Frédéric Bazille, Fisherman With A Net
The present peppery tittle-tattle I have heard enough at
clubs and drawing room discussions are about the full-frontal images of Orlando
Bloom’s penis as he was vacationing at a Sardinian beach in Italy with his
singer girlfriend Katy Perry. Bear in mind that this is something being quite
devoured by the very men who claim to be magnificent wielders of masculinity,
and those who fiercely refrain from murmuring anything ‘penis’ with the dread
of making them sound sexually devious. Yet, the same men appear fascinated by
the shade of skin, the size, the girth, the length, and can be seen debating on
how Bloom is uncircumcised when around sixty per cent of the world’s males have
their foreskin sacrificed by their parents, without their permission obviously,
soon after birth.
I would commence by drawing a quote from Orlando Bloom in the Nude that was published in The New Yorker, August 11,
2016 by Naomi Fry, a writer and
the copy chief at T: The New York Times Style Magazine, “Seeing Bloom’s
penis was exciting. (And I should say, too, so as not to seem fully shady, that
while I have no proof Bloom knew of the photographers, it seems to me that if
you’re a celebrity getting naked in a public place, you probably know that
having your picture taken is a strong possibility; and these were no telephoto
lens pictures.) First, there was the obvious thing of full-frontal male nudity,
which is still relatively rare to see—the cock, in our culture, too often
playing the role of that mysterious, precious prize behind a curtain. (And as
Adorno and Horkheimer once wrote, “only one girl can draw the lucky ticket”!)
Then, also, there was the fact that the grinning Bloom seemed to be having a
great time. More than this, his penis itself seemed … happy? Both man and
member appeared to reside in a relaxed nether-region, somewhere between
“casual” and “ready for action,” not hard but also not entirely soft, as if
saying, “I know you’re looking at me so I’ll be presentable, but I’m still, for
all intents and purposes, on a break, so I’m going to feign unawareness of your
gaze.” The whole thing felt offhandedly generous.”
While we are on the subject that is keeping the world excited
with its exposure, I would like to rewind a little and throw light on how menfolk
at our fitness clubs are rather inherently obsessed about men walking undressed
in our locker rooms. To provide you a quick outline, I workout at the Marriott Whitefield
and Oakwood at UB City. While the Marriott has people largely from Germany,
Britain, France, Belgium and New Zealand frequenting it, Oakwood sports a
predominantly Indian set of patrons with those from the Caucasian race showing
up rather rarely. In order to make one best understand things, I shall, therefore,
endeavour to recount an episode that happened with me earlier this year.
I was over with my workout at Oakwood and entered the
locker area. A gentleman who regularly visits the club scurried up to me. “Have
you seen that guy?” he uttered in an undertone. I turned in the direction
of that guy he was referring to and spotted
a well-shaped man, about six feet in height, reading something on his iPhone. “Do
you see what I see,” asked the gentleman, his voice still low. My vision
intact, I failed to unearth his motive and thus arched my eyebrows probingly.
“He walks naked, that bloke from Berlin.” I studied my gym mate with
scepticism. “And he does this daily.”
“I see,” I said without any emotion.
“I so want to tell him to cover his package.” He stopped
short as the man passed us by and bid us a good evening. I wished him a good
evening and opened my locker. The gentleman came closer, “It’s so wrong,” he
went on. “What is?” I asked, retrieving my box of dry fruits from my gym bag. “It’s
so wrong to walk like that in India,” said the gentleman in hushed tones, eyeballing
to make sure nobody was within earshot. “I walk about like that at the gym in
Marriott,” I said nonchalantly, plummeting my teeth into a kernel of almond.
The gentleman instantly wore a flabbergasted expression, “You strip
completely?” he enquired.
“I do, yes, when I am changing into my underpants after I have unwrapped my towel,
or when I am on my way to the steam or sauna.”
“Fully?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t embarrass you?”
“What’s to be
embarrassed about, it is not like I am putting on a show?”
“What about
the Jacuzzi. You sit naked in it too?”
“Everywhere.”
“You don’t feel embarrassed?”
“I thought you asked me that a few seconds ago.”
