is it a curse or is it the day
By Suhasini Patni
The date begins in a car, as it always does. She has to admit, it’s cleaner than most. There’s an air freshener attached to the vent that gives out a lavender scent. He looks like the type of guy who remembers to refill the freshener when it runs out. She finds that instantly attractive.
He talks a lot. She doesn’t remember what about. They have a small aux to which they’ve attached his phone and they keep passing it around to play music. She doesn’t offer her phone because she doesn’t want him to mess up her Spotify algorithm. She doesn’t want to be in a situation where her battery runs out and she is unable to order an Uber and get home at a time she decides for herself. He plays the first song. It’s predictably loud.
Everything about him is typical. He’s so shy that he talks all the time to fill the silence in the air, but talks exclusively of nothing. He asks her how her day went. She says it went fine, although what else would she really say? She spent the day in the gourmet store picking up nori and sticky rice. She will make kimbap when she goes home. The cucumbers and radishes are already pickled. What if he thinks she’s too bougie? Or that she talks about things to deliberately exclude him from her thought process? So, she just says fine. As a courtesy, she asks him the same question. And unpredictably he answers,
“I shaved my head today.”
“How come?”
“I wanted my palms to touch my bare head once before I died.”
She didn’t expect the response he gave and this delighted her. It was enough to excite her but not enough for her to ask follow-up questions. She wanted it to remain a mystery, so she could call him up again and dig through more of his soul.
He didn’t shut up.
To be fair, she was also being kind of selfish. He was playing background music for her but she was choosing the longest songs she could get away with. His voice was scratchy and his car was unfamiliar, and she wanted something certain to hold on to.
He wouldn’t fucking shut up.
“Whenever any girl shaves her head, she always talks about what an emotional experience it is. But hair has never felt important to me. If I went bald, it wouldn’t matter to me.”
Her favorite part of the song was coming up. A long jazzy solo erupting into a man singing in a foreign language. She had no idea what he was saying, which only made her want to listen more closely.
“It would be the same if I dyed my hair. It wouldn’t matter to me, how it looks. It’s just hair. I could go hot pink. I don’t care if other guys make fun of me. Pink is a color just like any other one.”
She wanted him to shut up so she could make out what the song was saying. She was like a bird seeking out vibrations. The way the song was arranged could tell her whether it was sad or happy. And that was all the hint she needed. Sadness or happiness could decide whether the song was hunting her or being hunted.
“Have you ever dyed your hair?”
She didn’t answer immediately.
Then for the fuck of it.
“Yeah, once I split my hair into two sections and just dyed my left side a bright red. The other one I left as is.”
She had never done that.
“Oh cool. Yeah. My sister says that only red works on our hair. Otherwise, we need to first bleach it. Now see, I’m not against it. Like. It’s just hair. If it falls out, it’ll just grow back. But you know. It seems like such a pain. Oh, did your song end?”
She sighed.
She handed him his phone so he could play the next track. He chose a song from The Love Album. She was pleasantly surprised he knew about its existence. Then she chastised herself for being a music snob. But then she got confused about whether appreciating someone’s music taste made her snobby or . . . just appreciative.
Buket Savci - The Raft (2019), oil on canvas, 35 x 50 inches
Image description: A group of people in a post-party scene, lying intertwined in a pile on top of each other with pillows, blankets, and a long, neon-green fire hose. Some of the people are dressed in brightly coloured costumes and wigs. A girl in a white slip dress with red hair-rollers lies on a large, blue pool floatie at the top of the pile.
She imagined what it would feel like if this guy slapped her. Was it normal to imagine your date slapping you? What would she have done to provoke the slap? Would he be the kind to slap her if she messed up his phone somehow? How seriously would she have to provoke him to get slapped? Did no such provocation exist?
“It’s your turn again,” he said.
“It’s all right. You can play another one. I can’t think of anything right now.”
“Oh, really? For a second there it seemed like you were more into the music than into me. . . Sorry, I’m just a bit awkward. It’s weird not to acknowledge how awkward this process is.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
“You’re really beautiful. Like. Much more beautiful than your pictures. Sorry. Is that weird to say out loud? I just think it’s nice to compliment people.”
“Um. No. Thanks. I guess I don’t really know how to react to compliments.”
Silence.
“Actually, there is a song that I’d like to play.”
“Changed your mind?”
“Guess so.”
She played the most abrasive song she could think of, but not as abrasive as some of the Norwegian black metal or Japanese noise tracks she had listened to in college.
