Blues in the Bod [4/5]
Saturday, 3 September 2011 10:29![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
extemporallyIn the end neither Andrew nor Carey made costumes.
The bop started at eight but that wasn't when anyone turned up. Once last term Carey and Andrew had made the fatal mistake of turning up at eight on the dot and gone down to the beer cellar primed in their costumes (this was back in the days when they actually bothered with costumes), ready to party. The only person there had been a moody third-year setting up the DJ booth. As he had stood at the booth giving them a gloomy, fatalistic look from under his sleepy, shaggy brows, they (frightened freshers both) had fled. It was hard to run when you had a piece of cardboard, upon which there was a drawing of a sheep, hung about you, Andrew could tell you that.
This time they just stayed in Carey’s room. Carey made really good gin and tonics – had it ever been mentioned? Andrew sat next to her, collapsed and grinning.
“D’you read the Cherwell article,” Andrew said, “The one where the baby has a pre-lash before she gets out of the womb to – hahaha – prepare her for life.”
"Oh my god, I totally read that!" Carey said, giggling. At this point she was way tipsier than Andrew was. What a lightweight. "Oh, god," she winced. "The hangover for this is going to be quite bad, isn't it?"
"Let's not think about it," Andrew told her. "Do you think Jesse's going to turn up?"
"I don't know," Carey said. "You should ask him."
"He'll just say no," Andrew sulked.
"Then you've got your answer," Carey said. "He's not going to turn up."
As much to defy Carey as to bring Jesse to the party, Andrew picked up his phone and dialed Jesse's number, making sure to put his sober face on before he picked up. On the bed Carey rocked with laughter.
"We're kidnapping you," Andrew informed him solemnly when Jesse said, "Hello?"
"Andrew?" Jesse asked.
"It is I," Andrew confirmed. "Or rather, it is we. Today I work in a collective. A collective to… kidnap you."
Carey made a face at Andrew, and he realized that that probably wasn't the most sober thing to say.
"Andrew?" Jesse said. "Have you been drinking?" He sounded amused. Maybe, Andrew thought, the tiniest bit fond.
"We are a bit," Andrew said. "Gin and tonic - what a drink. What, and I should have said this in the plural so I’m saying it now, drinks. We're in Carey's room now and you should come up. Bring Emma too."
"Gin and tonic is a bit beyond my normal run of alcoholic choices," Jesse told him, "but okay."
"Welcome to Oxford," Andrew said happily. "Okay, see you then."
He rang off and Carey made a face at him. "What?" Andrew said defensively.
"'Okay,'" Carey mimicked. "'See you then,' Garfield. That's the tone of voice I used when I had my first boyfriend and was talking to him; keep in my mind I was fifteen. You're transparent as a sheet of glass."
"Shut up!" Andrew said. "They might hear."
"It's a ten-minute walk from Columbia House," Carey pointed out reasonably.
"You think he knows?" Andrew said dreamily. He was slumped against Carey's knees.
"You know what you could do to make really really sure he knows?" Carey said. "You could… tell him."
"No," Andrew said stubbornly, and began to whistle a club tune. “Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. BARBRA STREISAND.”
Carey sighed.
---
There was a knock at Carey's door and Andrew was ready for it. He lunged at the door and opened it. "Jesse!" he said happily. "My favorite person in the world - and my second-favourite, Emma. Come in."
“Hey, what about me?” Carey wailed, and Andrew shushed her.
"Nice save, Garfield," Emma said, and stepped in. "Sorry, Carey. How are the both of you?"
"Mildly sloshed, actually," Carey said, and beamed. "Want some?"
"Ooh, yes please," Emma said. "I assume you're both not going to the bop then?"
"Scurrilous lies!" Andrew said indignantly. Jesse was standing by Carey's bed. Andrew plopped himself on top of the sheets and patted the space next to him. "Sit down, Jesse."
"We are going to the bop," Carey explained, putting cut limes into two clean glasses. "We just thought it would be more expedient to get sloshed now and turn up late-ish, around ten or eleven, and start dancing straightaway without having to wait for the dance floor to pay ridiculous prices for mediocre cranberry-vodka things at the bar."
"I can get behind that," Emma said, and accepted the glass Carey handed her.
"How are you?" Andrew asked Jesse.
"Good," Jesse said. He took a sip of his gin and tonic. "I was working on a paper before you interrupted with your party plans."
"Aren't I great?" Andrew said happily.
Carey and Emma laughed at him.
"Maybe," Jesse said.
---
Only Girl (In The World), Rihanna
It was ten-thirty by the time they went down to the college bar, flushed and a little stumbling. Andrew held onto Jesse's wrist as they went down the steps to the bar, just in case.
"I don't dance," Jesse told Andrew, "but I think I'm beginning to forget that."
"I do," Andrew admitted, "but I think I’m starting to forget that too. God, what did Carey put in those G&Ts?"
"Gin," Carey said loudly. "and a little bit of tonic."
Emma laughed. “Just a little.”
A Rihanna song was playing and the walls were starting to stream with sweat; someone had put up the god-awful strobe lights they always put up every time they had a bop and Andrew glanced anxiously at Jesse to see if he was okay, but Jesse was looking right back at him.
A couple of metres away, David and Georgiana and John and Billie and Freema were dancing; next to them, Ellen and Kristen were dancing very close to each other; Andrew tapped Ellen on the shoulder and because it was too loud for words they exchanged hi-fives but Andrew didn't attempt to join the both of them. Instead he, Jesse, Emma and Carey carved out a circle of their own on the floor and started dancing, Andrew throwing himself every which way and doing a little shimmy at Jesse. Jesse himself was moving in time to the music, maybe a little more expansively than he would have done if he'd not been drunk.
On an impulse, Andrew seized Jesse's wrists. "Dance with me," he said, and Jesse let Andrew take the lead.
They danced together; it was just for half a minute at the most but they were truly dancing together, in a way that seemed to be less and less in vogue these days, for a split-second Andrew wondered why until Katy Perry’s Firework cut into his consciousness again and he remembered that that was probably why. Even with music that wasn’t the most conducive, though, they managed it, Andrew swinging their arms left and right and twirling around as Jesse smiled at him, getting drawn and drawn into the dance. Andrew couldn’t tell if they were getting more or less drunk. Maybe this was only a different kind of inebriation.
BABY YOU’RE A FIREWORK –
They rejoined Carey and Emma. Emma smiled at him, and Andrew seized her hands, too, swung her around as she twirled with such force her wide skirt flared out. And Andrew dropped her hands and turned to Jesse and Carey and Emma again, and danced with them as the song closed. A long pause of silence, so strange it was practically Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony for the outlier bullshit it was pulling, intervened. That was punctuated by a collective groan rising from the dancefloor, silenced a few seconds later by the roar of a new song starting up again.
So the DJ was crap, but the night was brilliant.
---
When Andrew had been in school he had taken Philosophy at AS level. One of his core texts had been Thinking Through Philosophy (Horner & Westacott, 2000). He still remembered the chapter on art: “What is the purpose of art? Is it solely to transmit emotion? If we accept that premise wholly then we would have to reach the conclusion that dance music is the highest form of art.”
Now, with the sweat running down the back of his neck and Jesse’s own face turned purple under the coloured lights, the only thing he could think through the haze of music played loudloudloud and alcohol was why not, why not.
“Are you having fun?” Andrew shouted at Jesse. He didn’t seem to hear Andrew, so Andrew moved closer and repeated himself.
“I’m having a good time, yeah,” Jesse shouted in his ear. At some point he had fought his way to the bar and bought another drink, a cranberry vodka Andrew thought it was, and now he was dancing with it in one hand. Andrew beckoned him closer, and Jesse followed willingly.
Andrew took Jesse’s glass and sipped from it, his eyes not leaving Jesse’s face. Jesse let him, and when Andrew handed the glass back to him his thumb brushed against Jesse’s wrist, and Jesse didn’t flinch.
“I really want to kiss you right now,” Andrew blurted. He didn’t know if Jesse could hear him for sure, but Jesse turned to him, eyes dark as if he had.
Andrew swallowed and thought: this is it. Jesse was moving closer to him. He was wearing a v-neck t-shirt, and there was a bare patch of skin shining with sweat stretched slick over his collarbones. Their faces were barely two inches apart.
“Okay,” Jesse said, and put down his drink, and Andrew was absolutely positive he heard it despite the loud music blasting out from the speakers all around them. He’d mostly filtered it out, anyway. Who needed drums and bass?
“Okay,” Jesse said, and Andrew’s heart clenched inside of him. So brave, he thought. Jesse looked so serious, and Andrew wanted, somehow, in his drunk, fuzzy way, to reassure him. To let him know that this was all right.
