by Riley Meyer
“Oh you do, do you? How?”
“I’ve got Netflix, Rafe. I am a woman of the world.”
“Alright, alright,” I said, placatingly because her voice was increasingly rising over the speaker’s, who looked in our direction.
We returned our attention to the front of the room, where the speaker was explaining that your ID card not only got you into the libraries and into other colleges, but it could also get you discounts at many Oxford shops.
Maura sighed.
“It better get me a discount next time I need my fanny waxed.”
Then she looked over at me:
“Do you wax?”
“No, why would I?”
“British guys love to wax.”
“Really?”
I thought back to Mark’s crotch, pleased he hadn’t felt the need to control his thick bush.
“It’s all the rage. I thought you might wax your own fanny.”
“Nah,” I replied, “hairier the better.”
“Stop,” she whispered, putting a hand on my leg and squeezing, “the thought of your hairy crack’s getting me hard.”
About twenty minutes of monotonal information later, we were split into subject groups to formally tour the college. Maura peeled off towards the law students who looked somewhere between Skins and a Barbie Dream House (“Lard, give me strength”, she whispered) and I moved towards the English students who, though no less expensively attired, were aiming for a different look north of bed-head and just south of homeless.
Of course, who should be there but James, the solid curves of his arse so tightly wrapped in the fabric of his formal trousers that it seemed, too my hungry eyes, almost indecent. I only just managed to pull my gaze away to meet his eyes and nod to him as I sidled up.
“Rafe. Did you meet up with Jack?”
“Yeah, I did. And I’ll see him later, too.”
“Glad to hear it.”
The other English students were a few feet away from us. James glanced over before he leaned in slightly, taking the distance down from professional to personal. I could smell his cologne and see the muscles under the tanned skin of his neck, his Adam’s apple straining. It was a heady combination.
“And how’s your head today?” he asked softly.
His tone made my heart pick up the pace, but I tried to look unfazed.
“Oh, you know, feels like someone’s driving a monster truck around my skull.”
He laughed, throwing back his head to reveal his whole biteable neck.
“Was it worth it?” he asked.
“Oh, definitely,” I confirmed, again thinking of Mark’s cock.
“Again, glad to hear it.”
“I appreciate your concern, though.”
“Well,” he said sardonically, “your pastoral care is my professional responsibility.”
He was flirting with me, right? I wished Maura had been next to me to tell me I wasn’t going mad. I locked eyes with him, daring and willing him to keep up with the banter, even if I pushed it up a notch. I asked:
“Are these pastoral attentions going to stop after first week or can I expect this level of service throughout my Oxford stay?”
He looked at me, appraisingly, perhaps weighing the risks.
“That depends on how much of a headache you cause me.”
What exactly did he mean by that?
“I’m a model of discretion,” I replied, “I don’t go in for making drama”.
“That’s good to know, but actually we’re more likely to see a lot of each other if you don’t behave.”
“Well,” I said, racing to keep up with the possible subtext being lobbed back and forth, “I suppose I could cause a little bit of drama, if the situation called for it. A dramatic interlude, if you will. To keep things fresh.”
“An interlude?” he asked, his eyes flickering with a smile.
“Yeah, an interlude. A break. Otherwise professional responsibilities can weigh a bit heavily. I mean, take it from my perspective, I can’t study all the time, holed up alone in my room poring over the books. You’ve got to have fun as well. You’ve got to have company. Even if you risk a bit of a headache.”
“I think that might be a privilege of student life.”
I shrugged.
“There’s got to be some privileges to working at Oxford, right?”
“Perhaps,” he said, his lips twisting slightly, “though the university demands a lot of us.”
“As I said and speaking personally: work-life balance.”
He frowned, as though he’d just found a hair in his mouth or a bone in his chicken nugget, and looked away. The other students started to gather around.
Had I gone too far? Had I fucked it up? I had no idea but I knew I was feeling a bit sweaty in the armpit area.
We got split into two groups, James leading one of them and another English tutor called Karen leading the other, and as was typical of my terrible luck, I got lumped in the latter. I sighed as James and his iron backside left the hall, leaving me with the very sweet but ever-so-dowdy Karen to point out one bust after another.
Everything, it turned out, had some link to the English Civil War—her area of specialty—grinding our tour to a halt every other corner we turned.
At first I was distracted, either thinking about Mark or thinking about James, but as the time wore on I started to pay more attention to the Cavaliers and Roundheads. Karen’s eyes were alight with passion for the history of the place and I slowly felt myself getting caught up in it.
As we left the second quad, she pointed out a large mound set amongst the gardens and explained that in the early sixteenth century, the city’s plague dead had been buried there. This memorial though, which could have been so grim, was now bursting with trees and wild flowers, a little wilderness, and I saw some other students at the top of the mound enjoying a picnic.
Oxford, it turned out, was filled with moments like these. There was the spot where Thomas Cranmer was burnt to death at the stake, right next to the charming bookshop you have coffee in every morning. The city’s present lived alongside its past, the legacy of history was everywhere and it was always taking new forms and new resonances; to all this there was no comparison in New Zealand. It felt like I was in the thick of things, part of the real meaningful history of the world for the first time in my life.
