Ode to Lata (25 page)

Hunh!
  I’m not the bloody chairman of an outreach group, okay?  It’s not the same thing!  Those Indians who might want to come out of the closet need someone like you, Ali, not some hypocrite like Salman who wants to sit around and fill out millions of questionnaires and harp about safe sex all the time!  Doesn’t he realize part of safe sex is feeling good about yourself so you don’t get involved in such
khatar-naakh
situations?  And you can’t do that from under the hangers in your closet!
   

All of our lives we have been exposed to this mode of communication.  Everyone, from the ailing old ladies of the
bankra
committee to members of our own families, indulged in this pastime.  Sometimes, inevitably, things would backfire and a wounded aunty would appear at your doorstep, teary-eyed, demanding reparation for a comment we may have made frequently to her face, but made the fatal mistake of telling behind her back to someone who had leaked it. 
Panchaat
was just a way of life for Indians, to the extent that even
Hazar Imam
had addressed the damage it could do to the community.  But did anyone listen?  As South Asians away from Asia, and, more painfully, away from the country of our childhood, we tried to recreate the norms of our culture.  And gossiping was not only the easiest of all cultural profligacy, but it was also the most fun.

So when the truth recoiled in
Saath
, why did the group splinter irreparably?  Since the core group’s nature was as intimate as a real family’s, gossip had never been received with much offense.  Our gossip fests, though sometimes malicious in tone, still represented only unbridled cogitation from members of the family.  They were like Mummy and Aunty sitting over a cup of tea and
samosas
and having an unchecked, no-holds-barred dialogue about my psychosis.  At times the conversation could get brassy and impertinent – and always exaggerated – but it was still only Mummy and Aunty, and the reason they had chosen to discuss me in the first place was because, in some peculiar way, they were concerned; therefore it was their duty if not an involuntary reflex to do so.

When discord sprouted within
Saath,
it was obvious that a loose-lipped aunt had orchestrated it; someone had manipulated it as part of a personal agenda, taken what had always been innocuous and disinterred its potential for damage. After participating in flagrant gossiping about one other, suddenly everyone awoke from a deep sleep with wounds and indictments. 
How had it gotten so far?  How could he have said this about me?  Well, do you know what he said about you?  He said this about you!

I was the first one to be indicted and, discovered in time, the only one ostracized for it.

EXCOMMUNICATED

Salman responded to my message with a message of his own on my answering machine.  I found this odd, considering he knew he could reach me at work.  At such times, falling back on the answering machine became a clear indication of his avoidance of actually connecting.

Apparently he wasn’t the only one.

For about a week now, I hadn’t joined the group for one of our gatherings – either they had been temporarily halted or someone had forgotten to invite me.  I had left messages for Farida and Riyaz as well, but neither one of them had called me back.

Instead, I reconnected with Adrian, attempting to boost some life into our impaired friendship.  But I missed the
Saath
brand of camaraderie: the extravagant welcoming hugs, casual touches and gentle squeezes which became an essential part of any conversation; Farida’s commando tactics when she was upset and trying to punish everybody else; Salman’s dramatic expressions and sarcasm, unconsciously derived from the
bankara
committee; all the gossip and cackling.  I realized with some sadness, as I threw back another potent shot at some video bar with Adrian, that
Saath
had become like a cyclone sucking everyone in.  Within it, each of us familially or societally misunderstood Indians became a codependent.

The social matriarch of this extended family, Farida, had crammed each week with different plans, leaving little time for anyone else outside of
Saath.
  One night it was a barbecue, then a Hindi film, another day it would be a day trip to Artesia where we could gorge on
mithais
and buy hard-to-find Bollywood soundtracks.  As much as I valued our genus of culture, and had used it to spend time away from Adrian, it had become apparent that I would have to completely sacrifice his friendship.  I had not been prepared to do this and had broken the cardinal rule of not attending all of the gatherings.  Now I found myself uninvited to any of them.

