Toast. It Would Choke Me.

It shall never cease to surprise me how quickly things unravel, how quickly the Helepolis finds a river it can be dunked into, how stupidly the bottom of the Trojan Horse collapses, and out comes a Greek smiling sheepishly while the ones inside execute an elegant facepalm. It also astounds me how people do not think twice before, even if it is in a jocose sort of way, attaching the epithet of 'whore' or 'slut' to someone's name. Ah, yes, it is all most amusing, but frightfully heedless as well.

Having chosen Option B, I found that I have chosen beneath me. Remember how I waxed eloquent about how 'restive and restful', how 'refreshingly casual' their world is? I was a fool. There is nothing refreshing about casual, especially not when it takes the rather casual, if circuitous, path of a casual inception to a casual proceeding to a casual denouement (as oxymoronic as that is), and finally, a casual finale.

I am laughing more this time around. I remember last time, I was lachrymose and all Eponinny, but this time I find it, ah, "how very amusing, but also inept." This should, on no account, take away from the fact that every time something like this happens, a sizeable chunk of my self-esteem is first fattened to a surfeit, and then served like foie gras, and to an undeserving palate, to boot. Bright, witty and scintillating on the surface does not necessarily translate as 'secure with self', and I am not. I never have been, and this is why every time something like this happens, I feel hideous.

As far as this melange is concerned, I had promised myself not to get too invested. But I did get invested, and almost unknowingly so: how slowly my defences were infiltrated, or perhaps it was MY flesh that was far too willing. What does one do when that knowledge, a conversation intime, of the dans la boudoir variety becomes public knowledge? Well, one takes a walk, and reflects on the lines of "how very amusing! But also inept."

My walking companion was the alter-ego of a dear friend, we shall call the alter ego Scarlet Woman. There we were: Scarlet Woman and the Dirty Mistress walking into the night, our conversation was acrid: we spoke of people who were quick to judge our choices, people who we thought understood what we were about. As one who has dealt in the currency and gambles of gossip and hearsay for as long as he can remember, I firmly believe that those who call out certain actions as "scandalous!" or "whoreish" do, on a very visceral level, wish that they'd had the courage to sin so beautifully. Scarlet Woman and I lay in the grass, and watched the stars; we wept as our laughter bubbled through because all of this was so "very amusing, but also inept", until finally my friend quipped: "I feel like toast. We should get toast. Why don't you come up to my room, and I'll make us toast?"
"You are sure about this?" I said saucily. "Another gentleman making his way to your room? Think of your reputation!"
"Think of yours!" she riposted as crisply as her promise of toast.

There is something to be said about a piece of toast slathered with butter (or rhubarb jam, as in her case). As far as comfort food goes, toast is not fuzzy and/or the harbinger of a saccharified coma. Toast is crisp, and the crispness refuses to allow complaisance. Toast needs to be held with poise, or else one gets their hands sticky, and so it demands that one remains in control. Toast is versatile, and deals with most common spreads, and so is not limited to a particular kind of conundrum. The crunch of toast will force you to get up and get going, be it breakfast or break-up. It was over toast that Scarlet Woman, and I whiled away a few good hours. It was over toast that we let our dominoes slip: the witty one wasn't required to sway passions with his prolixity, and the piquant, business-like one wasn't expected to magically have all the answers. Oh, toast.

I didn't cry too much this time, I laughed more. There are those who said that the embittered laughter was infinitely more frightening, but, really, after a while, it just becomes "so very amusing, but also inept". It is amusing because it is a burlesque, really, everyone saw it coming but the players involved. It is inept for the same reason. I have learnt that one should never seek love below one's station, the hurt that the loss of such potential inspires is quite debilitatingly uncalled for. Furthermore, one wouldn't want maggots to feast on such meet food as one's Dignity, would one? Time for toast, I reckon.

Until the next time,
GossipGuy.

Overtures at Twilight, Or, Push the Button! Don't Push the Button!

Now that I am finally here, back in the Spitsbergen, I want to go home. By home, I mean The Eternal City. The sun would set in the Eternal City, there would be no web of intrigue and desire to disentangle, while ensuring that one's composure wouldn't unravel at the same time in the Eternal City. The only desire I felt there was for Ted Baker creations and macaroons...ah, well.I've barely been back a week, and my life is as tortuous as I had left it, albeit with a whole new cast of characters.  As Hamlet and I discussed, if our First Season was an exposition, the second was a denouement, the third promises to change tracks almost entirely, and present itself as a bedroom farce. Mismatched couples, like fickle water molecules, form momentary interactions with one another, only break off and move to a different cluster, as the sun sits low. 

