My Dark Little Thing.

We used to meet during lunch, in the library, on Wednesdays and Fridays. I don't know how we decided we would meet on those days, but I think it had to do with us having prep right after lunch, and that was held right next to the library. None of our other friends knew that we hung out twice a week, but neither one of us was deliberately keeping it from them either. Mostly because neither one of us fit into our *cliques* at school, we were members of the wrong circles of people, and because of that we existed on the fringes of our peer groups. It's hard to explain that but you have to approach it from the lens of teenagers in secondary school. His *circle* was serious athletes, because he played tennis, and rich kids, because his mom was a high-court judge. We used to meet during lunch, in the library, on Wednesdays and Fridays. I don't know how we decided we would meet on those days, but I think it had to do with us having prep right after lunch, and that was held right next to the library. None of our other friends knew that we hung out twice a week, but neither one of us was deliberately keeping it from them either. Mostly because neither one of us fit into our *cliques* at school, we were members of the wrong circles of people, and because of that we existed on the fringes of our peer groups. It's hard to explain that but you have to approach it from the lens of teenagers in secondary school. His *circle* was serious athletes, because he played tennis, and rich kids, because his mom was a high-court judge. 

My *circle*, alarmingly, was the pretty, popular girls. I can't explain it, because I am not pretty nor do I possess the charm and *joie de vivre* of well-liked people. I was friends with some of them, just because we had always been friends, and I was friends with the others because, well, pretty girls liked hanging out with me. I was the one with whom they got to be *bad* and when things got too real, they knew I would fix them. They could smoke cigarettes with me and get drunk enough to kiss a girl and have it mean *nothing*. They could tell me things, about their home lives and unspoken dreams, and they could always get from me, a morning-after pill. They would find me, often at the end of parties, when they wanted to sit by the pool, and be *deep* for twenty minutes before they passed out. I kept their grades from slipping, and did what their boyfriends failed to do between their legs, and I did it in secret. I know I'm supposed to believe now, as a grown up, that these girls were taking advantage of me, but many of them are still my friends today and they grew up to be wonderful women; any advantage they took, was one I aggressively offered, because that is who I am and need to be. 

Relationships can be many things, and sometimes, when we stop trying to fit them into a box, and appreciate them for what they are, even the bits that don't exactly sound savoury, they can be a lot more gratifying. There is no need to make conclusions about the nature of relationships, you can just, experience them. All that need to change, or to want someone else to change, goes away when you let the relationship decide what it wants to be based on who the people in it really are, as opposed to your emotions about what a relationship should be. They end easier that way too. My relationship with Raunaq is hard to put in a box. The most descriptive thing I can say about it is what I already said, we met during lunch, on Wednesdays and Fridays, and we started to meet during lunch because we kept running into each other, at the library. He was a year younger than I am, but we read all the same books. I wonder if they've changed the cards, but I hope not, because a lot of the books had our names one after the other on the check-out cards attached inside the back of the book. 

We talked about because he saw me reading a book he recognised. It was a very popular book about *sadism* written by an insane person who for some reason is credited with the business of pain. 

"Where did you get that book?" Raunaq asked me, "I couldn't get it anywhere." 

That was the first thing he ever said to me. 

"I downloaded it from the internet, printed it out and had it bound," I told him, because that is what I had done, I just needed to know what all the hype was about, "Do you want to borrow it after I am done?" 

He nodded enthusiastically. Raunaq was very theatrical. He had big gestures, big feelings, big smiles, big sweaters. It was very surprising to me, to have come across another person in my immediate surroundings who wanted to read *that book*. A week later, I gave it to him. A week after that, we happened to be in the library together at lunch so we sat down and talked about all the horrific details in the book, admitting to one another that we'd like that, we'd like the spectre of whips and romance. Then we started meeting more frequently. I liked his company, he was a dark little thing, and I was his twisted black angel. 

It wasn't sexual though, this thing between us, not at all. Raunaq was gay. Being openly gay in my home town is still extremely difficult, and very rarely a thing, and this was fifteen-years ago. The men in my town come from the families of commercial farmers and tradesmen of guns, they recognise only a certain type of masculinity, and it is not just heterosexual, it is also rugged in a way. Raunak wasn't like that. He liked moisturiser, the theatre, Marquis de Sade, tennis and a cock in his ass. He was too complex an individual for my town, and it showed in how he struggled to fit in there. He tried coming out to his family, at least ten times, and each time they pretended like he didn't say anything at all. His parents encouraged him to apply to colleges in Europe and North America, because "life would would easier for him there." I don't know if that is what he wanted, but he did it, and he did leave the country. 

I didn't see him again. 

I found out from the *newspaper*. I was already done catching up on the news, I was speed reading through lede sentences to see if there was anything else of interest when I came across his name. It could have been someone else, after all, he isn't the only person with that name, but even before I scrolled down to see his picture, I knew. I went into my contacts to look for his phone number, and the moment I was about to text him, it finally sunk in. There was no one on the other side. The question I was about to ask made no sense, you cannot ask a person why they didn't tell you they killed themselves. I couldn't be mad at Raunaq for not telling me that. 

We hadn't met in seven years. 

But we sent each other book recommendations every few months. I scrolled up through our chats, as if that would somehow give me access to a moment in time when I could talk to him again. It was lunch time on a Wednesday, and the library had been closed forever.