The Code Of Women.

I went out with him because she was running late. It was a little past midnight and I had just gotten home from seeing a client, when I saw that his car was parked outside our gate. He saw me approaching the building, rolled down the window and called out to me. I used to walk everywhere those days, it's hard to imagine it now, I even drive the kilometer to the gym now.

"Can you check on Suzy?" He asked, "She was supposed to meet me at midnight. I've been calling and calling, she won't come down."

His name was Amuj and I knew him well. He was Suzy's main side-piece. None of us could stand him, not even Suzy, but she insisted that he was fantastic in bed. He'd caused her first ever penetrative orgasm, she'd come home fucking shaking and catatonic one evening, with a huge grin on her face. I told him I would check on her, but I already knew she wasn't home. She'd told me just before I had left the house that she was spending the night with Jay. Jay was Suzy's real boyfriend, a piece of shit if I ever saw one, he had a kid with his ex-wife, and she sometimes followed us into clubs and smashed bottles around us until someone kicked us all out. I went inside and checked my real phone, I used to take only my whore-phone to whore business, I'm not sure why but it seemed to make sense then, Suzy had called a dozen times. I called her back immediately.

"Bitch what the fuck?" I asked her, "How could you mix up your schedule like this?"

Suzy was an expert at juggling men. To be honest, at the time, we all fucking were. I'd met her when I moved in with her. She wasn't there when I moved in but she'd left instructions, a key and some food for me

with some people who were in the house, I'm not sure if I ever saw them again. The next night, after my first day of college, I went up to the roof and she was there, playing her blue guitar, singing what would become my favourite rendition of *Behind Blue Eyes*. We became friends instantly.

"Listen, can you sleep with Amuj today?" She asked me, "Jay's really suspicious about him calling me again and again, and I may have told him it's because you are fucking him, and he cannot find you."

"That's okay Suzanne," I said, "But why do I *actually* have to sleep with him?"

"Obviously because I don't want to ask Amuj to lie for me, he can't have that kind of power," she said, patiently, as she always spoke, "If you sleep with him, it's not a lie, no one has to lie for me, that's what actually happened."

"He better be as good as you keep saying he is," I told her as I got off the phone.

He wasn't.

Suzanne and I don't fall for the same kind of guy, well, we don't fall for the same style of fucking. She likes role-play, I like the games to be real. She liked to play student, teacher, nurse, fisherwoman. I liked to play various renditions of myself, all of whom got hit in the face eventually. It didn't matter though, it didn't seem odd to me then, nor does it now, that she asked me to suck a dick on her behalf. My friendships with (heterosexual) women tend to have a certain platonic eroticism at their nexus, I tend to attract many different type of lovers, but a very specific type of friend. *Casually intense and comfortably insane.* All the Junes in the world. We had a specific code between us, not just me and Suzanne, but also our other friend, Haleema. We were criminals to the enterprise of Indian womanhood, and like a band of thieves, our code was built on a warped sense of honour. I'd fuck her side-piece if she needed that, she'd fuck mine if I wanted that, but never in any other situation.

So I fucked him.

The sex was underwhelming. He took me to his house and told me to be quiet because his wife was asleep on the first floor. For a world that strongly condemns cheating, everyone sure seems to be doing it. He wanted me to play a schoolgirl and he'd play the headmaster who punished me by making me suck his dick. The pedestrian nature of most male fantasies is what caused me to be world-weary at twenty, I swear. I texted Haleema to pick me up in exactly twenty minutes. Haleema was always late, if she said she would be there in ten minutes, she'd be there in five hours. That's not an exaggeration. She always came, always, but she was always five hours late. I cannot blame her, on any given day she pretending to be madly and dramatically in love with six different men. With each one she pretended it was her first time to do *everything*. Every man she ever had was her first crush, her first love, her first kiss, her first fuck. Her act was a masterpiece. Insufferable to most people, Haleema delighted me.

She came in exactly twenty minutes. That was part of the code, take seven hours to meet me for dinner, but never a minute more than I asked to get me away from a man. For the number of guys we fucked back then, we sure seemed to hate the concept of men. I met her outside the house and she handed me a lit cigarette the moment I got in. She always kept my brand in her car, not just of cigarettes but of condoms too, Haleema was a class act. You wouldn't know it from her terrible highlights and predilection to speaking in dated, over-the-top colloquialism, but she may have been the smartest person I have ever known. She spoke at least eight languages and she learnt them at the drop of a hat, a few days of exposure and she was fluent.