There is a lot to be said about using one's personal charms, one's crust, if you will. If you are not classically handsome, then your persona needs to be potent enough to inspire a certain degree of, well, a je ne sais quois that may endear you to many. As a person who has skated by on slick wit for many months, I think my word can be taken on that point. So, imagine my surprise, and utter delight, when I found myself being courted. But as a Gemini, making choices hasn't been my strongest point. So now, I have to choose between Option A and Option B. One who courts, and one who smoulders in the distance. One who is all affection, and one who is dangerously vertiginous to be around. These cases shall be addressed separately, as follows:

Option B

Option B is someone whom I have known of, but not really known until this autumn, and there is an innocence about Option B that shatters my heart into a thousand sharp shards that poke me in inappropriate places to remind me that what I have on hand is someone who deserves to be cherished, and not used. Yet, what we have is a liaison: it is a good idea to keep things civilised, is it not? Even if one has entirely countermanded the tedious business of defining what exactly it is that one intends to hold so high in sophisticated high regard. But, as men of fashion, detached liaisons are, well, easy. As men of fashion, we are, well, easy. Do I want to pick Option B? Yes. Have I mapped out the attractions of Option B? D'accord! Option B is found in a group of twenty-somethings who have a roughened artlessness about them: they are restive and restful; they take each day as it comes, each hour, in fact. As a person who has always lived and loved amongst the high-strung, the charmingly neurotic, and the achievement-oriented, I find this insouciance most delicious. Could I ever adapt to this? Not a chance! I am much to set in my obsessive-compulsive ways to be able to. I could do it, if there were a process, but that does indeed defeat the purpose, does it not? Have I learnt anything about myself from Option B? Yes. When I revel, I REVEL and weep, and revel again. When my clavicle is nibbled upon, I gasp. Do I see a future? Perhaps. A future in which I pull a 'Brief Encounter' and almost throw my planned life away, but not really? Yes, I may reach that point. Next course of option? Who is to say...

Option A

Option A shouldn't even be an option, since we've barely even met. I was introduced to Option A by my dear friend Elinor Dashwood whose poise and equanimity I admire and envy. I never thought that one could swoon, but I found out that keeping one's feet on the ground when the only thing one wants to do is tip right over, sigh and lose consciousness, is a task of extreme Yogic proportions. I was terrified that the blush that had suffused its way up my neck would be visible to all, but my cappuccino colouring took care of that. I proceeded to make an absolute exhibition of myself, laughing gaily, and orienting myself in a way that can only be described as slatternly. But how can one resist the vellications of such a gaze? I remember hearing Elinor whisper "Remember, you're better off" to herself, and I very nearly winked at her. I walked home steeped in the mud of self-loathing...what was I thinking throwing myself at Option A's head in so brazen a manner. Oh, and weren't my affections otherwise engaged with Option B? Well, not exactly. Being enliased (neologism) does not equal being enfianced. You may think, constant reader, that I am morally reprehensible, and, yes, I concur. But even here, I am not in love, so to speak. I am never in love anymore, it is a nauseating business, and why deal with noisome things when more fragrant, vespertine pleasures are to be sampled? Do I want to pick Option A? Yes. Have I mapped out the attractions of Option A? Mais, oui! Option A is the very epitome of pulchritude and comeliness, and has a gaze that makes me deliquesce. What have I learnt about myself from Option A? That I speak in a Southern accent when I am, ah, "half agony and half hope". Do I see a future? Theoretically, yes. But even then, I have no illusions. If Option A were to work out, it would be a situation in which I would delight in the utter wretchedness of my existence: being with someone infinitely more beautiful than one only amplifies the self-doubt, and frankly, I may burn my nights away wondering why this happened, or how this happened, only and only if I get too invested. The key is not to get invested, certainly not in the fickle-minded, proper false. Next course of action? "A weekend in the country! Smelling jasmine! Watching little things grow..." Or perhaps even making them grow. The only trouble with such a weekend is that, after a while, the mosquito bites and the hickeys begin to look startlingly uniform...ah, well.

Concluding Thoughts

I had long believed in the the more entropic nature of love, and I have outgrown that now. I do not even believe that something as grandiloquent as Love (i.e. the marketed kind) even exists anymore. Perhaps, it has more to do with distillation and crystallisation of feelings rather than the sheer entropy of whatever is supposed to happen. This is not a perplexing thought for me at all, a saddening one, yes, but that too is fading. This is no different from the many classes I have taken: read extensively, and carry a big stick. I don't know which button I shall push: A or B, but the one thing I shan't allow is either one of them to push my buttons. I am young,  but too disillusioned in my illusions to want to want anything more than a calculable means to a palpable end. The burlesques that are to play out under this perpetually purple sky are another matter. We shall see. 

