The Booty Call

He stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking down at his shoes. There was a familiar vibration in his left-pocket. She cannot wait, he thought, unable to contain his grin. Her message on Whatsapp had been urgent. She had demanded his presence at once. ‘There’s no one else at home.’

He kissed the Hanuman locket he wore around his neck, and prayed for strength. This was his big debut. He had to impress her. ‘Calm down,’ he said to himself, trying to forget that she was three years older than him – clearly more experienced. He put his right hand into his jeans-pocket, and felt the edge of the sachets inside. Three small soft packets, one behind the other.

He thought about the time they had kissed a few days ago. His first ever kiss, after all these years. He hadn’t told her, of course. She couldn’t know that she was about to be his first woman. He took a deep breath and started up the stairs, right foot first.

He then recalled the strangest thing – his conversation with Ramesh, back in sixth standard:

They went together to the toilet, back in those days, as it gave them an opportunity to walk around the large playground, watch the basketball game and stay away from the classroom for a while longer. One evening, standing in front of the urinal, shaking off the last drops, Ramesh told him the strangest thing – “I went to the girls’ bathroom yesterday.”

“Oh. And? Nobody saw you?”

“It was empty,” Ramesh said. “Nobody was there. So I quickly went and looked.”

“What did you see inside?”

“No place to piss!”

He laughed at Ramesh’s stupidity. “They don’t stand and piss,” he told his friend. 

“Haven’t you seen any girls without their clothes? Haven’t you observed animals?!”

Ramesh said that he hadn’t. “The chapter they skipped is for people like you,” he said, annoyed. Then he told his friend everything he knew.

He was halfway up the stairs now. He pulled out his phone and unlocked it. The message read – ‘The door is unlocked. Push, and you are in.’ He jumped up the last three steps. Then he stopped and checked his phone again. He closed the browser tabs quickly, awkwardly the last two times. He then realized that everything he knew about intercourse was through pornography.

He was amused by the thought. Will it really be like that, he wondered. He closed the Wikipedia page on ‘Safe Sex’. Then straightening his shirt, he pushed at the door.