He swallowed as his face turned a shade of red, “You are creepy,”
he said with an uncomfortable grin, grabbed a Turkish towel and made away to
the steam room. I shut my locker, and enroute to the shower I thought to myself,
how bewildering was human nature; I could not bring myself to decipher the
conundrum around why Indian men were horrified at the sight of something that was
such a central chunk of our culture – the male genitals are worshipped in our
country, and yet they behaved like it was blasphemy to set eyes on the nether
regions of another man.
The temperament of that exchange got me thinking about the
fuss. What was it really? Aren’t we habituated to seeing men bare-butt in our excessively
skin-centric society? Haven’t these men who feign to be outraged by nudity, not
set their eyes any pornography at all? Or do they possess mystical powers to mist
out the men and watch only the women while watching such films? You have a child in India scampering naked, and
that is acceptable? Aren’t we grown-up enough to look at
our penises maturely, or are we that naïve and childlike that the vista of someone
else’s member should evoke in us peculiar reactions when it is an accepted
appendage – an ordinary portion of their body like our penis is on our own?
Methinks nakedness must be associated with naturalness. It
ought to be treated with a confident rather than a conservative spirit. Methinks
that we need to move beyond our caddish behaviour. Methinks that a rational
adult will not squirm on seeing another man’s penis. And if it worries him, then
there are graver issues that he might have to scrutinise regarding why it is disturbing
him more than what is required, considering that the men who are changing, or
walking about naked, aren’t doing it for anyone’s titillation, but merely as an
extension of their upbringing, culture and habit.
As a heterosexual man,
secure in his masculinity, I would like to clear the dust on three things,
first, that when people have no problem with
their nakedness, then you ought not to have a problem with people, and this is
just about the healthiest unsolicited advise I can offer at this point to
anybody who finds themselves confused about such matters. Second, I am okay with it in so
far as it does not disrupt the standards of what is permissible. If I were to
stroll on the street, or make a spectacle of my nakedness for the sake of
seeking pleasure in spaces other than say the sports club, then that would
entail that I have my head examined. Third, the fact remains that every one of
us gazes at it for that one dot of a second when we see it uncovered and in
front of us. It is normal human tendency. It has nothing to do with curiosity; has
more to do with men wanting to size the person up, mainly to ascertain who is
better endowed. It is about the survival of the fittest in order to propagate
one’s progeny. And when our breeding instinct kicks in, we are not consciously
at fault; it is just that biology makes us behave in such a manner.
I must confess that it
has been a long time since I have found myself in a relationship with a woman.
Not that I am deprived of the company of the opposite sex, it is purely that I
find it distressing to make any conversation with them. They are either too taken
in by embellishing their superficial appearances, or too engaged in scheming what
type of man to seize within the manufactured net of deceit they have spread far afield in order to ensure
a catch suitable of providing them a life of luxury and material contentment. Due
to that culture, that very strongly rules the roost, I have tussled with a
magnifying glass in order to discover a woman who could talk to me, and have
come away finding those ordained in wasting time on inconsequential rambling. I
don’t know, perhaps I am a bigger fool when I am aware that it shouldn’t
surprise me that when they are accustomed to such a pattern, to then expect
them to think when they are preoccupied with such inanities is simply asking
for too much.
I would like to conclude
with an experience I had with a date somewhat recently. In less than five
minutes of our meeting, I understood that not a strand of our wavelengths matched.
It was the most tedious two hours where I struggled to make up sentences that
made no sense to me, and yet I found her delighting in my unimaginative way of
communication. Let me give you an example. I told her that Winston Churchill and Charles Dickens
were imaginary characters, whereas Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes had really
existed, and much to my dismay, she bought it, and most genuinely. The irony of
our digitally distracted era I told myself – people are dumber than ever before
when information actually exists at their fingertips. Sitting before her, I imagined
what people some years from now would think of those names. I guess they’ll
probably ask if those are names of amusement parks or older names of mountains. When we were done with
our luncheon, I walked her to her car at the parking of the restaurant. She
leaned her back on her car and we kissed, something that I felt was obligatory.
