The Man in Me

But, oh, what a wonderful feeling
Just to know that you are near,
Sets my a heart a-reeling
From my toes up to my ears

"I don't know where I stand with you", I said to him. I meant, "I don't know where you stand with me."

I wanted to hear, "If you must go I can't stop you but what can I do to not lose you?". I wanted to say, I should have said, "I must go, this is something I need to do but I don't want to lose you."

What I managed to articulate, with the grace of a hippo in a tutu, "Z, look away from me while I say this. I want to have my cake and eat it too." Puzzled because there weren't any condiments in the room, he does and turns back after an excruciating moment of tonguetiedsilence and an intolerable and ascending sense of ineptness and says, "Welllll......this is stupid." Both of us are inept at saying what we mean when saying it means something. And yet we've successfully managed to trundle along this semantic dirt road towards couple-dom and bliss. We're not 'there' yet wherever there is but we've hit a fork in the road.

It's 1 pm. He's leaving in 15 minutes. We've just had breakfast, a walk and what looks like certain victory over our respective hangovers. He knows 'The Talk' in Zeus like thundering tones will happen NOW. He looks like his brain is short circuiting. I kid you not. He's gradually turning red, he looks a bit desperate like a tense parent slowly realizing they left their child behind at the supermarket. (Mine did once). I had to book a slot for this conversation 2 days ago. A challenge to the mighty ostrich to not seek succor in the sand for once. He told me, he needn't have, that 'important' conversations flummox him to the point of muteness. His mind turns mute. It does. I haven't ever experienced anything quite like this. He's constantly looking at the clock. We had 15 minutes, well we've had a month actually but it came down to these 15 minutes before he'd jet off to his homeland for the weekend.

I look up at the clock, it's 1:05 pm, 'Z I still have 10 minutes so look at me and tell me what's going on in your head baby.' He looks at me so perplexed, like I was speaking to him from under water and or when the officer had asked me what my parents' names were. He says, 'Er....um.....sigh.......'. He's disappointed. There as a thought that had formed on his face, I'd seen the cloud passing over too. And then poof! It was gone. Just like that. Poof! I realize then that is what's going on in his head. Er....um....sigh. While mine is tied up in knots from the stomach upwards. I'm so terrified because I had such a conversation with a chap once and I left feeling gutted. I was so certain we'd break up today.

I'm leaving. For a few months or maybe longer. I'm leaving on the promise of returning.

What we have actively resists classical taxonomies of relationships. We're a 'boyfriend-girlfriend' pair who cringe at the mention of either word. We're together that's it, let's not limit ourselves to certain capacities. That's how I perceive us anyway. Mostly, I think we're just terrified by our proximity. I am wont to enter in to romantic configurations that have no future whatsoever. With men who promise nothing so that I can emerge with a relatively unscathed conscience and the empowerment that comes from knowing that I was willing and he was the commitment-phobe. Truth is, I am. The. Commitment. Phobe. But now here I am with someone who sees no problem in 'going with the flow' and 'using this as a test of us'. He thinks of us as us! I'm not a good test taker. I'm a tester. Of myriad complexities. Of trouble, mostly. Of least gracious exits.

I realized today that I cannot duck away from the fact that I adore this boy ardently. This gentle, sweet, annoyingly reticent and charming man is a lot more important to me than I ever allowed myself to acknowledge. Not to mention the fact that even though between the two of us I am The Official Spokesperson on all matters HoboZivania, he is the one with the courage to articulate in lucid and honest terms. Simply.

Mentally I was jumping through rings of fire to be able to say the simplest thing and never quite managed it. I did say, 'I value us. But if you don't want this as much as I do and I don't know how much you want it because I don't whether you want me anyway then we should end this and put us both out of our miseries. I don't know. Are we dating simply because it's convenient or because there's more substance to us?" I hear myself say these things, I feel the words roll off my tongue like the first bits of crumbling snow before an avalanche. But I can't stop myself. He does.

I didn't know he was still vital. His expression had turned from dour to chaar seeti pressure cooker. Hawkins. Jo Hawkins se kare pyaar voh biwi se kaise kare inkaar? "Convenient?", he grunts. "What's convenient about coming to see you through cold rain and slashing winds at 10 pm after a 14 hour workday when you're drunk and flirting with 4 men at the same time? Convenient!." "I wasn't flirting with anyone Z. I don't notice other men I just wait to see you all day.", was my feeble yet effective protest. Safe but only just. He grunts and shoots me a look. There's a reason why they call it 'shooting a look'. A look, a command, I didn't think this peacenik possessed in his armory of looks. It shot through me with surgical precision. It thrilled me and terrified me at the same time. I shrank back out of embarrassment and swelled with pride. Yeh hai mera mard. I stammer out an apology. In my head I'm hammering away at an effigy of me with relish. What I want to say is, "Don't let me go!" and instead I'm demeaning what we have because I'm so inept. Hence the title of the post, as gender stereotypes go, I discovered the man in me. The reticent man. The fumbling man. The graceless man. The butcher of words. The slayer of feelings. I decide silence is golden.

It's 1:15 pm, time for us to leave. I look to him and say, "You still haven't answered my question baby. Where do I stand with you?". And have I answered mine? I say this while standing up with him. "Get your bag, let's leave we'll talk en route to the station." I say the en route with a particular Frenchiness because he loves it when I attempt French. I only ever mimic him. Or the sounds he makes. French is a sound to me. A deathly aphrodisiac. The deadliest one is walking beside me. The sun's shining bright for us outside, the air's a little chilly. With a faraway look and nearbeside warmth he says, 'I like you. I like spending time with you. It's grown with each day. And I've taken each day as it comes with you. It'll be hard to do that once you're gone especially when you're in Delhi, Mumbai, New York or tillwhenever the world cup's on. But let's see how it goes heau-beau (he says my name in a funny way and this is the best I can do to share it without betraying my poorly veiled anonymity)." And then he beams. He knows he cinched it.

I turn to him beaming, ready to hump him on the streets if there hadn't been laws against that kind of impulsiveness. "See that wasn't that hard and you did such a better job than me in saying it Z." We both chuckle. We know we're inept. But he's beaming victoriously. The talk, The Talk is over and he's come out with no broken limbs, no tears, no unnecessary coochiecooness and an issue resolved. All despite me.

We reach the station, snuggle, kiss, giggle. He offers to let me leave some of my stuff with him. Victory's going to his head. I have a 20 kilo baggage allowance and 80 kilos of baggage. That's not counting my shoes. So I tell him I'll drop off my shoes. He starts to worry again. Those furrowing lines on the forehead like Charlie Brown's grumpy face. "Forget what I said about your luggage. If you have porn you can leave it with me."

I don't have any porn Z but I do have a mind for it.