“Oh, this sounds familiar.”
“Yup, it’s Death Grips.”
He didn’t say anything.
He finally shut the fuck up.
She noticed how his feet moved to the music. His side of the car was crammed with the pedals and steering wheel but he relaxed into the space, pulled his seat back, and just listened to the music for a while.
He wasn’t particularly attractive. But she found his naïve innocence astounding in the moment.
She leaned in close. He lay still. Almost like a dead body. When she kissed him, he barely responded.
“Oh well . . . This is just like kissing a corpse.”
“Right, sorry. It’s just that, I wasn’t really expecting it.”
“This is a Tinder date, isn’t it? Weren’t you expecting some sort of physical contact?”
“No, I thought we were going to get to know each other and all that. I mean, I liked the kiss. Just wasn’t expecting it is all.”
“What did you expect from a date that happens in a car? It’s like the most obvious sign that we’re just looking to fuck, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I didn’t know that. This is my first Tinder date. I just said the car cause we could listen to our own music and, like, smoke pot or something. I wasn’t trying to be sleazy.”
“Hmm, well clearly I was.”“No, no. Please. I wasn’t expecting the kiss but it was nice. Let’s try it again. Please?”
“Fuck no.”
“I’m really sorry. I just don’t know what the rules are. And I just thought people ask before kissing you know. This was like the movies and I’m not anything like the movies.”
Did he just blame her for not asking for affirmative consent?
This transgression clearly wasn’t enough for her to get slapped.
Would she have slapped a guy if something like this happened to her?
“I think I should go home.”
“Oh. All right, can I drive you back?”
“No, I can just call an Uber.”
Why didn’t he ask her to stay put? Why was he just letting her go?
“No, please. It’s a little late. Let me drive you back home. We’re already in a car.”
It was only 9 PM. Who was he to tell her what to do, anyway?
She insisted she would take the Uber. She didn’t want a random guy to know where she lived when he didn’t even want to fuck her. She stopped at a McDonald's takeaway on her way back home and was saddened to realize they had discontinued the Chicken McGrill burger. She just got a chocolate softie and reached home ready to call up a friend and vent.
Honestly, who was he to judge her for making the first move? He didn’t even bother taking her out for a real date. Although she would have instantly rejected the idea of a dinner or a movie because she would’ve felt too awkward knowing he could watch her perform the most basic functions a human being could perform: sit and listen or eat and talk.
She didn’t end up calling anybody.
She still checked her phone obsessively to see whether he had called or texted. He hadn’t. She realized she didn’t want to talk to him either. She had already been humiliated enough.
She turned on her laptop and put on her favorite headphones. She would stalk him while listening to music that would fill her brain up completely.
She was halfway through Maggot Brain and had sifted through his entire social media. She even checked out his LinkedIn until she realized that he would get a notification now that she had visited his profile and got so absolutely mortified that she instantly shut her laptop and blocked his number.
She didn’t feel like engaging in the domestic so she gave up the idea of making kimbap, which she anyway rolled too thick and often choked on because she didn’t roast the nori for the optimum number of seconds.
She didn’t want to admit how much this flimsy date had affected her self-esteem. Was she ugly? She would give anything to be taller. Her face gave off the feeling that she was really innocent so all the men she met would treat her with either strange indifference or pedestalized affection. Both reactions made her upset but if she were honest, she would rather have men’s attention than not have it.
She wanted to masturbate the bad feelings away, but she had nothing around her that turned her on. She wished she could just get wet on command and slide her fingers in whenever she felt anxious and keep going till her body succumbed to pleasure completely.
She wanted desperately to fuck but she had never learnt how to. She would twist and contort her body and let her lovers inside her and welcome them in a docile, obedient way. But they didn’t usually fulfill the manic desire to fuck that she had in her heart. It was never enough. It was either too long or too short. Too fast or too slow. Too wide or too narrow. She tried to train herself to achieve that intense pleasure on her own but it had never worked. She didn’t want to be that self-sufficient.
Buket Savci - Untitled (2013), oil on canvas, 54 x 52 inches
Image description: A closeup of a girl with dark-brown, curly hair, sleeping on her side showing her side profile. Her head rests on top of a man’s arm. She wears a white t-shirt with the sleeve ridden up to reveal an arm tattoo. The light hitting against her face and the bedsheets gives a soft, iridescent glow of pink, purple, and yellow hues.
The city around her was completely dead. There was silent lightning in the sky but other than that, everything was still, like her body.
