Issue #13
Hello hello!
This issue is a special one for me. I started properly working on mush on July 5th last year and in a cruel but necessary full circle moment, this is will be the last issue of the newsletter for an unprecedented amount of time. But I do need to reiterate, it’s not closing, it’s only going on hiatus. Going forward, we’ll be walking away from a monthly schedule and instead moving towards what possibly might be, a much more chaotic and irregular publishing timeline. This space needs more attention and work put into it and for that reason alone, it needs time. It needs time to grow and be made more accessible. It needs time to bring in, nurture and publish essays that also reflect and represent people who have not been able to find themselves in this current iteration of the newsletter.
All of that being said, I cannot be more grateful for the immensely talented writers I’ve spoken to, edited and built relationships with over the past one year. Thank you for trusting me with your experiences. But maybe most of all, I’m extremely, extremely proud of the stories we’ve been able to tell together. mush has always been about bringing people closer together and revelling in those emotions and that intimacy.
Coming to this current issue, it will only have 2 stories. I felt it was important to create space to tell both of these stories with the respect they deserve. We have the final chapter of Farshogar Vazifdar’s ongoing fictional narrative, Touch. It’s been a joy to publish this, it’s kept me on my toes every month, and I’m actively working towards convincing him to turn it into the graphic novel that it deserves to be. And to close not only this issue but also this chapter of the newsletter, Shubnam—who was a professor of mine in college and also one of the first queer people I was ever able to speak to and feel seen by as a young queer person—has written what I feel is just an incredibly vulnerable, honest and nuanced narrative.
One last thing, mush strives to publish narratives that are meant to be sat with and absorbed over time. So slow down and take as much time as you need, we’re not going anywhere, we promise. Those last words that I put at the end of every letter I write here, have not felt truer than they feel right now.
x
Veer Misra (@v.eird)
Touch: A world full of opportunity by Farshogar Vazifdar
The old man stood at the top of the hill, staring at the sky where the wall once stood. He could never get used to the new view. No matter how long it had been since, he still couldn’t accept the fact that the wall was once there, and then suddenly wasn’t. The wall he had grown up fearing, the wall he’d graffiti over in his teen years, the wall where he’d spend hours staring at when his wife died. He sat on the ground at the top of the hill, staring at the fields below him. ‘Oh how I wish there were a bench here for me to sit on,’ he’d say to himself, running his hands through the grass. Wild geese flew over him as the sun set in the far left. A slight breeze blew over the town behind him carrying the sound of the bells tolling from a nearby town.
It had been four years since his appearance, when he landed back into his own town. The townhall and the church and the houses and the streets were just as he knew them, except there was no one there. He spent days calling out to everyone, anyone really, searching alleys and basements all over until he finally gave up. He did not know what had happened to the town he loved and the wall that kept it safe.
That night he witnessed a thunderstorm striking what he believed to be another village nearby. Hundreds of streaks of lightning descended from the heavens striking the ground and then receding. But there were no storm clouds above. In fact, he wasn’t even sure if that was lightning or just beams of light coming down. They were slender and smooth, coming down with great speed and heading back up just as swiftly. Dozens every second. He stood at the top of the hill, staring in awe at the glorious light display miles away from him. And he could never forget the sound that filled the air around him, as if the gods were cracking their whips in the heavens above.
He looked at the sun setting and thought fondly of the day when he finally drummed up the courage to step out beyond the boundaries of where the wall stood, to the place of the cloudless thunderstorm, and was welcomed by swarms of people who offered him whatever little they had to offer. They had also suddenly been transported here, empty handed, to a place that was familiar but so new to them. “At least we have our homes,” they told him.
And so while the other township grew and prospered over time he lived all alone in his, waiting for the day the people he knew so well would arrive. But until then, every sunset, he climbed to the top of the hill to stare into the space beyond where the wall once stood, cherishing the expanse that still trapped him in.
Before he could realise, a sharp beam of light struck down right beside him, flinging him off the ground a couple of feet away. His ears were still ringing from the loud whipping sound when he managed to pick himself up and gather what had just happened. There, right behind him, a naked young boy was trying to lift himself up with one hand. He got onto his knees, and pushed himself up before noticing the old man in front of him. Coyly covering his groin with his right hand, he stared blankly right at the man, unable to gather what had just happened to him.
