Come Down: I.7

Élouan told my classmates to turn up an hour late on our last day; since we would just be watching the final performances and wrapping up the semester, they didn’t expect to need the whole time. I, however, got to arrive before everyone else so that the two of us could rehearse. I limped down the English department stairs for what would, it prickled my eyes and tightened my chest to realize, likely be the last time. I had brought my usual Thursday change of clothes, shoving my work pants and t-shirt into my backpack in favor of black jeans and my going-out tank top (I kept tugging it down and tugging my pants up, unsure if slightly-too-tight and slightly-too-short were slightly-too-much for what was kind of, technically, still my workplace, but unwilling to put the t-shirt back on). But the bag lacked room for a change of shoes, and not wanting to ruin the look with my work boots, I’d spent the day running around campus in a pair of rarely-worn black leather sneakers (whence the limp) that I had neglected to break in for fear of scuffing them or getting them wet. They were, of course, scuffed now, but it was sunny and fresh out, so at least they were dry, and I could tell myself the scuffs added to rather than detracted from my appearance, made it clear that I took good care of my belongings but wasn’t precious about them.

For the first time since Professor Hannah Weiss had last been unmolested by motor vehicles, there was no professor in the classroom when I walked in. No students, either, of course. It was a gift: I got to hop up onto the stage, backpack still on, and survey the place as it looked hollowed out. Eighteen empty desks, eight of them marked in some invisible way by being the ones we’d chosen to spend a semester sitting in. The big, blocky podium; the space beside it, where Élouan’s bag usually rested, traced out with a dotted line in my mind. The windowless walls, the wooden door, the fluorescent lights. There was nothing about the classroom that remotely suggested magic, but now it would always bear the residue of Intimacy on the Elizabethan Stage. If I ever set foot in here again, not that I could really imagine why I might, I would see the memories of our time in class overlaid like tracing paper. It was a lovely thought. Gone but not forgotten.

I took off my backpack, tossed it toward my desk, and began to stretch. If we were going to jump into rehearsing as soon as Élouan arrived, I wanted to be ready. I shook out my wrists and ankles, rolled my neck, closed my eyes, interlaced my fingers, and thrust my arms as far above my head as they would go, then pushed them a little higher. I leaned left, right, left, right, listening to my spine crunch like puffed rice. Possibly wheeling a heavy hand truck all day was doing something to my body. My tank top was inching up me one rib at a time, and there were goosebumps on my stomach: despite the almost-summer outside, it was still cold in the basement. I tilted back as far as I could, hips thrust forward to keep my balance, and there was a loud bang that for half a second I thought came from my joints.

“Warm enough there?” Élouan asked, striding towards me from the door they’d just let slam shut behind them, and I jumped but managed to fight the urge to straighten up and apologize. Obliging student was, I reminded myself, not the role Élouan seemed to like me playing.

“Just about,” I replied. I finished the stretch, dropped my arms, and stuffed my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t yank my shirt down. Let Élouan comment if they decided it was inappropriate. If asked, I -- plausibly, deniably -- hadn’t noticed. “Do you need to warm up?”

“Vocals, yes. But otherwise the hike from the T was plenty.”

Indeed, their face and neck were reflective with a barely-there glisten of sweat, although their marvelous hair had not wilted in the slightest. They were dressed for their role as Mephistopheles in a jumpsuit (oxblood, butterfly sleeves, wrap-tie waist, fabulous) and the black Docs that were, as far as I could recall, the only shoes I’d ever seen them in.

“Funny,” I said. “I don’t know why I assumed you had a car.”

“Well, I do. It’s just not in driving condition.”

“I see.” I didn’t, but Élouan gave me a little half-smile and didn’t elaborate, instead dumping their satchel behind the podium, already trilling their lips. We went back and forth with all the usual vocal warm-ups, the vowels, the sibilants, the stops, the proper cup of coffee, the big black block. The whole time I was feeling floatier and sicker, dizzy, fizzy, ready to hit the ceiling.

“Let’s just line-through,” Élouan told me once the warm-ups wound down. “Make sure you know what you’re doing. Remind me, you’re starting with the invocation?”