She imagined her body covered in scars. A bite on her neck so deep, it would take months to disappear. Her arms and neck squeezed so tight, deep blue bruises would form constellations on her skin. But her body was completely clean and pale, like a carton of milk. She thought it made her forgettable, but she wanted to be remembered.
Why did she want to be remembered through scars?
She unblocked him for a minute to see if he had texted her.
He hadn’t.
Maybe she freaked him out too much. Maybe she was going to be a story he would tell his friends. Maybe she would even be the reason he never went on Tinder dates again. She imagined him talking to his friends. She knew what they looked like, where they all usually hung out, and could even guess what they talked about, because she had stalked him really well.
She was so horny, she just leaned in and started going at it.
Would he lie to his friends and say they did more than they actually did? Would he boast that he made her come a bunch of times and then just left her to take an Uber back home? Men were unpredictable. They always boasted about sex they hadn’t ever had. She felt that whenever she let men inside her. They seemed to be walking through unfamiliar territory. Most of them shut their eyes, trying to let their inner eye guide them through her body, as if entering a dark, unfamiliar forest.
Then she remembered that one guy. He never shut his eyes. He would offer her his fingers to suck on and she would greedily take them in her mouth. His eyes would be open the whole time. She could feel him watching her, analyzing and judging her. It made her feel really shy. She always felt like she was putting on a show for him.
He could command her effortlessly but she often felt like she was reading into his actions. When she was sucking on his fingers, she would try not to look at his eyes. But every once in a while, she would look up. If she felt like he looked bored, she would stop.
“Why did you stop?”
Sorry, she would say. And continue. Then she would look up again. He wouldn’t touch her at all; she could never tell if he was enjoying himself. He wouldn’t say anything. She would try to concentrate on his breathing instead, hoping it would give her some kind of a clue. Vibrations from his body were very gentle. But he always breathed heavily.
Then he would suddenly stop her.
“Would you like to smoke a joint?”
She felt disappointed, like she had done something wrong. She would say yes to the joint, quickly put on her clothes and get him all the stuff he would need.
Then she would just sit next to him, unable to let her eyes meet his. Minutes would pass in silence. Then.
“You don’t always have to perform such subservience.”
She wouldn’t say anything in return. She would just lift up her face to look at him. Did he look upset? Angry? Would he be provoked enough to hit her?
He would pass the mix to her. “I don’t feel like crushing.” She didn’t feel like smoking. But she would start crushing instantly. He would sigh.
If she didn’t have to perform such subservience, could she tell him that she didn’t want to stop sucking his fingers? That she wanted to move further on, to the point that he would reciprocate the pleasure she had been trying to give him all this time?
He would touch her hair, petting her while she was crushing, and she would feel shy again and stop looking at his face. Then.
“I wish you’d cut your hair shorter. It would look nice on you.”
She didn’t want to cut her hair for a guy. But she’d be lying to herself that she hadn’t seriously considered it. Maybe it was her hair stopping them from the pleasure.
“Should I tie up my hair next time?”
She wanted him to indicate there would be a next time.
“We’ll see.”
Did she misread this lack of enthusiasm as mysterious sexiness? Did she think he was sexy? He wasn’t sexy at all. He was clumsy and selfish. But it pained her to know she couldn’t please him. She was good at pleasing people.
They saw each other on and off for a year. He would never shut his eyes. If she kissed his stomach, he would pull her back up with her hair. She would kiss and bite his collarbones, and he would set the pace by resting his hands on her neck.
He didn’t once do the same to her. Then.
I need you to be more assertive.”
“It’s not enough that I’m doing everything you’re allowing me to do?”
“You’re not doing anything to me.”
“Do you want me to go down on you?”
“Now is not a good time.”
“Then what do you want?”
He would offer her his fingers. She believed it was to shut her up. Her self-esteem really collapsed, but she tried her best anyway. Until she couldn’t do it anymore, and she stopped talking to him completely.
But it still haunted her that she wasn’t enough for one man. Why did he continue to see her so often when he felt like she did nothing for him? She would make him his coffee, she would fold his clothes, she would feed him home-cooked meals, she would do everything, despite being told she didn’t have to perform subservience.
Maybe, she just was subservient? Was it so simple? A man could just tell her she was unattractive and she would become his doormat? That made her feel like a bad feminist.
She unblocked the number again to see if her date had texted. He still hadn’t. She didn’t block him again. She wanted to feel the humiliation from her earlier date for a while. Anything that would make her feel human. Anything that would make her forget the man she hadn’t been able to please.
