the strange fruits of unpaid emotional labour

i wanna say this one has a happy ending but i’m not sure who's happy and what about.

deep in the trenches of covid, 2020, in my drop year for JEE, wringing time dry in my nani’s house in kerala, i get a call from one of my best friends in dubai. her ex had just been accused of sexual assault.

i knew the guy first hand too. he introduced me to her actually. i just knew my loyalties when they broke up eventually.

he had a soft spot for me tho. he had said to me once, “you might just be the smartest guy in class, aadi. after me, obviously.” with a dumb smile to assure me that was his best shot at a compliment.

so 3 years later, when he’d moved out to uni, abused every substance he got his hands on, forced himself on a girl, had a case filed in his uni against his name, had all his old friends cut him off, & had every last bit of his shit hit the fan, he decided to call the smartest guy in the class. clearly, he had missed something.

my friend had her own sources and had already filled me in on the headlines but i still wanted to hear it from his mouth. i felt angry & betrayed, & i had questions. & i asked them all, one by one, & back came the replies, one by one, never enough, never satisfying, like black tar tumbling out of his mouth, & me wading through dead bogs, looking through a puzzle for something like a story.

but only the one who filed the complaint could have ever given me a story.

what i got instead was a curation of sobs. for two weeks i was followed by a voice laced with palpable fear, & stream after stream of unadulterated doubt. & i responded as patiently as my blood allowed. in two weeks, he found christianity. cuz only the lord & saviour would offer him forgiveness.

what i got instead was gratitude and credit. a fucked up saviour complex. a more terrible i can fix him complex. i followed through my title as designated friend with a bitter taste in the back of my tongue, still exactly as out of place as i’d always felt in life.

carcerality is still something i feel ambivalently about. i don't believe punishment could ever be an agent of change in social life. rewards & punishments work, at best, at an individualistic neurological level. & the sweetest inner child in the world wants to believe there is always hope of rehabilitation. but the state of impunity allowed to men in our world is a legacy enough to fuck an example out of.

sorry, i love words.

but, barring all that, it's been 5 years now, & i do, strangely enough, want to believe he's become a better person. he had started therapy that month itself after my resignation was signed off. we fell a bit out of touch but he called me when he graduated. he became a doctor, like his parents. he started seeing a girl two years ago who he called to tell me had been a great influence in his life. & that was it.

oh, except december last year, he had texted:

yo aadi

you bi?

like bisexual?

like do u suck dick?

to which i said “lol yeah why”, & he said:

just had a minor bi-encounter and it's causing a psyche-crash out

we planned to debrief on call but that never happened.

march ‘26

yo aadi

what's your relationship status

“lol partnered why”

threesome with girlfriend

“oooohh??????”

no reply until april ‘26, i wake up late for college, 10am, roll over my side to find my phone, see a notification from him. a one-time-view image. no other message. oh god. click. ass.

grunge, grainy filter. with a thin white border.

his hands behind his back, handcuffed in black leather.

on his knees, facing away.

ready to be shot to the stars.

“wow good morning to me”

haha.

so turns out i’m bi.

& i’ve got to confess, i’ve always had the hots for you.

“so slay for you.”

“i’m actually not surprised.”

haha, shame you're halfway across the world.

maybe we should sext, vc?

“oho”

should have said “sorry, can't, you signed off my resignation” actually.

and, “girlfriend seems cool though.”