The train was bursting with colors. People around us were brandishing the rainbow colors on every item of clothing humanly possible. There were glitters on their makeup and colors on their lips. It was the New York pride parade that day. World pride, they said, 50 years since the Stonewall riots. We had driven down from New Haven to attend it, parked outside the city and took the subway. I was slightly buzzed from the vodka we had started gulping earlier. The alcohol and the monotone of the train were making me drowsy. I found a small space between two people and sat down. The light on the top of my seat was flickering randomly. My friends stood in front of me and talked about India's chances of winning the cricket world cup after losing to England that very morning.
I noticed two teenagers sitting across from me. They looked like high school students, wearing white t-shirts with rainbow flags on them, just like the one I was wearing underneath my shirt. They were holding hands, and one of them was showing something on the phone to the other one. Both were staring intently at the screen. Occasionally, they would look at each other, laugh, and then kiss. Nothing bothered their concentration, not the loud sound of the engines nor the busy chatter of the public, not even the yearning in the eyes of the strangers on the train. I was transfixed by the nonchalance. I felt guilty gawking at an intimate moment.
I saw him standing near the door. Sharp brown eyes, the tint of burgundy in the hair, and a single strap backpack, he still looked seventeen. It was as if we had never left high school. I had been in love with him for almost 15 years now. I waved at him to come to sit next to me and pointed to the couple in front of me. The light had stopped flickering by then.
"We missed this, didn't we?" He said with a blue smile on his face.
"Yeah. I was always so scared that someone from our school would see us and find out." He nodded.
"And we were in India; people would kill us if they saw us kissing on a train."
It felt like a lifetime ago when we had first fallen in love in that small town of ours. We were just boys then, awfully unaware of the outside world, yet extremely fearful of it. We kept our love within the walls of our tiny room. In our eyes, we took it everywhere.
The train was getting quiet. He started playing with my fingers. The people pouring in the subway were obscuring my view of the couple.
"Would you do it all over again?” He whispered in my ears. I knew what he meant.
"What? Love you and not have a single witness to it?" I thought for a while. "I don't know."
"We don't need witnesses. We have each other's memories."
"You know, sometimes I think I am forgetting some of it, I don't have anything to remember those days by. And my memory is not as good as it once used to be."
"You are barely 30; Stop sounding like an old man." He put his arms around my shoulders. I rested my head on it. I was tired.
"We would be different people had we been allowed to love openly like them. Don't you think?" I wasn’t sure why I was asking him this.
"I think so. It doesn't matter now, does it? We turned out fine." He replied, slightly irritated.
"I like your shirt," I said, changing the topic.
"I like yours too, but I can see your rainbow t-shirt hidden under your shirt. Are you still scared?" He was looking right through me.
"I don't think so," I said defensively.
"You are going to a pride parade in New York City. I don't think people are going to notice the rainbow on you. Look around."
I said nothing; I kept trying to find the couple between the commotion. The train was slowly moving towards our station. I could feel the restlessness in the crowd.
"Why do you think people need witnesses for their love?" He asked, looking out to the crowd.
"So that they can convince themselves that it was not a dream," I said.
"But why does it matter? Love is personal, isn't it? It stays with us, no matter if anyone knows.” He thought for a while, then said in a muffled voice: “I hope you don’t regret it.”
I shook my head.
“Remember how my brother called everyone when he got his first girlfriend? I wish I could have shared some of you with people in my life.” He smiled faintly at me.
"Maybe next time.” He said, “but while we are here, let’s be seventeen again for a minute; close your eyes." He held my face with both his hands. I could hear his breath inching closer and closer. I felt his lips. It was a rainy night, and we were out of power. Our small hostel room was lit by a gloomy lantern, barely holding against the winds gushing in from the cracks on the windows. It was then that I had realized that you could kiss a boy. It was that night that I wished he was around to remember.
I opened my eyes to the cacophony again. The light on the top of my seat was flickering randomly. I slowly took my shirt off. New York was turning out to be even dreamier than I had imagined.
Write a comment ...