Ohh Yes, I'm Single: And so is my Girlfriend Read online

  The movie ended and we walked out of the theatre, her hand in mine. I wasn’t the same Joy that had walked into the theatre. There was a voice inside me which was screaming, YOU JUST KISSED A GIRL! YOU’RE AWESOME! I think I even pumped my fist in happiness.

  We spent a little time at a coffee shop nearby and we said we loved each other and that we missed each other. No more flapping tongues. No more hyperventilating. No more elevated heartbeats. No more stammering. That was the day I had shed the garb of being clueless in front of women; it was a turning point. I went back home with my head held high and a spring in my step. I was awesome. YES!

  It took me quite some time to realize and accept why Sarah was with me—I reminded her of Arnab. I talked like him, I dressed like him and even my mannerisms were a reflection of his. He, unwittingly, had taught me how to talk, walk and do everything that worked to be with the times. I had picked up many things, intentionally or unintentionally, from him. Including his ex-girlfriend, my first love.

  Over the next two months, we met quite a few times, mostly in movie halls, usually at odd times, to make sure that we were alone. It worked for her, too, for she never wanted anyone to know that we were going out. Years older and a lot wiser, I now understand that a rebound should always be kept under wraps. She didn’t want anyone to know about us. I don’t blame her for that, I was a step down from her earlier boyfriend, Arnab.

  In the third month of our relationship, I told Arnab that I was seeing Sarah and that we, too, had done stuff. I also told him that I knew what all he had done with her. He was cool at first, but slowly, he lost it.

  Shocked and enraged, he called Sarah up, and he shouted and bawled and called us traitors and man-sluts and whores.

  Ex-boyfriends never let go of their ex-girlfriends. That’s the lesson I learnt that day when Sarah called me up and dumped me. I cried myself to sleep for a few days, and then I told myself—there is someone else waiting, someone who doesn’t have a sore ex-boyfriend. I slept on the bathroom floor for a few days because my stomach would churn and I would puke every time I thought of Arnab and Sarah together; my mother thought I had food poisioning and I had to take pills for that for an entire week. I had problems sleeping and I would clutch my pillow imagining it to be Sarah.

  But despite my unending misery and the trauma, it was easier than I had thought it would be. In our short relationship, I used to think I would choke on my own tears and die if she were ever to leave me, but that clearly didn’t happen, and that’s because I knew she didn’t love me for me—she loved me because she saw someone else in me. Though I did feel small and insignificant for months after the break-up—girls can make you feel like that.

  And yes, I never saw Arnab again for a very long time. But over the years, I have thanked him in my head many times. For the confidence he built up in me … yes it was false and rooted in lies to begin with but fake it till you make it, right? I thank him for believing in me and for … Sarah. The girl in the short skirt and streaked hair.

  ‘You guys are sick. Why would you ever discuss what you did with your girlfriends? You know that’s just wrong, don’t you?’ I said.

  ‘You wanted to hear it. I wasn’t dying to tell you this,’ Joy said.

  ‘But streaked hair?’

  ‘That used to be the in-thing back then, Neeti!’ he said.

  ‘By the way—Arnab? Who is that? The short, fat, bald person in your Facebook profile? Don’t tell me he was your godfather. He is such a geek! Such a nerd,’ I said.

  Joy and I had been friends for a long time now. I knew every friend of his. And though he tried hiding who the real ‘Arnab’ was, I was sure my guess was bang on!

  ‘Could be. Maybe. You never know. And by the way, the guy you are talking about is insanely rich and successful …’

  ‘Whatever. I think I know who he is, and I still can’t believe you looked up to him. He’s so fat now! Anyway, you never saw Sarah again?’

  ‘Not for a long time.’

  ‘Never tried?’ I asked. ‘After all, first phone call, first girlfriend, first kiss … you shared a lot with her.’

  ‘I did try, but not earnestly. I think she started dating someone else,’ he said.

  ‘Hmmm …’ I smiled. I knew I had my man. Yes! ‘What next? Who was the next? Oh, you never told if you and Sarah, you know, like, DID it?’

