Dating : Volume 2: The Novelist by Infidélité de l’amour

Book One | Chapter Five

The café was cozy, warm and comfortable. Sounds normal, right? And no, not Starbucks! It was a nice place near our home and about the size of a typical coffee joint. I was taking a green tea and a hot chocolate, and Sparsh was sitting next to me with a Powerade and Vietnamese iced tea. This is where we typically spent our Wednesday mornings, usually coming in early to the café around six am and staying until about ten or eleven am. Our unspoken rule was that we wouldn’t start our work until 8 or 8:30 am. We would find things to chat and talk about several topics for the first two hours; we forced ourselves into this habit to keep ourselves socially amicable and our relationship intimate. It was easy with Sparsh…we could chat about anything and everything without having to worry whether we were right or wrong about something. Around 8:30 am, we would order breakfast from the café and then begin our work. In our conversations, we often discussed things related to Sparsh’s writing and novels, Ré’s well-being, and the myriad aspirations I had for a career of my own. Really though, it was mainly about Sparsh’s work. His work was incredibly exciting and fun to talk about. Moreover, Ré and I came fully to life through his work and in fact had an easier time resolving our questions and struggles about life through his novels. Sparsh was unbelievably patient with both Ré and I, listening to each and every detail and feeling we shared with him about our lives. He would rarely ask questions and just let us talk continuously. Sometimes it became difficult because we were expecting at least a question or two in between, and Sparsh would patiently stay quiet and continue to stare at us with intrigue and his mysterious, pretty eyes. He was challenging us, like Ré challenged Sparsh. He wanted us to expand our own curiosities and intuition; to start asking our own questions as our monologues moved forward. Sparsh is so polite too. Even if he has to take notes, he’ll never make you feel like he is distracted or inattentive to your voice, dialogue and presence. He’ll keep you in his wonder as you learn to expand your own imagination. And no, it’s not that Sparsh is trying to be excessively polite and being kind just to put on a good image. If he needs to, he will interfere to ask questions or guide the conversation in a certain direction. He is not passive.

Sparsh is certainly not a shrink (psychologist). He has no bias against this profession; in fact, he encourages therapy and psychiatry and describes them as incredible tools of support for those working their way out of emotional, physical and mental trauma and struggle. In fact, he is seeing a psychiatrist (medicinally and therapy) himself to help him work through personal trauma he experienced both in his childhood and his fantasy (subconscious). Sparsh clearly delineates the work he is doing and is careful not to provide therapy himself. He is respectful of the profession and does not have the arrogance to act as its surrogate. He is very gentle with people’s emotions and makes an extra effort to tell them that he will not interrogate their traumas or experiences psychologically. If their traumas or experiences do come up when they are talking, Sparsh lets them decide how they want to proceed forward. To be clear, I’m talking the Sparsh who is meeting people to acquire more information, detail and inspiration for his novel work. Sparsh as a friend is the same, just less formal and lazier with his words. If anything, Sparsh is the therapist you’ve always wanted and fantasized about: gorgeous, kind, sweet, affectionate, an amazing listener, a fantastic thinker, and intentionally flirtatious. You’re rarely thinking about what you’re saying around Sparsh; you’re just thinking about being with him on some tropical island or city park and lying next to him doing nothing: letting him pet, caress and hold you, while you eat him to your heart’s content.

As Sparsh dedicates an increasing amount of his time to writing (in the novel form), his body and mind are adapting to his new life. His voice is sweeter. It cares less for a smooth texture (like most wannabe players) and in fact has grown more coarse across its punctuation, words, sentences and enunciation. I don’t mean to say his voice has gotten more hoarse and ‘manly’; more-so that it feels firm, mysterious, invigorating, and intuitive. He is patient and quiet with his movements; he is steeped more in thought than speech and less stuck in the words he does say. He has grown very open to both normal and philosophical dialogue in his speech and his writing. He is more comfortable with describing the details of settings, the minute movements occurring during dialogue or action scenes, and letting the chapter bridge its gaps through descriptions of casual (perhaps daily or weekly) habits and affairs. It’s nice. I can easily read and enjoy his writing and its mixed tempo. Most interestingly, writing has changed Sparsh’s general approach to people when he is an intimate dialogue with them (either talking about his novel or casually). When you sit opposite to him and look at his eyes and forehead, you visualize this sort of deep, red, invisible energy oozing out of his mind. Sort of like ink from a pen. He is metaphorically writing a narrative even while he is talking to you; he is using that narrative to guide you and the conversation to where it needs to go, and along the way he is integrating and organizing your speech for you. It’s really unique and different. It has its own healing power being around a writer, a novelist, like Sparsh.