Ode to Lata (2 page)

The other thing she liked to tell me, which only worked when I was a child, was that if I didn’t obey her by finishing everything on my plate, the two legendary man-eating lions that had killed over a hundred people during the construction of the great railway would tear in through the compartment’s formidable window and gobble me up instead.  I was a scrawny child, and she blamed me for making her look bad since all her in-laws had to do was take one look at me and accuse her of starvation.  “There,” she said, one hand hoisted up to my mouth with a hillock of rice and the other pointing out to the impenetrable darkness beyond the window, “I think I see them right now.”

DANCE OF THE BLIND

Heaven dispels its hordes of drunken angels.

Outside West Hollywood’s trendy nightclub, buff bodies and their devotees spill out onto the street like wingless creatures, disoriented from the closure of these pearly gates.  Indignant cries rise up to the heavens.  No one, no matter how long they’ve lived in this city, can get used to the fact that the elixirs of rum and vodka stop flowing at 2 A.M. At this hour, even the city’s ardent loyalists threaten to move to its nemesis, New York. Others throw nettled glances at the lamenters, their hands confirming little plastic bags, vials, bullets – alternative inspiration – in their jean pockets. They negotiate urgently through the crowd to the next destination, filled with something akin to a patronizing sympathy for the poor souls who haven’t progressed to ecstasy or GHB or Special K or some other animal tranquilizer delivering nightclub nirvana.

Adrian’s arm is hooked into mine and we don’t so much walk as sway out in the tide of men.  He asks me how I’m feeling.

“Just like Dorothy Parker, darling,” I drawl.  “Just like Mrs. Parker.”

Pleased with my metamorphosis, Adrian guides my hand to a bulge in his leather jacket and throws me a conspiratorial look.  He’s smuggled out a bottle of booze. I hope it’s Bacardi with that regal bat, posed spread-eagled – quite the way one feels after a few – on the label.  He probably hung around inconspicuously while the bartender boxed up his supplies and nabbed whatever he could reach. We laugh and Salman, now hanging heavily on our shoulders and propelling us dangerously into the crowd, asks us what the hell is going on and then without waiting for an answer, bursts into a Hindi film song – something campy that a vamp like Helen or Bindu would have enacted in some B-grade Bollywood film, nothing quite as tragic as the stuff that would appeal to me.  Not something by Lata.  Now, one thing about Salman is that he has no voice, a fault only made worse by his disregard for his limitations and insistence on volume. We ask him to shut up but he’s annoyed I won’t sing along.

“Come on, sing
na
?  Forget those melancholy Lata songs,
yaar
,” he says.  “It’s time for some – ‘
Dam maro dam, mit jaye gaam
…’”

We affix ourselves into a spot where we can stand still while others mill around us.  In the flurry of activity, a strange calm, one not unlikely between kindred spirits, pervades Adrian and me.  I have found some reprieve even if I haven’t managed to find Richard tonight. Adrian, one hand still holding the bottle securely under his leather jacket, pulls me down to him with the other, and I rest my head on his shoulder while Salman unleashes a medley of other
filmi
hits.  He has turned his back to us and is now assaulting the poor Mexican man selling hot dogs on the boulevard with his impromptu performance.  As the vendor tosses links and sautés peppers and onions on his mobile grill (the mélange creating a strangely repugnant yet appetite inducing aroma) he looks somewhat bewildered at being singled out for Salman’s attentions.  This could be keeping customers away.

I can’t hear Salman anymore, and I’m quite sure Adrian can’t either.  Dusky horns blow in my mind.  And Lata, that ethereal voice from every Hindi film I’ve beheld as a child, chimes in.  I am content in this state if not happy.  With my body slumped against Adrian’s, we must look like lovers.  The kind that through years of reinvention, long after the rush of new love has quelled, have found an almost platonic way to stay together, something made visible by a shared sense of style and demeanor.  Many have even asked us if we are a couple, but Adrian always relegates the answer to me, like someone uncertain of the mood-driven response – usually “no, just friends” or, at times when we’re feeling more mischievous, “yes, but only on rainy nights.”  We look like the best of lovers precisely because we aren’t.  Romantic love is savage, vengeful, demanding, rarely the foundation for the kind of calm one mistakes for a lover’s relationship.

