Blues in the Bod [3/5]
Saturday, 3 September 2011 10:33![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
extemporallyIt was only second week, but by the end of it Andrew felt like he’d been in Oxford forever. Everything was going so fast. Inside him, there was a voice whispering, slow, slow, slow.
Andrew continued to hurl himself into the fray anyway. They were rehearsing in earnest for the play now, and everyone had their lines down by the end of the week, even despite the fact that three of them had to double up on characters since there were only four people in the cast. Duncan promised that it would be seen as an avant-garde interpretation, or something.
“Good work with that,” Duncan allowed grudgingly after their rehearsal on Friday. “If you stop mucking around and start blocking on stage properly, we should be right on track.”
“We haven’t even figured out the blocking,” Emma said indignantly, as they left the auditorium. “Slave driver.”
“I suppose that’s just who he is,” Jesse said mildly from behind her, and Carey giggled.
“What are you all doing now?” Carey asked.
“Reading, probably,” Emma said, and Jesse made a noise in agreement.
“Can I come over to Columbia house?” Andrew pleaded. “We could all read together. I’ll be quiet, promise.”
“Sure,” Jesse said. “Do you want to come too, Carey?”
Carey smiled. “That’d be nice. Thanks, Jesse.”
“This is brilliant,” Andrew said happily. “Jesse, you said you’d show me your highlighters.”
---
“Yo,” Justin said, as Andrew wandered into the kitchen with Jesse for a cup of tea.
“Oh, it’s you again,” Andrew said without thinking. “I mean, sorry. I mean, hello.”
“No problem, little bro,” Justin said, hefting the fridge door open and peering at its innards contemplatively. Today he was wearing a skinny tie and a belt with a buckle that could reasonably be described as bling. “You want some leftover groundnut stew?”
“Did you make it?” Andrew said. He somehow would never have figured Justin for the cooking type.
“Isn’t that Armie’s?” Jesse asked.
Justin shrugged. “No wonder it looks all healthy and shit. Well, it ain’t his now. You want some, Andrew?”
“No, thank you,” Andrew said politely. “Jesse’s just making me some herbal tea. Can I have some fruit too, please, Jesse?”
Justin said, “I guess you found him after all.” Jesse looked puzzled.
“He means when I came here last week,” Andrew explained.
“Ah,” Jesse said. He got two mugs out of the cupboard, bending over Andrew, who was hit by the scent of his hair. It smelt like peaches and patchouli. Deftly, he then pulled a green-handled knife from the drawer and sliced a plum into six, their split insides sunset orange. “Was that the day after, uh, the day after Emma yelled at you and poured Coke on your shirt?” he asked Justin.
“Jesse, Jesse, Jesse,” Justin said sadly. “We made it up, after all. Why do you always have to bring up the bad times?”
“Uh,” Jesse said. He looked semi-panicked, and handed Andrew a mug instead. “Here’s your herbal tea. And fruit.”
“Do you always pronounce it like that?” Andrew said. “‘Erbal’.”
“How else would I pronounce it?” Jesse said.
“‘Herbal’.” Andrew said firmly. “Hhhhhherbal.” He took a sip. “Hey, this is rather good, which is surprising.”
“But is it as good as regular tea?” Jesse asked.
“Oh, that’s got to be a rhetorical question,” Andrew said, chipper. “Regular tea, as you call it, Jesse, is in a completely different league altogether.”
Next to them, Justin was heating up what Andrew supposed was the groundnut stew in the microwave. It smelt like peanut butter.
“But this is all right. Thank you, Jesse.”
Jesse didn’t roll his eyes, but it was a near thing. “You’re welcome.”
3rd week
"Guess what," Carey said, bursting into Andrew's room with shining eyes.
"GenCam's made you the best feminist of all time," Andrew said, and Carey rolled her eyes. "No, silly."
"Then what?"
"I went for a walk with Emma and Jesse!"
"What!" Andrew said. "Why wasn't I involved?"
"You were at the Jeri Johnson lecture," Carey said, and Andrew groaned.
"Never mind," he said, recovering. "Jeri Johnson's a goddess, I'll take her dalliances with Joyce over Jesse - say that three times fast - at a pinch. She's doing the lectures on feminism for the Final Schools next term, by the way, if you want to get in on that with me. Anyway. Where did you go with Emma and Jesse - without me? Traitor."
"Oh, just meandered through Christ Church meadow and I explained to Jesse and Emma about the ducks in spring," Carey said. "Jesse said, 'that must be really cute!' and Emma said she couldn't look at live ducks without imagining them roasted. And apparently Jesse's got three cats at home."
"Oh my word," Andrew said, delighted again. "That's the best thing on earth."
"He misses them," Carey said. "Anyway, wait till you hear this. We got out at St Aldate's, had a look-in at the £2 bookshop, so now I sort of know what his taste runs to, it's quite impeccable, and then we went into Lush on Cornmarket?"
Andrew nodded. He didn't go in there a lot. No doubt it smelled lovely, but he could never stop sneezing.
"Friendly Sales Assistant Bloke remembered me," Carey said. "At first he said, 'Oh, I love your outfit!' which by the way I'm starting to assume is just his standard opener, and then he said he remembered me because of my sneezing friend. Then," Carey leaned forward impressively, "he started flirting with Jesse."
"How do you know he was flirting?" Andrew demanded. "He could just have been talking. Friendly Sales Assistant Bloke is supposed to be Friendly, after all."
"Oh, Andrew, it was totally obvious," Carey sighed. "He handed a Sex Bomb - stop blushing, I mean the jasmine-scented bath bombs they've got - to Jesse and their fingers brushed on purpose and everything, and he was trying very hard not to ignore Emma and me, he does have some professionalism left in him after all, but he was chattering very hard at Jesse."
Andrew knew Friendly Sales Assistant Bloke. He had dark hair and a couple of piercings and before today Andrew would have even said he looked quite good in the apron Lush sales assistants always wore. Today he hated him.
"What did Jesse say?"
