Fair Weather Girlfriend

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OM SHANTI OM

Chris Gayle discovers marijuana, denounces hair care.  

When Girlfriend and I set off on a trek around Kasol a day after my book launch, the rules were clear: personal hygiene would be a personal choice. No judgments would be made, no snide comments would be passed and we would spend our days in sun-soaked, rain-drenched Himalayan hermitage in blissful quest for the muse. We were damned if we couldn’t squeeze some literary juice out of a month in the hills, what with Girlfriend having quit gainful employment and yours truly never really joining the ranks of the big boys in the taxman’s scheme of things. We were, therefore we’d write.

For those who don’t know (I say that grandly, but I hadn’t heard of the place till Girlfriend drew out the itinerary and circled our stops in idiot-proof red on Google Maps on her tab), Kasol is apparently where half the Israelis in their early 20s come to let their hair down and generally bum around after two (for women, four for men) compulsory years of military service.  Seriously, I’ve learnt more Hebrew from shop signs here than I did in twelve traumatic years of catechism classes. 

Generally marijuana-friendly and devoted to the thaandav-doing, chillum-toting Hindu stoner deity Shiva, the town is a pint-sized cross section of little gullies and one winding main road by the banks of the River Parvati, whose valleys produce some of the best hashish in India. Once the stronghold of Hindu pilgrims and babas, Kasol now boats of a vibrant multi-cultural hippie populace, from suitably unarmed Israeli forces to backpackers from Europe and America, dreadloacks and tie-dye everywhere.  

The baba is the collective- if curious- patron saint of the movement. Armed with nothing but chillums and a Beatles-worthy catalogue of variants of the same song, they stomp up and down these mountains in valiant search of the self, pausing only at the Hot Springs atop Kheer Ganga for some TLC. Our own plan was a little less Deepak Chopra, but the destination was the same. We’ve been here a few days now and we haven’t made the 4-hour trek to Kheer Ganga yet, but encouragingly, the babas don’t appear to be in any great hurry either. You can find them holding court in several of Kasol’s cafes, surrounded by awe-struck millennials and spouting platitudes to Shiva while smoking (and graciously passing around) the holy herb. We haven’t gotten much writing done, but all is, as the Israelis would say, sababa.    

                                       Icy Highs's Music Recco: Kula Shaker- Govinda  

When a little longing goes a long way

Pulling into Kakori: seriously, who names a town after a kebab?

"No, of course I'm not bored," I assured her, "just thought you may want to try something new. You're what, 25? Live a little!" 

''Oh I know it's not like there's nothing left to try," she said, "I even have a list. It's not that. I'm just not that interested in theatre or... shopping or... I don't know.. freebasing." 

''Freebasing's overrated anyway,'' I told her. 

''So you agree?'' she asked. 

I looked at her. 

''I guess so,'' I said, ''summer's almost over. You should leave. That was the plan.'' 

''That was my plan,'' she said, ''you have a better idea?''

I scoured her face for sarcasm. She looked as sincere as she sounded.

"Look," I said, "I'm getting the feeling I'm a little out of my depth here. When I asked you if you'd like to try something new, I just meant try the kakori kebabs. They have a new chef here and the kebabs are  on an introductory half price deal." 

Icy Highs's Music Recco: A little longing goes away - The Books, Lost And Safe (2005)   

A Revolution That Will Not Be Televised

                                                                     (For Igirit)

Every fight club needs its poster boy.

So the other day, a few of us had an early reprieve from work and were standing around outside, hungrily breathing in daylight like men fresh out of solitary. There was that familiar summer conviction in the air, that feeling that life was starting anew and promising to be phenomenal. In less than a minute however, our band of merry men had diminished to three, the others departing on a slew of errands that appeared to have reared their heads out of nowhere.

I was surprised. I was planning to make the best of our early finish, and get some  midweek drinking action going. "What about you guys?" I asked, "got plans too?" Suddenly, pockets were rummaged, hair re-coiffed, sunglasses readjusted. Basically, anything but look me in the eye.

