Closetalk in Chicago

Closetalk in Chicago
(sounds like one of those Asterix comics... 'Asterix in America'...!)

The ole Midwest is hardly the place for you, if you're a Bombay boi, who's used to 13 million teeming and pulsating around you, so you can imagine how eager I was to finally get my ass out to Chicago for a quick pre-Christmas trip. I'd heard all about the "Windy City" from Irish Coffee, who lived there for ten years earlier, and I was dying to see a real city finally in the States - with all due respect to Indy. So we packed our bags, put the dog in the car, and drove down to Chicago.

We found a motel right off Halstedt Street, Chicago's Boystown, and Irish Coffee and I traipsed down the street. I, of course, found the Rainbow Pillars of Boystown quite freakishly fabulous and got straight down to posing for snaps! Also drove over to Lakeshore Drive, which is supposed to be quite the scenic cruising area, and then back to Halstedt Street in time to catch the play we had tickets for.



Once that was done, it was time to visit yet another icon of Boystown - Gay-Mart, which I can only describe as a thoroughly kooky curiosity shop! Picked up a completely nonsensical Stewie angel ornament for the Christmas tree, and then ambled into the Leather Shop and Cupid's Treasures to check out the merchandise. Was sorely tempted to buy the handcuffs and edible underwear, but then decided I could be quite devilish in Chicago without them! What can I say... I get my inspiration from Stewie! hehehe!



After we finished checking into the motel, Irish Coffee and I hit the bar - the straight bar, that is, where his friend's the bartender. The idea was to get loaded on free beers and (yuck!) whiskey. Anyhow, it was fun chatting with the straight folks (as SnowWhite's Stepmum says, or used to, at any rate: "Straight people are normal too!"), but then I forgot that my boyfriend is Irish whereas I get high on a single malt, so after seven beers I ended up puking my guts all over the floor. Mortifying start to a fun holiday, but there I was. In my defence, we were at the bar for a good six hours till I gave my virtuoso performance.

*sigh*

Anyhow, by the time morning came, I was raring to go again and we dropped by the Magnificent Mile. I drooled at the sight of Prada and Tiffany's and given my Holly Golightly affliction, just had to pop in, much to poor Irish Coffee's vexation! :) Walked downtown some more, posed for cheesy pictures and then into the Millenium Park to watch the city's skyline reflected in the Big Bean. :) When the Traveller first recommended I head over to some place called "the big bean", I must admit I sniggered, but hey, it was actually loads of fun, standing by and watching the skaters whizz by.

Did loads more sight-seeing in the next two days, and we headed down to the gay bars in Boystown each night. Time to show of my Bombay togs, so out came the sexy pink Benetton tee and tapering black leather shoes, and I was ready to sashay. Roscoe's was fun and sexy, great cosmopolitans; Cocktail was amusing with its pretty boys; and Hydrate was fun too, with all the hunky shirtless guys boogeying on the dance floor. I'd been poring over the Gay Chicago reader during the day, over my Starbucks, and noting where all the fun parties were, and though I missed the Wet Bear contest (damn!) I had fun nonetheless. Nights of white wine for me, no more beer (thank you!), and it felt nice, standing and chatting and laughing with Irish Coffee, while he whispered terribly sweet nothings in my ear... :)

There are two different joys in exploring a fabulous city with (a) your boyfriend, or (b) your friends... and though I only have (a) right now, and I miss my (b) terribly, it was still a freakin' fun time in the Windy City!

What did I bring back? Mmmmm... apart from the wicked Stewie ornament, a great Boystown football tee that I plan to wear during the summer and a very shiny Pink Pig dogtag. :)



O, and a bunch of great memories!

White Christmas

White Christmas

Back from Chicago, and it has been a very lovely Christmas, if much more quiet than last year's. :) The streets outside are lined with snow and I took the opportunity to snap a quick picture. Spent the whole day cleaning house with Irish Coffee, since he's expecting relatives later this week, and relaxed at home for a quiet meal. Tried out my culinary skills, cooked some noodles, laid out some marinated chicken from Chicago, popped a bottle of wine and some assorted chocolates for dessert.



A very white Christmas.... which was abso-fcukin-lutely great, because for as long as I can remember I've always wished for one! From my youngest years, Christmas has been a special time for me - we used to spend it at my grandma's home and I would sit up a week before Christmas, listening to Jim Reeves croon, while decorating my grandma's tree (yes, in sub-tropical Calcutta, no less!) and then the whole apartment... What can I say? - I was made for mistletoe and holly! :)

Innocence recalled! *grin*

So, anyhow, this year I didn't get the great big party, and I didn't kiss random boys in closets, and I couldn't even find any hot santas to post pics of for the blog, but I did find this old gem in my laptop that I thought I'd put up here. Just a sexy, smutty X'mas for everyone...

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

It's been snowing here in the ole Midwest, and I've been lapping it up excitedly. You don't get to see snow in gorgeous Bombay, after all! :) So I was there playing with the snow on the pavement, while waiting for the college bus, and the Chinese student on the other side of the road flashed me a queer look (not the good queer look, mind you). And there was me bursting into class, 10 minutes late, with a verybeatific smile on my face, announcing: "It's snowing!"

And then my prof snorts, and says I can have the snow anytime - she wants the sun! :)

But it's snowing and it's going to be Christmas soon, and I've always been a nut about Christmas, so... I'm off the BIG city of the Midwest tomorrow - Chicago, here I come...!

And before I hit the Windy City, I thought I'd post this funny one someone emailed me...

Library Brew

Library Brew

It's hard to believe, really, that four months have already passed since I got here in the ole Midwest. I haven't really been that great intrepid explorer of the new land as I thought I'd be. :) Just Indianapolis and one other city in the Midwest and that's it. Yikes. And I haven't been very adventurous in the last couple of months on the men's side either, as the complaints from my sex-hungry freaky commentors will inform you. :) Well then, what on earth have I been up to here, millions of miles away from good ole Bombay?

Ummm, well...



I've been attending my classes, and writing reams of papers for them, and the general verdict so far is that I seem to be fairly talented here. :) So, while I'm already dreaming up PhD plans (mum always did want a 'doctor' in the family!), I'm also submitting papers and articles to conferences. The good news is: I've already been accepted at a couple of them and come March, I'm going to be in Pittsburgh and then at Detroit, waxing eloquent about my sheer brilliance. Aaa, well, not really, but you do get the picture. Suddenly, I seem to have become (gasp) the academic. As a prof informed me, I'm quite the FOB PIG about town - Fresh Off the Boat Poor Indian Grad (Student). :)

So, last semester saw me calling Famous Activist Guy and asking for pointers on a project I was working on, about sensitization toward gay men and women in the corporate workplace. FAG was a great help, of course, but he did assist me in realizing that I'd turned into one of those gay NRIs (Non Resident Indians, for the uninitiated) who turn toward good ole India for research work. *sigh* To think, I actually dated one of those for some time - o, but then he was cute, so it really doesn't matter that he turned out to be a prick. Anyhow, my project happened to be a great hit here, and then I started on a second one: gay-friendly curricula in US colleges. Of course, when I broke this piece of news to SnowWhite's Stepmother, he huffed and said I was as original as Om Shanti Om, with my o-so-cliched little faggoty research topics. :)

Nevertheless, I am being quite true to my faggoty self. *giggle* In a way, it's the whole "coming out" thing. I'd always planned on being more "out" here than I was back home, and I guess that's showing more in my research projects at grad school than anywhere else. I've already declared my intention to focus on Queer Theory to my professors, and they've been quite gung-ho. I don't think they've had a fag in the department in quite some time, so they seem to be quite excited at the prospect! :)

On the man-activity front, there's a reason for not posting about brand new scintillating sex-ventures, aside from my harried nerdy grad self. And that's cuz I've been getting progressively serious about the thing with Irish Coffee. It's not completely smooth sailing etcetera over here, because there are complications involved: I'm not very sure about my future, and he's not sure about his, plus he came out of a long-term relationship two months before meeting me, so there's "rebound-baggage" involved as well... so... *phew*... it is complicated. But it's also nice. It's fun being with him, and talking with him. Spending a lot of my time with him. He's been my sounding board for all my academic (and not-so-academic) yadayadas, and it's been great finding an intelligent, funny, witty (and patient) person in the Midwest to cuddle in bed with.