With Adrian’s heartbeat in my ear, I envision Richard’s painfully beautiful face during the siesta where I synchronized my breath with his so that our bodies would rise and dip with graceful alternation, our hearts beating in unison.  The frenzy that flared in me only hours earlier, one which sent me goring through the club with no regard for my friends or potential lovers, has been sedated by the administrations of my favorite bartender and Adrian’s pacifying breast. 

An argument erupts behind us.  We turn around to find Salman being hollered at by an Asian queen in conspicuous, black latex pants.  His intoxication coupled with the incommodious surroundings has caused him to step one too many times on her highness’ toes, and she’s not having any more of it! Far be it from Salman to apologize to her.  After a few drinks forced down his throat, he turns into the nemesis of his former, typical sober personality – the perennially apologetic, martyred son of an ultra-conservative Ismaili family.  Salman tells her that is
she
who should apologize for subjecting the rest of us to the hideous Hefty trash bag she has the audacity to parade herself in!

“Listen, you bitch,” hisses the queen, hands on hips.  “These pants cost five hundred dollars, more money than you’ve probably ever seen in your pathetic little drunk life!”  Her faithful coterie of handmaidens nod vehemently, especially the tall, sassy black one with braided hair who attitudinizes by tossing her head around and garnishes him with a “Yeah, you go sista.’  You tell her!”

But Salman is already laughing uncontrollably at his next line and asks, “What? All of your life savings so your ass can look more like your face?”

I yank Salman back, irritated for being beckoned out of my languorous spell.  “Okay, break it up.  Salman, come on, we don’t need this right now.”

“Yeah, you’d better take that trash away before she gets hurt,” says the queen.

I raise a pre-emptive hand up to her, asking her to hold back while wedging myself between them but Salman peers over me.  “Honey, even trash gets picked up once a week. What’s your excuse?  You’ve even dressed the part!”

The growling queen lunges forward and her body collides against mine as I try to hold her back.  Her talons claw the air, reaching for Salman who is being expedited through the crowd by a reprimanding Adrian, still unable to suppress Salman’s hysteria.

“Just let it go, let it go, man,” I say.  “He’s drunk, don’t pay any attention to him.”

She backs down grudgingly, still spitting out threats, encircled by her entourage.  The ritual display of witty comebacks and catty remarks checked; fully clawed catfight adverted.

I start to walk away when I hear her cackle, “Fucking Ghandhis.  Who let them out of the 7-Elevens tonight?”

I stop dead in my tracks and slowly turn back around. “What did you say?” I ask her.

“You talkin’ to me?” she says. “You talkin’ to me?”  She glances back at her friends for quick endorsements, and they ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ supportively.  “I
know
you ain’t talkin’ to
me
.”

“You wanna repeat what you said? Huh?”

“Just fucking get lost, okay?” She turns her back, dismissing me.

I want to thrash her face and I tense up.  The adrenaline pumps through my veins like a drug and I am shaking so hard, it makes me feel strangely weak.  “You stupid little cunt,” I say. “Who the hell do think you are? We may own all the convenience stores in the city but at least we’re not out on the rice paddies like your peasant family and eating dogs for dinner!”

“Just get out of my fucking face, okay, Apu? Go whip up a Slurpee or something.”

She’s done it.  Two things you should never mention around me – or any Indian for that matter – 7-Elevens and “a large Slurpee, please!”

I grab her by the slinky top she’s wearing – something she no doubt designed herself – and yank her up to me.  But I should have guessed the bitch had mastered some form of martial art because no sooner have I opened my mouth to deliver some threat than I’m being hurled back and end up landing on some horrified bystanders. There’s blood dripping off my chin and I don’t know where it’s coming from.  Salman and Adrian, who apparently haven’t managed to get far enough, rush back to help me to my feet.

“Oh, my God!  What the hell has she done?!” Adrian says, whipping his shirt off and dabbing my chin. “Are you alright?”

“I’m so sorry…I’m so sorry,” Salman says, sobering up.

