An Absurd Romance

Kids, the summer of 2012 was a very special time. The world was still an apocalyptic wasteland, and I was convinced life as we knew it was really just one big Zuckerberg simulation. While all of humanity clamoured for Mayan interventions and the Silicon Valley supply line appeared to have finally run out of minimalist Messiahs, your father was one of the few men to look reality in the eye and accept things as they were: we were all well and truly fucked. Like I say, it was a magical time.

Your father was in his prime, still compulsively spewing vitriol like any self-respecting writer should, still rocking his Chuck Taylors on weekends. Unfortunately, in the summer of 2012, your father wasn't a self-respecting writer. Not even a self-loathing one, which is the commoner kind. He was a professional, a clean shirt. Your father still harboured dreams of getting back into the literary game of course; back because he had already written his first novel, six years ago- it was a crusty old thing, languishing unread, amputated and hidden away in pieces in godforsaken corners of his inbox.

There were 3 Chucks in your father's life: Norris, and the Taylor twins.

Your father was biding his time, hoping- and believing- that his flirtation with corporate life was an infatuation, that he would roll up his sleeves and bin the flashy suits and ditch the rat race for the solemn static of uninspired graphite touching paper, for the desperate longing of lonely symphonies typed out on disinterested keyboards. And then one excessively inebriated night at Clarke Quay in Singapore, he snapped. Ever the Grand Gesture merchant, he threw his smartphone over the serendipitously named Read Bridge, left his boss a voicemail of questionable propriety and embraced the Dream.

Much as this little note sounds like a big ol' circle-jerk, I do have actual news to deliver, unlike the douchebag from the sitcom I'm parodying for whatever reason. A lot has happened since that stormy night on Clarke Quay. I've spent the last few months bumming around India, not because I wanted to find myself but because the Motherland is the one place that does not place immigration restrictions on my brown ass. I made new friends, got into fights, found a publisher for my novel, blogged and tweeted and facebooked like a crazy person, moved to Bombay, fell in love. 

But tonight, I am racked with all sorts of anxiety because tomorrow I finally join the ranks of  'published writers'. One of my short stories 'An Absurd Romance' has been published by the good folks at Scholastic Nova in their anthology 'Music of the Stars and Other Love Stories' which releases tomorrow at the annual New Delhi World Book Fair 2013 in New Delhi. Starting tomorrow, I can no longer hide in the shade of euphemisms; my work will be available to all to read and judge and love or loathe.

It's liberating and intimidating in equal measure, and the future being so unpredictable, I'm now slowly making my peace with the dawning realization that it's okay to be scared when you're going after something you love. I hope I don't, in the process, leave you a legacy of failure and not-good-enough; I hope tomorrow heralds the start of something magical, something special, like the Summer of 2012. But if that doesn't happen, if the wannabe-writer shtick blows up in my face, I'd like for you to know that it's been one hell of a ride.

'Music of the Stars and other Love Stories', Scholastic India (2013) 

Why I Suck At Casual Sex

Before you snigger away, I'd like to make it clear that I don't mean the actual act, of course. I have it on good authority that I'm not any worse at casual sex than I am at relationship sex. How do I know? Because of the three serious relationships I've had, two of them started as casual enounters. 

I don't know if there's a general concensus as to what constitutes casual sex. My understanding of the term is: sex between strangers, or between acquaintances, sans any emotional involvement. When I approach a stranger in a bar or a club, I do so- as most decent people do- with this tenet lodged firmly in my mind.

I imagine scenarios where I climb out her bedroom window the next morning while she's still asleep, or trick her into stepping out of the car for some air and drive off into the sunrise. But these things never pan out in real life. I almost always end up staying for breakfast, or exchanging numbers or adding them on Facebook as soon as I get home.

 On one horrifying morning-after, I invited a girl who's name I couldn't remember to a weekend music festival with my mates. Not only did I spend the weekend extricating myself from situations where I may have had to say her name, I also conveniently forgot to mention the fact that she was with me to my mates who were promised a lads-only weekend.

