Ode to Lata (5 page)

No, it would not happen to me again.  This abrupt and unjust abandonment.  Perhaps if I hadn’t failed him in some way.  Disappointed him.  Held on to him tighter.  Appeased him by comprehending signs that he surely must have emitted.

No, never again.  I would love him as nobody ever had.  He would never have to look elsewhere.  I would manipulate any circumstance.  Experience as an only child had taught me how to manipulate situations.  Offer any sacrifice.  Grant any kind of freedom.  Keep him by my side.  Never find myself in a situation that required reclaiming him.  He would be the father that had been slain.  The mother who had worked too hard. He would make everything alright.

Enter Richard.

LOVE STORY

Let me tell you about Richard Lopez.  About this 22-year-old boy who has me in the grips of an obsession.  Richard is the perfect boy.  The object of everyone’s desire.  He has the kind of muscled body that everyone gawks at and spends hours in the gym trying to chisel into.  When he lays on top of me, his weight pinning me to the bed, a trembling creeps over my whole body.  My wit and cynicism disappear, my tongue struck silent in my mouth.  I feel then like Sappho’s ode to man from 600 B.C.: “Greener than grass, at such times, I seem to be no more than a step away from death.”

Richard is the boy upon which the fantasies of dark, lonely nights formulate themselves.  He is aesthetic perfection removed from the realm of art and thrust into the flesh.  His eyes, dark and deep-set, slay hearts from under his heavy brows. When he smiles, as he does when I’ve pleased him, he lifts the darkest of my despairs.  But when displeased, his face contorts into a scowl that condemns me infernally.

 Often friends come to me with reasons to leave him.  They coax me with their compassion and then, frustrated, badger me with rhetoric.
Can’t you see he’s just using you?  You’re just his security blanket when things don’t work out.  Don’t you care that he sleeps around town but he doesn’t want you?  That slut!

They ask me exactly how he managed to conquer my most rational and independent spirit.  They want to know how an immature boy like Richard – too caught in up in a world of hip-hop clubs and random sex to even pursue an education or hold a substantial job – can bring a hardworking banker like myself to such degradation.

Using wit where common sense would not dare thrive, I tell them perhaps it’s because we’re born in degradation that some of us still remember to have a penchant for it.  In the primordial filth of blood and piss and shit.  Then they roll their eyes because they know I’m full of shit, determine that I revel in torture, and resolve never to hear another word about Richard.

Who can explain why I long for Richard?  For a man who pours his declaration of platonic love in my ears and his seed into the bowels of other men?  Who would believe the desperation, the madness, even the love that I feel for this boy who climbs into my bed at three in the morning but refuses to touch me in the way I want to be ravaged?  Only someone who has felt such fire. Someone who, instead of recoiling from the burn, is enchanted by the crackling of flames.

The problem – and what I can’t explain to my dear friends – is that Richard has been unable to disenchant me.  Yes, I’ve been seduced by the lure of his random beckon.  But I’ve also been kindled by the cruelty of his rejection.  Richard can do without me.  Walk away without so much as a backward glance.  To him, I’m dispensable, and this I cannot accept.  I was unable to change this about my father.  Perhaps I can change that in him.

Sometimes it all seems possible, and I become optimistic.  Drawing fresh inspiration from self-help books by Williamson and Chopra, I’m able to envision the very moment when the jousting will end and a mutually impassioned loving will begin.  I pilfer through these aids ravenously, underlining everything that puts me in command of my desires, with Richard at the very top of that list.  My faith is then restored and like a fool I believe we’re making strides toward some destined consummation.  But this was not one of those moments.

That night, as I sat holding my tear-stained face in my hands, waiting for the phone to ring, for Richard to call, I was in complete acceptance of his power over me, his fascist role as both panacea for and provider of my pain.  That night, as I sat there, checking again and again to see if the phone was resting properly in its cradle – because it wouldn’t ring – that is just how I felt.  Condemned.