I know what you are thinking and I’ll let you think what you are thinking. I soon
observed her opening the first two buttons of the shirt she was wearing. Her
cleavage now in full view, we remained facing each other without speaking a
word. Deeming my silence as a mark of approval, she undid another button and
reached for my hand. I resisted. “Sweetheart,” she said seductively, “don’t you
want to see my naked tits?” I hesitated and gulped, “To be perfectly honest I
would much prefer a cup of coffee,” I answered gently. She buttoned her shirt,
sat in the car and drove away quietly. The instant she was out of my vision, I
rang my mate who had set this silly ‘meet up’ as he described it and told him that
he would have no testicles left to flaunt about to anyone the next time he even
tries to fix me up with someone I am least interested in. “I don’t know what to
do with you,” he exclaimed, “how am I to help you get laid if you only want a cerebral
connection.”
“Have
I ever reached out for assistance in order to get laid?” I asked curtly.
“Fuck
the brains, my fella,” thundered my friend, “for once let your cock talk
directly to her cunt. That’s the connection you should be looking for and not
some mental shit you speak!”
“What
makes you feel I am deprived of what I need?” I asked.
“Dude,”
he said with some irritation, “if you had only married on time we wouldn’t have
to break our heads on you.”
“How
very considerate,” I shot back.
“Don’t
mock me!”
I
laughed heartily.
“No,
man,” his voice assumed an air of someone trying to convince a child, “if you
had married when you were twenty-five or twenty-seven, you would have found
yourself happy, and you would have adjusted to her ways too. The problem is
that time is far spent, and you are so fucking unyielding now that you give no
scope for someone to find some space in your heart.”
“I
was particular even back then.”
“Yes,
you have always been a pig.”
I
laughed even louder and told him that as much as I appreciated his concern,
marriage was not the ticket to permanent and unparalleled joy, and that the
person one needed to be with, would put in an appearance with the timely assistance
of the forces of nature, and to organise for dates like he had done was not only
unmerited, but made one look like a buffoon. “I tried my best, dude,” my friend
said, “but you are way too stubbornly old-fashioned to budge so I am resting my
case.”
Care and concern radiated
from what my friend wanted for me, but bluntly put, ‘I’ did not want for ‘me’
what ‘he’ wanted for ‘me’ and this is where people do not realise that they
have to let people be. Initially, I attempted to explain what was on my mind,
but after a while I stopped expecting people to understand me, or sensibilities
like mine, because ignorance was all around me, and often arrogant and proud,
so my second slice of unsolicited advise is – we each have our own life
sciences that we draw from, our own insight and our independent emotional receptivity,
and if you happen to fall into the similar bracket of a free mind like me
that is also changing, fragile, self-doubting, then I reckon it is time you do
the same too with your life: stop worrying about the ignorant and about what
they think. It may hurt some, and it may annoy many more, and it may be the
sternest indication of individualistic thinking, but let ‘you’ be your ‘own’
paramount, because at the end of the day it is you who will be living with yourself,
and the people who’ve articulated their judgments will be found nowhere around
you since that is how the world is, ready to dissect, but on the run when you
truly need them.
I know the gentleman at
the gym would go back speculating what the heck was on my mind to be strutting
my member in public. For him it was a violation of decency, exhibitionism of
sorts, for me nothing but the luxury of the coolest comfort level and
confidence that I had attained a sense of enlightenment where to be in union
with my own body and soul brought me unparalleled euphoria, and it was not
threatening in the least, to see the nude, or be in the nude. The woman would possibly
quote me to her friends at her next kitty party, and they would probably have a
hearty laugh wondering what a waste I was not to have embraced her bosom, or dunked
my staff between her legs, but alas, if it were naked tits I were looking for
then there is no dearth of them to find near me, and this is exactly where I go
back to where I began: I don’t quite care if people understand me or they don’t
understand me, and this is not because I think of myself as somebody above-board,
but because me, once again thinks, that people have stopped to think, and people
who do not examine all things intensely and relentlessly have no room in my
head or heart. Anything that is nourishing and sustainable matters to me the
most, and I revere connections and conversations with those whom I want to be conjoined
with, because in my fibre of life, great connections begin with great
conversations, and the more naked we each are, the better it is.
