Come Down: I.5

Angus (wearing a plaid flannel on Monday, Tyrian purple and pale blue; I kept glancing at the shadow where bright cuff met dark skin) made all the right noises of shock and awe when I repeated to him, at last, the story of the summoning of Élouan Gage. He teased me for having the cheek not to call him, even going on two weeks after our definitely-not-a-date-if-the-university-asks, and I pointed out that he’d never given me his phone number, and he gave it to me, and then I had Angus’ phone number, which I considered an absolute victory, albeit a rather cheap one, since it was obvious how much he’d wanted me to have it. We bantered, I worked, I went home and ate rice and beans and read a library book about reality television and told myself again that I should put in some warmer bulbs instead of the clinical white recessed lighting that was my only choice other than basement darkness in the winter. I was going to need to go grocery shopping at some point, but my industrial-sized sack of white rice and my mesh bag of onions had a little more life in them. The canned pinto beans were, as ever, endless. Then it was Tuesday, then Wednesday. By Thursday morning I was vibrating in my skin. Rachel’s friends had, despite my admittedly minimal efforts to avoid thinking about it, expanded the scope of my Élouan fantasies from the classroom to the club, and I had a thousand half-formed plans as to how I would learn whether and where they went on their off nights so that I could go there too, and then who knew what might happen.

I rarely saw my official supervisor, a woman named Meredith Mays who had an office from which she managed all of the shipping, receiving, and spatial logistics of the main library, but I popped my head in on my lunch break to ask if I could clock in and out a little early on Thursdays until the end of the semester, a request I had neglected to make before my first encounter with Professor Hannah Weiss and had no desire to make after it. Meredith acceded, if a bit tersely, and with (for my taste) a bit too much surprise that I might be taking advantage of the tuition remission program at all. Though, to be fair to her, I hadn’t considered myself eligible without Angus’ prompting, either. She could take it up with him.

I sprinted to the English building and ducked into the bathroom to change. Instead of my usual messenger bag, I’d brought my old college backpack and filled it with black jeans and a t-shirt that I’d used, in my cozy Northeast Kingdom days, as sewing practice, and the patches had come out looking handsomely, if haphazardly, punk. No change of shoes, but my stocky work boots passed just fine for a fashion choice combined with the rest of the outfit. I wet my hair and tousled it to get the curls going, shoved my sweatshirt and work pants into the backpack, and tried to hold myself like the kind of boy who goes to parties and protests equally often, who would call himself a faggot and spit at you for doing the same, who’s a little ethereal but knows how to get his hands dirty. This was, I assumed, the kind of boy Élouan would find interesting and would tell about the locations of cool parties. I checked my watch: ten minutes until class began. The others would just now be getting out of their previous classes, but it was plausible that I, an adult more than capable of setting my own schedule, would arrive so early. I left the bathroom.

As I opened the door, I heard a loud braying laugh, a countermelody of high, nasal giggles beneath it. Élouan wasn’t alone. Kat had beaten me to class.

My notions of the two of us as a pair -- MarcoandKat -- curdled. Never mind whether any of my plans to draw Élouan’s extracurricular persona out into the classroom in the stolen moments before other students arrived would have worked; consider only that I would never get to experience those plans’ success or failure (their failure, let’s not kid ourselves) with Kat already present. Why should she get the special before-class bonding time with the brilliant actor? She was still in college, with hundreds of clubs and sports and performances at her fingertips to fill the off-hours, obviously secure in her own skill and aesthetic sense, cisgender as far as I knew, probably bisexual, lesbian at the absolute most. She had all the professors at the university to choose from if she wanted a charismatic mentor to emulate or possibly fall in love with or at least imagine putting their fingers inside her. Surely there were other options -- in the studio art department, perhaps, or a hidden gem among the mathematicians. What did she need Élouan for? 

There is no way to describe what I felt, seeing her at her desk making Élouan laugh from their place behind the podium, that does not make me sound like the worst kind of lunatic. (Great word, lunatic -- who among us hasn’t seen a really good full moon, fat and pale yellow, and gone a little bit crazy?) But you are free to think of me as a lunatic if you want to. I can’t stop you. Arguably, I’m not even presenting the opposition viewpoint on the issue. The fact is that I was immediately, consumingly jealous of Kat when I walked into my second session of Intimacy on the Elizabethan Stage (my third overall, of course, but I cannot count syllabus week with a straight face), and I think if I had been wearing my work clothes, I would have slumped down at my desk and watched them talk to each other, making big wet eyes like a kicked puppy until pity was taken and I was included in the conversation. But I was not wearing my work clothes. Kat had usurped the role of ‘eager-to-please star student,’ and ‘lonely stray in need of saving’ was out, at least if I was to allow costuming to dictate my part, so I dropped my bag beside my desk and kept walking. I sat down on the edge of the stage, just where Élouan had sat the previous week, and stretched out my legs until I could tap the toe of Kat’s cherry-red Chucks with my own boot.

“Hey, Kat,” I said.

“Hey!” Her voice was bright, but she raised an eyebrow at my choice of seat. “You comfy?”

“Very. I’ve been on my feet all day. I’d be having full-on floor time right now if I could.”

