7.Aisha Paul

I cried for two whole hours before leaving home. If it were up to me, I would crawl back into my mother's womb and never leave.

  'I will miss you.'

  'Stop it, Aisha! School will end in another six hours and you will be back home,' said my mother, tired of me lungeing at her and kissing her all over. In times like these I wondered if my brother was right about my adoption.

  The summer vacations had ended too soon, as if the two months had rammed and packed into a neat box of day and a half. I returned to school in my little skirt and rolled down socks.

  But I hadn't wasted the time.

  I had spent it carefully working on myself. Quite literally. And after spending weeks locked up in my room, learning the tricks to self-satisfaction, I wasn't going to let my knowledge go waste. I would pass on my knowledge to other girls and I would guide them through the wondrous and dirty and fabulous world of earth-shattering, toe-curling orgasms.

  It wasn't easy to begin with.

  It took me two-hour long showers for a week to find the exact rhythm to transport myself to a place that's hot and blinding and blank and extraordinary. Now if I concentrate hard enough I can finish myself up in about three and half minutes. I was extremely good in bed with myself. Men should be able to take out three and half minutes of their time to learn to love the women they are with.

*

  I distinctly remember the first time I orgasmed. It's still the smuttiest, sexiest thing I have ever done, and it took me fifteen days to plan the entire operation.

  I had read in one of the issues of Cosmopolitan about this little shop tucked in one corner of Palika Bazaar—a dark, dank, strange place—which sold sex toys, whips, handcuffs, porn CDs and the like.

  I would swiftly walk past the shop a dozen times every day for a couple of weeks—scrunching up my face like I didn't belong there—sizing up and categorizing the different dildos kept in little glass cabinets by shape, girth, length and texture. I finally chose a big red one, complete with big red balls—it was veinous, curved to the right, about nine inches in length and as thick as my forearm. It was love at first sight and I was just denying it for the longest time trying to like some other average, safer ones. Just thinking about it made me feel kinky and wrong and wonderful.

  But then came the difficult part. There was no way in hell I could have casually walked into the shop in my school uniform and gone like, Hey, can you pack that dildo real quick, yeah? I will pay by cash, can you make it quick, I really have to go now. I strategized and I waited for me to be united with my lover.

  The next Sunday I reached Palika Bazaar before it opened and stood guard at the entrance, looking for someone with similar needs. Three hours and ten Diet Cokes later, four giggly girls, dressed top to bottom in overpriced brands, distinctly drunk, teetered through the entrance. They were up to something naughty; I could see that in the furtive glances they threw at the shops. I followed them around as they enquired about what they needed. Fifteen minutes and many awkward stares later, they were in the toy shop flicking through the goods. One of the girls dared to lay hands on my boy but backed off before I lunged and ripped her head clean off her shoulders. Little later, they left happy and scandalized with a pair of handcuffs and a whip and small vibrator.

  I waited for them to exit.

  I closed my eyes and calmed my nerves. My heart thumped. I felt hot, like both sweaty, nervous hot, and hot, like sexy hot. I walked into the shop as if I belonged there.

  'Hey, I was just here with my friends. And that girl? The one whose bachelorette we are celebrating? We want to gift her that dildo as well,' I said, pointing to my lover on the shelf. 'How much? Three thousand? We just bought so much right now. It's not our first time, okay. Don't fleece us. It's not that you have any customers anyway.'

  I closed the deal at a thousand. The blow-up sex doll in the corner smiled at me. Clutching my man close to my chest, I rushed back home feeling super dirty. I closed the door and drew the curtains. I took a quick bath, shaved my legs and my nether regions, to put it politely, put on an oversized T-shirt, and jumped into bed under my blanket. My panties were drenched at this point in time. With trembling hands, I took the dildo out from the brown paper bag, and wrapped my fingers around all nine inches of red, glorious plastic.

  I can't believe I have a dildo in my hands! I'm so kinky. It's mine! It's in my bedroom!

  I took off my T-shirt slowly, the way a boy would have, and started feeling myself all over. If I had to fuck myself, I had to be insanely good at it. I grabbed at my breasts and clutched them. My body felt like Christmas. I guided the dildo below. Oh. My. God. It reached a few inches below my navel and my body flooded with warmth. I started to sweat. I pulled the blanket off me and watched myself in the mirror as I made out with myself. I didn't know when my fingers found themselves playing with my tongue, and when I grabbed my breasts and kissed them, and when I alternately guided my fingers and dildo inside of me. It was hot and weird and kinky and my red lover was incredible. I thought I would shatter the windows with my screams so I bit my tongue and let out a hoarse cry instead. My heart raced and found it hard to keep up with all the sensations my body was throwing at it.

  Ten minutes of panting, heaving, wetness, grabbing, clutching, licking later, my body convulsed like I had just been exorcized and I felt a whiteness take over. My toes curled, my body spasmed, and I was suddenly aware of every cell of my being. I floated away somewhere and I could feel colours and taste sounds and ride unicorns and feel the sun in my palms. I touched myself a little more and accumulated a little more of that incredible blankness before I collapsed and felt enlightened.