I tried to express this to Jack when we met up after orientation. We sat on a rug in the fellow’s garden under the shade of an oak. It was idyllic, the afternoon sun not roasting but the air warm and fresh; it reminded me of swimming in the sea in the height of summer.
Jack'd got us each a pint from the college bar and he sipped his, watching me as I tried—abortively—to explain myself. Then he sat there, thinking for a moment and letting his gaze drift over the flowerbeds before he replied in his measured voice:
“Perhaps it’s just that New Zealand’s history is less visible, or not visible in ways that you think of as “historical”. No stone buildings, no columns, no cobbled streets, but history’s there all the same and just as meaningful, even if it takes different shapes.”
I nodded, quickly turning red.
Of course he was right. I’d just been saying the first thing that came to my head but I got the sense that Jack wasn’t one to give himself over to whatever hot-take came to him at any given moment.
I stammered a response, something about the traces of Māori civilisation and basically fessing up to my lack of thought.
“I’m not pulling you up,” he said kindly, “not at all. In fact I know exactly what you mean. We all have Western glasses on and they make some things visible and some things not. When we think of history we think men in togas, soldiers fighting in trenches, maybe galleons blowing each other out of the water with cannons. I think you’re right, in that when we think about history we automatically think about Europe.”
“That’s a very generous interpretation of my brain fart.”
He smiled.
I thought he looked more relaxed than he had that morning and for a moment he closed his eyes, enjoying the warm air and the cold pint in his hand.
I took the opportunity to look at him. Slim, long, but coiled somehow, sinewy, like a runner. It always felt intimate, looking at someone with their eyes closed. That tiny change, the little fold of the eyelids, could transform a face, and in Jack’s case it made him look serene, almost marmoreal: Statue of a Young Man at Rest.
“What’s your girlfriend’s name?” I asked.
His eyes flicked open and looked troubled.
“Jen. Jennifer.”
I nodded. He let out a sigh and had another sip. Definitely trouble at home.
“How long have you been together?”
“A long time. First in Bristol and then we moved here for our Master's. She was doing history, actually.”
“European?” I asked, smiling.
“Latin American. Mayans, Aztecs, that kind of thing.”
“That’s so cool.”
“Yeah, it is. She’s not doing it now though. After she finished she started working at a cafe near where we live. I think she’s—uh, she’s a bit lost, really.”
“You seem a bit lost, too,” I commented, again without thinking twice.
Jack looked at me, seriously, and then let out a little laugh.
“Is it that obvious?”
He rubbed his eyes with the balls of his hands and then grinned. He asked:
“Do you have a girlfriend? Or did you, in New Zealand?”
“Oh, uh—nah, I didn’t. I don’t.”
He nodded.
Come on, Rafe, I thought to myself. Jesus, don’t put yourself back in the closet after all these years.
“I’m gay actually. More or less.”
Jack nodded.
“That’s cool. I thought you might be.”
I couldn’t help but ask: “Was I that obvious about it? That fruity?”
“Fruity?”
“Like, gay-gay.”
“No,” he replied, again his eyes appraising me, “do you worry that you’re “fruity”?”
“No,” I lied.
This guy was reading me like the most clichéd book at the library. I felt on the back foot, like he was taking a wrecking ball through all my usual bluster.
“I didn’t think you were fruity,” he said, “you’re just different from most of the guys—or most of the undergraduate guys—that you tend to get here. And that’s a good thing, at least in my opinion.”
“Well, thanks then.”
He laughed absently and I waited for him to explain.
He let the pause extend for a while before he spoke again, staring at the grass and twisting a few blades between his fingers.
“I used to think I was gay, actually.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, interest piqued, “how come?”
“Well, exactly because I was different from other guys. Because I wanted to talk about books and they wanted to talk about the Premier League.”
I wanted to ask: do you still think you might be gay? But I bit my lip.
“And I had a lot of female friends when I was young,” he continued, “they used to come over in the weekend for sleepovers and we’d watch movies. My dad used to be very proud about it, he’d make jokes. Which in retrospect was a bit fucked up. But we were all just friends. I don’t remember ever thinking of any of them in that way; like, it never even occurred to me until much later.”
“Maybe you’re asexual,” I offered.
He laughed and shook his head:
“That would make things easier. Maybe. No, I’m definitely not that. It’s funny, I, uh—,” he paused and then, having evidently decided not to say what he had been about to say, and concluded, “yeah, not asexual.”
I raised an eyebrow. I was getting more and more intrigued by this soft-spoken 25-year-old with the pale skin and green eyes But my inquiries were cut abruptly short by the arrival of Maura, who was pulling two large guys in tow.
“Hello boyos, mind if we join?”
I saw my hesitation reflected in Jack’s face, but what choice did we have? We both nodded. The two guys had rowing lycra on with running shorts over the top, their biceps bristling out of the tight suits and their chest muscles on full display.
They barely looked at Jack or I but were keeping a very close eye on Maura, to her obvious pleasure.
