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Published: February 28th 2008
Empty Truth
"But I'm still interested in sex," Raj replied, averting his eyes.
"Sex is submitting to your desires,” Adam told him. At some point you are going to have to decide whether you want to be governed by your desires or whether you are going to overcome them." Adam spoke slowly and severely, as if analyzing his words, while still in the thought process, for any negative influences.
Adam lowered his voice, conscious of the other students who all appeared to be asleep in the van. He sat against the back window next to Raj. Emily and Laura had also squeezed into the three-person bench. They had spent a long day of temple sightseeing. Adam thought that all of the temples looked the same. Raj was just excited for the chance to experience life outside of Madurai.
Adam saw that they were now going through a town. Light poured out of the open-faced stores, people milled around determinedly. Even now, while everyone inside the van was exhausted, India kept moving. Adam could see Raj's unremarkable face reflected in the darkened window. Raj's jet black hair was combed perfectly down the middle as usual. He knew Raj was staring at him and turned towards him again. "Listen, I used to be overwhelmed by my desires and had a lot of meaningless sex with girls that I didn't even like. But it didn't make me happy."
"But it's hard because it is all my friends talk about. And they all make fun of me because I have not gone to a prostitute yet." Raj's voice was thin and each time he spoke he faintly cringed, as if expecting to be rebuffed.
"Let your friends talk,” he told Raj. “If they don't understand your decision, then they are not real friends. When I was in high school I was on the football team. All of the cool kids played football. They worked out all the time, and drove around in sports cars. Then everyone started taking steroids."
"What are steroids?" Raj looked over at Adam like a small child being read a book.
"Steroids are these drugs that make you get stronger, but they make you vicious. I started taking them because all of my friends were. Then I started getting into fights every day at school. If it wasn't me who started the fight, it was one of my 'roided out friends. You shouldn’t always do what your friends do."
"I know, but it's not that easy,” Raj insisted. Whenever we are all able to get out of our houses at the same time my friends and I go to the pornography theatre. It makes me uncomfortable." He looked around the van; no one seemed awake. "It makes me uncomfortable to go with my friends," Raj continued, "But I rather like the movie. I know it's not the right thing to do, but sometimes I go by myself."
"Why? Why do you go?" Adam said in frustration.
"I don't know," Raj said, bowing his head slightly.
"I know. It is because you have not yet mastered your mind."
"So what do I do?" Raj's eyes almost looked scared.
"When I first came to India, I was lost like you. I saw many beautiful Indian women, but I knew that they were all off limits. It was making me crazy. Then I met Ajit."
"Maybe I should have yoga class with Ajit." Raj picked his head up hopefully.
"I don't know. Ajit is very busy and besides, he has decided to increase the amount of time he spends with me."
"Couldn't he fit me into his schedule? I really need help. I can't stop thinking about it.” Raj paused. “Adam, what's it like?"
"I've already told you."
"But please, is it the same with every girl?"
"No, it's different with every girl," Adam said flatly.
"Does it feel the same as when I am in the theatre and I touch my-"
"Talking about sex only makes it harder to overcome it. Listen, I don't want you to make the same mistakes I made" Adam said curtly.
"But how can I master my mind if I don't make the mistakes first? I kind of want to make mistakes." Raj paused, before repeating. "But what is it like?"
Adam was beginning to get frustrated. He hunched over with his palms facing the ceiling. "Ok Raj. Have you ever seen dogs have sex?"
"Yes."
"You've seen them get stuck together? And they keep pulling away from each other and sometimes it hurts, and sometimes they get bored, and sometimes they start attacking each other right after. Sex is like that."
Raj looked disappointed. "Did you know that I got a job in Bangalore?" he said suddenly.
Adam looked relieved to be asked a different question. "I know. You've told me like eight times today."
Raj broke into a nervous smile and his body lost some of its rigidity. "Did you know that I am going to live there? In an apartment with all the employees. And some of them are women."
Adam rolled his eyes. "I know. You've told me that eight times too." "I haven't told my girlfriend yet," Raj blurted as if divulging a secret.
"Why?" Adam asked
"She does not want me to go. She is scared that I will find someone else to marry."
"Girlfriend? Who, the girl you haven't even kissed?"
"I love her! We have been going out for two years!" Raj said, raising his voice. Emily coughed suddenly, throwing her head off the cushion. Adam and Raj looked over at her. Her head settled back once again.
"You're going to marry her, are you?" Adam sneered.
"I want to. But I want to have sex. That's the problem. Her mother has never let her alone with me. What should I do?" Raj lightly placed his hand on Adam’s right wrist and looked over at Adam helplessly. Adam looked down and pulled his arm away.
"You like America, right?" Adam asked.
"Yes." Raj listened intently.
"You want to go to America and have the freedom to marry whoever you want, where you don't have to follow any traditions, right?"
"Okay."
"Well people are miserable in America. I was lost in America.” Adam crossed his arms. “People need to be told what to do. You should follow your traditions. You’re lucky to have them."
"But my traditions make me do things that I don't want to do. My traditions keep me from having sex. I want to have sex."
Before Adam could respond, he felt the van slow to a stop next to the side of the road. The lights blinked on inside. Adam's classmates begrudgingly began to wake up.
"This is my stop," Raj said.
"Ok. We'll talk on Thursday when we do fieldwork together. Raj, I want to help you," Adam said earnestly.
Raj leaned over and pulled his bag out from underneath his seat. He stood up and slid between the two middle seats stealthily, as if trying not to be any more disturbance to the others. He turned back to Adam and said, "Thank you, Adam. You are my best friend." Then he turned and was gone.
Raj walked up to a tiny concrete house, trash covering the ground in front of it. He looked at the litter, then at the one room hovel he had lived in with his mother and sister for so long, then he turned and looked over his shoulder at the van. He saw Adam’s silhouette outlined in the window of the van.
