Bitch

BITCH

As he stared into his glowing happy face, he saw his eyes, so brown, so full of love and joy. So distant and ignorant. His happiness, and probably even love was brought about more by ignorance than by knowledge.
Ignorance of introspection, of wilfully, subconsciously ignoring truths that would deglamourise the feeling that would fade the glow of the smile that lit his face.

As naked as he could be, in his splendid feeling of love, Ajay stared into Joseph’s face and saw how Joseph’s happiness disconcerted him. It disturbed him. For instead of feeling the security of being in love, he felt the security of trust, that he would not be betrayed. That wasn’t good enough.
He believed that the truth would dawn upon him, or worse, an answer that masqueraded as truth would convince him of its false veracity. He feared his intelligence, his rational premonition would come true. That he was, indeed, incapable of love.

Ajay kissed him nevertheless and drowned himself in the utterly confusing feeling of love, passion and introspection as he held at bay, the rational thoughts and arguments that made him swing him back and forth amongst arguments of his being and not being in love.
He ignored, like Joseph did, and lived the moment.

The untrained human mind is capable of handling only so much truth at a time. He realised the trick was to ignore realities which were coming to him prematurely.
Confusion isn’t a feeling arising out of contradictory ideas. It is a feeling coming out of ideas, feelings and thoughts prematurely juxtaposed and tried to make sense of. Happiness then, is lost in the realm of understanding or in the attempt to understand.

Ajay savoured Joseph’s lips and his tongue swallowed the feeling. Joseph filled him, and yet Ajay felt a sense of emptiness after making love with him for three consecutive days. The love tired herself out.
He feared the love would lose novelty and become commonplace, like loving the morning cup of tea every day. That was until a prolonged separation ignited the fire again.

And Ajay would wake up beside Joseph every morning with a different feeling. Irritation, remorse, confusion, contentment, happiness and emptiness. He didn’t know what to make of a feeling so full of other feelings.
He’d never met a man who looked different when he was kissed, different when he woke up and something else when he wore a suit. And Ajay loved every bit of this changing vision of his lover.
He’d never met a man who had aroused happiness, sadness, irritation within him and forcibly mixed the emotions together to create confusion.

Ajay, in his most formative years of 16 and 17, had fallen in love with another man, knowing fully that he would never be his.
And yet Ajay had found unconquerable happiness in that love which burst out of his heart and played with him, with the flowers around him, with the wind and the sounds of the birds, for the thirty minutes that they would walk together. And the same love would torment him inside of him for the rest of the day, with happiness and impatience, until she got an opportunity to burst out and play the next morning.
His feelings for Justin was love for Ajay then. Now. That was the only love he had known and grown up with. The feeling of unrequited, yet euphoric love was what he identified true love as.
And unlike happiness and sadness, that would appear in a singular, definitely identifiable form, devoid of deception, no matter what the cause, love deceived him cunningly.

Love, over time became his nemesis. For she would forever make him wonder about her. He tried to understand her, without ever really finding her.
Love had deflowered him to the extent that she left him happily cynical, bound by his definitions of platonic love; never really understanding what love for a man other than his father or his best friend truly felt like.
She tortured him.
And yet Ajay would dance about, cheerfully, trying to understand what she was.
For she was royalty for Ajay- a feeling of eternal happiness that was supposed to stay with him.
For him love was that grand a feeling.

And when that grand feeling would be rendered unimportant by the joy of possession or the security of having found and acquired the loved one, he would be thrown again into the terrible mix of confusion where he was blinded and deafened but not muted. He’d ask questions, look for answers without ever finding them.

Ajay sailed in the sea of confusion as he tried to make sense of life, love and purpose.
Love had bastardized his feelings. Aunts had had sex with nephews, brothers with sisters and it was impossible to tell if their offspring feelings were sons or grandfathers, happiness or delusion, love or lust, contentment or security.

In his moments when he’d enter Joseph, and Joseph would smile in painful passion, Ajay fornicated mechanically as his mind tried to make sense of the feeling he felt.
And after a heart wrenching orgasm when Ajay would hold Joseph tightly, his naked skin against his, his brain could not verbalise.
Ajay surrendered to an incomprehensible feeling.

As Ajay tried to make sense of his relationship, he’d say ‘I love you’ without not meaning it.
Because it dawned upon him, that so much confusion could only be brought about by the bitch that love is...

As an afterthought, love came back to him, just when Ajay figured out what his feeling for Joseph had to be called.
Love came back to him and didn’t say much, but did enough, just enough, to make him feel that the feeling was contrived. And yet, deep within his honest heart, he knew that the feeling was real.

Confusion made love with Ajay again. His bastardized feelings for John remained un-baptized.