The old man stood up as well, recognising the scar on the face and the torso of the young man in front of him. “E?” he asked quietly, “Is that really you?”
E looked at him with confusion. He recognised the old man, but couldn’t really place him.
“E! It’s me!” the old man said, tears filling up his eyes, “I taught you back in kindergarten. It’s me! Mr. J!”
E finally made the connection, and his eyes widened with joy as he ran in to give the old man a big, tight hug.
----
E tore into the paratha as if he hadn’t eaten in days. The travel – if he could call it that – had drained him of all his energy, and the stale food in front him was like manna.
“Sorry if it's all a bit dry,” Mr J apologised, “The town that’s there a few hours away helps me with supplies every week, they’ve really built themselves up from nothing very quickly… maybe I can take you there someday. There’s this aunty who makes these parathas for me. They’re actually delicious when they’re fresh, but this is all I have ready to give you right now.”
E didn’t mind it at all. He was happy to be clothed and sheltered (the naked walk through the town was so embarrassing for him that it hadn’t really struck him that nobody was there) and to be fed. He had a lot of questions, but they could wait for now.
“How’s your friend doing? Umm… what’s his name. M? Is he all good?”
E was so caught up in his thoughts that he had completely forgotten about M. His last memory of M was seeing him run towards him after his Mirror touched him. And then he fell down to the ground, except that he landed here, in this… place. Naked! He dreaded the fact that he was naked.
“Mr. J, I have a few questions.”
“Well, beta, of course you do.”
“I’m not dead, right? Like this isn’t heaven or purgatory or something?”
Mr. J laughed. “Not that I know of, so no. It isn’t.”
“And this place is exactly like the town we lived in, before we were sent here.”
“And more! The world has really opened up for us because there’s no wall keeping us in.”
“No wall…” E whispered.
“Sorry beta? I couldn’t hear--”
“There’s no wall! My Mirror was right!”
“You spoke to your Mirror?”
“Yes, right before he touched me, he told me that he’s sending me to another place. That all the Mirrors were coming to ‘reclaim their space’. And that I must prepare the new place for the whole town.”
“The whole town?” Mr. J asked hopefully.
“Yes! He said he wasn’t sure where I’d be transported to, but it seems like I landed exactly where I met him. And the town is exactly how it is back there. We’re in some alternate universe or something where our place has no large wall, or something like that. I'm not very clear on the science bit, and I may be completely wrong about this Mr. J, but he did say that his whole town of Mirrors would come and make us all disappear. But when I disappeared from there, I came here.”
“So that means everyone is coming here?!” Mr. J stood up from his seat in joy.
“Yes!”
“Oh! We’re going to need clothes. A whole lot of them. I don’t want to see the whole town naked!”
E rolled his eyes and laughed in excitement.
----
I ran out from the Council House as fast as I could.
“M! Where are you going!?” My father called out to me.
But I just kept running. I couldn’t believe how so much could change in such a short time. It hadn’t even been 40 hours since I saw the Mirror on the other side of the wall, but now the world I knew and lived and loved in was collapsing around me. Not just the present, but the past as well.
‘The wall was meant to keep them out!’ I thought, ‘how can it collapse so easily?’
I knew I had to hide somewhere. But I couldn’t figure out where. ‘We know this town like the back of our hands.’ The Mirror E’s statement rang through my head. ‘After all, we technically lived our lives here as well.’
Before I knew it, I was halfway up the hill. The town behind me rang with the alarm siren and screams from the people. I couldn’t bring myself to turn around. I just couldn’t. It wasn’t until I reached the steep climb when I realised that I was being followed.
The two figures behind me were making their way up the hill as I lifted myself onto the top of the hill. There was no place for me to hide. No place, but the cave.
“Stop! M! Please, do not panic!” a voice called out behind. Unsurprisingly, it made me panic even more. I ran as fast as I could to the edge of the hill near the wall, trying to assess the quickest way down to the landing in front of the cave’s mouth. I descended down the cliff, noticing one of the figures telling the other to stop as it continued to move towards me.
I froze halfway down the descent as I realised who that was.
“M. Please, listen to me. You have no reason to run.”
