In the neon-painted, unfriendly city of Bangalore with its startups and its clubs, he finds himself going back to the poem called Broken Tower by Hart Crane, the gay American poet whose epigraph reads 'lost at sea'. 'I want to explore things beyond the bed. Sometimes he would borrow gay fiction to read and that was how he felt a little less lonely.Īnd now, as an openly gay man, the sexual encounters as part of the subculture in the gay world that's often called 'cum dump' are what makes him wonder if it is his sexuality that could be what makes him lonely. He wasn't brave enough to go to the dark enclosures in Cubbon Park in the city he grew up in as a closeted gay guy to understand the gay experience. I left him a message late night asking him if he would tell me his story. There have been many conversations over the years with men who have felt strange because they chose to love men. Some stories must tumble out of the closet. This is how we transcribe notes on loneliness, on love and on loss. asking them if they think they can tell their story. In trying to locate the loneliness of others, I figured I was on the map and if you zoomed in, you could see me sitting by the glass door, looking out and on the phone with another lonely soul 1,000 or more miles away.
