My Bel Ami Life

So Georgia's not the only flashpoint in East European affairs, you know. Here's a strange situation. Closetalk recently moved into a brand new apartment with a brand new room-mate. The room-mate is an East European hunk, in his early thirties, married but his wife lives some six hours away so he visits her on weekends. Bit of a chatterbox, but then, in a fun way, and the two of us yak well into the wee hours of the morning, about university gossip and nerdy research stuff. Welcome to boring Gradstudentville. But then what happens when Pavel (that's my nickname for him, after the o-so gorgeous East European hunk I've lusted after since I was 18) starts talking about ummm... the dearth of romance in his marriage?



Here's a sample:

Pavel: After having having our second child, the li'l woman says she just stopped feeling romantic. And she's not in the least apologetic about it. Says that's just the way she feels. But then... my feelings for romance haven't changed, and I'm not sure she gets that!

CT: Aha. OK.

Then, again;

Pavel: O, she's really great with the guilt trip. She tells me before I head over for college: I'm a good wife, so don't cheat on me. But then, I'm thinking: why did you have to tell me that?! I mean, I wasn't even thinking of cheating but then by saying something like that, it just makes it seem all the more forced, you know what I mean...? You're supposed to be with someone because you really want to... not out of guilt. Now, if she really wanted to be that 'good' a wife, she should have said: you can go ahead, honey! *guffaws*

CT: Ummmm.....!

Scene Three -

Pavel: Do you think it's wrong of me to totally find my sister-in-law smokin' hot?! I mean, she's totally awesome, and it's all I can do to help myself! *guffaws even louder*

CT: *blank*

And then, of course, there was the 'confession'...

Pavel: So, yea, I wanted to screw my bitch girlfiend in college, so then I went and slept with all of her room-mates... in fact, my roomie in the fraternity and I did her best friend together! And she called back saying we took advantage of her friend, but yea, we knew she wanted some of that stuff too: she asked, can I come over to study? And is your roomie at home too? *cackle* O yea, I was quite good at sleeping around during my undergrad years!

CT, talking to himself mostly: So, shall I study Discourse Analysis tonight or Humanistic Audience Research, do you think?

So now... I'm left wondering lots of things, really. Number one on the list: am I turning out to be, of all things ghastly and horrific, a prude *shudders*?! Number two: is Pavel looking to cheat on his wife? And far more interestingly, Number Three: what with all the talk about how he believes sexuality to be fluid and not straight versus gay, and his insistence on spotting me on the weights at the university gym, is he perchance looking to me to provide him with some... aah... relief till he gets to meet his wifey next? I mean, not to sound like a mutton-headed egoist who thinks everyone wants to get in his pants, but the fluid sexuality speech is pretty much used by most guys who wanna play gay now and then, and the whole gym-thing is so out of good ole 80's gay porn... so it does give me pause to think... What the fcuk am I getting myself into?



And you'd think, this would be something I'd keep to myself and not blab to the boyfriend, right? Wrong. I go and tell Irish Coffee everything about the Pavel-thing, and of course his reaction is to guffaw even louder than Pavel, and growl that he'll tell him to "keep his filthy mitts outta my boyfriend's knickers!" the next time he meets him. (Yes, Irish Coffee can be quite the archaic speaker at times.) While I'm quite positive that that speech isn't going to happen anytime soon, I am looking forward to my newfound gym-routine and chat sessions with Pavel, if for nothing else than to explore where this goes ahead - purely research interests, of course *harrrumph*. As I recall, married men are usually lots of fun to play with - especially insistent and fired up! Aa, but then if I were a prude, I wouldn't be having these thoughts now, would I?

Hallellujah and praise the 'lawd' for something! :)

Another Ever-After Story...

Once upon a time (it seems ages now!), in a gorgeous city perched by the sea, with neon lights and shining skyscrapers, a boy sat on his sea-facing verandah-flat, poring over his laptop and was going about his merry way finding a fcuk for the night, as all devastatingly witty and cute gay Bombay boys who're not very modest do. A chat-window suddenly opened, however, and it turned out to be an American. Older guy, but with a grin so impish that it made our hero grin back unconsciously to no one in particular.

