Issue #8
Can you believe this year is almost over?
2020 might forever be remembered as the year the whole world stood still in silence. I don’t think I have the words to describe how everything we know shifted and changed overnight, but perhaps that’s not even required anymore. There’s always this sense of finality that comes with December, and I feel it might just be best to let the following three essays do the talking for me.
Issue 8 traverses through the idea of finding yourself within your queer identity. These essays dive into life in a heteronormative world both idealistically as well as realistically. What does it mean to live both inside and outside of these institutions? What does it mean to have the ability to choose to accept or reject them? The writers in this issue elaborate further with unparalleled depth.
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.
x
Veer Misra (@v.eird)
Of Warmth and its Ashes: by Parth Rahatekar
In this, Bombay is burning. (Only for me, and him).
The first time I saw Yash I had Tessa Violet sing "Bad Ideas" in my head.
It was almost December in Bombay, and I was at Churchgate. Waiting. We were heading to Gokul, because there’s something about hazy, heaving, barely-lit bars in the guts of a big city that makes for memorable first dates, no? And Bombay had inserted herself slickly into my heart. The lanes had started to make sense to me - I had begun to estimate my arrivals to places accurately, and I’d finally begun to make talk beyond the terribly bothersome humidity.
Mind you - Bombay isn’t kind, and I know that. But here, I don’t pay the cost of being perceived. Here, I walk with a full face of makeup and still sink into the crowd. Here, strangers on my way to work don’t start recognizing me at crossroads after a few months. Here, there is the sea that pulls me every other evening, and the trains deposit the music they made with the wind in my hair. Here, I wait for boys in a crowd and when they arrive with the light catching in their hair like in the photos, I beam without shame. Here, these boys cross the distance, brush past strangers, unpack apologies for being late while looking at their feet, and here, everything stops to matter when they look up at me with green and gold eyes to say, “Let’s go?”
And so we go.
We sat in the third (or perhaps it was the second?) cubicle on the left through the first set of doors. There was a measly, struggling Kingfisher logo lamp right above where he sat and I cursed under my breath because I couldn’t see his gold-green eyes properly anymore. On our way there, we discussed the usual “what brings you to Bombay?" and "how do you like it here?” type questions. Finding a taxi was oddly tough, but I’d like to think neither one of us complained because it meant more time to get the small talk out of the way.
A little after 2 beers, we began to talk about writing and I happily pulled out my poems to show him. I find it easy to layer what I want to say in delicious, visual metaphors. It's an exercise in healing for me. But when he pulled out his very, unfiltered secret blog, I was in awe. There’s something incredibly attractive about writing that says what it wants to say without holding back. And while I find myself trying to attempt that here, I keep wanting to pull back and talk about him as the sea instead. About how love, for me, has been a lot like sailing, crashing and capsizing - all at once. But not today.
Halfway through our third (or perhaps it was our fourth?) beer, we began to talk about how much we love Google. We both wrote on Google Keep, I still do (perhaps he does too?). We both preferred Google Pay to other UPI apps (and perhaps these seem like all too unnecessary details to mention, but I promise, they’re not.) Somewhere, at some point, Yash leaned over the tabletop and said, “Let’s meet the sea tonight?” Almost on reflex, I said, “Marine Drive?” A cigarette, two Bademiya rolls, three rejected kaali peelis and four minutes of crunching into one later, we were facing the sea. After sitting in silence for a while, he turned and asked me, “What’s the game plan, Parth.” And I said, “I don’t know what you mean, what do you want it to be?” And he said, “Well, I see your face, and I like it, I see the rest of you, and I like it. Can we kiss tonight, please?” I turned from the sea and said, “Can we hold hands instead?”
I could see his eyes perfectly then.
His fingers began to mimic the water lapping at the rocks near our feet. I pressed his thumb under mine, against my other palm, and the city took the hint. An indescribable silence crawled up around us. I brought his hands closer to my lips and planted a kiss on the back of his hand.I don’t think I have ever felt such a heavy headrush before.
The tender transgression of queer affection in public. The incredible intimacy of holding hands. The deafening desire I have ached for. All at once.
