Maybe, truly

The gray insides of a girls’ school beckoned me, and I slipped inside, not knowing whether I was allowed there or not. Strangely, the room which I walked into looked more and more like my nursery classroom, with low wooden chairs that seemed to be as much for toys as for human babies. I was looking for somebody, I think. A young girl. A girl who on meeting seemed to be close to my own age. She was sweet looking, and had pretty hair. No, she was decidedly younger than me, even if by one or two years. She had a loving adoration towards me.

As I tried to know her better, I saw myself in my Amma’s two-beds-in-one. Beside me, in the next section of the bed, was the girl in the arms of her lover, who was all that good-looking with curly hair and dimpled face. As I looked at them, they looked at me, with the same loving adoration that the girl had proffered to me before. I noticed that the boy was tugging my hand, and that I didn’t wholly dislike it; his touch on my hands. He wanted me. He revered me, looked up to me and idolized me in every breath. His laughing advances were not checked by the girl. She smiled, a lovely beckoning smile, and didn’t seem perturbed at her partner wanting me. And I decided that it wasn’t such a bad thing. But as he tried to get me into his lap, I coyly drew the line. ‘I’m all for monogamy, you know. I have a boyfriend.’ He seemed disappointed, but not wholly so. He knew that his playtime was over. As I rolled out of bed, I wasn’t satisfied either.

Then there was this group of white musicians whom I bumped into, near the elevator, I think. One of them, (I don’t remember who, all of them looked about the same) with a guitar slung across his torso and cropped Bermuda pants, with a kind face, incidentally, who wanted me to accompany him. Or it could’ve easily been the other way round. And I did. I sat in his lap, or he in mine, and sang duets that needed two people, but he could sing for both. He could even produce vocal harmonies on his own, as I listened to the faint vibration in his back as he sang. As he sang, he kept caressing a sliver of flesh above my navel which my shirt didn’t hide.