“Okay,” Andrew said, smiling, nearly against Jesse’s lips. “This – it’s okay, this doesn’t have to mean anything.”
He felt Jesse still against him. Then Jesse nodded imperceptibly, just once, and surged forward.
Andrew wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. He felt Jesse’s lips against his, tentative, and took the lead, winding his fingers into Jesse’s hair and guiding his head to an angle. Jesse licked against his lips, and yes, Andrew wanted that, so he opened his mouth and licked into Jesse’s own, and felt the heat surge into his groin. He pressed against Jesse and Jesse didn’t move or skitter away, just pressed back, hard against him, and wrapped his arms loosely against Andrew’s waist before putting both his hands into the back pockets of Andrew’s jeans. Andrew leaned forward even further.
There was the taste of cranberry on his lips and teeth, there was the sound of a couple of people cheering them on over and above the roar of yet another club hit (I wanna celebrate and live my life, saying eh-oh! Baby, let’s go!), but none of that mattered. Here, and here, beneath Andrew’s hands and on his mouth and on his ass, was Jesse, Jesse, Jesse. Andrew’s heart was hammering in his chest but for once he didn’t think he might die.
Jesse moaned softly and Andrew broke off the kiss, gave a gentle questioning sound. Jesse drew in closer again, and Andrew, Andrew was overwhelmed by how much heated skin there was he wanted to kiss, and made a beginning by nipping at Jesse’s jaw and moving to kiss his lips. Jesse made a soft, quavery sound at that and Andrew was pleased, thought, I did that. He dove back in for another kiss, and another, and another.
“I –” Andrew voice sounded wrecked. “Jesse.”
Jesse, trembling, didn’t respond, but ducked his head and tucked Andrew’s earlobe into his mouth, in between his teeth, before raising his head to speak.
“We should go,” Jesse said. “That’s what – I mean we don’t want to do this in front of everyone, maybe, I think, maybe we should go.”
---
Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt, We Are Scientists
Andrew unlocked his door with fumbling fingers, then crossed the room and switched on the desk lamp so it cast a dim glow over the room, not too much, just right. He walked back to Jesse hovering over by the door, and shut it behind the both of them.
Andrew really wanted to drop to his knees, drop to his knees and suck Jesse off, but that would be, that would be wrong and bad; he wanted that first time to be perfect, for all of the other times that weren’t perfect; he didn’t know how much experience Jesse had but he remembered his own first. He never wanted Jesse to feel that bad.
“I want to suck you off,” he murmured, air ghosting hot against Jesse’s ear. He hoped Jesse could feel it connected like a taut string to Andrew’s thumb pressing against Jesse’s wrist, hard against his jumping pulse point. “But I’m too – I’m too drunk, so maybe next time –”
“There’s gonna be a –” Jesse swallowed compulsively. “Okay.”
“Yeah,” Andrew said. And Jesse moved his face so they were kissing again, fast and wet and sloppy. Andrew was glad they were here, that he was here, in his room pressing Jesse against his door with his stupid TOASTIES WELCOME sign on the other side of it because he could hear the sound of them kissing and didn’t have to fight off the bad white noise of the dance floor.
The kiss got heated fast. In between dragging his mouth down Jesse’s throat, Andrew’s hands had moved from the warm solid column of Jesse’s waist to the backs of his thighs – and he heaved, lifting Jesse up so Jesse had his legs wrapped around Andrew’s waist, erection pressed against Andrew’s own groin. Andrew groaned into the kiss.
“God – you’re so –” he said, and felt Jesse nodding frantically even though he had no idea what Andrew had been going to say.
Andrew didn’t know what he was going to say either, forgot it, in between Jesse pressing up against him like this was one thing he wanted enough to show that he wanted it, finally, and the weight of his legs under Andrew’s hands and wrists, the strain of it like a stretch you hold and hold.
Still holding Jesse, Andrew staggered back against the bed and Jesse landed there too, right on top of him.
Jesse looked down at him, his mouth slightly open and eyes downcast. “Sorry,” he said. He didn’t look sorry, but Andrew tipped his chin up anyway and swallowed that single word, that sorry in another kiss.
They kissed, and Jesse moved into a sitting position and toed off his shoes, bending forward so his forehead was drooping towards his knees. “Ohgod,” he said aloud, his voice deep and dark in the depth and darkness of Andrew’s room. “I’m so drunk.”
Andrew believed him. Partly because he had said it with such conviction. And also because Andrew was drunk.
“Lie down,” Andrew said, smoothing his hand over his sheets in invitation. “Lie down and – and sleep –”
“I’m so drunk,” Jesse repeated, with gloomy conviction, but he lay down next to Andrew anyway, on his back.
Andrew pressed a kiss to Jesse’s temple, part of his mouth hitting his curls. “Shhh,” he said. “Don’t think about it. Lie on your side and we can spoon. You can be the little one.”
When they had finally wrested their limbs into place, Andrew’s kneecaps were cupping the backs of Jesse’s thighs, his right arm flung over his waist. Andrew felt Jesse relax and smiled into the back of his head. He heard Jesse whisper something into the pillowcase.
“Yeah,” Andrew said softly. “Tomorrow morning.” Then he fell asleep.
5th week
Subject: Fifth Week Bulletin
From: Keira Knightley
Date: 13 February 2011, 10:05
To: Merton JCR [merton-jcr]
Dear Merton,
Welcome to fifth week! I hope those who went to the Valentine's bop last night had a good time and that you’ve managed to accumulate a solid stock of goodwill for the tough week that lies ahead…
Three JCR related things going on this week:
1. I’ll be leading a focus group on Monday on the different funding structures Oxford should lobby for in the wake of the Browne Review. The three main options we'll be considering are a) lower fees, b) enhanced bursary schemes and c) fee waivers. 7.30 pm, Ackroyd Room - please come and have a say on the future of Oxford Uni.
2. Leehom and I will be starting work on our brand new Alternative Prospectus this week. A meeting about this will now probably take place after Tuesday's JCR Tea - location to be confirmed.
3. The Room Ballot for the academic year 2011 - 2012, led by our very own Accommodations Officer Jay Chou, will be happening on Thursday in the Auditorium.
And that's all from me for now! Notices will be coming up as they arise. Don't let fifth week blues get you down.
Cheers,
Keira
Keira Knightley
JCR President, Merton College
Committee Member of OUSU Women's Campaign
---
When Andrew woke up in the morning Jesse was gone.
His bed, which was a single, suddenly seemed emptier than it had ever been; anxious almost with the lack of Jesse.
“Jesse?” he said aloud, feeling stupid immediately. Then he winced. On top of the sensation of being still drunk, the hangover was hammering its point home. (Home for it seemed to be the top of his skull.) He fumbled for his phone and texted Jesse.
hey, where did you go? hope you’re ok x
He didn’t understand how Jesse could have found the strength to walk away. All he wanted to do right now was close his eyes and fall back asleep for another couple of hours, and so he did.
---
Sunday Morning, The Velvet Underground
Andrew definitely needed something greasy to eat.
That was literally his first waking thought. He was still feeling a little worse for wear, but at least he wasn’t feeling quite as awful as he’d been earlier. And also, a little voice sang a reminder in his head, I got with Jesse! It had been a bit of a downer to wake up to Jesse’s absence, but he expected that his bed had been rather cramped with both their bodies anyway. Except what if – but he shut down that line of thought straightaway.
Only after he’d stumbled out of bed, put himself under a shower and swallowed an aspirin did he think to check his phone, and scrabbled under his bed to retrieve it, where it had inexplicably fallen from his nightstand.
Jesse hadn’t texted back. The warm glow in Andrew’s chest was ebbing away.
Perhaps, Andrew decided, perhaps he was still sleeping off the hangover. Or maybe he had somewhere to go – in any case he probably shouldn’t worry about it, he told himself. He looked at his phone again and saw that it was a quarter to twelve. Lunch would start in forty-five minutes. Maybe he would see Jesse in hall.
Meanwhile he sat down on his bed again and listened to the bells coming from the college chapel pitch their tremor, from treble to tenor.
---
Subject: missing scarf
From: Ellen Page
Date: 13 February 2011 11:37
To: Merton JCR [merton-jcr]
Dear all,
A friend of mine from Mansfield attended our bop yesterday and she's lost her scarf. It's long, fringed and has red and black checks. It's very dear to her and she would be grateful if everyone could keep a look out or check if they've accidentally got it. If you find it, please put it in my pigeonhole and I'll get it to her.
Thanks,
Ellen
Ellen Page
Merton College International Students Rep
--------------------------------------------------
Subject: Scarf?