And he's a funny foil for me. I'm this weird flamboyant gay guy whose scarf has to be flounced over his shoulders just right, whose leather gloves must gleam, whose hat must be tipped just perfectly, who can only wear well-fitting jackets despite the freezing weather - and he's so butch he might as well be straight. We do make a funny pair. He likes his coffee black, straight up, no sugar, no milk - but he still makes mine for me, the way I like it: plenty of sugar, plenty of milk. India ishtyle.

I'm getting used to my Irish Coffee. :)

Here comes... the SATC Movie

*drumrolls* Here comes... the SATC Movie

So I was all set to write a post on a somewhat 'serious' topic here, and then I discovered.....

...the all-new Sex and the City MOVIE trailer... yeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaa! :)





And that's when you think about the great stuff they ended with:

Carrie: Later that day, I got to thinking about relationships... there are those that open you up to something new and exotic... those that are old and familiar... those that bring up lots of questions... those that bring you somewhere unexpected... those that bring you far from where you started... but the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself... and if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous!



O, and I just realized, they show Mr. Big's name on Carrie's phone in the last scene there: John!

Hot Turkey

Hot Turkey

I've been making excuses for quite some time now to my friend the Traveller for not blogging, excuses mainly dealing with work. It's the end of the Fall semester here, and I had tonnes of paperwork to do - theory and term papers to write, presentation proposals to make, etc, and now that I have a kind of respite (one more due Monday, but that's the very last!) I did want to come back here and blog about what a fun time it's been since my last post.

The best thing to ease me into the tough study schedule I find myself in now would be, I decided, a holiday over the Thanksgiving break. So a phone call was made to the Traveller, bus tickets were purchased, and I found myself in Indianapolis. I'd asked Irish Coffee when he dropped me at the bus station, whether there were any cowboys there, and he laughed. I didn't think so, but it doesn't hurt to ask. :) Anyhow, my trip to Indy was simply fabulous. Traveller took me all around downtown, we gawked at the phallic symbol the city prides on, we walked in and out of museums, we snapped pictures of fabulous old buildings and we dined on some amazing food at English pubs and German rat cellars (The Rathskeller was the name of the restaurant). There was even an attempt to change the template of this blog, but I got cold feet at the last minute when the HTML codes started bullying me. O, and yes, we partied. :)



I haven't partied like that in ages! :) Not since Bombay, at any rate! :) Traveller's gay cousins were in town, with their respective partners, and all of us hit the Indy gay scene with a storm. Great music, loads of alcohol, and dizzying dances that ended with the fabulous circle jig. Mmmmm.... even waking up with a (teeny) hangover didn't dull the fun!

So, Indy was fun.

Understatement. :)

A/S/L?

A/S/L?

Back in Bombay, there was this one time SnowWhite's Stepmother and I went across to Bandra to buy tee-shirts with gay messages, and I picked up one that went with the title of this post: "A/S/L?" (Age/ Sex/ Location). I was thinking about that episode right now, when I looked in on my blog traffic after ages tonight. And that's when I thought, I've never really written anything about the people who come in here to this space. Never really said anything about all the guys and gals who come by, scroll up and down, and pass a verdict whether I've done good or sucked royally, and so I thought this would be a great time to do that.

So... where are you from? :)

Well, according to the statistics, TalkingClosets got 969 visitors from 48 countries in the last week. While I expected people from India to bag the top slot here, given that I am a desi boy and all that jazz, I was a bit surprised to note that it was the US of A which was Number One here. Ahem, USA - 374, compared to India's 335. Of course, you can probably shave off 5-10 of those views from that tally, when I logged in myself to check/answer comments, but that still leaves the US in the top slot.

So, now I was a bit curious to find out where my viewers in the States come from. Turns out, California, land of the free, bags the most votes - 89. Strangely though, the centers that I thought TC would be most popular in - LA and West Hollywood - didn't do too well, with only about 7 views from there this week. Nopes, the big daddy of the lot was Piedmont in the San Francisco Bay Area, with about 38 views. Now I was stumped. I mean, I've never even heard of this place before. A bit of googling tells me, however, that it's quite a posh piece of suburbia in SF with a HUGE Asian population - 16% - and well, I guess that's how I got my 38 views this week! :) All the cute and rich gay desi doctors and lawyers in piedmont, I love you, so please come and take me away from the Midwest! :)

The other biggies in the US turned out to be the Big Apple (predictable, I suppose, but YAY, I *heart* NY) with 34 views and Chicago with 27. A place called Blacksburg in Virginia also figured high here, with 30 votes, and I was a bit surprised again, knowing Virginia is God-fearing anti-Christian territory. But then I realized that that's where VirginiaTech is. Hehehe. So, the college boys like me. Nice! O, and Princeton loves me to - 11 votes from there! :)



Back home in India, good ole Bombay wins hands-down, with a whopping 170 views over last week! Funny to think that SS used to tease me earlier, that my dragging everyone to the GB parties was a clear indication I was getting kickback from them! :) O, but I do miss the cit dreadfullyy! Anyway, Delhi came in second with 65, and Chennai third with 26, but my hometown Kolkata saw a lousy 2 views. *sniffle*

This post feels like a horrible lesson in statistics by now, but I did do a little bit more detective work to see where else, other than India and the US, I got page-views from. The next largest is the UK with 60 votes, of which London hogs the majority with 26, and then Canada with 41, of which Toronto claims 25. Mmmm... and I might actually be heading up to Toronto sometime the end of this year. :) Australia gave me 25 views, of which gay mecca Sydney accounted for 15.

O, and I get no views from Africa, and my showing is pretty poor in mainland Europe also - Germany, France and Norway gave me only around 10 views each last week. China hates me - only one lone ranger logged in and I'm going to discount that as a fluke - but Hong Kong made up for that gaffe and logged in 9 times last week! :) Down in Southeast Asia, Malaysia gave me 10 views, and o, I do want to go see the Petronas Towers now. :) Closer home, I was kinda glad to see I got 10 views from Pakistan. Cool - especially since I thought that blogs were not accessible from there. :)

O, and funny thing: stupid Google counts Russia as part of Europe, when everyone and their mother know it's in Asia. Dummies!

Desi Dinner Time

Desi Dinner Time!

So I'm going to pop the corn quotient to 100% and say a silly like like: you can take CT out of Bombay, but you can't take Bombay out of CT! Sitting here in the middle of the sleepy Midwest, Closetalk calls on the all-powerful Youtube.com to take him to the bright gay disco lights of Bollywood to spy on the two brand new releases all of his facebook pals have been chattering about, and he is not disappointed. Nopes. Astounded, maybe, by how wonderfully gay friendly Bollywood heroes have turned out to be, but never disappointed. :)

It seems such a long time ago that Vivian and I were squealing our appreciation of yummy King Khan in his dapper Don look, but nothing could really have prepared me for the sight of SRK's 8-pack abs in his latest release Om Shanti Om. woof! No, no, I mean, nothing at all. There I sat in one of the computer labs on campus, innocently in front of youtube, and when SRK starts throwing his shirt away, gets his brand-new pecs and abs wet in true Mandakini style, you really can't blame CT for getting a woody. Suddenly, all those Irish boys can go hang - give me desi beef any day, baby! :)



And if you think that's yummy, go check out the actual video - Dard-e-Disco - on down here. The drool is inevitable. Quite a different type of drool, though drool nonetheless, for that hot new fireball called Ranbir Kapoor, in his debut Sawariya. O, ok , fine, his heroine is kinda pretty too, but when that hot studmuffin is in the frame, you don't really have eyes for anyone else. Imagine my glee (girlish giggles and all) when I discovered what I think to be the most delicious, gay-est pic of him ever on the net.



Mmmm... just what they needed on that ole Moulin Rouge: sexy Ranbir smouldering the stage in his sailor outfit. yummy! Simply love his dance number in the movie with his o-so false shy act with the looooong towel/sheet/dunno-what-it-is, but despite the thing's ambiguity, you have to love the part where the hottie falls onto the floor and single, slender, o-so-well-waxed leg peeks out. O shucks, now I'm in the mood for some tandoori chicken here...

Wanna Nach All Night...

Wanna Nach All Night...

I guess it's partly the Diwali fever, but here I am in the ole Midwest, and I've been missing amchi Mumbai. I had a formal dinner the other night with the Dean of Graduate Students, and there was the usual introductory round and I do my "I'm the international student from Bombay..." routine, but then he interrupts to ask, "Bombay? Don't you mean Mumbai?" And I'm like: "Nopes. It's Bombay to Bombayites, Mumbai to the rest."

