The Undergraduates

by Steven Snell

  I wrap my arms around my body and hold my biceps and pierce down into the skin with my finger nails. I don’t want to be like this. I so wish I wasn’t like this. Help me.

  I slowly, as if recovering from surgery, find my legs. I stand and look at myself looking back in the mirror is something I don’t like. My sad black eyes.

  Beethoven went mad because he could not hear what made him Beethoven.

  Existence is adherence to a greater ecology mediated through conflict and hope and I don’t believe in anything.

  I’m not anything.

  I go to bed.

  I fall asleep.

  I wake up.

  My eyes open, close, open again. My alarm clock turns on, CBC radio. I reach over and turn off the radio. I close my eyes. I wake up. I wake up more.

  I lie here and I’m surrounded by my misgivings and my errors in my apartment objects and reminders of all the people I treated like shit. The red mug on my bedside table. Her, Gabriella. She lays here with me in my bed of wet grass a great park just her and me and deciduous trees in bloom. We lie here. Her voice echoes in me and I’m a house on an empty street and it’s storming outside and there are no other structures to share the brunt of the storm and the wind carries stories from a distant shore and my cement foundation is not yet settled.

  Morning becomes later morning and the muffled sounds outside become the early afternoon and she appears again and again and again again again.

  I remember calling her.

  “This isn’t happening,” she said.

  She said, “This wasn’t a fling. This isn’t how this was supposed to end. Do you want this to end?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “What did I do, Shawn? What can I do? What … tell me, tell me what I can do?”

  “… Nothing.”

  “What can I change?”

  “This isn’t about you.”

  “Just –”

  Then she didn’t say anything.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Fine, Shawn.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re selfish.”

  “What?”

  “You’re selfish. You heard me. You’re selfish and you’re right, this is your fault.”

  I stared vacantly at the wall from on the other end of the phone. “… Okay.”

  “Okay? Seriously? That’s it??? … This is why this is happening. Happened. Christ, Shawn! You never thought about me. You never thought about how I cared!”

  “… Gabriella … I did.”

  “You never thought about how much I care.”

  “I did.”

  “You didn’t! You never realized that your actions affect someone else – your lack of emotion! … Do you even know how I feel?”

  “…”

  “Do you???”

  “…”

  “Shawn?”

  Silence.

  “Say something!”

  Then I broke it. “You built me up to be something more than I was – than I am.”

  The second worst phone call we had. And no, no I can’t make sense of it. I’m here; she’s there. And I’m an asshole. I’m not sure what I’ve done. I’m not a full person. I don’t want there to be tears between us anymore. I know we can’t … I don’t know.

  I fall asleep telling myself I don’t want to inhale campfire smoke ever again.

  I wake to a lamp’s shadow laid canted across my clothed body and sweat dripping from my brow and skin heavy on my bones as if before death released into a larger fabric of time. Help me.

  5.

  I open my front door. Karen steps in and puts down her bag. She looks up at me as she steps out of her shoes, “You look awful.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “Not in a high temperature sort of way.”

  “You’re weird Shawn,” she says shaking her head.

  We go and sit down on my bed.

  “Did you want something, water, tea?” I ask.

  “I’m good, thank-you.”

  She starts talking. I start listening, sometimes not. She complains about things. Her friends, her house, her husband, her car, her work. I nod when it’s appropriate to have a reaction. I’m not in the mood for talking. I just want a warm body, my medication, lessen my sickness. Me and Karen and being naked. Saying nothing. Not kissing. Not holding each other but attached, locked together, me in her.

  I nod again.

  She runs out of things to say.

  We remove our clothes. We do what we do. We get clothed. She leaves. I make tea.

  My phone rings. It’s Alex.

  “Hello, Alex. What’s up?”

  “I got hit by a car.”

  “What?!”

  “I was cycling, high, mind you, but yeah, a car hit me.”

  “Seriously?! You okay?!”

  “I’m calling from the hospital.”

  “Which one? I’m on my way.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m getting a cast and then I’m blowing out of here.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Meh, that’s what happens when you go skiing and cycling at the same time. How’re you?”

  “Karen just left.”

  “You’re a terrible person.”

  “I’m aware of that. So, other than not under the bumper of a bus, what’s up?”

  “You sound like shit.”

  “That’s your fault.”

  “You disappeared.”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “We were at the pub –”

  “I recall that.”

  “One of your exes was there.”

  “I partially recall that.”

  “And her boyfriend.”

  “Even less about that.”

  “Dude, it was coke, not roofies.”

  “I awoke on some stranger’s lawn.”

  “Ooh, that’s impressive.”

  “And you?”