From: Kristen Stewart
Date: 13 February 2011 11:07
To: Ellen Page
Dude,
So I can't find the scarf I wore to your bop last night anywhere - do you think you might have it? If not, could you please shoot an email to your JCR and ask them about it. Robs gave it to me and he'll be really pissed off if he finds out I lost it at a bop.
Despite the unequivocally good time I had.
Thanks,
K.
---
At half-twelve Andrew put his jacket on and went to lunch. There were a couple of people in the JCR as he passed through, just to pick up a copy of The Observer, and he couldn’t decide if it was just him or if everyone really was staring at him like they knew he’d got with Jesse the previous day. Suddenly he knew how Boo Radley must have felt.
Usually Andrew smiled and said hello, but today he just tucked the newspaper under his arm and went into the buttery.
It was a pretty short queue. On the board it said pork chops and ‘vegetable pasta hotpot’ were for lunch; to be quite honest Andrew wasn’t really looking forward to either, but his stomach growled and he felt queasy all over again, so he supposed that was a reminder from his body that he ought to eat something at least. He wished Carey was here, but he hadn’t brought his phone out and it was probably too late to ask her to come to hall anyway.
Andrew unfolded the newspaper and read the headlines as he waited for the kitchen to open its doors.
Halfway through the comment section he heard a strange scuffling noise and raised his head. Jesse was looking at him from the entrance to the buttery, his eyes wide and panicked.
“Jesse,” Andrew said blankly, and Jesse turned and stumbled away. The reddening flush on his face was apparent, even from behind. The door swung shut behind him with a definitive thunk.
Now everyone was definitely looking at Andrew. He swallowed, unsuccessfully, against the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat, a taste strange and bitter behind his tonsils. It was as if the cold stone walls of the buttery were bearing down on him, threatening to crush him like a glass bottle in a recycling factory.
Andrew very carefully opened his newspaper again, and retreated behind it just as deliberately without stopping until he was at the head of the queue. He sat alone and didn’t speak to anyone else all through lunch, and as soon as he had worried down some food he went back to his room and stayed there for the rest of the day.
---
Andrew didn’t know how startled Carey was to hear a knock on her door on Sunday evening. That was usually when she did last minute reading for their tutorial the next day, Andrew knew – he hadn’t seen her all day and she didn’t like to be disturbed then. Nevertheless, she opened it to find Andrew on the other side of it.
“Andrew!” she said. “How are you?”
Possibly Carey meant this happily (she had seen him and Jesse at the bop, after all – who hadn’t seen them?), but Andrew’s face started to crumple and she understood him immediately and pulled him in, shutting the door behind them.
---
“What happened?” Carey asked.
They were sitting on her bed and Carey was looking at him with such concern Andrew didn’t think he could take it.
“I got with Jesse,” he said. He stared at his hands. “And then this morning, he left before I woke up.”
Carey made a soft, humming noise. “Did he text you or anything?”
Andrew shook his head. “No,” he said, and swallowed. “I texted. He didn’t reply. And when he saw me, when he saw me at hall, he ran away –”
Carey wrapped her arms around Andrew and if there was a wet patch on her shoulder by the time he sat up again, she didn’t mention it.
Just said, “Oh, honey.”
Andrew laughed, but it sounded like a sort of hiccup instead. The humiliation of it still stung. And how Emma had looked at him with an indecipherable expression before following after Jesse and leading him by the forearm – “I guess – I guess that settles things pretty definitively, then.”
Worrying her lip, Carey said, “You could –”
“This is why I didn’t tell him,” Andrew said, pressing his knuckles to his eyes, as he interrupted her. “I put myself out there and he just, just looked humiliated, like I was going to, going to, I don’t know, and it was horrible. It’s horrible.”
“Andrew,” Carey said, pulling his hands away from his face. “Don’t rub your eyes so.”
Large-eyed, hollowed out, Andrew whispered, “I really like him. Maybe even – you know?”
Carey watched him with the light coming through her window glinting off the tips of her honey-coloured hair, and said nothing.
“I’ve ruined everything. Made it all wrong.”
“Do you think you can make it right?” she whispered. She ran her hand up and down his arm soothingly.
Andrew thought about it, and didn’t think so. He shook his head, just once, and Carey didn’t pursue it.
“I hate fifth week,” he told her, as if that was actually the problem. “I hate it. I hate this so much. I can’t stand being here.”
“Oh, darling,” Carey said. “Do you want to – I don’t know, go home for a bit?”
“I’d have to explain everything to my parents,” Andrew said. “I don’t know how – I don’t know what to say.”
Carey nodded carefully. “I wouldn’t know what to say either,” she allowed.
Andrew laughed, hating the way it sounded like a tremulous hitch. “It’s not something my mum ever prepared me for, you know?”
Carey hesitated. “Tell you what,” she said. “After our tute Monday – d’you want to go back to Reading with me? My parents won’t mind, I’ll ask them not to ask questions.”
Andrew thought for a while. “Would it really be ok?” he asked her, trying not to sniffle.
Carey smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “We can bring our books. Have a reading holiday.”
Andrew nodded, once, jerkily. His lip wobbled again, but he kept it together long enough to wrap his arms around her in thanks.
“Pack your bags and I’ll get the train tickets,” she said, squeezing his hand. She clambered over him to get him an apple juice, took the straw out his wrapper and pierced the foil covering with it for him like he was a small child. “Just get through Monday and it’ll be better. Love you.”
---
The City Is A Drag, Hawksley Workman
Monday was Valentine’s Day. Andrew had been all prepared to forget until he got the obligatory JCR email on roses bought and sold, distribution courtesy of the Environment and Ethics Officer; the obligatory JCR email on “chunder on Valentine’s Day” (email sent by a furious Keira, on the behalf of an even more furious junior dean); and had been confronted by the roses themselves when he’d stopped by the lodge to collect his mail.
There was a single rose in his pigeon hole, but the label said it was for Charlotte Gainsbourg, who was a second-year Andrew hadn’t ever met despite having shared a pidge with her for coming on two terms. Andrew hated her immediately.
“She had it in her pidge all day!” Andrew told Carey later at hall dinner, Columbia students still nowhere to be seen. “I’m sure that must violate an obscenity rule or something, and I had to confront it every time I stopped by my pidge” (that had been three times to make absolutely sure no one had left anything for him, but who was keeping count?) “It was like she didn’t care at all.”
“Well,” Carey said reassuringly, “At least her rose was wilted when she got to it.”
Andrew stuck his spoon into his rice pudding and didn’t answer.
---
Going to Bristol, the Mountain Goats
They left at 3 PM on Tuesday. Andrew and Carey marched grimly to the station, and when they were halfway there Andrew remembered that Carey had Gender Campaign meetings on Mondays, she never missed them, and actually a couple of weeks ago (a long time, come to think of it) at the crew date Carey promised Jesse they could go together, and remembering that made Andrew falter, just a bit.
(Jesse still hadn’t texted or called. Andrew hadn’t seen him around in college either.)
“Your…” he began.
“Yeah?” Carey looked at him.
Andrew gave up. “Nothing,” he said, and they kicked through the puddles again.
Carey gave a sad sigh. “I won’t say ‘cheer up’,” she said, holding onto her scarlet brolly, avoiding puddles neatly as they walked along. “I can only promise you that one day you will.”
“Yeah,” Andrew said. Carey was right, of course.
It was a relief when they got to the station, standing under the covered shelter of Platform One waiting for their First Great Western to arrive. A few metres away in front of them, the rain spat wetly on the rails.
Carey leaned into Andrew, warm without saying a word, and Andrew looked away but returned the embrace.
---
Pelican Rapids (poolhouse mix), Holly Miranda
Reading was… restful. That was the only term for it. It rained most of the week and all throughout the day, so while Carey’s parents (who were very nice) went to work Andrew and Carey stayed in the house and read all the reading they would have done if they’d stayed in Oxford anyway. Andrew was going to be on top of this.
This week he was doing Wilde as a break from the Victorian novelists; Lady Windermere’s Fan and An Ideal Husband, both of which he’d read before. That didn’t mean there was no lack of reading to do, though, he’d quite unwisely decided that he absolutely had to talk about De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol in his essay as well as a couple of other books he’d brought with him.
“Can we go to Reading Gaol?” he asked the day after they arrived, working at the table in the dining room, their books splayed covers apart all over without any thought for their spines.
“D’you really want to?”
“Not really,” Andrew said, and went back to reading. He was at the beginning of De Profundis now. Putting his eyes to the start of the page, he read: Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return., and shivered.
“I wonder what Jesse’s doing now,” he said out loud, fidgeting with the collar of the plaid shirt he was wearing.
