Responses from metros

I had entrusted three persons to check out the prices of guitars in three metros across India. They were my bandmate Xander, my best friend J and my sister and brother in law.

After 4 days, these are the responses that I got.

  • Xander – ‘Sorry dude, didn’t really get the time. Been very busy. See, I have to prepare sets for big shows. I spend whole of my working day doing that. In the evening, I go to attend the big shows.’

  • J – ‘I don’t have (adding ‘for my dear friend’ would make it sound even worse. I’m working 18 hours per day for 7 days a week. I’ll try to do it by next Saturday.’

  • My sister and brother in law – They called me from a guitar shop near their residence. But didn’t have the kind of info that I’d have liked. I sent them an e-mail and a couple of SMSes detailing what I wanted. Today, both of them called and said – ‘We are a little busy right now. We’ll try to do it soon.’

    I don’t know how to react. Was I too selfish and unrealistic to expect them to do this for me? Or is it the usual thing : ‘I help people out – they don’t find time to do returns’ thing?

  • Wonderful tour

    The engagement went fine. I felt good in the role of a responsible friend and a photographer. It was a whole lot different from the last time that I had been in such a role. I didn’t even feel uncomfortable just once through the whole two day period.

    That must be due to the fact that the company was a whole lot different. Besides Chuck and Ray, the other friends were a jolly good bunch. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly playing ‘Dumb Charades’ while travelling in the train.

    Since this was the first occasion that I and Ray were travelling together after we came out to each other, we laid a few ground-rules about exchanging thoughts and expressing feelings about other men. Basically, we decided to refrain from commenting about older men, exchanging glances and pointing out hot men during the trip.

    It worked well. We didn’t break the rules more than twice. Both the times, when we had total privacy.

    Apart from that there were two siginficant things that I felt during the trip.

    • I felt that Ray was the kind of guy who I would love to have as a partner in a long term relationship. There are absolutely no problems between the two us in sharing a room, travelling together etc.

    • I realized that I was to scared to even disappoint Chuck. Even in the slightest of ways.

    Chuck’s engagement

    Today evening, I’ll be starting from my town to attend Chuck’s
    engagement. I’m very happy because Ray will be there along with me
    through the trip. Chuck and his family are coming as well.

    The search for my guitar is still not getting anywhere. That is a
    little disappointing.

    :( –> :)

    Too many expectations. Too little money. A multitude of options limited to a SINGLE guitar!

    That sums up my experience at the Queen yesterday. Besides, I was irritated to the core by S. with whom I had gone.

    We checked out three guitar shops. Only one had at branded guitars and that too, a single guitar each from Ibanez and Fender. Fender’s Showmaster sucked. Ibanez’s starting range guitar GRX-40 was okay. But just okay. It is relatively expensive for the quality. And it is made in China and not Japan (which is the benchmark).

    My friend S. managed to irritate me a lot. Here’s why

    • S. thought it would be ‘fun’ doing this – board a train at 11 pm with sleeper clas tickets (about 2 times that of a regular ticket) to reach the Queen at 3.30 AM. Hire an autorickshaw for 3 times the usual cost to reach the middle of the town. Enquire at four different hotels before ending up paying Rs. 350 for a dingy double room and sleep in there for 5 hours.
    • The alternative was – To sleep peacefully at home till 5 AM. Board a nice, fast train at 6 AM and reach the middle of the town by 9 AM. No troubles with sleep, autos, rooms. And we save 1 hour. Oh… and we save about Rs. 500 each!
    • He chews Sweet Pan and continuously spits on the roads while walking.
    • He watches WWE like he is a 4 year old kid.
    • He tries to appear knowledgeable in some topics he is or was never good at.

    The great thing that happened was that I was able to meet and interact with members from the progressive rock band ‘Evergreen’. I even got to see them practice.. in their own practice room! Oh, it was lovely! The drummer was simply awesome! So was the guitarist and the bassist!

    Indiana Jones’ Temple disappoints

    Ever since I watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusaders, I have longed to watch the other two movies. Last week’s and Lost Ark was not upto the mark. This week’s Temple of Doom is even worse. I thought that the storyline was weak and the action scenes shown were too unrealistic.

    One good thing though; the movie gave me a good excuse to avoid being dragged into a hopelessly predictable and boring conversation between my parents and my cousin who had gone to visit my sister a couple of days back.

    Coming out – on video

    Today, a group of guys from college paid a friend of ours on the day before his wedding. This is the guy for whom we had bought the condom+lube+books set. As we were having snacks and tea, the conversation meandered on to my sexual orientation. My friend had promised to get me a sexy older man for his bachelor’s party.

    I asked him if the plan still was on. He said yes. But of course he didn’t mean it. He went on to explain to the rest of my friend (to whom I was already out) that he didn’t believe me first when I told him that I was gay and I liked older men. It was only when he saw my porn collection that he could believe it.

    Then he said “I would find it even hard to imagaine. What would you be; ACTIVE or passive? I replied with utmost ease “Passive, of course!”. His jaw virtually hit the table. Same for the rest of the gange except Ray and Chuck.