Until the next time,

GossipGuy. 

Senescence, Or Something Like It

I have found, of late, that I have a positive dearth of patience with the young. Or at least those who are younger than I am. Eighteen-year-olds are tolerable, I suppose, they have an idea of what is what. They don't realise it fully, but at least they have few illusions. I feel like I have superseded my illusions and I do not like it: this was one race I wasn't supposed to win.

I don't mean to sound old and embittered, God knows, I am not nearly aged enough to own that level of cantankerousness, but I recently had coffee with a friend who brought his protégé along. While my friend and I chattered away amicably, I think the protégé felt, oh, neglected perhaps. I lauded his valiant attempts at trying to join in the conversation, and smiled benignly at the "ten-dollar words", the contrivances whipped out in an attempt to hold his own. It was, as he would probably say, "Rather endearing"! How familiar this all seemed! 'I was such a little snot! Just like this one!' I recalled fondly. We played along, and it was adorable. Initially, at least.

Things began to go downhill when  my friend had to excuse himself to take a phone-call, and his protégé and I were left alone. We talked perfunctorily for a few minutes, and finally he asked me where I went to school. I told him, and his face...changed. I'll admit, mine is a charming State school, and yes, I remember my face 'changing' too when  I had filled out an application for this place. Oh, very well! It was my safety school, and, in the end, when it boiled down to pure economics, I realised that this was my best bet! I felt, for some unfathomable (t)reason to explain this to the protégé, and he smiled sweetly, indulgently: his face was my face from fifteen minutes ago. 

"Perhaps, economics isn't the only criterion, hmm?" he questioned with a cowing politesse, that made me feel like a poor cousin.

"No, not the only criterion, certainly," I responded. "But a vitally important one, wouldn't you agree?"

"Oh, quite. But, you will agree, that reputations are important as well. Imagine, people of our breeding associated with commonplace schools!" he laughed.

"You cannot deny, however, that paying for a reputation and a reputation alone is the worst kind of snobbery!" I trilled.

"I wonder, then, sir, about the Dior label on your shirt!" he exclaimed affably.

"Your Lacoste amphibian inspires similar wonderings, monsieur!" I countered charmingly.

"The point I am trying to make is that, surely, you cannot be satisfied in a farming community?" he asked.

"You do assume, sir, that it is a farming community. Not so. Also, I shan't lie, I really thought that I had settled for something below my station, only to learn that things like station are superficial things that must be indulged in as superficially as possible." I explained, a bit passionately.

"How noble." he responded. He didn't look like he believed me, in fact he went as far as to hum a ditty from 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi' (A Match Made in Heaven)- a Hindi film about a young, vivacious woman who marries a staid, older man only to live in connubial bliss. It made me mad.

"And where are you applying?"

He proceeded to rattle off the names of elite academies in India, and of course, the Imperial Eight; the Indian schools were his "Plan B". I didn't have the heart to say anything polite, but I did have the spleen.

"I wish you luck." 

"I will get in, I know I shall." 

"Such confidence is admirable."

I wanted to ask him what recourse he had if he didn't make it in. A Plan B-01 perhaps? I wanted to tell him that he was being a fool, and that, when the chips were down, for an international student, economics was the sole criterion, that one was beatifically fortunate if one found a school that was intellectually sound and didn't cost a King's Ransom, even if one's father was a King or a noble, that scholarships shouldn't be scorned at as 'charity'. 

Reading over that last section, I find that I do sound old and embittered. I hadn't failed, I had just chosen differently, followed an instinct, a call that influenced the tides in my blood vessels, and I had made good. I don't disapprove of the Imperial Eight, but of the questions of 'breeding' and 'station' that come with them. I have friends, dear friends, at these places, and they deserve to be there because they got in meritocratically, and not because of the fact that they were "raised a certain way". Perhaps, just perhaps, this is why I needed to placed in the Spitsbergen so that I could fully comprehend the nature of superficial things.

My friend had returned by then and sensed the tension in the air and managed to diffuse the tension by bringing up a compelling topic of conversation, it's a skill of his that I have long admired. If anything, they are probably very grateful and awe-struck by this skill of his at Princeton! The protégé and I parted cordially; we knew that our paths would probably cross only under the rarest of circumstances. Later, when my friend asked me what I thought of him, I gave him the usual platitudes, but my friend knew. His laugh at the end of my "perfectly delightful" told me that he knew that I hated that kid. Envy is what this is, and an envy that stems from an animated wistfulness that yearns to be that innocently reprehensible again, to be able to have those illusions, and water-tight plans that do not yield to any force. I miss it. I miss it so.

Until the next time,

GossipGuy!