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Jay Utkarsh


It's the sharp December cold outside of the glass doors. I see people walk past the bright, somewhat strident yellow glow sign that reads "S.K.R.S Grand *Sweets* *Savouries* *Snacks* Restaurant". My eyes blurring of the mental fatigue, the board seems to be a mix between a typical yellow STD.ISD.PCO sign and a "LIVE Nudes XXX" flickering neon sign outside a San Francisco motel.

Aah! "Your coffee, sir!" The aroma of fresh filter coffee is probably the best remedy to a tiring day, but it's still becoming difficult to keep those lines out of my mind. "...well my brother arranged for a meeting with her, I got her drunk,…drunk real bad, and then took her to a friends flat, where about 8 of us took turns with her. Whoaa! Man, she almost fainted by the time all 8 of us did what we had to. Poor girl. I believe she's never come out of her house since then. Man was I drunk that night!". He uttered these words with absolutely no sign of guilt, and added "you know it's a kind of thing we have amongst us friends at SouthEx, we share a babe, whoever is dating." I went blank for a moment, and then everything was blurred, as if somebody had hit me with a hockey stick on my head. I am trying to recollect if my last memory was of talking to a rabies infected mad dog or a frog who's pea brain had been sucked out by a vacuum cleaner. None. I was talking to a fellow Man.

While I wait for my steaming hot Onion Tomato Utthapam and stare at the yellow board visible through the striped lines made by dripping winter dew on the fogged glasses; the rest of the conversation spirals in mind, as if somebody set it on autoplay. "So what about you...you have this great room all to yourself, and you lucky bastard, you live alone...must be having a lot of fun all the time huh?" I am blank and quickly run through the "usual answers" shelf in my mind and blurt "oh! not really...!". He laughed and said "...ya!" with a sugar coated sarcastic smile that made me feel for a moment that I should be ashamed of that.

This from a classmate of two years, who asked me if he could come over to study for the next exam. I was having my lunch when he came in and after a "scan thru" look at my room, he said "Man! If I had a room like this, It'd have been a can of beer, a bowl-full chicken tikka and a sexy babe after that....what's that you're having ...sabji-chawal?".

We've only been discussing work for about an hour when gradually the conversation erodes into things about college, followed by the girls on campus and eventually on to Sex. It's a typical guy-to-guy talk that one usually gets pulled into, sometimes reluctantly and other times unknowingly. I've come out of it, all drained, all lost.

I find my concepts of sex, "of doing it with the one I love", somewhat faint in the light of these HUMAN acts that my friend describes. Of "agar (expletive deleted) nahi chahta, to ek chhori pakad kar maje to le liya kar!". "Maje le liya kar" …am I that desperate....? I have no idea why I even went through this conversation, nor do I know anymore the distinction between love, sex and rape.

I am through with my Utthapam dinner and there is this question lingering as I pay the bill, "are all men supposed be that way, or am I normal?" I get answers within, of what is supposed to be right and what is the nastiest I can think up. And I am only wondering if from now on dating a friend should be "talking over some coffee" or "sex over dinner"?

(This story is based on a real-life experience. "Please share it," Jay wrote in his mail. So here it is. -- Webmaster)

This copy is posted as it was received. It has not been edited by TLM

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