  Later I hid my lover deep behind the cupboard, wrapped in all my clothes I didn't wear any longer. Every few days, he would come and visit me and I would indulge in a little space travel with him. I named him Hellboy after the comic book character.

  *

  The more I masturbated, the less I felt the need to lose my virginity. Why would I need a man when I could give myself so much pleasure? I didn't need a fleshy, unreliable appendage when I had shampoo bottles, hair brushes and rolling pins, and of course, Hellboy. These things I'm sure were made by women, for I don't know what they are if not symbols of women empowerment hiding in plain sight! Imagine a rolling pin used to make chappatis setting a woman free of her man.

  Brilliant, just brilliant.

  'So did you find anyone?' Megha asked me in the washroom while fixing her hair, and pulling up her skirt and dropping her shirt over the belt. She looked quite cute if you ask me. She had the whole Punjabi sharp features, clear complexion thing going on for her. She still looked twelve though. Her father had a huge jewellery shop bang in the middle of Rajouri Garden, and a driver use to pick and drop her to school every day. Money was never a problem for her so she never really understood why I never put any make-up on. Or why I didn't hang out after school that much. Or why I never changed my uniforms on time. But we still talked out of habit. I knew she was a little toxic, fuelling rumours about me from time to time, and to be fair I had had made fun of her exam results quite often, but we remained friends or whatever you call it. Sometimes you get into relationships you don't want to be in but don't know how to get out of them. Megha and I shared a similar bond. We had nothing in common, nothing whatsoever, but we had started talking when we were really young and comparatively stupid, and now it was inertia more than anything else that was the reason why we still talked. She was into clothes and Bollywood, and I was into books and academics. We were poles apart.

  Megha and I were seat partners back in the day when our bodies were changing. Suddenly, the two of us were thrust into the limelight because we looked more womanly than others—she was cute and I was busty—and we enjoyed it. We were like two mean girls who didn't love each other but only maybe hated each other a little less. The little popularity we had got us heady and we knew we had to work together to selfishly hold on to it. So we stayed together to concoct gossip about other girls and boys to pull them down. It was all fun and games. But we had done nothing worse than what I had done to Namrata, my classmate for five years now, the girl I secretly admired and hated at the same time. Megha now knew too many of my secrets, so that was another reason why we had to continue to be friends.

  I could stop talking to her from the next day and not feel the loss and I could say the same for her. But for some reason we dragged on with our relationship since no one between the two of us was brave enough to walk out, say no, we are not meant to be, this is over, and never look back. We do waste a lot time in relationships that only ask and not give anything back.

  'I don't think I need a man to know what sex feels like!' I said, hoping to impress her by my revelation.

  'You have had sex, isn't it? That's why you're deflecting,' she said quite convinced. 'Tell me about it!'

  'I haven't but I shagged. And it's the most beautiful thing ever!'

  'If you don't want to tell, it's fine, you don't have to lie about it,' said she and walked out angrily. It was quite strange of Megha to believe more easily that I had had sex with someone than trusting what I told her about being a compulsive masturbator.

  Between her walking off from the washroom and the sixth period, the news had travelled of my hav 

ing regular sex with a boy from outside school.

  'He's a college guy,' one girl whispered.

  'I heard they are just fucking. No relationship,' said another.

  It was clear soon enough that I needed to be a little ashamed of myself, and by the end of the day, I was called to the principal's office.

  'Sit, Aisha,' he said. 'I have been hearing things about you in the school. You're a brilliant student and I don't want you to be mixing with the wrong people.'

  'They are rumours, sir. I'm still a virgin. There was a time I thought I should have sex with someone but the feeling has passed. I'm looking for something else now.'

  The principal looked at me like I had admitted to heroin abuse. 'I don't understand.'

  'I don't understand it either. I'm still looking for what I'm looking for,' I said, smiling widely at him. 'For now I'm quite satisfied with masturbation.'

  He was quite aghast to hear this despite having three kids himself—the babies couldn't have been possible without him being sexually active as well, right?

  'Look, Aisha, I know you're going through a lot,' he said, barely able to meet my eye. 'I understand that. But I will have to recommend you to our counsellor.'

  'Counsellor? Why? Because I masturbate?'

  'I will appreciate if you don't use that word around here or in front of other kids in school. If you continue to do so, I will have no choice but to notify your parents about this.'

  'But students use far worse words! They cuss all the time!'

  'You're not in a position to argue, Aisha. You will have to spend an hour every second day with the school counsellor or I go with this to your parents.'

  At this point I must mention that with my tales of getting my period and masturbation stories, I missed an important detail of my life, which people often blame for my slow descent into madness. A few years ago, my mother woke up to a crippling pain in her lower back. A battery of tests later, she was told she had a weak kidney and would have to rely on dialysis for the rest of her life. No one tells me how long she would be alive but I have a gnawing premonition that it wouldn't be long.

  And so, I didn't plan to give her any more pain than she was already in.

  'I will attend counselling.'