Kissing a Woman

I don’t know when exactly I realized that being bisexual was different. I think I sort of assumed that everyone was attracted to both men and women with equal sexual vigour.

And I want to talk about DD. The first woman I kissed. I must have been 18, and I was dazzled by her. She wrote poetry. She sang, and she spoke Hindi with that wonderful UP tone. She was exactly what I wasn’t. She was graceful, well mannered and yet strangely free. And it was some day in December. What can I say, it was cold, the sun was shining. And everything about her was just perfect.

Here’s the strange thing. I went to a very feminist women’s college. The sort of place that talked about lesbians and bisexuality the way most people talk about making maggi in hostels. Commonplace. Nothing to be shocked about. And yet, on that day when I kissed DD, (well, to be honest it was a nice long smooch), they dropped their plates.

This is what I remember. I kissed her and thought, “Bloody hell. It’s all so soft!”. Everyone around us though looked at us with disgust or disguised envy. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

Our first kiss was the stuff of Hindi films. People whispering, us running off to the green rooms and making out. And yet, this was despite me knowing her boyfriend. I suppose he wouldn’t be as cool with it if she had kissed another man. But somehow her kissing me – a woman just seemed funny and strangely kinky to him. As though what we did was accidental, for his gaze. For his pleasure. Like we were going to give him his own porn film.

I don’t think he understood that she was beginning to love me more than she loved him.

It’s not just about the sex. It’s about love. What can I say? Is it really all that different sometimes?