I Call Him Baby Boy
The Heartbreak of Adolescence & ReLearning to love in my 60s

Yes, I know he is the son of a famous actor, born into privilege.
Yes, I know he is part of an insidious entertainment industry.
Yes, I know he might be a commodity in the Bollywood machine.
I don’t care.
Yes, I know he’s years younger than my youngest child.
Yes, I know that biologically I could easily be his grandmother in some diasporas, including my own.
Yes, I know he is surrounded by 24 year old ingenues. None of whom I like !?!
I don’t care, I love him.
Yes, I know his life may be scripted.
Yes, I know that he may not have the opportunity to explore anything of his internal landscape. Or have the capacity for introspection.
Yes, I know that he may not have as yet the option of exploring his own multiple identities, some of which I can only guess at as an observer.
I don’t care. I love him still.
He dances like an angel, is a martial arts ninja, plays soccer to win. Has never been to college, has a too-soft speaking voice, laughs with carefree abandon. And I have to undo in my mind’s eye my ex-partner’s faux-dancing body, his multiple higher ed degrees, and my own tendency (like many other SouthAsians) to look upon with disdain anyone less educated than them.
Nevertheless, I love him.
Yes, I know that he has been shilling. That is how entertainment and commerce have married to create Brand Management, not only in India but by celebrities around the globe.
Yes, I know his name is being used to launch an activewear product line. Getting it while the getting’s good.
Yes, I know there is a team of people behind him, vetting his every move and appearance and media interaction on FaceBook, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Musical-Ly, in print and on televised interviews.
I don’t care. I love watching his videos on my phone just as I’m falling asleep. I have seen him dance live on televised concerts. I repeat: he dances like an angel! Others do too: Hrithik, Shahid, Ranveer…there’s a whole essay brewing about this one…but Varun? Puleez…don’t talk to me about that dancing hack!
Yes, I know other people are writing the music to the lyrics coming out of his mouth, other singers are voicing the words. At least those words are not misogynistic, sometimes only sexist. Whether he’s Getting ready to Move or Getting ready to Fight, I’m all in.
Yes, I know I don’t see the outtakes of when he fails to make a clean landing in an action shot or misses a step in dance rehearsals. Actually, I can find these videos on disallowed YouTube followers’ channels and illicit recordings.
Yes, I know someone choreographs his dance moves (how much he practices! how well he learns!!), someone does his hair and makeup, someone makes him look good in post production. But the canvas is his own, and so is his diligent work. And the CGI never enhances his moves!
I don’t care. I love the way he looks shirtless. I’m objectifying him? So sue me!
I call him Baby Boy. When I saw him for the first time only 4 short months ago, just around the time I joined Medium, it was on YouTube in a song from his first movie. He was 23 in that movie. Aesthetically beyond pleasing (to me), nary a hair on his shaven face or his waxed body (yeah, I have some body issues, ok? Sue me again!), sweet softness in his expressive eyes. That movie was released in 2014, the year of my coma. I was smitten. My heart totally and utterly captured.
I know, accept, acknowledge all of these things purely intellectually.
I’m definitely in love. Hoping I’ll keep feeling this way until the fever runs its course and I can’t love him anymore. The 4 Stages of Relationships and all that. Maybe I will move on to someone even younger, maybe to a real world relationship, who the helluva knows.
He’s changed in the 4 months I have been following his 5 year career and his social media presence (by a social media rep who is online 24/7). More angular in face, crisper in his dialog delivery, more confident, his beautiful curly hair cut short into the macho image he wishes to project. Rebel, Rambo, Spiderman. His goal is to emulate the career path of an actor I spurn for that actor’s lack of personal accountability in the deaths of 3 human beings.
But right now, I love him, my Baby Boy. There are days I look at him and just weep with the joy of being in love again.

Yes, I know he looks familiar. The cut of his face: his cheekbones, his jawline. The shade of his corneas, the tint of his skin, the pink fullness of his lips, the great shape of his body…it’s all too familiar. He is almost a doppelgänger.
At 28 Baby Boy looks almost exactly like my maternal uncle (now deceased), one of my father’s victims (I have surmised) and eventually my father’s accomplice in my month long rape at 10, looked at the same age. And I have to undo the tangled webs of trauma around this face. I am adolescing in a protected medium, safe in my home, far from my crush, learning to love again. The longer I can maintain this love - this crush - this infatuation, the more healed becomes my broken-assed heart. Right now I need to be in love, and let the endorphins flow.*
*I have learned recently from research articles that the mind will sometimes create these feelings for the body to be able to process held trauma, and that endorphins and other hormones are released to create a sense of well being to perhaps contain the overwhelming of the neurological system in this process.
