She of the Mountains by Vivek Shraya Read Free Book Online Page B

and resting in a three-storey home at night, instead of pouring over the work of dead English poets, searching for (or, more accurately, hiding from) the answer to the most important question in the world: What do you plan on doing with your Arts degree?
    To be the guy that another guy waits for, every Wednesday, from 12:30 to 12:33 p.m.

You are going to be my boyfriend.
    These were the first words Smith said to him, the first time they met at a mutual friend’s birthday party.
    This forwardness surprised him, but the prophecy itself did not. Smith was a celebrity dancer, often featured in the local news, and with each Smith sighting, each mention of Smith’s name in conversation, it never felt like a random occurrence, but rather a step toward each other. It wasn’t a feeling of destiny, of future promise, as he was certain that Smith was out of his league, but a feeling of familiarity, as though maybe in their childhoods they had attended the same school or had played in the same park.
    In person, Smith was even more attractive—the magnetism of his physicality enhanced by his character. His brown hair was precisely parted and his matching brown eyes were surrounded by lines of kindness, as though his eyes genuinely cared about every subject upon which they fell. His hands gestured delicately when he spoke, adding an element of dance to everyday conversation, and though he was a commanding six foot three, he never seemed unapproachable, always the first person to say hello .
    He wasn’t sure if hanging out with Smith qualified as “dating” because, when Smith wasn’t talking about how much he adored his border collie and his family, he talked about his ex-boyfriend. It had not been an amicable breakup, and Smith was brokenhearted. But Smith was the first boy he had ever hung out with/dated, so it was easy to ignore Smith’s condition and start imagining their shared life. He would work at the downtown library during the day while Smith rehearsed. On Wednesdays, they would meet for lunch at the Korean restaurant where Smith used to be a server. Their evenings would be spent reading, his head on Smith’s shoulder, on the second-hand loveseat in their small but well-designed apartment. He would get over his fear of dogs and stock up on lint rollers. He would attend Smith’s every performance, watching from stage-side with a bouquet of pink roses to give to his man.

    The first time he saw Smith’s penis, they were on Smith’s couch, arms around each other, lips against each other’s. Oops! Smith said, signalling down with his eyes. Poking out from the waistband of his pants was what looked like a large pink thimble. He wasn’t sure what to do at this point, if anything, aside from observe. Even that he wasn’t sure of, and he had to remind himself: It’s okay to look .
    Smith recognized his paralysis and pulled down his own pants and white briefs. It stood proudly between them. As he gazed at Smith’s penis, he couldn’t help but think of his own. This comparing and contrasting seemed to be an inevitable by-product of having sex with a man.
    Many of the differences in their physical attributes could be explained by their racial differences. When Smith took off his black T-shirt, he nodded with a feeling of déjà vu. Every shirtless male body he had seen, save for the males in his own family, had looked like Smith’s: lean but muscular, smooth chest, hard stomach. Smith’s body was every man’s body. In GQ , the Sears catalogue, movies, and porn, he had digested copies of it countlesstimes. He expected it. He worried about Smith’s expectations, given that Smith had most likely never seen a naked brown body before. Before her, just the idea of the words naked and brown together had seemed incongruous, even to himself.
    Being brown meant he had much larger nipples, two puffy Hershey’s Kisses, and an abundance of hair