Carey was silent.
“Just saying,” he said apologetically, and went back to his books.
---
Subject: location search: A. Garfield "missing"
From: Ellen Page
Date: 16 February 2011, 13:37
To: Andrew Garfield
Dude,
Where are you? I usually see your face around in college whether or not I bother to actually stop and have a conversation with it but it’s like you and Carey’ve gone MIA this time round. Starting to get concerned.
Ellen x
Ellen Page
Merton College International Students’ Rep
Subject: re: location search: A. Garfield “missing”
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 16 February 2011 15:07
To: Ellen Page
We’re in Reading. Don’t worry.
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
Subject: re: re: location search: A. Garfield “missing”
From: Ellen Page
Date: 16 February 2011 15:49
To: Andrew Garfield
You’re in READING? What the hell are you doing in Reading? What is there even to do in Reading?
Ellen Page
Merton College International Students’ Rep
Subject: re: re: re: location search: A. Garfield “missing”
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 16 February 2011 15:50
To: Ellen Page
It’s where Carey lives. Be back soon.
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
Subject: re: re: re: re: location search: A. Garfield “missing”
From: Ellen Page
Date: 16 February 2011 15:51
To: Andrew Garfield
Okay.
(Look, I don’t know what went down between you and Jesse beyond the obvious – I was at the bop and I do have eyes, but I saw him in college today and he looked absolutely terrible. I hope you’re doing fine. I hope everybody’s fine.)
E. <3
Ellen Page
Merton College International Students’ Rep
Andrew didn’t reply to that one.
---
On their last day in Reading, the weather finally cleared up and it had ceased being wet enough for a walk to be conceivable.
“I can’t believe you live right next to a field of horses and didn’t tell me,” Andrew complained. “You’ve been holding out.”
“Well you should have visited over Christmas like I said,” Carey said, unperturbed. “Don’t they look silly in those coats anyway?”
They did look silly. The horses gazed at them threateningly and Andrew cooed, then laughed. The fresh air certainly didn’t make anything better, objectively speaking, but it was hard to feel bad. His world of pain, while not shrinking, was at least not actively expanding.
Carey hopped up on stile and jumped down on the other side of the fence, looking at him impishly. “Come on,” she said.
With his most ferocious energy Andrew took a flying leap off the stile, taking a staggered landing on his feet with both knees bent.
Yes, he thought briefly, I’ve never felt comfortable except in lofty places.
---
We Can Work It Out, The Beatles
Andrew came back to Oxford rejuvenated. A little shiver of gloom passed through him at the thought that there was only three weeks left to term. God, he thought, it all goes so fast.
Andrew was pretty proud of the essay he wrote that week, though; the one he wrote while he and Carey were hiding out in Reading. Meera told him that it was better than usual, though she was adamant as always about not giving them marks. So.
“Thank GOD you’re back,” Duncan told them the day they returned, having cornered them at hall. “What were you thinking, pulling that disappearing trick?”
“Zowie, we were away for just three days!” Carey said. “We didn’t have any rehearsals then.”
“Yes, but I wanted to schedule extra ones,” he muttered mutinously. “But seeing as nearly half my cast wasn’t around instead I had the time to prepare for opening night… and failure!”
Preparing for opening night was correct, anyway. Everywhere Andrew looked he could see posters advertising THE REAL THING BY TOM STOPPARD, DIRECTED BY DUNCAN Z JONES, STARRING JESSE EISENBERG | EMMA STONE | ANDREW GARFIELD | CAREY MULLIGAN in college, on Oriel Square and all along Broad Street. Apparently, with two weeks to go ticketing was already going well, and Andrew was glad.
So how come he was dreading the rehearsal tomorrow so much?
---
When he turned up at the auditorium with Carey the next day Jesse and Emma were already there. They turned to look at him. Andrew immediately felt too small, hemmed in and helpless.
“Hi,” he said. His voice sounded very loud in the empty room.
“Hello Andrew,” Emma said, and smiled at him. So she didn’t hate him completely, then. Andrew took that as a good sign.
“Uh,” Jesse said, “uh, hi.”
There was a significant pause.
“How are you?” Andrew said, and hated himself.
“Fine,” Jesse said. He raised his thumbnail to his mouth and Andrew knew instinctively the cuticle there was ragged – remembered it, from last week. “You enjoy Reading?”
“How did you know I went to Reading?” Andrew asked, knocked off-course.
“Natalie told me,” Jesse said. “Ellen told her.”
Andrew shook his head, trying not to look as irritated as he felt. Of course. He’d never been the subject of college gossip before, and it wasn’t especially pleasant now.
He really, really would have liked to not be having this conversation right now, not in front of an audience, even if that audience was solely composed of Carey and Emma. (Who, Andrew felt sure, had been exposed to more than their fair share of drama through confidences by their respective best friends anyway.) Perhaps Jesse felt the same. Or maybe he simply didn’t care.
Jesse hesitated, at the look on Andrew’s face. “Um –”
“Places!” Duncan boomed, clapping his hands as he came into the auditorium, and both Andrew and Jesse jumped. Andrew could have killed him. “Places, please. We’ve already wasted enough time, what with an impromptu three-day sabbatical from half our cast.”
“We didn’t have any rehearsals scheduled,” Carey muttered rebelliously, and squeezed Andrew’s hand comfortingly as she crossed the stage for her entrance from the left.
Silently, Andrew got to work.
---
It was kind of a frustrating rehearsal. They were at that stage where they’d more or less figured out both their lines and positions, but Duncan was a demanding director and today he put that out full-force and demanded more; and unfortunately Jesse seemed to bear the brunt of that demandingness.
“Give me more!” Duncan shouted, interrupting a scene while they were halfway through. “Jesse, throw your voice. Speak less quickly.” Then he added quietly, “Start again.”
“That’s true,” Jesse said, reciting the same lines he must have gone through at least twenty times that day, “I don’t.”
“ ‘That’s true’,” Duncan interrupted. “And your voice goes up on the ‘don’t’. ‘I don’t?’”
“That’s true,” Jesse said. His face was slightly red. “I don’t?”
“Continue,” Duncan said gruffly.
“Why is that?” Jesse repeated, working himself into a staged temper.
Andrew held his breath. Here they went –
“It’s because I feel superior.” Jesse said, and wheeled around and spat, or pretended to. Then he continued, accelerating the pace at which the words came out of his mouth – “There he is, poor bugger, picking up the odd crumb of ear wax from the rich man’s table. You’re right. I don’t mind. I like it. I like the way his presumption admits his poverty. I like him, knowing that that’s all there is, because you’re coming home to me and we don’t want any. one. else.”
Softer now, slower:
“I love love,” Jesse said, as if he was realising it for the first time. “I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn’t one’s lover.” He blew out a breath, caught Andrew’s gaze from where he was waiting in the wings, and looked away just as quickly without breaking character.
“Only two kinds of presence in the world,” he continued. “There’s you and there’s them.” Pause. “I love you so.”
“I love you so, Hen,” Carey said tremulously.
They finished the scene.
“Good,” Duncan said finally, after they had both fallen silent. “Better now, Jesse. Just don’t look away.”
---
At the end of the day they were all bone-tired, if not from the fact that their brains had gone through the wringer, then the fact that they’d stayed behind packing and hefting the set away.
Carey and Emma had disappeared. Privately, Andrew suspected them of some conspiracy, but he didn’t say anything because he was grateful to have a chance to clear the air. Jesse was striding out of the auditorium with his backpack slung over one arm, the other hanging loose.
Andrew hurried after him. “Jesse, wait – ”
Jesse turned around slowly. “Andrew,” he said resignedly.
This was going to be difficult. Andrew bit his lip. “About last week –” he said tentatively. “You, um, do you…”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Jesse said, looking straight ahead. “If you don’t want.”
“Are you sure?” Andrew said uncertainly.
“Very.”
Andrew had been priming himself to talk about things. Maybe, he thought, maybe Jesse didn’t want to –
“Jesse,” he began uncertainly, and Jesse whipped round to look at him. “Are we still friends?”
“Yes!” Jesse said. “I mean. If you want to. Be.”
Andrew nodded. “We are,” he said fiercely. There was a pause, before he remembered something else, and struggled with the concerted effort to speak normally. “And, um. Carey says we should go for Formal Hall next week, if you and Emma wanted,” he said. “You know. A proper Oxford thing, and all that.”
“Sure,” Jesse said, after a pause. “Emma said something about that too. Can you sign us up?”
“Definitely,” Andrew said, and Jesse nodded and moved away, looking relieved, and Andrew stood in the foyer for a while longer, thinking about nothing, or whether he would ever stop being young. Thinking about how many ways there were in which he was hungry.