“And who might you be?” Maura asked.
Jack introduced himself and stuck his hand out for her to shake. She took it.
“A true gentleman,” Maura said, trying to deflect the awkwardness of that gesture, but I saw Jack turn red nonetheless.
She turned to introduce the guys, Tom and Jason, who grunted like they were her personal bouncers. Maura introduced me to her guys and explained to Jack, Tom and Jason how she’d meet me, pulling me up off the ground outside the lift, putting my jet-lagged young self to bed, and guiding me through my first drunken night in the big city.
I looked at her ironically, remembering quite a different chain of events—at least on the third point.
“So you’re telling me you were sober when you sent me those texts last night?” I asked.
She spun her head to look at me, icily.
“A lady never tells. And a gentleman doesn’t either.”
“I bet you were trashed,” said Tom or Jason in their deep, mating-dance voice that I found frustratingly both annoying and hot.
“I couldn’t possibly confirm or deny,” Maura said firmly, “though I do remember the world spinning just a little bit. But that’s normal, isn’t it?”
The guys laughed. One of them pull a flask out of their pocket and had a long swig before passing it to Maura.
“Back me up, here, Jack,” Maura said, before taking a long sip.
“Oh, uh—” Jack was on the spot but he wasn’t sure what he was being called to do, “yeah, I think a few drinks tends to have that effect.”
“Yeah, you were probably fucked out of your mind,” snorted Tom or Jason.
“Not exactly the fucking I was hoping for, let me tell you,” said Maura. With that comment, she had the two guys basically lapping out of her hand.
Fuck, it was so easy being a girl sometimes.
I, on the other hand, grimaced at the change of tone that the arrival of Maura and her crew had had on Jack and I’s conversation. I was embarrassed. It was so obvious they were eighteen and by being with me, I felt I was being tarred by the same immature brush.
Maybe I deserved it, I probably was a little immature for my age. But I liked to think I could code-switch, into my teenage dude self and out again, into the vaguely sophisticated adult that could shoot the philosophical breeze with Jack.
I was very aware of losing points in his estimation. I didn’t know why I cared, but I did.
The conversation continued on in this vein, with a healthy dollop of innuendo and a singularly unenlightening discussion between Jason and Tom about which mix of spirits got you “fucked up” quicker. Jack tried to contribute but I could tell it wasn’t exactly his idea of a good afternoon. After a polite amount of time, and some quick downing of his pint, he stretched and stood up.
“I better get back home. My turn to cook dinner.”
“No worries,” I said, sheepishly, looking up at his silhouette, dark against the dying light of the afternoon.
“It was good to see you again though, Rafe, and to meet you guys.”
“Yeah, uh, thanks again for fielding all my questions.”
“Oh, no problem. I don’t think I really did all that much. But feel free to email me, if you have any other things you want to ask.”
“Sure, I will.”
He hesitated and then nodded at everyone and made to go. As he walked off, I called after him:
“Jack—let’s get a drink sometime?”
He nodded, brightening slightly:
“Definitely. I’d like that.”
I turned back to the group. Maur
a was looking at me.
“Isn’t dinner at seven?” the guy I’m pretty sure was Jason asked.
“He lives out. He’s a DPhil student,” I explained.
“Oh shit,” Jason reflected for a moment on this new information, ‘so what, he’s like twenty?”
Maura put her hand on my knee and squeezed. Her expression was apologetic.
“Sorry for interrupting.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” I said.
“But I did, didn’t I? Interrupt. You were having a deep and meaningful.”
“Nah, it’s all good.”
“He’s cute,” she commented, “quiet, but cute.”
I shrugged.
“He’s straight.”
7
Against Maura’s protests, I decided not to follow them to the college bar after dinner and instead returned to my room to try sort my head out for the week ahead. After all, I had my first class in the morning, I was still jet-lagged, and I knew I had about fifty emails from various university administrators. And I felt discombobulated. I’d woken up, left Mark’s room and hadn’t stopped since. The swigs of booze that kept coming my way from Maura’s flask during dinner weren’t helping either.
When I was getting my key for my room out of my trouser pocket, I saw a note sticking out from under the door. My first thought was that it might be from Mark. But would he leave it in plain sight, sticking half-way out into the corridor?
I knelt down to pick it up and read it as I entered my room. The neat blue ink read:
“Hi. I don’t know if you realise but you left your laptop playing music really loud all last night. Some of us are actually here to learn. I hope you’ll show more respect in the future but to make sure you do I’ve alerted the college. Best, A Neighbour x.”
I groaned and crumpled the piece of paper in my hand. Fucking nark. Just what I needed: some flat politics. I shut the door behind me and locked it. I couldn’t face the prospect of a head-to-head with one my neighbours just at the moment.
The room was bathed in the orange of the evening sun and I felt a wave of tiredness come over me.
I checked my emails. As expected, there was a generic email from the college stating that they’d had a noise complaint and asking me to keep it down in future. Repeat infractions would be referred to the disciplinary committee, apparently. It was like living with my Mum again.