She checked in her fridge for something to eat. She found some oats she had soaked three days ago and cut some mango on top of it. Oats didn’t taste good, so she often forgot they existed in her kitchen. But they were good for her so she ate them from time to time.
She was good to her body. She exercised every day, barely ate out, and cooked all her meals at home with a balanced diet in mind.
But she wasn’t good to her body. She let men use it all the time. But sex was a meaningless chore, and she didn’t want to believe that she could be used for it.
She hadn’t met a lot of people from Tinder who interested her. But she saw a man whose bio boasted that he traveled the world and spoke Mandarin. She had always wanted to be able to speak many languages.
He had invited her to his house. She wouldn’t normally go to a random guy’s house, but she went to his. She just hoped something bad wouldn’t happen.
He was a pompous, rich guy. His house had Joan Miró and Japanese woodblock prints on one white wall. The rest of the house was painted an ugly beige. He opened an expensive-looking bottle of wine without first asking her first if she wanted a drink. He pulled out a chair for her to sit at the dining table.
His house had peculiar furniture and carpets everywhere. It had that musty quality of being crowded but minimalist at the same time.
“Is this your parents’ home?” she asked him.
“Yeah, but they’re in France for a month, so I’m here all alone.”
He offered her the wine as if it was obvious that she was going to drink it. She did. It tasted really good.
“Do you like the wine?”
A contentious question. Should she pretend to know about wine or put it out in the open that she found people who know about wine deplorable.
“Yes.”
“Great. My parents just had it lying around. I don’t know much about wine myself.”
She relaxed.
“Me neither.”
“But I like this one.”
“So do I.”
She noticed a bookshelf to her left. All of it filled with titles written by white authors. A lot of them racist.
“This is my parents’ shelf. My mum studied English Literature so these are all her old copies. They smell nice, but that’s about all I know about them.”
“Do you read?”
“Yeah, here and there. I have some nice manga in my room I flip through from time to time.”
She knew that it would be polite to ask him what manga he read. But she didn’t feel like listening to his answer. She swirled the wine around in her glass and kept on drinking. Then she got nervous she was drinking the fancy wine way too quickly. Was it weird to want to leave a date after not even spending half an hour with a guy?
Why not? You stopped watching movies if they didn’t fit your vibe. Why couldn’t you walk out of a date?
He was a good-looking guy. Chiseled jaw line. Tall, well-kept.
After a long silence, she noticed there was no music playing.
“Should I give you a tour of the house?”
What a weird fucking question to ask.
“Sure,” she said.
He didn’t really give her a tour. Just brought her into his room. It was inevitable. They were going to have sex.
His room was painted sea-blue, with a small section over the bed filled with octopus drawings made with some sort of a calligraphy pen.
“My sister made that when she was young. Now she’s studying to be a marine biologist.”
“Wow, that’s cool.”
She wished she were on a date with his sister instead. Why had she thought this guy was going to be interesting just because he spoke Mandarin?
“Would you like to sit?”
“Sure.”
Could she cut the awkwardness and just take her clothes off so they could have sex quickly and she could leave?
“Would you like some more wine?”
“Sure.”
He left her alone in the room and went out to get the wine. She sat on his bed and observed his room. Was it normal for a Tinder date to invite you into their childhood home on a first date?
He brought her the wine and she noticed once again that there was no music.
“This chair. It’s called a Bombay Fornicator.”
“What?” she asked.
He pointed to an odd-looking wooden chair, with really long arms and smooth leather cushioning.
“It’s like a chair that’s . . . good for sex.”
“How so?”
“You know. You—”
He started to blush.
“I mean. A girl could sit and spread her entire legs on the arms and the guy could be. You know, just below her.”
“Oh.”
Silence.
“What else could you do on it?” she asked.
“I guess, anything that involves putting your legs up.”
“Sounds cool.”
Could she cut to the chase now and take her clothes off? She went over and sat on the chair, displaying her legs on the long arms. She was wearing a skirt, and was aware she was showing a lot of skin by sitting in that position.
He noticed.
He instantly went to her and took her underwear off. He didn’t bother about taking anything else off. Then he unzipped his pants. In less than a minute, they were having sex.
The chair was not comfortable. He too lasted uncomfortably long. Her thighs had chafe marks and her neck felt knotted.
She picked up her panties and said goodbye.
He never called her back. She didn’t mind.