  ‘Nope, we never slept together. We just made out a few times and that’s it. I was scared,’ he said, almost embarrassed.

  ‘So who was the unlucky girl who had to endure you?’

  ‘My first true love,’ he said and clicked on the folder named Sheeny.

  ‘So did the two of you …?’ I asked, not wanting to say it. And he nodded and smiled.

  The folder opened.

  Beautiful pictures. School dress. Beautiful hair. Kohl-lined eyes. Fair as snow. Sweet as hell.

  ‘She lived in my colony and she was the sweetheart of all the roadside ruffians, she was the reason why guys came out in the evening … She was the beacon of innocence and cuteness, and she loved me for me,’ Joy said.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ I said, looking at her pictures. ‘Does she have light brown eyes? They are so pretty!’

  ‘I know,’ Joy said. ‘The prettiest I have ever seen, and with her brown short hair that was always in a mess on her head like a mop, she could have passed off as a European. I used to spend hours looking at her,’ he sighed, ‘and her pictures,’ he added.

  And Joy started narrating again, and blinked away his tears.

  The First Pill—Part 1

  This was the time that Orkut had first made its presence felt, with its alluring scrapbooks, the communities, and the option to see who visited your profile last; it sounds ancient now, but it was a rage. Everyone had a profile! Within days, I too had a profile up there. I felt confident after my Sarah experience and so I started adding girls to my profile, left, right and centre. Anyone with a good profile picture worked.

  Things were different back then. Since people were yet to realize that these social networking sites could be hunting grounds for perverts, people accepted random requests if they found the person interesting. Or good-looking.

  My profile on Orkut was better than most people around, for I had joined the right communities, I put up pictures of the stacks of books I used to read, I tried to be witty in my scrapbook, and I wrote a very sensible ‘About me’; my picture was adequately photoshopped; I had just one good picture where my hair was long and flopped over my forehead, and I had a patch of beard on my skin, somehow it all came together. I looked like an okay-looking, well-read, non-creepy guy from a premier engineering college.

  A few days later, my mom came up to me and asked if I had put my name on the Internet somewhere.

  ‘It’s Orkut,’ I said. ‘It’s a social networking site. Friends add each other, we can talk and drop scraps on their walls and tell them we like each other’s pictures.’ It sounded stupid.

  ‘But all of you have phones!’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you kids are up to these days on the Internet. Anyway, did you add Sheeny?’

  I recalled that name in an instant. Sheeny. The neighbourhood sweetheart. If teenage guys were to decide real estate prices, our neighbourhood would be one of the most expensive localities to live in.

  ‘Yes? Why?’ I asked, nervously.

  ‘Sheeny told her mom that you study in DCE and they were looking for a Physics teacher, so her mom asked—’

  ‘Yes. I will teach her!’ I said, before she could finish her sentence. My mom looked at me strangely, told me that she would tell Sheeny’s mom, and left the room.

  A week later, I was at Sheeny’s home trying to teach her Electrostatics, and I was having trouble concentrating. She had the most incredible body for a seventeen-year-old; it was cute and cuddly, yet very attractive. At certain levels, she reminded me of Sarah, only Sheeny was fairer, shorter and cuter. A lot cuter. Her dimpled smile and charming demeanour was infectious, her messy brown hair, a thou
sand shades of brown, looked just perfect on her. I-don’t-care-how-my-hair-looks-like hair.

  It was not the first time I was seeing her, but I had never looked at her up close; I could hear my neighbourhood friends shouting and howling outside the window. The word had spread that I was to teach her.

  ‘Why did you add me?’ she asked as she chewed on her chewing gum. She flicked her hair off her face and looked at me.

  ‘I remembered you from the community park function,’ I lied. I knew her from long back.

  Lies had started coming naturally to me. One relationship and you know the ground rules. Lie if you want to live peacefully.

  ‘I never go to any of those.’

  ‘You don’t? I must have, like, found you in one of my friends’ list and recognized you,’ I said and she smiled. ‘Why did you want me to teach you?’

