As a child, there were few places I feared more than a public toilet.
The way they smelt of men, the way that no amount of phenyl or naphthalene could mask the rankness of ammonia, was in such contrast to the tiny, cool bathroom at home that smelt of Lifebuoy soap and Sunsilk shampoo. Ma would always bang suspiciously on the door if I spent longer than five minutes inside.
But behind the terror was also a nervous excitement. I had no idea I was also attracted to men back then in junior school (or did I?), but I did know that there was a whole code in those pheromones which stirred something forbidden. ‘Say no, say no,’ an insistent voice whined, and I said no to public toilets and blamed it on hygiene.
Till that one evening in Pune.
As a student in Pune, on an evening walk after a particularly long film in a particularly cold theatre, I had to break the old, personal taboo and use a public restroom. It just so happened that the one that I was destined to use that night was right out of my worst nightmares. Dark in a way that made me wonder about mugging even as I struggled to hold it in, and putrid in a way that I could smell from across the street. I walked into the darkness and unzipped. In that moment, as what felt like twenty years of piss flooded out of me, I was awash with gratefulness for the existence of every public toilet ever. I will never forget the streetlight streaming through a broken window into that ruin of a toilet. God does speak in mysterious ways.
And then, as I adjusted to the light, I saw a grotesque shape to my right, in the shadows. It had four hands and a writhing body. It was my monster, my curse let loose. I froze.
The next moment defined my immediate life to come; the monster uncoiled itself into two young men. My entry had interrupted them, but when they understood I was harmless, the kissing slowly resumed (as I realised that the only monster that existed was in my head). I stood at my urinal, transfixed in terror. And excitement.
Later, I stammered mentally, briskly walking down the footpath, flushed with fear and desire, unable to shake away the image of the two men. Something unleashed in that toilet, something that I had bottled up for twenty years in societally imposed in-sanitation.
From there, my fascination with cruising began. I had read a little on online forums about cruising in my teens (mostly with disgust), but now I would take long walks across Pune in the dead of the night—walks that mostly led to the extremely cruisy railway station toilet. It was big, that loo, and manned by a shrewd-looking fellow who seemed to be measuring the world in the way he chewed his gutkha.
The moment you entered, there was a huge stained mirror that looked on as all kinds of men washed faces and limbs.
Taking a right would get you into an L-shaped hall with a high ceiling, where an incessant stream of travellers attended to nature’s call. None of them really bothered to take the trouble to walk down to the end of the L—and that is where I learnt to head; a place where a different sort of call, no less urgent, was being attended to.
Often, I would stand at the far end of that railway station loo, pretending to pee as if my life depended on it, cheeks flushed red, as around me strangers looked into each other’s eyes, and depending on a nod or a nay, changed the pissoirs they were standing at. Men unzipped and tugged at themselves as strangers with silent, gentle hands helped. Depending on the time of the night, more would happen. Never was a word spoken.
At twenty, I vehemently believed that sex was possible only when in love. That the craving of my body was a test against being tainted. Never mind that I wound up at the toilet so often; when someone would reach out, I would shy away and leave immediately, burning with shame.
One night at around 2 a.m., I saw someone I really liked. He was like me—nervous, naïve, young and a little sleepy. His eyes darted to mine as mine did to his. He took off the handkerchief hiding his face, a dark sweaty face with a curly beard, and adjusted the heavy bag on his back. I took a deep breath and made my way next to him. After an eternity, we touched.
I forgot the smell of piss, the leaking pipe, the footsteps around me. I was completely in my body. In that moment, in the most public of private spaces, I finally saw the visible in the invisible. I had found the end of one road. Or perhaps its beginning.
I smiled at the toilet attendant as I left that night. He was a little taken aback.
Slowly, in the act of making eye contact with strangers and learning to read body language, I began to see how my community had subverted urban public spaces. And I began to talk to the people I met about their experiences of cruising.
At 5.30 p.m., Palash leaves office as usual after a long, sweaty day of work. An affable bhadrolok a year away from retirement, he says a polite goodbye to his colleagues. Putting distance between himself and them, Palash walks off the road that leads to the metro station and takes a detour.
Just a block away from Dalhousie, a bustling business district in Kolkata, is an old public toilet adjacent to a mostly empty park. The ancient toilet attendant outside gives him a customary nod—Palash has been visiting this loo once or twice a week for the last thirty-odd years.
‘As someone in my fifties now, I never could “come out” the way people do today, though I’ve known I’m attracted to men my whole life. In the early 1980s, one day, soon after starting work, I was talking to a man at a bus stop. He took me to this toilet which I had crossed but never entered. Inside was another world. Two men were kissing and people were peeping over the cubicles at each other. I left that day but ended up returning—it became a haven for me after work, a small break that let me be myself before I caught the bus back to my wife and child. It took time, but I grew confidant enough to make eye contact with men and take them to the park nearby. And now, although so much has changed, I can’t stop going back there once in a while,’ says Palash as we sit talking on a roadside bench, drinking chai.
I know what it feels like—it seems so much like my own story, except instead of a family, I would go back to a jolly group of friends at the hostel. Friends to whom I was out—but being out doesn’t really take care of desire, does it? Desire sometimes pulls you down its own rickety road, scented with pheromones and carpeted in shadows. Millennia of bodily desire carving a path through memory and morality, through concrete and contact. A path that leads to parks, toilets, cinema halls, bars, massage parlours and stations—places to pick up strangers or maybe just have a go right there. The deity of desire is not one to always take it lying down. The spirit of sex resides as much in spaces as it does in human bodies. Think of cruising as a pilgrimage.
Publisher: Context, Westland Books
Pages: 256
Price: Rs 399
The excerpt is taken from Love, Sex and India: The Agents of Ishq Anthology, edited by Paromita Vohra and published by Context, Westland Books. Paromita is also the founder of Agents of Ishq portal, now India’s best-loved digital platform about love, sex and desire.
This excerpt has not been edited by queerbeat.