But the guy she couldn’t please; with him she couldn’t wait for the phone to ring. He barely existed on social media so she had to make up scenarios in her head to imagine what he got up to and what his friends were like. She would wait for weeks for him to call. It didn’t occur to her that she could call him herself. She didn’t feel like she had that much agency.
He would finally call. Never text or catch up. Just call her up and ask her to meet for dinner. She wouldn’t want to sound too pleased and act easily available. But with him, she wasn’t smooth.
She would agree instantly. He would always want to meet at Khan Market even though it was out of the way and neither of them earned much money. In fact, she was sure she earned more. He probably still got his parents to support him.
He would ask her to pick the restaurant.
“Whatever you want.”
“You know I hate that answer. Pick.”
“You invited me. You should pick.”
“I said we should eat dinner. But I’m okay to eat whatever you want. You’re a picky eater anyway.”
She felt hurt he said that. He held her by the shoulders so she was forced to look at him.
“I’m not going to wait forever. Where are we eating?”
She would say the restaurant’s name. Then she would get nervous about what to order. If he disapproved of her choice, she would feel even more hurt.
Buket Savci - Istanbul Evening (2018), oil on canvas, 20 x 42 inches
Image description: A top view of two girls lying next to each other on a bed covered with a pile of clothes. The girl on the left has long, straight, black hair and wears a striped t-shirt dress of pink, light teal, and green. Lying on her side, she embraces the other girl. The girl on the right, with dark-brown, curly hair, lies on her back, arms at her sides, and wears a dark dress with a pattern of small flowers and a plunging neckline to reveal some cleavage. The two girls’ foreheads touch each other, suggesting a passionate exchange between them.
Later they would go to her apartment. They only ever met at her place; a small barsati she was renting in South Delhi from her salary as an assistant editor for a magazine. She would ask him if he wanted coffee. He always asked if there was alcohol instead. She would make them both a drink. Then she would wait in anticipation for what he wanted next.
“You’re such a people-pleaser,” he said.
She wanted to say something witty to lower the blow she felt. Something like “no, I only like to please you.” But she said nothing and kept her face lowered.
“Sometimes, your lack of self-confidence can be really unattractive.”
She nervously sipped her drink. She wanted to fight for herself, but she couldn’t get herself to question him.
“Get up.”
She got up. He kissed her. They kissed for a really long time. He took his shirt off. He never motioned that he would take hers off too. She took hers off anyway. He didn’t touch her even once. But she felt bold enough to touch him. He walked them to her bed and lay down on it. She followed on top and remembered to put her hair up the way she thought he would like.
“I prefer it open.”
She got nervous.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“I’m sorry.”
He sighed and nudged her off him. She felt defeated.
“Just try to relax next time and just do whatever feels right. Stop being so nervous.”
She felt delighted he had mentioned there would be a next time.
The next time they met, he held up her hair and kissed her lips and called her beautiful. He looked straight into her eyes as he said it. Something inside her broke as she heard that word, and she did everything in her power to stifle her tears.
It didn’t work. She was afraid he was going to get irritated at seeing cry, but he was surprisingly calm. He let her cry for as long as she needed and just sat next to her without touching or interrupting her. After that, she made herself stop responding to his texts right away and cancelling plans with him even if she was free.
She didn’t like playing games, but he was playing one and she needed to catch up.
She never caught up.
One day, she realized, he would never be calling. She always wondered if he had found a woman who could actually please him. But he never updated his social media so she had no way of finding out.
Her work didn’t interest her much. She was aware her magazine perpetuated a neoliberal capitalist fantasy, featured photo-essays that were borderline poverty tourism, and insisted on publishing only Northeastern writers who hadn’t ever lived in India. But work was work. After reading a viral article about how loving your job was a capitalist myth, she felt constantly oppressed because she was spending a major chunk of her life fulfilling someone else’s needs.
She tried to nourish herself by going out often. She didn’t dislike being by herself. She watched plays alone, she ate out at restaurants alone. She watched a lot of movies, read a lot of books. She was good at crowding the blank spaces that cropped up in her head.
But she never felt fulfilled. People around her always looked happier. She tried to fulfill herself through relationships, but none of them ever stuck. Whenever she got too comfortable with a guy, she would start to get irritated by his existence. Everything he did would be wrong and she started to hate him.
She liked a little discomfort in relationships. To have a mystery unfold in her head. She liked meeting unpredictable people. She didn’t necessarily have a type. They could be tall or short. Working or non-working. Religious or non-religious.