Salman started off by providing me with the implausible yet commonly used excuse of Angelenos and almost all city dwellers: he was too busy to respond sooner.  He went on to say, “And by the way, you know, I had a talk with my mother and as far as she’s concerned, she said it doesn’t matter what that bitch sister of mine wants!  She actually said, ’
Beta
, do you think that we would disown our own child?  What would make you think like that?”  He continued to mimic her, and I found some reassurance of our intimacy in his flamboyance.

“‘Oh,
mowla!
You are my first born, and nothing can change the way I feel about you, you know?”’ he cried.  “So, anyway, now I feel a lot better.  Just knowing I still have my inheritance!  But you know, I’m going to be real busy at work,
aah!
We’re doing mammograms for the pussies at the DWP during the next few days, so I guess, I don’t know, I guess I’ll just talk to you some time later on?”

There was no mention of the weekly outreach to all the confused Indian shopkeepers who surely had been expecting the duo like clockwork by now, and I presumed that this too had been postponed.

“Oh, and by the way, I don’t think I’ll be able to go out this Saturday.  I’m sorry,” he continued.  “My parents are having some
maghenis
over for dinner, and I completely forgot about it!  You know how it is with guests and all,
neh?
  Okay?”

A beep signaled the end of his message and I felt rudely cut off.  What?  Not going out on Saturday either?  How can that be?  We’ve been planning on attending the opening of this Latino club in Silver Lake for so long!  And it had been his idea to begin with!  His demanding words from weeks ago went through my mind:
“Ay
, you’d better go with me,
henh?”
he had warned me on being handed a flier for this club.  “I need to find my
dhanni
for the night.  It won’t kill you not to shake your
gand
at those white-boys for one night! Oh, WeHo is so eighties anyway, with its attitude and gloss! ‘Look at me!  Look at me! No body fat and no brains either!’”

Salman scoffed at West Hollywood nightclubs; places where sexuality had been reduced to an illusion were of little use to him.  Not in the arena to battle vanities, and burdened with self-consciousness about his weight, Salman felt uncomfortable in such places.  He scowled at the sweating bodies bumping and grinding against each other.  He subscribed instead to the Vortex and those sleazy little Latino dives in Silver Lake where he could cruise his
cholos
.  Places where the air crackled with sexuality and an aura of the subterranean.  Places that were cloaked in humid darkness instead of the pulsating colored lights and fluorescent walls.  He thrived on the stereotype of a rowdy Mexican gangbanger.  The kind that starred daggers across the room and acknowledged any mutual interest with barely a nod.  Mexican men whose dark skins were scored peculiarly with tattoos of voluptuous women with their tits hanging out and slang words; whose style was comprised of the emblematic crew cut, goatee and the unvarying livery of tank tops, plaid shirts and boxers peeking over their low hanging baggy denims, holding all the promise of uncut cocks.  They sent Salman in a tizzy of nervous desire.  According to him there were only two kinds of Latin men he claimed to be fatally attracted to: the “gangbanger, gun-packing” type or the “Taco Bell, just ran across the border” one.  Both, he claimed, represented sex in its most primordial state.  “Ooh,” he’d purr whenever catching even so much as a glimpse of such a contender. 
“Mi culo esta ardiendo!”
he’d say, and start to fan his ass.  I would have to look away, anywhere, just praying we wouldn’t get caught and beaten.

Once, between stops on an outreach, Salman had confided to me about the time he had been accompanied by two such men to a motel room somewhere in Hollywood.  After they had all undressed, they had tied him up with bed sheets.  Salman had gotten terribly excited.  That is until they gathered all his clothes and his wallet and, spitting on his horror-struck face, drove off in his car.

“Can you imagine?” he asked.  “After screaming my lungs out for help, who should come to my rescue? The Indian motel owner! 
Ya Allah!
He breaks in with this huge knife in his hands and, for a moment I wasn’t sure if I was going to die from embarrassment or if he was going to slice me up or something!”