"Oh, he was very nonplussed," Carey said. "Just stood there and said, 'yeah,' and 'okay'."
Andrew considered this.
"It was so different from when you flirt with him,” Carey said.
“I do not flirt with him!”
“Oh, Andrew,” Carey said, looking at him pityingly.
“I do not!” Andrew said. “Unlike Friendly Sales Assistant Bloke, I just talk to him. Normally. And we talk a lot, cos we’re friends.”
“But you want to be more,” Carey accused.
“That doesn’t mean I would abuse my position in that way,” Andrew said.
“I think you should go for it,” Carey said. “Jesse’s pretty twitchy but that’s how he is around everyone. I think you have a pretty good chance right there.” She turned around and rooted for a Strawberry Delight in the paper box of Quality Streets he had open on his desk.
“You don’t understand anything,” Andrew said to her back.
---
Subject: ACCOM BALLOT
From: Jay Chou
Date: 1 February 2011 17:38
To: Merton JCR [merton-jcr]
Hello everyone (except finalists),
I have drawn the ballot for next year's accommodation - results are attached.
Sign-up sheets for group accommodation will go up tomorrow morning, and I will send round an email with details of exactly which properties are available as group options - there are some slight changes from last year.
Let me know if you have any questions. This may be self-evident, but REMEMBER: the lower your average score (if you're going for group housing, that is), the better chance you'll have at getting your ideal accommodation.
Thanks,
Jay (Accommodation Officer)
(attachment: ballot.xlsx)
---
Subject: next year
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 1 February 2011 17:45
To: Carey Mulligan
CAREY. Ballot scores are out!!
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
Subject: re: next year
From: Carey Mulligan
Date: 1 February 2011 17:50
To: Andrew Garfield
I know! We have decent scores too so we could actually get one of those flats down Iffley if we get three other people to come with. Who do you think? It’s crap that Jesse and Emma aren’t going to be around next year.
Subject: re: re: next year
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 1 February 2011 17:51
To: Carey Mulligan
How about Matt and Karen? And say Arthur. Arthur and Matt have got ok scores, Karen’s is STUPENDOUS by virtue of her being a classicist. Yes?
PS. We’ve still got next term, be nice to them so they’ll stay on for that.
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
Subject: re: re: re: next year
From: Carey Mulligan
Date: 1 February 2011 17:50
To: Andrew Garfield
YES. I’ll ask them! Fingers crossed they say okay – who would pass up the honour and privilege of living with us anyway?
Also I am always nice.
Subject: re: re: re: re: next year
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 1 February 2011 17:55
To: Carey Mulligan
We can discuss this (both accommodation and your alleged niceness) later at dinner. Hall?
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
Subject: re: re: re: re: re: next year
From: Carey Mulligan
Date: 1 February 2011 18:00
To: Andrew Garfield
Yep. See you in half an hour.
---
Spring had sprung. The crocuses were coming out at Merton and the snowdrops had been there for a while now, and even if it was still ridiculously cold the flowers let one imagine, for once, a world in which the sun shone and scarves were things you wore to be decorative instead of keep your neck from accruing icicles.
“Trinity is going to be brilliant,” Andrew told Jesse. “You should be here for it, you know, it’s all people lying on grass in Christ Church Meadow and Pimm’s and punting and swimming in Port Meadow. At least, that’s what the second-years say.”
“And ducks,” Jesse said. “Carey told me.”
“And ducks,” Andrew confirmed. “The kind of Oxford experience people sign up for, essentially.”
“Don’t you have exams next term?” Jesse asked.
“Don’t kill the wonder,” Andrew said reproachfully. “Baby ducks, Jesse, how could you kill the wonder that is constituted by baby ducks? Is it true you’ve got three cats at home? Carey said something to that effect.”
“I do,” Jesse said. He laughed self-consciously. “It’s kind of overkill, I agree.”
“No, that’s brilliant,” Andrew reassured him. “What are their names?”
“Atlas, Raskolnikov, and Levin,” Jesse told him, still slightly pink about the gills.
“Tell me all about them,” Andrew demanded immediately. “I’ve never had any pets – d’you want to know something stupid?”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“Well I always wanted a puppy when I was growing up,” Andrew said. “And my mother always said no, because she thought I wasn’t old enough to handle the responsibility. She always said when I turned eighteen?”
“You’re over eighteen now, I assume,” Jesse observed.
“I turned eighteen last year,” Andrew confirmed sadly. “Then I came to uni, and college has a no pets policy.”
Jesse groaned.
“I know!” Andrew said. “It’s horrid, and my parents won’t get a puppy now that I’m in Oxford all the time, anyway.”
“You could get a goldfish,” Jesse suggested.
“Goldfish aren’t pets, they’re moving art,” Andrew said. “What use have I got for moving art that needs its tank cleaned out every week?”
“Two words,” Jesse said. When Andrew looked at him he was grinning. “Civil disobedience.”
---
Much to his delight, Andrew saw Jesse nearly every day because he was one of those rare breeds of American exchange student, an inveterate turner-upper at hall. Andrew himself didn’t cook unless you counted sardines on toast, so he was always at college mealtimes, and invariably he’d see Jesse sliding into the buttery from Thomas Quad.
And there was the play, too. Andrew entered the auditorium that week to find Jesse and Emma there already.
“Hey, Andrew,” Emma said. “Where’s Carey?”
“She was meeting someone, she’ll just be along.”
“Oh, cool.”
Andrew beamed at them and sat down in one of the seats in the front row, right in front of them. “What’s new, my favourite Americans?”
“Yesterday,” Jesse said, “Justin fell to his knees in the JCR and begged Emma to please forgive him.”
“Jesse!” Emma hissed.
“It really happened,” Jesse said defensively.
“It was so embarrassing,” Emma told Andrew. “He did it just to embarrass me and I felt like shooting myself in the head. After I shot him, that is.”
“It sounds like he fancies you,” Andrew said. Emma glared at him.
“I didn’t say it,” Jesse said, putting his hands up when Emma turned to him.