5/5
The bop started at eight but that wasn't when anyone turned up. Once last term Carey and Andrew had made the fatal mistake of turning up at eight on the dot and gone down to the beer cellar primed in their costumes (this was back in the days when they actually bothered with costumes), ready to party. The only person there had been a moody third-year setting up the DJ booth. As he had stood at the booth giving them a gloomy, fatalistic look from under his sleepy, shaggy brows, they (frightened freshers both) had fled. It was hard to run when you had a piece of cardboard, upon which there was a drawing of a sheep, hung about you, Andrew could tell you that.
This time they just stayed in Carey’s room. Carey made really good gin and tonics – had it ever been mentioned? Andrew sat next to her, collapsed and grinning.
“D’you read the Cherwell article,” Andrew said, “The one where the baby has a pre-lash before she gets out of the womb to – hahaha – prepare her for life.”
"Oh my god, I totally read that!" Carey said, giggling. At this point she was way tipsier than Andrew was. What a lightweight. "Oh, god," she winced. "The hangover for this is going to be quite bad, isn't it?"
"Let's not think about it," Andrew told her. "Do you think Jesse's going to turn up?"
"I don't know," Carey said. "You should ask him."
"He'll just say no," Andrew sulked.
"Then you've got your answer," Carey said. "He's not going to turn up."
As much to defy Carey as to bring Jesse to the party, Andrew picked up his phone and dialed Jesse's number, making sure to put his sober face on before he picked up. On the bed Carey rocked with laughter.
"We're kidnapping you," Andrew informed him solemnly when Jesse said, "Hello?"
"Andrew?" Jesse asked.
"It is I," Andrew confirmed. "Or rather, it is we. Today I work in a collective. A collective to… kidnap you."
Carey made a face at Andrew, and he realized that that probably wasn't the most sober thing to say.
"Andrew?" Jesse said. "Have you been drinking?" He sounded amused. Maybe, Andrew thought, the tiniest bit fond.
"We are a bit," Andrew said. "Gin and tonic - what a drink. What, and I should have said this in the plural so I’m saying it now, drinks. We're in Carey's room now and you should come up. Bring Emma too."
"Gin and tonic is a bit beyond my normal run of alcoholic choices," Jesse told him, "but okay."
"Welcome to Oxford," Andrew said happily. "Okay, see you then."
He rang off and Carey made a face at him. "What?" Andrew said defensively.
"'Okay,'" Carey mimicked. "'See you then,' Garfield. That's the tone of voice I used when I had my first boyfriend and was talking to him; keep in my mind I was fifteen. You're transparent as a sheet of glass."
"Shut up!" Andrew said. "They might hear."
"It's a ten-minute walk from Columbia House," Carey pointed out reasonably.
"You think he knows?" Andrew said dreamily. He was slumped against Carey's knees.
"You know what you could do to make really really sure he knows?" Carey said. "You could… tell him."
"No," Andrew said stubbornly, and began to whistle a club tune. “Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. BARBRA STREISAND.”
Carey sighed.
---
There was a knock at Carey's door and Andrew was ready for it. He lunged at the door and opened it. "Jesse!" he said happily. "My favorite person in the world - and my second-favourite, Emma. Come in."
“Hey, what about me?” Carey wailed, and Andrew shushed her.
"Nice save, Garfield," Emma said, and stepped in. "Sorry, Carey. How are the both of you?"
"Mildly sloshed, actually," Carey said, and beamed. "Want some?"
"Ooh, yes please," Emma said. "I assume you're both not going to the bop then?"
"Scurrilous lies!" Andrew said indignantly. Jesse was standing by Carey's bed. Andrew plopped himself on top of the sheets and patted the space next to him. "Sit down, Jesse."
"We are going to the bop," Carey explained, putting cut limes into two clean glasses. "We just thought it would be more expedient to get sloshed now and turn up late-ish, around ten or eleven, and start dancing straightaway without having to wait for the dance floor to pay ridiculous prices for mediocre cranberry-vodka things at the bar."
"I can get behind that," Emma said, and accepted the glass Carey handed her.
"How are you?" Andrew asked Jesse.
"Good," Jesse said. He took a sip of his gin and tonic. "I was working on a paper before you interrupted with your party plans."
"Aren't I great?" Andrew said happily.
Carey and Emma laughed at him.
"Maybe," Jesse said.
---
Only Girl (In The World), Rihanna
It was ten-thirty by the time they went down to the college bar, flushed and a little stumbling. Andrew held onto Jesse's wrist as they went down the steps to the bar, just in case.
"I don't dance," Jesse told Andrew, "but I think I'm beginning to forget that."
"I do," Andrew admitted, "but I think I’m starting to forget that too. God, what did Carey put in those G&Ts?"
"Gin," Carey said loudly. "and a little bit of tonic."
Emma laughed. “Just a little.”
A Rihanna song was playing and the walls were starting to stream with sweat; someone had put up the god-awful strobe lights they always put up every time they had a bop and Andrew glanced anxiously at Jesse to see if he was okay, but Jesse was looking right back at him.
A couple of metres away, David and Georgiana and John and Billie and Freema were dancing; next to them, Ellen and Kristen were dancing very close to each other; Andrew tapped Ellen on the shoulder and because it was too loud for words they exchanged hi-fives but Andrew didn't attempt to join the both of them. Instead he, Jesse, Emma and Carey carved out a circle of their own on the floor and started dancing, Andrew throwing himself every which way and doing a little shimmy at Jesse. Jesse himself was moving in time to the music, maybe a little more expansively than he would have done if he'd not been drunk.
On an impulse, Andrew seized Jesse's wrists. "Dance with me," he said, and Jesse let Andrew take the lead.
They danced together; it was just for half a minute at the most but they were truly dancing together, in a way that seemed to be less and less in vogue these days, for a split-second Andrew wondered why until Katy Perry’s Firework cut into his consciousness again and he remembered that that was probably why. Even with music that wasn’t the most conducive, though, they managed it, Andrew swinging their arms left and right and twirling around as Jesse smiled at him, getting drawn and drawn into the dance. Andrew couldn’t tell if they were getting more or less drunk. Maybe this was only a different kind of inebriation.
BABY YOU’RE A FIREWORK –
They rejoined Carey and Emma. Emma smiled at him, and Andrew seized her hands, too, swung her around as she twirled with such force her wide skirt flared out. And Andrew dropped her hands and turned to Jesse and Carey and Emma again, and danced with them as the song closed. A long pause of silence, so strange it was practically Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony for the outlier bullshit it was pulling, intervened. That was punctuated by a collective groan rising from the dancefloor, silenced a few seconds later by the roar of a new song starting up again.
So the DJ was crap, but the night was brilliant.
---
When Andrew had been in school he had taken Philosophy at AS level. One of his core texts had been Thinking Through Philosophy (Horner & Westacott, 2000). He still remembered the chapter on art: “What is the purpose of art? Is it solely to transmit emotion? If we accept that premise wholly then we would have to reach the conclusion that dance music is the highest form of art.”
Now, with the sweat running down the back of his neck and Jesse’s own face turned purple under the coloured lights, the only thing he could think through the haze of music played loudloudloud and alcohol was why not, why not.
“Are you having fun?” Andrew shouted at Jesse. He didn’t seem to hear Andrew, so Andrew moved closer and repeated himself.
“I’m having a good time, yeah,” Jesse shouted in his ear. At some point he had fought his way to the bar and bought another drink, a cranberry vodka Andrew thought it was, and now he was dancing with it in one hand. Andrew beckoned him closer, and Jesse followed willingly.
Andrew took Jesse’s glass and sipped from it, his eyes not leaving Jesse’s face. Jesse let him, and when Andrew handed the glass back to him his thumb brushed against Jesse’s wrist, and Jesse didn’t flinch.
“I really want to kiss you right now,” Andrew blurted. He didn’t know if Jesse could hear him for sure, but Jesse turned to him, eyes dark as if he had.
Andrew swallowed and thought: this is it. Jesse was moving closer to him. He was wearing a v-neck t-shirt, and there was a bare patch of skin shining with sweat stretched slick over his collarbones. Their faces were barely two inches apart.
“Okay,” Jesse said, and put down his drink, and Andrew was absolutely positive he heard it despite the loud music blasting out from the speakers all around them. He’d mostly filtered it out, anyway. Who needed drums and bass?
“Okay,” Jesse said, and Andrew’s heart clenched inside of him. So brave, he thought. Jesse looked so serious, and Andrew wanted, somehow, in his drunk, fuzzy way, to reassure him. To let him know that this was all right.