She was estranged from her parents. They were staunch Islamophobes and couldn’t relate to anything that didn’t exist in their upper-middle-class narrative. She thought they were shallow and unexciting. When she left college and became self-sufficient, she stopped meeting them as often. She didn’t call her mother, but she would pick up the phone if it rang for her.
It never did.
They didn’t seem to like the daughter they had raised either. She was self-aware to a disconcerting degree. She made them uncomfortable, the way she would look at them. She gave off the feeling that she was bored. She wouldn’t talk a lot. She just looked bored.
They didn’t want to try so hard to relate to a daughter they had given everything to.
She hadn’t felt the need to call her mother in years. But she felt rejected and depressed that night, and she wanted to fill up her mind with chatter. Instead of calling her mother, she scrolled aimlessly through her date’s profile again. She was hoping he would update it so she could imagine what was going on in his mind. She was trying hard not to obsess over it, but she felt extremely hurt he hadn’t messaged her even once. Whether to find out if she reached home safely, or had a nice time, or to clear up the awkwardness of the non-kiss kiss.
Was she pathetic? She wanted him to come over to her apartment and redo the kiss. She wanted him to take control of her body and show her that he was not that awkward. That she really did just catch him off-guard.
Would he slap her if he came to visit now? Accuse her of crossing a line? How would she react if he did actually slap her, ever?
Would there even be an ever?
The guy she couldn’t please had always seemed like he would slap her. When he got upset with her, he would put his hands on her cheeks like he wanted to cause her harm. She hadn’t felt threatened by it at all. It just made her want to do better. To be better for him.
But he never actually slapped her. He didn’t need to. There were so many unspoken rules in their arrangement that she was always working overtime not to transgress. It made her feel sick in her stomach, but she did it because she liked spending time with him.
Like her, he too didn’t mind being alone. In fact, he thrived in his solitude. He wrote well, and rejected the magazine she worked for, with overwrought fervor. He never offered to read her work. She tried to make him show interest by giving subtle hints. “I wrote a poem about you,” she said. He didn’t even ask to read that.
She had never written a poem about him.
Sometimes, he would just ask her to take a long walk with him. He said it helped him think. She liked being a part of his process of thinking. She never inquired what he needed to think about. He had a journal in a satchel he would carry, a seductive black, leather-bound journal that she had never dared open without his permission, even when she was left alone with it.
He drank a lot. But she had never had to take care of him when he was drunk. He would just clumsily fall asleep on her bed. In the morning, she would anticipate when he would wake up, and make coffee for him. He never showered in her apartment. He wouldn’t leave immediately after waking up. Sometimes, he would spend entire days in her flat. Without asking for permission. She would go off to work and come home to find him sitting in his boxers on her bed, reading one of the books on her shelf.
He would treat her with cold indifference but make himself a permanent presence in her house. Until he left. Then there were weeks of silence. It was torturous.
She felt upset that her life was defined by the falls and crashes of affairs she had had. Men who had fucked her too much. Men who had worshipped her and whom she had forgotten about almost instantly.
There had only been one woman in her life. Seeing a woman had been a curious experience. She didn’t know when to flirt or to act sisterly. She didn’t know whether complimenting other beautiful women would lead to jealousy. She didn’t know how to behave romantically with a woman in public.
It brought her great displeasure nonetheless when her female lover left her. She called her “far too heterosexual for a female experience, but far too homosexual for a male experience.” Her life, so crudely defined in one sentence that summed up all her fears and anxieties. She thought about that sentence all the time.
She didn’t want to be one of those people who carried a cloud of despair with them. Whose company was so unbearable, you couldn’t help but feel pity for them. She often acted livelier than she felt only because her anxiety prevented her from showing how lonely she was.
She often met lonely men. In the beginning, she would appreciate how confidently they were able to display their loneliness. Then she got tired of how sad they felt for themselves. It gave her an uncomfortable gaze into herself.
Her date still hadn’t texted her. But the guy she couldn’t please had. It was the first time he had ever texted her. Usually he would just call, claiming it was easier and faster to do so. As if texting her was a waste of time. As if her words weren’t appealing to him at all.
“I was falling in love with you until you decided to cut me out of your life. But I don’t think I’ve fallen out of love with you,” he wrote.
Shocked, she dropped her empty bowl on the marble floor. She didn’t register the sound of it shattering into small pieces.
Was she supposed to act suave? Like she had always known he loved her and in fact it was her who had the upper hand all this while? Should she reply right away, or let him simmer in the moment? For once, make him feel uncomfortable. She tried to imagine what he looked like when he squirmed. But she couldn’t imagine it.
