Chapter 2

In math class, Tony usually sat on the far-left side of the room, that being the only place where left-handed desks could be found. But on Wednesday’s class, he scanned the room anxiously looking for Manjula.

She was wearing the revealing sundress he’d picked for her. Stretching out her legs in the front row, she looked irresistible. And few guys could resist her — there were two flanking her on each side, each vying in assorted ways for her attention. Tony smiled sadly in her direction and went over to the left-handed desk.

He had a lot of difficulty concentrating in that class. At one point he was struggling to keep up, seeing the professor write out an incomprehensible series of partial derivatives. Manjula interrupted.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Yes, miss?” It was almost embarrassing how this professor, notorious for his normally gruff, abrasive attitude, was now being obsequiously polite.

“That plus on the third line — should that not be a minus?”

The professor stared for a minute — at Manjula’s legs, not the equation!

“Oh, yes,” he finally said, and corrected it. Tony peered at the whiteboard. Now finally he began to understand the equation.

After class, he made a beeline for Manjula. To his immense relief, she waved goodbye to the other guys and walked off with him.

“Are you a math major?”

“Biology.”

“Biology? But if you’re this good at math, you must be awesome in biology.”

“Maths has always been my favourite subject. Even in the sciences, I like physics and chemistry better.”

Tony found it very cute that she used the British form of the word, maths, like his parents did.

“Why study biology then?” he asked.

“I want to be a doctor.”

“Why, if math is your favourite subject?”

“What can you do with a maths degree?”

“Tons of things. You could be a quantitative analyst—”

“In finance? We do not have much of that in Sri Lanka.”

“There are lots of math-related disciplines. I’m in computer science. Or you could do engineering—”

She cut him off. “I need to be a doctor.”

Questions popped into his head, but seeing her expression, he decided to put a stopper in them. He followed her to the library.

They hadn’t actually made plans for another Tamil lesson, but Manjula started one anyway. Before long, she had him try to make complete sentences.

Enakka Tamil theriyum. I understand Tamil. Intha oor nalla oor. This is a nice city. Ninga alahanna. You are beautiful.

“How do you say very?” he asked.

Manjula’s irritation was gone; she had a warm smile on her face. “Chadyanna.”

“Ninga chadyanna alahanna,” he said. You are very beautiful.

“Thank you,” she said. He hoped to press the point further, but she moved on.

Enakka cutherica virappamillai. I don’t like eggplant. Enakka puttu virappam. I like puttu.

“What I would not give for puttu right now,” she sighed dreamily. “I have not had any in weeks. Even rice is hard to get around here.”

In Toronto, there were any number of Sri Lankan restaurants that would have served that flour-and-coconut dish, but they were not in Toronto. Then a thought occurred to Tony.

“I know a place you can get good Sri Lankan food. Homemade.”

Her eyes lit up like a child’s on Christmas morning. “Enga?” she asked, using the Tamil word for “where” in her excitement.

“My parents’ house. I could take you there this weekend. You could stay in the spare room.”

She looked suspicious. “I hope you are not trying to marry me. I am not ready for that.”

It was as if a weight had lifted off Tony’s chest. “No, no, nothing like that.”

He didn’t want to introduce her to his parents as a candidate wife. But he did want to introduce her as his girlfriend. Did he dare ask her that? How did she even feel about the whole notion of boyfriends and girlfriends? If he asked her, would it ruin everything?

There was an awkward silence.

“So about slang—” she said finally.

“Yes, I’ve got the book here,” he replied, pulling it out.

“If you do not mind, I want ... I want to ask you about sex.”

Is she on to me? he wondered desperately. Had she guessed that he wanted to have premarital sex with her?

“They were talking about putting a penis in their mouths,” said Manjula. “Has any girl done that for you?”

Tony blushed to the roots of his hair.

“Well ... um ... the truth is ... no, none have.”

“I thought the average age here for beginning sexual activity was seventeen?”

So help him, she’d done research.

“Well, you know, that’s an average, I guess I’m, um, in the tail end of that distribution.” Oh funny man, he thought. I’m in the tail end for getting tail.

“Do you want to do it?”

Tony dropped the book, staring now with unconcealed hunger at her perfect round lips. Those lips, around his cock. That tiny, smooth, perfect body, on her knees, naked. He felt his cock squirm.

“Yes. Yes, I would love it.”

“What is the appeal? I do not understand.”

Dammit! She hadn’t been propositioning him, she’d been curious about the act itself.

“Well the most obvious is you can’t get pregnant that way. The risk of disease transmission is also less.”

“Surely that is not the only reason.”

“I—” He hesitated.

“Do not be afraid,” she said reassuringly. “I will not judge you.”

Somehow that did reassure him. “A girl’s face in ... in my midsection is a sign of submission. She’s putting her face, the core of her identity, in my sexual organs.”

Manjula looked curiously at him.

