Throttled

He had felt it two nights ago, underneath his skin. The worms of desire had started wiggling, and gnawing at his flesh. The desires that had been sent to a seed for the past three months or so, had suddenly started sprouting. Thoroughly unprepared, he was still coping with this sudden onslaught, trying to figure out what could have provoked it. The past three months had been so peaceful. All he had to worry about was him. Succumbing to this onslaught would mean bowing to the whims and demands of others.  Parading, anticipating, handling rejections, putting yourself out there to be consumed—it was too much work, all in all.

Rejections were a part of deal, yes. But today it had hit him hard. Parth was this uber-macho guy whom everyone had desperately wanted. He did not know what got into him, and he sent a message to Parth. To his surprise, Parth responded favourably. But the interaction had come to an abrupt and awkward end as soon as he said he won’t go fourth base. “Sorry, dude! Then I am not interested,” Parth said in his last message.

Was it about Parth? No, it was about the grounds on which he was turned down that made him feel incomplete and inadequate. He hated himself for not being able to take the plunge yet. He was about to turn twenty-six this year after all. He hated himself for craving for that specific specimen of masculinity that Parth epitomised. How demeaning it was. But then, just like so many other things in life it JUST was. Do you get to engineer your choices and desires consciously? Or do they just happen? And once they do happen, is there much that can be done about them except for yielding to them, or indulging in self-congratulatory ratiocination or intellectual masturbation to justify your not yielding to them? Both exercises seemed equally appealing and futile to him. His only coping mechanism: silence. Pregnant and loaded silence.

His disquietude could perhaps also be traced to this cousin who got married last week. She was exactly his age, so much so that there was a gap of hardly three days between their birthdays. She was one of those cousins whom your parents and family always compare you with, to your chagrin of course, because he/she is miraculously good at every thing they do. She was always better at academics, maths in particular. She always scored more than him. She got into a better college than his. She had wanted to pursue engineering; how on earth then he, being a boy, could have dared to pursue any other discipline, his relatives had insisted. His performance was always weighed against hers. His skills and penchants ...what did they matter!

And now she beat me even at getting married, he thought. There was of course a strain of jest in his thought. Despite everything he genuinely liked her. It wasn’t her fault after all. She was one of the few people from the family he was fond of. Maybe because they were age mates; maybe because she showed some respect when she talked to him and never made him feel expendable like the others in the clan did; maybe because they studied (and whined about) the same course at the same time. He wanted to attend the marriage. But he did not.

He expected her to personally invite him. Nothing grand— not even a phone call, just a message on facebook would have done the trick. No avail. Her father called up his. His father decided to go. “All of them were asking when are you getting married,” his father told him upon returning from the wedding. His reply was only a smile.  

Majestically, he sat to write, hoping to find some solace in words. But no sooner he reached the second paragraph than he realised that even the writing was throttled. He used terms such as “fourth base”. He remembered how taken aback he was when he observed how the Nobel prize winning author, Toni Morrison, used the word “fuck” ever so organically in her prose.  And he, a person of no literary worth whatsoever, could not do so. He wished he could be as unapologetic as she. Or V whose writings he admired. But inhibitions had clawed deep in his head, and he found it difficult to shake them off.