“I would like to, or else I learned all that Latin for nothing.”

Élouan snorted. “Whenever you’re ready.”

We ran through the lines front to back three times -- I fumbled Faustus’ final speech the first time, mixing up the order of all the different things he’s planning to do with the power of his new demonic boytoy. The second time was fine, but Élouan insisted on another run to ensure that we both had it down pat (the both was a pointed kindness on their part; of course they knew their lines). By the time we finished, it was nearly time for the rest of the class to arrive.

“Should we do a proper run once?” I asked.

“Do you think you need it?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t mind some notes.”

Élouan’s eyes were bright. “Marco, you know it’s terrible form to give a fellow actor notes.”

“Sure, unsolicited notes, in an actual production. I promise you, I would never. But you’re not --”

“Besides, this is your final. Wouldn’t want you to have an unfair advantage.”

I raised my eyebrows. “And acting opposite you isn’t an unfair advantage?”

From the hallway, the sound of feet on the stairs. Élouan looked me up and down, gaze dropping from my face to my chest to my pants to my (artfully?) scuffed sneakers and back up. I was warm, so warm, which was odd because it was cold in the classroom and doubly odd because I wasn’t even inside of my body, I was floating somewhere slightly behind and above it, but damned if I didn’t still feel the lightning-quickest, lightning-hottest brush of the backs of Élouan’s knuckles against my stomach as they reached out both hands and tugged my tank top down toward the waistband of my jeans.

“Break a leg,” they said, and jerked their chin toward my desk.

That I managed to get off of the little stage and into my seat without following Élouan’s advice in the most literal way is nothing short of a miracle. That I managed to say hello to my classmates as they came in and wish Rika and Jack broken legs of their own, I attribute to my own previously-unknown reserves of fortitude. Because I was experiencing the photonegative of my first class with Élouan, when they touched Kat’s shoulder but not mine -- better, technically this had been their bare skin on my bare skin, more than technically, that was hand to stomach (knuckles, yes, but still), that was on purpose, and there was nobody else in the room, which perhaps even made it illicit, gave it the flavor of a tryst -- and, once my body was safely ensconced at my desk, I was in no shape to do anything else with it but sit. I drank a little too much a little too fast from my water bottle and felt it sloshing in my stomach, which was already knotted with performance jitters on top of whatever Élouan’s touch had done to it. I was going to have to use the bathroom before I got up onstage, but I feared that I only had one more stand-up-without-collapsing in me, if that, and if that was true I didn’t want to waste it on the bathroom. Élouan was welcoming everyone, collecting essays, asking Katherine and Petruchio whether they’d like to go first or second (first, they said, to get it out of the way, an offer I very much would have liked Élouan to make me instead), and I felt deeply, acutely, full-body unwell. I knew it was because Élouan had touched me. I wanted Élouan to touch me again.

Rika and Jack were great. They had, apparently, spent a lot of time talking about our discussion from Midsummer week, the ease with which sensuality can become comedy because there is something inherently surprising and silly about being vulnerable with another person, and they used the gender-swap to dial the absurdity of Katherine and Petruchio up to 11. Jack was prissy, disdainful, venomous, somehow making all six-foot-whatever of his body seem prim by the way he held himself, and Rika turned her Petruchio into a lascivious, unabashed oaf. She grabbed Jack’s ass -- “my tongue in your tail” -- and Jack gave such an exaggerated startle and shriek that we, the audience, absolutely lost it. It was good theatre. The applause for their bows was richly deserved, and after they were finished, I felt a little tyrannical urge to demand that they perform it again after my final was finished so that I could experience their scene without all of the feelings fighting for control of my body getting in the way, although with the benefit of hindsight I know that I would have been in even worse shape to pay attention had they gone second.

“Thank you again, Rika and Jack, for such a fabulous take on Taming,” Élouan said, taking center stage once our applause had died down and the two performers had returned -- sheepishly, all smiles -- to their desks. “Our second final -- our second and final -- will be Marco taking on Faustus, with yours truly playing opposite. And Kat, thank you for agreeing to film so I can grade him later. Now, everyone comfortable? Let’s give Marco a round of applause, then, shall we?”