“He – god! That is not the point!”
“Do you like him?” Andrew asked keenly.
“Emma would probably sign up for any class where Justin was the TA,” Jesse said.
Emma looked disgusted. “If the both of you don’t stop talking I’m going to have to kill something.”
“Sounds like true love, all right,” Jesse said, rocking his chair backwards so it was balanced on just two legs. Emma feinted a kick at it. Jesse pushed his chair upright immediately, giving her a look equal parts humour and real terror, then turned to Andrew and laughed, sweet and surprising as sleep.
Call Andrew obtuse, but it was a genuine surprise to find himself completely and utterly in love with Jesse.
---
Kimba, Retro Stefson
Andrew knew he had better things to do later that night than moon about in front of his mirror, but he had never been able to resist a chance to appreciate his handsomeness. And so he stood.
“La la la la la,” he said out loud, checking that his tongue and teeth (like each and every strand of his hair) were in their respective right places. “La la la la la.”
These were the choir exercises he used to do at school when he sang in a choir, before he realized he couldn’t actually sing. He hadn’t been able to drop out, though. One sport, one musical activity. That had been the rule at school.
No wonder he’d hated school.
Back in the present, Andrew examined himself in the mirror anew, greeting himself like a stranger striding through his room, door flung wide. He tried to practice a confession of love. “Jesse, I have something to tell you,” he said aloud.
Too stilted, and too serious. Again. “Jesse, I have something to tell you!”
Too flippant?
Andrew gave up and turned away from the mirror, and took a running leap at his bed (he removed his shoes first). Scrambling onto the mattress and standing on his coverlet with his socked feet, he bellowed (as loudly as his fear of discovery would allow him to do), “Jesse, I love you!”
Is this a joke? the Jesse in his head asked, his chin nonchalantly tilted and his expression skeptical. Such was the effect of this imagined expression, written in a foreign language Andrew couldn’t quite understand, that he gave up and got off his bed.
No, it wasn’t a joke. No.
4th week
The thing about love, Andrew decided (though he was always deciding things about love, this one was true), was how surprising it was. He never expected it to give life a narrative, a shape the rest of your world turned on.
"I know what you mean, kind of," Carey said, when Andrew told her this. She was taking him very seriously. That was what he liked about her.
“Do you?”
“Yeah,” Carey said dreamily. "It's kind of like when you say, 'Oh, today he smiled at me' and tomorrow your defining thing's like, 'Oh, he said hi and we had a five minute conversation in the library', and it's, it's, you feel like you're going somewhere with this, even if you're not sure where and it's. It's love."
There was a pause.
"Exactly," Andrew said.
"Andrew?" Carey asked.
"What?" Andrew said.
"Will you ever make a move on him?"
"The universe is unfolding as it should," Andrew said dreamily.
Carey gave a soft, serious snuffle of laughter. “Go placidly amid the noise and haste, child of the universe.”
---
“Hello,” Andrew said, sliding into his seat beside Jesse on one of the dark wooden benches in hall.
“Hey,” Jesse said, looking at him meditatively across his soup (leek and potato today). “How are you?”
“Not so bad, thanks.” It was Monday and Andrew was feeling pretty good about that. He’d just had a tutorial, which had been all right, bordering on the good. Professor “Please, call me Meera” Syal had told him to tone down on the sarkiness (“Freud is working on the baffling presumption that a stable, adult homosexuality does not exist. It is tempting to wonder if he perhaps felt threatened by the prospect…”) but that she’d enjoyed it anyway. “Just had a tute. What about yourself?”
“Good,” Jesse said. He hesitated, then said, “We had to decide by yesterday if we were staying on in Oxford for another term, or going back to New York.”
Andrew held his breath. “What did you choose?”
“I’m staying,” Jesse said. “Emma, too.”
“That’s lovely!” Andrew said, in all sincerity, his breath whooshing out of him. “Oh, that’s wonderful – I’m so glad.”
“Thanks,” Jesse said. “Got to be here for the baby ducks, after all.”
Andrew laughed. “That’s true,” he said.
Jesse, it seemed, wasn’t finished. He put down his soup spoon and Andrew admired, for the thousandth time, the shy downsweep of his lashes. “But really, I, uh, I really like it here.”
“I really like it with you here,” Andrew said, before he could stop himself.
“That’s. That’s good, then,” Jesse said, and they smiled at each other. Andrew felt like he couldn’t say everything he felt.
(But, oh, how he felt it.)
There was a heartbeat of a pause. Then Jesse tore a bit of bread off his half-baguette.
Andrew flung some pepper over his potatoes out the shaker, and they started eating again. All around them, the hall buzzed with the sounds of people eating; talking; living; breathing, the high ceiling giving the fresco an otherworldly acoustic.
Beneath its high vaults, Andrew was in love.
---
Only, Okay
Subject: Valentine’s b-b-b-bop!
From: Lee Hom Wang
Date: 10 February 2011 17:32
To: Merton JCR [merton-jcr]
Hello JCR,
This Saturday, as you might have heard, is the Valentine's bop! The key details being: Beer Cellar, 8:00 - 12:00, music, a room full of awesome costumes and hopefully Cupids filled with candy. Sounds good.
If you'd like to DJ just send me an email, I'll even supply you with CDs. (When we say DJ we mean put some music on 2 CDs and play a song of one CD and then a song off the other, repeat and you're sorted.)
Hope to see you there!
Leehom
“People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.” – Nick Hornby
---
“Are you going to the bop?”
“Yes, but I’m not dressing up.”
“Oh, but why?” Andrew demanded, disappointed. “Dressing up is the best part of bops.”
“Spend ten quid on materials and countless hours wrestling them into a supposedly acceptable costume that looks ridiculous?” Carey shuddered. “No thanks, I’d rather not. Do you know who else is going?”