The voice was familiar, yet extremely different. It felt wrong, listening the the voice that you found so awkward hearing it in a recording being played back, except this time it was coming from a face that was also extremely familiar.
“I really don’t know what E has told you, but you really have absolutely no reason to run.”
I stared back at the face that I had only ever seen as a reflection in the mirror.
“I know you’re afraid, M. But trust me, the transition will be extremely painless. You have no reason to worry. I just really need you to climb out from there, because when I touch you, you’ll be transported to the exact same spot in another place, and we’re not really sure if the cliff exists there. You know what I mean?”
I didn’t know what he meant. Was I finally meeting my mirror? Why am I unable to move? I had so much I wanted to ask him, about what he exactly wanted to do, about the life beyond the wall, about me. But I just couldn’t move.
He had reached the edge of the cliff and was standing right in front of me, his arm stretched out to pull me up.
“Trust me, M. It’s me. I have been you my entire life. We’ve had so much in common. All the late night talks under the blanket figuring out your true feelings. All the stolen glances at the cute guys smoking by the wall. All the confusion and chaos you felt when E finally kissed you for the first time that night. It’s me! And I’m you! And I’m only here to help you…”
His arm now inched well past my arm, approaching my face. Why wouldn’t he just touch me and get it over with? What is he waiting for?
“I really don’t want to touch you while you’re on this cliff. I don’t know where you’d end up as I sent you away. Hold my hand. Let me pull you up.”
It felt weird trusting someone you feel like you’ve known your entire life even though you just met. But I could feel my right hand let go of the branch it held on and reach out towards his hand. I paused it right before it touched him.
“Go on. I’m not going to force myself to do this. I really want this to be as fearless an experience as possible for you.”
And so I grabbed his hand. My hand. I’m not sure, it all felt too normal to be such a major moment in my life. He pulled me up onto the top of the hill and gave me a smile that I had seen so many times.
And then it all went blurry. I stared at his face as he tried to hold me up, but I limped away dizzily. The sky suddenly went black and everything began to move too fast. Very soon I could no longer recognise the face in front of me. I could no longer figure out the silhouette of my Mirror. All I could see was the white of the wall as it expanded all around me. The wall that had been such a big part of the life I had lived. The wall I had ignored and admired. And so I tried to focus on the wall as I stumbled to the left, and then to the right. I tried to make a clear vision of the blurry white until I fell…
To…
The…
----
… ground.
My ears were ringing, but I could finally make out the voice of someone calling out to me. I still couldn’t see clearly. The white of the wall had been replaced by the green of the grass. At least I thought it was the grass in front of me as I lay on the ground. I tried to turn my head, but I could barely lift myself off the ground.
Someone called out my name again. This time much closer. I felt someone grab onto my right shoulder and lift me up. Their hands against my naked skin felt weird, but safe. I felt them wrap something around my body that I only just realised had no clothes on.
“M, are you alright?”
I stared back at a familiar face, except this time it had a scar on the left of his face.
“E…?” I whispered.
He gave me his cheeky lopsided grin. “I can’t believe I’m seeing you naked in public, M. I’m really embarrassed for you.” He laughed loudly.
“What happened?” I asked weakly.
“Not to sound cheesy or anything, but you’re home. Like, your real home. Where we actually came from.”
I was confused. I was so very confused. And then I looked around.
“What….” I managed to say until I realised that I had no words coming out of my mouth.
“It's really something, isn’t it?” My E replied. “A complete hill, with flowing plains. And there's even a river in the distance. You really can see pretty far beyond without a massive fucking wall around you, right?”
I stared right into E’s face, not knowing what to say.
“Come, let’s get you to your home. The others will be arriving soon. There’s a lot we have to catch up on.”
And he put his right arm around my shoulder, and guided me to the steep slope on the hill, with the town right in front of me. Except this time, there was no wall going round it.
No, there was a world full of opportunity.
This Delirium Called Love by Shubnam
It was a strange dream. A nightmare perhaps, I wasn’t sure. A morbid amalgam of random moments from my childhood through teenage years, mostly toxic and some that brought a cherished solace— swirling around with no linearity of time or narrative whatsoever. I must have woken up several times; but failing to swim up to my current reality, I would fall asleep and sink back into those waters again. When I finally woke up from the delirium in the morning, it took me quite a while to orient myself to remember, that it wasn’t real. I suspected something was wrong. For thirty years, I keep landing up in dreams every now and then, which emanate from the trauma of an abusive childhood. And I have also since figured ways to ground myself when I wake up, lest I spiral into an anxiety trip. Starting your day with an anxiety episode is rarely productive. But today, I wasn’t anxious, I was distressed. The delirium accompanied by a severe headache.