Kat inclined her chin at me, then turned her face back toward Élouan -- away from me -- pointedly, even -- as if she intended to exclude me from the conversation, to make me her audience, the selfish brat -- but Élouan was looking at me, below them but beside them, taking up space, with my palms on the floor and my stuck-out legs, and I looked back up at them with almost a smile and the widest ingénue eyes I could muster, playing someone who was playing someone who didn’t know exactly what he was doing, and asked, “You didn’t happen to bring candy again this week, did you? I could use a little something sweet.”

There are few worse feelings than realizing you’ve misjudged a situation, come on too strong or faded irreversibly into the background, spoken too intimately or offended someone by being too distant. Knowing ahead of time what the other person is expecting of you helps avoid that feeling and can mitigate some of its potency even when it happens. But, too, there is no high quite like finding the exact right role to play in a conversation, hitting your marks, nailing your lines, filling your mouth with chewed scenery, and watching the reaction. Not from the audience, although having one is always better than not, but from the other half of the dialogue, lighting up as they realize just how much you’ve given them to work with, expanding to fill the space you’ve offered, ready to play off of you until the both of you shine with the smooth gloss of practice even though you’ve never said these words in this order to each other before. I have, it will probably not surprise you to learn, felt this feeling rarely. I’m dependable and engaging in situations where I know my role, but asked to guess at what it ought to be, I often guess wrong.

Legs outstretched from the edge of that stage, asking Élouan Gage for a little something sweet, the accidental-on-purpose provocateur, I did not guess wrong. And when their lips parted and curled up into a smile that was all mischief, they looked almost handsome.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” they said. 

It was the perfect line. How do I do what you do? I thought at them, but I didn’t say anything, just waited with my eyes oh-so-innocent and my lips less so, and Élouan heaved a dramatic sigh and turned their back to me to rummage in their satchel. Their hair stuck up from their scalp and porcupined down over the nape of their neck. It must have been bleached to Hell and back to get the green so vibrant. I wanted to run my fingers through it, check its texture. After a few moments, Élouan came up with a package of Lemonheads and tossed it to me.

“Clearly not that much nerve,” I said as the candy landed in my lap. “I won’t eat your whole supply, I promise.”

“If it’ll keep you from fainting again, have as much as you’d like.”

I popped a candy into my mouth and grimaced, talking through the sourness. “That wasn’t a faint.”

“It was practically Victorian. We’ll have to get you a couch.”

“Come on, it was barely a swoon.”

“A swoon,” they repeated, leaning on the podium. Their body was angled out toward the classroom, but their gaze was all mine. “At the mere prospect of learning about Shakespeare?”

“I was moved by the spirit of the theatre?”

“Or you’re a drama queen.” The harsh note under the teasing took my breath away. Élouan Gage pulled no punches. I loved it.

“Same difference,” I said. Then, pressing my advantage, I turned to Kat and offered her the package of Lemonheads. “You want one?”

Out of the corner of my eye, Élouan threw up their hands. “And now he gives away my candy. What am I going to do with you?”

I rattled the package in response, percussive, almost musical, and Kat smiled and held out her hand for me to shake a Lemonhead into.

“Thanks,” she said, popping it into her mouth. Other people started trickling in, and I handed the candy back to Élouan and moved to stand up, to quit while I was ahead and exit stage right, but Élouan waved me back down.

“Stay,” they said. “We’ll start by talking about the end of three-one today. I’ll ask Rika to read Titania once she gets here, but I’d like to have you as my Bottom.”

I’m grateful that I was looking at their face when they said it. Because, as soon as the words were out of their mouth and Kat snorted, Élouan’s already wide eyes went saucer-round and they clapped a hand over their mouth, shaking their head and breaking out into nervous giggles and saying, into their palm, “Marco, I am so sorry, please don’t report me to the university.”

It was a remarkably convincing performance. But I saw the way they looked at me when they made the joke, those spotlight eyes making the room slide sideways, the wicked smile still on their face even as they kept it out of their voice, and I swear to you they did it on purpose.

“I just can’t believe you’d ask in front of all these people,” I replied, gesturing to Kat, and to Harris and Nathan, who were just taking their seats.

“Marco,” Élouan said, a note of admonishment in their voice now. 

“I don’t think you can get in trouble for harassing me,” I said. “I’m not even a student.”

“You’re not?”

“I work at the library. University employees get tuition remission.”

Élouan raised an eyebrow. “Good to know.”

My head swam. The whole world tasted like artificial lemon.

“Anyway,” they said, “I’d still prefer it if you didn’t get me fired for that.”

I laughed and said it was fine, it wasn’t Élouan’s fault that Shakespeare named his character Bottom, and when Rika came in, they called her up onto the stage too, and we enacted the scene where the queen of the fairies falls for a man with a donkey’s head, and the discussion (the very thin line between what is sexy and what is funny, the weaponization of a powerful woman’s own desires against her) was off to the races, and all was normal, which is to say it remained the most engaging and destabilizing class I’ve ever taken.

Élouan made no more interpretable statements about me in our remaining hours together. But they didn’t need to. The Bottom joke, I knew already, would last me the week.

Might Makes Write and all the writing shared herein are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.