My name is Babbita. I am not the subject of observation. However, I have become part of it. I have gone native so to speak. So you must know me. My inclination has first manifested itself at age seven.
I was hiding under a corner bench of a banquet. The grown ups minded their own wedding celebration business and did not pay attention to us kids, especially, because we were beneath the furniture. Nine feet ahead of me were Yamir and Yamika sitting on their behinds with the legs slung sideways. A Western table served as a roof to the childhood play house. The tablecloths were the curtains. Yamika's hot little hands were holding tender Yamir's hands: "Will you marry me, when you grow up?" Bug eyed kiddie eyes looked back on her. After careful consideration of the novel idea, he agreed to marry her. Yamika placed a peck on Yamir's check and slung off. The next boy whom she propositioned was Waman.
I carefully updated my notes on the back of the wedding invitation with a crayon. Then, I drew another line on what I know now as a network diagram. Yamika was a serial bride. Yamir was her seventh groom this afternoon already. Yamika was the first kid to have gotten the idea of asking for marriage promises. From there, other kids copied her. Yamir was growing wiser by the moment, as he turned around to face me. He crawled under the chair between us on his belly. With his big head resting on his arms, he looked at me:
"Will you marry me, when we grow up?"
An ivory tower collapsed then. My enthusiasm for tallying the wedding game collided with the need to muster an action. The action failed me. Yet, Yamir made up for it all by himself. He turned his lips upside down and firmly placed the bundle of wet on my lips. The heroine, yours truly, was further daunted by such impulse and affection. So, I ran crying for my mother's skirt. Thus my first anthropological study ended. The lesson was to better camouflage myself for further studies.
My parents should have realized my anthropological talent, when I pushed my older brother out of the closet as an 18 year old teenager. The darkness of night was outside the windows. The incandescent lamp lighted up the dinner table. Piles of rice were smothered in Dal. I liked my rice like a pyramid with the right side covered in Dal. My older 19 year old brother liked his rice like a volcano with the Dal in the center as lava. My father liked to berate my mother about her duties in the household. He listed out all the things that he wanted her to buy at the grocery store. My mother was waving her index finger in the air higher and higher like a sailplane soaring in a thermal. When my father mentioned rice for the second time, because he hadn't paid attention to his own list, her hand came smashing down on his chest with a shrill 'Kutha.'
After 300 seconds of respectful silence, I announced that I had a presentation. Mother looked at me sternly: "Is this for school or your nonsense?" I assured her that it was a relevant family matter. Her feet walking to the kitchen to fix dessert suggested her disbelief in my words. I started by asserting that a twink described a young-looking, clean-looking, and slender man like my brother, as honorably as he was sitting at the dinner table. My brother helped me to an extra spoonful of rice. Unfortunately, he missed my plate and hit my sari. A bear described heavy-set and bearded male, who appears to be very cuddly. Observing the eye movement in the streets of my brother, he clearly preferred to check out bears. Last week counted 23 glances of more than 3 seconds at a bear. My brother must have gotten very excited, because he accidentally kicked my shins under the table.
Evidently, the fascination for boys had started five months ago, when the cousin from Bombay stayed with us for a weekend. He had shared the room with my brother and me. I had started making fake snoring noises immediately with lights out. It did not take long for the young lads to start a whispered conversation. The cousin was very proud of his male genitalia. They brought their penises out at moonlight to compare. The cousin's seemed long, yet thin. My brother's was more of a stout nature.
They could not trust each other in the weak moonlight. As they did not dare turning on the light and wake me, they took measures on each other with their own hands. There was a discussion about measuring flaccid or stiff, from the back or from the front. They kept taking each others measurements until the cousin said, 'feels good, doesn't it?' A silence had fallen. My brother invited the cousin into his bed to hold each other. Nothing happened that night. I carefully analyzed the bed sheets and the trash can. Father did not seem comforted by this, as he flung two plates off the dinner table, when his fist pounded on it.
However, my brother bought a magazine the next day with his new credit card for his 18th birthday gift. My unimaginative brother hid the magazine under his mattress. I regularly check the typical hiding spots in the house. My brother's first centerfold was Ettore Tosi, an Italian porn stud. The centerfold showed him slouching in a turquoise ottoman. His head hair was short and curly. Warm blue eyes and a soft smile looked straight at the viewer. The chest hair was curly all the way out to the male nipples. The six pack abs were covered in fluffy hair with a thick line of hair running up the middle. His hands were holding down his khakis with an open fly. The penis hung out of the V of the pant fly like the lord's candle. My brother left two cum dribs on the lower right corner. This was his first gay wanking session. Mother was waving the rice pot high in the air. She was completely oblivious that it had contained rice, which was now spilled over her hair, clothes, and the floor.
Obviously, I secretly followed my brother everywhere that week. By Friday, he had set up a date. If I may add, it took quite a bit of skill on my part to follow him for an hour through the busy streets. I was hiding behind the last antiquated red British telephone booth. He sat in a bistro chair made from skinny wood. He was all dapper and even wearing an elegant white hat with a black band. The other young man was rather bear-like. His chest was big. The suit was smooth. My dear father unduly interrupted me by pulling me into the air with both of his hands. I reached for the picture frame behind me. I waved the highlight of my presentation prematurely in the air. It was my brother's wet and first used condom ever framed and preserved to show his children.
My father said that it was for my own protection, when he explained why he locked me in the closet. Obviously, the reaction to my presentation was rather surprising. I had diligently collected all the evidence to paint a rather engaging portrait of my brother's sexual development. At the time, I used the night in the closet to take notes on my brother's coming out night. Later, I noticed the pun of being locked in the closet, when my brother figuratively came out of the closet. I learned about de-closeting being a delicate emotional process. My academic arrogance had cheated me out of observing my brother's coming out.
At the time, my class mates and family simply considered me nosy. I considered myself destined as a prodigy of anthropology. Unfortunately, my high school offered neither anthropology nor journalism. However, the school had Ekanga, our school's handyman. He was a jolly man, who took much joy in watching the teenagers at lunch brake. He'd break up fights and give heart broken girls flowers from the school garden. We'd watch the teenagers scatter around and chatter with each other.
My favorite pastime with Ekanga was making profiles. We'd pick a kid like pocket grabber boy. We nicknamed him that. He had a habit of walking up to a girl and asking her to look over his homework. As the girl would lean over his papers, he would slide clothes pretending to get a better look. Then, he'd put his right hand in his pant pocket and start shifting around the change. When the girl would suspect some kind of oddness in the air and shifted a bit away, he would tell her that he was really scared of the particular teacher. They'd usually keep helping him. The smart ones told him that they'd bring his homework corrected back at the end of break and walked away.
Ekanga and I were curious to find the origin of the boy's behavior. He'd soon graduate with the other eighteen year old boys. So, we made a bet. If I won, he promised to get me into an anthropology college. If he should win, I had to bring him a naked photo of my mother. He was a pervert in some ways and reminded me that college were a much bigger deal than a photo.
The last pocket boy's last girl was a buxom blonde Indian of fair skin. She wore a black net over her hair. Her eye lids were colored blue. Pearls were her ear rings on either side. She wore a tight blue sari. I was nervous to approach her. She gave me a quick hug. A hug is an utter warm feeling that distracts from one's purpose. The girl had not paid much mind to pocket boy. However, when his habit was revealed to her, she squirmed. A plan was laid to find the first girl. They would acquire pocket boy's notebooks. With the help of other girls, they would find the handwriting of the first girl ever to write in his notebooks to help him with homework.