Popagandhi

Like many couples, straight or gay or bestial, Z and I fight quite a bit. As much as any couple edging close to the one year mark, in any case. (We never fight on holidays though, but more on this later.)

It’s been nearly a year, the longest either of us have been attached to a single woman, but it’s only now that we have figured out the root of many of our fights: what I told Cowboy Caleb in last year’s interview, that I think of myself not as a gay woman but as a “gay man trapped in a woman’s body, and who likes cross dressing men”, may not be entirely baseless. No, it’s not that Z is a cross dressing man — she’s as femme as they go: gay women, of course, love her, straight men check her out, my straight girlfriends can’t stop telling me how pretty she is and how they “want one too”, and gay men notice parts of her body that they don’t usually care for on a body attached to a vagina.

It’s that despite believing very strongly in not needing any gender roles, or role-playing types of claims on identity, the truth is — even in the pomosexual world, something’s bound to fuck up. As straight girls now grapple with who pays for dinner, Z and I grapple not with gender or identity or roles to assume, but the collisions of multitudes of existing ones, since I think it’s fair to say the both of us suffer to an extent from multiple personalities (the best personality being the one that is great in bed).

People always ask why we never fight whenever we go on holiday. My answer is simple: “division of labour”. When we are away, it is very clear what is within my domain of control and what is hers. I’m the one with the bags of cables, adaptors, plastic bags, maps, medication, torchlights, cameras, computers; I even remember to bring an audio splitter and extra earphones so that she can share my iPod on a long bus ride, because I know she will be bored with the tracks on her flash-based MP3 player. I call all the shots on where we’re going, how we’re getting there, not because I’m domineering, but because (1) I’m meticulous and masochistic and like the nitty gritty details of logistics (2) I have, arguably, a better sense of direction (3) she very seldom knows where she is. She handles all the toiletries, hair products, makeup, and the most important job of all: my wardrobe, picking out my ensemble of clothes for me, thereby assuring that I will never leave the room with bad hair or in an awkward combination of colours.

In everyday life, however, things get far more complicated. For one simple reason — in her words, she’s “a woman with the emotional standpoint of a man”, while I’m “a gay ah pek with the emotional standpoint of a woman” (which then makes my statement about being in fact a gay man who likes cross dressing men, a little truer than I meant it to be). And she’s right: I am gay, and I am somewhat an ah pek, but I’m extremely needy, or manja. I’m used to being fussed over and babied, and being the absolute centre of someone’s life (I’ll have to talk to a therapist about this, in 10 years). She’s all woman, but sees emotions as a weakness, and much rather prefers to suck it up, deal with it, and all that macho guy stuff, including falling asleep right after.. Which puts me in the very screwed up position that if this is true, then: (1) we’re gay men! (2) of all the heterosexual relationships we’ve had before, this might possibly be the most heterosexual (I knew the reason I liked all those men was that they are, in fact, very female..). Ah, sweet pomosexuality.

I’m all woman when I say the things I don’t mean, and mean the things I don’t say. Which is difficult for her since she’s never been with a woman up ’til now, while I’ve had approximately eight times the amount of practice. So I had a fair bit of explaining to do, a situation which might resonate with most straight men: “When I say, okay goodbye then, in that tone, I don’t actually mean, goodbye, I mean you better bloody apologize and say you’re sorry, or else.” “When I say, ‘What?’ in that tone, I actually mean…”

She protests: “But it sounds exactly the same!” Straight men everywhere, you are not alone.

And she’s right. Women just expect to be read like that, nothing thrills us more than to have someone who knows what we want without us saying it, and then we’re women again in how when we get exactly that, we freak out. I know I do did.

Z and I are not really the melodramatic type of lesbians when we fight. No knives, no stalking, no conventional psycho behaviour: we’re much worse than that! A typical fight goes like this — we get upset about something or other, somebody starts crying (usually me), demands The Talk, we end up in a room Talking About It, generally borders on hysterical (no screaming though, just a bit of yelling) and within 20 minutes we are giggling, falling over ourselves laughing, and worrying about whether or not the people in the room next door recognize us lest our reputasi is destroyed. If we had any in the first place.

It usually goes something like —

(intense fighting for 20 minutes)

Me: “Fuck. I’m tired of fighting.”

Z: “Me too.”

Me: “I wish we were fighting at your house instead of on the phone.”

Z: “Why?”

Me: “So that we can fucking get over with it and just kiss and make up. Then make out.”

Z: “You’re such a man.”

Me: “You’re the one who turns over and falls asleep!”

(giggles)

I know, I’m disturbed too. She thinks she’s the Amitabh Bachchan type of girlfriend. In that if we were the Bollywood movie I sometimes think we are (we are), she would be the brooding, emotionally distant, type of father, and I would be the petulant child who really wants to impress his father but fucks up. I always knew I attracted the sorts who want to mother me, but now this one wants to father me, too. Yes, she really said, “Amitabh Bachchan type of father“, which is so wrong on so many different planes: she’s not Indian, she doesn’t have facial hair, and it’s like, the wrong gender and relationship I think. WWFS?

Besides, Big B isn’t really in my age group of choice. Little Z, however, is totally my type.