The Rainbow Under My Bed. Part#1

(A personal narrative of lust, secrets and chaos of a closeted guy.)

"How do you identify if one is sexually liberal or just lustful?" I ambushed my girl-friend with the question that had been troubling my mind since weeks. Startled with such an unexpected query she paused her coffee slurps, raised her chin,eyebrows and anger ; put aside her mug and stared harrowingly in my eyes.

"What made you ask so?" She retorted.
"You know...just curious" I resumed my hot sips.
"They both are one. You mask your lewdness with the idea of being open" the words spilled out of her mouth in the most matter of the fact way.

"Sexual openness is the fancy nightgown of the intemperate mistress ,lust" she blurted out in the most typical Literature student style.

I was explicitly uncomfortable with her proposition and I made this very much evident with my expressions of disgust. "I disagreeee....Isn't sexual liberty supposed to be the philosophy of removing the taboo around sex?" I counter argued.

"O yea, right... it's the philosophy and then going around having sex 'openly' is it's practical application" she clarified her point as also my views about her views on sex. Not late, I made up a reason of assignment to leave the narrow talk and deserted her at the fancy table with her cold dessert and a colder heart. I left the café feeling feverish and thinking low about my own self.

It was the same day that night when rain come down in torrents , dampning the ambience and the heat of my heart. I had just called up and cancelled my meetup(and more) with my grindr guy (grindr is the gay version of tinder, more sexual though). Leaning against the window frame as I thought about her words I felt shameful and shallow about myself, having had forgotten about a guy I slept with 'once' when he boarded the same rickshaw, just the previous day. He recognized me and extended greetings but I was blank throughout. No rememberance ,no memory of anything either. That same evening as one of the guys on the app asked "How many guys have you been with?" , it took me minutes before I could actually reckon the digits. And then ,there I was , ready to go out again with another random romeo. It was strange, my own mediocre life was forceful enough to traumatise me so deep.

Later that night I got to be thinking about character, shame and sex. Just how may men is too many men? After what number of instances should we retreat to our bed alone without anyone and when and where exactly did LUST respell itself as SLUT?

I couldn't help but wonder , was I sinning or just overthinking?

Two sundays later as I was strolling around a posh mall in the city, I stumbled about a book shop and for once again life had me standing face to face with my guilt, Sarat Chandra's book "Charitraheen" lay calmly on the wooden chest,evoking a tempest in my chest. I moved past it and continuously tried to make my brain move past the judgement, but I couldn't. Once I was back in my room, I sat down heavily to face the brute reality. Yes, I was lustful, am...am lustful. Yes, I forget my past affairs and indeed I don't exactly remember the count of my 'meetups', but that didn't tarnish my dignity, atleast not for me. I was brave to have admitted to this , people out there deny much more.

(Blank stares in the wall)

Minutes later I sounded too philosophical to myself and simply decided to unistall provoking apps, minimise using incognito mode and cool down my heat. I may be sexually open to say, but I couldn't figure out if my openess was way too open.

"Let it be so" I said to myself and crawled inside my blanket with my mobile. Did I mention that the grindr guy had given me his whatsapp number?