Still feeling generous from the previous scene, everyone’s applause was spirited and enthusiastic. I took a very long breath and did not stumble when I climbed the shallow steps up to the stage and did not fall over when I looked Élouan in their water-blue eyes. I nodded my readiness, and they nodded theirs, and we both got into character. They stepped behind the podium, waiting for their cue. I held myself a little taller, my chin at an imperious angle, and imagined how it would feel to be bored, bored of everything and everybody, only to be given a shot at real-life magic, to summon the thing that would cure your boredom forever and ever, and poured that wild, stinging, sour hope into my carefully-memorized Latin.

“Per vota nostra,” I intoned, raising my hands a little with every word, now a plea, now a request, now a demand, “ipse nunc surgat nobis dicatus Mephistophilis!”

Élouan stepped forward, and in that moment I saw them as an observer might. Gangly, even a bit ridiculous, although not more ridiculous than most actors. A fairly good teacher. Maybe a bit too chummy with their students, but then again, they were brought in at the last possible minute without a lot of teaching experience, and it was probably good that they’d decided to err on the side of less strict. Their jumpsuit clashed with their hair. There really was no good explanation for why I was so desperately obsessed with them, I knew. I cheated out a little more and looked at them out of the corner of my eye, letting a little grimace slip onto my face.

“I charge thee to return, and change thy shape. Thou art too ugly to attend on me.”

The audience chuckled.

Élouan began to retreat, mirth in their eyes, that I-know-you-know smile playing on their lips, and I swallowed, and once again I wanted nothing in the world more than them. They were queer, and successful, and brilliant onstage, and in control of whether or not I’d get my 664 dollars’ worth of tuition money back, and they had taken a shine to me -- me, when Kat was right there with her heart-shaped glasses and her ingénue-ready cheeks -- and they were coy, not shy, in responding to my accidental-on-purpose provocations, and all that was more, far more, than enough for me, and I feared I would have nothing to do with them after Intimacy on the Elizabethan Stage had ended, and I would be damned if I didn’t make something happen then and there, give them something to remember me by, impress them.

“Go, and return an old Franciscan friar,” I called out as they ducked behind the podium once more. "That holy shape becomes a devil best.”

As I delivered my next short speech, all but fanning myself -- “how pliant is this Mephistopheles!” -- I watched Élouan pull something from an unzipped pocket of their satchel and fasten it, very quickly, around their neck. When they made their proper entrance, it was with a short length of thick white satin ribbon secured with something I couldn’t see -- Velcro, maybe -- at the nape of their neck. A faux priest’s collar. I nearly laughed aloud, and judging by the way everyone else actually did, I’m sure my surprise was visible. Élouan smiled beatifically and spread their arms, tucking one foot behind the other and bending their knees, sweeping into a perfect curtsy.

“Now, Faustus,” they said at its nadir, stage-murmuring so they were audible but still soft, “what wouldst thou have me do?”

They moved to stand up, but -- fully in the scene now, rolling with it, letting my instincts and the space Élouan gave me carry me forward -- I placed a hand on their shoulder (the fabric of their jumpsuit was thin; I could feel the knob at the end of their collarbone, the humidity radiating off of their skin) and kept them where they were for a moment, knees bent, deferential. I said, “I charge thee wait upon me whilst I live, to do whatever Faustus shall command, be it to make the moon drop from her sphere, or the ocean to overwhelm the world.”

Élouan straightened up, brushing my hand away, and crossed their arms, tilting their head a few degrees: annoyed yet intrigued. “I am a servant to great Lucifer, and may not follow thee without his leave. No more than he commands must we perform.”

“Did not he charge thee to appear to me?”

“No.” Élouan dipped their head, almost shy, but with a purposeful hint of suggestion in their voice. “I came hither of my own accord.”

“Did not my conjuring speeches raise thee?”

Élouan shook their head. I waited a beat, two beats, watching them. They watched me back. When I could take the tension no longer, I stepped closer, curled two fingers into their ribbon, and pulled them towards me, just barely, as I delivered the last of my line.

