Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

So, the big news for this month is that I've quit my job. And not to go to another job either. I'm going to be freelancing full-time for the next year, taking a sabbatical as it were, writing my next book and so on. So far though, it doesn't feel like much of a sabbatical as I foresee I will be working much MUCH harder at holding a freelance career together than I ever have with just one job. I have three columns in three newspapers and a part-time job teaching with an NGO, which I'm really REALLY looking forward to.

But the nice thing is I wake up every morning feeling happy and joyful and less with a cold knot of dread in my stomach. I was done with working for someone else, I guess and it's nice to know that I am my own boss. (Of course *ahem* if this blog post is to catch anyone looking for a freelance writer's eye then you know where the email address is. What? Have blog, will pimp self!)

Anyway, I'm off to Delhi on Thursday for two whole weeks, making it the longest vacation I have taken for, oh about two years now. And then when I return, I'm going on a training programme with the same NGO, again out of town, so I'm not likely to be in Bombay for most of May. That's another thing I'm looking forward to. I'm getting my usual summer/city ennui and itchy feet and I need to be out of familiarity. I love having a home base and yes, I will want to come home by the end of it all and cuddle my cat and sit at my desk and go to Zenzi and stop living out of a suitcase and so on, but it WILL be nice to get away.

And before I go, I thought I'd address issues raised in the last post comments. Why don't I write about sex I'm having anymore? Well, a) I don't think I wrote THAT much about sex I was having in the first place and b) at 26, I don't know, it feels a little dated to be talking constantly of my conquests. Feelings will be hurt also, because a lot of people I know read this blog. I'm sorry, but if that's what you've come here expecting then you might have to go elsewhere. But if you're sticking around to follow me to this new, very challenging stage in my life, then welcome. I will have many new stories for you.

eM (and scout's) excellent adventure-II

Previously on The Compulsive Confessor:

eM goes to Singapore and is rather jet lagged. She meets scout and of course, they begin drinking immediately. They are at Clarke Quay and Aurora and scout are being rather patient and posing for many photographs.

Clarke Quay reminded me a little bit of the India Habitat Centre, if the IHC had bars everywhere you looked. And no red brick. Okay, so it wasn't so much the IHC, but it had all these metal things in the middle that could be at the IHC. We went to a barccalled The Highlander (Scottish theme, waiters in kilts, huge stag horns as decoration--hey, do they welcome stags out of curiousity?) where their friends were playing, one of whom commented on my last post, let's see if I can find his URL. Ah, here we go. Anyway, the music was good, and there was vodka-Red Bull and I was beginning to get my second wind at this point anyhow. (Deepti and I have timed to an art my bursts of energy. My second wind usually appears around 10.30-11ish, only to vanish around 1 am. My third wind appears at around two and that lasts till five in the morning, mostly. But since I was in a different time zone I think that got slightly messed up.)

Post Highlander we moved to the Singapore TC (I love discovering TC equivalents all over the world) called China One (which brings me to another digression, sorry, I'm full of them tonight. It occured to me that almost all cities have a China something. Bombay has China House, Delhi has Indo Chine, London has a China One again, I think. New York, as far as I know, doesn't.) It wasn't exactly TC, because they played mostly hip-hop, but every now and then the band would break into something like Take On Me (take on me! take me uppppppppp!). And it was there that I was introduced to the Jaegerbomb--a jaegermeister shot in a glass of Red Bull, and yeah, about as deadly as it sounds. Given that I had devoured two vodka Red Bulls at this point and was working on my third, I think my heart just skipped several beats. Third wind? I was on my hundred and twenty fifth.

FINALLY, around two in the morning, my body decided to give up and go home without me. Sadly, I said goodbye to the girls who were still going strong and went back to the hotel where I slept for twelve solid hours, only waking up when scout called me the next day and realised that I was starving. I had barely had any dinner the night before and obviously, missed breakfast so at this point I could have eaten a cow if it was unfortunate enough to wander into my path. (Mmmmmmmm, cow.)

