The Obituary Of A Home.

I am lying on top of a bed of gravel. It has not been very long since dusk fell so the rocks are still a little warm, but the comfort of that does little to allay the pain of the jagged edges digging into my naked flesh. The wind is cool, a pleasant chill, unlike the last six months when stepping out without a sweater was akin to asking for hypothermia, and I shiver in pleasure as it makes contact with my exposed cunt. We must never let the tourists find out that April is the best month to visit, we must continue to hype the summer so they arrive only in June, and leave before flood-season, so I can spend this month of heavenly weather being degraded in the yard. Most of my face is covered by the shoe he has bound to my face; the heel digs into my chin, the groove in the sole rests against my nose and the tip extends over my head, but through the corners of my eyes I can still see the pecan tree that towers over us.

It doesn’t bear fruit anymore. There was a time when we filled barrels upon barrels with the bounty of a single tree, but as the residents of the house got too old to care for the garden, everything started to die. The lemon tree withered into a husk, the bougainvillea gave way to weeds, the oranges stopped showing up, the apples disappeared and the parrots ravaged the pecans until they became too scared to grow. Now, the residents are gone, and this house, with everything in it, belongs to the dead. It does feel like the house has died. Two months ago, it wouldn’t have been possible for me to laying here—naked and covered in welts—without being spotted by the dozen people who lived here, most of them were staff and now that the people who employed them are gone, so are they. This is no one’s home. Everyone refers to the house by different names. The neighbours call it the family house, the courts call it ancestral property, the builders guild that is trying to buy it already sees it as a future hotel, my mom calls it her dad’s house, my aunt calls it her mom’s house and to me, it is a sex bhavan. The house makes me horny.

I know that is weird, but before we recently moved to this town, I used to travel to it to see my grandparents and family, sure, but mostly, I came to fuck the hippies, travellers and drug-addicts that abound. So many people come here to escape their secrets, as if being surrounded by pines and snow-capped arcadia really does make life easier, as if packing your belongings into a backpack really makes it possible to condense your problems into a movable unit of non-substantial weight. I think I envied them a little, this beautiful place was their escape but for me, it was home. They could be whoever they wanted here but I would always be associated with the history of my family. They could wreak havoc and be typecast as outsiders, but everything I did was a reflection on who I was supposed to be. They came for adventure and beauty, things that become harder to see as valuable when a snow-line is permanently etched into your memory as the view outside your window and the hiking trails are just your walk home. I dug for their secrets and sorrows, with my mouth on their cocks and cunts, because if I found those things, I could feel like we were the same. I could believe that their hemp-pants and ashram-visits didn’t make them any freer than me. I don’t think I quite believed it, they felt freer, so I had sex with everyone in the house as an act of conspicuous liberation. My captors and benefactors had to watch me flout their honour and traditions in their home.

It's hard to explain my rationale, I admit, it’s not immediately clear. When I had sex with the household staff in the storage rooms, it was because I was being ravaged by the hormones of youth, but also because I wasn’t supposed to do that. I was supposed to keep a distance, one enforced by propriety and class, not get on my knees and feel their fear melt into my mouth. I still see those people sometimes, they used to bring their wives and newborns to my grandparents for blessings, and my presence was like that of a ghost that should have been gone, but persisted in refusing to accept its alienation through ever exorcism. No one ever thought I would come back here, they were sure I was so stifled but the convention and conservatism, I would run from the hills and when I continued to show up, not just for madness but the complexity of family, they became more and more confused by my attachment. I don’t know how to explain to them that I love my pain more than my freedom.

When I brought scores of strangers home from the bazaars and cafes, hopping over the boundary wall and climbing straight up to the roof where I preferred to sleep, it was because I was collecting the stories and pleasures of the wounded and lost, but also because my family couldn’t bear to directly address what I was really doing. They spent hours trying to convince me to sleep inside the house instead of in the shack on the roof, telling me I would get cold or the wild dogs would disturb me, but never saying that the neighbours saw me jump over fences with prostitutes and hippies, and every time I did so, their respectability crumbled just a little bit more. In the morning, they would be so courteous to my guests, serving them breakfast and inviting them to accompany us to lunch at the river, because they knew something I accidently discovered, it’s easy to chide the ashamed but impossible to shame the brazen. I don’t know whom to explain it to anymore, the brazenness has no meaning without their polite disapproval.

When I spent a week locked up in the basement that used to be my grandfather’s study, letting a man I shouldn’t have loved play rape with my body and soul, I did it because the call to live my fantasies has always been a lot stronger than anything else, but also because it was in that study that I began to understand my mind. A disturbed child, playing disturbing games, aided by the hundreds of psychology textbooks my grandfather used to teach the women who needed to be protected from him. No one was here that monsoon, the house was empty but for the caretaker, and I paid him to disappear for a week. He called my family immediately, as I knew he would, and with anyone else, they would have sent someone to check on what was happening, but with me, they knew it was better to not ask questions, not because they are afraid of my reaction but because I taught them to fear my honesty for their own sake. Like a sinister child I thwarted the attempts at snooping with discoveries that harmed their psyche more than my privacy until they left me alone to do as I pleased. I don’t know how to explain why the disinterest feels less gratifying than the attempted interference with my soul.

None of it matters anymore. Now, I lay here, as naked and disturbed as ever, but it’s just for me. I may as well be naked and disturbed in a hot-tub in a resort. Time turns you into a tourist on your own land. The neighbours don’t know me anymore, the hippies moved further North in search of something as transient as life, the study crumbled and was rebuilt into an apartment for strangers, the roof houses a different set of caretakers and almost every trace of my family is gone. We don’t mean anything. This house doesn’t mean anything. I finally got what I wanted. This must be the freedom I so envied once upon a time. The freedom of uncontexualised behaviour. The freedom to lay here for the love of jagged stones and exposure and have it mean nothing at all. Now this is my escape and tomorrow, I will pack my bag and go back home.

No pecans in my bag, holding me down.