"I'm not really sure," mumbled KD, after some time, "I'm waiting for my girlfriend to text back."
"Me too," chimed in Leo, "and mine's in a meeting till six."
I felt devastated, violated.
"What the fuck guys," I said, "it's only four. Let's go get a beer."
"Oh come on dude," K retorted, "you do the same thing."

And that's when it hit me. It was true. Girlfriend was out of town so I had no conflict of interests that afternoon, but make frantic calls to Girlfriend was the first thing I did on most days after work. She would pick a place for dinner, or assign some kind of grocery responsibility to me, or tell me how many hours I had to myself till we met for dinner. Girlfriend scheduled my non-working hours with an iron fist, and I hadn't even realized it.

I insisted the guys buy some time for themselves and herded them over to the nearest bar. "Guys," I said, "we're adults. We should be able to come up with a plan on a free fucking evening without bringing our women into it." The guys showed their support by ordering another round of drinks. "I mean how did this even happen?" I said, "When's the last time we picked a movie or a bar? When did we lose all control?" The guys nodded enthusiastically but I could see we weren't making much progress. These guys needed something more raw, more visceral, to shake them out of their slumber. So I called Fatboy.

"The tyranny of the tongue," declared Fatboy, stroking his double chin, "literary emasculation."
"What the fuck, dude?" That was probably all three of us.
"Nicknames," he explained, "drugs don't emasculate men, nicknames emasculate men."
We looked at each other. None of our girlfriends had given us nicknames. We had all been called names, but not ones you'd utter in front of your mom. Fatboy was finally wrong about something.

"This is worse than I thought,"said Fatboy, shaking his head on seeing our blank faces.
"Oh fuck you," I said, "just admit you're wrong."
"It's not nicknames with you lot," he said sadly, "it's just as I suspected. You morons didn't even get the gateway treatment, you just let them stick it right up your asses. Do you realize what you've done?"
"Dude, stop shaking," I tried to calm him, "look you're upsetting poor Leo here. He's a graphic designer. That's almost like a real artist. He's really sensitive."
"Eighteen years," said Fatboy, still shaking his head, "eighteen years we fought tooth and nail to get rid of that disgusting, insulting, belittling label. A few years of freedom, of independence, of self-respect, and what do you do? You stupid, middle class, Westward looking idiots. You flushed it all down the toilet and then took a shit on the seat."
"I want whatever this guy's having," said KD. In a flash, Fatboy had him by the collar.
"Dude calm down," I said, "you were getting a little emotional there."

"You want to know why your women make all your decisions, bro?" sneered Fatboy.
"You want to know why you don't know what to do with your spare time?" he asked, "why everytime your women are busy, you feel a bit like a little boy lost in a supermarket?"
Maybe he did know what he was talking about. "Why?" I humoured his rhetoric.
"Because," he said, "you've gone and reclaimed the Label. You've niggerized it, throwing it around, giving it fancy little flourishes, and suddenly you've made it mainstream, blurred the lines. You can't fault the oppressor for calling you a cunt, if you refer to yourselves, and them, as cunts."
"Assuming my girlfriend is who you're delicately referring to as the 'oppressor'," Leao started, "I can assure you she's never called me a..."
"Not 'cunt', you idiot," I said, and pretended to have followed all along though I'd only just gotten it, "it's ba..."
"Don't say it," said Fatboy, and looked furtively around, "you'll get us all killed."

I looked around. We were at Gopalkrishna's, a shady little bar next to Dadar station, a place run strictly for the barely salaried slave to wet his beak before the long commute home. The three of us- writers, artists, struggling all- had never done a day's work compared to these guys. They would eat us alive.
"It's 'baby', you guys," I whispered, "they had us at 'baby'. Call someone a baby long enough, and suddenly they're sporting goatees and drinking tofu beer because babies are not fit to make their own decisions."
"They just respond to breasts," said Fatboy.  

I woke up the next morning, ready for war. The Tyranny of the Tongue had had its time. It was time to restore the natural order of things, re-establish control. Unfortunately, Girlfriend would have to head straight to her office from the airport, so I just texted her saying I'd see her at night. Oh, I'll see her at night, all right, I thought, get ready for Alpha Man, baby.

