Playboy

(2 weeks ago, I was out of town. Fortunately met some old friends. From one late night mehfil)

(The following post has some sexual content)

I have been called and rightly called 'Playboy' all my life. I don't even remember how many women I have slept with or had an affair with. I don't take women seriously. Maybe a couple of times in my life, I thought of getting married to a particular woman, but spending the rest of my life with one woman freaked me out. I run away! Though I enjoy their company and conversation, I think women are just good for F***.

Now that said, let me narrate my one childhood experience. I was nine years old. Since all characters are now dead, I am comfortable sharing this. We were not very rich people. We lived in Lyallpur. They start calling it Faisalabad to make Arabs happy. Our father, in the mid-1970s, with a wave of the labor force, went to Dubai so he could provide a better lifestyle for us. He used to stay there for a year or two amid brief trips back to see family on Eids. Every evening, we went to the neighbor's house to watch TV for hours. One evening, my two-year-old brother and I were sent home early by neighbors, and we found our mother sleeping with my one distant uncle. That day, we did not know what to make out of a naked man and a woman sleeping together.

My brother and I never talked about that.

As chapters of life unfolded in the next 30 years, I turned into a playboy. And my brother is a divorced, impotent man who lives in a one-bedroom apartment somewhere, popping anti-depressants every night and every week, spending 200 dollars on his psychotherapy session.

May I step out to puff a cigarette?

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