*sigh*



So this weekend, there's a little Diwali something at my li'l Midwestern university, and I'm dragging Irish Coffee over with me. Thought I'd show him some of the desi moves. He's already heard some of the Hindi stuff on my computer and makes a face whenever I play Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, and so now I thought I'd torture him with the sight of some ABCDs and College Curry Bois dance to Where's The Party Tonight. :) (actually, he may like the dance performance more than the music.)

And that's another thing. I am soooo completely behind what's current in the Bollywood scene right now that I still listen to Where's The Party Tonight! Just now, I was so overwrought with nostalgia of the great parties at Guppie's house, and Vivian and SnowWhite's Stepmum dancing to Beedi, that I started listening to the Omkara album on my ipod while studying in the library. While walking to campus this morning, I was playing my five-month old Bollywood collection and snapping my fingers. I miss letting go on the dance floor when they play those fabulous jhatka tunes. I miss seeing the Bombay gay boys do their horrible rendition of the bhangra, and my joining in with my own topsyturvy version.

And the other night, when I found myself alone at the gay bar, I missed o-so much my GB parties and my gang of silly, fabulous queens. :) I missed all the lousy drinks, and bitching about the lousy music, and doing the borderline porno moves with SS, and squealing about the horned-up Punjabis on the dance floor. I missed having friends to dance with. I really want to dance. Just step out there on the dance floor and go wild like I used to in Bombay. With someone (friend or trick) who dances back with me. And while Irish Coffee is so terribly sweet to offer to go to gay bars and clubs with me, he just hates dancing and I know that. It seems somehow terrible to admit that I haven't slipped on those dancing shoes of mine in almost three months!



Ok, so this is the part where I realize that I've been moaning and groaning this whole post. Is life really that bad? Ummm... no. That's just the drama queen in me griping. Halloween was fun, for instance. And even though I was just one cowboy among the 200 others in this Midwestern town, I'm happy that Irish Coffee whispered in my ear that I was the cutest among them all! :)

Things are actually going quite nicely on this end. We still haven't had the "chat" and someone told me the other day that I was a whore to still have random hook-ups now and then if I was seeing someone, regardless of the "chat" having happened or not, but in all truthfullness, the randomness and the frequency of the hook-ups has descreased. Hell, it is true: graduate students don't have time for much else but work! :) And, more than anything, it's fun to talk about Irish boys and college boys and all the other different kind of boys that I bump into here.

That, and Bombay. *happy sigh*

Fairyland's Redheads

Fairyland's Redheads

Sitting here in the ole Midwest, I realize that there's one type of game here which seems especially drawn to me: the Irish American buck. I didn't really notice it much, the first time around. I mean, as far as I knew, there was only Irish Coffee, with whom I shared a fantastic equation. I mean, we ate, we drank, we drank, we drank, we shared conjugal relations *titter*, we drank some more, and we bitched about the British, and then I really didn't think much more about the Indo-Irish connection.

Till I found out, Bearded Boi was Irish American too. Aha. That made me think the world was a small place. Bearded Boi and I drank a lot too (sheesh!) and ate Mexicano food, and drank some more again. And anyone who's known me in real life knows I'm what they call a cheap date: I get drunk after one-and-a-half beers. So, of course, Bearded Boi and I had fun.

And then, I met the Scriptwriter, we had a great date dancing all night, got drunk beyond ourselves, bonked like rabbits till the early morn, and then he tells me at the door while leaving that he's (surprise surprise) Irish American!



So, now I'm left wondering what that special connection between moi and the Irish Americans of the Midwest is all about. It's become a joke for me to ask my hook-ups during the online chat, whether they're Irish or not - and six out of nine times, they are. I mean, back home, I didn't really have much of an idea (or opinion) about the Irish laddies. I knew all about the conflict with the Brits, I knew about the poor ole peasants who had to migrate to America, and I'd seen Ralph Feinnes look very sexy in a variety of Irish roles on the big screen. O, and yes, there was that soppy soap opera movie with Tom Cruise (ages ago, when he looed human) and Nicole Kidman (who is simply gorgeous) playing Irish American immigrants, and that hideous movie with Leo DiCaprio in NYC as an Irish hoodlum. Ahem, ahem.

So... my notion of your average Irish man hasn't really been dripping in style (except, maybe Ralphie). No, they're mostly the rough men-of-the-soil, who drink and belch and fart and laugh, but don't really know much of the finer things in life. But then, neither do I. :) When I tell Irish Coffee this, he has his standard reply ready: "The British stole it from us!"

There are of course, lots of gay men who like swarthy men-of-the-soil. Like me, for instance. :) Like my friend Diamond Choker Baccha for another. O, also Vivian. When you come to think of it, a lot of Indian guys go for that kinda MAN'S MAN - ok, well maybe not SnowWhite's Stepmother, but then, that's not catastrophic. Had sauntered over to an Irish American Festival sometime back, and it was quite fun, watching all the cute redheads fanning around, drinking Guinnes and swearing loudly. I'm no leprechaun, but I do like my redheads! :)

D-I-S-C-O-C-T

D-I-S-C-O-C-T

You won't ever see me in an Afro, or wearing shiny pants (ok, well you might see me in thos e sometime), or doing coke on the dance floor (though prior posts have found me snorting in the bedroom), but don't let this mistle you - I am a Disco Queen.

So last weekend saw me at Irish Coffee's place, and after the episodes of Sex and the City, I force him to sit by me and watch Studio 54. Ryan Phillipe. Yummy. OK, so he's awfully skinny in the movie, but I completely loved the idea of disco-dancing in a great big amphitheater, under a giant shining ball or two. May not be any sort of Ghetto Superstar, but hey, I can do a meeeeaaaan disco! :)

And what bugs me is the complete lack of disco in the gay bars these days. I can't even call it a Midwest thing, because Bombay was the same. Well at least Bombay used to play the odd Shakira and Justin Timberlake which might not be exactly disco, but are gay as gay can be. You can do the sexy shake here and there, raise your arms and scream, get down and dirty with your partner and do everything else that makes a gay man live on the dance floor. And hell, at least they used to play the odd Madonna and ABBA and Cher... sigh. Not so here in the Midwest, though. The staple here is trance. Dance music, they call it. Which means a lot of DJ intervention. Which means that I can't do all my bumps and grinds and tricks with the umbrella that I did back in Bombay.

Throw the DJ out!



(Well, maybe not, if he's that cute!)

Strange to think I'm a puritan like that. I like listening to Donna Summers and all the rest. I like to wear something slinky and sexy and boogey on the dance floor. And I think D-I-S-C-O is the only way to go. Disco complements gay men like no other brand of music can. And it's no just about the tune or the tone, but soooo much more about the attitude! An attitude that you can't find anywhere else. *sigh* Gosh - listen to me: 26 and I sound like a 70s hippie. *grin*

So Irish Coffee watched me dance to the closing credits of Studio 54 with a very bemused expression - I can only imagine SnowWhite's Stepmother's look of chagrin if he had been in the room - but I didn't really pay any attention. There I was, in my cowboy hat, jeans and nothing else, and wishing I could head out to a gay bar right then and there.

Halloween is coming up: I was all set to go as Zorro, but I have a good mind to do a skanky disco queen instead. :)




If I could read your mind, Love,
What a tale your thoughts could tell.
Just like a paperback novel,
The kind the drugstores sell.

SSIs (Singleton Slut Infections)

SSIs (Singleton Slut Infections)

Somewhere in Season Three, Carrie muses, "How many men is too many men? Are we simply romantically challenged, or... are we simply sluts?"

I've been watching a lot of SATC as you can probably tell. They show about five to six episodes a week here, and even though it's not in any particular order of seasons, it's still fun. So I flop down on the weekends over at my friend's home and torture him while I imbibe the girls - he calls them "trollops". :)



Getting back to the episode I quoted, Miranda is all crushed when she discovers she contracted chlamydia from an old lover, and of course that ties in perfectly with Carrie's reflection of what makes a "slut", when she's really hoping to sleep with Aiden but Aiden seems more interested in cultivating her enough to "care" for her. (Of course, watching the episode with my friend just reinforced his notion of the SATC gals as "trollops", but I didn't really care.)

And then, there's us. The gay boys of the world. Who are often accused of being sluts. The stereotypical gay boys. Who are often looked down upon for being sluts by those other gay men, who hate being thus stereotyped and hence look down upon the gay boys who do have sex regularly. *ulp* I once had someone who I was dating read this blog and decide I wasn't the "right kind of guy" for him via sms, and of course that pissed me off big time. Because that kind of thinking really gets my goat.