“Georgina is, and because she is, David is too” Andrew said, referring to the finalist who was Georgina’s boyfriend (rumour always had it that they were on the cusp of getting engaged; personally Andrew always hoped they were true because then he’d be able to attend a wedding in the Merton chapel and then his life would be complete), then made a thoughtful face. “Probably Billie will be, since David’s going, and Freema, and John… both Johns… you know that crew.”
“Ellen’s going, and she said she might bring Kristen,” Carey said. “And Indira and Jessica, and Zoe and Matthew. And Keira, of course.”
“Sounds good,” Andrew said. “I haven’t seen Keira in ages, she’s been really busy with JCR stuff. Anyway. Are you really sure you don’t want to dress up as one-half of a lovey-dovey, soppy-soppy couple with me? We could wear matching outfits!”
“I’m quite sure,” Carey said. “You could ask Jesse if he’d like that, though.”
“I can’t ask Jesse,” Andrew said, affronted. “That would be pushing the boundaries of obviousness.”
Carey sighed. “You really are hopeless,” she said. “How do you even expect to get with Jesse if you never even make an advance?”
Andrew thought about it very hard. “Get drunk and kiss him at a party?” he offered. “Or failing which, I just yearn after him the rest of existence, not a big big deal.”
“You are missing the point here,” Carey said.
“Oh, shush,” Andrew said, waving her away.
It wasn’t as if Andrew didn’t want to ask Jesse out, and Andrew knew it and Carey knew it and everyone Andrew had ever mentioned the entire situation to knew it. Andrew was even beginning to suspect that Jesse himself knew it. It was simply that he didn’t see the point of it when Jesse was clearly going to say no anyway, because Andrew couldn’t even start to imagine a situation in which he might say yes. It was just better to stick to making up songs in his head about their epic unrequited romance.
Now he was starting to sound like an American.
---
Subject: Litsoc at 5
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 12 February 2011 14:02
To: Merton JCR [merton-jcr]
Dear Merton,
Litsoc later today at 5! Ackroyd Room, pen, paper, mug. Happy Valentine’s weekend – perhaps you’ll have a little extra inspiration to put to paper?
A x
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
---
He had other things to think about, anyway. Such as the fact that, much to his surprise, the submissions for the Merton Mag (he’d think up a wittier name later) were starting to trickle in and by Saturday of fourth week they were starting to widen to a pour. Some of these were truly horrendous but some of them were rather, as his grandfather might say, Quality. In fact, at least two of these were bordering on Zadie Smith – and her name was not one Andrew took lightly – levels of good. Andrew frowned at his screen. Had Merton been infiltrated by professional authors hoping to give their ego a boost by publishing their works in a student publication next to the terrible, terrible poems that inevitably began with “Come, fateful light”? Who was Anjali Joseph anyway? How come her writing was so brilliant and she never came to Litsoc? Andrew was personally affronted.
Nevertheless. He’d already decided on a couple of pieces and was willing to bet that the real deluge of submissions would come on Saturday or Sunday, if these people weren’t out at the bop too late. He shot off a reminder email to the JCR at large anyway, and was just about to log off so he could do actual work when he got a new email.
Subject: Merton Mag submissions
From: Jesse Eisenberg
Date: 12 February 2011 14:36
To: Andrew Garfield
Hey, Andrew.
Here are my submissions. Let me know if you want different drawings; they’re not quite architectural (a bit more fantastic than that I’m afraid) but they’re still pretty diagrammatic. I also attached an excerpt from a play I’m writing… seriously, feel free to completely ignore this and not publish it at all because I wouldn’t want you to feel pressured to include it in your magazine just because we’re friends (yes?).
Anyway, you can just take a look.
Jesse
PS. I realise that you probably already know this but doing layout can be stressful. Let know if you hit crisis point at some point and need help stapling or anything like that.
(attachment: malfoymanor.pdf
attachment: what’s up mr rosenberg.doc)
Andrew chewed on his thumbnail as he opened the attachments. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting when he asked Jesse for some architectural sketches; a couple of raggedy drawings, perhaps. When he was growing up, his father had had a friend who’d been an architect; at some point there had been talk of engaging him to renovate the ramshackle thirties house they lived in, in Guildford, at a discount. What Andrew remembered from that time was the architect coming over for dinner and having a gander about the house beforehand, and afterwards talking plans, sketching out his proposed changes on the paper serviettes Andrew’s mother set out at every meal as Andrew had watched, entranced.
This, this was even more magical.
Jesse must have worked very hard on this, Andrew realised as he looked at the PDF file. He hadn’t just drawn an architectural plan of a manor house, he’d drawn wings and rooms and hidden-away chambers and secret passages and an attic he had helpfully labelled ‘for the storage of Dark artifacts’, he’d drawn the garden (French, it looked, if French gardens contained plots of Deathly Daffodils and neatly-pruned (by magic, of course) shrubs in the shapes of witches in addition to carefully manicured lawns) and peacocks (peacocks!!!) and a small map to show where it was in relation to the rest of Wiltshire (unplottably so, of course) and how it looked from the outside and Andrew found himself unaccountably tearing up with how good it was. It was as if someone had taken his eleven-year old self by the hand and drawn him into a magical world of Hogwarts and Aurors and snobbish boys and Scourgify all over again.
Jesse, he thought. He wasn’t sure he could stand it.
Andrew knew he was being melodramatic, but he didn’t care.
Subject: re: Merton Mag submissions
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 12 February 2011 14:40
To: Jesse Eisenberg
You’re self-deprecating to a fault – no, it’s a tragic flaw. Also a genius. I mean you’re the genius. See you later at Litsoc. And then maybe the bop?
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
And then Andrew logged off without reading the play, because he wasn’t sure his heart could take it any more, and he really wanted to save it for when he could. Andrew was usually someone who welcomed an overabundance of feeling but this was probably too much before he died from a heart attack of ecstasy, or something.
He sighed out loud. Just once. But it was there, and it was heard, even if there was no one else beside himself to hear it. Having allowed himself that barest indulgence of self-pity, he opened In the Reading Gaol: Postmodernity, Texts, and History (Cunningham, 1994) and fell to once more.
