Waiting for Jonathan Koshy by Murzban Shroff

Author:Murzban Shroff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independent Thinkers
Published: 2019-04-16T14:00:00+00:00

Nine

Dhruv had been with Jonathan in college. Senior to him by four years, he had known him longer than us. Enrolled in the Arts’ section, Jonathan had been a hit with his professors and colleagues. Although his attendance in class was low, his professors liked him for the fact that he knew his stuff. History, literature, psychology, philosophy: he had a knowledge of these that went beyond the textbooks. He read for pleasure and he read all the time. He also had a cut-to-the-bone logic, which he shared with his professors, after class, and this habit of his exasperated them to the point where they would explode: “Why don’t you bring this logic to class, Jonathan, why don’t you attend lectures?” to which he’d say, “Because this assembly-line system of teaching is not for me. I will choose what I need to know and will do it on my time.”

Being in an Arts’ course, he was surrounded by sixteen and seventeen-year-old girls eager for friendship. He, of course, was looking for more, hoping to score with them. But sadly, the girls saw in him a brotherly figure, someone they wanted to confide in, someone whom they could trust. “That too is a quality, Jonathan,” we would say, “dependable guys are hard to come by,” and he would say, “Yeah, but I don’t want to be trusted, guys, I want to get laid, every night.”

Well, after a couple of bad starts, clumsy starts (no need to go into that now, no need to embarrass our friend), he did make it with Ruchita, whom he never really forgot for the way he treated her. He had an explanation for his retreat. “The psychic load of sex is too much to handle,” he’d say. “I can’t deal with the aftermath: the emotions, the guilt. I can’t handle the fact that I have invaded some sacred space and am held accountable for it. This whole business about accountability spooks me. It annoys me that I need to back up my instincts with words of commitment. Why go beyond the act? Why give it any more importance than what it really is? An act of instinct, of surrender! Frankly, if that’s how it’s going to be with every woman I bed, I would rather go to a whore, take my pleasure, and be done with it the moment I am done. The sex act is misinterpreted when we give it too much importance. Look how the beasts do it, as a matter of routine, as cold functional release, without guilt or attachment. I have come to realize there are two of me, a romantic me and a bestial me, and not necessarily should one survive at the expense of the other. The problem with being in a steady relationship is that it denies the two sides in you. It confines you to an order that is in conflict with your basic instincts. In binding you to a commitment, it denies you free will. It bludgeons you into a blind romanticism, the delusion of a permanence that doesn’t exist.

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