So, today, I was online chatting with this really fun/ cute guy and after some time, the conversation somehow turned toward matters of sexual regularity. He asked me if I were a "playa", and of course I've had this conversation before with Natureboy, and I tell him of my views... which is basically, I don't think that someone who's a slut while he's a singleton is necessarily going to be disloyal and bad "relationship material". The two are not mutually exclusive, so says CT's Law.

So then, Online Guy says, "I agree. There have been times when I've hated the periods of long abstinence and wanted to feel a body next to me in bed, so I've gone and gotten some. *grin*"

*sigh* My reply? "Abstinence doesn't do a thing for me, dah-ling."



Aside from the psychological infections a Singleton Slut might have to deal with, there's also the physical kind. Getting back to the Miranda issue, I once had the conversation about Sexually Transmitted Infections with Natureboy: he educated me about crabs, and called me the "cleanest slut in town" if I didn't know what they were with my track record. So, I took pride in my achievement, but when I hastened to pass on the information to SnowWhite's Stepmother, he had the fits and refused to hear anything about the ghastly subject. *sigh* Crabs. The skank's handmaiden. Poor Miranda.

Over here in the midwest, being "clean" is very important in the online chat room. That question may not have come up too often in the Bombay chat room, but three times out of five, it does here where I am. Of course, as I've posted about earlier, a lot more gay men unfortunately seem to have HIV and thus seem to either be in the dark or lie about their actual "clean" status, but the point is - that question does come up online.

Makes it easier to hate them when they say they are, and it turns out three weeks later, they're not.

Multiple Choice Questions

Multiple Choice Questions

Grad school has been busy, and that's why I haven't been as regular on this blog as I should have been. So that's why I got Wicked Witch of the West play mommy on me and reprimand me online. So that's why I got SnowWhite's Stepmother play ummm... wicked stepmother (?) on me and say nobody really reads this and I shouldn't bother. *sigh* And then I bumped into my Delhi Twin online, and we had a fun chat about some of the people we know in common, and what the whole rigmarole of dating is all about. Complicated stuff.

I've been reading about Michel Foucault a bit for class, and that bugger used to talk about something called the "de-centered self": basically, there are multiples "selves" to every person, and everyone flits among those "selves", so there's no real "one person". How does all that mumbo-jumbo apply here? Mmm... think about it. So many of us gay guys are so many different "selves", we're continuously looking for a different person to cater to each "self". And do we get shortchanged in the process? Well, what do you think?



I started thinking about all this, after I told Delhi Twin that I was (kinda) dating someone. "ONLY dating," I hastened to add, "Nothing more than that, mind you." So he was a bit perplexed about what I meant by that, and I filled him in on a conversation I'd had with SS the night before:

SS: "*sigh* So are you doing other people, besides this guy?"

CT: "O yea. I had this cute Irish laddie in bed last night - and this morning, of course."

So... that's it, I explained to Delhi Twin. "Dating" is when we're meeting up regularly, so it's more than a one-night stand, and we're getting all cozy and cute and cuddly, but we haven't had the Exclusive Chat (capital letters) yet. When that thorny issue comes up, and we pass through without getting singed, that'll be the "seeing stage". I remember having a similar conversation a year or so back with that other Delhi boy, Soulboy, and talking about what's a relationship and what's not, and so this was a strange deja vu happening here. And, very much like Soulboy, Delhi Twin was not very convinced with my logical reasoning. I see perhaps a pattern here: are Delhi boys (Soulboy and DT) per chance more old fashioned in how they see gay relationships, while Bombay boys (SS and myself) are more... umm... pragmatic? Save that thought for later...

So, DT referred to a common friend and opined that people who date/ conduct one-nighters on an extra-regular basis aren't really giving either themselves or their potential dates a good enough opportunity to evolve. It's always a situation of "Yea, he was cute, but the sex wasn't all that great, and hell, I can make up my mind after I meet candidate number 2 who's ringing my doorbell right now." And even though DT was talking about our mutual friend in this connection, that description could pretty well fit me too.

"So what happens is this," types in DT, "A year or two later, he calls me up and says, you know DT, candidate number 565 has really grown up quite a lot now, and he's soooo my type! And I keep saying, why don't you just stop?"

I tried to put on a defense for both the mutual friend (and myself) and argued that well, it's not easy to know when to stop. So, when you're looking, and they all seem to be turnips, you don't want to end up with a turnip, right? So... you keep looking.



But then, DT had this to say: "Is it that tough really? I mean, my fear is: when you find someone who is sexy and cute, and smart and well-settled, and everything you ever wanted, will you be able to understand it - or will you be so used to looking that you'll just ignore him? What will you really do, when you bump into Mr. All-of-the-above?"

*ulp*

"All of the above". An elusive term.

Past Addictions

Past Addictions

I used to love this song a long time back when I was in college, and then I heard it again this morning after ages - and then, I realized, this was exactly the way I felt during November-December, when things were breaking down with the ex...

(Try to ignore the 'she' part! *grin*)

She says she hates to sleep alone, but she'll do it tonight.
She wants to grab her telephone, but she knows it ain't right.
So if he won't call, she'll survive, and if he don't care, she'll get by.
Climb into bed, bury her head, and cry.

From the beginning he was all anyone could have been.
They were delirious with love; they were certain to win.
Now he's breaking plans more and more, and he's leaving notes on her door.
Took a trip out of town, couldn't turn this one down; He said, "I guess I
should have told you before."

She says she feels like she's addicted to a real bad thing,
Always sitting, waiting, wondering if the phone will ring,
She knows she bounces like a yo-yo when he pulls her string,
It hurts to feel like such a fool.

She wants to tell him not to call or come around again,
He doesn't need her now at all the way that she needs him.
She's on the edge about to fall from leaning out and in,
And she don't know which way to move.

She wants to be fair; she couldn't say he was ever unkind,
But if she could bear to walk away, she thinks he wouldn't mind
'Cause he just keeps himself so apart and there's no one else in her heart,
So she's taking a dive from an emotional high and coming down hard.

She's determined to try, but she'll still give in when he gives her a call.
She'll ask herself why, but in the end it won't matter at all.
Sure, she could sit at home, stay inside and sleep alone with her pride
And as she walks out that door, she feels as weak as before with nothing to hide.

She says she feels like she's addicted to a real bad thing,
Always sitting, waiting, wondering if the phone will ring,
She knows she bounces like a yo-yo when he pulls her string,
It hurts to feel like such a fool.

Man, it feels GREAT to have those days behind me now! :)

Collars and Cuffs

Collars and Cuffs

The other night, I'm over at the Lesbian Cowboy's place before heading out to a party together, and we're discussing Employment Opportunities at the li'l ole midwest town I'm at.

CT: "I mean, I would love to meet someone who's not in either the retail business or the food business. I mean, where the eff have all the cute white collar boys gone?"

LC, a bit flummoxed: "Huh, say that again?"

CT, trying to organize thoughts: "Well, in Bombay I used to date all sorts of people with fun careers. There were journalists with big newspapers and television channels, there were rich stockbrokers and investment bankers, some great designers, interiors and fashion, some smart guys working with NGOs even, and you know... basically, cute, sexy and qualified!"

LC bursts into laughter: "O you poor thing!"

CT: "Well, here all I get are college boys or Subway boys or Wal-Mart boys or boys waiting at bars! I mean, fine, if I get a truck-driver for the first time, I can tell myself it's a gay porno fantasy so just shut up and have sex and enjoy it... but here I've been meeting 5 truck drivers online in the past few days!"

LC falls off her chair.

This is actually a topic I've chatted on with Irish Coffee as well. He's one of the few gay men here I've met, who have what can be considered a proper Bombay-ishtyle white collar job. And he's got a sad story to tell. He says, the city I'm in is dying away and every smart gay man over the age of 30 moves from here - so, it's not really a surprise to him that I'm meeting truck drivers and Subway boys. O, and nursing attendants. A lot of 37-year old nursing attendants here.

While this story didn't really trouble me too much at the time - I mean, every city rises and falls, right? - I got into a conversation some time later with this really smart and sexy artist here. Artist, yes, but he gets his money from his night-job, that's playing bouncer at a bar. Ummmmm.....! And when he heard me moan about how I wanted white collar hunks, he got a bit perturbed and said that I was being snobbish. I shouldn't be bothered about what my guy did for a living, he said, I should simply let go and be attracted/ fall in love. It didn't matter that I was white collar; I should just go ahead and do blue collar/ hippie.