We went to Orchard Street (or was it road?) and went to a Burger King. Don't laugh, I go to a Burger King each time I'm abroad, just for the bacon cheeseburger. Chicken burgers here just aren't the same, and I've had the beefburger at Crepe Station and stuff, but it still doesn't taste like Burger King! It was turkey bacon though, but I was so hungry, I didn't care. scout and I made zero conversation during the entire meal, until finally, full and replete, we went scouting (scouting. hee.) for a smoking spot where we just vegged for a bit and people watched.

And then it was shopping time! Well, more for her than for me, because I just wandered around Zara and Top Shop and things and made admiring noises while she tried things on, and coveted a set of fridge magnets in the shape of cat bottoms. Sigh. Those were nice fridge magnets.

And then, amidst shoe shopping, scout had to go and do this. So Aurora and I went to Starbucks and I people watched some more and when she got back, I gave her my 'boys lie and sometimes stink' pep talk (excellent pep talk by the way, I've used it on myself many times) and we collared her and went to the nearest bar, the name of which I've forgotten but it was very TGIF.

Oh but before that we went and bought me a New! Red! Bag! So shiny! So red! So patent leather! I love it. I want to rub my face against it and yes, yes, make babies with it, shiny red clutches. Everyone feels better with a little retail therapy. I don't know why I needed to feel better, but you know, empathy and all.

Anyhoo, we bitched about the men we knew and I, of course, made inappropriate joke type comments (but, hey, in my defense: a) I'm not good with crisis situations and b) she LAUGHED. Ask her!) and then we went back to theirs so everyone could get dressed and we could go on our Grand Girls Night Out.

I looked alarmed at the time but I was told to "Relax, dah-link, this is Singapore and we only go out at one am." Fine. I read Aurora's Archie comics and drank my drink quietly and waited for other people to make leaving noises (which HAH they totally did at like 11 even though we were in Singapore and people only go out at one. Pffft.) Finally everyone departed and scout and I went back to the hotel so I could shower and change and then once more to Clarke Quay. I love going to the same place twice on holiday. It's sorta nice to see something familiar, to be acquainted with it already, to stop gaping at things, you know? And we went to China One again, which was also nice, because I already knew where the smoking area was and where the loo was and I didn't have to ask anybody.

Ooh and I met many people. Besides scout's friends, I also met a friend of a friend in Bombay and someone who reads my blog! Hello! We were ALL so drunk though (and by 'we', I totally mean 'me') that there was much backslapping and confession making and tequila shotting.

After three drinks I was ushered out of there and to a place called Attica, which was more nightclubby, with smoke lights everywhere and a dance floor. Surprisingly cheaper than the other place though. There were so many of us in this enclosure (VIP, ahem) that it didn't matter what the rest of the crowd was like (only, it did later, as you will soon find out). I danced, drank part of a pitcher of LIIT, took many pictures (but you have to be on my Facebook list to see them, sorry!).

And then we needed a cigarette, so scout and I excused ourselves and went outside and met many of her friends, one of whom was a cutie and at whom I batted my eyelashes. Soon, the rest of the party left (at three am, wusses) and it was only me and scout and Aurora and the Cute Boy, and scout and Aurora disappeared (sorry, were perfect wingwomen) leaving me alone with Cute Boy.

Cute Boy wasn't Indian and so he had a lot of India Questions which I was happy to answer including, "Are you a good Indian girl?"

"Why, of course," I said, demurely, "But then that totally depends on what your definition of a Good Indian Girl is."

He leaned forward and whispered it into my ear and I smiled.

"In that case," I said, "I'm definitely a good Indian girl."

But since I don't kiss and tell (oh all right, don't kiss and blog anyway) suffice to say that as the evening proceeded he knew a lot more about India than he had before.

And the next day, after a sushi lunch, I went home.