A really long time after drowning in all of that, we left the sea behind and walked to where we met first. On the train back, he gave me a earbud, put on some music and collapsed on my shoulder. I wrapped my hand around his waist, and began typing out a poem in my Google Keep with my other hand. I could swear the local took longer to reach Santacruz than usual. I could swear everyone in the compartment wanted to be us. I could swear I almost pulled the emergency chain just to keep this moment with me for as long as I could.I could swear the whole hostel could hear my heartbeat skip when the next morning, I woke up to a Google Pay transaction from him that also asked, “Go out with me again?”
We kissed the next time we met.
Surrounded with warm people, poetry, music, and a girl that swore that she smoked nothing but parsley. Claiming a corner for ourselves at a poetry house party even when we were at least half an hour late. Everyone else speaking in peals of laughter and verse, but the two of us speaking exclusively in held hands and ripening yearning. We got up to fetch beers from the kitchen, and someone began singing Scarborough Fair. Somewhere between opening the beer and closing the fridge, I begin to talk about how humid the day has been. But before I could finish, he’s on his tiptoes, and my hands, in his hair. On the way back, we lose ourselves in a lane that the rickshawallah swore he’d been through before. It didn’t make sense, but Yash’s hands never left mine for the whole time so I didn’t care.
That was the last time we saw each other.But I am still washing Bombay’s ashes from my palms.
---The simple truth is: I am looking to fall in love. You know - a dusty suburban, yet somehow cosmically grand affair? The kind that you see on screens and can’t help but retrofit your own life into? I’ve been left wanting of the adrenaline from a coy courtside romance in college. I want to steal glances with a boy across the lecture hall and become the thing that campus speculates about as a bleak pastime. In the process, I want to take my absolute mistake of a lover to my most favourite McDonald's and ruin it forever. You know? I Want It All™. I want The One™.
But we all know being queer means missing out on The Ones™. It means carrying out the coming-out along with the coming-of-age. It means loneliness making the lines of our palms deeper without anybody to hold. It all sounds extremely sappy and cranky, I know. Unimportant even. But I have lived within these moments inside my head for far too long to not look for them every time I find an affliction worth carrying.
So instead, what I find myself coming to terms with, is that when you spend your youth looking for a needle - the one that you’re so sure will stitch your ripped seams - you begin to lose sight of the glorious process of setting fire to the haystack.
Until the needle is found, this begins with me burning every single haystack to fill my palms with warmth, and its ashes.
A Warm July Night by Satviki Sanjay
In the years before I had come to terms with my bisexuality—and the fact that what I felt was, in some ways, unique to me—I really, genuinely, truly believed everyone was somewhat bisexual. That everyone felt the same flutter in their bellies while looking at people, no matter their gender. This justified what went on in my brain. It wasn't that I was afraid to stand out in a crowd; it was just that my brain couldn't rationalise the flutter in my chest when I saw not only attractive men, but also women. Because yes, bisexuality was a thing and yes, I definitely could’ve been oriented towards it, but sure, everyone liked admiring people the way I did. Right?
And so, caged inside my emotional walls, even years later when I was confident enough to question my sexuality, I never felt bisexual or queer enough.
It only took a warm July night, a queer romance paperback, and an epiphany involving one of my closest friends to change that.
---
10:05 p.m., July 9
Two ticks appeared below my message as I stepped outside into the warm breeze blowing outside my balcony. I was having one of those moments, you know, when life around you feels like it has slowed down a bit and you need a minute to absorb the sheer vulnerability of it. I had just finished reading a heart-wrenching part in this romance: at that moment, love felt too pure and my chest too tight.
As I always had done whenever I had had moments like these, I decided to text her. She'd know exactly how I was feeling and scream with me too.
If you'd ask me why, I'd tell you about all the times we had spent passionately screaming about Percy Jackson going to hell with Annabeth because there was no way he'd leave her alone, or Sherlock Holmes finally finding comfort in John Watson or Halsey's lyrics in Colors (that one we truly thought was the epitome of poetry). When I was a 14-year-old who had just discovered pining, she was someone I looked forward to seeing every day in school. She would make sense of my emotions and geek out with me before I would even verbalise them properly. Now, as a 19-year-old, she was the friend I had sent a set of essays that had made sob particularly hard a few nights ago.