By afternoon, my suspicion turned into a conviction, as I began to experience an unusual tightness in my body, like something was squeezing the muscles from inside. As the body ache intensified, I knew I was coming down with something. And considering it was five days before Diwali, I knew exactly what it was. The first thing I reflexively did was book covid tests (but since it was during the peak of the festive season wave, they wouldn’t respond to my bookings before a week). The second was to cook food. Being a single queer person living alone in Delhi for almost a decade, life teaches you how to adult. How to take care of myself first, irrespective of how much my depression makes me a constant nihilist. Fortunately, I had stocked up on veggies and groceries recently, so I cooked a lot of comfort food and packaged around six to eight healthy meals for the next few days.
By evening, the fever had started to set in. It was faster than the usual slow burner seasonal virals I was used to. Thankfully, Delhi winters did not delay in 2020, so regulating my body temperature was easier. I just had to make sure that my head didn’t overheat, because I knew with the throbbing body ache, I just wouldn’t have it in me to drag myself to the bathroom and squat under cold water. I have detested fever since I’ve been an independent adult. Not because of the practical concern of it getting worse. But it’s the sensation inside your body. That feverish churning. It morphs into a vulnerable flashback of the times I used to fall sick as a child. When the everyday running dysfunction would go on ceasefire, until I got better. I loved being loved and be cared for, till it could last. By mom, of course. I guess I still miss her holding my spinning head under water and make sure I did not slip and fall.
For a long time, I contemplated if I should call someone. I have some close friends now, rather, my ‘family’; who would be like ‘wtf?’, when they would find out, that I never called them for the first three days of covid. In my mind, I pondered, what would be the point? No one could enter my house. People would get prematurely worried. I would start getting concerned calls and texts. While it’s always reinforcing to be remembered, hanging up from those calls would just further mess with the anxiety that began to hang by a thread by now. For, long before I fell sick, during the months of isolation with my own self, I made several contingency plans for various scenarios. I’m embarrassed to admit this to anyone, that for this particular time, I had decided, if I got worse, I wouldn’t call the ambulance.
Things were all clogged up back then. People were getting sicker waiting in ambulances outside the hospitals. I was scared of the chaos and panic. I just wanted to remain in my own bed, in silence. I know it’s irresponsible of me. And I am sorry. I admit, I can be somewhat selfish at times. Not that, logistically I am answerable to anyone. Though morally, yes, I am. My selfishness is that I don’t cling to my life as dearly as the people who care about me. It’s a work in progress. And then, it was also a crazy time. All of us were experiencing the horrors of a pandemic for the first time (although by six months later, the memory of it would hardly remain a horror). We all did what we did, to save our own sanities. And for me, hunkering down and staying put, was my contingency plan.
Late nights in burning fever are always unbearable, after the neighborhood goes to sleep and time seems to stop in silence. It brings out the worst of my loneliness. I begin to helplessly miss the idea of a lover. And all the bygone daydreams from a naïve teenage— of intimacies, togetherness and caregiving. There was a cis-guy I had been connected to since the beginning of the year. I really wanted to call him that night. And just, hear his quiet voice. But we had been still figuring out what we meant to each other. While this fever had unlocked all the floodgates around my baggage, some of which I usually kept to myself. I just wasn’t sure if he knew how to swim yet. So, I had to do this on my own. Because you know, crying while sick, sounds miserable; but for me, it’s also therapeutic. Even my fever feels better after I let it all out.
By the following day the fever had taken the life out of me. I stayed in bed for the rest of the day, except for lunch. By evening, as my fever plateaued, I got up and laid down in the living room and watched some TV. Just before dinner, very randomly, I realized I was drenched in sweat. Something inside felt released. The churning had stopped. And it felt good. Felt like I was on the other side of a hill I had been walking towards for a very long time. Half an hour later, my throat clogged up in soreness and my nosed blocked up in cold. By the next day, I would lose my sense of smell. Though the fever never returned.
