Losing My Virginity and Other Dumb Ideas by Madhuri Banerjee Read Free Book Online

company so much! He had rejuvenated my brain cells. He didn’t have body odour or smell like the Garden of Eden. What more could I ask for? But there was a problem. And I knew it as soon as we went from chatting like friends to being romantic.
    ‘You know, when I saw you at Nitya’s wedding, you looked absolutely ravishing,’ he said. I smiled and he continued, ‘I knew then that you were the one for me.’
    ‘The one?’ I laughed. ‘We didn’t even know each other then!’
    ‘But Kaveri, haven’t you felt sometimes it takes only one meeting to know a person for a lifetime, and sometimes it takes a lifetime to know a person?’ I nodded vaguely. I’d never had that connection with anyone but I didn’t want to seem like a novice in front of this worldly wise man.
    ‘I feel as if I know you already. Let me take you on a real date.’
    ‘A
real
date? Like where?’ I asked. I thought we were on a date.
    ‘Well, I would whisk you away to Paris,’ he said excitedly. I raised an eyebrow. I knew he would say Paris since we had been discussing how it was such a beautiful city some time back. ‘Then from there we would go on a wine tasting trail across France. Bordeaux, Chablis, blah blah … We would go in the Eurorail, staying as long as we want in the area of the wine we liked. We would lodge in small bed-and-breakfasts, waking up next to each other, taking showers together and I would get you tea to remove the hangover we would have from too much wine and sex the previous night.’ I sat transfixed and listened as he continued with great enthusiasm.
    ‘Oh yes. Our sex would be wonderful. It would be a mutual bonding of our bodies, pleasuring each other at regular intervals till we need to complete the act. We would wake each other in the middle of the night and sneak out to the lawn and make mad, passionate love, hoping no one saw us, but secretly relishing the fact that we were being dangerous, risqué, different! We would sit by the river and see the beautiful French countryside and have cups of espresso and pastries. Our lives would be so perfect! We would have wine, see works of art and make love till we were exhausted, and then have some more.’
    He looked at me now and said, ‘That’s what I would do with you. Is that more than one date? I’m sorry!’
    I looked at him and smiled. That would have been so perfect and I told him that. It would have been a lovely life, not to mention an awesome date. There was only problem. I wasn’t attracted to him. And really, wasn’t that just too mushy for the first date? I mean, get a grip. You are, after all, a man!
    We must have spent several hours together and yet I couldn’t feel the ‘spark’. I only started feeling icky from all that sweetness. I didn’t know love at all but I knew one thing: there needed to be some sort of chemistry, some sort of balance. And even if we were completely alike, I couldn’t feel it. It was uncanny.
    I could see my life flash in front of my eyes. If we got married, we would do the same things together. We would complete each other’s sentences and we would never differ on vacations, children, art. We would be One—in the truest sense of the word. And after a while, we would get bored. We would
need
the difference. We would long for the new, the exciting, and the passion.
    So I decided that we could be friends. And I left him with tears in his eyes and a broken dream of a forever with me. I also left him with a fake number in case he got psycho and started sending me more flowers to woo me back. I decided never to let my parents interfere with my love life again.

Seven
    After going on a few dates I realized that even though I had opened myself up to the Universe, I hadn’t opened up to men. The men, to me, were useless. They didn’t contribute anything to me to allow myself to sleep with them, much less be my Great Love. After all, I was giving them a really precious part of myself. My heart. That had to be worth