And so, while revelling in this marvelous warmth of love and intimacy and everything pure, I had sent her the paragraph that was responsible for my current descent into chaos. There was no one else I could see myself sending it to. It wasn't that my other wonderful friends would not get what I wanted to say; it was just that she got it—got me—on a very primitive, personal level.
When a few months ago I had been struggling with my sexuality, I had vehemently refused to discuss it with anyone: the thoughts in my brain were too young and insecure to let out into the world. Talking about it meant giving people pieces of myself, my mind, my heart that I wanted to bubble wrap and hide in the cosiest corner of my closet. And yet, there I had been, spilling everything to her one May night, unprompted.
“BTW, y’know I’ve seriously been questioning my sexuality”01:05
“yeah?" 01:06
"..." 01:06
"is this something that you’ve been thinking of recently, or has it been a while?” 01:09
It did not matter that I hadn’t seen her for more than an hour in two years, or that she was on the other end of the country, or that I hadn’t even texted her in a while. I knew she would get what I meant when I said what I said.
A deep breath. "do you want the long version or the short one” 01:10
“the long one always, when it comes to you.” 01:11
While, by now, I had squashed my internalised queerphobia enough to comfortably talk about exploring my sexuality, I hadn't made any significant progress into understanding myself yet. I knew that everything I felt pointed towards bisexuality—or at least somewhere on the spectrum—but I still, deep in my heart, wasn't sure if I was there yet. It still was hard not feeling like an imposter.
Here was the thing: To me, the part of my body that made me fall for people enough to date them felt separate from the part that got me wet for them; my desire to casually see someone felt far removed from my desire to fall in love (and god, did I want to fall in love). So, by now, even though I knew I was attracted to women, the fact that I wasn’t sure yet if I wanted to date one was giving me hell.
If the world wasn't ending—as someone who thrived less online and more IRL—maybe I would've met people and found out sooner. But a global catastrophe meant dealing with a personal catastrophe took a backseat. Until then, all I had was queer media to help me navigate my way out of the cosy closet I had grown used to.
So there I was, three months after I first decided I would let myself explore, texting one of my closest friends to scream about the sappy gay romance I was currently reading.
10:27 p.m., July 9
The air around had turned too warm for comfort and the smoggy Delhi night too stale for me to be outside any longer. I had dwelled on my thoughts enough. I needed to know what the protagonist had said after his love interest spilled his heart in that letter.
But, just like all the other times she had made me feel things and do things I wasn’t planning on, all the feelings came rushing back in as I got her reply.
"oh my god." 22:29
On other days when I didn’t have the urgency of my emotions prodding me, I would’ve normally read her message, smiled at my phone, and replied a couple of hours later. The next text that came in, though, stole my attention.
“this paragraph captures so perfectly how it feels to be in love but not know what to do with it—it's so overwhelming and new and strange." 22:29
In the book at the core of this, the protagonist had told his love interest that their love felt like the North Star. It was what had guided him when he had been stumbling in the dark. A few minutes ago, while gazing at the total of three stars that I could see through Delhi’s haze, I had wondered if she was the North Star for me too: you could take out everyone and everything else and some of her words would still be there, dazzling alone in the dark sky. Where did you draw the boundaries of platonic love and romantic love for some people—especially when you were a questioning bisexual who had healthy sexual tension with all her friends?
"right? I read all of this and just want to be consumed—burst in flames and be reborn like a phoenix” 22:31
A cluster of butterflies in my stomach soon threatened to burst out. What if said people were the reason you thought about love anyway? Not because you were in love with them per se, but talking to them made it inevitable for you to think about love.
"yes, like a wave to wash over me" 22:32
And then, like something prophetic straight out of a movie, like that one big moment in coming of age stories when the hero finally works out their life, like that car ride where you fall asleep and realise you’re home when your eyes open, like that one song from years ago which doesn’t fail to remind you of all the great times you had, I was washed by my wave. Right then, if the very vivid image in my mind was anything to go by, I knew—just knew—there was no way I wasn't bisexual.
