how it all began

the anatomy of destruction of faithfulness/ the anatomy of the beginnings of an open relationship

all this really began with one guy at a photography workshop who liked the right photographer, and didn't have money to get in. cute, glasses and cheesy smile - young but chatty, witty but not too irritating. i gave him the pass, the folder and smiled, hoped my transparent white shirt was working...and thought i would never see him again.

but all this really began when at a bus stop at colaba, where i was walking with a friend, dangly gold earrings, green kurta, could smell or rather feel the sea just a few steps away, and i saw him again. we said hi, he said - where are you going? i pointed to the sea. he shrugged - he had to go to santa cruz.

and at that point his bus came. i could see it on his face - the desperation with which he looked at a small possibility, and the need to get home. i couldn't help him, didn't have the guts yet to break my binds, couldn't tell him - surely you'll get laid by me, whats the problem.and then the bus left.

you could have broken my heart that night, i stayed awake so late. it was also the ganesh chaturthi festival, and the whole of bombay stayed awake - you could hear drums roll, and ganeshes falling into the sea, inspite of all the laws to regulate noise in the city. i watched television in a friend's house, kept on the earphones, struggled to find something to eat in the dark without making any noise that would wake up either my tired, over-worked flatmate, or the cantakerous one. i was a temporary visitor in their flat - someone who would leave soon enough, and therefore couldn't over abuse their hospitality.

but after that sleepless night, i got into a fight at my office, i hated myself, i disliked for the first time, the walk from tardeo to lamington road. the same walk where a man painted sai baba's face in chalk every day on the road. i took a taxi, got dropped off, and hated the guy who sold cigarettes at the corner. hated that skeleton of an old building, which was just iron rods covered with moss, that i had longed to get inside and photograph. hated that road, with mongini's bakery that gave me trifle pudding in a plastic cup which tasted so good. walked in - hated my boss, but then i always did hate her. and she did disgusting things like change her sanitary napkin in front of me. that wasn't new actually.

but then she took me home, her husband was an old attractive man, who tried gently to engage in conversation with her two young assistants. but he could tell - hormones were flying off my body. this was a young girl to be wary of. she is 26, she looks 19 or so he told me. but she takes bloody mary after bloody mary, she wears revealing night clothes at her first night in a stranger's house, she pads about this house like she's absorbing the life that he and his wife had built, like she could see where they had fought, what they had said, who he had cheated with, she read books. which at the end of the day, is actually the most scary thing to say about any woman. she reads...

not much happenned there, but that was where it began. the stir, the urge. the guy who started it - who liked avedon's photography, was lost in the maze of the city. lost in this labyrinth that is bombay, from which miraculously he emerged at a bus stop once. and then was gone.
but many days later, the same girl in a borrowed reckless blue and white shirt with frilly open sleeves, and loose pants was walking into lokmanya tilak station. think she had to change trains there .. and she walked against an incoming train on the station, and saw men hanging out of the train that was approaching her so fast. from her perspective she could see them catch sight of her and begin to smile, the silhouette became real, filled out in details, to the point you could see breasts, maybe nipples, thighs, maybe cunt. at that moment it felt like the entire train was full of men leaning out towards her. that the train would miss this station yet again, but it stopped, she got jostled, but before it could get tedious, she left towards the track where she had to be.

and then.. she met a young boy when she came back. a young boy who had used her house for having sex with a person he would refuse to call girlfriend a year later. a girl he would cheat on, not just physically but painfully in various small ways. the young boy, who couldn't smoke that much, but dangled a cigarette between his fingers said - so are you also an intern here? in that remark she realised that what she thought of herself wasn't her. no i'm not an intern, i'm going to join to work, if they let me. i'm going to create another track of working in this place, going to bring in cables, tapes, cameras, details of another world, if they let me. they did.

and then we go to a moment during the world social forum, which is the next stop in the journey, which is strangely linear right now, unless you knwo the real story then you can see the jump cuts. but right now it seems linear. there...she goes back with her man day after day, but for the first time, has the thought - what if she didn't have to? what if she stayed with all the others, what if they didn't retire so easily each time to their respective rooms, respective couples, what if she could hit on his friends, what if they did more than hang around too much and talk about their girlfriends, what if ...
what if all this bull shit we say about being open about sexuality would really actually happen. what if?

one guy tried to talk to her because of what she said during a presentaiton on new media. she tried to talk to a cartoonist from pakistan. in hindsight, which is always more than 20/20 she shoudl have gone with the guy who spoke to her. but then he turned out to be a friend's boyfriend, a friend who would steal another friend's boyfriend, eight months down the line.