    All this happened without us realizing that a relative of his was taking video of us talking.

    A couple of minutes back, he came back and asked my friend if he wanted to keep the footage for the wedding CD. And then he replayed on the cam. We could clearly hear our voices. He said yes!

    I feel proud about this achievement. Am I not the best?

    ‘Naach’ is good!

    Today was a great day. A good day at the hospital except for a
    comment or two from Chuck which sunk my spirits. He was asking me if I
    could get our friend a gift on his wedding. He said that I’ve been an
    unreliable person in the last few weeks and therefore, needed double
    confirmation that I would do the purchase. He repeated it.

    I was surprised at this apparent lack of trust-worthiness that my
    friend found in me. Since it came from Chuck I felt bad. In fact I
    told him immediately that just like two days back when he had brought
    a smile back to my face, he’d put me down. I felt even worse when he
    said that that is how he felt every morning when I wouldn’t wake up to
    join him for jogging.

    A couple of hours later, I was walking to the parking lot to my
    scooter thinking what had suddenly gone wrong in my life. I was low in
    self-esteem and that is exactly why I felt bad when someone questioned
    my integrity.

    When I reached there, I saw Chuck standing there talking to someone
    on the mobile phone. He waved at me as soon as he saw me. I walked up
    to him undecided on what to say. It was easy to make out that it was
    his fiance at the other end. In between, he asked me if I would join
    him for lunch. I said yes.

    I gave him a lift on my scooter and it was not until that we had
    found a table that he hung up on the phone. Immediately he apologized
    me for what had happened in the morning. I apologized for behaving the
    way I was during the last few weeks. He offered me a lunch to make it
    up at a restaruant of my choice. I said that was unnecessary.

    When we finished lunch I felt at ease with my life.

    Then we went for shopping for the gift. It took a lot of time to
    finally get what we wanted; a Kama Sutra honeymoon pack. It was a
    wonderful time even though we couldn’t find one. Whenever we walked up
    to a store to ask for condoms, the shopkeepers would seem stunned and
    always tried to be evasive. Instead, we went to a big medical store in
    the city, got a sample of all the varities of condoms available and a
    lubricant jelly. We got it packed in a big Kama Sutra condom box. Then
    we went shopping in a book store. We bought a couple of cheap versions
    of the book ‘Kama Sutra’ and another book on the Arabic Technique of
    Sex called ‘The Perfumed Garden’.

    Since Chuck was on duty, I left him at the hospital and went to
    Ray’s room. We spent some time going through the sex manuals and found
    a lot of interesting stuff regarding oral sex and it’s practice in
    ancient India. According to the books, oral sex was practiced
    extensively by Hindus and sodomy was introduced by the Muslims.

    Then, I went to a colleague room in the hostel to try my hand at
    troubleshooting a computer which was acting up. I tried my level best
    to re-install Windows 98. But a hardware problem kept me at bay.

    After that, Ray wanted me to take a look at the common ‘puter at
    the hostel. It was getting stuck after it got booted. It didn’t take
    me much time to note that it was due to some virus/worm as the
    computer was laden with spyware and junk downloads and didn’t have a
    firewall or an updated antivirus software.

    I removed most of the crap and got the system back to booting
    properly. But couldn’t finish the job as the network adapter was not
    working which made it impossible for me to access the internet so as
    to get an updated version of antivirus software.

    After that, I and Ray decided to go out to have dinner. We went to
    our favorite vegetarian restaurant. Had a delicious meal. Then hung
    out at public park watching out for silverfoxes. Then we went for a
    movie. We had been indecisive about the movie after our last
    experience. We finally decided on a hindi flick called ‘Naach’.

    Thankfully, our decision was spot on! The movie was excellent. It
    is much different from the average Bollywood sizzler and is probably
    the best Hindi movie I have watched this year.

    From being down to up

    I’m finding myself bluesy for the last two days. I don’t have any particular reason for being so. Generally, I’m not satisfying myself with what I’m getting out of my life.

    I don’t usually feel down. And it is easy for someone to cheer me up. But that was not the case for the last two days. Yesterday, it took a good effort on Ray’s side to bring me back to normalcy.

    Today, I was feeling down in the afternoon. I took a nap and woke up realizing that I felt disgusting. I had a bad headache as well. Chuck tried to cheer me up. At first, it didn’t work.

    I had to meet him again later on in the evening. This was after I had finalized my plan to make my guitar purchase next week. I told Chuck that I’m getting a new pair for jeans.

    He asked me ‘Who’s giving you this? And in return for?’ with a funny look in his eyes. I laughed and felt good instantaneously. When I asked him what he had meant, he said that he thought I had got the jeans as a reward for my services to an older man. He guessed that I would rip the jeans of a hot older man and give him a nice blow job. In the end, the older man would give me the jeans as a reward for the fine job while patting my back saying ‘Well done my boy/son!’

    Then I had to meet May to give her a book. She said that I’m looking more gay! Well, because of me wearing tight pants which clung on to my thighs revealing my thin waistline.

    Now I feel really happy!