***
It was New Year’s Eve. I had just started stepping out since around Christmas. Met a few friends I hadn’t met in quite a while, much before the pandemic had started. I had a nice small dinner plan later in the night as well. Though while I was getting ready, I was rather itching for the next day. Not because of the popular imagination that somehow 2021 would be magically better, with all its infectious hopefulness floating all around. But because, exactly a year ago, I had set up a date on the first day of the year with that guy I told you about. Both of us laughed about it later on when I told him that the specificity of the day, was a theory I was secretly testing out. It’s a beloved superstition among Bengalis, that if on the first day of the year, you can categorically get some work done, then the rest of your year will be productive and prosperous. Of course, the exact day depends on the calendar you’re following. Nonetheless, I decided what if, I applied this theory to my love life.
I had been on only a handful of dates till then; since I self-enforced the rule, that if I met anyone off the Internet, it would be in public. A nice old-school coffee date where I would wear whatever I want. Which is usually a low-key saree. The rule itself filters out a majority of people I match with on dating apps. This “trans inclusive” algorithm of these apps, while it has benefited me since they launched, it does still contain many UX flaws. While setting up, you have to include yourself in the search pool for “women”. And people who are looking for ‘women’ are mostly cishet men. Whereas this also becomes the only space, where I can meet bisexual and transamorous men (irrespective of how they self-identify) — which also happens to be my primary dating pool, going by how my life has unfolded so far. But to find them, I must wade through an ocean of straight men, who have never engaged with anyone trans before; and seeing my pictures, are only curious about materializing a sexual fantasy. For me, it’s like, been there, done that. Not interested anymore.
However, this guy was different. Very different, as it eventually turned out. The thing about him that did the actual number on me, was that, he had a way with his words. Through the days of endless chatting right after we matched, I was mesmerized by his skill at managing to never say anything that ticked me off. He always composed his responses in a thoughtful, articulate manner. And he listened. He would absorb every single thing I said; and even when it felt like he didn’t pay attention, he would always surprise me, by casually referring to it when I least expected it. Honestly, I hadn’t engaged with anyone like this, in the dating or hookup scene so far. I guess there’s a reason why I got superstitious in the first place.
Everything had checked out so far. He didn’t “believe in labels, but probably pansexual” he was. He had dated transwomen when he had worked abroad and was currently single, with no plans for marriage anytime soon. Beyond logistics, he did have this particularly lazy, sexy voice. Although mostly quiet, he took his own sweet time whenever he spoke. And behen, main kya hi bataun. That time, when he went through his questionnaire about my sexual preferences at an excruciatingly slow pace; I was tossing and turning in my bed, with my phone glued to my face. With a lot of mutual anticipation, we met two weeks later post some very intense conversations. And the closer we got to the end of 2019, the more anxious and excited I became.
We met at a small café near my house. Although I got a little irritated that he was twenty minutes late, I think I just let go of it, the moment I saw him open the door. I think for the first time in my life, I was immediately turned on by a guy I was on a coffee date with. It was like a fucking switch that I couldn’t turn off. He was really hot. My kinda hot. A biker bear with a subtle degree of swag, and a whole lot of BDE. The first thing he said after we hugged in greeting, and as the pallu of my thin blue-violet silk saree slid off his arm which he slowly unwrapped off my back: “That’s a lovely saree”. We sat there and just talked. Until we were the last customers in the café. Afterwards we walked over to my place and hung out there and played some Mary Jane. There were several moments in happenstances, where our faces came so close that we could feel each other’s breath. Sadly, both of us were too awkward to make the first move. We hugged again when he left, but this time he spent some extra moments, with his face resting on the side of my neck and his arms snug around me. “And that’s a lovely perfume”, he said with a stupid grin on his face.
By February, we knew we had a pandemic coming. And since he lived in the NCR, borders would probably lock down sooner. I had invited him to stay over after work one evening. We had dinner and then watched Tangerine- right after which finished, he moved from the couch and onto the diwan where I was, slid under my quilt and engulfed me into his large frame. I think he got a bit emotional, which to be honest, I had figured by now, would be a rare display. It was a sweet night. A little awkward, a little held back, and with a lot of promise. Though the promise had to be renegotiated in the months to come, since he moved back home to a different city, by April. We met again only once in the late summer, once the lockdowns had lifted and he had visited the city for some work.