She hadn’t ever been suave with him.
“I haven’t fallen out of love with you either,” she texted back.
Would this be the moment they talked about everything? Sort everything out? Put all the awkwardness out in the open and be good to each other; good for each other?
He didn’t reply for a long time.
She was upset. She had built up a great moment in her mind. He would text her back and apologize and she would accept the apology. Then he would come down to her apartment and hold her in his arms. They would stare at each other for a while. They wouldn’t even have to say anything; their eyes would communicate everything that had to be said.
When he finally replied, she was disappointed.
“So, when are we having dinner again?”
Did this declaration of love mean nothing to him? She wasn’t even sure she loved him, but she had said she did. Why did it seem obvious to him that she loved him?
“Whenever you want,” she wrote.“Not this again.”
She sighed. She kept refreshing her texts with her date. It was now past midnight. She imagined there would be more of a chance that he would reply now that he had had so many hours to think about their date.
He hadn’t texted. His chat window didn’t show if he was online. She didn’t want him to see that she had been consistently online since their date, lest he thought she was waiting to hear from him.
She was going to meet the guy she couldn’t please, who had told her he loved her, the next day for dinner. They were going to a small Tibetan café near her place. She liked watching him eat with chopsticks. It made her feel like they were both cultured people, who had knowledge of the world and different cuisines. That if she were to make phở he would not only immediately recognize the dish, but also shower her with appropriate compliments. It was a childish and spoilt thing to be proud of. She only had access to that knowledge because of her privilege.
When they met at the Tibetan café, he ordered a pork dish. Usually, he ate vegetarian food with her, so they could share from each other’s plates. It was the most intimate thing they did. But this time he had deliberately deprived her of this intimacy. She tried not to let her insides singe. She ordered a vegetarian thukpa and ate in silence.
She didn’t feel self-conscious eating in front of him. He had spent days in her apartment just watching her exist. Watching her painfully construct sentences so that they didn’t sound overly ornate or clumsily strung together. He heard her humming to music in the shower. When she came out of the shower with her wet hair dripping, tangled up on her shiny forehead, he would kiss her gently.
She tried to teach him how to cook. But he was rubbish at it. He would instead buy them a bottle of gin, carry lemons and tonic with him, and keep supplying drinks as she cooked.
But she was still always unnerved by him.
“The food is good here, no?” she said to break the silence.
“It’s good only because I’m so happy to see you,” he said.
“You don’t look so happy to see me,” she said.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been texting. It’s been a difficult few months.”
“What’s been happening?”
“Just . . . problems at work.”
“Work? You work?”
“Yeah, what else do you think I did with my time?” he asked her sarcastically.
But what did he do with his time? He always seemed to just exist in her apartment. Doing absolutely nothing. Just watching her do her menial chores, going away for work, coming home exhausted. When she would ask about his day, he would just talk about a movie he saw.
“I work at the magazine. The one you work for,” he replied.
“What?”
“Yeah. Didn’t I tell you that?”
“No. I would’ve remembered.”
“Well. It’s my dad’s magazine. It’s shit. But it’s work. I just edit the articles before they go to print. So, I don’t come into the office.”
“Your dad is my boss?” she asked.
“Yeah. I think he should be giving you more bylines. You write really well. Restrained neat sentences, but with a lot of thought.”
“You’ve read my work?”
“Yeah, of course I have. It wouldn’t be published without me. I’m the one who keeps pushing my dad to publish you. He calls your writing insincere and insignificant. Dishonest.”
“My boss thinks my writing is dishonest so his son, who is my lover, publishes it without me knowing? Are you . . . are you fucking kidding me?”
“I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”
“How the fuck would I know? You haven’t told me anything about yourself. You’re like an apparition. You just appear out of nowhere and haunt me for a while and I stop sleeping well. Why are you here?”
“I’m here because I love you.”
“Why are you really here?”
“You sound upset. Can we please not raise our voices in here? Let’s go to your place and talk. About everything.”
They walked back to her place. Her stomach hurt from the food.
“I really like you. I think you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. I don’t usually miss people when they’re gone. People are like the phases of the moon. They keep going and coming back. I don’t pay attention to it. But without you, I genuinely felt upset. I wanted you back,” he said.
“If you felt upset, how could you ignore me for so long? How could you not even tell me you’ve read my work? All of it? Even the rejected articles. That you’ve picked it apart, spoken about me to your father, put it back together, published it?”
