Teddy Wayne - Loner

You cut the next Prufrock. The following week featured Tom’s guest lecture on The Sound and the Fury , an intellectually posturing performance full of verbal pyrotechnics, signifying nothing. You sat in the front row with the rest of your section, laughing along at his pandering pop-culture references.

When it was over I waited for you outside Harvard Hall. “How’s it going?” I asked, falling in step with you over to Sever.

“All right.”

“Sara and I broke up,” I said. “That’s why I haven’t been in the room for a while.”

“That’s too bad,” you said in your usual affectless tone.

“Yeah. She took it pretty hard.” I inhaled deeply through my nostrils, as if I were reeling with guilt over the pain I had inflicted on your devastated roommate. “Anyway, do you want to meet up sometime to work on next week’s essay?”

Before you could answer, someone called your name across the Yard. Liam took his time walking over to us. I scuttled away a few feet as he parked his hands on your hips, pulling you against his midsection. Your head came up to his chest. After whispering in your ear he smiled and leaned down to kiss you. Your lips closed instinctively as he forced his against them. It reminded me of when Sara tongued me, the instinctive desire to shield an orifice from a probing foreign object.

“I gotta run,” he said, lacing his fingers in yours as he took a reluctant step back. “But I’ll see you at the thing tonight. Come anytime after nine.”

“I don’t think I can make it tonight,” you told him. “I’m sorry — I’m totally behind in my work.”

You appeared less contrite than apprehensive. He nodded slightly and pursed his lips as if he’d anticipated this excuse.

“Babe, I can’t help it if everyone’s assigning essays before Thanksgiving,” you said.

“Why don’t I stay in with you, then. I’ve got some reading.”

“Okay.” Your voice was a little unsure. You turned your head and looked over at me. “David’ll be there, too,” you said cheerfully. “He’s helping me with my paper. You remember David, right? He came to the club a few weeks ago?”

Liam looked my way. I lifted my forearm, my parka’s sleeve making a waxy sound, and flashed a palm in his direction.

“What class is this for?” he asked, alternating his gaze between the two of us.

“From Ahab to Prufrock,” I spoke up. “Tragically Flawed Hero(in)es in American Literature, 1850–1929.”

“My English class,” you translated.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll leave you two to your study date.”

“Tomorrow night I’ll come over, I promise,” you said, stroking the back of his neck and rising to your tiptoes for a parting kiss.

My breakup with Sara had paid off. Maybe she’d even told you about the line I’d “crossed,” thinking it would cast me in a negative light — except with your predilections it would have the reverse effect. Liam still had you, still groped your figure as though it belonged to him, but you’d picked me for the night. Your inconsistency was just the result of working through complicated feelings. You were beginning to unshackle yourself from him.

We finalized our plans for the evening and you went off to Gender and the Consumerist Impulse. On my way back to my room I realized we hadn’t discussed what you wanted to write about; I would need to prepare. I rushed over to Sever to catch you, but the class had already begun. The door to the room was open a crack, and I could hear your professor speaking.

It was dicey to loiter outside any classroom for you, especially for a feminism course, where my being caught might itself be fodder for an entire conversation about the male gaze. But there I waited, ears keenly tuned for anything resembling your voice, copy of Emily Dickinson out for pretense and defense. (How could I, a lover of the Amherst recluse, evince any sort of untoward signifiers ?)

“Cixous’s écriture feminine is a rebellion against the repressive forces that would silence woman,” you said fifteen minutes into class. I leaned in closer to the door. “The verb ‘swallowed,’ in that passage, is… you know.” You laughed slightly, and your classmates joined in, in that tepid, tennis-applause way students do when subject matter verges on the bawdy. “It underscores the male’s anxiety over his loss of power when woman is allowed to write in her own voice and not in a phallogocentric register.”

You contributed two more times with similar eloquence and poise. I’d never heard you speak like this before (had never even heard woman used in the singular to represent the plural like that). Our time working on the Henry James paper hadn’t revealed anything near this caliber of discourse. Maybe you simply didn’t want to do the work for English class and had identified me as a willing and proficient accomplice. Most students didn’t have the time to do all the reading for every course.

Or perhaps you were looking for an excuse to spend time with me.

Whatever your reasons, I wasn’t upset. I was exultant. You didn’t merely appreciate intellect in others; you yourself possessed more brainpower than I’d thought, probably even more than Sara, who had to grind for her grades. You could coast at Harvard on sheer native aptitude. Just like me.

On my walk over to the library I resolved to make this a more intimate meeting than our last study session. I wouldn’t let you get away with evasive parries; tonight we would have a real conversation.

When I arrived at our same nook on the second floor, you were already there, punctual for a change, your laptop ready. That boded well.

“Missing a party to work on your essay,” I said. “You’re turning into a perfect little Harvard student.”

“Not missing much,” you said.

“I guess there are always plenty of parties to go to, right?”

“I guess.”

“I feel like I heard about a big one next weekend in Kirkland.”

You didn’t say anything. Maybe you’d warm up once we started working.

“Do you know what you want to write on?” I asked.

You reached into your bag, pulled out the course pack for Prufrock, and flipped to “The Yellow Wallpaper.” A short story — no wonder you’d read it.

“And what interests you about ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’?”

You took a deep breath. “Don’t know.”

“So you haven’t come up with a thesis yet?”

A cute grin. “Maybe you could help me come up with a topic again?”

“I could do that,” I said.

You turned the laptop around and pushed it toward me. “How about we connect the narrator’s insanity to her desire to write?” I proposed. You nodded, but as soon as I began typing, you pulled back the laptop.

“This is a bad idea,” you said, your forehead creasing with worry.

“We can change the thesis if you want. I just came up with that off the top of my head. I didn’t really have a chance to prepare.”

“No — this.” You gesticulated back and forth across the table.

“Why do you say that?”

“I shouldn’t be doing this to you.” You shut the laptop and pulled it closer. “It’s not right.”

“You’re not doing anything to me,” I said. “It’s with me. A big prepositional difference. People work with tutors all the time.”

You drummed your fingers on the table. “Not in college.”

“Sure they do,” I said. “Just think of me like your TF.”

“But you’re not my TF.”

“Technically, no — though Samuelson asked me to take his seminar on Hawthorne next semester, which is mostly grad students,” I said. “Not to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty good at this. And there’s nothing wrong in asking for help when you need it.”