Chennai’s open arms for the ‘criminals in love’

Manorathan discovers the dark underbelly of Chennai in a rendezvous with male sex workers at Marina Beach- the city’s gay cruising spot.

Yearnings have been the cause of ruins of all awful extents from times immemorial and they hold their legacy even now. The paperboy early in the morning greets us with his anxious eyes as we rub our slumbering ones, to earn that extra buck while that late night news reader wraps up the day with his good night (with a perceptibly missing yawn), a desperate call for a break that is needed. In the middle are we, stirred in emotions, I mean, longings, living our day, planned or unplanned, on a balancing gesture, stretching and un-stretching ourselves to meet their demands.

Chennai’s open arms for the ‘criminals in love’

Blinded by the vapoury yearnings, which descend on us with vengeance for demands unfulfilled, rarely are we permitted to desire a breather from an abundance of air, purified of its stagnant redundancy. Such is life, we yell, giving names like commitments and responsibilities for things driven by an inner desire, with exceptions when one still has the shallow and pretentious selflessness to fight with. Violent would the attempts to disrupt this routine be, as the fight is with oneself, for the same one, when both his selves speak for their parts, proving just. And mine were less crazy in no particular way one can ever come up with!

Night times are my cathartic moments, especially on the roads, when the lights on those ambitious billboards flicker in vivid hues (with the maddening vehicular traffic already asleep), the only signs of life after a busy day. These billboards, no longer the advertisers, now speak of mysterious, flamboyant dreams, giving direction to my aimless walks, with my eyes upturned, catching their flicker and missing nothing, making out images not being seen. The small town boy that I was, Chennai was a network of such streets, unexplored, when I had to relocate here for my under graduation. Let conservative, chicken-hearted, closed circuited (one of my favourites), etc., be the tag words glued to Chennai, but my night trips never had anything to do with these boring modifiers.

It was on one such night did my stress worn feet drag me to the Marina beach, to that gays’ corridor, squeezed in between the historic government buildings and the polluted sea waters beyond a massive expanse of heavily littered sand, with one most remembered chief minister resting peacefully at its side. It’s a cruisers’ spot in all aspects, religiously revered as ‘The sanctuary for Chennai gays’ by one petty artist I came across. With the air saturated with stench caused by the wayside urinators, boldly misguided by the ‘men only’ ambience, I was quite uncomfortable but then I was partly pleased as this place was the closest actualization I could ever achieve of those parks in movies that men frequent, more in night.

A shady place as it is, why beatify myself by making me the cold researcher, for I was no less a hooker than them, hooking up with the unknown, with no less wants. Everything is decided by a stare over here, and I did know the tricks to avoid being misunderstood as encouraging. Those lusty stares from beefy hunks, enquiring ones from the middle aged (watch out for the pan in their mouths!), timid downwardly stares from the grey haired oldies and to top it all, the winners were those desperate, deadly stares, determined to devour you even without a touch! By winners, I mean the most memorable ones and not the actual winning of their pursuit, which is an altogether different story governed not by the magnitude of the stare. Shiny costumes donned by a few, (sex workers, as I heard), add colour to the ageing night, and of course to the wearer.” He is a she! No, but she may not be a she! “, so go the comments as a gang of dandies pass by, followed by one figure draped in a sari, in an ultramodern way, rouged cheeks and wet lips! Cars follow them with an unusually slow speed, suggesting an imminent halt with any sign from the group. A few get picked up, while a few refuse to, returning with their hands busy, setting their hair in place. A few smoke, out of anxiety? Or maybe, just boredom.

Those dandies spotted me and came to me asking, “Time enna?” (What’s the time?). I could see from his watch that it was 1030. After the regular exchanges of nom de guerres, and our fictitious jobs, he then talked about his mansion nearby, hinting his readiness to host me. I didn’t want to just lose him for he sounded quite decent and suggested my wish to be here for a few more minutes for which he obliged. Waving at the passersby, he seemed quite well known to most of the well dressed guys there. It was then that I came. Then came a khakhied guy, and then the hushes and the inactivity, the danger as I smelt! Then the normalcy! One of to know about his part time job that helped to fill the hole his mansion’s rent made on his tiny pocket.

The elusive male sex workers, non-existent to Indian cinema, with not much citation in articles on prostitution in magazines, were just in front of me. These poor young men, obviously leading double lives by choice, seemed to have arrived at a better solution to lead their less lucky lives. And if it’s a question of whether being ‘pleasure-driven or money-driven’, it has something to do with pleasure, for the guy I talked to, made no mention of my paying him. He was in fact starting to yarn a tale of his love for me, taking my interest as an encouragement! Easy hopes for a simple man, and there, a sign of aspiration! Then were my enquiries about safe sex, and pat came his approval for letting me do him with no rubber. Some people are still into trusting others, no wonder we still have innocent in our dictionary. Maybe, ignorant is the right word! Not that he was ever told, for he did mention about a few people supplying condoms and a meeting stressing the need for safe sex. The change did happen in his thinking, but not in his way of perceiving things. A seventeen year old getting buggered for money, teens fellating stinky old men, gay lovers in the flesh trade together, married men trying to earn some extra money and the list went on, of which my ears could hear no more of! Should the blame be on the unjust dancing of money or on the choice of living of a few? And why should there be any blaming, for they are as proud as any other moneymaker, with regrets attributable to the professions of even you and me? Yearning is the common catalyst here (and of course in every other place), the primitive wheel of its own will, with the protagonists stuck to its spokes!

I got an auto back home from the bus stop nearby, shooing away the desperate bikers, who took me for one soliciting sex! Guilty I did feel, for breaking the heart of that overtly romantic young man, and satisfied was me as I got my share of flattery I was so desperate for!