Sigh. Great holiday. Thank you to everyone who met me and most especially to my blogging BFF (heh) scout, without whom it wouldn't have been even half as much fun.

eM (and scout's) excellent adventure

(This will be a very long post. You stand warned.)


First, from the travel journal.

17th April, 2008, International Airport, Mumbai

I love looking for omens before a trip. This time there have been two--a good one and a bad one. Do they cancel each other out? The good one is that the Singapore airport code is SIN, which pretty much is a message for me from the universe. I've decided if GOD wants it, how can it be wrong?

The bad one is that this airport has not a single bookshop past immigration. I can buy a hundred different cups of coffee but not a single book. Damn. I'm sticking to flying out of Delhi.

Since there are no bookshops, I'm journalling furiously and equally furiously (well, not ANGRY, but you know, rapid) sending text messages to everyone I can think of.

After a drink at the airport bar, I feel a lot more optimistic. It's 11.25 pm and I left my drink to come and board. And the gate's still closed. Sigh. Who are all these people? What are their stories? In front of me, two couples, one with a really ugly but kinda cute in a troll like way baby, single male passengers, six, no, eight, three old ladies, FOUR old ladies, one "mixed" couple--blonde boy and Asian girl. Woman in burqah (ooh, gate's opening!) two little girls and their mother (there'll be kids on this flight. Please keep them far far FAR away from me.) one woman in hijab, unfortunate looking sister and brother, their mother's better looking, so clearly the dad had more to do with their genetic coding, woman in bright pink pinstriped shirt carrying a briefcase, MORE old women, maybe it's like a holiday for them, troll baby's crying now, two burqahs, tall blonde couple, tall old man, ooh, cute boy! (Let me be near a cute boy, no, wait, quite tired. Let me be near a cute boy on my way back) more blonde couples, sheikh type dudes, another cute boy, no, I think it's the same one, boring, boring, boring, kid with spiky hair, REALLY ugly woman, man, there are unattractive people here today, boring, okay, time to board.


Why we were there in the first place

My hotel was most fancy, you can check it out here. Sadly, I didn't manage to take advantage of any of the facilities and only had ONE of their excellent buffet breakfasts, a fact that now at 12.14 in my hot little room with my stomach grumbling, I'm beginning to regret. I landed at around 7 am (5 am India time) and proceeded to stay up for the next, oh, fourteen to sixteen hours. (How DOES she do it, I hear you asking. COFFEE. RED BULL. MINIMAL FOOD. Coz food makes you sleepy.) All the same, I had to make sure I wasn't sitting down for more than fifteen minutes because then it was just la-la land.

I met the other bloggers on the panel--Daryl and Victor and Kenny. Et moi, representing Indian Womanhood and India In General and Young Adults and People Who Like To Pah-tay. That's quite a few labels. It was quite a hardcore IT conference, and I was actually rather surprised that they asked me at all. I mean, I'm fun and all, but I didn't think my blog was exactly... topical. Oh well. Another nice thing was that no one in the audience had read my blog so I was able to be completely myself without any odd, tripping up questions. I got quite a few laughs and people came up to me afterwards saying they'd like to read it, so I wrote down the URL on several pieces of paper. I really need to get business cards made.

Anyhoo, the good news is, I'm finally getting the hand of this panel discussion stuff.

It's the scout!

Tearful reunion happened. In the midst of a room full of IT people, we squealed and giggled and talked very rudely in Hindi to each other (rudely, because it excluded everyone else, not because we were saying mean things. That happened later.) I chugged down my last glass of wine, got a refill and together we skippety-hopped up to my (smoking) room on the 27th floor, where we did a general gab fest and catch up and then I got dressed so we could get out of there.

Dipso meets dipso

Really, did you think it WOULDN'T be a drunken weekend? This is me. And scout. Possibly the two bloggers whose content is MOSTLY "So, I was out last night and got very drunk.."

