Mind out of the gutter. Shush! No, I am not going to spend the rest of this post describing my first time with a woman embarking on carnal pleasures of the Sapphic variety. That is for the Fiction section. Instead I shall spend the next many words pondering my fist time in love – For that is yet to happen.
Love. I very recently in my life believed I was in love. But just as quickly realized it wasn’t love. It was an infatuation with the comfort level this particular person in my life provided me. This individual doesn’t play a role in my life anymore. And she never knew of my feelings. But lets just say I miss the idea of her – what I wanted her to be. Oddly enough, it took a breaking heart to realize I wasn’t in love with her. Almost as if the agony and anguish of her not being mine to cherish and desire flipped a switch of great wisdom inside my head. And along with that wisdom came the responsibility to do right by me to move on. And I did. So the answer to the question Have I ever been in love? Still remains No.
Fast forward a year – I return from India. Incredibly exhausted for a million reasons. I spend a whole week having locked myself inside an apartment – sleeping, eating, drinking (imbibing), barely venturing out, staring out of floor length windows at the lake and city vista, flashing lights, no switching on the television, no music – Just me, silence, omnipresent headaches and my macbook. I’d lost weight, had dark circles that rivaled craters and was persistently jittery which refused to go away because I was too tired to cry or work out or punch something. The only thing I did was read. A lot. On the spur of the moment, one sunny gorgeous summer evening that I barely noticed, wrapped up in a fleece blanket, doped up on Acetaminophen because I seriously believe my head, heart and sinuses were trying to do me in in a sufficiently painful joint fashion, I tweeted Gaysi family the following – “Can I write for you guys?” and between the two editors ( sexy and snarky – I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one is which – but make no mistake, they’re both adorable) very quickly, words that I had once written for myself now had a space. And they were no longer just for me.
So what of my views on love and me and gaysi ? I think this line in an e-journal entry a few weeks ago sums it up – “I guess if the right woman comes along, I know or rather now believe I can and will be able to still get it up …hehe”. That’s right. I giggle in my journal entries too. When I wrote those words I was reflecting on how writing had suddenly taken the edge off of my queer existence. I’d been possessed by a strange guilt till then of how despite having come out to two important people in my life – I was just lucky. It felt it was no big deal that I had the love and support of family if so many others out there suffered in silence every single day just for being Queer. What of them?, I asked myself. It wasn’t a desire to possess a messiah complex but then again it wasn’t the right attitude either and this was something I realized only after I started writing for this website and talking to the individuals who read the many posts. I’ve met some wonderful women through the online gaysi space in the past two months or so and heard their stories of love, life and loss. And an epiphenomenon to this indulgence of making new friends was a sudden recognition that it was possible to fall in love and happily at that. As beautifully and as easily as it should be because everyone else out there does. Despite hardship and sneaking around, despite closets and windows and lack of privacy in rickshaws, despite broken hearts and broken trust and despite being Queer and being pummeled by all that the word entails everyday – It was possible to fall in love. And you know what is funny? Its something one would imagine they already know. Like as simple a fact as the sun rises in the east. But this thought had to occur to me for me to understand its weight. And it didn’t end there. I had to believe it – which I do now.
I look forward to falling in love for the first time. I’d like it to happen sooner rather than later. I’d like to want someone with every fiber of my being and have vested interests in their well-being. I want to get to know someone gradually and discover one day that I miss her. I want to be on my best behaviour not because I am genetically pre-disposed to it but because I want her to like me. I want to care about her life as much as I do mine and secretly hope they entwine one day. I want to be able to share feelings and trivial matters of the heart with her as easily as it is to say “Good Morning” . I want to want what she wants as much as she wants it. I want all of this and a whole lot more…with her.
I simply want to fall in love. For the first time.
and by god! You shall hear of it when it happens.
Ps – A corny and heartfelt thank you to the ladies who shall remain unnamed and unknowingly inspired the shift in my frame of thought. The coffee cup owes you.