Girlfriend was already home when I got back at night. The bedroom door was open, there was some French  popstar trying to cross over to the more respected Vauxwagen-jingle genre of music, and I thought I smelled Thai chicken curry on the stove. "Tonight we dine in hell," I thought as I walked in.

Girlfriend was a mess. A blur of mascara and snot and Kleenex and tears and estrogen, all in a Girlfriend-shaped mess in our bed. I was ambushed.
 "What's wrong, baby?" I asked, a little less sure about raising hell.
She looked up. "I just had a bad day at work," she said, dabbing at her face, "can you give me a hug?"

And suddenly, I realized it had always been a two-way street. The revolution would just have to wait.


                                       Icy Highs's Music Recco: Vienna- Billy Joel 

                                                                                   

This blogpost is part of a series called The Girlfriend Chronicles - which went on to form the crux of my second novel Mornings After (2016, Bloomsbury India). You can buy it here on Amazon. 

      

The Breakfast of Champions

The heroin of the 21st century is a tad less rock 'n' roll.

No man likes getting caught tip toeing across a girl's living room at seven in the morning. It's an exercise in great  inner turmoil- a mandatory walk of shame that must be undertaken before your induction into some sort of one-night-stand hall of fame. The surreptitious sweep of her bedroom door as it closes shut behind you; those tentative, Huxley-esque steps through domestic purgatory, hoping you don't step on her cat or- God forbid- the remote control on your way to the Other Side; and finally, finally, the operatic symphony of upper floor  flush tanks flushing and air conditioners air-conditioning seeping in through the ceiling as you pause (and all men pause at this point) in the hallway, safely outside her apartment. Of course, you tend to look back at the moment with some degree of pride if the woman whose apartment you're attempting to sneak out of isn't your girlfriend of several months.

Fatboy, still sprawled out on the couch as we had left him the previous night, caught me in mid-tiptoe.

"Dude," he says, "crazy night last night, huh? Good times."
"SShhhh!" I tell him and mime my way closer.
"Where's Girlfriend?" he wants to know, "I said I'd make breakfast."

I gesture wildly for silence as I collect his jeans and shoes, roll them into a ball and deposit them on his lap.

"Let's go," I whisper, "now."
"What, why?" And then he panics. "Fuck, did you do some weird shit last night? Is Girlfriend hanging from the ceiling with a crown of thorns around her head? I'll never understand your Jesus fetish."
"Worse," I say, "she's got the Grumps."

"The 'Grumps'?" he asks, "what's that, like a that-time-of-the-month scenario? Water turning to wine?"
"Ok one, you're going to hell," I say, "and secondly, no. It's her time of the day."
"Oh come on," he dismisses the notion,"she's not a morning person; big deal."
"SSSSSHHHHHHH!!" I shush, but I know the damage has already been done.

"Listen," I say and cock my ear bedroom-wards for signs of danger, "don't ever use that word around here."
"What, "morning"?" he says, "seriously, you're such a drama quee..."

The room changes before he can even complete the cliche. The smoke and the flatulence and the waft of leftover Peking Duck that permeated the atmosphere till moments ago have all made way for a terrifying, uncharacteristic wintry cold. There is a draft in the room, originating from under her bedroom door as far as I can tell. There are sounds of unrest, of bedsheets being flung in frustration, of thunder making its way up Girlfriend's body and quickly gaining momentum.

I look Fatboy in the eye and tell him I'm sorry I snogged Sara Markose in tenth grade.
"I knew you were into her," I say, "that was unsavory of me."

The draft has become a force of nature; there are icicles on top of the television, hail stones rain down from the ceiling. Her bedroom door appears to be vibrating on its hinges, threatening to be blown away. "SAVE YOURSELF, FATBOY!" I scream as I jump over the couch and rush to her door as fast as I can. Holding on to the door knob with all my strength, I fumble around in my pockets for the key. Fatboy, equally scared but  just as loyal, jams a chair under the knob. I find the key, lock the door and collapse on the floor, exhausted. "Thanks bro," I say, "you're a good friend. Now, go."