i want to tell you now that i'm not the writing woman, not the woman who writes poetry and sends it to her lover, not because of any other reason but because i've done it, i would be willing do anything else..but not that, because of the pathetic feeling that we surround ourselves with when we do that. you can't see the man for the words that you've sent him, and you fall in love with your words inside him, or worse to get those words inside, incase he doesn't read (obviously properly) or doesn't give a damn.
either way torture begins with sharing that stuff...
the writing woman can scawl at her desk
i'll be naked and waiting..

and then came the boy who said - what is the hottest girl doing with the ugliest guy? and i saw my world spin, in his eyes, i saw just myself, not my work, my other crutches of support, my life, my friends. just me. that was all that was required to take into this room.
we shared nothing, barely anything... but he was the cook who who added the pudina and poured out the dish into a bowl. the embellishments can come later.
ofcourse the question remains who ate it?

so what did the boy do? except say - you're breaking my heart. with his hand on his heart, long locks of beautiful hair, crazy grin and absolutely irritating way of talking about absolutely nothing, loose jeans, 5 t-shirts he wore again and again and i swear till 6 months ago i could remember the inscription on each, pretensions about politics and palestine where he spent 6 months, acquired a silly small girlfriend (i think- white obviously) for whom he bought crazy funky underwear. what did he do, except incessantly surf in the office, but never bothered to mail back to that one tentative email when he left. too busy in new york, on his way to palestine. the boyfriend exposed his virginity, and he smiled and laughed, slow danced with a friend who didn't let groins touch in my house. and all i could think was- if only that was me.

no one could know that that thought had crossed my mind. i had too much at stake. no one could know it, the beginnings of desire many months ago in bombay was reaching crescendo. when a friend asked why don't you make out with him? the words that slipped out, frightfully untrue and true were - he's so young. the real words were - i'm so young, again looking at him.

so at some point i decided to chain whatever little courage i had, and look at him and say - please, don't back out. come with us for a holiday. and crazily he did. all the back and forth that he was doing, ended at that moment. i think he saw the young girl, not the older woman who was inaccessible, who was someone else's girlfriend, who could spend only 5 minutes in a day with him and was saying - please come, this is the only only way that we can happen, get anywhere, this is the only way we can sit with your arm around my bare shoulder in a swimsuit, the only way youcan photograph me many times, the only way you can put me in the same room as another woman you desire so much and watch us laugh together. this is the only way that i will put sand on your feet, the only way we can touch tentatively, the only way .. that i will not kill myself for having let you go, without hearing you say - you're breaking my heart.

i genuinely think i tried to do more with you, but i think our moment had passed. by the time we actually left together, codes were coming into place in your 19 year old brain, the kiss i gave you when you turned 19 faded, and other things came into the picture. the girlfriend in palestine, the trip to new york, the home back in south africa, the university in durban or is it johannesburg. it is difficult to compete with the possibilities of a future of getting fucked plenty, when all youcan barely manage to do is look good for you, day in and day out, for several days, and cannot bring yourself to do more or say more. he made me young, shy.. and all that came bursting out over the next few months.

the bravado he inspired beneath the shyness slipped out in conversation with friends, he knew it, i knew it - the kind of relationship he slyly called beautiful, the open relationship, which isn't actually anywhere close to beautiful had begun. i had obsessed, i had fret. i had chewed out my nails. i had found appropriate music for him to seduce me. .... i had begun to lie, to say it was fine, to do all this and seem the same at the surface, it was difficult then, its easier now.

now... he would be screwed, and so wanting more, regardless of whatever fucking possibilities his future had, he would have remembered it. but then..he made me shy, its a valuable gift, to be reduced to rubble occasionally. to fill your stomach move, your gut clench, your cunt become moist, just because someone is in the room, and his arm had brushed against mine, while we stood next to a recalcitrant printer, that thankfully refused to work.

and then came the next boy - these two boys together are my y tu mama tambien trip, they are both slightly gay, amazingly physically beautiful in different ways. their expressions youthful, their anxieties boyish, their humour infectious and completely stupid -- and yes, they would have come too quickly.

till then i obsessed with physical beauty thinking that was what i wanted, what i lacked, thinking that was what had made my juices run, whenever either got close. but then i hadn't figured out yet, why i didn't screw them. and in retrospect i realise that it was, and had always been, mostly my decision not to screw. because i was the faithful girlfriend, but mostly because all said and done - they didn't like the same photographer, they hadn't read the same books, and they weren't moved by the same movies. its amazing how these things matter - how much.