“Okay,” Andrew said, smiling, nearly against Jesse’s lips. “This – it’s okay, this doesn’t have to mean anything.”
He felt Jesse still against him. Then Jesse nodded imperceptibly, just once, and surged forward.
Andrew wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. He felt Jesse’s lips against his, tentative, and took the lead, winding his fingers into Jesse’s hair and guiding his head to an angle. Jesse licked against his lips, and yes, Andrew wanted that, so he opened his mouth and licked into Jesse’s own, and felt the heat surge into his groin. He pressed against Jesse and Jesse didn’t move or skitter away, just pressed back, hard against him, and wrapped his arms loosely against Andrew’s waist before putting both his hands into the back pockets of Andrew’s jeans. Andrew leaned forward even further.
There was the taste of cranberry on his lips and teeth, there was the sound of a couple of people cheering them on over and above the roar of yet another club hit (I wanna celebrate and live my life, saying eh-oh! Baby, let’s go!), but none of that mattered. Here, and here, beneath Andrew’s hands and on his mouth and on his ass, was Jesse, Jesse, Jesse. Andrew’s heart was hammering in his chest but for once he didn’t think he might die.
Jesse moaned softly and Andrew broke off the kiss, gave a gentle questioning sound. Jesse drew in closer again, and Andrew, Andrew was overwhelmed by how much heated skin there was he wanted to kiss, and made a beginning by nipping at Jesse’s jaw and moving to kiss his lips. Jesse made a soft, quavery sound at that and Andrew was pleased, thought, I did that. He dove back in for another kiss, and another, and another.
“I –” Andrew voice sounded wrecked. “Jesse.”
Jesse, trembling, didn’t respond, but ducked his head and tucked Andrew’s earlobe into his mouth, in between his teeth, before raising his head to speak.
“We should go,” Jesse said. “That’s what – I mean we don’t want to do this in front of everyone, maybe, I think, maybe we should go.”
---
Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt, We Are Scientists
Andrew unlocked his door with fumbling fingers, then crossed the room and switched on the desk lamp so it cast a dim glow over the room, not too much, just right. He walked back to Jesse hovering over by the door, and shut it behind the both of them.
Andrew really wanted to drop to his knees, drop to his knees and suck Jesse off, but that would be, that would be wrong and bad; he wanted that first time to be perfect, for all of the other times that weren’t perfect; he didn’t know how much experience Jesse had but he remembered his own first. He never wanted Jesse to feel that bad.
“I want to suck you off,” he murmured, air ghosting hot against Jesse’s ear. He hoped Jesse could feel it connected like a taut string to Andrew’s thumb pressing against Jesse’s wrist, hard against his jumping pulse point. “But I’m too – I’m too drunk, so maybe next time –”
“There’s gonna be a –” Jesse swallowed compulsively. “Okay.”
“Yeah,” Andrew said. And Jesse moved his face so they were kissing again, fast and wet and sloppy. Andrew was glad they were here, that he was here, in his room pressing Jesse against his door with his stupid TOASTIES WELCOME sign on the other side of it because he could hear the sound of them kissing and didn’t have to fight off the bad white noise of the dance floor.
The kiss got heated fast. In between dragging his mouth down Jesse’s throat, Andrew’s hands had moved from the warm solid column of Jesse’s waist to the backs of his thighs – and he heaved, lifting Jesse up so Jesse had his legs wrapped around Andrew’s waist, erection pressed against Andrew’s own groin. Andrew groaned into the kiss.
“God – you’re so –” he said, and felt Jesse nodding frantically even though he had no idea what Andrew had been going to say.
Andrew didn’t know what he was going to say either, forgot it, in between Jesse pressing up against him like this was one thing he wanted enough to show that he wanted it, finally, and the weight of his legs under Andrew’s hands and wrists, the strain of it like a stretch you hold and hold.
Still holding Jesse, Andrew staggered back against the bed and Jesse landed there too, right on top of him.
Jesse looked down at him, his mouth slightly open and eyes downcast. “Sorry,” he said. He didn’t look sorry, but Andrew tipped his chin up anyway and swallowed that single word, that sorry in another kiss.
They kissed, and Jesse moved into a sitting position and toed off his shoes, bending forward so his forehead was drooping towards his knees. “Ohgod,” he said aloud, his voice deep and dark in the depth and darkness of Andrew’s room. “I’m so drunk.”
Andrew believed him. Partly because he had said it with such conviction. And also because Andrew was drunk.
“Lie down,” Andrew said, smoothing his hand over his sheets in invitation. “Lie down and – and sleep –”
“I’m so drunk,” Jesse repeated, with gloomy conviction, but he lay down next to Andrew anyway, on his back.
Andrew pressed a kiss to Jesse’s temple, part of his mouth hitting his curls. “Shhh,” he said. “Don’t think about it. Lie on your side and we can spoon. You can be the little one.”
When they had finally wrested their limbs into place, Andrew’s kneecaps were cupping the backs of Jesse’s thighs, his right arm flung over his waist. Andrew felt Jesse relax and smiled into the back of his head. He heard Jesse whisper something into the pillowcase.
“Yeah,” Andrew said softly. “Tomorrow morning.” Then he fell asleep.
5th week
Subject: Fifth Week Bulletin
From: Keira Knightley
Date: 13 February 2011, 10:05
To: Merton JCR [merton-jcr]
Dear Merton,
Welcome to fifth week! I hope those who went to the Valentine's bop last night had a good time and that you’ve managed to accumulate a solid stock of goodwill for the tough week that lies ahead…
Three JCR related things going on this week:
1. I’ll be leading a focus group on Monday on the different funding structures Oxford should lobby for in the wake of the Browne Review. The three main options we'll be considering are a) lower fees, b) enhanced bursary schemes and c) fee waivers. 7.30 pm, Ackroyd Room - please come and have a say on the future of Oxford Uni.
2. Leehom and I will be starting work on our brand new Alternative Prospectus this week. A meeting about this will now probably take place after Tuesday's JCR Tea - location to be confirmed.
3. The Room Ballot for the academic year 2011 - 2012, led by our very own Accommodations Officer Jay Chou, will be happening on Thursday in the Auditorium.
And that's all from me for now! Notices will be coming up as they arise. Don't let fifth week blues get you down.
Cheers,
Keira
Keira Knightley
JCR President, Merton College
Committee Member of OUSU Women's Campaign
---
When Andrew woke up in the morning Jesse was gone.
His bed, which was a single, suddenly seemed emptier than it had ever been; anxious almost with the lack of Jesse.
“Jesse?” he said aloud, feeling stupid immediately. Then he winced. On top of the sensation of being still drunk, the hangover was hammering its point home. (Home for it seemed to be the top of his skull.) He fumbled for his phone and texted Jesse.
hey, where did you go? hope you’re ok x
He didn’t understand how Jesse could have found the strength to walk away. All he wanted to do right now was close his eyes and fall back asleep for another couple of hours, and so he did.
---
Sunday Morning, The Velvet Underground
Andrew definitely needed something greasy to eat.
That was literally his first waking thought. He was still feeling a little worse for wear, but at least he wasn’t feeling quite as awful as he’d been earlier. And also, a little voice sang a reminder in his head, I got with Jesse! It had been a bit of a downer to wake up to Jesse’s absence, but he expected that his bed had been rather cramped with both their bodies anyway. Except what if – but he shut down that line of thought straightaway.
Only after he’d stumbled out of bed, put himself under a shower and swallowed an aspirin did he think to check his phone, and scrabbled under his bed to retrieve it, where it had inexplicably fallen from his nightstand.
Jesse hadn’t texted back. The warm glow in Andrew’s chest was ebbing away.
Perhaps, Andrew decided, perhaps he was still sleeping off the hangover. Or maybe he had somewhere to go – in any case he probably shouldn’t worry about it, he told himself. He looked at his phone again and saw that it was a quarter to twelve. Lunch would start in forty-five minutes. Maybe he would see Jesse in hall.
Meanwhile he sat down on his bed again and listened to the bells coming from the college chapel pitch their tremor, from treble to tenor.
---
Subject: missing scarf
From: Ellen Page
Date: 13 February 2011 11:37
To: Merton JCR [merton-jcr]
Dear all,
A friend of mine from Mansfield attended our bop yesterday and she's lost her scarf. It's long, fringed and has red and black checks. It's very dear to her and she would be grateful if everyone could keep a look out or check if they've accidentally got it. If you find it, please put it in my pigeonhole and I'll get it to her.
Thanks,
Ellen
Ellen Page
Merton College International Students Rep
--------------------------------------------------
Subject: Scarf?
