The play featured an Indian man Niels whose mother is happily planning an arranged marriage, not realizing that he's gay. He has a secret lover Ravi, and they meet clandestinely on the beach one night. Ravi is very affectionate, grabbing Niels' ass and so forth, but Niels is shy!
A huge suspense built up over whether Niels and Ravi were going to kiss. I was on the edge of my seat. On the one hand, we were in San Francisco, so why not? On the other hand, everything about this play so far had been very traditionally Hindi. Oh, will they or won't they!
Many agonizing minutes later, they kissed. It was a good kiss too -- prolonged with fingers running through hair and clutching and gasping. I was very excited. I couldn't stand still during intermission because I wanted the second half to feature more of them kissing.
Now I understand the phenomenon described by my 20-year-old cousin in China. "Do you guys in the US have BL?" she said.
"BL?" I asked dumbly.
"Yeah, boys love," she explained. "My female classmates love it. They'll take photographs of two boys in the class who have nothing to do with each other, and then cut and paste the photos together and make up a story about how they're dating each other. Yeah, my girlfriends are all over that stuff."
Elad was sitting next to me during the Indian play. "You're a fag hag!" he told me.
"That is so not the definition of a fag hag," I said.