4/5
Andrew continued to hurl himself into the fray anyway. They were rehearsing in earnest for the play now, and everyone had their lines down by the end of the week, even despite the fact that three of them had to double up on characters since there were only four people in the cast. Duncan promised that it would be seen as an avant-garde interpretation, or something.
“Good work with that,” Duncan allowed grudgingly after their rehearsal on Friday. “If you stop mucking around and start blocking on stage properly, we should be right on track.”
“We haven’t even figured out the blocking,” Emma said indignantly, as they left the auditorium. “Slave driver.”
“I suppose that’s just who he is,” Jesse said mildly from behind her, and Carey giggled.
“What are you all doing now?” Carey asked.
“Reading, probably,” Emma said, and Jesse made a noise in agreement.
“Can I come over to Columbia house?” Andrew pleaded. “We could all read together. I’ll be quiet, promise.”
“Sure,” Jesse said. “Do you want to come too, Carey?”
Carey smiled. “That’d be nice. Thanks, Jesse.”
“This is brilliant,” Andrew said happily. “Jesse, you said you’d show me your highlighters.”
---
“Yo,” Justin said, as Andrew wandered into the kitchen with Jesse for a cup of tea.
“Oh, it’s you again,” Andrew said without thinking. “I mean, sorry. I mean, hello.”
“No problem, little bro,” Justin said, hefting the fridge door open and peering at its innards contemplatively. Today he was wearing a skinny tie and a belt with a buckle that could reasonably be described as bling. “You want some leftover groundnut stew?”
“Did you make it?” Andrew said. He somehow would never have figured Justin for the cooking type.
“Isn’t that Armie’s?” Jesse asked.
Justin shrugged. “No wonder it looks all healthy and shit. Well, it ain’t his now. You want some, Andrew?”
“No, thank you,” Andrew said politely. “Jesse’s just making me some herbal tea. Can I have some fruit too, please, Jesse?”
Justin said, “I guess you found him after all.” Jesse looked puzzled.
“He means when I came here last week,” Andrew explained.
“Ah,” Jesse said. He got two mugs out of the cupboard, bending over Andrew, who was hit by the scent of his hair. It smelt like peaches and patchouli. Deftly, he then pulled a green-handled knife from the drawer and sliced a plum into six, their split insides sunset orange. “Was that the day after, uh, the day after Emma yelled at you and poured Coke on your shirt?” he asked Justin.
“Jesse, Jesse, Jesse,” Justin said sadly. “We made it up, after all. Why do you always have to bring up the bad times?”
“Uh,” Jesse said. He looked semi-panicked, and handed Andrew a mug instead. “Here’s your herbal tea. And fruit.”
“Do you always pronounce it like that?” Andrew said. “‘Erbal’.”
“How else would I pronounce it?” Jesse said.
“‘Herbal’.” Andrew said firmly. “Hhhhhherbal.” He took a sip. “Hey, this is rather good, which is surprising.”
“But is it as good as regular tea?” Jesse asked.
“Oh, that’s got to be a rhetorical question,” Andrew said, chipper. “Regular tea, as you call it, Jesse, is in a completely different league altogether.”
Next to them, Justin was heating up what Andrew supposed was the groundnut stew in the microwave. It smelt like peanut butter.
“But this is all right. Thank you, Jesse.”
Jesse didn’t roll his eyes, but it was a near thing. “You’re welcome.”
3rd week
"Guess what," Carey said, bursting into Andrew's room with shining eyes.
"GenCam's made you the best feminist of all time," Andrew said, and Carey rolled her eyes. "No, silly."
"Then what?"
"I went for a walk with Emma and Jesse!"
"What!" Andrew said. "Why wasn't I involved?"
"You were at the Jeri Johnson lecture," Carey said, and Andrew groaned.
"Never mind," he said, recovering. "Jeri Johnson's a goddess, I'll take her dalliances with Joyce over Jesse - say that three times fast - at a pinch. She's doing the lectures on feminism for the Final Schools next term, by the way, if you want to get in on that with me. Anyway. Where did you go with Emma and Jesse - without me? Traitor."
"Oh, just meandered through Christ Church meadow and I explained to Jesse and Emma about the ducks in spring," Carey said. "Jesse said, 'that must be really cute!' and Emma said she couldn't look at live ducks without imagining them roasted. And apparently Jesse's got three cats at home."
"Oh my word," Andrew said, delighted again. "That's the best thing on earth."
"He misses them," Carey said. "Anyway, wait till you hear this. We got out at St Aldate's, had a look-in at the £2 bookshop, so now I sort of know what his taste runs to, it's quite impeccable, and then we went into Lush on Cornmarket?"
Andrew nodded. He didn't go in there a lot. No doubt it smelled lovely, but he could never stop sneezing.
"Friendly Sales Assistant Bloke remembered me," Carey said. "At first he said, 'Oh, I love your outfit!' which by the way I'm starting to assume is just his standard opener, and then he said he remembered me because of my sneezing friend. Then," Carey leaned forward impressively, "he started flirting with Jesse."
"How do you know he was flirting?" Andrew demanded. "He could just have been talking. Friendly Sales Assistant Bloke is supposed to be Friendly, after all."
"Oh, Andrew, it was totally obvious," Carey sighed. "He handed a Sex Bomb - stop blushing, I mean the jasmine-scented bath bombs they've got - to Jesse and their fingers brushed on purpose and everything, and he was trying very hard not to ignore Emma and me, he does have some professionalism left in him after all, but he was chattering very hard at Jesse."
Andrew knew Friendly Sales Assistant Bloke. He had dark hair and a couple of piercings and before today Andrew would have even said he looked quite good in the apron Lush sales assistants always wore. Today he hated him.
"What did Jesse say?"
"Oh, he was very nonplussed," Carey said. "Just stood there and said, 'yeah,' and 'okay'."
Andrew considered this.
"It was so different from when you flirt with him,” Carey said.
“I do not flirt with him!”
“Oh, Andrew,” Carey said, looking at him pityingly.