After we left the hotel we went down to the business district which was pretty close by and to this place called Barrio (China, was it?) to meet two of scout's friends, one, the very famous and fabulous Aurora (ooh and we got to do the "oh my god, it's such a small world!" conversation which it seems I shall never escape, even in foreign countries) and another friend, whose name on scout's blog I have forgotten, so I'll just call her Katy.

We had some more drinks and it was my first experience with the whole not-smoking-at-bars thing, which in theory, I guess sounds like a great idea. I mean, you smoke less and all. But in practice, you're smoking just as much as you would, only there's a new annoyance factor involved in getting up and leaving the table. Man, smokers are like lepers these days. Good ol' polluted India. This is why I'm never moving.

After mini-pizzas at Barrio, we moved to the girls house, which is HUGE by Bombay or even Delhi standards and also on the ground floor. Most young people who live alone, in India at any rate, get the nosebleed floor, so that was surprising.

I almost passed out at their house despite vodka and TV, and so there had to be a practical arm lift to get me out of there. We went to Clarke Quay, a name I love because I love the word 'quay' and I kept rolling it around in my mouth. Quay, quay, quay. I wish we had a quay. I'd totally go every day just so I could tell the rickshaw guy 'Quay'.

Okay, now I'm actually tired and I have other stuff to do. More in the next post!

As I was saying the other day: one third psychologist, one third drinking buddy and one third sex goddess. What more do you need?

(updated: I will be in Singapore this weekend to be on a panel on blogging and user-generated content and so on. Wheeeeeeeeeeee! I'm so excited! I've never been to Singapore! The live feed is here and you can actually log in and ask questions to the panelists real time. Super fancy! See ya'll Monday.)


I Need Help! (Installment the first)


Hi eM

Straight away coming to the topic; I need a help from you….to fulfill my love.
I'm an HR executive, working in a s/w company in Bangalore. 7 months back I came across with a girls profile with photograph, she is also a Keralite like me, and now staying in UAE. The face fascinated me unbelievably, as somebody I was waiting for long. Yes…. I fell in Love, as never before, and now im spending a lot of time thinking of her.

But I really had no idea how to proceed. At last I sent her a mail (few months back), without revealing anything, I requested her friendship (I can hear you calling me ‘stupid’). She didn’t even reply.

Then I decided to wait till my parents start searching girls for me, but it will be tooo late, im sure.

Now Im thinking of sending a mail straight away, by revealing everything, but again Im afraid. I don’t know what she will think of me while getting such a mail. If I lost this chance too, I cannot approach her one more time.

Before finishing- myself; too poor in girls’ psychology, in school and college, I haven’t mingled much with girls, i don’t even have sisters.

I haven’t discussed this issue with my friends or room mates. First time I am telling it to somebody. I see you as a person who can help me. Please pleeeeese advice me, don’t ignore. Im waiting.

Hopefully
Sleepless In Bangalore

Dear Sleepless,

First, sorry for making you wait for so long, but you know, real life type things have been keeping me quite occupied (major news for you guys in the next post). But, see, see, I got around to it!

Okay, so you're in a bit of a pickle. You like this girl, but she never responded to your emails or anything and now you're in a quandry. Might I point out though that you've never met her? And to fixate on a photograph (really, because how much of this is based on her 'about me' section?) might be setting yourself up for disappointment, no?

Sleepless, dude, I see men like you all the time. I see them on my Facebook and Orkut friends request pages. I see them in my inbox and in my comment section. And, I'm sorry to say, I usually reject them. Because, hear me out before you get all mad and close this page, girls like to know they're more than just pretty faces. They go for good opening lines, for something that reveals that you've been paying attention. You might be in love with her, sure, but how does she know you don't want to just get into her pants?

Here's my advice, Sleepless. Forget this girl. Meet someone real, in REAL LIFE, perhaps at your job or through a friend. Spend some time knowing what makes her tick, what her favourite colour is and whether you like the same music and how many children you want and so on. Also, if the Object Of Your Affections (OOYA) is in the UAE, how do you expect it to work? Long distance relationships RARELY work, and only when the couple has a strong past, take it from a pro. If you continue to pursue her she could either a) ignore your emails; b) block you from sending any more or worst case scenario c) report you for harrassement. Do you want that? I think not.