I will not be living here much longer, Raj thought to himself.
The sun sprang into the sky Thursday morning, promising the end of the monsoon season. By four in the afternoon, when Adam reached Simacul Bus Stand, the sun was scorching. The few people waiting for buses were huddled in the narrow band of shade. Adam looked around for Raj.
Bordering on the strip of shade, and sandwiched between tea stalls each the size of a refrigerator, Adam saw a Suguna Chicken. A giant counter ran along the open face of the store. Behind it, a smiling butcher with a bloody apron and sticky mustache was dismembering what had formerly been a chicken. Adam glanced at the squawking chickens in mesh crates stacked in front of the store. At first, it had struck him as weird that they would have live chickens out front as advertising. Now though, he understood that Indians were at peace with the cycle of life and death on a level the West would probably never reach.
Adam looked down the sidewalk. There was an old creased woman on a blanket selling pomegranates and an auto rickshaw with a cracked windshield. Six auto rickshaw drivers in beige khaki work outfits were huddled up in a circle nearby bickering in rapid Tamil. Then, from around the corner, he saw Raj. Raj was dressed in tight bleached jeans that rested well above his waist and hugged his bony legs. Before they reached his ankles, they splayed out. Although meant to show the definition of his muscles, Raj's tight orange t-shirt actually just made him look scrawny. This was Raj's version of dressing American. Adam secretly thought he looked laughable.
"Where do you want to go?" Adam asked as Raj approached.
"I don't know."
“What? You always have some place lined up,” Adam said in surprise.
“I will go wherever you want to go.” Raj was looking past Adam’s shoulder at the chickens in cages.
“Um, I guess let’s go to Meenakshi Temple then.” Adam looked at Raj quizzically and then asked, “Are you okay?”
“I am fine. I am tired. Do you want to walk to the temple?” Raj asked, still looking away.
They crossed the overflowing street. A motorcycle and an auto-rickshaw with a teenage boy hanging out of the back seat flew past them, and a lone cow plodded along the street next to the median.
They got to the other side and began down a narrow lane. Neither of them spoke for a while. Raj knew that his unusual silence betrayed him, but he knew he could not talk about the only thing on his mind.
Adam looked at Raj, noticing tired bags under his eyes. Considering what he knew about Raj’s hard family situation, they seemed the likely cause of Raj's apparent stress. Adam had to ask.
“Raj, what’s up? I know something is on your mind. You always have a place for us to go.”
Raj took a few more steps in silence, then turned, standing face to face with Adam. “I am sorry. I did a very bad thing yesterday,” Raj said, looking down.
“What did you do?” asked Adam.
“I was with my friends yesterday afternoon, and they told me it was time. I asked them what it was time for. They said I would find out. They took me to a dirty building on Main Road across from the railway station. Then I knew why we were there."
"No, you didn't. Please tell me you didn't." Adam's face looked almost desperate.
"Yes, I did. I'm sorry. But I couldn't say no to my friends. I just couldn't say no."
"But even after our conversation in the van? I thought that it helped you." Adam put his right hand to his temple in exasperation.
"She was about my mother's age,” Raj blurted. I was sitting in the waiting room and I was not sure what to do. Then a woman the age of my mother came out with a fat, smelly man on her arm. She looked at me and my friends and said, 'Which of you kids wants to play?' I was scared. When my friends pointed to me, she grabbed my hand and brought me through the door into an old room with peeling walls.”
"How could you!" Adam stepped resolutely past Raj, and exited the alley onto another main road. Raj ran after him.
When Raj caught up to him, Adam snapped around. "You are a desirous little fool,” Adam said viciously. “When I decided to be friends with you, I thought you had character."
"But Adam," Raj began "it wasn't like you said it was going to be. It felt good; it felt like the right thing."
"You went to a whore!"
Raj ran over to a sidewalk vendor pushing a cart for of roasted peanuts and asked for two servings. The man tiredly scooped the nuts into makeshift folded newspaper containers. Raj ran back to Adam.
"Here, Adam. Take some peanuts. Please, I didn't mean to hurt you." Raj's facial muscles had been taut, but now were starting to waver.
"No. Give them to the cows. I don't want anything polluted."
"But Adam, she made me feel comfortable. I felt guilty before I did it, but only a little after. And when I was in that room with the naked woman, I felt like a man."
"You know nothing of being a man."
They were walking down the side of the dusty road, no longer even going towards the temple, but they didn't notice. "Adam, the whole world feels different now. After I left that room, I felt like I could do things. And it wasn't sex. The sex felt ordinary, it was something else."
"You are worthless,” Adam said quietly. “You have let me down.”
Raj cocked his head and blinked hard, as if to neutralize the sting of Adam’s words. Adam sat on the curb and rested his head in his hands. Raj remained standing behind him.
A chai wallah chanted "Chai, chai ingeh irka. Chai, chai ingeh irka" and glanced sidelong at them as he passed by. An old drunk with only one tooth propped up against a wall nearby stared at them absent-mindedly.
“Adam, I had to do it,” Raj said at last as he looked down at Adam. “I never had the experiences that you had.”
“But Ajit’s teachin-“
“You do not know what is best for me,” Raj interjected. “Not my mom, not my friends, not Priya, not you. I do not need your lessons. I can make it in Bangalore on my own.”
Raj took one last look at Adam, and then stepped confidently out across the busy road. Traffic swooped past and then he was on the other side.
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Owen
non-member comment
Wow. This is really really good. The emotions of the characters are visceral and powerful without being melodramatic. Email me a copy if you want me to make a couple suggestions for line edits. Holla! Your writing is getting mad good kid.