“I do not!” Andrew said. “Unlike Friendly Sales Assistant Bloke, I just talk to him. Normally. And we talk a lot, cos we’re friends.”
“But you want to be more,” Carey accused.
“That doesn’t mean I would abuse my position in that way,” Andrew said.
“I think you should go for it,” Carey said. “Jesse’s pretty twitchy but that’s how he is around everyone. I think you have a pretty good chance right there.” She turned around and rooted for a Strawberry Delight in the paper box of Quality Streets he had open on his desk.
“You don’t understand anything,” Andrew said to her back.
---
Subject: ACCOM BALLOT
From: Jay Chou
Date: 1 February 2011 17:38
To: Merton JCR [merton-jcr]
Hello everyone (except finalists),
I have drawn the ballot for next year's accommodation - results are attached.
Sign-up sheets for group accommodation will go up tomorrow morning, and I will send round an email with details of exactly which properties are available as group options - there are some slight changes from last year.
Let me know if you have any questions. This may be self-evident, but REMEMBER: the lower your average score (if you're going for group housing, that is), the better chance you'll have at getting your ideal accommodation.
Thanks,
Jay (Accommodation Officer)
(attachment: ballot.xlsx)
---
Subject: next year
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 1 February 2011 17:45
To: Carey Mulligan
CAREY. Ballot scores are out!!
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
Subject: re: next year
From: Carey Mulligan
Date: 1 February 2011 17:50
To: Andrew Garfield
I know! We have decent scores too so we could actually get one of those flats down Iffley if we get three other people to come with. Who do you think? It’s crap that Jesse and Emma aren’t going to be around next year.
Subject: re: re: next year
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 1 February 2011 17:51
To: Carey Mulligan
How about Matt and Karen? And say Arthur. Arthur and Matt have got ok scores, Karen’s is STUPENDOUS by virtue of her being a classicist. Yes?
PS. We’ve still got next term, be nice to them so they’ll stay on for that.
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
Subject: re: re: re: next year
From: Carey Mulligan
Date: 1 February 2011 17:50
To: Andrew Garfield
YES. I’ll ask them! Fingers crossed they say okay – who would pass up the honour and privilege of living with us anyway?
Also I am always nice.
Subject: re: re: re: re: next year
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 1 February 2011 17:55
To: Carey Mulligan
We can discuss this (both accommodation and your alleged niceness) later at dinner. Hall?
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
Subject: re: re: re: re: re: next year
From: Carey Mulligan
Date: 1 February 2011 18:00
To: Andrew Garfield
Yep. See you in half an hour.
---
Spring had sprung. The crocuses were coming out at Merton and the snowdrops had been there for a while now, and even if it was still ridiculously cold the flowers let one imagine, for once, a world in which the sun shone and scarves were things you wore to be decorative instead of keep your neck from accruing icicles.
“Trinity is going to be brilliant,” Andrew told Jesse. “You should be here for it, you know, it’s all people lying on grass in Christ Church Meadow and Pimm’s and punting and swimming in Port Meadow. At least, that’s what the second-years say.”
“And ducks,” Jesse said. “Carey told me.”
“And ducks,” Andrew confirmed. “The kind of Oxford experience people sign up for, essentially.”
“Don’t you have exams next term?” Jesse asked.
“Don’t kill the wonder,” Andrew said reproachfully. “Baby ducks, Jesse, how could you kill the wonder that is constituted by baby ducks? Is it true you’ve got three cats at home? Carey said something to that effect.”
“I do,” Jesse said. He laughed self-consciously. “It’s kind of overkill, I agree.”
“No, that’s brilliant,” Andrew reassured him. “What are their names?”
“Atlas, Raskolnikov, and Levin,” Jesse told him, still slightly pink about the gills.
“Tell me all about them,” Andrew demanded immediately. “I’ve never had any pets – d’you want to know something stupid?”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
“Well I always wanted a puppy when I was growing up,” Andrew said. “And my mother always said no, because she thought I wasn’t old enough to handle the responsibility. She always said when I turned eighteen?”
“You’re over eighteen now, I assume,” Jesse observed.
“I turned eighteen last year,” Andrew confirmed sadly. “Then I came to uni, and college has a no pets policy.”
Jesse groaned.
“I know!” Andrew said. “It’s horrid, and my parents won’t get a puppy now that I’m in Oxford all the time, anyway.”
“You could get a goldfish,” Jesse suggested.
“Goldfish aren’t pets, they’re moving art,” Andrew said. “What use have I got for moving art that needs its tank cleaned out every week?”
“Two words,” Jesse said. When Andrew looked at him he was grinning. “Civil disobedience.”
---
Much to his delight, Andrew saw Jesse nearly every day because he was one of those rare breeds of American exchange student, an inveterate turner-upper at hall. Andrew himself didn’t cook unless you counted sardines on toast, so he was always at college mealtimes, and invariably he’d see Jesse sliding into the buttery from Thomas Quad.
And there was the play, too. Andrew entered the auditorium that week to find Jesse and Emma there already.
“Hey, Andrew,” Emma said. “Where’s Carey?”
“She was meeting someone, she’ll just be along.”
“Oh, cool.”
Andrew beamed at them and sat down in one of the seats in the front row, right in front of them. “What’s new, my favourite Americans?”
“Yesterday,” Jesse said, “Justin fell to his knees in the JCR and begged Emma to please forgive him.”
“Jesse!” Emma hissed.
“It really happened,” Jesse said defensively.
“It was so embarrassing,” Emma told Andrew. “He did it just to embarrass me and I felt like shooting myself in the head. After I shot him, that is.”
“It sounds like he fancies you,” Andrew said. Emma glared at him.
“I didn’t say it,” Jesse said, putting his hands up when Emma turned to him.
“He – god! That is not the point!”
“Do you like him?” Andrew asked keenly.
“Emma would probably sign up for any class where Justin was the TA,” Jesse said.
Emma looked disgusted. “If the both of you don’t stop talking I’m going to have to kill something.”