The Indian man, an immigrant from Uganda, had gone completely insane. “You psycho!” he said, wagging the knife at Salman, still tied to the bed and trembling.  “I’m not wanting this problems here, understanding?  Why you bringing trouble,
henh?
You better go, get out!”

Much to Salman’s relief, the Mexican cleaning lady that had followed Mr. Patel into the room had pacified him, gently taken the knife from his hands and untying a mortified and naked Salman from the bed.  Then she had arranged for Salman to borrow a pair of ill-fitting sweats and spared a few of her own dollars for him to catch a bus back to his apartment.  The following day, Salman lied to his parents about filing a police report, dreading that the circumstances of his entrapment would be discovered.  A couple of days later, Salman had gone back to the motel to return the borrowed clothes, but Maria was off that day and all Mr. Patel could do as he mumbled his apology and thanks was look at Salman with a sneer and motion for him to disappear from his sight.

Even after that incident, Salman was not discouraged from pursuing such men.  It was as if the fear of disapproval from his family fueled his flagrant behavior.  Because of his lifelong struggle to conform to the expectations of his family and his culture, Salman’s random assertions of sexuality had taken an extreme and daring form.  These assertions were more exciting and bolder than those of most unrepressed, out-of-the-closet men.  Dangerous, unrefined men were Salman’s weakness and no grandeur of a dinner party thrown by his parents could have sufficiently distracted him.

So what was all this nonsense about being the obedient son?  Since when did that matter more to him than anything else?  I found his new responsible behavior towards family hard to swallow.  I was being alienated.  Not only by Salman, but also by everyone else.  By
Saath.
  By that Indian family that I had embraced as a refugee from the betrayals suffered at the hands of outsiders.

As long as I had known him, Salman hadn’t bothered to relate to his family – save for an obligatory phone call when he’d been running low on funds and, to his chagrin, had to confront his despotic sister – and now he wanted to cancel our plans because they were having guests?  I didn’t buy it.

Frantic with suspicions, I decided to call the one person who had taken it upon herself to create our social calendar and enforce attendance for the past few months.  I called Farida, demanding to know why I had suddenly been overlooked.  Why would no one return my calls or only do so when they knew I wasn’t at home?  What?  Had every one else also been too busy because their families were having guests?

Thank God for call waiting, otherwise I would’ve bumped into her answering machine just as I had for the past week.  Her voice passionless, she asked me to hang on and clicked back to her previous caller, or callers, as I was to discover, when I insisted on talking to her right away.  When she returned, Farida was disinterested and sounded cold.  I could hear her trying to tolerate me through the wire. “I can’t talk for long.  You’ve just caught me at a really bad time,” she said, the Indian vernacular that would have lightened our conversation conspicuously absent.

“Evidently it’s a pretty bad time for all of you!” I said.  “What the hell’s going on?”

She feigned ignorance for a while, but I could feel her on the verge of cracking.  I persisted, at first urging her as a friend and expressing my confusion and pain over this obvious rebuff and then irascibly as a cheated member of
Saath
.  In that moment, seconds before she started to spill her guts, I felt the tormenting need for their continued friendship and the looming fear that something irrevocable had occurred.

“How
could
you!  How
could
you!” she cried.  “If you minded so much that I was calling you, then why the hell didn’t you just tell me to stop talking to you?  Why did you have to go and tell everyone that I was harassing you with ten phone calls a day?”

It took a moment. “But Farida,” I said.  “You
were
harassing me with ten phone calls a day!”

“So?  Why not just ask me to stop?  Why did you have to tell Salman that I was a psychotic with nothing better to do with my life?”

“But I
did
tell you to stop calling me so much!  I told you to your face a million times before I ever said anything to Salman.  And I never said that you had nothing better to do with your life, okay?  That was always Salman’s angle!”