Well, sure, I can do a blue collar, but I doubt I would be happy enough to settle down with one. I know I've blogged about professions and which ones are 'sexy', and while I never really thought about that in so much detail, I know I probably won't be happy 'living' with a guy who drives trucks, or even one who's going back to college at age 38. True, there's the cultural thing: guys here go back to college even at age 40 sometimes, but there's also my culture - and I don't set up house with pizza boys. Sadly enough, that does make me a snob in America.

He Man sings

PInk Panther/ Adam

Pink Panther/ Adam

The video up there was shown to me by a friend here in the ole midwest, and I just fell off my chair laughing. O, and of course it brought back memories. I used to have this massive crush on He-Man in the good ole days and despite my yearning for that tanned hottie, I also nurtured this li'l hope that Teela and He-Man would finally get together. O, and the gay fantasies had tonnes of scope for Prince Adam, of course. :)

I mean, look at Adam - he's blond, he's wearing a wide-neck skin-tight white shirt which is sooo gay, with a dark pink velvet jacket, pink undies, pink stockings, and pink boots lined with fur. Hell, you don't need Youtube to scream out that it's all fabulously homosexual. Of course, when I was ten, I didn't really get all the subtext, but I still had all the usual moony thoughts about Adam finally being brave, and sweeping Teela off her feet and the two of them fcuking like rabbits in the palace. (Castle Grayskull is too sombre a place for humping!)

And now that I'm a seasoned ole slut, I can imagine Skeletor with his mad ole grin pumping poor li'l Adam against the walls of Snake Mountain. *cue for evil laugh*

What prompted this little trip down Nasty Nostalgia, was bumping into this guy (not the one who showed me the Youtube clip and loaned me DVDs of Best of He-Man) who has a fetish for cartoon sex. I think it's called hentai, actually. So there we were, he and I, and he confesses that he's got a thing for watching cute furry cartoon characters sport huge dicks and start going at it with each other. I'm intrigued, because at one level this is something new, and at another, I'm thinking of my own childhood fantasies involving He-Man (and also the GI Joes, hehehe!), and so he starts showing me some of his collection. It's pretty impressive, really, some of it has great artwork. It's like imagining Superman fuck Spiderman - it's got all the improbable positions - but with maybe a Kryptonian Dog and a Tarrantula head affixed.

The thing is, despite my childish trepidation, hentai gay porn is a big business. I remember, while going through one of my favourite gay websites, how many of the galleries featured cartoon wolves copulating with cartoon foxes. And no, that can't be part of a Gay Parent Education Programme, right?

CT, stunned: "Wow, you're telling me there are loads of people out there who go for cartoon porn?"

CartoonKid: "O yea. Feel me - I'm hard."

O, he was. :)

Positively Prohibited

Positively Prohibited

The other day, I was chatting online with this really cute Italian guy, and making plans to visit him. He was tall, dark and handsome, with wavy black hair, a strong jaw, shining olive skin, worked out in the gym two hours a day five days a week, and then mentioned something about being ‘poz’ in the conversation. He got question marks from me on the chat window on that one.
So he drops the bomb: “O, I’m HIV+. Check it out. It’s on my profile.”



Well, he was right. He hadn’t really dropped any bomb, I’d just neglected to lift the covers and see what was in there, do my homework before venturing into uncharted territory. He’d plainly stated that he was HIV+ there, and had even mentioned it in the conversation.

For a second, I was stumped. I’ll admit it; I didn’t know how to react for a few seconds. I’ve never actually talked with a Positive person before, even though I’ve familiar with HIV and AIDS and taken the test. But no, I’ve never actually come across anyone who’s contracted it, and I’ve certainly not negotiated a hookup with anyone like that. But then, I didn’t want to be the stupid guy who treats him like a leper and drops him like a hot potato either.

So, I asked him how he’d got the virus and how long it had been.

Hunky Italian: “Well, I don’t have AIDS. I’ve been Positive now for about 10 years. My ex boyfriend of three years infected me.”

Of course, that wasn’t it. It turned out, that he suspected his ex of actually knowing about his own Positive status before having unprotected sex with him – something which completely inflamed me.

“What an @$$HOLE!” I exclaimed in my indignation and anger. I mean, here was this completely healthy guy who was just about 35 now, who looked simply fabulous, and he’d been infected by his boyfriend. I recognized how it went, of course, the line with boyfriends – “O, honey, I love you, and I’ve been safe and I would never suggest it if it weren’t safe, and you make me so hot that I wanna do it raw” – hell, I’ve been in that position myself, and regretted/ tormented myself about it later. And while I’d thanked God fervently that I hadn’t ended up in a horrible nightmare as a result of that capitulation, it was clear that this gorgeous Italian had. He was living that nightmare, and yet making do with what he had.

The thing is, back in Bombay, we see AIDS more as an African or Asian disease these days, or hell, maybe a Big City Thing. But it’s shocking how the American Midwest here seems to ignore the problem in its backyard. Some days back, there was a top guy online here who wanted to bareback, when I told him I didn’t have condoms with me. He realized I meant business when I told him to go away and put him in my ‘ignore’ list. (Or else, more likely, he badmouthed me as the prissy Indian bitch to everyone else on the chat room.)

And tonight, I just came back from meeting this young man, who’s all distraught because (a) he listened to his stupid boyfriend and had unprotected sex with him, and (b) he cheated on his stupid boyfriend with another ass and had unprotected sex with him, too. I’m glad he stopped me before we got onto the serious petting, because as you know, I don’t have condoms here either. O, in all probability, he hasn’t contracted anything from either the dumb boyfriend or the dumb hook-up, but he’s rightfully distressed now, and I played the good Gay Counselor and told him he needs to get himself tested ASAP. He says, I was better than Oprah, so maybe I should just chuck my degree programme here and hunt out the television channels. I can see the headline in the Washington Post already: Indian Fag Starts Gay Counseling Centre.

The thing is, I know that living with HIV is a much easier option now than it ever was earlier, with all the medication that’s out there. But it’s still an expensive and wasteful proposition, and I’m amazed why anyone would want to even risk it. I’m an idiot myself, I’ve been down that road, and I know that one moment of imagined intimacy is simply not worth those weeks or even months of self doubt and questioning later – or the years of regret afterward, as in the case of the cute Italian. I’m glad he’s living his life with dignity, hell, he’s even having sex these days (though protected), but o yes, there’s regret, plenty of it. And even though I know I probably sound all preachy right now, I’m simply stunned by this stuff here, because I’ve been confronted with all three cases in the time span of just a week…!



These cowboys down here need to get their caps on straight!

Seasoned Sizzler

Seasoned Sizzler

So the other day, I'm having pancakes over at Irish Coffee's place, and we're discussing the kind of men we go for. He's a rice queen, I tease him, and curry's lately become his agenda. He doesn't deny it, but counters it with a "And you go for older guys!"

CT, flinging maple syrup in his general direction: "No, I don't! I'm just looking for cute, smart men who can talk sense and fcuk great. I can't help it, if the majority of those happen to be above 30! I wouldn't mind spooning a clever and sexy 25-year old, you know!"

Irish Coffee, not buying my argument: "Above 30, eh? Liar!"

So I think about it, and realize he may have a point there. He's 45. The Latin Lover is 38. The Manager is 32. The Serious Guy is 35. And the other two grizzlies I've been flirting with online are both on the other side of 40. It seems I do have a thing for older men.



Cut back to an online conversation with SnowWhite's Stepmother some days back -

CT: "So I met this really great guy who's sweet and amazing in bed, and don't worry, I'm not falling in love with him so soon. He's 45 and works as - "

SS cuts in: "Excuse me?"

CT: "What?"

SS: "How old did you say he was?"

CT: "O, he's 45, I said. So anyway, he's interested in markets and everything and - "

SS: "45."

CT: "Yea... And we went to this great Indian restaurant the other day and I help him choose what to eat, and he's really so much fun to talk with - "

SS: "45."

CT: "Ummm, yea. So we talked about the new trends in India with the car industry and the IT boom and what all of that means here - "

SS: "45."

CT: "You still haven't got beyond 45?"

SS: "Honey, I'll never ever go beyond 30."