“Sounds like true love, all right,” Jesse said, rocking his chair backwards so it was balanced on just two legs. Emma feinted a kick at it. Jesse pushed his chair upright immediately, giving her a look equal parts humour and real terror, then turned to Andrew and laughed, sweet and surprising as sleep.
Call Andrew obtuse, but it was a genuine surprise to find himself completely and utterly in love with Jesse.
---
Kimba, Retro Stefson
Andrew knew he had better things to do later that night than moon about in front of his mirror, but he had never been able to resist a chance to appreciate his handsomeness. And so he stood.
“La la la la la,” he said out loud, checking that his tongue and teeth (like each and every strand of his hair) were in their respective right places. “La la la la la.”
These were the choir exercises he used to do at school when he sang in a choir, before he realized he couldn’t actually sing. He hadn’t been able to drop out, though. One sport, one musical activity. That had been the rule at school.
No wonder he’d hated school.
Back in the present, Andrew examined himself in the mirror anew, greeting himself like a stranger striding through his room, door flung wide. He tried to practice a confession of love. “Jesse, I have something to tell you,” he said aloud.
Too stilted, and too serious. Again. “Jesse, I have something to tell you!”
Too flippant?
Andrew gave up and turned away from the mirror, and took a running leap at his bed (he removed his shoes first). Scrambling onto the mattress and standing on his coverlet with his socked feet, he bellowed (as loudly as his fear of discovery would allow him to do), “Jesse, I love you!”
Is this a joke? the Jesse in his head asked, his chin nonchalantly tilted and his expression skeptical. Such was the effect of this imagined expression, written in a foreign language Andrew couldn’t quite understand, that he gave up and got off his bed.
No, it wasn’t a joke. No.
4th week
The thing about love, Andrew decided (though he was always deciding things about love, this one was true), was how surprising it was. He never expected it to give life a narrative, a shape the rest of your world turned on.
"I know what you mean, kind of," Carey said, when Andrew told her this. She was taking him very seriously. That was what he liked about her.
“Do you?”
“Yeah,” Carey said dreamily. "It's kind of like when you say, 'Oh, today he smiled at me' and tomorrow your defining thing's like, 'Oh, he said hi and we had a five minute conversation in the library', and it's, it's, you feel like you're going somewhere with this, even if you're not sure where and it's. It's love."
There was a pause.
"Exactly," Andrew said.
"Andrew?" Carey asked.
"What?" Andrew said.
"Will you ever make a move on him?"
"The universe is unfolding as it should," Andrew said dreamily.
Carey gave a soft, serious snuffle of laughter. “Go placidly amid the noise and haste, child of the universe.”
---
“Hello,” Andrew said, sliding into his seat beside Jesse on one of the dark wooden benches in hall.
“Hey,” Jesse said, looking at him meditatively across his soup (leek and potato today). “How are you?”
“Not so bad, thanks.” It was Monday and Andrew was feeling pretty good about that. He’d just had a tutorial, which had been all right, bordering on the good. Professor “Please, call me Meera” Syal had told him to tone down on the sarkiness (“Freud is working on the baffling presumption that a stable, adult homosexuality does not exist. It is tempting to wonder if he perhaps felt threatened by the prospect…”) but that she’d enjoyed it anyway. “Just had a tute. What about yourself?”
“Good,” Jesse said. He hesitated, then said, “We had to decide by yesterday if we were staying on in Oxford for another term, or going back to New York.”
Andrew held his breath. “What did you choose?”
“I’m staying,” Jesse said. “Emma, too.”
“That’s lovely!” Andrew said, in all sincerity, his breath whooshing out of him. “Oh, that’s wonderful – I’m so glad.”
“Thanks,” Jesse said. “Got to be here for the baby ducks, after all.”
Andrew laughed. “That’s true,” he said.
Jesse, it seemed, wasn’t finished. He put down his soup spoon and Andrew admired, for the thousandth time, the shy downsweep of his lashes. “But really, I, uh, I really like it here.”
“I really like it with you here,” Andrew said, before he could stop himself.
“That’s. That’s good, then,” Jesse said, and they smiled at each other. Andrew felt like he couldn’t say everything he felt.
(But, oh, how he felt it.)
There was a heartbeat of a pause. Then Jesse tore a bit of bread off his half-baguette.
Andrew flung some pepper over his potatoes out the shaker, and they started eating again. All around them, the hall buzzed with the sounds of people eating; talking; living; breathing, the high ceiling giving the fresco an otherworldly acoustic.
Beneath its high vaults, Andrew was in love.
---
Only, Okay
Subject: Valentine’s b-b-b-bop!
From: Lee Hom Wang
Date: 10 February 2011 17:32
To: Merton JCR [merton-jcr]
Hello JCR,
This Saturday, as you might have heard, is the Valentine's bop! The key details being: Beer Cellar, 8:00 - 12:00, music, a room full of awesome costumes and hopefully Cupids filled with candy. Sounds good.
If you'd like to DJ just send me an email, I'll even supply you with CDs. (When we say DJ we mean put some music on 2 CDs and play a song of one CD and then a song off the other, repeat and you're sorted.)
Hope to see you there!
Leehom
“People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.” – Nick Hornby
---
“Are you going to the bop?”
“Yes, but I’m not dressing up.”
“Oh, but why?” Andrew demanded, disappointed. “Dressing up is the best part of bops.”
“Spend ten quid on materials and countless hours wrestling them into a supposedly acceptable costume that looks ridiculous?” Carey shuddered. “No thanks, I’d rather not. Do you know who else is going?”
“Georgina is, and because she is, David is too” Andrew said, referring to the finalist who was Georgina’s boyfriend (rumour always had it that they were on the cusp of getting engaged; personally Andrew always hoped they were true because then he’d be able to attend a wedding in the Merton chapel and then his life would be complete), then made a thoughtful face. “Probably Billie will be, since David’s going, and Freema, and John… both Johns… you know that crew.”