People are holding the queen back and
she’s
wailing!  Imagine!  I’m the one bleeding but
she’s
the one rapt in a relentless dirge.

Adrian and Salman have located the cut on my brow and dab the bleeding.  And when they least expect it, I break away and lunge back at towards the queen, managing to penetrate through her army of friends to deliver what is possibly the most degrading blow to someone of her persuasion: I’ve yanked out a handful of her hair, and she shrieks like her peasant family has just been massacred outside of Heaven.

“Oh God, my hair!  My hair!”

Adrian picks me up off the floor and starts to drag me away just as the security guard appears, like a delayed superhero.  He pauses to inspect my face quickly, lifting it up by the chin while Adrian props me up like a pole.  The guard has become a kind of parental figure since the first time I tried to enter Heaven with a fake ID years ago; he has given me the kind but disapproving
you’re up to no good, as usual
look ever since.

“Get him outta here,” he says and moves on to the queen who has collapsed on the ground and is swearing “war.” 

We drive to the supermarket around the block, and now I’m victimized by two nurses whose true callings were never realized.  Hydrogen Peroxide, cotton balls and Band-Aids galore.  It’s as if my head has been split open by an axe with all this fuss being made about it.

“Maybe he needs stitches!”

“Stitches?” I say.  “Are you crazy!”

“Stitches,” agrees Adrian.  “Yeah, you may be right, Salman.”

“No, I don’t need any fucking stitches!  I need sex!  Just let me go!  It’s two in the morning.  I should have my legs up in the air instead of being fussed over by you two!”

We settle for the Band-Aid, and now Salman starts in with the guilt. He blames himself for drinking in the first place and progresses into a fest about everything from overeating to dancing with some stranger he ended up kissing to ever having known the joys of gay sex.  What all this has to do with his fixation on that queen’s plastic pants a little while ago beats me.

But it is always that way with him.  Never enjoy yourself too much without feeling remorseful about it right after.  Penance was always an important part of the pleasure partaken.  A true Indian, after all.  What was a responsible boy like him, one from such a renowned and respectable Ismaili family doing drinking, dancing and kissing some black man in West Hollywood instead of pursuing some nice Ismaili girl around the mosque compound?

“Oh shut up, Salman,” I say.  “What we need is to get laid.”  Going home is no longer an option.  Was it ever?  We head for a sex club up by Highland to salvage the night. 

It’s three in the morning – that midwife between what could still possibly turn out to be a night of passion from chance meetings and the frustration of not being able to drink anymore.  This is the hour during which, if you weren’t prudent enough to carry a bottle of Bacardi in the trunk or sophisticated enough to be high on X, you are entertaining the idea of stealing a bottle from the grocery store.  And you’re still drunk enough to believe you can pull it off too.  Unless someone’s arms embrace you soon, unless flesh finds itself welded with flesh – or at least another drop of liquor smoldered its way down your throat – you feel as if your world will come crashing down. 

The line to get into The Vortex is going out the door.  New members are taking so long to get registered, you’re turning from a nymphomaniac into a psychotic. 
Come on, come on!  Hurry up, for Chrissake!
Although you want desperately to push past them, you inhale deeply and try to calm yourself.

As always, there is
that
someone who’s forgotten his membership card and another whose membership has expired and is wondering how that can be possible and if he can pay by MasterCard (all the while pulling out these little promotional fliers from his pocket).  As I wait, I watch others leave.  They look sinister and unappealing, unlike how most of them look inside.  Is that a trick of the light?  Or, rather, the lack of it?  Perhaps these are just the worms wriggling their way home.  Your man may still be in there, and the sound of the creaking floorboards over your head may be his footsteps pacing from room to room until you find him.

The dexterity with which you swipe your card through the scanner tells you you’ve been there much too often, as if the familiar faces of the check-in clerks don’t.  There was this old, stocky, no-nonsense dyke who used to work the door, clad in a Budweiser T-shirt, and you wonder what happened to her.  The last time you saw her, this drunk queen was throwing a tantrum because she wouldn’t let him in without his I.D.  In resignation he had walked out, pinching his nose and saying, “Stupid old rotten fish.  Why don’t you go back to the pond you came from?”