Ummm, so there you go. Some people find it strange that a 26 year old would probably find a 45-plus attractive. Hell, I've posted a singularly idiotic theory about gay Shelf Lives here in the past - to which thankfully no one actually subscribes to!

So there are some guys who find it absolutely natural to fall head over heels in lust with older men. Diamond Choker Bachha, for instance, has always had a fascination for older men, and we've teased him tonnes about this fixation earlier. Somehow, though, while I always kinda found older men sexy, coming here to the midwest has seen this interest of mine peak. Maybe it's cuz very few of the clever, sexy men here are under 35 - despite this being a university town. *sigh* Not that I regret falling in lust with the Pepper Brigade - personally, I quite enjoy discussing international policy matters, what movie to watch, what sexual position to adopt, all in the same breath.

And, yes, the sex is great...!

Interlude

Interlude


So, last night, I was walking with my date, and then at the entrance of one of the night clubs, this cute blond guy smiles, waves at me, and addresses me by my name. Oops. I have no idea who this guy is, not really sure whether he's gay or straight, if he's gay I must have chatted with him online but I don't recall who he is, and hell I have a date walking next to me so it doesn't look very sensitive of me to start chatting up someone new in front of him... So, I smile awkwardly, wave and move on, after my date.


Am I settling in here? Ummm... yes, I think. *grin*

Getting OUT There

Getting OUT There

Last night I was online, and met a guy who was there in my LGBT Safety Orientation Session. I didn't recognize him at first, and when I finally did, it was kinda funny. I'd seen him at the gay bar the other night too, as he was the guy chatting with Sweet Older Guy, and I'd been more or less ignoring him then. He spoke to me all of once that night, asking "So are you having fun?", to which I'd replied in a not-very-amused way "What do you think?", and turned away. Somehow, one realizes how stupid one acts/acted only after the deed is done - and I guess it was the same with me. So I see this guy the next day at the LGBT session and then again online, and I felt terribly embarassed. Picture me red. He asked me why I hadn't been dancing that night, and I said because I didn't feel like talking to strangers. "You should get over that", he responded, and I kinda think he's right. I should.

So, tonight, I have a date (sorta) with a guy who might take me aboard his boat. No pun intended there. And this weekend, I'm travelling to a neighbouring city with someone I'd chatted with online ages ago. The emphasis really is to go out there and make some new friends.

Hell, I bought myself new sneakers at Wal-Mart; can friends really be that tough?



So, the LGBT session was chaired by this venerable ole dyke professor, and we all gawked at and admired her tattoos. She said, her marriage of 22 years before coming out was what she calls "doin' my hard time", and we all giggled at that - the lesbians in the room guffawed, and us gay guys tittered. I got chummy with the gal next to me, a Masters student in Fine Arts, and we've made plans to catch up next week, and maybe go dancing. She's from Cowboy Country and said she'd bring back a hat for me next time she went home. :) I'm torn between asking for the hat or the big snakeskin boots. Both would be great sex-aids.

Getting back to what the professor said, she encouraged us to walk into class on the very first day of our teaching assignments, and make it very clear that in addition to not tolerating any shit about non-attendance and racism, we would also not stand for any homophobic comments. "You don't have to come out, necessarily, but by saying that you won't tolerate homophobia in the classroom, you instantly make the queer students in the room feel safer, and the straight students feel a tad more sensitive."

It's an interesting concept, but I wonder how many queer students there really would be in a class of, say, 20, people. And, hell, even if I don't come out outright, just by making that statement, isn't it very clear where my orientation lies? (Or is that the closeted Indian in me talking?) When I first thought of coming here, I reasoned I'd probably be a bit more open about being gay than I was in Bombay - but this is Redneck Country here, fairly Christian Conservative, so maybe being too 'out and proud' is not such a great idea. And then, there are counter-arguments - like the other guy I chatted with online last night, who's living here and is out, and has been out for almost three years now. There're no maniacs with pitchforks outside his house - yet.

So this is still a grey area for me. And I'm not sure how I'm really going to react. Even if I don't come out and make a statement like the professor suggested, maybe I'll step in with a "NO Homophobia" discussion on a case-to-case basis in the classroom. If I do come out of the closet in the classroom, I'd probably rush right here to the computer lab to change the blog's name. :)



On a more personal note, I feel midly happy. The ex contacted me last night, having finally realized I was in the States, and wanted to meet up. I told him, I don't think it's a good idea. I'm glad I did so, and I'm proud of myself. No looking back here; the doors have closed.

In Need of a Refresher Course

In Need of a Refresher Course

I realized keenly how much I miss Bombay and 'the family' last night. Decided to hit the gay bar in town with the Sweet Older Guy who'd been showing me around and helping me get acquainted with the place, and so I got all dressed up - sexy Benetton tee, skinny jeans and a great cologne. I was ready to rock and roll. So we drove down there all the way, and I showed my passport to the bouncer (o yikes, yes, my passport!) and we were admitted. I think I expected it to be something like the Bombay bars, or at least a bit more chic, but what I got was this long saloon-like room, with a stage in the middle which had a drag show in progress over there. Yep, my first drag show. And I'm proud I didn't wince.

Actually, now that I remember, my first drag show was at a GB party - divas dancing at Velocity, and SnowWhite's Stepmother and I doing our little tango at the back, quite mollified that there were a sizeable number of people watching us boogey too! :) Last night, however, I didn't dance. I downed three beers, enough to get me sodden drunk, as my drinking buddies will tell you, but there I was - immobile and zenlike at one end of the saloon, cradling my BudLite.

What struck me the most was how casually most of the guys were dressed - so many of them were in three-quarters/ cargoes, and so many of them were (blech) fat. And by fat, I mean American overweight, not good ole Indian 'fat'. Possibly, I felt all standoffish in my sexy svelte outfit, but then I also started to feel a bit out-of-place. And then there were the women - loads of them. You don't get to see so many lesbians at an Indian gay party, so I suppose I was a bit taken aback by the presence of all the lesbians. And my own puzzlement regarding lesbians notwithstanding, I did find the large presence quite encouraging - cute, even. Finally, some good-looking guys did stream in, all well-turned out, buffed and great dancers. And yet, there I stood, all wallflower (Benetton wallflower, nonethless) with my bottles of BudLite.

*yech*

I'm not really sure what happened to me last night. CT came a-cropper. Here I was, all gung-ho about the outing, but there I stood all morose and silent in a corner. My friend found somebody closer to his own age to chat with, and I felt even more neglected and sullen. Drama Queen elements began to rule, and I was all 'out of it'. A cute guy, all tall and blond curls and a great dancing body (I know, cuz I'd spied him dancing by himself on the other side of the room), came and stood next to me for ages, before he got bored at my silence and walked away. Hell, even my older friend tried to hit on him and I didn't. Somehow, I was in this weird "I don't want to hit on people, let them hit on me" mode, and though it felt terribly constricting I couldn't snap myself out of it. I thought I'd feel better if I just got on the dance floor, but my older friend doesn't dance, and I didn't want to approach a stranger. (I'm strange that way.) Bumped into Goatee Guy from online, though, and the ten minutes we spent chatting was fun, but then he had to leave. Finally, I decided I would, too. So, I asked my older friend to let me take my jacket from his car and I'd walk home. He agreed, and I think that hit my ego again.

When his friend opened his car for me, so that I could retreive my jacket, she asked me why I wasn't going home with him. "He's a great guy!" she crooned, a bit drunk. I didn't know what to say. That he hadn't asked me? That I didn't want to? I knew that, at least, was a lie. I'd planned on spending the night with him, while heading out earlier that evening. The thing was... somehow, things just hadn't materialized between us. He'd been so helpful showing me around town and helping me get settled in, that I wasn't sure there was much else to talk about between us. We'd had a hurried sexual encounter at his place last week, but hadn't managed to get together privately again - he never asked, and I was too shy to. Last night, before heading to the gay bar, we watched two episodes of Will & Grace at his home in silence. I'm not sure whether we have enough to talk about, though I know he's been very sweet and everything, and I'm a bit attracted to him. Somehow, the attraction element has... faded.

I'm not exactly sure what this post is about. On my late night walk back home, I told myself I'm not going back to the bar unless I find a date/ friend who dances. I miss my dancing friends, I miss my group. I miss Penguin, who slides down onto his knees to do a weirdly funny dirty dance with me; I miss Diamond Choker Baccha, who goes all diva-like with his cigarette; I miss Guppie who's as mad and frentic a dancer as I am; I miss Vivian, who pretends to be all uppity but then gets down to do the steps for the most crass Hindi songs; I miss Flyboy who gets the attention from all the gay men in a ten-mile radius; and most of all, I miss my soulmate, SnowWhite's Stepmother and his jerky dance movements and his attempts (and failures) to not get drunk, and our very own brand of 'dirty dancing'. *sigh*

I need to dance at this place. And I can't dance alone.

