Analog sexy

Illustration/Uday Mohite

The cartoonist Joe Dator recently updated an older cartoon of his. In it a pregnant woman gets an ultrasound and the monitor displays a movie star. "Don't worry" says the radiologist."That's Pedro Pascal. He's in everything."

He sure is and I have no complaints. Pedro Pascal is hot, funny and fluid. I am not ashamed to say that a large part of my free time and not-so-free time is spent consuming Pedro Pascal (only metaphorically alas). Reels, shorts, clips, whole interviews, TV shows - I'm there. Aren't you?

I recently saw a wide-eyed Reddit post where the puzzled poster said he had "looked him up" and found that though Pascal was a good actor, he was only above average in the looks department, so why do women love Pedro Pascal so much? This made me laugh, if a bit ruefully. Men say they're so lost about what women like because they seem to imagine there is one known answer. But if stardom tells us anything, it's that we are beings of infinite desires. And desire is usually a question, not an answer.

And does Pedro Pascal always have a question in his eyes or what? Were your eyes to meet across a crowded subway car, you would hold the look for a saturated minute, before you both broke into irrepressible grins, and walked away, already lost in the memory of the greatest love that could have been. It's by dwelling in ambiguity that we dwell in romance; in the knowing for sure without knowing for certain that our blood quickens to flood us with sensory awareness.

Pedro Pascal has enlivened my DM duniya, earlier ruled by SRK who is nowadays not in the mood for love. "Do you think he is gay?" I wondered to one friend last night. "I won't allow it," she said. "So, just a romantic then?" I typed wistfully. "Largely unpartnered romantic" she replied. "Which means the greatest romantic of them all." Sigh. I shared a thirst reel to my stories. A friend texted "laga do aag, paani bhi to bhejo Pascal ji". Yus.

A lot of Pascal's sexiness is what I think of as Analog Sexiness. Analog sexiness is hedonism that is sensual, not just consumerist. It's eccentric and open minded. Aesthetics is for play and blurring lines, not conforming to the rules of design. Mischief, emotion, friendship, and a dial-up connection all have an element of maybe, of surprise and mutual waiting. There's a lot of give and take in Pascal's demeanour that invites you to play. And of course, he can dance, which all South Asians know matters a lot.

This is a savoury contrast to digital sexiness which has a vanilla curated sameness. Pascal's age defies the suffocating logic of our time, that we must be forever young and born formed for success. At the same time he seems completely of this time. Middle aged men, especially self-described liberals, complain a lot about "too much wokism" and too many categories. Pascal on the other hand has a being that has opened itself to all the libidinal energies that queerness celebrates - tart humour, colour, softness, gender play and allowed it to infuse a more traditional masculinity where affection and sexiness, co-exist. It makes masculinity possible without it having to be boring and self-serious or toxic or in need of reform. Yaniki, delicious.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com