{"id":28945,"date":"2026-01-16T12:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T06:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/?p=28945"},"modified":"2026-01-19T11:53:55","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T06:23:55","slug":"not-quite-anything-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/not-quite-anything-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Quite Anything"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I met Ithamar on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. It wasn\u2019t the kind of rain you find in films \u2013 the dramatic kind that is romantic and gentle, hinting at kisses to come. No, this was the kind that settled in your bones, the hard and wet kind, that wrapped itself around you and made you wonder if you\u2019d ever feel dry again. He sat at the rear of the campus coffee shop, tracing his fingers along the spine of a worn edition of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man<\/em>, as though the story would seep into him through his fingertips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was something about him that tugged at a thread within me, the sort of recognition that makes you feel older than you are, as though recalling a dream you can\u2019t quite define.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t speak right away. He was a quiet figure, nearly too motionless to register unless you were looking. The kind of guy who didn\u2019t interrupt, didn\u2019t do masculinity or intelligence. And maybe that\u2019s what attracted me. He didn\u2019t wear his identity on his sleeve, and therefore he seemed more real than most people who did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It started with a comment \u2013 mine \u2013 to the effect that someone had been misquoting Eliot in a seminar. He turned to me, smiled as if he had been anticipating someone to remark on it. And then we settled into a mutual cadence. An unspoken one in the beginning, but with time it was understood that we didn\u2019t need words to be together. We\u2019d spend our afternoons browsing through dog-eared volumes at the coffee shop, books we never intended to purchase, but always borrowed, always read again. There was no necessity of over-the-top declarations or verbal vows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wasn\u2019t loud. He wasn\u2019t aggressive. And yet he had a presence \u2013 without his ever needing to show that he fit. His manhood was reserved, uncarved by pageantry. In a campus in which men honed their egos like daggers, Ithamar remained unpolished in the most excellent sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019d sit on the stone steps behind the Philosophy block that remained cool even in the afternoon; it was my favourite place. Vines hung down from the eaves above, and occasionally a leaf would fall between us, unseen. It was hard to tell whether our knees would brush by mistake, by fate, or because, in some way, he too was leaning in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We would talk about things that didn\u2019t need conclusions. Once, he told me that the story of Achilles and Patroclus was the most tragic love story ever written \u2013 not because they were lovers, but because they never got to name it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you think naming it would have made it more real?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think naming it would\u2019ve ruined it,\u201d he said softly. \u201cReal things don\u2019t always need language.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wasn\u2019t gay. He said it like an apology. And I said I wasn\u2019t straight, like a confession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While others saw things differently, there was no need to explain it to one another. We weren\u2019t dating but I would often picture reaching out for his hand, just to check if he\u2019d allow me. There were no late-night texts or stolen glances across the room. It was something slower than love, and stranger. A friendship that rested on the cusp of something else, never quite stepping into the light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was softness. The kind that doesn\u2019t make itself known. He had this manner of listening like he was transcribing a piece of music he couldn\u2019t identify. He once sat with me for two hours on the library lawn as I tried to cry and couldn\u2019t. He didn\u2019t offer words of wisdom. He just stayed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He handed me his handkerchief during class one afternoon when I had a coughing spell. White cotton, soft-fringed, a little worn, with the barest hint of clove. I never returned it. He never asked for it back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was something a man\u2019s grandfather would have owned. A detail inherited. A softness folded inside the doing of use. That was what he was, really \u2013 an accumulation of contradictions no one ever bothered to round off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wasn\u2019t being a man, the way men tend to be. There were no proclamations, no posturing. He didn\u2019t lift weights or define jazz for girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But neither did he apologise for not being anyone else. He just was. And somehow, that felt radical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once, I asked him what he feared most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecoming my father,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, I realised it wasn\u2019t the man he feared becoming. It was the silence that followed him.
Around the time the semester was ending, he informed me that he was relocating to Auroville. He said it like it was just another line in a long conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI need to live in a place where I can hear my own thoughts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat kind of thoughts?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe kind I haven\u2019t been taught to have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t fight. We didn\u2019t cry. He didn\u2019t hug me goodbye, even. He just faded away, like ink on a page. One day he wasn’t at the caf\u00e9 anymore. He left Letters to a Young Poet <\/em>on my desk, folded open at the last letter. Underlined in pencil: \u201cTry to love the questions themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never wrote to him. Never went there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A part of me wanted to leave him suspended in the moment \u2013 before things had to be labelled, before tenderness had to justify itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, when I think of him, it\u2019s not with yearning, but with quiet contemplation. It\u2019s more like discovering petals you once pressed between pages to recall a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At times I imagine him in Auroville. Reading Baldwin in a sunroom with daylight, drinking tea brewed from leaves he has cultivated himself. Wondering whether he ever needed to name what we left unnamed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And sometimes I wonder what masculinity means to someone like him now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it\u2019s a pair of quiet hands that never learned to hurt. Maybe it\u2019s the absence of explanation. Maybe it\u2019s just sitting across from someone and letting them be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was originally published in the May 2025: Masculinities and Sexuality<\/a> of In Plainspeak.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cover image from Freepik<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He didn\u2019t wear his identity on his sleeve, and therefore he seemed more real than most people who did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":507,"featured_media":28097,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5148,3401],"tags":[4689,66,4544,121,402,26,4688,1001,2080,48,2065,1965,2095,99,25,2310],"class_list":{"0":"post-28945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anthology-issue-january-2026","8":"category-fiction-poetry","9":"tag-coming-of-age-2","10":"tag-desire","11":"tag-emotional-intimacy","12":"tag-feminism","13":"tag-friendship","14":"tag-gender","15":"tag-letters-to-a-young-poet","16":"tag-lgbtqia","17":"tag-masculinities","18":"tag-pleasure","19":"tag-queer-community","20":"tag-queer-relationships","21":"tag-redefining-masculinity","22":"tag-relationships","23":"tag-sexualities","24":"tag-sisa-spaces"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28945"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29007,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28945\/revisions\/29007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}