Christopher Columbus, anyone?

Christopher Columbus, anyone?

Back to basics. Here I am, at school, and while it's not quite the "new cultural experience" that my friend the Traveller told me it would be, it's still... different. For starters, this isn't Bombay. *sigh* But before I get all droppy at the thought of that, as I have been actually for much of this past week, I shall stand right up to attention, and do a quick salut!

Not quite Disneyland, but what the hell...! So, anyway, what have I been doing since I got here?

1. meeting the other international students. (social me)
2. exploring town. (not bad)
3. house hunting. (groan)
4. going through a whole lot of alarming details about insurance and phone services. (gasp)
5. having sex. (grin)

Class doesn't officially begin till another week or so, and till then, there're more orientation rounds, more 'mingle and socialize' events, and probably more sexual episodes. Given the size of the town though (groan), exploratory activities of both the town and its gay inhabitants will not take very long. Not at my rate. I've decided that American burgers are terribly dry and yechy, so spicy food is the only way to go - enter buffalo chicken wings and Taco Bell. I've also decided to be frugal, seeing that I'm quite broke, really - classic 'Indian Student in Amreeka' Syndrome. I'm supposed to opening a bank account next week, and I'm wondering whether the bank teller will start guffawing in my face when I show him my measly travellers' cheques I need to deposit. (cringe)

Before leaving Bombay, I'd spoken very loftily to Guppie that I'd quite decided to give up One Night Stands, and focus on dating from hereon.

CT, artificial halo blooming overhead: "I mean, even if it's inconsequential dating, just meeting the guy for the first time or something like that - a proper date is a must. At least, a coffee date. And that means, no running home immediatelly after the coffee to get laid. No Sex On The First Date. That's my new rule. From here on, I'm Dating CT, no more ONS CT. What do you think?"

Guppie, smiling, and reaching over to prick that grotesquely growing halo: "You won't last a week."



Ummm... and I haven't. Met this really sweet guy who showed me around town and helped me to find my apartment, so we somehow ended up at his place on the second day. :) And this afternoon, after recuperating from a horridly debilitaing fever, I decided I needed some feel-good sex. Which I promptly got. Hell, it's the weekend here, so cut me some slack! Especially, since this place doesn't have much of a nightlife beyond Taco Bell! (OK, so I exaggerate to serve my own ends, yawn yawn.)

Next week, I have the cute Chemistry undergrad and the Spanish grad student signed up. :)

Testing, testing....

So Long, Farewell

So Long, Farewell

There's a sad sort of clanging
From the clock in the hall
And the bells in the steeple, too
And up in the nursery
An absurd little bird
Is popping out to say coo-coo
(Coo-coo, coo-coo)

Regretfully they tell us,
But firmly they compel us,
to say goodnight...
To you

So long, farewell,
Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight
I hate to go and leave this pretty sight



Hmmmm... I do seem to have a Sound of Music hangover...

Gay Calcutta Chromosome

Gay Calcutta Chromosome
- With Due Apologies, Mr. Ghosh

Back in the homeland, and this time I've been missing Bombay from Day One. The good things have been regular phone calls from SS and Vivian to keep me going, chats with Natureboy about Sex and The City, and some good ole-fashioned hogging! (I can imagine SS pursing his lip with a "I'd be horribly mean to you, but then since you're going away...!" whimper) The men, however, have been few and far in between.

Calcutta is not famous for its cute gay men - the author of this blog being the notable exception.



Somehow, with the barrage of Sushmita Sens, Rani Muherjees, Bipasha Basus, and even the sluttier Koena Mitras and Tanushree Duttas, the Bong men were left far, far behind, so far behind that no one ever stopped back to look for them. The Bong men, we're just usually the smart and witty ones, the arty-farty ones, who totally lack in the Body Beautiful department. I got hit on online by an otherwise great Bong chap this evening, and when I told him he wasn't my sexual type, he responded with a o-so-hurt "Aa, so you prefer the brawny hunks, eh?" - to which I replied, yes, Delhi's Jats and Punjabis have always done it for me, in a way that hardly anyone else has.

(O, ok, so there was the Mac sailor-boy I'd had just before leaving Bombay. O, and the Gujarati tall boy who liekd getting down and dirty. O, and even the hunky Marathi guy in his Andheri East flat. Oops, and the Sindhi cutestuff in Khar...)

But the point is, with the notable exception of Salsaboy in Delhi, I've never been really attracted to another Bong. The so-called Bong Connection has never happened with me.

So yesterday evening, I went out on a great date with this Multani Punjabi fellow, a dying species I know, and we had vodkas and beer and chatted nineteen to the dozen. The morning before that, I was playing wicked games with a Sindhi muscle-mary I somehow managed to find in the by lanes of the Calcutta chatroom. Tomorrow, I have a coffee date with a NYC Bong boy - but no, since he's spent 24 of his 34 years out of India, I don't consider him a Bong in any sense of the term. Hell, most of my childhood buddies would hardly consider me a Bong. SS for one, though no childhood friend of mine, habitually says I have no "cul-chaar" (culture), as befitting a true Bong. (I like my sex much too much, and I have no fashion sense, he says. :)

So, no, I haven't had much luck with the Bengalis in the city. According to a survey, Bongs account for only 45% of Calcutta's population, and even with those statistics, its gay inhabitants are by and large unpalatable. There was this hunk who buzzed me on Manjam's chatroom, and after ogling his pecs for five minutes, he told me he was Punjabi, recently moved to the city. Then there was another Salt Lake inhabitant who is a Bombayite, desperately seeking doable men. After a brief chat with him, I realized that the IT and Call Centre Boom in Calcutta has thankfully aided its gay fauna - we now have cute men from Delhi, Gurgaon, Bombay, Hyderabad and Bangalore in the City of Joy, all trying their very best to spread some gay cheer.



With four days left till I leave Calcutta, and only one sexual escapade since I arrived, I'm certainly cheering from the front rows here! :)

Raindrops, Rose and Bombay Dreams

Raindrops, Rose and Bombay Dreams

This post was supposed to be written last night, but by the time I returned home from my white wine-and-telly farewell date with Guppie, I was a bit tired and decided to hit the sack since I had an early morning flight to catch (well, 10 am is early morning, isn't it?!). And here I am, back home in Calcutta, feeling a bit misty-eyed at my departure from Bombay - in case you missed the point, someone called this a 'ditsy bottom' blog many months ago.

In keeping the misty-ditsy mood, therefore, I thought I'd list some of the glorious events/ moments/ things I'm going to miss about Bombay... three years went by so terribly fast, it seems now, and here I am, aching to head back as soon as I can...! In no particular order then, either chronologically or emotionally, these are a few of my favourite things...

1. Chimneypot and I would sit at the Phoenix Mills Barista and talk for ages... she's bring her blind dates there, and I'd bring mine - and sometimes, we'd dump them and meet each other. :) The coffee-guy was very bewildered...!
   
   
2. Gateway of India - anytime, with anyone. It's simply gorgeous. Ditto for the Taj Hotel - of course, I've only been in that second one for conferences and hotel room sex. (The hotel room sex was better, by far!) :)
   
   
3. Driving down Marine Drive at topnotch speed, after watching a late-night movie show at the INOX theatre at Nariman Point - it was amazing when it started raining sheets this one time, I mean I know it wasn't the smartest thing in the world then to keep on speeding but it was so much funnnnnnnnn!
   
   
4. Carter Road, Bandra - another Monsoon memory - I called up SnowWhite's Stepmother, and we went to catch the rains and the wet boys at the Cafe Coffee Day. It stopped raining as soon as we got there, but the weather (and the boys) was quite unbelievable. :)
   
   
5. My first GB party - eventful only because it was my first party in Bombay, and marked the one and only time I picked up/ got picked up by a post-party stranger in the city. I don't remember his name now, but I do recall that he lived in Malad (I got dropped home, no worries!) and that I serviced him thrice (one that night, twice in the morning), and that I never saw him again. (grin)
   
   
6. The first time I met Vivian - the Barista at Worli Seaface (O, it's shut down now), we sparred verbally, then made plans to have a sex-filled weekend at Lonavla, and then canceled the plans - instead, we became amazingly good friends. :) I remember I walked him to his clothes-iron-wallah, after the date. :)
   
   
7. Another Monsoon vignette - driving past Worli Seaface and the waves crashed right onto the road - a gorgeous sight in beautiful Bombay.
   