Girlfriend has left the bed. We can hear her coming. Her footsteps echo down the hall and across children's parks and hospitals around Bombay, sending pigeons and Catholic nuns into defeatist rapture. Their wails (and coo-roo-ctoo-coos) of despair come boomeranging back to meet her footsteps, through the open window and into the living room, but timidly stopping short at her door, bouncing off her Warhol-tinted works of art like tweens at a #Belieber tweet-off.

"This is the end," I say as the room turns on its side. The chair Fatboy had jammed under the door hurtles forward and catches him in the jaw, sending him reeling. "FAAATBOOOY!" I scream as I push out a leg for him to grab on to, my hands still firmly wrapped around the door knob. "There must be something we can do," he sobs, "have you tried garlic? Or a stake through the heart?" I weep as I remember attempts past- padlocks and chainsaws and sugar donuts- all fated to failure. And pain. Oh, the pain.

"Go," I say, "just go."
"I can't, bro," he tells me, "I'm not leaving you behind."
There is a sarcastic knock on the door, almost a taunt, and a body crashes against it with a force that sends me flying across the room. "Run, Fatboy," I yell, "I didn't just kiss Sara Markose. I got some cheeky sideboob action too." "You BASTARD," he says and kicks me on his way out.

When I come to, it's midday-bright. I can hear Girlfriend in the bedroom, going about her business, humming an old song. "Girlfriend," I call out, "baby, are you okay?" "Yes," she shouts back, "open the door." I find a Cosmo magazine on the floor and slip it under her door, the key pressed between an article on what men want and an inforgraphic on the dangers of pandering to their needs. I take my spot on the couch, and await judgment.

"Is Fatboy gone?" asks Girlfriend as she steps out, all pinstriped and corporate-sexy and ready for work.  
"Yes," I say, "and I don't feel good about this at all."
"Oh don't be a baby," says Girlfriend, and ruffles my hair, "you know this was the only way. He can't boil an egg to save his life."

Icy High's Music Recco: "Wake Up Everybody"- John Legend & The Roots 

 Image (up top) artwork: Black Betty 

  

This blogpost is part of a series called The Girlfriend Chronicles - which went on to form the crux of my second novel Mornings After (2016, Bloomsbury India). You can buy it here on Amazon.  

My Anarchist Valentine

Girlfriend and I had the Conversation a few weeks after we started going steady.
“Christmas?” I said.
“No,” she said.
“Me neither. New Year’s?”
"Passé"
“Ok good, birthdays?” I ask.
“Remember to wish me. No gifts, maybe dinner, nothing fancy,” she said.
“Same. Valentine's Day?”
“Bleuuurrgghhh.”

The consensus was clear: neither of us were big on Days. We were united by our common disenfranchisement with the consumerist practice of hyping up dates into ‘days’, and were destined to live happily –if frugally- ever after. Except I was lying through my teeth. It was one of those white lies you say when you’re still trying to get into someone’s pants (“Birthdays? Oh, who gives a fuck, right?”), but it had somehow mothballed into a philosophy.  Besides how many men readily accept they’re suckers for romance?

Which is why this conversation with my boss would be especially difficult. After fretting for weeks about how to bring up the topic of doing something special for Valentine’s Day, I found out a few hours before Cinderella-time that Girlfriend is in fact on suspension for the next couple of days for picketing her employer’s annual ball. The placard she held up outside the venue seemed to indicate that she thought a 25th anniversary bash for a multi-million dollar company was a tad bourgeois. Or as she worded it, succinctly as always: “DIE, CAPITALIST CUNTS!”

“So why do you want leave the next couple of days again?” asks my boss.
“Well my girlfriend’s some sort of political ninja, and it’s Valentine’s Day and…”
“I see,” he says, “so?”
I look at him for signs of smugness, of bastardry, but he appears genuinely puzzled. Fuck, I realize with a shock, Boss-man is a true blue alpha male. He really doesn't get Valentine's Day! He's who I pretend to be to get laid! I man up and try to explain.

