Neel Mukherjee - A Life Apart

He gets impatient on summer evenings because the light stays till so late, the darkening blue of the sky never quite reaching the perfect black he thinks is necessary for going out on the prowl. It is a last vestige of some inhibition, this reluctance to go cruising with the residue of daylight stubbornly lingering in the air. He is sure in time it will go although he doesn’t know whether that is going to be a good or a bad thing.

He has started questioning himself about why he feels this urge to sit or stand in his cubicle for sometimes three to four hours on wet, icy evenings even when there is no action going on nor any reasonable chance of it. There are more pressing things that need his attention: Miss Gilby has only just made her first appearance at Nikhilesh and Bimala’s, Prometheus Unbound remains untouched. All those areas in which he thought he had imposed some order and method — books, essays, Miss Gilby — are beginning to escape control. All because, he thinks in a moment of trying to find one monolithic enemy, of that addiction to the adrenaline rush as he steps down the wet stairs into the underworld of St Giles, his heart a slow percussive fist, opening closing, opening closing. There is no denying it is a thrill. And he is hooked to it in the same way a big cat is after its first taste of saltblood. No amount of getting used to it, as he is by now (one of the other regulars calls him ‘our Indian chair’, he’s so much a fixture now in this place), no amount of it totally removes the slight loosening of the sphincter, the vague, peripheral urge to shit, as he makes his way into the toilets. Adrenaline, he notes every time; fight, flight, or fright.

The elements of danger and fear were at the forefront before. Will he get caught by the police? Will anyone who knows him see him in there or going down the stairs? What are the chances of picking up a psycho? What about AIDS? They have all moved back to the shadows, some more, some less. He is now so inured to any sense of danger that if it is there, it is as some complex spicing, present only in the bass notes, resistant to isolation and pinning down.

A particular incident in the toilets one day, at around two in the morning, sticks in his mind. No one there except Ritwik, who had been hanging around, utterly bored yet free and in his element, and another man: short, chubby, small shifty eyes, his skin the colour of bacon fat, tiny scratches on his nose and face, the kind one would see in an infant who has been scratching itself. The man hadn’t betrayed any interest in Ritwik at all but it was getting late and all they were going to get that night was each other. So, reluctantly, Ritwik had been making the moves, his mind not really on it, just to tease, just to see if the man was interested. Either way, he probably wouldn’t go through with it, he would just tease a bit and leave. The man had suddenly taken down his trousers, flicked out his penis and said, ‘If you don’t suck my cock, I’ll beat you up.’ Ritwik had thought how easy it would have been to spit at him and run out of the toilet to the safety of the open public streets above. Instead, though, he had kneeled down and sucked him with greed and had even got the stranger to jerk him off. In the post-ejaculation illusion of rapprochement, Ritwik, a few steps already on his way out while the man was washing his hands, hadn’t been able to resist shouting out, ‘I have a bigger cock than yours.’ Cheap, but it was going to hit home, he was that sort of man. He had shouted back at a hastily retreating Ritwik, ‘That’s coz you’re fuckin’ black, that’s why.’

It’s different tonight. He had had to leave the bar, it was getting too smoky and close in there. In his room, his work had outstared him into defeat. So he’s been left with no choice but trace his invariable tracks to the cottage. Or so he tries to reason with himself. 328665, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, from 9 p.m. till 6 a.m. That information won’t leave him alone.

The toilets are fairly busy tonight. Just entering it gives him a temporary reprieve from 328665 328665 328665 . His cubicle is occupied. He waits for the occupant to leave and then practically pounces on the door, lets himself in and locks it. He’ll have a tough time keeping this for himself tonight, there are other loiterers like him who want to use it as a base too. There’s no option but to stay put in here until the trade thins out a bit. Unlike other evenings, tonight he is not buzzing with the need for action, rushing in and out of the cubicle to check out new arrivals, heading for the viewcrack at the sound of shuffling feet. Tonight he stands with his back against one of the walls and realizes after what seems like a considerable while that he has read all the graffiti many times over without any of it sinking in.

Maybe he can will himself to shut the door that has opened inside him. The unsettling thing is that he did not know the door was there in the first place. No, he has to resist this tug. If he can only force himself to concentrate on the traffic around him, he’ll be better; nothing like the tired old game leading to orgasm for a snack of oblivion.

He leaves his cubicle and someone standing at the pissoir neatly moves back and steps in, bolting the door fast. Bastard . He’ll have to hang around in the open now. He feels exposed and it’s not a natural feeling for him, not in this world. Then someone comes out of one of the other cubicles and Ritwik automatically, along with everyone else, looks at him. Very tall and very thin, his exposed collarbones like ridges enclosing two shallow bowls on either side of his neck. I bet if he takes his trousers off, his hipbones will be jut out like promontories in a map : that is Ritwik’s first thought. He marks it with unconscious prescience, for he won’t have either the clarity or the luxury to focus on his thoughts about this stranger again. There are dark shadows under his eyes, as if he hasn’t slept in a long time. Heroin addicts have such leaking darkness around their eyes, that devoured, consuming look, Ritwik thinks.

They look at each other. Ritwik turns away and moves to the urinal, looking back at him once, making sure there is a lot of space between him and the next person standing and pretending to piss. The stranger doesn’t accept the offer, instead he goes and positions himself at the pissoir on the other side of the mirrors. Ritwik’s chest has a plumetting feeling inside it. He leans back to look at him and catches him doing the same.

Who dares, wins .

Ritwik zips up, walks over and stands beside him at the other urinal. Heroin Eyes is resolutely looking down, refusing to catch his eye, but he isn’t moving away either. Ritwik has become brazen — he is straining to get a glimpse of his cock, willing the man to catch a second of the crackle of electricity that he suddenly seems to have developed around him.

It doesn’t work: the stranger buttons up and starts making his way up to street level. Ritwik is unable to let this one go. Almost immediately, he too moves away and follows him outside. The man takes the steps three at a time, bounds up and with enormous strides crosses over to Martyrs’ Memorial.

The man looks over his shoulder: Ritwik has nearly broken into a run now. The stranger quickens his pace, crosses Cornmarket Street diagonally and almost runs into the vaulted Friars’ Entry, between Debenhams and the Randolph Hotel, just behind the bus stops. Ritwik pursues, running now, desperate, heavy with the knowledge that he has scared him off, is scaring him off right now, by stalking him out in the streets, but he can’t stop himself. He runs into the passage too and watches a tall, lanky figure lope away hurriedly, through the uneven patchwork of light and shadows thrown out by huddled buildings, a fair distance from him.