So I finally end up writing about Queer as Folk here because I can't find anyone who has written what I want to write. Well, that I don't want to be heteronormative either. I dunno yet what that entails: whether it means being alone for the rest of your life if you don't find someone who is willing to live according to the same terms as you. For me, it means never marrying or having kids. QaF became so maudlin in its last season, and also how Brian was scared out of his mind into wanting to marry Justin. I don't want to do that. But what happens when you get scared out of your mind when you start losing those you love, and find your friends have moved on and have their own lives and can't be counted on to be your support system? You feel lonely and start doing things Rituporno Ghosh did, or abuse yourself, or do anything the fuck that will take you out of your boredom? I dunno, I thought I did these last few weeks. But life has a way of slowing down, and when you struggle to get through the seconds, when you hunt for oblivion, or something that will divert your mind, or something that will interest you beyond the mundane, what is the way ahead? Yet something not self-destructive? It makes you want to cry knowing there is such little alternative, that life won't be a Fire Island or a Babylon. Just look how I am writing of all of this in homosexual terms, because I can't find anything attractive enough in the heterosexual paradigm. Let me please find the courage to put myself out there and never give up, to not settle into maudlin domesticity, but constantly challenge myself (big words) to discover what being alive means to me. Am I what they call hypersexual? Damned if I know. But I wish life were a fantasy, that one could be Peter Pan. And say, fuck the world, I will do exactly what I want.
When F died, when F died, I never really told you what that was all about, did I? Another anchor less, that's what it was. And I wish she were here with me, that I had taken better care of her, that I had been able to care more for her, were more scared about her life. Instead I got bored and turned my attention to other things, the next high. Ladakh, Benaras, here, there and everywhere. One needs anchors, one needs to be moored. Otherwise, one could end up a free radical and jump off a cliff, or be a lonely, sad, fat queen, or a dried up single woman. I understand now why K used to say he would commit suicide at 45. He will never have the balls, of course. And yeah, you gotta be pro-life.
This daily tedium of life. When I go out on the road, I try to channel Brian Kinney, I try to channel all my hate and say fuck you to everything that irritates me: the crowd, the guys who try to shove, even the ugly woman whose face I have to see. I want to allow myself to feel exactly as I want to, and not be apologetic about anything. Yet, when I met my future employers today, I was my best, if slightly manic self, and trying to establish the best terms, and disappointed to not have the approval of the lady who recruited me. I wish I could say in my head, fuck you, I don't care. I will do my work well, and if that doesn't work out, tough luck.
This is all a struggle to find my voice, to find myself. Right now, it's such a pastiche, such a clamour of images of what I want it to be like. Feel it and pretend it's happening. Brian Kinney was so fucking attractive till he decided that he would sell his loft and buy a huze mansion and give dear Justin the family he wanted. Fuck that. He was such a hero before.

Apparently, I have an INFP type personality on the Myers-Briggs scale (first read in Philip K. Dick's Blade Runner (you pretentious beast!)), and some of it is true:

According to Myers-Briggs, INFPs focus much of their energy on an inner world dominated by intense feeling and deeply held ethics. They seek an external life that is in keeping with these values. Loyal to the people and causes important to them, INFPs can quickly spot opportunities to implement their ideals. They are curious to understand those around them, and so are accepting and flexible except when their values are threatened.

According to Keirsey, based on observations of behavior, notable INFPs may include Princess Diana, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Audrey Hepburn, Richard Gere, Albert Schweitzer and Isabel Myers.

The polite, reserved exterior of INFPs can at first make them difficult to get to know. They enjoy conversation, however, taking particular delight in the unusual. When INFPs are in a sociable mood, their humor and charm shine through. Disposed to like people and to avoid conflict, INFPs tend to make pleasant company.

Devoted to those in their inner circle, INFPs guard the emotional well-being of others, consoling those in distress. Guided by their desire for harmony, INFPs prefer to be flexible unless their ethics are violated. Then, they become passionate advocates for their beliefs. They are often able to sway the opinions of others through tact, diplomacy, and an ability to see varying sides of an issue.

INFPs develop these insights through reflection, and they require substantial time alone to ponder and process new information. While they can be quite patient with complex material, they are generally bored by routine. Though not always organized, INFPs are meticulous about things they value. Perfectionists, they may have trouble completing a task because it cannot meet their high standards. They may even go back to a completed project after the deadline so they can improve it.

INFPs are creative types and often have a gift for language. As introverts, they may prefer to express themselves through writing. Their dominant Feeling drives their desire to communicate, while their auxiliary intuition supplies the imagination. Having a talent for symbolism, they enjoy metaphors and similes. They continually seek new ideas and adapt well to change. They prefer working in an environment that values these gifts and allows them to make a positive difference in the world, according to their personal beliefs.

In other news, today is Shasthi, but who the hell cares. I am going to sleep by 7 am today, so hurrah! I was up for 37 hours straight before my last bout of sleep, so this is improvement. Also, no plans for Sashthi, or Pujo, what with Queer as Folks and general lack of interest and disenchantment with the extreme frenzy, a sampler of which I saw yesterday while out on some errands: mikes from two pujas blaring on the street, women dressed in heavy silk saris with complete disregard about the weather and munching on any food they could lay their hands on regardless of whether it was good. 