He continued, “It’s ... it’s especially arousing to see a girl kneeling before me to do it. It would make me feel like a lord, like a master, a king...” It seemed very silly to say that out loud.

“I see,” she said, but it was obvious that she did not see. “And what is the appeal to the woman?”

Tony had often wondered this himself. “I ... I don’t know.”

She paused. “And the comparable thing to a woman, what do you call that?”

“The formal name is ‘cunnilingus’, but it’s usually called ‘going down on her’ or ‘eating her out’”.

“Would you do it?”

“Well...” Tony was conflicted. None of his friends had said anything positive about the smell or taste of that region. But they had very positive things to say about how their girlfriends had responded to it.

“From what I know, women are much more likely to come to orgasm when stimulated by the tongue, than by the penis.”

“Is that not terribly dirty?” she queried incredulously. In fact, she looked much more shocked talking about going down on a woman than about going down on a man.

“I guess you could always wash it or something,” said Tony lamely. When most of your knowledge of sex is second- or even third-hand, eventually you run out of wisdom to dispense.

“Do not be embarrassed,” she said kindly. “I have another favour to ask you.”

“Name it.”

“I ... I tried looking at these videos. These sexual videos. You call them pornography? Most of them are blocked by internet providers in Sri Lanka. And...”

“What happened?”

“I have never seen anything like that before. It is very scary for me to watch those videos by myself. And there are so many, I do not know which ones boys are watching. I think you must have watched them. Can you ... can you show me some?”

Tony’s jaw dropped so far he nearly fell out of the chair.

He had been viewing porn since the age of fourteen. Most boys accompanied this with mental fantasies of pretty girls they knew, in similar poses or acts.

As the years went by without any other outlet, Tony’s fantasies had curved in a different direction. Masturbating to porn had become its own reward. He found himself imagining, not actually having sex with a girl, but merely having her, fully dressed, look at him while he enjoyed himself with porn.

To have Manjula be the one watching — at that thought, his cock rose like a tower. Cut the thought, he told himself sternly, she didn’t say she wants to watch you, just the videos themselves.

“You want me ... to show you ... pornography?”

“I feel the biggest divide between east and west is actually about sex. I come from a country where pornography is illegal, and I am now in one where everybody seems to be influenced by it. I need to understand it. And I need ... I need,” she said, shyly, “a boy whom ... whom I trust to show me.”

Tony felt enormous affection for her at that moment. He rose and gently pressed her hands to his lips.

“Of course ... of course, we can do that.”

The library is not, of course, a good place to look at porn. Tony wasn’t sure where Manjula wanted to go, but she led him to her room. That means she trusted him with knowing where she lived. Then again, it was probably still safer for her than going to his room.

They held hands all the way across campus. Tony saw plenty of guys staring at Manjula — he felt a surge of pride at this — but he also noticed girls looking at him. He’d never experienced that before. Could it be that just being with Manjula rubbed off on him a little? Whatever. There was no girl he wanted more than her.

The effect accelerated once they entered the women’s dorm. Tony had never been inside an all-female building; several times he saw very hot girls, dressed in outfits as skimpy as Manjula’s, glance at him and flash knowing smiles at her.

Tony had been thinking about what to show her. He doubted she would be able to handle his long list of fetishes — in fact, there were some he feared very much showing to any girl, of any culture. Why even start with full-fledged porn? Pinups would do.

One of Tony’s pastimes was to download images of girls from various sites — often lingerie or swimsuits, but also ordinary revealing clothes, like miniskirts — and collect the images into a PDF. He could then have the computer display them in a slideshow, a few seconds per image, full-screen, leaving his hands entirely free. Looking at a series of images has a mesmerizing, almost hypnotic effect even for non-porn pictures; if there are girls, the effect is that much stronger, clothed or not. Tony had also torrented virtually the entire back catalogue of Playboy magazine, painstakingly assembling his favourite photos from each issue into custom PDFs designed to push exactly his buttons.

His mildest PDFs were for microkinis, bikinis, lingerie, and outerwear. He started with the latter. It did not escape Manjula’s notice that the outfits he’d put in his collection were remarkably similar to the ones she’d bought earlier that week, and that she was wearing now.

“Tony, you ... you find these arousing?”

“Yes. I usually start with these when I”— he stopped when he realized what he’d been about to say.

“When you masturbate?” she asked, so gently that he nodded.

“So when I am dressed like this” — she pointed at the sundress — “and boys are staring at me, and talking to me, will ... will they masturbate later and think of me?”

“Probably yes, at least some of them will.”

She covered her face in her hands. Sighing, Tony closed the laptop.

“Why are you closing it?”

“Huh? I thought you were offended.”

“I should be, should I not?” She paused. “But I am not. I feel — I feel free!” She sported an expression of defiant joy. She pulled open his laptop and jerked her chin at him.