மோகனீயம் - Sindhu the stripper

The morning after I moved in, I cornered Visu. Eyes sharp. Voice low. He sat folded into the couch, yesterday’s clothes still on, coffee trembling between his hands. The television flickered through a DVD he was not watching. His headphones lay around his neck. He looked wrecked. Scared of his own sleep. That quiet way he falls apart.

“You and Amma having issues?” I asked, smirking. My gut twisted anyway. I was poking a bruise and I knew it.

He did not answer. He stared. I could almost hear his heart.

I snapped.

“I’m not going to rape you. Please don’t insult me by sleeping on the couch. If you don’t like me staying here, I’ll go back to my house.”

He flinched. His face went small. He said nothing. The cup shook and that was the whole answer.

I had asked if they had issues as if I were a guest in someone else’s fight. I was not. I was the fight. I stood there with the question still in the air and could not name what I had come to collect. Him. Her blessing. A night that would make the upstairs legal. A lock on whatever he had on her. All of it at once, and none of it in a sentence I could say to his face. He loved Amma. I did not need him to say it. Yellow. Jasmine. The way he went careful when her name was near. I was the other weather: loud, young, a tease when I needed a door. Looking at him I wanted the door. Under the want a colder thing arrived without being invited. Father. Daughter. Not the facts. The shape. It made the lust look like a mistake I was committing on purpose.

If I took him I would not get a boyfriend. I would take her afternoon. That was the fear I kept walking around. She had already said she would not stand in the way of my happiness. She had meant it. I had used it. Now the using sat in my throat. Tomorrow I could call the whole thing a game and throw him back on the couch. Youth makes that easy to say. It does not make it true. I know the talaivi who asks whether the pain is worth the pleasure. I did not want to write her into Amma’s mouth.

If I left him alone she might stitch herself back. I wanted that and I did not. He looked like he had not slept in days. I did not know why. Nightmares. Work. Janani. The careful life coming apart in his face. I did not have the real night. I had the wreckage of it. I made more coffee instead. Bitter. Correct. The only trick I still trusted.

I grinned.

“I love you!”

It came out like the other jokes. It was not. I had already used the word on Amma, as weather, as a trap, as a blessing I stole. This was the first time I put it on him. No campaign in front of it. No mouth. No dare. I meant the stupid version. The one where you look at a wrecked man on a couch and the wanting is not only to win the house.

I ran for the bathroom before he could give it back or laugh it off. I did not want either. I wanted the sentence to sit in the room without me holding it up.

When I came out I had a towel. He still looked unsaved. Coffee had done nothing. Sleep had done nothing. Janani’s name on the phone had done nothing. I thought, without being proud of the thought, that youth might. The body that still worked when talk did not. I let the towel go. Not a strip. Not the party. Just the fact of me, standing there, as if a girl could be a kind of air.

“You should be a magician,” he said. Voice rough. Eyes wide.

I laughed. Easy. I did not know what poem he had in his head. I only saw the pressure leave his face by a fraction. He looked at me as if I were stupid for thinking skin could fix a night I did not even know. He also looked a little better. Both could be true.

Until then I had only played him toward a bed. This was the other thing. I loved him. The reasons were not good reasons. He was in the house. He was careful. He was hers. He had seen me and still not taken the easy door. Stupid. Still true.

I stood there with nothing on and let him have the relief I had not planned. The word was already in the room. The towel was on the floor. For once the game had come second.

“Do you want a hand job?”

It did not come out as a tease. I could have offered my mouth or the night I had been asking him for, but either would have turned care back into the campaign. A hand seemed like the nearest thing to innocent I still owned. Like coffee: small work against an ache I could not name.

“Thanks and no thanks,” he said, voice tight. I saw the spark anyway.

I wandered like that. Dressed slow. Sipped more coffee. Watched him squirm.

By noon, sincerity had begun to feel like humiliation. I did what I always did with humiliation. I invited witnesses.

“I invited some friends for a party today. You know some of those guys.”

By evening the party was already going when he got home. Friends from pubs. Faces I barely knew. Too wild for his age. Beautiful madness in them. The room reeked. Not only my cigarettes. Weed, thick and sweet. One guy, gone, crawled over me, hands on my chest. On another day I might have let it ride. Today I had a plan. I slapped him off. He moved on to another girl. Smoke. Dance.

I was wrecked. High. I stared at Visu as he walked in, then dragged him to the middle of the couch and sat him down. Mia. Bad Girls. A strip song that was not special, only loud. Clothes off to the beat. I had put on the lingerie earlier. Black lace. The kind you learn from a screen. It made me feel like I owned the room because I had practised owning a room.

I climbed his hips. Danced. Reached. Pulled back.

