First ONS in Mumbai!

The love bites still hurt. Angry purplish in color, they are clearly visible on both napes of neck. Standing at the station waiting for the train, I can see (or imagine!) the look of curiosity in people’s eyes when instead of focusing on my face, their gaze is deflected to the bruises on the neck.  And strangely I feel happy!

For all of it to make sense, I have to go back to the very start.

 More than 4 months have passed since I came to Mumbai. Ist Semester is already over. Back to back so many exams were too much for me to handle and in the last few, I didn’t even care what I was writing.

On the social front I had mostly cut myself from most of my friends and colleagues, primarily because I was busy with exams. Finally when they got over last week  finally I put up some pictures on a popular gay dating website. I was looking for nothing in particular, was pretty much open to everything but was unsure of how to move forward with it. Let me tell you a bit about the gay dating world from a novice’s perspective. The whole world is a shade of grey. User IDs become the instrument of identification, profile substitutes personality, stats and preference is usually the first impression, right from tastes in cuisine to tastes in bed every blank is provided and guys use it amply to describe themselves (mostly fake!). Then there are PICS! Beefy cakes, drop dead gorgeous faces, average lookers, nude pics focusing on ‘relevant’ anatomy and/or positions. There is an array of ‘products’ on display. Some of them quoting their long list of demands of what they want/do not want or like/do not like. Some have sky rocketing attitudes while others are plainly visibly desperate. There are a lot of nuances of it which I am discovering as I go along. I’ll keep you updated with them.

So coming back to my story, I was looking for a conversation to begin with but the only prerequisite being that he should have good English, just no major spelling gaffes or repeated grammatical blunders.  In this process, I hit a guy my age whose self description sounded sincere and gave an impression of a well read and sensible guy. We started chatting and hit along quite well. One thing led to another and we ended up having dinner at a nice place in Bandra. He was quite talkative but equally well read and had one after another anecdote to narrate which I liked in him, at least there were no awkward silences in between. It being my first time, I was initially bit hesitant and unsure but he put gradually put me at ease. We talked a lot about travel, wildlife, academics, interests etc. He had travelled a lot across country like me and we had some good experiences to share with each other. After dinner we shared a dessert at a famous American Ice cream chain in the same area. He had come prepared with a bag and came back to my place. After an hour of chatting about random things we ended up having sex.  The light of an almost full moon pouring in through the large french windows, we were bathed in a shiny glow and kissed each other passionately for long.  About the sex, it was quite good. Our long sessions were interspersed with him narrating interesting anecdotes & we talking random things. All in all, it was a night 'well' spent!

When I woke up, he was ready to go and was insisting he’ll go by rickshaw. After much debate, I finally dropped him at the local station. We messaged each other politely once or twice after that.  And that was it, my first ONS (one night stand) in Mumbai.

I don’t even know his name. Even after asking him he didn't tell me and neither inquired about mine. He was sorted and formal about the whole the whole thing. You meet, talk nicely, and have a good time in bed and part on polite terms with each other. Though I have read and heard about it a lot, but while experiencing it first hand, I felt out of sorts.  The whole day, I was feeling  a kind of emptiness inside me. Not because I got emotionally attached to him or something but the whole thing was alien to me. But the bigger unsettling thing was a strange sensation that finally the city had won. It had drawn me into its net and now I am trapped in it. Visions of me doing ONS on a routine basis without any guilt in the future kept floating in and out of mind all day leaving me disturbed. It all happened yesterday and today I am on the train taking me far away from this city and I know this that when I’ll come a month later, I’ll start living an empty life which I never thought I could.

Anyway, this post goes out to S (I don’t know his real name and probably never will!) for being my first in Mumbai and showing me how to enjoy while being detached and professional about it. My dear kannidiga, I’ll remember you for a long time.  J