Go get a drink tonight, Sleepless. Bangalore's a great city, I've heard and you won't meet anyone sitting at home surfing the internet.

xoxoxox

eM

(For advice, a bitchslap or a backpat email me: thecompulsiveconfessorATgmailDOTcom)

You know summer's here when...

.. you write poetry bemoaning your lack of a love life to a mythical person who may not even exist. But still, I quite like this. Not quite poetry, not quite prose.

Love me wordlessly.

Love me with hot moistness under a noisy fan.

Love me so that I am without language, without communicating.

Love me so I am silent.

Love me so I am loud.

Love me at the pit of my belly and the dent of my back.

Love me into knots.

Love me into a straight line, toes unfurled.

Love me with Blake and Eliot and cummings.

Love me especially with cummings.

Love me so that I forget.

Love me so that I remember.

Love me into you, crawled into the space between your lungs, beating.

Love me into smoke, vapours, thin air.

Love me into thick air and fire, so I explode into flames.

Love me.


(And a little later today, the first (and perhaps the only!) installment of I Can Give People Advice. Stay tuned.)

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands (clap, clap)

Man, you think I would've realised when I have PMS by now.

I'm not dying.

I haven't suddenly contracted hermititis, a rare disease that makes you want to stay at home and draw the curtains and snap at people who call you.

I'm not in depression. (Although in a vague Slyvia Plath Bell Jar kind of way I wanted to be all melancholy and slit my wrists in the bathtub)

AND, best of all, I'm not ageing before my time either.

Damn hormones.

The most exciting things that have happened to me recently are buying a brand new deodorant (*gasp* I KNOW! I like to live dangerously) and the proofs! The proofs are here!

(eM's proofs poem:
The proofs are here!
Let's give a cheer!
And smile, happily,
from ear to ear.

Um... I write prose, in case you haven't already guessed.)

The new deodorant is actually quite exciting because it's Nivea and the most popular girl in my class in the seventh used to wear Nivea and every time I smelt it I thought of her and now, yes, I smell of popularity. I'm aware that I'm a loser.

But that's not my fault. There are no cute boys in Bombay. The person I was dating briefly, dates five and six and seven, if you recall, well, that didn't happen. Not for anything I had done or he had done but just coz we weren't feeling it, I guess. And there are now no cute boys in Bombay. Or Delhi, because you know, I've TRIED Delhi. Maybe they're hiding in the small towns.

Instead, I'm learning to cook. I'm like the QUEEN of instant food in my house. Maggi? I innovate by adding cheese and chilli garlic sauce and sometimes, when I'm feeling wild, chopped up green chilli. I know how to make a kick-ass South Indian dahi-chaawal, just like my mother's. I can also make a decent omelette and further on to that, a decent omelette sandwich, which tastes awesome at three in the morning. BUT, I haven't told you the worst of it.

I'm addicted to aloo bhujia. The Haldiram's kind. And okay, that's not so bad. But I CANNOT eat this aloo bhujia unless I add to it a) lots of lemon b) rock salt and c) red chilli powder. I've tried eating it without the above, or just minusing one and I can't. It's terrible. I eat it all day, sometimes as a substitute for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And we've been out of lemon for the last two days and I'm ready to climb the walls. This may also be the reason for recent sundry weight gainage in sundry areas. I'm like a crack whore, except with a salted snack. A snack whore! See, that even rhymes and is all cute in a Cookie Monster-esque kind of way instead of images of Amy Winehouse that the words 'crack whore' instantly project inside my head. (Okay, she might not be on crack. But she looks scary enough in the photos on Smoking Gun.)

