Wait and Watch...

Being gay means you're usually obsessed with your weight. Well, you don't actually have to be gay to obsess about your weight, but that's when you're (usually) glancing all the more at your reflection in the mirror, tucking in that tummy, wishing that ass was firmer than it looks in the cold plate of relflective material before you that seems to cluck its tongue cruelly in judgement. OK, OK, well, things are not quite that bad (or dramatic!), but you get the point.



But there are variations, of course. There's Gupshup who embarked on The Great Diet a coupla months back, but quit later. When it was my turn to lose weight and I asked him what his TGD had entailed, he laughed and replied: "Don't eat anything. That's simple enough to follow, isn't it?"

A bewildered Closetalk stammered and stuttered and said, "But.. but, it can't be that, na? I mean, you lost loads of weight? You looked so great? So what's the truth?"

To which, Gupshup gave another conspiratorial grin, and replied, "Why do you think I quit?"

And then there are others, like Emily, who cribs about his weight and watches it sporadically when he's sipping tea and munching on sandwiches at the Tea Centre (though, to be honest, those outings have dropped to the point of extinction these days), but is pretty much unrepentant about his weight, otherwise. There's Penguin, who's been gymming it regularly for the past couple of months, and for whom Gold's Gym has now achieved second home status. And then there's SnowWhite's Stepmother who really couldn't be bothered to work out in the gym, but who doesn't really need to, since he never gains weight (most unfair!) and stocks up on various low-fat, low-carb, low-everything-and-anything cans from the grocery suburb of Bombay that Andheri is.

;-)

And then there's Me.

A chance step onto a bathroom scale pushed me (rudely!) off cloud 9, as I realised I was a whole 5 kilos overweight! Many minor shrieks later, I call up SS, who grins evilly in the phone and says, "Now that you're fat you won't have any friends! MUHAHAHAHA!" I cursed him for his silly sense of humour and told him to get to the point: how on earth would I regain my svelte 62 kg frame?

And that has led to the chain of events at which my flatmate chortles every evening. That means, coming back from work, locking the door and exercising like a soon-to-be-maniac. That means asking Penguin at a bar recently, "So what's your workout regimen like? I do about 60 ab crunches a day", to which he looks shocked and remarks, "Sixty??? Wow, I only do about 45, and that too on alternate days!" His answer satisfied me: I think I'm on the right track.

The workout mode also involves an enforced dinner of wheat flakes with lite milk - and sugar-free. It involves buying atta Maggi noodles, instead of the regular variety. It involves no-no-ing paneer and potatoes for lunch, and bypassing mutton in favour of chicken. *sigh*

But it's not all been dreary, though. The best part about the new regimen is my regular bouts of dancing in the middle of my exercise count. I started that originally as a warm-up/ to jolt the cramped tummy muscles after a set of crunches, but Twinkle Toes that I am, that's easily become the best part of my exercise regimen. So last night, I boogied to Y-M-C-A, shouting at the top of my lungs, leaping about the room in my shorts, in front of the mirror, performing the latest GB party moves for the neighbours next door who might be peering towards my open window. Next came Gloria Gaynor with I Will Survive, and then I completely freaked out.



By the end of the allotted hour, I was limping and sweating, with a happy smile on my face. And when Boy rings up right then, I explain why I'm panting like a filly involved in a threesome. That's when he chuckles and whispers hoarsely, "God, I wish I could do you right now...!"

*blush and grin*

Playing at Boundaries

Playing at Boundaries

The other day, I was chatting with a friend, and he was giving me relationship advice. Some of it was funny, and it helped cheer me up when I was feeling a bit low and uncertain of how things should progress. At the end of it all, however, he giggled and said, "Now please don't go and quote me on all this at your blog! God! Nowadays I have to watch what I say to you, or else I might see it all reproduced, with added masala!"

I laughed when he said that, but it struck me how true it is, at times. I use a lot of my conversations with friends here, which are often followed by phone calls lambasting me on the other end as to how I took 'creative license' to extremes. I simply find so many interesting points that surface out of these chats. Points that make me ponder and think, and some that just make me burst into laughter. There was this friend who told me the other day, one great point about how to keep your boyfriend. Quoting from Omkara, he said, mard ko hamesha thoda bhookha rakhna (keep your man always a little hungry), and though I always decried that games-gays-play attitude, I've had to agree with him and Father Time that just a little bit of play-acting around is essential.

The truth is: making love work is much harder than finding love - and we all know how hard that is!



On another note, and on another conversation, I heard a story about a failed date from both sides. A said, B had pushed his nose in and invited himself along for the ride, and so A was justified in ditching him and going out with another friend. B says, A invited him in the first place and then never bothered to call back. I sighed, and refused to let myself get caught in the middle here. I kept my mouth shut to A, and gently told B that since he had had sex with A the very first time he met him, he really should stop calling him and asking to do non-sexual things. Understand your sexual boundaries, and respect them.

It's strange, but true. I'm not sure whether it also happens in the straight world or not, but in Gay Bombay this is how it works: if you've had a hook-up with a guy, then the chances that it's going to turn into anything more, even anything remotely platonic, are slim. The guy's had sex with you, he's made up his mind from the start that you're sex-material and not friend- or relationship-material. It doesn't matter how good a chemistry you shared while rocking the bed (or the kitchen counter, or the desk, or the couch, yadayadayada) - he doesn't want to have dinner with you and go on a date date the next day. I've seen it, and I've done it, too.

Unless you both decide in the middle of the hook-up itself, that you better stop the hooking up, and meet later on for a real date - like Boy and me.