CT: "So, are you here in Bombay for a vacation?"

Irish Coffee: "Nopes, I'm in the States. In TheCityWhereYou'reTravellingToIn4Months."



After the initial surprise had subsided, the boy decided that this was a great opportunity to make 'first contact', so to speak, with the people whom he was going to stay with for at least a year of his life, in the middle of the American Midwest. So CT and Irish Coffee chatted, they laughed and they talked, exchanged emoticons, and enquired about each other. Irish Coffee wasn't single, he was planning to visit Southeast Asia next month with his boyfriend of three years, but he was very amenable to befriending new people. He even offered to pick up CT from the airport and drop him to his university, when the time came, four months later, and CT actually considered it.

His friends however had other views. SnowWhite's Stepmum made an O with his lips, and charged that horrible horrible things might happen to the traveling Bombay boy: "You could get kidnapped, and then maybe raped and he could maybe do wierd kinky stuff to you in his basement!"

CT, pauses: "Ummm.. Tell me again, why that's a bad thing...?"

Despite the brevity, our hero decides to follow his friends' advice and not trust the stranger for a pick-up ride. "Plenty of time for him to pick me up later," CT grinned to himself. In fact, as the weeks drew close to his departure from the fabulous city of Bombay, he didn't come across Irish Coffee again. Till, finally, just a week or so before he was due to catch his flight, they bumped into each other - virtually, of course.

CT: "I'm dropping in about 10 days or so!"

Irish Coffee (paraphrased): "My asshole boyfriend dumped me, and I'm heartbroken."

CT (paraphrased): "Well, you can give me your number, and when I'm down there, I can cheer you up so that you can forget all about asshole ex."

Or something like that.

So, our hero lands in this sleepy Republican Midwestern hamlet, applies himself to loads of orientations and introductions, runs around helter-skelter in finding an apartment for himself, and lands himself with a most impolite form of strep-throat, so that he goes out of circulation for close to two weeks. When his birthday comes rolling around, though, he decides that he needs to take his mind off things - of course, he's also explored all the men in the hamlet by this time, strep-throat or no strep-throat - and that's when he discovers Irish Coffee's number, hastily scribbled onto a patch of paper, creased and crumpled in his wallet. Perfect: Irish Coffee lives in a nearby city, he might be willing to show our hero around a bit, which would be just the thing to get over his funk. So that's what he does: "Hello? I'm the sexy smart Indian guy you chatted with ages ago. I'm bored. Can we do something?"



Despite SS' brilliantly suggested itinerary, however, CT and Irish Coffee decided to start off with vanilla. So that weekend, Saturday to be exact, they met up: our hero standing at the corner of the road in front of the Subway, and Irish Coffee's car whizzing by twice, and then stopping on the third round, his head poking around, and: "You wouldn't be CT, would you?" Yes, I am, and off they head to the gay bars. They talk some more, tell each other about the kind of work they do, they laugh at silly things, Irish Coffee tells him about America and why he hates Evangelicals, CT tells him about gorgeous Bombay and living the fast life of a PR con and what he wants to study here, and while the drinks flow, the music thumps, and they dance (sort of), time somehow whiles away. They end up heading back to Irish Coffee's place. And our hero ends up staying the whole weekend there.

***

A story I recounted to my friend in Cleveland, when she asked me at the fantastically romantic Italian place we were at: "Tell me the story of how you and Irish Coffee met!" And so I did. And, seeing that we crossed our first-year anniversary a couple of days back, I decided to re-tell it here. If only for myself. :)

Society Lads

I've wondered aloud earlier about the politics involved between tops, bottoms, and those in between, even when I hadn't morphed into this strange social sciences nerdy academic I am now. Wondered about the power strategies used by both tops and bottoms to get what they want, and the accompanying typecasting that even the most adroit of them cannot help but get mired into. The other day, however, I revisited that contentious lane, while chatting with SnowWhite's Stepmum who'd phoned in to wish me well on inching that one-step closer to the grisly morass of the big 3-0... namely, turning 27.