"See Boss-man," I say, "when a man loves a woman..."
"Yes?"
"Well, sometimes when a man loves a woman, you pick up... infections."
"Like an STD?" he grimaces.
"Yeah. It's Girlfriend. I think she's cheating on me."
"Wow," he says, "what a bitch."
HEY! Enough is enough. NObody calls Girlfriend a bitch.
"No, no," I say, "it's not her fault. I think I might suck a little in bed."
"Well that makes sense," he says, "she didn't seem the type."
"Yeah," I say, and take in the scene again.

"Boss-man," I say, "why's your finger on the intercom?"
Guffaws and laughter and hoots from across the office erupt through the intercom and fill Boss-man's cubicle as he says, smugly, bastardly, "There are two things you never admit to as a man: not making your woman happy in bed, and..." -the smug bastard is laughing so hard he can't even complete the sentence- "celebrating Valentine's Day."

Two days paid leave in hand, I go to Girlfriend's place to lick my wounds and die a slow, unmanly death. But Girlfriend is in no mood for inactivity. "Come on to the terrace," she says, "let's fire up a joint and chill." I slip into my sickday pajamas and trundle over to the terrace. I'm shocked and awed. Girlfriend has strung up the Christmas lights we never used. There's a table and two chairs in the middle, candlelight, a bottle of wine and what looks suspiciously like the tub of mango ice cream she had had delivered home last week to help me get over Crazy, Stupid Love. Damn Ryan Gosling and his bedroom eyes.

"You thought I forgot, didn't you?" she says quietly.
"Forgot what?" I say.
"Today's Valentine's Day, silly," she says and nuzzles me under my chin.

I'm touched. I'm loved up and mushy and.. try as I might, just can't seem to stop myself from bursting her bubble.


"Baby," I say, "this is very sweet but Valentine's Day is tomorrow. The 14th of February."
"Fuck you, baby" she says, "it's today, the 13th. That's why it's an unlucky number."
"You think Valentine's Day falls on the 13th coz it's traditionally an unlucky number?"
"Doh," she says, "the 'number of the beast' and all."
I'm speechless. The number of the beast?

"You don't like?" she says, dipping a spoon into the ice cream.
I can't bear to break this to her. I decide Dates don't matter after all.
"I love it," I say earnestly, " I love you. This is the best Valentine's Day ever."


                                          Icy Highs's Music Recco: The Franklys - Imaginarium

This blogpost is part of a series called The Girlfriend Chronicles - which went on to form the crux of my second novel Mornings After (2016, Bloomsbury India). You can buy it here on Amazon. 

The Forbidden Gadget

There are few sights more beautiful on a lazy morning than sleeping Girlfriend's visage. Aah who am I kidding, it's my favourite sight of all time: those few minutes of bliss before Girlfriend wakes up and becomes...well, herself, again.A vision so tranquil that I regularly douse her morning coffee with whiskey just to see those curtains come down again, however temporarily. Not that I'm some kind of compulsive coffee-spiking psychopath. Sometimes, I just pepper her pasta with finely powdered Paracetamol. One particularly lovelorn afternoon, I knocked her out with a rolling pin. Those tightly shut eyes, those gently cascading eyelashes, are the promises, the visions, all relationships are built on- the promise of calm and quiet, the hope that those sleep-gooey lips will not always chastise or criticize or order you to stop smoking during meals.

Since we started seeing each other regularly, I have always made sure I wake up a good five minutes before she does just to get a glimpse of those non-judgmental eyes. It wasn't easy in the beginning, what with my predilection for sleeping in, and Girlfriend's demanding job that requires her to don pinstripes and create PDFs or pour through Excel sheets or whatever it is real adults do for a living as early as 9 in the AM. But when you want something strongly enough, you're all sorts of resourceful. The solution to my little conundrum, I discovered, was fairly simple: I'd just have to wait for Girlfriend to fall asleep at night, and reset her alarm to a later time. Must be love.