I loathe the idea of starting any kind of sexual engagement over long distance. I just never entertain it to begin with. And if there are romantic overtones to it, then long distance is a slippery slope for me. It never ends well. But then, new realities, new rules. If I was going to be stuck alone at home, then I might as well have someone, whose presence is accessible in some form, and in abundance. He too desired the same. The entire year, we talked in phases. Couple of months of silence, and somewhere randomly it would pick up again, and weeks and weeks of incessant conversations. Pictures. Video calls. Memes. We talked about everything under the sun. Some of the more fruitful conversations were about desire. The further we discovered each other’s kinks, the deeper our attractions grew. A carnal hunger to consume each other’s existences and fuse them within our being. And behen, did it yield some commendable results when we met again, later in the summer. He had booked a hotel room, for he knew I got too conscious about my neighbors overhearing my sexual overtures. My walls and my sense of independence are always paper-thin.
The more difficult conversation, was about our individual perspectives on love. It took months and months to resolve. When I say, old-school dating, I actually mean it all the way. I grew up on those ideas. I tried everything, but just couldn’t shake off the desire for monogamy. Well technically, I would call it monoamory. I don’t care about sexual monogamy. Everyone has got all kinds of desires, and it’s a general truth, that no one single person can fulfill all of them. Anyway, my guys are usually bi, so why should their desires be limited on my account. Though when it comes to love, that’s where it gets tricky. I know it sounds juvenile, but I have a fundamental need to be the one, in someone’s life. And so, they be for me. I have tried, very hard, to look at this redundant idea of love, from many different viewpoints. Especially considering, my politics is also critical of hierarchizing romantic love above all other forms of love in our lives, by institutionalizing the hierarchy with marriage (including all the privilege and access that come along with it). But well, at the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, I just can’t do it. Nahi hota hai. I don’t desire marriage, but I do want that love. And I know the line between those two ideas is also paper-thin. I guess I have just resigned myself to posit the easy blame upon my so-called daddy issues. But yeah, I do aspire an emotional singularity. Maybe that’s also why I’ll probably never find it.
He on the other annoying hand, calls himself a lone wolf, wandering around on his own in the wilderness. What he explained in many different ways over the year, was that he couldn’t root himself in love. That he loves everyone he meets in his life and is unable to park that idea of love with one person. Because when he is with someone, he is present in the entirety of his being. Which, to be fair, is true. Throughout the lockdowns, isolation and endless quietness, there were many a days, when I would be on the brink of insanity. And whenever I reached out to him, he was always there. He would spend hours and hours entertaining my madness. Without getting impatient or irritated. Towards the end of the year, a deep sense of shared affection grew between us, as I began to come around his idea of love. By the time I recovered from covid, I was exhausted from my loneliness. I didn’t care about my rules anymore. If he could be this person in my life, who would be there for me, then it’s fine. I can live with it. It’s sappy to admit, but the pandemic does change all of us. And I guess, it’s on me now, to figure out what makes me happy.
The last time we talked was a few weeks after my bout of covid. When he found out, he sounded so warm and pampering, I wondered if I should have called him after all, when I had been sinking in fever. We talked for hours. He said he was planning to move back to Delhi in the next couple of months. We contemplated a vague plan for going off to the hills for a week. We reiterated the desperation in our desires. We ended the conversation with some deep longing and anticipation to meet again. To be near each other again. To feel our skin again. That was a month ago, which passed without any communication. Now, since the next day was the first of January again, I was itching to check in on him, and see if he was in Delhi by now. Then perhaps, we could plan something to commemorate my superstitions.
I went to his Instagram, which always otherwise stayed inactive. He only used it to chat. But this evening, I found out, that I was removed from his followers. His profile had become private. And in his bio, there was an additional line. A diamond ring emoji and another profile handle, of a ciswoman who lived abroad. It turned out, they had been dating for three years, and got formally engaged about a month ago. Three days after our last conversation.
Before you leave, we just wanted to mention that a platform like mush thrives simply on more and more people reading queer stories. If you like what you just read, it would be wonderful if you could share this newsletter with your friends, families, lovers, pets as well as any sociable gremlins that you might come across.
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