This meant staging an elaborate ruse whereby I 'bumped' into her at the entrance in full view of my mates, and she ended up sort of hanging around in the background like a Casper mime. I spent my time alternating between telling my mates that the girl was certainly odd for following us around, and telling her that my mates were just too ill-mannered for a formal introduction.  

Both my 'serious' exes were casual encounters-turned-relationships through my propensity to text relentlessly. I can continue a conversation for hours and days, and sometimes, weeks, by text. Within three hours of having met me, women usually know everything about me from my favourite of the 4 Non Blondes  to why I resent my ex's goldfish. I'm a chatty man, and addicted to the sound of my own voice; for ever fascinated by the story of my own life. Sometimes, I wonder if I only have sex to trick women into feeling obliged to listen. 

As for the golden rule of casual sex- no emotional involvement- I'm even more ill-equipped for that one. I cried when I lost the pen I used to write my first short story. I have named household objects after women I've been with, and parts of girlfriends' bodies after sports teams. I'm incapable of emotional unattachment- to people, animals or things. If anything, I attach everything, and then superglue them together with emotion.    

I was once in the enviable position of being FWB with a rather attractive girl. We were neighbours in uni in Glasgow, and we had common friends back home, and she had a boyfriend. I was in a new country, and I was not looking to be tied down. It was perfect. She had a mouth like a salior, and a body that had never known failure. To top it all off, we detested each other on principle. There was nothing there but pure physical need.

It should have been a learning curve, a springboard to sexual greatness. We broke every rule in the book, plumbed new depths of depravity with every coupling for the first three months. I'll never forget the thrill of listening to her have phone sex with her boyfriend while we tried out a new position. Or the sickening aftertaste of lips that have just tasted my piss. But then winter came.

Winter somehow domesticated things; necessitated cuddling and partnered preparation of Christmas dinners. I put on a few pounds, she stopped waxing, and before we knew it, we were having relationship sex. We did assignments together, and went for walks. Luckily, our mutual hatred was just strong enough to never push us into a romance. My inability to walk away after a good innings meant we skipped romance and headed straight for long-and-bitter-marriage territory. She bit off a small piece of my ear on the last night we spent together.

I would like to apologize today to the women I’ve been with, whose welcome I subsequently overstayed. I wish I could blame the absence of a male role model in my childhood, but that would not be true. I remember when I first realized I had this condition. I was watching Cruel Intentions with my best friend, both of us excited and a little guilty about just how hot Sarah Michelle Gellar was. Remember how Sebastian had that scrapbook of all the women he had slept with? You’d think that’s what would stick in an impressionable teenager’s mind. Not in the case of yours truly. Do you know why? Frickin’ John Cusack, that’s why.

"Ïn your eyes" soundtracked many a childhood daydream.

Long before Cruel Intentions, long before pop music and Nick Hornby had infiltrated my soul, there was John Cusack. There he stood under women’s windows, clad in Nike high tops and that ridiculously cool coat, arms aloft holding a boombox over his head blaring Peter fucking Gabrielle. That was the beginning and the end. It was such a formative image, one that set in stone the notion and undying romance of the Grand Gesture. Every woman, every liaison in my life has been molded in expectation of that moment – the search for the woman who would finally give me the opportunity to make my Grand Gesture. It’s not that I’m unable to detach my emotions from sex, or even that I’m a romantic. I’m simply in search of a moment, and I can’t take the chance that I may lose out on it by not calling or emailing someone I’ve already slept with.   

To the bartender who woke up to find freshly-picked daffodils by the bed, the Russian student I moved in with briefly, the school teacher whose house I showed up at unannounced (you really should have told me you were married), to all the other women whose lives have been made poorer by my continued presence, by my audacity to stick around after and to remember birthdays and inquire about ailing moms, my inability to perceive you as objects of sexual gratification alone, I’m sorry. I’m terribly, sincerely sorry I suck out of bed.  

                            Icy Highs's Music Recco: "What's up" by 4 Non Blondes