“Speak.”

Élouan gasped as if I were choking them, and I let go at once, stepping back, giving them air, but they smirked and followed me forward, keeping the same distance (and it was not very much distance) between us as they told me how Lucifer’s minions go wherever the name of God is taken in vain, hoping to grab another soul for Hell. Their Mephistopheles had the upper hand over my Faustus, which was not what I wanted, but they knew that it wasn’t what I wanted, which meant they were doing it on purpose, inviting me to take the power back. Possibly inviting me to grab them again. If I stopped to think about it I would no longer be in the scene nor in any state of mind that could be called sound, so I forced the thought away, breathed, watched to see what Élouan gave me purely in the context of what I could give them back. It was easier than I thought it would be. My body, for everything I was putting it through -- or Élouan was putting it through -- still remembered how to act.

And, wonderfully, perfectly, when I told them I already knew my soul was forfeit, they raised their eyebrows in surprise and confusion. When I told them I wasn’t scared of damnation, that in fact I was sure I’d be quite happy in Hell, I leaned toward them and they leaned back, just enough, keeping that same distance. Of course: it was a dance. They mirrored my steps as we circled each other, sharp back-and-forth about the nature of Hell that flowed with the breathless ease of rom-com banter. When I called them “passionate,” they licked their lips, that same darting motion that put me in mind of a snake, bright green and shimmering. When I told them to “learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude,” they took in a sharp breath and glanced down at my crotch, so quick I almost missed it, and the belated ripple of laughter from the audience told me everyone else had almost missed it, too. But they caught it, and so did I. And then I made my pitch, placing a hand on Élouan’s bony shoulder and giving them the lightest push, and down they went into their curtsy again, lower, lower.

“Having thee ever to attend on me,” I said in the most come-hither voice I could manage, “to give me whatsoever I shall ask, to tell me whatsoever I demand.”

Élouan was nodding, looking up at me through their eyelashes, looking -- I couldn’t put a better adjective on it -- hungry. They were on their knees. The top of their crest of hair was level with my solar plexus. Their face was -- well, it was below their hair. I took my hand from their shoulder and at once my palm felt freezing cold. I was tempted to put it back, but I didn’t, and I let the moment breathe, and I didn’t want to say my next line because I didn’t want to stop looking at Élouan. I wanted to live another couple seconds in the world where I could have them to myself, wherever and whenever and however I pleased, where they would keep looking up at me like that. But drawn out any further, the scene would start to flag. The audience would get bored. The story wouldn’t feel quite right.

Always leave them wanting more.

“And always be obedient to my will,” I finished.

Élouan reached up and clasped my right hand between both of theirs. “I will, Faustus,” they breathed.

I used their grip on my hand to help pull them to their feet, and they gave one final curtsy and ducked behind the podium, and I watched their ‘exit’ with a yank of longing in my gut -- there they go, I actually thought -- and I knew that Faustus, too, was going to miss that feeling of being in control with every fiber of his being until he had it again.

“Had I as many souls as there be stars,” I sighed, “I’d give them all for Mephistopheles. By him I’ll be great Emperor of the world, and make a bridge thorough the moving air, to pass the ocean with a band of men. Now that I have obtained what I desired, I’ll live in speculation of this art ‘til Mephistopheles return again.”

I hadn’t thought about the turn of phrase while I was memorizing it -- my strategy as an actor has always been to get the words down brute force first without any particular inflection or emphasis, then find the nuanced shape of the performance in rehearsals without having a script in my hand weighing down my gestures -- but as I said I would live in speculation, I felt it, felt the thrill and anxiety of anticipation, of waiting and seeing and imagining a thousand thousand possibilities in the meantime. From behind the podium, Élouan caught my eye, and I opened my mouth to say -- I don’t know what, I was out of lines -- and they smiled, and again the only adjective I could put on their face was hungry; they looked like they were about to unhinge their jaw and swallow me whole, if such a thing could be done in a way that I would find hot rather than nightmarish. And then they winked. It was corny. I knew it was corny. It didn’t matter.

