No Land's Man Read Online Free
Author: Aasif Mandvi
her that of course we didn’t have to kiss when something miraculous happened. Judy kissed me. It happened quite suddenly and it was most certainly deliberate. She looked me in the eye, smiled, and kissed me. As we kissed she held on to me for dear life, as if wewere taking off together in a rocket ship, or going down together in a plane crash. (I couldn’t tell which.) Our lips were locked and our faces were smashed together so hard that our teeth ached. I squeezed my eyes shut so tight to keep out the embarrassment that my eyeballs even began to hurt.
High above we could hear the laughter and the roar of the other children as they relentlessly chanted “Kiss, kiss, kiss.” Our kiss seemed to last forever, going on and on and on! As more and more children jumped on top of the mattress insisting that their voyeurism be satisfied, we became locked together, unable to move. As we gave in to our predicament, our desperate kiss seemed to grow into something different. However it had started and whatever the fallout would be afterwards, we were kissing each other. Really kissing each other. Our mouths went from tense to soft, our breathing became deeper and our bodies became relaxed and we found ourselves no longer entangled but rather embracing each other. We were sharing a simultaneously humiliating and beautiful moment. We were together and everything else seemed to disappear: the mattress, the mocking children, the Rose Bank School for Boys and Girls, they all suddenly vanished.
The truth of this kiss would be our secret from now on and whatever happened in my life, I would know that I once kissed the most beautiful girl in our school . . . and very likely the entire world. Me. Curry Pot. In this moment I was no longer the dorky, overweight Indian kid who doubled as Mark Delancy’s punching bag. Judy had led me into an inner sanctum where all great lovers lived. I was Elvis, I was Travolta, I was Starsky and Hutch (hey . . . it was the 70’s!). It felt like I was in the last scene of a great film wherethe credits roll up the screen as the hero throws the heroine onto the back of his horse and rides off into the sunset never to return.
Things would never be the same from this moment on, because no one would ever again taunt me with their name calling, or their chanting, or their Jesus, or their British bulldogs, or their stupid dares, or their bloody noses, because I had conquered them. I had, in one monumental moment, conquered them all! The most beautiful girl in our class and very likely the entire world had kissed me once down in a cellar inside a beat-up stained mattress with seventeen children and Mark Delancy on top of us. I had become the king. I had become the Curry Pot Cowboy.
3 . The British version of tag.
THE LEDGE
T HE WIND WHIPPED THROUGH the small courtyard below me. I balanced precariously, shivering on a cold, hard cement ledge. I had never stood on a ledge like this before, this high up, and I didn’t know how long I would be standing on it. It was getting very late, almost midnight. At six A.M . the morning bell would sound, signaling that we were to wake up and make ourselves presentable for breakfast. Would I actually be expected to stay out here for six more hours? Surely they wouldn’t leave me out here all night? Someone would have to remember that I was locked outside the fourth floor Southern House dormitory window on this unfriendly ledge.
Not that breakfast was such a highlight. Undoubtedly I would once again eat dry cereal, because the two prefects at the head of the table would satisfy themselves with almost the entire contents of a single milk jug before handing it down to the third-form students like myself at the other end. The prefects were part of an elite group of sixth-form boys specifically selected by the faculty because of their superior scholastic or athletic achievements. They were in charge of the rest of the student body any time before and after the actual
High above we could hear the laughter and the roar of the other children as they relentlessly chanted “Kiss, kiss, kiss.” Our kiss seemed to last forever, going on and on and on! As more and more children jumped on top of the mattress insisting that their voyeurism be satisfied, we became locked together, unable to move. As we gave in to our predicament, our desperate kiss seemed to grow into something different. However it had started and whatever the fallout would be afterwards, we were kissing each other. Really kissing each other. Our mouths went from tense to soft, our breathing became deeper and our bodies became relaxed and we found ourselves no longer entangled but rather embracing each other. We were sharing a simultaneously humiliating and beautiful moment. We were together and everything else seemed to disappear: the mattress, the mocking children, the Rose Bank School for Boys and Girls, they all suddenly vanished.
The truth of this kiss would be our secret from now on and whatever happened in my life, I would know that I once kissed the most beautiful girl in our school . . . and very likely the entire world. Me. Curry Pot. In this moment I was no longer the dorky, overweight Indian kid who doubled as Mark Delancy’s punching bag. Judy had led me into an inner sanctum where all great lovers lived. I was Elvis, I was Travolta, I was Starsky and Hutch (hey . . . it was the 70’s!). It felt like I was in the last scene of a great film wherethe credits roll up the screen as the hero throws the heroine onto the back of his horse and rides off into the sunset never to return.
Things would never be the same from this moment on, because no one would ever again taunt me with their name calling, or their chanting, or their Jesus, or their British bulldogs, or their stupid dares, or their bloody noses, because I had conquered them. I had, in one monumental moment, conquered them all! The most beautiful girl in our class and very likely the entire world had kissed me once down in a cellar inside a beat-up stained mattress with seventeen children and Mark Delancy on top of us. I had become the king. I had become the Curry Pot Cowboy.
3 . The British version of tag.
THE LEDGE
T HE WIND WHIPPED THROUGH the small courtyard below me. I balanced precariously, shivering on a cold, hard cement ledge. I had never stood on a ledge like this before, this high up, and I didn’t know how long I would be standing on it. It was getting very late, almost midnight. At six A.M . the morning bell would sound, signaling that we were to wake up and make ourselves presentable for breakfast. Would I actually be expected to stay out here for six more hours? Surely they wouldn’t leave me out here all night? Someone would have to remember that I was locked outside the fourth floor Southern House dormitory window on this unfriendly ledge.
Not that breakfast was such a highlight. Undoubtedly I would once again eat dry cereal, because the two prefects at the head of the table would satisfy themselves with almost the entire contents of a single milk jug before handing it down to the third-form students like myself at the other end. The prefects were part of an elite group of sixth-form boys specifically selected by the faculty because of their superior scholastic or athletic achievements. They were in charge of the rest of the student body any time before and after the actual
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