Right then every New Age guru and their motivational psychobabble had perished, along with all my fantasies of a blissful tomorrow.  All this because an hour before I had been expecting him to show, Richard reneged on our plans to see a movie together.  Changed his mind.  Didn’t feel like it anymore.  Wasn’t up to it.  Not in the mood.

It should have been quite simple.  People changed their minds all the time.  It’s their prerogative.  So one took a rain check, stifled his disappointment and tried to articulate an understanding, “Oh, no problem, Richard.  I was feeling a little pooped myself.  I’m disappointed but we can do it next week.  No big deal… .”

But not for me.  For me, it suddenly became a matter of life and death.  I was a starved refugee who had been promised a banquet, even permitted to smell the redolence as it cooked, only to discover a change of heart had tossed everything into a dumpcart.  All I could see then was his face and think the unacceptable – that I almost had him there within my reach, and then I didn’t.

How could Richard be expected to understand my ceremonies for that evening?  To understand that every time I’d felt dismayed with life, I had shaken the bleakness off with the promise of our evening together.  The reverie of him next to me and smelling him and feeling his touch sustained me as my fingers mechanically punched away to open a savings account for someone.  God, just listening to his laugh….That full-bodied, robust laugh like he could grasp life and just swallow it whole.  How can he have known such longing?

“Listen,” he said, without even a hint of remorse. “I have to do something else.  I have to go and see this guy.”

“What guy?”

“Oh, just some guy, you don’t know him, okay?”

“Well, tell me about him!  Who is he?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Just tell me,” I pleaded, as if knowledge of the lucky person would assuage my own misfortune.  “I want to know.”

“His name is Louis, okay?  Happy?  Now can I get off the phone?”

It crushed me to think that our time together meant so little to him and my very salvation.  Oh, the horrible things I wanted to do when I thought of where he would be going and what he would he would be doing.  From meat cleavers above his cock to razors upon my wrist.

I’ve been told that two people can never love each other the same amount, at the same time.  Often when one’s suffering ends, the other person’s begins.  Problem was that not only could I not imagine Richard suffering for me, I didn’t think he was even capable of it. 

I would have done anything for him to keep his promise, to make him change his mind, and God knows, I tried.  At first, I made bargains that were impossible to keep. 
Please, Richard, just this time, don’t cancel on me.  We don’t have to see a movie again for as long as you wish.  But just this time… I just need to see you so badly this time…
When that didn’t work, I tried to cajole him with humor, to remind him of how witty and funny I could be.  I then shifted to emotional blackmail by recalling his promise.  And finally, stripped of any dignity, I capitulated to the most basic of human techniques – crying.  None of it made any difference.

Instead Richard told me he needed to get off the phone because now he definitely didn’t feel like being around me in this desperate and needy state.  So I began to pray, as I have night after night, for a boon. Bent down on my knees, I looked up at the framed picture of our Imam – who among many things had inspired my mother’s choice of doctors – and with teary eyes I bargained petulantly with his spiritual worth.

Why would you deny me this? What’s wrong with wanting Richard?  That, after all, isn’t materialistic.  It’s not like I’m praying for a car or money or anything.  All I want is for Richard to love me back.  For him to want me.  How can you just stand there in that damn picture, smiling down at me, and do nothing to answer my prayers?  Give him to me!  You must give him to me!

It didn’t occur to me then that I’d performed this little scene more than once in my life.  At about thirteen, I had stood unshakable by a
taqat
, a coin depository in the mosque where the followers supplicated in idolatrous fashion at a life-sized picture of the Imam, and poured in all the change I had to my name.  I had joined my hands in prayer, the rosary twining through my fingers, and lodged a desperate plea to make my best friend fall in love with me.  I’d learnt early in life that the commodity that proves scarce in the world and could make grown men grovel was love.

Oh, God, let me have Richard.  Richard, Richard, Richard.
  I blubbered and convulsed on the floor, calling God’s name and Richard’s as if they were one and the same. 

