Looking at my father, I can't help but think where his life would be if it weren't for ironed corduroy pants and television debates. He stares deep into the screen as an Indian politician demands for secularism, clapping his hands in enthusiastically blind agreement.
"What's going on with all the fighting in Kashmir?" I ask him.
"Nothing going on. It is Muslim fault; they are the violent," he answers.
I guess that just about put an end to his stint as an open-minded liberal secularist.
Dad, nobody fucks horses, okay? You're a threat to society if you fuck a horse in my book. Not just a horse, any animal for that matter. Whenever guests come over, the topic of discussion deliberately sways towards politics, which leaves him at ease as he can then rattle off the same words he just heard from some highbrow political analyst on TV. It's his chance to shine, to pull a Shia LaBeouf without getting caught. And if the Houdini-like act is successful, he'll come away feeling like he'd had an original thought for once.
The chatting turns into vehemently vapid political discourse that, if you were to witness with no sound outside the living room window, you'd think was Daffy Duck defending himself against Bugs Bunny after being accused of roofie-ing Lola and covering her in spit. Literally, everyone in the conversation gets spit covered. It gets animated and rather than having talks of a genuinely deep nature, the nature of the talks gradually devolve into terribly written cartoon shows that display an innocent yet pretentiously playful nature.
When I see my father ironing corduroys I can't help but think that he's still a virgin—that somehow happened to get lucky on the golf course—three times. Three hole-in-ones. I've given him my laptop before and have gotten it back with the internet search history claiming he'd looked up videos like "bollywood undressing" and "how to put on a condom, by sunny leone." I don't know if it makes me happy or depressed that my entire fucking existence could've been washed away if he had just gotten his hands on that condom video 25 years ago. The internet not existing at the time sort of saved my life—and now that it does exist, it's sort of ruining it.
Sunny Leone demonstrates how to put on a condom with the closest match to a human penis: a banana.
I had no issue with him searching soft-core porn, considering it's Sesame Street compared to the stuff that I've seen. That is, until I scrolled down the history and saw a search for "horse sex."
My jaw dropped and then I laughed nervously, but overall, I was just completely grossed out. Finally, the answer to my long-standing curiosity as to why he knew Tobey Maguire being was in Sea Biscuit, but had no clue he was in Spiderman; in a paradoxical fashion, it's kind of like someone mentioning Will Smith and then picturing him in Hancock or The Legend of Bagger Vance. And it couldn't have been because he simply didn't know anything about superhero movies.
"Remember Superman?" I asked him.
"Yeah. Christopher Reeves. He fall off the horse and paralyze his neck. You have to be careful and use the protection when you ride the horse," he responded.
"Oh. I'll keep that in mind," I said.
I can't concentrate anymore because all I can picture is my dad fantasizing about fucking a horse. It's not something you can let slide, like forgetting to turn off the AC. Horse fucking is a sexual act that's illegal almost everywhere in the world, except for the deep recesses of my dad's mind.
There's got to be something in there now that I think about it. He cannot be that empty and airheaded up there. There's at least a glimmer of hope now, although that hope comes in the form of a well-groomed horse penetrating my father's anus. Or at least that's the image now implanted in my mind. It's like Inception, but Leo is penetrating my mind with ideas that center around polo as my father's favorite sport, and his propensity to frequent the Bronx Zoo after work without telling anyone.
Finally, I decided to confront him about it; otherwise my mind would become a cesspool of horseshit—if it hadn't already.
"Dad, I saw you looked up some stuff on the computer," I led off.
"What stuffs? I look at computer. My News, My Article, Akila-India."
"I saw you looked up some videos."
"What video?"
"Dad, I saw you looking up stuff about ‘horse sex' and ‘Sunny Leone' and stuff like that."
"Yeah, I LOOK FOR THE HORSE SEX."
He had gone from nonchalant confusion to vigorous self-defense in a matter of seconds.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? HORSE SEX?? WHY?"
"This is strange the horse sex? It's common everywhere."
"Dad, nobody fucks horses, okay? You're a threat to society if you fuck a horse in my book. Not just a horse, any animal for that matter. You'll fuck a horse but you refuse to eat beef? So you have a moral guideline and compass now, but your reckless sexual desires trump the extent of your religiously indoctrinated appetite?"
"I don't look for the animal—I SEARCH THE HHHOORSE SEX."
At that moment, I realized he had unknowingly pulled a Houdini on me. It was the accent that got me. I should've known all along. The man who says he's going to "THEBITCH" when we're vacationing by the ocean, was actually looking up "WHORES SEX."
By the way, if my dad were to say "whores," he is talking about just one whore. The extra "s" is just a cultural misunderstanding in speech, something he and other foreigners put at the end of any singular word. When there actually are multiple whores he'd simply say, "THE WHORE."
Well, the lack of grammar proficiency is okay with me as long as I know my dad is attracted to whores, not horses. The fortunate thing for my mom is that he's Indian to his core, which means he's too cheap not only for whores, but for horseback riding lessons, too. Unless of course he got a buy 1 get 1 free, in which case he wouldn't pass up a "double-deal."
It's funny because he can pronounce the "h" in "horse" even if he means to say "whores," yet if he were to say "hooker" he'd have pronounced it "OOHKER," which is exactly how my mom pronounces "cooker," the thing she uses in the kitchen constantly that makes a screeching, whistling sound. I can see it now: my mom's cooker will break and she'll yell at my dad to take the subway to buy an "oohker." My dad's eyes will light up, and he'll turn to my mom as he gets off the couch: "Give me five dollar. I give her the foot-long."