Imagine my surprise then, when a few days ago, I woke up to find Girlfriend not just awake, but not even in  sight. I shut my eyes, telling myself it was just a dream, that I'd wake up any second now. I was jolted back to reality by the sound of the bathroom door opening, and out peeped Girlfriend's head. It banged shut again almost immediately, Girlfriend's head retreating like that of a startled turtle the moment she caught my eye.

"Girlfriend," I call out, "you ok?"
"Yes," comes her voice, cautious but steady.
"Did you forget to flush again?" I ask.
"I told you that was the cat!" she shouts back.
"I forgot. So what's wrong, baby?"

The door opens again, and out steps suddenly-nonchalant Girlfriend, clad in boxers and tee, her laptop in her hand. "Nothing" she says, defiantly. She places the laptop on the dresser, and busies herself in front of the mirror. "Baby," I say, "were you using your laptop in the loo?"

"What if I was?"
"It's a little...weird, no?"
"There's an entire stack of your magazines by the pot."
"I know, but they're paper. A dump is not traditionally a technology-friendly activity."
"A tech-friendly activity? Why is everything so complicated with you?"
"It's a slippery slope, that's all. Next thing you know, you'll be texting at the cinema, and playing fruit-chucker on your tablet."
"It's called 'Fruit Ninja'."
"Oh my god."
"What?"
"How do you know that? You don't know any sixteen year olds."

Aah, the calm before the storm. The lull before Techocalypse. That guilty-flirty look Eve gave Adam while biting into Apple.

"I got an iPad, ok?"
"What? But we're against mass-produced consumer goods."
"No, you are."
"But they cut off the poor little Chinese kids' fingers after they assemble those things."
"They build computers, not the Taj Mahal."
"But.. when did you get it?"
"Two weeks ago."

Modern life is rubbish. 

"Where is it? How have I not seen it yet?"
"Coz I knew how you'd react. I keep it at work. And in the car, sometimes."
"You've never brought it home?"
"Only..just on that night you were out with Fatboy."
"Is it bigger than me?"
"What?"
"Sorry, I anthropomorphized my fear of being displaced by technology. It's a guy thing."
"No it's not. It's a you thing."
"How would you know?"
"There's an app for it."

Icy Highs's Music Recco: Video Killed The Radio Star by Buggles, The Age of Plastic (1979)

This blogpost is part of a series called The Girlfriend Chronicles - which went on to form the crux of my second novel Mornings After (2016, Bloomsbury India). You can buy it here on Amazon. 

       

Of Mother, And Other Women

I’m not great at keeping in touch. This is not a new thing, or a trait I picked up in my later years, but my parents are convinced that said character flaw reared its ugly head around the time I made  friends with Fatboy. This is patently untrue. Fatboy and I just happened to become friends roughly around the same time as when I ran out of things to talk about with my family. I let him take the fall for it, of course, in the same way we’ve both pointed fingers at each other every time one of us was caught in possession of pot or porn or –on one deplorable occasion- a Pussycat Dolls CD. He still refutes the Pussycat pop allegation. I will plead innocent till death on that count.

Having established my indifference to the occasional phone call or email, I’d like to tell you a little story of how the best intentions sometimes blow up in your face. And spit on your grave while doing the Gangnam Style. I was in Kodaikanal over the Diwali holidays, and slightly more in sync with the Oneness of the universe and the sentience of the collective human experience and all that other hippie bullshit you buy into when you’re on a diet of magic mushrooms and Kingfishers. Having risen earlier than the sun on one of those days, I decided to give the Ol’ Maternal a call. You know, just because. 

“Hi Ma,” I say, “how are you?”
“Older,” she says, “roughly about a year older as of yesterday.”
Fuck. 20 seconds. That’s how long it takes to realize why social telephony is not a good idea, especially if you’re not the type to remember birthdays and anniversaries and names of the fast expanding brood of the Jimani clan.

“Happy birthday Ma,” I say.

 “I didn’t forget,” I assure her stony silence.

“Everybody called but you, you know,” she says, “even Fatboy.”

SonofaBITCH.   

“Yeah but talk is cheap, right Ma?”, I say, “you’ll never guess what I got you.”