I am displaying compulsive behaviour, but it's not out of control yet. 

It would be good to have sex before I leave this city.

I was looking at the stats of my blog today. Nobody reads my blog, like no one! I did change my address so that I could moan as much as I wanted without anyone finding out, but a big part of me does like being read, and being told I don't write too bad (!) My readership of two-and-a-half people dwindled to nothing when I decided I needed to hide, and that airing my feelings for public consumption was really not a good idea anymore, and that the whole business of honesty and putting myself out there to face the brickbats and the love, if any - well, all that was BS. I wouldn't change what I write to make it more consummable and not embarrassing to me, because I want to be able to write here about the same stuff, but some of it is rather naked, and I would rather not have people who I know but who aren't close friends, read it. I want lots of complete strangers to read it, though.
I watched a rather lovely movie yesterday. It was today really, cuz I watched it between 4 and 6 am. It's called Your Sister's Sister, and directed by a woman called Lynn Selton, and has a cast of 3 people: Rosemarie Dewitt, Emily Blunt, and my current crush, Mark Duplass. His surname will tell you that he must have at least some French in him, supported further by the fact that he is from New Orleans. He really is rather good looking and he plays a slimeball-ish midwife on The Mindy Project, my Thing to Watch of the moment. As they were saying in this long, lovely promo interview for the film, it has a lot of the actors as they are in reality, in the film.

Anyway, so, I was talking to this guy, a junior, gay, whom I've never met face à face; we've only spoken on chat and Facebook. With this guy, I can indulge all my curiosity (and fantasies) about homosexuality. He seems to live his life with an irresponsibility that I will never be able to muster. It would have been the dream once: fucking many, random people, who always seem to be available, with no emotions to worry about, with no social consequences. But after talking to him yesterday, such a life didn't seem so charming anymore. It seemed pointless, and then, scary. It must be so lonely to live your life with so few anchors. I was listening to this really charming and weird interview of Truman Capote with Robert Frost. (Who was asking him rather puerile questions, which would have passed off as charming and risque because it was 1969, and Capote was also very sportif about it. And I do think Americans enunciated their English better 40 years ago.) Listening to him answer Frost on whether he'd had more friendships or sexual liaisons, I wondered how lonely it must be, to die without a family and partner, or blood relations, when you are old and tired. My friend, this gay guy, he seems to be romping across continents with everyone he is attracted to, but then you imagine what would happen if this guy was sick, and needed people's help, but he's completely fucked himself out of the mainstream, and they wouldn't care if he lived or died.
I fear I was too open with him, and fear consequences, because Tinkerbell that he is, he has no responsibility to keep what I said to himself. He'll go "give somebody some goss" about this random senior who, do you know, said she was open to a homosexual experience, and that she thought everyone was potentially bisexual. Well, I don't suppose I said the last, though I believe so.

Footnote: Somebody on Facebook wrote about their first experience of tasting Golbarir kasha mangsho. I'll tell you my one and only experience of tasting Golbarir kasha mangsho. I used to work in Calcutta, then. On my day off, sad, depressed, because my kind, accommodating fuckwit of a boyfriend never spent enough time with me, and well, because it wasn't his day off, I buoyed myself up resiliently to go experience something I'd heard spoken about a lot. It was winter and I remember being cold, people looking at me strangely for being the only woman eating alone in that cubbyhole of a place in Shyambazar, and that the mutton was tough and very very very oily and the platter came with sweet tamarind pickle, which I think is completely pointless. By itself, going off to try kasha mangsho at Golbari's not such a terrible thing. I've gone to tonnes of places alone (and since realised that I am happier travelling and eating in company and that it need not be with my best friend or the person I am sleeping with). But the experience of Golbari is inflected with the frustration of working in Calcutta at a deadend job, when I wanted to a) go live in another city b) have a job I actually liked, and which I had a reason associated with the quality of the work, to keep. Most importantly, it was frustration for having tied my life with one who could not make me happy and did not care to try, for whom I was making all these compromises that took me further and further away from the person I wanted to be.
It has been a good thing, the break-up. Hugh Laurie's The Oranges, horrible movie though it was, had some moments which rang true. There is this point at the end of the film where Laurie's wife slaps his teenybopper girlfriend and then says, "Someday I'll thank you for this." That's how it's been for me. And though terrible things have followed, it is still a good thing that I am free of him.
Yesterday, I realised I didn't even feel that terrible hate towards him anymore. I think getting in touch with him, taking his help, and on occasion, talking with the old familiarity, has helped me move on from it. Yes, it feels like a bitch when he takes off for his trip to the Him-uh-laa-yas with his parents and wife, when I cried myself hoarse because I wanted to travel with him, but it doesn't occupy my thoughts beyond the occasional moment, and I can say I don't really care what he does.

This was not a footnote at all, and this post is longer than all permissible limits. It's the kind the mad momma writes, those which make me want to hurl the laptop. But then, hardly anyone comes here, and it's sort of my diary, so...