  ‘If I don’t get into DCE or a good college through IP University, my parents will take me to Bangalore with them. And I don’t want to go. I have friends here and I don’t want to make new ones. The only good part about Bangalore is the men! They are so tan! I don’t like fair guys, I am a bit of a racist,’ she said, as she sat cross-legged on the bed in her tiny green hot pants and a yellow T-shirt two sizes too big—the transparent bra strap peeked out on her shoulder and it was very distracting. She was a riot of colours, and contrasts. A million shades in her hair, light brown eyes, yellow and green clothes, and the colourless strap. Cute!

  ‘But why would you want me to teach you?’

  ‘You are cute. And you are in DCE! That’s even cooler. My friends will be so jealous,’ she said and winked at me. She clutched tufts of her hair in both hands and pushed them away. Her eyes were beautiful, so brown.

  ‘Your friends?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘All my friends have boyfriends, and I don’t. And since they don’t know you, I can tell them that I am seeing you!’ she said, as casually as anyone could, still texting on her phone.

  ‘Seeing me?’ I asked, confused.

  ‘Oh! I am sorry. I hope it will not be any trouble for you. And they hardly know you. So, it will be fine, I guess …’ she said and placed her hand on mine. Obviously, it was okay. It would have been okay even if she told the whole world about it. It would have been okay even if she told the whole world about it.

  ‘You are kidding me!’ I exclaimed and interrupted Joy.

  ‘I had the same reaction,’ Joy said. ‘I asked her again, “Why me?” and she told me that I was cute and tanned! It was hard for me to believe someone could actually like the way I look. It was crazy! I went back home and looked at my reflection in the mirror for hours. I still felt I was ugly as hell!’

  ‘And she is so pretty …’ I said and flicked through some more pictures. ‘How come she was single? And how on earth did she find you good-looking? Beats me.’

  ‘Yes, it was strange,’ he said. ‘But isn’t it always like that? The extremely pretty girls are always single. Like you,’ he nudged me naughtily.

  ‘Aww! Asshole,’ I said. ‘Anyway, continue.’

  Joy closed the folder and continued with the story, ‘Weeks passed and we were still to do a single question of physics. I had started to really enjoy her company and vice versa. The entire time, I couldn’t tear my eyes off her.’

  The First Pill—Part 2

  ‘You have no intention of studying, do you?’ I asked her as she sat on the computer, poring over someone’s Orkut profile.

  ‘Not really,’ she said, blowing up her chewing gum till it burst all over her face. She was addicted to chewing gum, and I never found her not chewing one. The first drawer of her study table had all flavours of chewing gums from Wrigley’s to Big Babool to Center Fresh; she was quite a chewing gum gourmet.

  ‘I always wanted to know, Sheeny. How come you are single?’

  ‘Umm … I don’t know. The good guys never come up to me,’ she said, switched off the computer and turned towards me. ‘And now that you’re my boyfriend, even the bad ones don’t. I don’t mind it much though. It’s only when all my friends start to talk about their boyfriends and the sweet things they do for them, I feel left out.’

  ‘Maybe you were always too good for the good guys. Maybe they think they don’t have a shot at you.’

  ‘Aww, you think so?’

  ‘Most certainly,’ I said. ‘You are cute and you’re smart!’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, touching my arm again. ‘You are just being sweet!’

  ‘No. I am serious. I would have never thought that I had a chance with you. Really. It would be awesome if I were dating you for real!’

  I regretted those words as soon as they left my mouth; she stopped chewing and looked at me, and I was about to apologize but she came and sat next to me, and said, ‘For real?’

  ‘Yes,’ I responded, trembling.

  ‘That would be cool. I, anyway, really like you,’ she said, blushing. ‘And you are a nice guy, fun to be with, and you are kind of hot. You’re not too tall either!’

  My face felt warm, I was blushing. She came closer. I repeated the sentence in my head again. Nobody had called me hot before! There has to be some mistake.

  ‘Thank you. And you are pretty awesome, too. So …’ I said, not knowing what to say.

  ‘So?’ she asked, her eyes big and expectant, like a little schoolgirl from those Manga comics.

  ‘Will you go out with me? Like for real?’ I said, sweat on my brow, panicking; I felt the walls close in on me. ‘Umm, be my girlfriend? A real girlfriend? Not just to tell your friends?’