Now tendency to one-up each other notwithstanding, Fatboy will always be my go-to man in times of trouble- and me, his- no matter what. So it was that a half hour of recriminatory stop-start conversation later, I found myself calling The Obese One himself for counsel.  

“That was low man, calling my Mom,” I say, “I’m impressed.”

“I thought you might appreciate it,” he says, “even set up an iReminder and all.”

“Fuck you Fatass, you fucking Apple fanboy fuck,” I say, “sorry.”

“Pleasure. How’d it go?”

“Not too bad, I  guess. I’m royally screwed,” I say.

“What’s up? Jesus, you’ve got to add Sam on Facebook. Girl’s all grown up.”

“Skinny Sam? Really? Fuck Sam, Fatass. Fuck you, you fucking Facebooking fuck. Hear me out, I’m fucked.”

“Do tell.”

“So Mom was all pissed I forgot her birthday, right? Stop laughing, you bastard. So anyway, I ended up telling her I’ve written this kick-ass thank you note and dedicated my novel to her.”

“’Snot so bad.”

“What? Dude, you don’t understand. This is my one and possibly only novel. It’s all I’ve got.”

“So?”

“So I also told my ex I’d dedicate it to her.”

“Well, it is pretty much about her. I don’t see a moral dilemma. Do the right thing.”

“But my Mom’s not sounded this happy in years, man.”

“Wait a second. This is not about your Mom. You’re not that nice. What’s going on?”

“I may have…also given my girlfriend the impression the book’s dedicated to her.”

“Seriously, what is with you and dedicating everything to everybody? You’ve only been seeing her a couple of months.”

“I was weak, ok? It was the only way she’d let me… enter through the gift shop.”

“Ohh.”

“Yeaahh.”

“Sorry ex-girlfriend, whose life you plagiarized. Sorry Mothership, with the womb and all.”

“It’s the right thing to do, right?”

“Your Dad would be so proud.”

Icy Highs's Music Recco: Just Because - Jane's Addiction  

Every me, every you

I hoard information. It's what I do. When I like someone, I can never stop with the basics - where they work, what they like to do with their spare time, why they prefer Wednesday afternoons to Thursday mornings. Not enough. I need to know what they looked like as kids. Why they're afraid of commitment. Who broke their hearts and when and how. If they had a dungarees phase, whether they rate Seinfeld higher than Arrested Development,  where they see themselves six months down the line. I need to be let in, and allowed to poke around, hammering away at their walls, their defenses, till they're laid bare for me to redecorate, to be clothed in me.

This is usually a long and drawn out process, spread over first dates and celebratory dinners and birthday parties and weekends together and impromptu trips to Giants Causeway. It just sort of happens- little nuggets of information about their personality, their views on politics and philosophy and sports that they unknowingly  drop into my eager, waiting hands, nary a clue that they're being stored for posterity in a possibly Frankensteinian data lab in the back of my twisted mind, mixing and analyzing and holding up to the light to see what parts I'd like to keep, what I'd choose to delete.

Maybe it's not as sinister as it sounds. I suppose we all do it, one way or the other, exorcise the ghosts of the past, personalize our persons of interest. Deprogram all the conditioning out of them, what they've come to expect out of a relationship based on what they've had before, little Pavlovian treats for a trick unlearned, a tick unticked, an ex outgrown. What good is being with someone if you can't change them, turn them into you? Isn't that what this is all about, this crazy dance we do, aren't we all really just looking for a better, more beautiful us we can crawl into?    

I'm not sure any more. Maybe you can just like someone exactly as they are. Maybe all the hoarding, the sifting through life data, the perusal of their minds for words you can swallow or borrow or deconstruct, maybe that's all we need. Maybe you'll meet someone so secure in their skin, you'll want them to change you instead, to lend you a little bit of them. Could that happen? Maybe that instinct, that need, to completely take over and inhabit somebody else's existence becomes less pronounced with time, with age and maturity and learning to be okay with one's self. I certainly hope so. It'd be a shame to fuck this one up.    

   Icy Highs's Music Recco: "Every Me, Every You" by Placebo from Without You, I'm Nothing