I had an epiphany, and all I could see was a slightly breathtaking, intimate moment of us: a quaint apartment, her two-year-old cat, the two of us laughing into our kisses while cuddled up on our couch, discussing romance and pining and poetry softly for our eternity.
"oh BTW, remember when I wrote a 1500 word essay talking about how I thought I was bisexual? 22:36
"Yeah?" 22:36
“it dawned on me a literal moment ago that I am pretty sure I am." 22:40
---
If you’d ask me what happened after this, I’d like to probably fictionalise this a bit—add just the right amount of sugar and spice—and say we started dating after one of my cheesiest confessions. But honestly, that would be a disservice to her.
The truth, despite being more us, was blander. A few minutes after I decided something that made being myself a little easier, I called her to talk on the phone after what felt like—and probably was—years. She lent me her shoulder to cry on, and in turn, I lent her my ear to vent to. And when we were both drained from the burden of self-discovery, we hung up and went back to what we were.
It has now been a couple of months since then. Life has gone on: I’ve become more confident in myself, flirted with strangers over the internet, whined about my perpetual singledom to my friends, intensely crushed over someone (and had my hopes crushed), and had several surreal conversations with her. I’ve also realised that there are some people in our lives that we’ll always be a little in love with. She’s one of them. And for now, I suppose that is enough.
Mapping the Terrains of my Asexuality by Priyanka Chakrabarty
On a Saturday evening, I am attempting to write a second first draft of the writing you are currently reading. The first first draft was slightly incomplete. This is not complete either as I am still loving, living and exploring my probable panromatic and definite asexuality. Why did I feel the first draft was incomplete? My queerness is an identity that I have recently acquired. It still takes me a few second to say out loud that I am a queer woman. The moment I say this I start to justify myself like I owe the person in front of me or even the world at large an explanation. I start my laying down where exactly in the spectrum I fall only to fumble badly because I have not figured it out. I also add that I am an asexual person and stumble once again because I do know where in the spectrum I fall. I am aware of my identities in broad strokes but the finer shades continue to elude me. The first first draft was an elaborate justification of my newly discovered sexual orientation. A justification is not an honest account of acceptance and belonging. It is a cry for acceptance and validation. What was missing in the first first draft that I am hoping will magically appear on these pages? Perhaps, a more honest account of my confusion, without the rush to find answers.
Asexuality is often defined as the absence of sexual desire and sexual attraction. It has little to do with sex and a lot to do with ways in which asexual people navigate the terrains of desire, romance and intimacy. This definition solely gave language to an elusive feeling of it just does not feel right. I have always wanted affection and intimacy without a goal to reach. I want the ambiguity of being with someone without the certainty of sex. While explaining asexuality and the ways in which sex doesn’t work for me, I never stopped and asked, what does work for me.
What does it mean to be an asexual person, a largely undocumented terrain? What does it mean to want love, intimacy and emotional connection when you feel little or no sexual attraction? I have always wondered how easy it was for me to not have sex, just don’t have it. I never understood why people around me had such difficulty abstaining from it, I went without it for nearly 25 years and even when I finally “got some” it was neither earth shattering nor life changing. It was nice, yes! But I also felt bored, wondered when it would be over, and constantly asked myself, so this what all the fuss is about?
Even when I sat across people on dates, the thought of having sex with them never occurred to me. Not seriously, not casually, not in any way! When I imagine being with someone, it comes with an emotional intensity that is hard to pen down. I want to know everything about them; I will ask about their maternal aunt’s dog, thoughts from the time they turned thirteen, thoughts from last Thursday when it rained and they were staring outside for all of ten seconds in the middle of that work call. The connection I imagine is largely romantic and emotional with sex thrown in for Diwali and Christmas, like the Amazon Big Billion Day sale!