I just realised on a completely different tangent that at the angle I am sitting, if I look down I cannot see my stomach at all. Man, I have big boobs. (NOTE: This is NOT an invitation for dirty comments or email) So, you know how when you're 12 or 13 and one morning you wake up and look down and are all like, "Hel-lo ladies"? Well, that happened to me and like, six months ago. Suddenly I have had a growth spurt in the chest area and don't get me wrong, I'm not being like arrogant or anything, but I had a perfectly adequate chest before that. I'd like a little attention on the ass, to tell the truth, if the universe is doling out growth spurts. I look like Pippi Longstocking waist down. ANYhoo, since I'm a small person, I now look like I could fall over on my back at any time due to extra weight. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little, but still. My clothes aren't buttoning up properly and this is annoying me.

Wow, I just talked about my boobs on the internet. I feel like my old self again. Awesome.

EDITED TO ADD: Also, I was wondering what you guys would think if I added on a little advice feature to this blog--either as a post once a week or as a different URL. I get quite a bit of mail asking for advice, so all I have to do is reply to it and post it (anonymously, of course. I won't *ever* print your name or email address unless you're being completely assholic, and even then sometimes I think twice.) Let me know in the comments, or send me your questions (with 'I need help!' in the subject line to thecompulsiveconfessorATgmailDOTcom). If there's enough of a response, maybe an Ask Aunty eM blog, eh?

How do you solve a problem like eM? (Nah, it doesn't have the same ring to it)

Super anti social type mood happening. I don't know why, I guess just too much partying and not enough sleep makes eM socially inadequate. So this last week and a half have been spent (mostly) doing quiet things and even if I do go out, I get home by midnight-ish. I made an exception for KVA's birthday/farewell party (Sniff. I HATE farewell parties) but then I stayed in on Saturday night and watched The Sound Of Music with Yamini, Lali and my mom, who is visiting. Yamini and I sang along loudly, much to Lali's amusement, picking our favourite songs and getting all teary during the mushy bits. I seriously heart that movie.





Why I love The Sound Of Music:





1) High on a hill was a lonely goatherd, lay odeley odelay-ee-oo.





2) Playclothes! With curtains!





3) The bit when he's all getting a crush on her and she looks sort of haughty and stands up to him and then he smiles and man, Christopher Plummer is a HOTTIE. What other movies has he done? Is he dead? Can I have his babies? (the haughty hottie. mmmmmmmm)

4) The totally sexist bits where Liesl and Rolfe are getting it on and he's all like, "I'll take care of you." Can you imagine this song being sung in the 21st century? (Okay, not quite a reason to love the movie but in its old values it's somehow charming)





5) The way the nuns all bitch about Maria, but they do it so musically that you almost wish that they'd call you a moonbeam too.





6) Discovering that as an adult I like different parts from when I was a kid. For instance, none of us (except my mom) very clearly remembered the Nazi bit. After the wedding everything seemed sorta blurry. And I always thought the Nazis wanted to kill Captain Von Trapp not make him join them which confused me later coz if she's coming from a convent, how come he's Jewish?





7) Tea, a drink with jam and bread! And that will bring us back to do-oh-oh.





8) Oh and the Baroness. I totally felt sorry for her. Even though she made Maria leave the first time. She loved Georg! Awww.





9) Christopher Plummer is HOT. Have I already said that? Damn.





10) There's a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall and the bells in the steeeeeeeeeeple too! And up in the nursery an absurd little bird is popping out to say (everybody!) CUCKOO!





We wondered last night whether boys had seen the movie too, whether it was as seminal a classic to them as it was to us. I voted yes, but the other two weren't entirely sure.





- eM hates to go and leave this pretty si-ight.

Flights Of Fancy (when real life is too boring to write about)

(inspired by a very fun discussion I had last night with (among other people) Ideasmith, JAP and Chronicus Skepticus)

It's Thursday morning. You wake up, feeling slightly heavier than you did last night. "Damn hangover," you think to yourself. Somewhere during the night your clothes seem to have gotten all tight and uncomfortable as well. You stretch and knock your cat off your bed. "Dude," you say out loud. Your voice is low and gravelly. This is not terribly surprising, because several times having first woken up, you sound like a man anyway. What is surprising is the unfamiliar weight in your underwear. And the unfamiliar lightness of your chest. You figure your clothes must have twisted around in the night. You're not prone to thinking in the morning anyway.