Before the bra came off I thought: these are not hers. Hers are a different weather, saree, jasmine, years. Mine are the argument I can still make with a body.

I held them, felt the weight, the nipples tight, and pressed them to his face. Soft. Electric. He froze. I laughed. The second time he was ready. Mouth opening. I pulled back fast. He looked cheated. Hands came up. I slapped them off.

Panties still on. Hips. He was hard under me, obvious, and he moved with the grind, dry and desperate. I could have let him finish. I did not. Tease. Leave him hanging. The song ended. I slid off.

Nelly. Move That Body. I sat on him again, facing away. Same tightness. No hand for him. After two songs I leaned in and kissed him.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you fuck me today.”

Then I crashed on the bed. Left him wrecked. Grin wide. The buzz would not die. Weed. Music. The tease. The next room still going, bass in the floor. I needed to burn it off. I shut the bedroom door and let the song keep working through the wood. The long mirror against the dresser. I sat on the rug. Black lace still on. Looking at myself after leaving him dry felt different. Not secret night habit. A claim. Legs open. The glass doing what glasses do.

I cupped my breasts.

“You twins enjoyed the show, huh.”

A pinch, the kind I had not let him have.

“Bet you loved teasing him. Driving him crazy.”

Hands down. Slow. Not the clit yet.

“Dolores, I know you’re begging.”

Circles. Waiting, like I had made him wait.

“Always whining for the predictable way. Not now. I know you would have shown your real face if I had ground on him a little more, you needy bitch.”

The music and the blood caught up. Two fingers. Then the clit, one hand opening, the other working. It came like a grab I could not drop. I watched the hands, the wet, the shake. I made a sound the bass could hide. Afterward I was soaked and stupid with it, tears going for no clean reason, alive in a way that did not feel like winning.

He was still in the other weather of the house. Dry. Careful. Hers. I had made a party of not giving him what I had asked him, days ago, to take. The ranking had not moved. I had only made noise on top of it.

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Mohandoss

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மோகனீயம் - Sindhu being wingwomen

I had been at him for days. Not with a joke first. With the ask.

Safe sex, I said. No boyfriend. A boyfriend was a problem. A college boy was a story that left the building. He was already in the building. He already knew the worst thing about the house. That made him the cleanest option I had, which was a filthy sentence and still true.

I told him it was the best possible outcome. Not love. Not a future. An evening that did not create a third person I would have to lie to. I told him their evenings had done this. The rooms. The hours I was not supposed to hear. The glass. You do not put a girl in a house where two people take each other apart and then act surprised when she knocks.

I was knocking. I wanted him to take me. I wanted the thing they had been practising to stop being only theirs.

He looked tired of the campaign and of the truth inside it.

“Fine,” he said, tight. “Bring me a woman I choose. Then we’ll talk about you.”

I grinned. Cheap lock, and I had the key.

“‘But’ always stinks, huh. Not this time. Think I’d stumble into that trap? I’d love to be your wing woman, damn fucker. But you’re helping me too.”

Deal. I would bring him a woman who was not me. He would still owe the ask I had put on the table. Last night’s shame lay low in the room. The rest of me was already spending a win he had not agreed to.

Tavern again. Us. No crowd to hide in.

He looked once and stopped.

“Her,” he said. “Get her for me. Wing woman up.”

Janani.

Full suit. Hard edges. Older.

Not a giggling girl. A test. He had picked the one I was supposed to fail.

I went over with the cigarette still going.

“Hey. See that guy? Shy bastard. Needs a night bad.”

Her eyes came up. Broad forehead. Makeup that did not apologise. Forty, maybe. Hair loose. The kind of woman a bar does not soften.

“What’s your angle, kid?”

Ready to throw the drink or leave.

“He’s eyeing you. Good catch. I’m watching from there. You’re bored as shit. Another office night, huh?”

She waited.

I dropped the only bait I had that was true enough to land.

“He’s banging my mom. I’m trying to snag him off her. All mine.”

Her face did the two things. Shock. Then the lean-in.

“Hell. Really?”

“Tons,” I said, which was a lie about worth and not about the house.

I walked her back.

“Your date.”

“Fucking her mom, huh?” she said to him.

I cackled. “Gotta piss.”

Wing woman out. His test eaten.

I did not go to her side of the house. Umaiyal’s rooms were rules and Appa’s shadow. His were the ones I had been taking by inches: couch, his food, now the bed. I knew he would be at Janani’s until the light changed. I took the sheets. Shorts. Tee. No bra. Light on. I did not care.

The mind would not shut up. I gave it jokes so it would not give me the window.