“You’re really humble, you know, you'd never once boasted to me when one of your articles was published. You’d always play it cool. I thought that was cute.”
She hadn’t ever heard him say the word cute before. She didn’t like the taste it left in her mouth.
“I feel like I don’t know who you are.”
She continued.
“I don’t think I ever knew who you were.”
“You know enough to love me.”
“I don’t know if I love you,” she said sadly.
“I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long. It’s been an unpleasant few months, really ghastly. You always make me feel better when I’m having a bad time.”
When had she ever done that?
“Why don’t you just come out and tell me what’s wrong? Why are you playing with my head so much?”
“Stop being so hurt,” he said a little more sharply than he'd intended. Then he sat her down on her bed and held her hand. “I need you to tell me something,” he said. “Whatever we did in here. . . was it always consensual?”
She didn’t know what to say.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, did I force us into hooking up? Or did you really want me?”
“Hooking up? We've never hooked up. We just made out. You'd never even touched me. We'd never touched each other sober. There was always alcohol.”
“I can’t do it without alcohol.”
“Do what? We did nothing. You did nothing. You left it to me to do everything. You just lay there, like a dead body. Completely uninterested in me. Critiquing my every move.”
“You were the one who always looked bored.”
“I never looked bored! I never felt bored.”
Did she never feel bored?
“But you didn’t answer my question. Was it consensual?”
“What’s the point of asking me? After all these months? How does it matter if it was or not? It’s already done, isn’t it?”
“I just feel like I do horrible things without meaning to sometimes. I don’t want you to press charges or something.”
“Who would I press charges to? No one in Delhi Police would believe me!”
“So, it wasn’t consensual? You’ve thought about going to the police?”
“No. I hadn't even thought about the question of consent. It honestly . . . it wasn’t anything. We weren’t anything.”
“What do you mean we weren’t anything? We dated for a year!” Now he sounded incredulous.
“Dated? Were you under the impression we were dating?” she scoffed. Had she completely misread their entire relationship?
“I stayed over in your apartment for days on end! We slept in the same bed! We ate together. Isn’t that a relationship?”
“But we never talked. About us. About how we really felt inside. About our futures.”
“Is that what you think a relationship should be?”
“Isn’t that what a relationship should be?”
“I guess I misjudged you. I thought we connected on the same wavelength,” he said.
She felt angry and violated.
“I think you should leave,” she said.
He didn’t. As if it was easy enough to ignore her voice.
She glanced at her phone and noticed her date had finally texted her back. But now she felt like the date had occurred ages ago. She read his message, a simple “hi,” and then without replying, blocked him again.
“I want you to leave,” she said.“Fine, I’ll leave. I thought you loved me.”
“This isn’t the kind of love I want.”
“Right, you want to try to be edgy and self-aware and smart, but you’re just that subservient woman who wants to be owned by monogamy.”
She felt pathetic.
She would think about this description of her for years. Just like she had about the description supplied by her woman lover.
“It was always consensual. But I’d never gotten any pleasure out of it,” she said to him.
He sighed.
“I’m sorry. My body is a little closed up, and I’m afraid I act out sometimes because of it. I wish I could just command myself to receive and give pleasure. It doesn’t work that way.”
She softened.
“Why did you call me?”
“You always ask too many questions.”
“I don’t ask enough.”
“There’s this girl, this other one from the magazine. My dad invited her home for dinner. We hung out in my room. Now she’s telling my dad I forced myself on her. It really made me have a good long think about myself and my actions.”
“So you’re here to feel better about yourself?” she asked.“I suppose I am.”
“Do you love me?”
“I’m not sure what love is. I do miss you a lot. Your laughter, your scrunched-up face when you’re nervous. Do you think you love me?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
He left. She wanted him to text and ask her again if she loved him. She didn’t want him to be satisfied with one answer.
She unblocked her date’s number and texted him back. Then she waited.
Suhasini Patni is a freelance writer based in Jaipur and Delhi. Her work has appeared in Asymptote, Words Without Borders, Mekong Review, and elsewhere.
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Buket Savci is a Brooklyn-based, Istanbul born artist working in painting and works on paper. She received her BFA from Pratt Institute (2010) and MFA from New York Academy of Art (2012). Savci has shown her work in numerous group exhibitions and art fairs both nationally and internationally and has presented solo exhibitions at Spring/Break Art Show (NY), 5-50 Gallery (NY), Manifest Gallery (Cincinnati), Olcay Art (Istanbul), and joint two person show at Kunstverein Ludwigsburg (Germany).
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