   
8. Buying the brass nameplate for my second home - I remember what a thrill it was, getting my name engraved up there.
   
   
9. Setting up home has always been thrilling for me. So I remember buying those cane lamps and stools at Bandra, the cushion cover fabrics from Fabindia...
   
   
10. Coming out to my first Bombay flatmate, the Punjabi one I used to have a crush on. I told him, while we having a drink at Toto's, and he responded with such a natural "And so?" that made me want to hug him then and there. :) He's no longer in the city now, but I wish him all the very best.
    
    
    
    
11. Mmm.... o, of course, my coming out to Chimneypot. Again, at the Phoenix Mills' Barista, over coffee and cigarettes.
    
    
12. Chimneypot, me and another friend I will call the Mad Journo taking long and frequent afternoon breaks cuz we were all so fed up with the job - the three of us sitting side by side on the bench in the middle of the green space, and I was inevitably in the middle, not smoking, while the two of them puffed away to glory. We discussed our quarter-life crises then - or so we thought that was it then. :)
    
    
13. My first meeting with SS, of which I have already posted.
    
    
14. Riding pillion on the bike with Diamond Choker Baccha in Goa, singing "I believe in miracles" so loudly, while racing Guppie and SS who were on the other bike.
    
    
15. Singing karaoke with SS at Goa - complete with head shaking and dramatic hand movements, we did Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive so magnificently that the whole room full of drunken beach bums started applauding! :) O, and our only other karaoke session before that - at Jazz By the Bay, the two of us sang Pretty Woman quite horrendously, but Guppie and the Penguin still clapped for us, bless them! SS says, our real song is Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, and I agree. :)
    
    
16. A candle-lit dinner with First Bombay Ex. He came over, lit some candles, and we sat on the window-ledge, eating cake and necking. Some of the next door neighbours were peeking out and wondering why we were sitting out there with all the candles, so I started singing Happy Birthday To Me very loudly. (grin)
    
    
17. New Year's Eve with the ex, Boy - I was waiting outside for Chimneypot to join us, when I got an sms from him inside, saying "I'm falling in love", so I went in and we locked lips for quite a long time. :) O, and there was this time, just before he was supposed to leave Bombay when I sms-ed him that I was missing him - and he showed up at my doorstep just twenty minutes later. Mmmm... and no, just because I'm counting these as my good Bombay memories, doesn't mean I don't think he's a losah. :)
    
    
18. Dirty dancin' with SS. We do this every GB party - and we're just amazing at it. And yes, some people do think we're a couple because of that, but what-the-hell, it's too frikkin' great for us to care! hehehe
    
    
19. Goa with the Straight Guy - it was fun, in a way quite different than with the gay boys. :) We took the bike across several beaches, and even down to Panjim and Old Goa, and the old church was breathtaking! Beef Chilli fry and Bibinca at Soussa Lobo's was awesome!
    
    
20. Guppie's house parties - they're the best! And Guppie is Mr. Fixit - he's the one who dispenses all the important practical advice, Mr. Dependable. And yes, I love his new 42" TV.
    
    
21. Parsi food at Fort. I'm quite an expert on all the Parsi and Irani restaurants in the area, and I'm an avowed afficiando of the mutton cutlets, the berry pulao, the chicken salli, the caramel custard and the lagan nu custard. And, my lunches with SS at Brittania at Ballard Estate - two gay boys admiring the old-world charm and hogging on the berry pulao. :)
    
    
22. Chocolate tarts at Piccolo, also at Fort - Natureboy and I have bonded in a whole new way following our mutual discovery of the place.
    
    
    
    
23. This freaky movie called Madagascar which I saw with the Penguin - and the band of wily animated penguins there made us both split with laughter, so that's where the Penguin got his blog alias from.
    
    
24. O, and I hafta say here: I L-O-V-E the salad spreads at Just Around The Corner - of course, as SS and Vivian will tell you, my 'salads' are anything but healthy here, heaped as they are with eggs, bacon, beef, mayo, potato, pineapple, corn, and everything else least connect with the concept of Fat Free Food.
    
25. My Going Away Party - thanks, all you guys. :) Though, a hot Andheri hunk popping out of a wet cake would not have been unappreciated....! :)

Testing Times

Testing Times

Some weeks ago, at a party at Guppie's place, I asked Famous Activist Guy (FAG) about places I could get an HIV test done. I'd been thinking about going in for one for ages, especially given my rampant sex life, and so here I was - thinking that with all the leaving etc, this was as good a time as any. Of course, I was quite the silly ninny, so I informed all my closest friends and begged them to accompany me. And then I asked FAG, "Don't really mean to make this sound like a Kitty Party thing, but the boys and I are interested in getting ourselves tested. Where do you suggest?"

God bless him, FAG immediately came up with a list of names, but his favourite was the PSI Centre at Cotton Green. Of course, SnowWhite's Stepmother heard the words "Cotton Green" and promptly declared that he was going nowhere near that (admittedly boondocks) part of town, and would only accompany me if we went to the posh Lilavati Hospital in Bandra.



And while I was weighing the cons of paying through my nose for a HIV test at the Lilavati (it's more of a boutique hotel than a hospital, really), FAG confounded me further by saying that the PSI conducted 'rapid tests', which yielded the results the very same day - while the Lilavati didn't, and apparently, the wait for the results the next day can be quite a scary situation.

So, here I was, thoroughly confused and confounded, when Natureboy came to the rescue. And yesterday, the two of us went to this private clinic at Nariman Point (not too far from where I work) after lunch and bared our arms for the lady and her syringes. Natureboy squealed his outrage ("She doesn't need two bottles of my blood! A drop will do, the vampire!") and I was surprisingly stoic. By six thirty that evening, we had our reports in hand and went to catch the train back home.

OK, so it wasn't as easy as that.

Natureboy and I pondered, on our way to the clinic, how we would deal with the outcome of the test. We promised each other that we'd be there for each other even if one of us were 'positive'. Then he looked at me, and said, "We are going to tell each other our results, right?" I couldn't help laughing at that one.

But it's true, that for a lot of people, getting an HIV test done is one of supreme privacy. Some of my closest friends have had themselves tested without informing anyone else, and the rest of us only got to know of it much later. FAG was actually quite surprised that I was asking around for a companion as publicly as I was. And though I told everyone (and myself) that I was doing this just for the heck of it, to be politically correct or something, I must confess that I didn't quite regard it as a picnic either. I wanted a friend with me, possibly because I was *gasp* shy, possibly because I was *gasp* nervous, and possibly because I didn't want to think of how it would be if I did receive a 'positive'. Heaven knows, I haven't exactly been Bombay's safest gay man, and even though I value the use of a condom, one tends to get a little... carried away in the course of pleasure. The balance between sexual pleasure and sexual safety is never an easy one, and like most gay men, I had given in and indulged in what some may call risky/risque activities, telling myself, "O well, if you want to be 100% safe, you might as well just sit at home, watch porn on the computer and jack off!" - which is true, by the way. A lot of gay men do that, get stupid like me, and say that whatever they're doing is a justifiable gamble with minuscule odds of contracting anything, so... bombs away!



So yes, I was a bit nervous about the test. Not knees-knocking-knuckles-clenching nervous, no, but a bit too breezy perhaps. I had silly thoughts springing in my head on our way back in the evening to collect the report: stuff like, "O, if I'm 'positive' here, I shall have to call up that guy I've scheduled for kinky sex tonight, and tell him I can't be quite as naughty as I'd like to be, because I have HIV...!" Of course, I never told Natureboy any of this during the cab-ride. Wisely, I kept my mouth shut - perhaps, like I ought to have done, during some tightrope-walking activities I'd indulged in earlier, but we shall not go down that road now...

I survived the test, though. Both Natureboy and I got our 'negative's and we were happy. Grinning from ear to ear. We made fun of the clinic and cursed the blood-collecting doctor some more, and got on to our separate suburban trains for home. Before leaving the clinic, however, I'd gone in to take a leak, and in my usual ditsy behavior, stood at the urinal, looked up at the bright tubelight overhead and said aloud, "Thanks, God!"



And yes, to celebrate, I kept my kinky date that night. :)