As the alarm went off I became aware of the stirring in my shorts. Not as much of a stirring as I would have liked. Certainly not the kind of raging hard on I'd get when I was in my teens or right up until my forties. Let me tell you, a man likes his morning wood. And when it starts to become a rare thing, it hits him, hard, if you'll forgive that limp pun.
I'm 57. Indian. As in, Asian Indian, not among the Indians that Columbus mistakenly named.
Up until the age of 53 I was single. Yeah, yeah, that's a rare thing among Indian men. Most of us bow down to Mummy and get married by the age of 30 or so. Because, you know, Mummy wants some grandkids.
But I was a maverick. Not for me the regular; marry by 30, have kids, then "drink yourself into oblivion as you curse your fate" route that most Indian men take. I had seen my father drink and smoke himself to death at the age of 58.
Anyway, I kept myself away from marriage until I was 53. Then I thought I needed a companion. So I jumped into marriage. The worst thing I had ever done.
She was a docile thing until the marriage certificate was inked.
We'd fucked before marriage, of course.
But after the certificate was issued she turned into some kind of Harpie who let me know in no uncertain terms that she had married me for my sperm. She wanted a kid within a marriage. I was expected to impregnate her and then she'd leave me as she raised OUR kid.
Well, I'm all kinds of a romantic fool but even I knew that it was a recipe for disaster. There was no way I was going to let a narcissist raise MY child. There had been episodes of violence on her part -- a dining table she demolished with her bare hands when she got angry with me, a mobile phone she slammed on the floor, again, when she got angry with me... It was clear that I was dealing with someone who might slam our child to the floor in a killing rage if it innocently transgressed her boundaries.
The divorce went off pretty smoothly, all things considered. She decided that my sperm was not good enough, mainly because I couldn't bring myself to fuck her any more. She was a beauty, no question about that. But beauty flies out the window when she calls you an impotent motherfucker. Yeah, I couldn't get it up for her. She pranced naked for me but there was no love and I wasn't 20 anymore, an age when I would gladly have humped her without regard to the consequences. She left me the house, declaring that she wouldn't take away the only erection I had. She intended that to hurt and it did. But at least I had a roof over my head.
And so there I was, shamefully divorced, dealing with a dick that wouldn't stand up any more. Or so I thought.
* * *
"Hey Bro, drinking yourself into a stupor?"
"Vanks? What you doing here? Well yeah, what else can I do? Got no money, no car, no hope," I retorted.
It was my sister Vandita, fondly called Vanks (not why you think) who had walked into my house unannounced. She had a key to the house. It was a tradition in our home. We all had keys to each other's houses and it was no big deal if a sibling came over.
"Porn not good enough for you?" she giggled as she opened the fridge and took out a pint of beer.
Now let me tell you, it wasn't a thing in our home to discuss sex. We were a good Catholic family (yes, those exist in India) and porn was something we all knew existed but never acknowledged.
"Oh c'mon, Vanks, we aren't teens any more!"
"How you coping after Shreya left you?" she asked, drinking straight from the bottle. My little sis wasn't the kind to ask for a glass when a bottle would do just as well.
"I'm ok."
"Getting any pussy?"
I hiccupped. That kind of straightforward question wasn't something I'd ever experienced in our family. But Vanks was a woman of the world. Married to a man who had business interests across the continents, she had travelled. And expanded her mind and vocabulary, I supposed.