You roll out of bed and your cat takes one look at you and leaps a few feet in the air, his tail all twisted and bushy. "Crazy cat," you think and begin to proceed to the bathroom. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a strange man in the mirror. You start and whip behind you. The guy in the mirror does the same. He looks oddly familiar. You take a step forward, mouth open and realise it's you. This is the worst hangover of your life.

Somehow--let's not get into semantics and details and things--somehow, you know that you are a man for only 24 hours. That tomorrow morning you will be back to being your old feminine self. Carpe diem takes on a whole new meaning. You open the door of your room, feeling the new muscles in your arms, feeling the way your legs walk differently. You lope.

Of course, the first thing you do in your bathroom is examine your new equipment. It's all outside! And your period has, duh, vanished! You pee standing up and for the first time in your life don't get any on your thighs (you've used public restrooms where standing up is a necessity) you're aiming, it's in the toilet bowl, you're awesome. You do, however, forget to put the toilet seat up.

Now to think of logistics. You find your cellphone and send a text to your roommates: "Hi, out of town for the day, a friend of mine (here you pause and then pick the name Abhimanyu because you've always loved it) Abhimanyu, will be staying the night in my room. See you tomorrow!" You send similar texts to your friends who you're meeting tonight, saying Abhimanyu came in unexpectedly and since you've had to leave, could they entertain him? You're leaving him your number. Your friends are happy to oblige and your evening plans still stand.

Still, it's a shame to waste the day sitting at home. You spend an inordinately long time in the shower, for a boy, you think, you have rather a nice body, if a trifle on the smaller side. Your mind is suddenly filled with boy thoughts, sports and sex and the human body. It could be women, but you've been a straight woman all your life so it's hard for you to think of them sexually.

You wonder what you're going to wear. You find a t-shirt abandoned by one of your male friends, underneath that you put on your baggy camoflage pants. It doesn't seem to matter anymore, in your head, what you look like. You still look pretty good, you think. You have actual stubble, which you rub the back of your hand against with not a little pride.


You watch a movie by yourself. You follow some women into the theatre and are shocked when they shoot you suspicious glances and leave one seat deliberately between you. "But I'm one of you," you want to say. You content yourself by eating a box of popcorn, a large coke and a hot dog. Suddenly, your body seems to need more food.

You meet your friends at night. It's odd not to get as much attention as you're used to. It's odd to walk through rows of men at the bar and not have their eyes automatically do a scan. You are invisible.

But on the other hand, you are in a world where male solidarity is the name of the game. You are backslapped. A guy trying to get a girl's attention looks at you and shrugs. Your women friends are a little weird around you, slightly guarded, slightly flirty. You look away when you realise you can see down their shirts. Almost you want to tell them, but stop yourself. This is too much fun.

A girl at the bar slides over to you and begins to talk while ordering her drink. You smile back, nervously and then at another point you say, "Oh my god, I totally know what you mean!" She looks at you weirdly and walks away. One of your male friends comes over and says "She was hot." "Really?" you say and he looks at you weirdly too. You sound gay.

By the end of the night, after dancing somewhere, when no one offers to drop you home, you're filled with joy again. To take an auto alone at four in the morning with no fear. This is the most powerful you have ever felt. By now you have observed the other boys enough to kiss the girls and pat the boys on the back. "Are you and eM related?" asks one of them. "We're sorta cousins," you say, and leave it at that.

Back home everyone is asleep and your cat still runs and hides at the sight of you. You lock the door and sleep naked. You want to feel the moment of your body transforming, of hardness becoming softness, of curves appearing, but of course you miss it and the next morning it's just you again, and your cat rubs himself against you, demanding to be fed.