Our Boyfriends said, this isn't a fairytale, but it's as close as you're ever going to get
"Orange Girl" by Pia Quintano
Our boyfriends were one guy cloned. Dress shirts and khakis, black leather shoes. Gel slicked hair making them look older than they were. Their feet constantly tapped on the floor while troubleshooting HTML or Python code in offices with glass doors in the Andheri suburb of Mumbai where we interned.
Before they were our boyfriends, they stopped by our 6X6 cubicles introducing themselves, their arms crossed over their bodies, their eyes running up and down the length of our bodies, measuring our lives so far. When we ran into them in the breakroom, or on our way to the printer or restroom, they waved at us. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything.
Before we had boyfriends, we dreamt of a fairytale wedding with someone like them.
The day they became our boyfriends was a day like any another.
We learned our boyfriends slowly.
In Uber/Lyft or on a commuter train, our boyfriends took out their phones and watched updates from the stock market—numbers making out and breaking up with each other. Our boyfriends shared their locations with each other and us—blue dots cutting through the grid of Mumbai.
Our boyfriends moved as a pack, whether they convened for Vada Paav at Chaupati or strolled on Marine Drive or met for monthly brunches in Indian Accent. When they sent us their group photos, they looked so alike we often tagged the wrong ones.
Our boyfriends spoke in baritone voice while calling each other Bro. In the evenings, when they came to our apartments (we shared with other working gals), and leaned in to kiss us, their breath smelled of stale coffee, the sharp plastic corner of their IDs scratched against our skin—a check mark for a date.
Sometimes our boyfriends booked rooms in Marriott (at reduced company rates) and invited us over. Our boyfriends shared porn clips circulating on their (boys only) WhatsApp groups. We adjusted the lights in the rooms to make our skin look brighter (like the girls in the videos) than it was, but it never worked. We made sure our boyfriends slipped on condoms before they spoke dirty, came hard and fast, often in the doggy style. Afterwards, our boyfriends sprawled their thin legs on the bed, socks on, watching cricket highlights and dozing off while we sat in the blue glow of the TV, still wet and hot like Mumbai, swiping profiles left and right on our secret dating profiles.
Our boyfriends made us swear not to tell other girls about our sex lives, but we discussed it anyway.
On Wednesdays, our boyfriends went to Ganesh temple with their parents. On Tuesdays and Fridays, they avoided liquor. On Saturdays, when they’d want to go bowling and we’d refuse to accompany them because it wasn’t something we wanted to do, they’d call us Babe (reserved for special occasions) and buy us makeup from Chanel and Bobby Brown on our way back.
At social events, we called our boyfriends’ fathers Uncles as we hugged them. They squeezed our slim torsos, their protruding bellies pressed against our navels. From a distance, our boyfriends raised their glasses and smiled. It’s a sign of acceptance, they gestured, you should be happy.
Our boyfriends’ mothers looked miserable, despite our compliments on their outdated saris and gaudy accessories, despite us overlooking their eyebrows pushed up unevenly with cheap Botox and their anxiety (from the maids not showing up on time to not being able to sleep) climbing the slope of their chests obscuring their faces that might have been beautiful once.
Fake? Our boyfriends’ mothers asked running their fingers over our sparkling long nails and shifting their curious gaze from our pierced belly buttons to tattooed ankles—how do you walk in such big heels, beta? inducing a certainty that they cared for us, and we almost called them MummiJi until they caught us vaping on the terrace, their voices slipping from tight-lipped poise to a full-blown complaint—do your parents know about your smoking, huh? Startled, we retracted our billowing lungs into the hollows of our chests, our gaze scraping the sky. Until one of us whispered, Dude, my boyfriend suggested wearing a salwar kameez or a sari next time onwards, and we were terrified at the idea of not being in shorts and cropped tops anymore. Perhaps this is our future, another one of us pointed at our boyfriends’ mothers phoning their drivers (waiting in the underground garage) because their husbands were drunk and talking shit, eyeing young women walking past them, a veil of smoke, loud ringtones and curses between us. Later in our rooms, when night fell on our eyes, we dreamed how to get rid of our in-laws once we were married.
When we visited our parents, our mothers enquired if we were getting engaged soon. We didn’t have an answer, so they continued, have you touched your would-be in-laws feet? You need to show the values we gave you. This time you better learn to cook … their voices stirring up a familiar ache as we went into our rooms and locked the doors. In the morning, our fathers shifted their eyes from behind the newspapers to us and sighed. When we served them tea with their favorite biscuits, and hugged them good morning, they smelled like we remembered them as little girls, but they stayed stiff as if we had failed them. We longed to return to the city, to our boyfriends. Before we left for Mumbai, we hugged them tight, and held on to the soft sounds they made, leaving the little girls they knew at their doorsteps.
Sometimes we met men (from the dating apps) in a coffee shop far away from where we worked and lived. Most of them affirmed this was the first time they were trying an app to meet a girl. Liars, we muttered under our breaths. They called us bold and feminist. We never met them again.
We should’ve known something was different the day our boyfriends proposed. The way they slow-blinked, you know Babe, I love you, their arms circled around us cautiously.
I know, Babe, we replied. Our boyfriends cleared their throats and pulled out what looked like ring boxes from their pockets. I love you, loveyouloveyou, we shrieked. And our boyfriends paused as if to hold on to that image—our mouths parted, our eyes reflecting that nervous energy back.
When we watched the sunsets on the polluted skyline of Mumbai the first time as official couples, our boyfriends called the usual ochre-red brilliance in the sky fucking brilliant. We walked on Juhu beach hand in hand, our gaze checking the tiny solitaires on our fingers like faint, nameless stars a million miles away.
It’s perfect for you, they cheered and squeezed our hands, kissed us deep, their tongues fat snakes in our mouths, in the background those damn gulls calling out, sand grinding under our feet like motors running on want.
We tried to smile. Our eyes tear-glassed because of the sun or a growing uncertainty in our chest, our throats choked momentarily, as if we were leaving something important behind. Isn’t this the life we have asked for? Yes, but ... We could hear our thoughts colliding.
Are you crying, babe?
A little, we whispered, pulled our rings out, and held them high. It had rained that morning, and the humidity was unbearable, but we let the sweat flow from our forehead, our armpits, the soft behind our knees, light unbolted from the sky in the golden circles between our finger pads.
What are you doing, you’ll lose the ring, our boyfriends snapped. We kept walking—fast and faster, as if invisible threads pulled us forward like kites soaring in the wind, somewhere along the way letting the diamonds slip from our palms.
Babe, our boyfriends called but we didn’t stop until we didn’t hear their voices anymore, until we were surrounded by strangers. We fell on our knees, pulled out our phones and turned off the location services. Who would have imagined this? We looked around and waited for our breathing to ease, riddled with a mix of fear and relief. The sun sank into the Arabian sea and the colors of the sky unleashed on the frothy waves that drenched our folded legs and shifted the sand beneath our skin, making us shiver each time a bit more than the last.
About the Author
Tara Isabel Zambrano is a South Asian writer and the author of a short-story collection Ruined A Little When We Are Born by DZANC books upcoming in Fall 2024. She lives in Texas.
About the Artist
Pia Quintano is a NYC-based writer/painter who often suggests narratives in her painting work, as well as fiction that emphasizes the visual. Her paintings were sold at the Frank J. Miele Contemporary American Folk Art Gallery in NYC until it closed.