"Why the hell were you with Amuj?" She asked me, "Did Suzy ask you to fuck him?"

She knew. We knew. We all always knew that no one would ever step into the other's business, unless invited.

"Yeah," I told her, "He sucked."

"Of course he did," she said, "He works out at my gym, he cant squat for shit."

I don't know what the ability to squat has to do with fucking, but to Haleema it seemed to matter. I fucked a guy to get him off her back once, she wanted him to think he cheated on her, catch him and then have an excuse to dump him, he fucking sucked in bed too. Worse than Amuj, he tried to put his tongue in my asshole.

"Where are we going?" I asked her, as she turned away from our neighborhood and towards a slightly different part of town.

"I was at a party at Raj's house," she said, "Told them I was bringing you back."

Raj was annoying, but everyone knew him. He was rich and generous, and while we weren't quite broke, from Haleema I learnt the thrill of letting men pay for things for you just because you have tits and pussy. Certainly not healthy, but it was gratifying in some sick way, to financially manipulate men. I preferred a much more direct approach than Haleema, I just charged men for sex, she liked it when they paid for her spirit, just to have her around. For the visual image of her. The wonder of her company.

"Who else is here?" I asked her, as she pulled up in front his house.

"No one for you," she said, "Your rowdy, violent type guys won't be found here, you cheap girl."

Haleema used to call me cheap all the time because I liked to pay my own rent and tuition. She also thought it was cheap that I had sex for pleasure, and not just to fleece men. It wasn't a moral condemnation, it was almost an honorific. There were dozens of people at the party, but almost instantly, we both saw Jay there. He came up to us and started talking to us. I excused myself and called Suzanne.

"Why the fuck did I just meet Jay at Raj's?" I asked Suzanne.

"We had a fight," she said, "He wanted to go to Raj's, I didn't, I tried to call Raj from his phone and accidentally found out the asshole is fucking his ex-wife."

Our moral compass is an amazing thing. We were all cheating on someone, I was somehow cheating in a poly setup at the time, yet we didn't think it hypocritical to be or act upset when people cheated on us.

"You really mad?" I asked her.

"Not really," she said, "He's been sleeping with her for years, I just wanted to come back home."

"I'll be home in a bit," I told her.

"I'll make noodles," she said, "You want them extra spicy?"

I did, I always did. Suzanne made the best noodle-based dishes. She brought spices from home I hadn't even heard of and she did something to bok choy that made it the most delicious food in the world. I went back inside to find Haleema and tell her we should go, but I found her holding Jay by the neck and slapping and punching the shit out of him. I ran up to him and pulled her off him, she wasn't a violent person. A bunch of people were casually watching the scene, but it was room full of drug addled idiots, they may have thought it was a game or a hallucination.

"He fucking hit on me," she screamed, "He put his hands inside my shirt and kissed my neck, how dare he do this to Suzy!"

To Suzy.

It didn't occur to her that he had just sexually harassed her, but it did occur to her that he had hit on his girlfriend's best friend. That was the code. I pulled Haleema away from Jay and prepared to leave. Jay followed us out, begging us to say nothing to Suzy.

"A lot of men I meet are pigs," I told him, "But you Jay, you are an idiot."

We drove home, enraged and entertained. Haleema blasted noxious Bollywood music in her tiny black car. It wasn't a long drive. We all seemed to live in one incestuous circle, like a tribe of addicts and whores. We parked at home and went upstairs. It was quiet and calm. Suzy had made food and set it out on the table.

"How was the sex with Amuj?" Suzannne asked me.

I had forgotten, it felt like so long ago, that I had fucking forgotten.

"Next time, you fuck him," I told her, "I cannot play schoolgirls, Suzanne."

"Failed to hurt you, huh?" She asked.

They knew. We knew. We all just knew one another. There was never any discussion about my sexuality, nor theirs, but in a way the discussion was endless. I never had to explain that I liked a violent man, they never had to explain they liked a cuckold.

"Haleema punched Jay today," I told her.

She laughed.

"Did he hit on you?" She asked Haleema.

She asked as if that could have been the only possible explanation. That was the code. I'll fuck your man if you ask and punch him if he disrespects you. I'll keep your secrets and tell you his. In this gendered mire of moral ambivalence and madness, your girls are all you've got.

.........