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*