  ‘I expected you to say something better,’ she chuckled, ‘but this will do! Yes!’

  She hugged me and a huge smile broke out on her face. ‘You looked so adorable when you said that!’

  Then just like that, she kissed me on the cheek. Instantly, small bolts of electricity ran through my body. I felt a tingling sensation running through my fingers and toes. She held me with her hands around my neck.

  ‘And you always look adorable,’ I said and kissed her back on the forehead. Once. Twice. Thrice. We stared into each other’s eyes, our breathing completely coordinated, heavy and expectant. I knew what was going to happen next, but the voice inside me was screaming aloud, ‘IMPOSSIBLE! YOU’RE A HIDEOUS BOY AND SHE’S AN AMAZING GIRL!’

  She looked into my eyes and then lowered them to my lips. Mine followed the same trajectory, inching towards hers until we kissed, softly. She retreated a little and then came closer, looked at me and smiled. This time, she inched forward and kissed me. She tasted very fruity, I guessed from the chewing gum but I didn’t ask. I spent the rest of the evening giggling like a little girl, and I told her about the far-reaching fame of her enviable looks. We talked in hushed tones and kept an eye on her mother who was cooking all this while in the kitchen.

  Our classes soon went from holding hands, to telling each other about our school and colleges, to talking about our crushes (and she had many!), to stealing kisses whenever we could, and then one day when her mother was visiting my house, we found ourselves considerably naked and wrapped around each other, our legs intertwined in an inseparable and awkward maze. We were exhausted. I don’t think I was very good at making out, but it surely felt unlike anything I have ever felt before.

  ‘Joy?’ she said, as she looked at me with her wide-open eyes. ‘How many girls have you kissed before me?’

  ‘Is that important?’

  ‘To me, it is,’ she said, as she looked away and rested her head on my shoulder.

  ‘Just one. And I didn’t like her as much,’ I said, as I kissed her forehead.

  ‘Really?’ she looked at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You are my first guy,’ she said and smiled at me. Her smile, I still maintain, was the best sight in the world. ‘And I wish you to be my last, Joy.’

  After that day, we went for three weeks without kissing or holding hands, or even having a proper conversation without someone interrupting us. Her cousins were
in Delhi from Bangalore and we always had company, often little baby brothers, irritating as hell and not cute at all. She tried meeting me outside the house a few times but a cousin would always accompany her. It made her restless, it made me lose my mind; I wanted her so bad!

  A day before they left, Sheeny had texted me that her folks would be at the airport the next day and that I should get protection, and god knows, I read the text about four million times. I intended to text her back the question, WHY?, but I thought it would be pretty stupid; the sentence was self-explanatory and all-encompassing. How I got the protection is a long and embarrassing story in itself, and I should save it for some other time.

  I went online and searched forums for Tips & Tricks for first-timers. Everyone seemed to say, just go with the flow, as if that made any sense at all! Listless, I called up Sidharth, who is a bit of know-it-all and the only guy I can discuss this with. Sidharth became kind of like my best friend after Arnab and I fell apart. In fact, he almost became my girlfriend for we talked for hours every day, yakking about girls, careers, professors, his crazy ideologies about life in general, and hung out together, often to the horror of my parents, especially since it was around this time that people started talking about gay rights with alarming frequency.

  Anyway, Sidharth had always been the go-to guy. Problem-solver. Tall. Good-looking. With the craziest of ideas. Very straightforward. His father worked in the stock market and his cash flows depended on how the stock market behaved each week.

  ‘You are a lucky bastard!’ Sidharth said. ‘I mean, I have this cousin in the eleventh grade and he is in a band and everything, so you know, he is at the top of the social pyramid. He says that though almost everyone has a girlfriend now, only some of them make out and stuff. And sex is still pretty uncommon. So your girlfriend is a nymphomaniac!’

  ‘Fuck off, Sidharth! She’s my girlfriend. Watch it! She is very sweet and I love her!’ I said, defending her; I was uncharacteristically angry. After all, she was my first legitimate girlfriend.