The Hill

By Arsch Sharma

I see the little bright spots on my laptop screen out the corner of my eye. They say the first step  towards writing a great short is getting your ass in the chair. Well I’m here now, on this breezy June  afternoon, listening to the dull hum of distant traffic and the mechanical spurts of some rickshaw.  And I’m out of words. 

A couple of years ago, around this time, I was on a bus back home. And after a gruelling puke stenched fourteen hour ride, I got to the riverside. June’s a great month – it’s the month when I ask  myself how far I’ve come in the pursuit of forgetting. I go out on a date each June, on June fourth,  to be precise – because when your date asks you about your birthday, telling her that it’s tomorrow  makes for good small talk. 

Every evening, I check my phone and swipe right on a bunch of people – a glance, swipe. Too  short: swipe right. Too fat: swipe right. Androgynous: swipe right if they look more woman than  man… And then I walk out in the balcony and light a smoke. I take it between my fingers and pose,  as if it were some high contrast monochrome in soft lights. As if there’s a jazz tune playing in the  distance. 

Last summer I came across Richa, who was crazy enough to like me back. We went out a couple of  times, but I wasn’t looking. She went on about how she’d always dreamed of practicing psychiatry,  and listening to people sitting cross-legged in a big leather chair. She saw herself in swishy silk  shirts that felt rich. Maybe she wasn’t looking either. But we had one too many daiquiris, and I  couldn’t get it up. So that was it. 

I have a bowl of fruit before me – freshly plucked cherries and strawberries. And the flies are  walking in bursts and hiccups around them. Some seem languid though, enjoying the fine spring  weather after four days of rain, and they prime their wings and rub their hind legs in the shade. I  have a jar of lemonade by my side. I wish I’d made iced tea instead. 

Jimmy and I go for a morning run each day. We’ve been doing this for about four weeks now. I get  off the bed at five in the morning, and I walk to his house four blocks away, from where we jog  across the town all the way to the Firhill hotel for about six miles. He always has a cigarette  dangling off his lip, even while running. “Helps the lungs get stronger”, he claims, “Just like our  grandfathers ran!” And I dredge myself behind him, while he glides across the cold tarmac in his  keds, to the basketball court. I never tell him how tired I am. 

When the sun sets, I walk to the airport and sit in a sweet spot by the blue taxi counter. And I watch  the airplanes fly high above me into the fading twilight. I bet they’re trying to catch the last of the  fire. By the arrivals, rows of people scratch their balls with placards, waiting for other people  who’ve flown into this night – some of them will wake up tomorrow and try harder to chase the  light, while some will stay back, vanquished. 

It’s June 1, and my prospects of finding a date are bleak. Maybe I’ll have to resort to internet porn  on the eve of my birthday. I don’t mind it, but memory is relentless. Sometimes I wish I could cast  my memories in flesh – if not anything, at least I’d have their knuckles in my face. A black eye or a  bloody nose would be my road to redemption. I want them to be vexed with my reality, just as I am  with their intangibility. If I could, I’d drop the fuckers off an airplane.

Three Christmases ago, I stood amongst the ball scratchers, waiting for her with a placard that I’d  made hurriedly on the metro. We made love that night – it’s a touching phrase, making love. It’s that  lingering dream that seems to fade in the morning against the burning dawn, elusive until the last  moment. And we went on, until we couldn’t anymore. Fairy lights aren’t ever good enough. 

I write about them, just as one writes a journal – undulating letters, a soft cusp here, a forlorn ache  there. And three Christmases hence, last December, I found myself sitting on a pavement by the  train station, still writing, freezing in my hoodie. I’m still waiting for that punch. 

Swipe right: too short. Swipe right: too fat. Swipe right: too pretty. 

I matched with Kim on 22nd December. We met on Christmas Eve, and I never got to understand  what she meant when she told me that she was dying. We talked in our blindness. We drank in our  death. We lived the immense catastrophe of what goes on between men and women. And then she  was gone while I lay dreaming of bones. 

But that was months ago. And now I’m here, staring at the cursor blinking on my screen. And I’m  waiting for the blows, the slams and the kicks. I await the great epiphany of my defeat that I’d trace  on the screen remorselessly. Bukowski liked how Hemingway held his typewriter – “Like a gun”,  he had said. And I imagine him trying to grab it by the carriage, trying to shoot, le petit mots, but  drinking himself blind instead. I wait and I wait and I wait, like an exasperated lunatic waits for the  sea, but seems it’s the sands for me today. 

“I’m going out with Aditi tonight”, Jimmy declared this morning in the court. “I think it’s going  well.” 

“Good for you. Good for you.” 

“You want a puff?” He always held his cigarettes against his ring finger, and smoked through his fist  as if it were a chillum. 

But I was out of breath, and shook my head. “So, so you’re planning something special tonight?” I  managed to stutter. 

“Maybe, who knows? Maybe little Jimmy’s getting some tonight.” he grabbed his crotch and gave it  a tug over his grey jogging shorts. 

“You seem confident.” 

His drag was so vigorous that I could have sworn that I saw half the cigarette crumble to the  ground. “It’s all up for grabs. You’re too timid, writer. When a ravenous cougar presents herself to  you, you make sure to play the prey. It’s in the books, I tell you. You should know better.” 

“Fuck off Jimmy. I wish her husband walks in on you. I wish he skins and keeps your head in the  living room for a trophy. How about that?” 

He waved dismissively at my anguish and spat out the butt, “You’re funny. What do you know  about dames, writer? You’re pasty and sun-starved, far removed from reality. Look at yourself!  You’ve gone soft, still panting from the run!” 

Swipe right: too fat. Swipe right: too thin. Swipe right: too insecure. 

And it goes on.

Two summers ago, June: I almost came close to having it. But I don’t see that guy in the mirror  anymore. He talked to her over the phone, he called her that famous two syllable word that lovers  call each other. And he drank with her while they were a thousand miles apart. They climbed the hill  that night, in their keds. They smoked cigarettes. They were almost there, and it felt as if he were  just a fifth of an inch away from the possibility of having it all – an airport cab away from the  promise, but love came back and grabbed him by the balls, and hurled him away. It made him me.  Days later, he heard her mutter something, it was too muffled. But he could tell from how she  looked at him, the words that had fractured her breath: 

“I could love you too, you know?” 

Swipe right: too fat. Swipe right: too thin. Swipe right: too desperate. 

I finally give up. I can’t write tonight. 

Jimmy says that the mind can only take as much as the body. Murakami runs ten miles a day when  he’s writing. It takes him deeper within where cat devouring whisky men, and sad blind women  live. Maybe getting your ass in the chair isn’t enough. 

Forgive me Jimmy. I can’t run anymore. I can’t make the hill

By Arsch Sharma