  “I met a synchronized swimmer.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Okay, okay, I was the synchronized swimmer.”

  “You’re going to have to elaborate on that.”

  “I was at some bar.”

  “I’m sure you were adored.”

  “The salt water is good for my skin and gives a brilliant sheen to my hair.”

  Alex has numerous personas for bedding men. He’s been a pilot – “Just flew into town” – which I told him was such a cliché. His reply, “You’re fucking a married woman, seriously?”

  “Touché,” was my response.

  Alex has been a monkey trainer, a bike courier, an Australian backpacker. In real life he’s worth seven figures but never wears a suit.

  “I’m such a martyr,” he says.

  “I believe the word you’re looking for is monster.”

  “And how’s The Wife?”

  “You win.”

  “I always do.”

  I shake my head. “We might be doing it for different purposes but neither of us is deceitful about it.”

  “You’re of the highest order.”

  “Whatever. Shouldn’t you be working?

  “We’re on strike.”

  “You do online investing.”

  “I don’t understand your statement.”

  “You’re not in a union to strike.”

  “I’m on strike from the system!”

  “You’re such an ass.”

  Alex sniffs. I say, “How’d it go with the Ski Instructor.”

  “Cathy is such a kind soul.”

  “When she’s topless and you’re skiing down her breasts.”

  “Women love having gay men appreciate their breasts.”

  “She looked transplanted from Florida; someone’s been microwaving.”

  “She gets a discount on the tanning bed at the fitness club she works at.”

  Cathy works as a Life Guard at a fitness centre in the sticks. She sits overlooking lanes staring at swimmers’ back-and-forths. She knows
the number of underwater lights from shallow to deep end, the number of seats in the bleachers, the number of skylights. Thursday and Friday evenings she works part time at a public library and listens to Spanish language lessons audio CDs for when she moves to Ecuador. Poder escapar es la razón de la vida. She taught Alex how to run black diamond ski hills in deep powder. Relax the knees, ski tips up and one long strong inhale dropping the cliff to slam into the passing gondola. Alex introduced the Nyquil.

  I walk over and slide the door open and step out onto the balcony and lean against the railing.

  Alex coughs. “How’s The Philosopher?”

  Alex started calling Laura The Philosopher after I told him about her enjoyment giving oral sex.

  “I haven’t seen her in awhile.”

  “She’s still gifted?”

  “In the Platonic ideal.”

  Alex modeled her name on Plato’s teachings. Civilization represented as the human body. The workers, the labourers are the body and the limbs. Thinkers, leaders, philosophers are the head. Philosophers, the ones who are intellectually endowed for good governance and kept in check through their innate love of abstract knowledge and thus not interested in material satisfaction. If Laura would have been good at hand jobs, he’d have called her The Artisan. But truth is, Alex said, no one is as good as themselves when it comes to hand jobs, except for him.

  “She’s still unique,” I add.

  “To be unique is to be moral because it’s morally correct to adhere to one’s specialization. Consider me jealous.”

  “Based on your ability to hold your breath while wearing a nose plug and swim cap to pick up a dude, I don’t think you need to be.”

  “No, no, I’m just a limb, a finger in comparison to Laura’s cranial greatness.”

  We wrap up our phone call and I say no more four hundred blows and Alex asks what that means and I say it’s a French saying about being the maximum punishment the human body can take. No more blow. He calls me a lightweight and we say bye and I press End on my phone.

  6.

  I’m sitting on my bed, my phone in my hand. I’m flipping it over and over and looking at it and looking outside and back at it. I want to call Gabriella. I’m thinking about calling Gabriella. I’m sitting here and thinking about her. I have good days. I have bad days. I don’t know what today is. A few days off of my medication and my body doesn’t know what it is. I don’t know what I want it to be.

  I click through my Contacts and see her name and long distance telephone number. I see her in Seattle where she’s working now and she’s drinking a coffee or with a friend or she’s walking along the break-wall. We’re walking along the break-wall. A few months ago we were together in Seattle maybe neither of us knowing what we were doing but wanted to be together, for how long I don’t know; she didn’t tell me what she knew.

  When we were together we had something, something I haven’t had before. But we also didn’t have something. I don’t know what that is yet. I’ve searched for it. I still search for it in my lonely moments, my moments picturing her. We’re on a paddlewheel boat peddling with our feet in a small lake and they’re birds and it’s spring but feels like summer. There’s ice on the shore and the south facing lots have brown grass and we’re wearing thick sweaters and jeans and holding hands and smiling and talking and saying things, that easy just everyday sort of things.