Janani with something ridiculous and purple, him yelping, Take it, shy boy. Then the other picture, kinder and worse: her bored with him soft, asking what it was for besides pissing. Then the husband at the door and Visu in a cupboard with his trousers. Then the dull version, which was probably the true one: missionary, her already half asleep, him having picked the sharpest woman in the room and landed on a weekday.

I laughed into the pillow and called it even.

A little after four, the door creaked.

Visu shuffled in, reeking of booze and Janani’s polish.

Anger flared. He’s back?

I grinned, half-awake, owning it. He froze when he saw me. First time I had taken his bed, not just camped on his couch. Shame prickled. He’d rather Mom here?

I tossed it off, the playful edge cutting through.

“Switch off the light,” I mumbled.

A pause.

“Please.”

He did not fight. He switched it off and dropped onto the couch, wrecked.

The anger softened. Fuck. I had kicked him out of his own bed.

I fell asleep again.

By the time I woke properly, the room had filled with morning. He was still curled on the couch, sweaty, muttering through whatever dreams the night had given him. I left him there and went to shower.

Sometime after eight-thirty, beneath the running water, I heard him hit the floor.

Then the gagging.

I shut off the tap, wrapped the towel around myself and ran out, water still moving down my back.

He was on his knees beside the couch, vomiting hot and rank across the floor.

“Gross.”

He heaved again. I caught his head before he could drop into it and held him there, one hand gripping the towel closed, the other against his forehead. When it stopped, I found water, made him rinse his mouth and pressed the glass into his hand.

“Drink, dumbass.”

He crawled back towards the couch, dazed, his eyes moving around the room as if he had misplaced something.

I knew what.

He wanted Mom, not me.

“Janani’s still at her place,” I said.

A grin, because care was unbearable unless I damaged it before he could see.

He looked at me and said nothing.

Days later I hauled my things upstairs. Shorts, tees, a suitcase of bras and panties I wore when I remembered them. I connected my MP3 player to his television and made the speakers announce the occupation.

Umaiyal did not object. Visu did not throw me out. Between her guilt and his exhaustion, silence became permission. He took the couch more often. I took everything else by inches.

“My room now, asshole. Whether you like it or not.”

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மோகனீயம் - Sindhu joining Kappa, Kappa, Gamma

Umaiyal said it first. Not as an accusation. As weather.

They had been in the same rooms too often. Autos. The upstairs door. The way I waited when he was late. She said, one afternoon, with her hands still on a cup, that she could see I was with him a great deal these days. She did not say too much. She left a space where a daughter could put an innocent sentence.

I did not put an innocent sentence.

I let the silence become a weight. Then I said I knew how it looked. I said I had not meant it to look like anything. I said the word love as if it had been dragged out of me, not chosen. I said I had tried not to. I said I was ashamed of the trying. I watched her face for the flicker I needed: the older woman who cannot tell a girl to stop wanting the man she herself has not released.

She asked if he knew.

I said he was kind to me and careful, and that carefulness was what I had mistaken for a future. I did not say her name. I did not say the window. Guilt does not work if you show the knife. It works if she is allowed to believe she is the obstacle to a daughter’s ordinary luck.

She said she had only asked because a mother notices. She said she would not stand in the way of my happiness. The sentence was too large for the room. I let it stand. I looked wounded, which is a look I have used on her since I was small.

After that, Visu was no longer only the man upstairs. He was the man I was supposed to be growing toward. She had given me that. I had asked for it without asking.

Late 2010. New Delhi talking about 2G as if talk could keep the heat down. I had not planned a shrine. I had planned a dare.

A Kappa senior told it over coffee that did not pretend to be good. Rush week. They wanted a blowjob on a man and a fact they could see. Visu was the mark because I had made him sound like mine. I could have lied. They would not have believed a lie. I could have refused and let the year go thin. The senior had made three girls fail the week before for bringing back stories instead of proof - cum in the mouth. 

I sat with the dare long enough to understand that I did not know him. I knew how he left a room. I knew his carefulness. I knew what I had seen through the window. I did not know what made that carefulness slip.

Janani could tell me what belonged to his body. Umaiyal could tell me what belonged to his attention. I could not ask either woman the question as itself. I had already put love in Amma’s cup; what works on him was no longer a daughter’s innocent sentence. She would know I was preparing for Visu, but not what I was preparing him for. That was the permission we had arranged between us.

If I succeeded, she would lose the afternoon rooms and keep her daughter’s happiness. If I failed, she would keep him and I would return to Kappa with only a story. She could help without saying his name. I could take her help without naming the dare. Both of us would call it love. Only one of us would be playing.

I went home instead, to the room where Umaiyal sat with wet hair and chai, as if composure were still a sari you could drape. The advice came later, and I kept it general so the house could survive it.