*CT shudders, as he hears the Ghosts of Gay Death creep up behind him*

Getting back on track, SS and I were talking about his new crush and my boyfriend (should I be all politically correct, fag-itistically speaking, and call him my partner? *giggle*), and his old crush and my old fcuks, and that's when the strange phenomenon of being a social top versus a sexual top cropped up.

You know what I mean: the social top is the swaggering guy who brags to all and sundry about how he had last night's trick squealing giddily with his legs apart, who spits regularly in good ole rustic Punjabi fashion, and who has zero imagination on the dance-floor...



... While the sexual top is the one who actually does the whole making-squealing bit (and not very gently at that, either), who doesn't brag about his exploits too loudly, who spits into bodily orifices rather than on pavements, and who can actually do a trick or two on the dance-floor not related to pelvic gropes... And there are many a times when the two are actually not the same person: the sexual top isn't really very top-ish when you first meet him, and the social top often turns out to spread his legs wide when he finally gets to the sheets.

And of course, that opens a whole-frikkin' can of beans: if there's a social versus sexual top, there's bound to be a social versus sexual bottom - I'm not sure versatiles qualify for this categorization, though. Unless... you consider power bottoms as both social bottoms and sexual bottoms - and the sheer intricacy of all those permutations and combinations simply leave one gasping for breath... not in a good way, if you follow my drift! *wink*

CT: "Would you believe me if I said I'm a sexual top, though not a very convincing social one?"

SS, squealing: "Never!"

CT, sulkily: "Well, don't give yourself too much credit either, dearie. You can be quite the hoity-toity drama queen, shooting looks and glares that can freeze the balls of the most horny stallion out there. You're quite the social bottom yourself!"

SS, falling off his chair while giggling: "O, you know I can! But then I'm quite the sexual top too! If one of those idiots try manhandling me in bed, they'll soon be missing their balls!"

CT: "That's true; you're also quite the aloof social top at times, as well, you know... I wonder if that makes you a social versatile...?"

SS: "You are so not writing about this on your blog...!"

Right. As if that ever had a chance of happening. *grin* I mean, come on: a boy on his 30's deathbed has to have some joy in life, right? I resolve hereafter to stop having birthdays once I reach the Big 3-0 mark. I'm going to be the one with the older boyfriend (or partner, however you like it), always in his 20s. *sigh* Social wishful-thinker, that's me.

Whirlwind

The world has been turning (as ever), I've been busy with a gadzillion things, and even when I thought things would just kinda settle down, either they didn't or I didn't let them - and it's taken me this long to reclaim this space. I have a theory that I actually like being all busy and buried under a pile of books and responsibility - and of course, the bitching that comes with it. It's a theory that Irish Coffee won't dispute too much, seeing that he's usually the hapless victim of my bitching! :)

It's strange to think that it's been more than a year now since I hopped on that awfully long plane ride, snarled at Heathrow officials, marveled in Chicago, and then dropped my jaw on arriving at my Midwestern hamlet. From initially looking at a one-year stint and then planning on running back to good ole Bombay, here I am doing the Whole Nine Yards, falling in love (I'm the hapless one, really!), and quite at ease with the whole poor-grad-student routine. Mind-boggling. As that fabulously profound facebook one-liner goes: I can afford to be a Humanities scholar, I'm marrying rich! *grin*

Cleveland went by all too fast, though. The Little Italy historic district was a dream: lazing on the sidewalk patisserie munching on cannolis and licking white chocolate gelatos, and then that amazing dinner with violins playing in the background, the laughter of friends, and a blurry picture on my digicam to make it all perfect. Gawking at the Terminal and Key Towers downtown, bracing in the cool Lake Erie air, shimmering in front of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, doodling around the Western Reserve Historical Society, drawing patterns in the grass of International Park, and hushed silence at the Cleveland Museum of Art... A strangely harmonious, whirlwind weekend which sped by with crazy laughter, heart-stopping tenderness, and a strange buzz.



But Cleveland is over, and I'm back; graduation ceremony was the other day, and a very close friend is leaving soon, and while I'm feeling a bit sad, I'm also a bit excited because it's a whole brand new year, a whole new thesis to catch up on, and that hunt for graduate schools starts all over again.



Told ya I had a theory... :)