  We always held hands. Shopping, at movies, at dinner eating with just a fork, lying in bed, showering, driving. But … but – I let out a long breath – but I don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know. She liked desserts and I didn’t. She was light and sensible and tender and afraid of snakes and loved her family and never got in trouble and did well in school and drove the speed limit and made her bed and always had candles lit. She fell asleep to the television on and called her mother every day and kissed her father hello and goodbye and loved her brother. I don’t know what I was.

  We didn’t talk.

  We talked but didn’t … talk. We communicated but … just sorta filled up the air.

  I just want to talk. I want to hear her voice and imagine where she is. Maybe I want to imagine being there too. I want her to tell me a story.

  I look at my phone.

  I look outside at the white featureless sky.

  I look at my phone.

  The Contact list.

  I call her.

  It’s ringing. Ringing.

  Silence.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi Gabriella.”

  “… Hi.”

  “It’s Shawn.”

  “… I know.”

  “How are you?”

  “… Okay.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  I hesitate. I put my hand on the back of my neck and push my hair up and down on the back of my head. I can feel my heart beating heavily in my chest. I start to speak. I stop. I try again.

  I look at myself reflected in the mirror beside my bedroom door. My heart heavier or harder. “I …”

  “I’m not sure if I can deal with this right now, Shawn.”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe this isn’t fair. … I’m sorry – but …”

  I sit here, my phone pressed to my ear. The white featureless sky. Her hellos from the yesterdays echo two or three times. Then silence. The nothingness. My head drifts out away and gets lost in the spring when there was still snow on the north facing lots, peddling a boat along in a small lake.

  I go to the kitchen and pull out a stool and sit. I wish I could tell her that I want to be emptied of her, that I want it easier, that I must let go of these thoughts, but I’ve gotten used to the difficulty of her inside of me, the habits and memories. I don’t want to let her go.

  She once tried to teach me the piano. Just the basics but all I wanted was to hear her move through Moonlight Sonata. Over and over. No, just you, I had said. Play. And she did. Just for me, because maybe she once loved me. She would play long enough for me to fall asleep where the piano’s legs meet the floor. On my side, my hand holding her ankle.

  I wish I could hear her playing now. Any song. But she said something about time and far enough away on two tanks of gas back home to where she grew up. Salty air and change. I imagine her driving listening to Damien Rice. His guitar. The softness, the anguish. His vocals as though lost in himself. And she drove, mountains and valleys and then the ocean and a city of wind and sailboats in harbors and old growth trees and still that guitar playing on her radio.

  Gabriella.

  It hurts but I want you to find happiness. It makes me nauseous but … I don’t want to picture it … I just want you to be happy.

  Let me remember what it’s like to sleep in with you on Sundays. Let me have your hand on late night walks. Let me wake to see your naked back. Let me hold you again in this cool kitchen. I don’t want to be like anyone else. I never wanted us to be like anyone else. Just you and me and shutting off the world. Just happiness. I didn’t need anyone else’s. Only ours. That would have been enough. I knew something was missing though I never said it. Maybe we both knew but never communicated it. Maybe that’s our fault, miscommunications … misses. I never said … I never used the word, I never said love. … It never wanted to come out of me. I wanted it to feel natural but … but I couldn’t say it when I thought I needed to say it most.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I didn’t say love but I’m sorrier if I didn’t show you it enough. Love.

  I should have said love.

  My shin up against the counter and my head lowered to my knee.

  Gabriella.

  I think I need to say something, something more but …

  You mentioned love many times. I smiled and said thank-you but kissing you always felt inadequate. I was being an asshole. I don’t know. I think you grew tired of it. Frustrated by it. Of saying it and not hearing it. I never liked the word. That fucking word. I still don’t. … It’s a stupid word too often heard to describe any motive. It’s los
t its meaning. Its significance. You were so much more to me. I know that you were so much more to me. I know that now but should have accepted it when holding hands walking along the break wall, when we were lying together, making dinner together. I should have said it over and over. Maybe, maybe I needed to have found a word that was good enough for you, one that had not been said before. One that still has not been said.

  Together, one day, I remember you resting your head on my shoulder … but now I know everything between us is only memories. We sat like that the last time we saw each other and we will never sit like that again.

  I cross my legs and put my elbow on my knee and hold my chin in my hand.

  For a moment I felt myself getting closer to you. I felt you becoming a part of me. Closer than any feeling we’ve had physically. We laughed a lot and the period of questioning who we were or what we had together had left us. Fear, I thought, had left us.

  I think I needed to define us as something. Make it real or something. Something. I no longer need to keep searching for a lifetime together. Just be. Just live. I wish I could have known just what the present was so I could understand what the future could look like and be one step, perhaps, perhaps one step closer to that place of growing old with you.