From: Kristen Stewart
Date: 13 February 2011 11:07
To: Ellen Page
Dude,
So I can't find the scarf I wore to your bop last night anywhere - do you think you might have it? If not, could you please shoot an email to your JCR and ask them about it. Robs gave it to me and he'll be really pissed off if he finds out I lost it at a bop.
Despite the unequivocally good time I had.
Thanks,
K.
---
At half-twelve Andrew put his jacket on and went to lunch. There were a couple of people in the JCR as he passed through, just to pick up a copy of The Observer, and he couldn’t decide if it was just him or if everyone really was staring at him like they knew he’d got with Jesse the previous day. Suddenly he knew how Boo Radley must have felt.
Usually Andrew smiled and said hello, but today he just tucked the newspaper under his arm and went into the buttery.
It was a pretty short queue. On the board it said pork chops and ‘vegetable pasta hotpot’ were for lunch; to be quite honest Andrew wasn’t really looking forward to either, but his stomach growled and he felt queasy all over again, so he supposed that was a reminder from his body that he ought to eat something at least. He wished Carey was here, but he hadn’t brought his phone out and it was probably too late to ask her to come to hall anyway.
Andrew unfolded the newspaper and read the headlines as he waited for the kitchen to open its doors.
Halfway through the comment section he heard a strange scuffling noise and raised his head. Jesse was looking at him from the entrance to the buttery, his eyes wide and panicked.
“Jesse,” Andrew said blankly, and Jesse turned and stumbled away. The reddening flush on his face was apparent, even from behind. The door swung shut behind him with a definitive thunk.
Now everyone was definitely looking at Andrew. He swallowed, unsuccessfully, against the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat, a taste strange and bitter behind his tonsils. It was as if the cold stone walls of the buttery were bearing down on him, threatening to crush him like a glass bottle in a recycling factory.
Andrew very carefully opened his newspaper again, and retreated behind it just as deliberately without stopping until he was at the head of the queue. He sat alone and didn’t speak to anyone else all through lunch, and as soon as he had worried down some food he went back to his room and stayed there for the rest of the day.
---
Andrew didn’t know how startled Carey was to hear a knock on her door on Sunday evening. That was usually when she did last minute reading for their tutorial the next day, Andrew knew – he hadn’t seen her all day and she didn’t like to be disturbed then. Nevertheless, she opened it to find Andrew on the other side of it.
“Andrew!” she said. “How are you?”
Possibly Carey meant this happily (she had seen him and Jesse at the bop, after all – who hadn’t seen them?), but Andrew’s face started to crumple and she understood him immediately and pulled him in, shutting the door behind them.
---
“What happened?” Carey asked.
They were sitting on her bed and Carey was looking at him with such concern Andrew didn’t think he could take it.
“I got with Jesse,” he said. He stared at his hands. “And then this morning, he left before I woke up.”
Carey made a soft, humming noise. “Did he text you or anything?”
Andrew shook his head. “No,” he said, and swallowed. “I texted. He didn’t reply. And when he saw me, when he saw me at hall, he ran away –”
Carey wrapped her arms around Andrew and if there was a wet patch on her shoulder by the time he sat up again, she didn’t mention it.
Just said, “Oh, honey.”
Andrew laughed, but it sounded like a sort of hiccup instead. The humiliation of it still stung. And how Emma had looked at him with an indecipherable expression before following after Jesse and leading him by the forearm – “I guess – I guess that settles things pretty definitively, then.”
Worrying her lip, Carey said, “You could –”
“This is why I didn’t tell him,” Andrew said, pressing his knuckles to his eyes, as he interrupted her. “I put myself out there and he just, just looked humiliated, like I was going to, going to, I don’t know, and it was horrible. It’s horrible.”
“Andrew,” Carey said, pulling his hands away from his face. “Don’t rub your eyes so.”
Large-eyed, hollowed out, Andrew whispered, “I really like him. Maybe even – you know?”
Carey watched him with the light coming through her window glinting off the tips of her honey-coloured hair, and said nothing.
“I’ve ruined everything. Made it all wrong.”
“Do you think you can make it right?” she whispered. She ran her hand up and down his arm soothingly.
Andrew thought about it, and didn’t think so. He shook his head, just once, and Carey didn’t pursue it.
“I hate fifth week,” he told her, as if that was actually the problem. “I hate it. I hate this so much. I can’t stand being here.”
“Oh, darling,” Carey said. “Do you want to – I don’t know, go home for a bit?”
“I’d have to explain everything to my parents,” Andrew said. “I don’t know how – I don’t know what to say.”
Carey nodded carefully. “I wouldn’t know what to say either,” she allowed.
Andrew laughed, hating the way it sounded like a tremulous hitch. “It’s not something my mum ever prepared me for, you know?”
Carey hesitated. “Tell you what,” she said. “After our tute Monday – d’you want to go back to Reading with me? My parents won’t mind, I’ll ask them not to ask questions.”
Andrew thought for a while. “Would it really be ok?” he asked her, trying not to sniffle.
Carey smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “We can bring our books. Have a reading holiday.”
Andrew nodded, once, jerkily. His lip wobbled again, but he kept it together long enough to wrap his arms around her in thanks.
“Pack your bags and I’ll get the train tickets,” she said, squeezing his hand. She clambered over him to get him an apple juice, took the straw out his wrapper and pierced the foil covering with it for him like he was a small child. “Just get through Monday and it’ll be better. Love you.”
---
The City Is A Drag, Hawksley Workman
Monday was Valentine’s Day. Andrew had been all prepared to forget until he got the obligatory JCR email on roses bought and sold, distribution courtesy of the Environment and Ethics Officer; the obligatory JCR email on “chunder on Valentine’s Day” (email sent by a furious Keira, on the behalf of an even more furious junior dean); and had been confronted by the roses themselves when he’d stopped by the lodge to collect his mail.
There was a single rose in his pigeon hole, but the label said it was for Charlotte Gainsbourg, who was a second-year Andrew hadn’t ever met despite having shared a pidge with her for coming on two terms. Andrew hated her immediately.
“She had it in her pidge all day!” Andrew told Carey later at hall dinner, Columbia students still nowhere to be seen. “I’m sure that must violate an obscenity rule or something, and I had to confront it every time I stopped by my pidge” (that had been three times to make absolutely sure no one had left anything for him, but who was keeping count?) “It was like she didn’t care at all.”
“Well,” Carey said reassuringly, “At least her rose was wilted when she got to it.”
Andrew stuck his spoon into his rice pudding and didn’t answer.
---
Going to Bristol, the Mountain Goats
They left at 3 PM on Tuesday. Andrew and Carey marched grimly to the station, and when they were halfway there Andrew remembered that Carey had Gender Campaign meetings on Mondays, she never missed them, and actually a couple of weeks ago (a long time, come to think of it) at the crew date Carey promised Jesse they could go together, and remembering that made Andrew falter, just a bit.
(Jesse still hadn’t texted or called. Andrew hadn’t seen him around in college either.)
“Your…” he began.
“Yeah?” Carey looked at him.
Andrew gave up. “Nothing,” he said, and they kicked through the puddles again.
Carey gave a sad sigh. “I won’t say ‘cheer up’,” she said, holding onto her scarlet brolly, avoiding puddles neatly as they walked along. “I can only promise you that one day you will.”
“Yeah,” Andrew said. Carey was right, of course.
It was a relief when they got to the station, standing under the covered shelter of Platform One waiting for their First Great Western to arrive. A few metres away in front of them, the rain spat wetly on the rails.
Carey leaned into Andrew, warm without saying a word, and Andrew looked away but returned the embrace.
---
Pelican Rapids (poolhouse mix), Holly Miranda
Reading was… restful. That was the only term for it. It rained most of the week and all throughout the day, so while Carey’s parents (who were very nice) went to work Andrew and Carey stayed in the house and read all the reading they would have done if they’d stayed in Oxford anyway. Andrew was going to be on top of this.
This week he was doing Wilde as a break from the Victorian novelists; Lady Windermere’s Fan and An Ideal Husband, both of which he’d read before. That didn’t mean there was no lack of reading to do, though, he’d quite unwisely decided that he absolutely had to talk about De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol in his essay as well as a couple of other books he’d brought with him.
“Can we go to Reading Gaol?” he asked the day after they arrived, working at the table in the dining room, their books splayed covers apart all over without any thought for their spines.
“D’you really want to?”
“Not really,” Andrew said, and went back to reading. He was at the beginning of De Profundis now. Putting his eyes to the start of the page, he read: Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return., and shivered.
“I wonder what Jesse’s doing now,” he said out loud, fidgeting with the collar of the plaid shirt he was wearing.
Carey was silent.
“Just saying,” he said apologetically, and went back to his books.