I did not take Kappa into her room. I took a daughter’s question. What makes a man look. What makes him forget to be careful. I spoke as if I meant rooms, parties, the ordinary market of college. I did not say blowjob-cum. I did not say dare. I did not say his name again.

She looked at my face the way she looks at a blouse that is almost right.

“You have good eyes,” she said. “Use them. Dark blue on the lid. Not black. Black closes you. Blue holds a stare. If he is looking at your eyes he is not managing the rest of himself.”

That was all. No lesson about love. No blessing of a test I had not confessed. A practical fact, like a pin. I left with it and called it mine so I would not have to call it hers. I chose to believe she wanted me with him because it gave her a way out that could still resemble a mother’s hope.

The other sentence was Janani’s. Do not work at making him finish. He will finish, or he will not, and chasing it only teaches him to leave. She said it the way girls pass a rule about a particular man, not as theory. I took it with me. I thought it meant patience. I did not yet know it was also how he had arranged himself with Amma: a mouth allowed to be a beginning, an end treated as a mess he would not own.

I went to Janani for the thing that belonged to his body. I went to Amma for the thing that belonged to his attention. 

Morning I told him he was coming. Not what for.

I cut across the work talk. A party. Show your face. I am asking. I did not say Kappa. I did not say a blowjob. I said he owed me a night. He had promised one when I was still carrying messages between him and Janani. Wing work has a price. He had named the price himself, in a room that was not a bathroom full of seniors. Sex, when I asked. He had thought he would choose the hour.

He said no. Last night. Rooms. The careful life. I did not bring Amma into the morning. A sentence like that is a last door. You do not open it on the stairs when you still need him to put shoes on.

He came anyway. Late. The Munirkha Vihar flat was not his weather. Someone’s parents gone. Bad speakers. Smoke that wanted to be hidden by room spray. I had been there long enough to look as if I lived on the couch.

“Senior thing,” I said. “You know what a sorority is.”

He did. He liked knowing.

“Rush week. They want a fact they can see. A mouth. Yours.”

His face did the simple thing. He turned.

“Not here.”

“You owe me. You said when I asked.”

“My place. Not this.”

He made for the door. Then I used the sentence I had kept off the morning.

“I will talk to Amma. I will tell her I do not love you. You can stop pretending the house has a spare.”

He stopped because that sentence would have made her blessing look like a joke she had told herself. He stayed. Not for me. For her weather.

Only then did I take him down the passage to the lock. He had come for a debt he thought he understood. I had changed the debt in the room.

I took him to the bathroom at the back and locked it. Large. A mirror. He stood as if the lock were an accusation.

“Why this lot.”

“Strip, or I will.”

“I don’t finish from that,” he said. “Ask anyone. An hour will not help you.”

I knew the rule. Years with her. A mouth was allowed to be a tease. An end was a mess he would not own. I did not care. Kappa wanted an end they could point at.

His belt. The rest. I had seen him only once before, from a window, in her mouth, a fact that had lived in me as heat and as a bad dream and then as a plan. Close, he was only a body that had washed. No story in the smell. That should have made it easier. It made the window louder.

“Give me something.”

“I am tense. There is no chance.”

I took my own clothes off because his carefulness is a wall that looks at walls. I kissed him and turned him to the glass. He had to see the girl from the house and the man from the house in the same frame. It took a long time. Then it did not.

I went to my knees. Amma’s work on my eyes. I did not blink. The party leaked under the door. In my head I opened Kalyani because I cannot keep a mouth full and a mind empty. Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa, no veena, only the climb. His eyes watered and stayed. Mine watered and stayed. The raga did what he would not. I came quietly, thighs locked, and took him out only long enough to say it.

“I cum.”

His face changed into relief. He had been afraid of a duty. My body’s small theft freed him from having to be kind. I went back. His hand in my hair, not driving. When he tried to leave my mouth I held his hips. Kappa needed what he called disgusting. He spent. I swallowed. I dressed. I opened the door on seniors and let one of them take the proof off my mouth by kissing me. He slammed what he could slam.

In the auto, tissue, his silence.

“Thank you.”

He looked as if he had lost a rule, not a night.

“I knew what they wanted. A girl told me. I knew I would bring you. Amma said the eyes. I laughed when she said it. You looked. You are consistent.”

He did not ask the question I had left a space for. At the house he kissed my forehead as if I were a problem that had been put to bed.

“Thanks,” I said. “Are you my father now. Do you kiss her like that too.”

He told me to stop. I stretched on the sofa in the same skirt and let the night become a fact I could carry to rush week.

I had used her advice on him. I had used him as a door that still opened only because of her. The ranking had not moved. He had finished in my mouth and still put me to bed with a father’s mouth. That was the episode. The campaign had a photograph and no house.

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Mohandoss

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