Perhaps the reason conventional relationship has always eluded me is because it comes with the ever looming expectation of sex. When I start to unpack the unsanitary mess relationships are, it dawns upon me that there is so much taken for granted. It is assumed everyone wants to have the same kind of sex, with the same intensity, with everyone. Walking this unchartered terrain is often a lonely journey. For miles there is just me and the burdens of my confusion and the struggle for self-acceptance. I wish I could tell you that I can say “I am an asexual person” out loud without a tinge of guilt. I blame the entire world for being sex obsessed and also feel cheated when I cannot be the same level of obsessed. Who is to say that a shared meal is not any more erotic than a sexual encounter? Who is to say that a conversation where you are seen and heard in all your rawness, imperfections and excruciating vulnerability, not any more intimate than the most intimate sexual encounter?
There are times when I cannot sleep at night. Headspace and all its sleeping meditations exhaust itself while trying to put me to sleep. My distracted, all over the place, overthinking and, hyperventilating millennial mind goes back and analyses everything I have ever said. I try to pick out clues of asexuality that may have always existed. They have, I assure you, and the sleepless nights are not in vain. I have never been a fan of casual touch unless I am very close to the person. Casual touch and the extreme example of it, casual sex is extremely difficult for me. Biologically I am capable of it but my brain and heart does not enjoy it. My brain zones out and my heart screams for it to stop.
I know this is not how allosexuals respond to sex because I have conducted a very rigorous social experiment. I called up some of my closest friends and after assuring them that I will ask them deeply personal and invasive questions about their sex lives, proceeded to do just that. (Yes, they are still my friends). I asked them to describe in as much detail as possible what they experience during sex. The common responses include accelerated heart rate at being touched, shortness of breath in anticipation of being touched or while being touched, tingling sensations and, a marked ability to lose themselves in the act while the world slowly falls apart and time stops making sense.
Theoretically these answers made sense because this is the promised land of romance meets sex. I also spent a long time thinking when it finally happens, THE day, I will feel exactly the same. The day came once and, then over and over again and I kept feeling nothing. I jokingly told a friend, I could be having dinner, buying vegetables or having sex it’s all the same for me. My body does not recognize it as a life shattering, love inducing act. In fact, my heart seems as frozen as the ice palace in Frozen.
I wanted my stubborn heart to beat, once, just once, to tell me everything is fine with me, I didn’t have to constantly feel cheated by life and love and romance and everything that comes “normally” to everyone else. In this desperate act of trying to know and swearing to make my heart beat just once (for the sake of evidence), I found myself walking into a house with someone. We had lunch, an alright conversation, I did not spot any red flags. There was no safety based reason to say no to casual sex. I said yes. He looked at me and said, “I did not even think of having sex till we walked in. But the moment I thought about it my heart skipped a beat”. I smiled pretending to be flattered. His heart beat fluctuated just at the thought of having sex and while having sex. Here I was, completely zoned out during the act. I was wondering should I have faked the orgasm. Wouldn’t it be much easier if I just did it? Then it dawned upon me that I faked the entire act. Perhaps, people fake orgasms because at least they enjoyed the act, their heart sang, body responded, stomach dropped, they quivered under their lover’s touch, and they could fake the orgasm because we do strange things for love and to be liked. But I wanted to save myself that shred of dignity because I faked the entire act. I made all the right sounds in the absence of feelings. We never met again.
Adrienne Maree Brown in Pleasure Activism uses the term pleasure and erotic to signify aliveness and transcendence. Audre Lord in The Power of Erotic says erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. Now, when I am asked what do I like in intimate settings, I shall add the words pleasure and erotic. They simply mean ways to feel fully alive. Suddenly I have been handed a blank slate upon which I can write and re-write my desires of love and intimacy. There are days when I feel liberated because I do not feel socially sanctioned desire. Then there are days I feel shame, followed by justification.
On some days the answer feels rather simple. I simply want the thrill of being alive, of standing at the edge of possibility and simply exploring. In some ways, stumbling upon my asexuality has been liberating. It has brought me closer to throbbing possibilities of feeling alive with my own self. The measure of relationships, love and intimacy is then simply a measure of how alive I feel and whether my entire being sings with joy. It is simply an extension of the erotic which is the manifestation of love in every aspect. So on this second first draft, I have some answers, too many questions and consolation that confusions are also road maps. So future prospective partners, friends, and other people here is a short list of things I like-pleasure, the erotic, being alive, feeling alive and standing at the edge of possibilities.
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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