---
Subject: location search: A. Garfield "missing"
From: Ellen Page
Date: 16 February 2011, 13:37
To: Andrew Garfield
Dude,
Where are you? I usually see your face around in college whether or not I bother to actually stop and have a conversation with it but it’s like you and Carey’ve gone MIA this time round. Starting to get concerned.
Ellen x
Ellen Page
Merton College International Students’ Rep
Subject: re: location search: A. Garfield “missing”
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 16 February 2011 15:07
To: Ellen Page
We’re in Reading. Don’t worry.
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
Subject: re: re: location search: A. Garfield “missing”
From: Ellen Page
Date: 16 February 2011 15:49
To: Andrew Garfield
You’re in READING? What the hell are you doing in Reading? What is there even to do in Reading?
Ellen Page
Merton College International Students’ Rep
Subject: re: re: re: location search: A. Garfield “missing”
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 16 February 2011 15:50
To: Ellen Page
It’s where Carey lives. Be back soon.
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
Subject: re: re: re: re: location search: A. Garfield “missing”
From: Ellen Page
Date: 16 February 2011 15:51
To: Andrew Garfield
Okay.
(Look, I don’t know what went down between you and Jesse beyond the obvious – I was at the bop and I do have eyes, but I saw him in college today and he looked absolutely terrible. I hope you’re doing fine. I hope everybody’s fine.)
E. <3
Ellen Page
Merton College International Students’ Rep
Andrew didn’t reply to that one.
---
On their last day in Reading, the weather finally cleared up and it had ceased being wet enough for a walk to be conceivable.
“I can’t believe you live right next to a field of horses and didn’t tell me,” Andrew complained. “You’ve been holding out.”
“Well you should have visited over Christmas like I said,” Carey said, unperturbed. “Don’t they look silly in those coats anyway?”
They did look silly. The horses gazed at them threateningly and Andrew cooed, then laughed. The fresh air certainly didn’t make anything better, objectively speaking, but it was hard to feel bad. His world of pain, while not shrinking, was at least not actively expanding.
Carey hopped up on stile and jumped down on the other side of the fence, looking at him impishly. “Come on,” she said.
With his most ferocious energy Andrew took a flying leap off the stile, taking a staggered landing on his feet with both knees bent.
Yes, he thought briefly, I’ve never felt comfortable except in lofty places.
---
We Can Work It Out, The Beatles
Andrew came back to Oxford rejuvenated. A little shiver of gloom passed through him at the thought that there was only three weeks left to term. God, he thought, it all goes so fast.
Andrew was pretty proud of the essay he wrote that week, though; the one he wrote while he and Carey were hiding out in Reading. Meera told him that it was better than usual, though she was adamant as always about not giving them marks. So.
“Thank GOD you’re back,” Duncan told them the day they returned, having cornered them at hall. “What were you thinking, pulling that disappearing trick?”
“Zowie, we were away for just three days!” Carey said. “We didn’t have any rehearsals then.”
“Yes, but I wanted to schedule extra ones,” he muttered mutinously. “But seeing as nearly half my cast wasn’t around instead I had the time to prepare for opening night… and failure!”
Preparing for opening night was correct, anyway. Everywhere Andrew looked he could see posters advertising THE REAL THING BY TOM STOPPARD, DIRECTED BY DUNCAN Z JONES, STARRING JESSE EISENBERG | EMMA STONE | ANDREW GARFIELD | CAREY MULLIGAN in college, on Oriel Square and all along Broad Street. Apparently, with two weeks to go ticketing was already going well, and Andrew was glad.
So how come he was dreading the rehearsal tomorrow so much?
---
When he turned up at the auditorium with Carey the next day Jesse and Emma were already there. They turned to look at him. Andrew immediately felt too small, hemmed in and helpless.
“Hi,” he said. His voice sounded very loud in the empty room.
“Hello Andrew,” Emma said, and smiled at him. So she didn’t hate him completely, then. Andrew took that as a good sign.
“Uh,” Jesse said, “uh, hi.”
There was a significant pause.
“How are you?” Andrew said, and hated himself.
“Fine,” Jesse said. He raised his thumbnail to his mouth and Andrew knew instinctively the cuticle there was ragged – remembered it, from last week. “You enjoy Reading?”
“How did you know I went to Reading?” Andrew asked, knocked off-course.
“Natalie told me,” Jesse said. “Ellen told her.”
Andrew shook his head, trying not to look as irritated as he felt. Of course. He’d never been the subject of college gossip before, and it wasn’t especially pleasant now.
He really, really would have liked to not be having this conversation right now, not in front of an audience, even if that audience was solely composed of Carey and Emma. (Who, Andrew felt sure, had been exposed to more than their fair share of drama through confidences by their respective best friends anyway.) Perhaps Jesse felt the same. Or maybe he simply didn’t care.
Jesse hesitated, at the look on Andrew’s face. “Um –”
“Places!” Duncan boomed, clapping his hands as he came into the auditorium, and both Andrew and Jesse jumped. Andrew could have killed him. “Places, please. We’ve already wasted enough time, what with an impromptu three-day sabbatical from half our cast.”
“We didn’t have any rehearsals scheduled,” Carey muttered rebelliously, and squeezed Andrew’s hand comfortingly as she crossed the stage for her entrance from the left.
Silently, Andrew got to work.
---
It was kind of a frustrating rehearsal. They were at that stage where they’d more or less figured out both their lines and positions, but Duncan was a demanding director and today he put that out full-force and demanded more; and unfortunately Jesse seemed to bear the brunt of that demandingness.
“Give me more!” Duncan shouted, interrupting a scene while they were halfway through. “Jesse, throw your voice. Speak less quickly.” Then he added quietly, “Start again.”
“That’s true,” Jesse said, reciting the same lines he must have gone through at least twenty times that day, “I don’t.”
“ ‘That’s true’,” Duncan interrupted. “And your voice goes up on the ‘don’t’. ‘I don’t?’”
“That’s true,” Jesse said. His face was slightly red. “I don’t?”
“Continue,” Duncan said gruffly.
“Why is that?” Jesse repeated, working himself into a staged temper.
Andrew held his breath. Here they went –
“It’s because I feel superior.” Jesse said, and wheeled around and spat, or pretended to. Then he continued, accelerating the pace at which the words came out of his mouth – “There he is, poor bugger, picking up the odd crumb of ear wax from the rich man’s table. You’re right. I don’t mind. I like it. I like the way his presumption admits his poverty. I like him, knowing that that’s all there is, because you’re coming home to me and we don’t want any. one. else.”
Softer now, slower:
“I love love,” Jesse said, as if he was realising it for the first time. “I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn’t one’s lover.” He blew out a breath, caught Andrew’s gaze from where he was waiting in the wings, and looked away just as quickly without breaking character.
“Only two kinds of presence in the world,” he continued. “There’s you and there’s them.” Pause. “I love you so.”
“I love you so, Hen,” Carey said tremulously.
They finished the scene.
“Good,” Duncan said finally, after they had both fallen silent. “Better now, Jesse. Just don’t look away.”
---
At the end of the day they were all bone-tired, if not from the fact that their brains had gone through the wringer, then the fact that they’d stayed behind packing and hefting the set away.
Carey and Emma had disappeared. Privately, Andrew suspected them of some conspiracy, but he didn’t say anything because he was grateful to have a chance to clear the air. Jesse was striding out of the auditorium with his backpack slung over one arm, the other hanging loose.
Andrew hurried after him. “Jesse, wait – ”
Jesse turned around slowly. “Andrew,” he said resignedly.
This was going to be difficult. Andrew bit his lip. “About last week –” he said tentatively. “You, um, do you…”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Jesse said, looking straight ahead. “If you don’t want.”
“Are you sure?” Andrew said uncertainly.
“Very.”
Andrew had been priming himself to talk about things. Maybe, he thought, maybe Jesse didn’t want to –
“Jesse,” he began uncertainly, and Jesse whipped round to look at him. “Are we still friends?”
“Yes!” Jesse said. “I mean. If you want to. Be.”
Andrew nodded. “We are,” he said fiercely. There was a pause, before he remembered something else, and struggled with the concerted effort to speak normally. “And, um. Carey says we should go for Formal Hall next week, if you and Emma wanted,” he said. “You know. A proper Oxford thing, and all that.”
“Sure,” Jesse said, after a pause. “Emma said something about that too. Can you sign us up?”
“Definitely,” Andrew said, and Jesse nodded and moved away, looking relieved, and Andrew stood in the foyer for a while longer, thinking about nothing, or whether he would ever stop being young. Thinking about how many ways there were in which he was hungry.
5/5