Until then, having exhausted both – myself and the dear Imam – with a paroxysm of threats and tears, I sat by the phone, hoping for a miracle.  My head was pounding, the tears had run dry and I felt weak and admonished.  I’d been turned to ash.  After another fifteen minutes, I knew I had no other choice.  I picked up the receiver with much apprehension, and dialed his number.  All the time, a part of myself, the part that I felt was standing outside of me, was saying,
What are you doing?  You can’t go on like this.  This must stop.

The answering machine came on.  I panicked. 
He’s avoiding me.  Surely he’s standing right there with his arms folded across his chest, and his face contorted with disgust.  He’ll never pick up the phone again, and I’ll be shut out of his life forever.
I felt my insides, with every beep that gave way to a message, contracting into little knots.

Oh God, what have I done?  Why couldn’t I just let him go to whoever and been understanding about it?  Pretended to be nonchalant.  Maybe then he would’ve taken me out tomorrow.  Or some other time.  Now he’s punishing me.  I’d rather die…

But I had no other choice.  Delayed gratification had never been part of my training as an only child.  I had always wanted it
now
and I had always gotten it
now
.  Never had to wait.  All I had to do was fling myself onto the ground and start kicking and throwing my fists around and whatever my heart desired would be provided.  Toyshops would be re-opened, and ice cream would come by the gallons if I had so desired. If required, I could cry until it became difficult to breathe and I started to hiccup and compel them with my trauma.  Not that one time though.  No, it certainly wasn’t working this time… .

I opened my mouth to speak but there were no words.  That’s when Richard unexpectedly intercepted the call.  “Yes?”

“It’s me,” I said carefully.  As if he hadn’t known that.  As if he hadn’t known that unless he picked up the phone, I would have been driven to incessantly calling and hanging up.  I was only grateful that he’d spared me from that portion of my sickness.  He remained silent, and I was afraid I was making this worse.  “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry… I know, I know, I’ve said that before, but I
really
am, Richard.  Oh, God, I love you, please don’t be angry with me… .”

I heard him sigh with exasperation. 
He thinks I’m pathetic.  I think I’m pathetic.

“It’s just that, it’s been a whole week since I last saw you, and I was really looking forward to tonight, you know?  I mean, I was all ready and everything, and then you call me—”

“I really don’t want to talk right now.  Didn’t I tell you that?”

“I know, I’m sorry.  Look, let’s just forget about it, okay?  Maybe another time.  It’s fine.  Just go ahead with your plans.  I just… I guess I just over-reacted….”

“
Again!
  You over-reacted
again!
  You
always
fucking do this, Ali.  I’m tired of this shit!  I don’t want to put up with this any more.  Who the fuck do you think you are, giving me shit?”

“Richard, please, I love you.  Work with me on this… Please, show me how.  I didn’t mean for it to get this way.  I know I’ll change.”  There.  I repented.  Repented for him letting me down.  Repented for him wanting to go fuck some other guy.  Repented for crying.  For questioning.  For my very existence.  One more chance was all I was asking for.  I’d discipline myself not to act needy or give him a hard time about other men or for flaking out on me at the last moment to accommodate someone else.

Somehow, he must have felt sorry for me because he said, “Look, what time is it?”

“Uh-I think about seven… ”

“Well,” he paused for a moment.  “We can still make the eight o’clock show.”

I started to cry again, uncontrollably so, only this time it was out of gratitude.  I’d been forgiven.  Redeemed from myself.  It was as if somebody had his finger primed on the nuclear button, a little red one as is popularly imagined, and had decided to postpone the meltdown so he could enjoy a last cigarette. 

You see, you fool, he does love you.  He’s coming back to spend time with you, and everything will go back to normal.

“Don’t cry, it’s okay.  I’ll be there soon,” he said, his voice resounding with a tenderness that I feared I had killed.