It is not that I was molested as a child or I never had a loving father. I had a very typical, secure, and affectionate household - but - I always felt attracted to men, way over my age.
I was 24 when I first saw him at a wedding. He must be 48 or 50 (In fact, he was 54). He looked so dashing in cream-colored sherwani, churi daar pajama, salt pepper hair, graceful mustache, in his unwavering confidence and the way he was carrying himself. He was never married before for various reasons. My untamed eyes finally caught his attention, and without going into detail as soon as he proposed to me, I said 'yes. My parents had a heart attack, siblings cried, but in the end, everyone gave up. We got married. He agreed to have at least one child.
No, it was not a happily live ever after story. Life sucks!
As he grew old and started losing charm, I was more and more into life. You may not know, and doc, you don't know, and you will never know! For a woman, 30ish is the most agile, sexual, lively, and womanly period, where she needs a 'man.' Her fear of dreaded 40 makes her go wild as she approaches more and more towards late 30..........
His list of medications was growing. His arthritis and complicated knee surgery made him immobile. He developed diabetes and bought stents to the heart. I became from a wife to a nurse. I tried to reconcile myself 1000 times. I cried. I read Quran. I went to dars in the local mosque. I joined group therapies - but love was gone. Let me confess it, I was dying to have sex, and he could not perform. I never cheated on him, but the vacuum grew deeper. Eventually, that thread of feeble connection, of holding hands, went rotten too. I find excuses and now sleep in our only child's room.
And no, there is no climax to this story. - that what sucks!
I guess 'Cheeni kum' type romance only exists in Bollywood - or they don't dare to make a sequel to it?
(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?
*