“Ellen’s going, and she said she might bring Kristen,” Carey said. “And Indira and Jessica, and Zoe and Matthew. And Keira, of course.”
“Sounds good,” Andrew said. “I haven’t seen Keira in ages, she’s been really busy with JCR stuff. Anyway. Are you really sure you don’t want to dress up as one-half of a lovey-dovey, soppy-soppy couple with me? We could wear matching outfits!”
“I’m quite sure,” Carey said. “You could ask Jesse if he’d like that, though.”
“I can’t ask Jesse,” Andrew said, affronted. “That would be pushing the boundaries of obviousness.”
Carey sighed. “You really are hopeless,” she said. “How do you even expect to get with Jesse if you never even make an advance?”
Andrew thought about it very hard. “Get drunk and kiss him at a party?” he offered. “Or failing which, I just yearn after him the rest of existence, not a big big deal.”
“You are missing the point here,” Carey said.
“Oh, shush,” Andrew said, waving her away.
It wasn’t as if Andrew didn’t want to ask Jesse out, and Andrew knew it and Carey knew it and everyone Andrew had ever mentioned the entire situation to knew it. Andrew was even beginning to suspect that Jesse himself knew it. It was simply that he didn’t see the point of it when Jesse was clearly going to say no anyway, because Andrew couldn’t even start to imagine a situation in which he might say yes. It was just better to stick to making up songs in his head about their epic unrequited romance.
Now he was starting to sound like an American.
---
Subject: Litsoc at 5
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 12 February 2011 14:02
To: Merton JCR [merton-jcr]
Dear Merton,
Litsoc later today at 5! Ackroyd Room, pen, paper, mug. Happy Valentine’s weekend – perhaps you’ll have a little extra inspiration to put to paper?
A x
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
---
He had other things to think about, anyway. Such as the fact that, much to his surprise, the submissions for the Merton Mag (he’d think up a wittier name later) were starting to trickle in and by Saturday of fourth week they were starting to widen to a pour. Some of these were truly horrendous but some of them were rather, as his grandfather might say, Quality. In fact, at least two of these were bordering on Zadie Smith – and her name was not one Andrew took lightly – levels of good. Andrew frowned at his screen. Had Merton been infiltrated by professional authors hoping to give their ego a boost by publishing their works in a student publication next to the terrible, terrible poems that inevitably began with “Come, fateful light”? Who was Anjali Joseph anyway? How come her writing was so brilliant and she never came to Litsoc? Andrew was personally affronted.
Nevertheless. He’d already decided on a couple of pieces and was willing to bet that the real deluge of submissions would come on Saturday or Sunday, if these people weren’t out at the bop too late. He shot off a reminder email to the JCR at large anyway, and was just about to log off so he could do actual work when he got a new email.
Subject: Merton Mag submissions
From: Jesse Eisenberg
Date: 12 February 2011 14:36
To: Andrew Garfield
Hey, Andrew.
Here are my submissions. Let me know if you want different drawings; they’re not quite architectural (a bit more fantastic than that I’m afraid) but they’re still pretty diagrammatic. I also attached an excerpt from a play I’m writing… seriously, feel free to completely ignore this and not publish it at all because I wouldn’t want you to feel pressured to include it in your magazine just because we’re friends (yes?).
Anyway, you can just take a look.
Jesse
PS. I realise that you probably already know this but doing layout can be stressful. Let know if you hit crisis point at some point and need help stapling or anything like that.
(attachment: malfoymanor.pdf
attachment: what’s up mr rosenberg.doc)
Andrew chewed on his thumbnail as he opened the attachments. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting when he asked Jesse for some architectural sketches; a couple of raggedy drawings, perhaps. When he was growing up, his father had had a friend who’d been an architect; at some point there had been talk of engaging him to renovate the ramshackle thirties house they lived in, in Guildford, at a discount. What Andrew remembered from that time was the architect coming over for dinner and having a gander about the house beforehand, and afterwards talking plans, sketching out his proposed changes on the paper serviettes Andrew’s mother set out at every meal as Andrew had watched, entranced.
This, this was even more magical.
Jesse must have worked very hard on this, Andrew realised as he looked at the PDF file. He hadn’t just drawn an architectural plan of a manor house, he’d drawn wings and rooms and hidden-away chambers and secret passages and an attic he had helpfully labelled ‘for the storage of Dark artifacts’, he’d drawn the garden (French, it looked, if French gardens contained plots of Deathly Daffodils and neatly-pruned (by magic, of course) shrubs in the shapes of witches in addition to carefully manicured lawns) and peacocks (peacocks!!!) and a small map to show where it was in relation to the rest of Wiltshire (unplottably so, of course) and how it looked from the outside and Andrew found himself unaccountably tearing up with how good it was. It was as if someone had taken his eleven-year old self by the hand and drawn him into a magical world of Hogwarts and Aurors and snobbish boys and Scourgify all over again.
Jesse, he thought. He wasn’t sure he could stand it.
Andrew knew he was being melodramatic, but he didn’t care.
Subject: re: Merton Mag submissions
From: Andrew Garfield
Date: 12 February 2011 14:40
To: Jesse Eisenberg
You’re self-deprecating to a fault – no, it’s a tragic flaw. Also a genius. I mean you’re the genius. See you later at Litsoc. And then maybe the bop?
Andrew Garfield
President of Merton College Literary Society
And then Andrew logged off without reading the play, because he wasn’t sure his heart could take it any more, and he really wanted to save it for when he could. Andrew was usually someone who welcomed an overabundance of feeling but this was probably too much before he died from a heart attack of ecstasy, or something.
He sighed out loud. Just once. But it was there, and it was heard, even if there was no one else beside himself to hear it. Having allowed himself that barest indulgence of self-pity, he opened In the Reading Gaol: Postmodernity, Texts, and History (Cunningham, 1994) and fell to once more.
4/5
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Sunday, 4 September 2011 07:42 (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, 4 September 2011 09:12 (UTC)You know, I hadn't thought of it like that, but you are perhaps right! :D