My whole body flushed, blood speeding up my capillaries, sweat prickling in my armpits and along the horizontal scar lines on my chest. Élouan stood up, and we took our bows, and the audience applauded -- not quite as much as they had for Rika and Jack, but still with warmth and enthusiasm. I tottered back down to my desk and heard the bloopy little sound effect of Kat stopping the video on her phone. It was done.

When I go back and watch it now, I’m impressed that my agitation isn’t clear on film, although part of that is Kat’s camera quality. Through the unsteadiness and the grain, I look more or less like I’m embodying the role, cocky and flirtatious, full of more knowledge than anyone else would know what to do with, but still entirely, tragically mortal. It’s only at the end that I can see myself fall apart. There’s a long, uncomfortable beat after my last line where I’m staring into the middle distance -- Kat didn’t capture the podium in the shot -- with my lips parted and eyes widened like I’ve seen a ghost, and then my cheeks visibly darken like I’ve decided I’d really like the ghost to possess me, please. I look sweaty and shaken during the bows. I rarely rewatch the video all the way to the end, preferring instead to stop right after my last line, right when I know Élouan is just offscreen, winking at me.

They gave their little wrap-up speech (we were their favorite class they’d ever taught, ha-ha, but seriously they were grateful for our participation and our insights and our incredible talent and skill) and people thanked them and stuck around chatting for a few minutes and finally began to file out. Kat hung back to send Élouan the video, giving me the excuse to hang back so she could send it to me as well. She thanked them profusely for helping her understand Shakespeare better, which was really going to take her performance to a new level when the department hopefully did Hamlet in the fall, on and on, while I leaned on my desk and waited, for Kat, if anyone asked, so we could walk out together one last time, but really for any sign at all that Élouan was impressed with me, that they thought I had what it took. What it took to do what, I didn’t know, I didn’t care. It was ages before Kat was finished talking. I lived in speculation.

“Anyway, I’ve really gotta run,” she said. “This was such a great class. Thanks for everything.”

“Trust me when I say it was my pleasure.” Élouan lifted a hand to wave. They still hadn’t taken off the priest’s collar. “Take care, you two.”

Not even a name. Not even a ‘well done.’ Not even a hint of eye contact with me.

Kat bounced towards the door. I trailed her, eyes on the red zipper pulls decorating her backpack as they swayed back and forth, Orpheus refusing to look over his shoulder at Eurydice. It was over. Intimacy on the Elizabethan Stage was over, and I could take another theatre class in the fall but that was nearly four months away, and in the meantime I could go to shows with Angus and trivia with Zach’s frat brothers and Horsie’s with Rachel and the girls and the entire time I would be bored bored bored, and with the exception of whatever Angus and I happened to catch them in, the odds were that I would never be in the same room, let alone on the same stage, let alone the same, as Élouan Gage ever again.

I was easing the door to the classroom shut behind me when Élouan said, “Oh, Marco?”

My whole body fizzed. Kat stopped, but I waved her off. “I’ll catch up,” I said.

“Cool. See you around.”

And then I stepped back into the room, and it was just me and them, and I asked, “What is it?”

Élouan was up on the stage, taking their time with their satchel, buckling and zipping each pocket individually. “You did well,” they said.

“Thank you. It helps to have a good scene partner.”

“You flatter me.”

“Only because I want a good grade.”

They smirked. “Well, if that’s the only reason, I take back what I was about to ask you.”

“And if it’s not the only reason?”

“Is it not?”

“Depends on what you were about to ask me.”

Élouan leaned an elbow on the podium, one ankle crossed over the other, Docs shiny under the fluorescents. “Have you ever been to a Backwash before?”

“A what?”

“I’ll take that as a no. Their May event is next week.” They shrugged one shoulder, not the shoulder I’d touched during the performance. “You might enjoy it.”

“I’ll look into it,” I said, and their pink lips parted in a proper smile and their teeth were sharp and straight and lovely, and I knew that, in my last act as their student, I had once again gotten the right answer. I would not, in all likelihood, ever be the same as Élouan Gage, but God, I wanted to try.

“Good,” they said. “Maybe I’ll see you there.”

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