Boyfriend in a Dress (5 page)

‘Oh, you’re back, are you?’ he said, with a trace of irritation – he wasn’t nearly as nice to me if Joleen wasn’t in the room.

‘Yep, and I’ve just had a shower, so can you leave, please, while I get ready?’

‘Going anywhere nice? Another frat party, is it? You’re such a joiner,’ he said, without a hint of interest. I had only been to two fraternity parties in the four months since I had arrived – pathetic affairs full of seventeen-year-old girls not used to drinking, and a house full of frat boys all lashed on keg beer, and a makeshift jacuzzi out front for concealed groping. The University of Illinois, my home for that year,
had the largest Greek system in the States, meaning it had the most fraternities and sororities. It’s a quaint little system, whereby you get to buy your friends for four years because you’re too damn scared to make them on your own, but it’s all dressed up as tradition and fun. It’s a system that reeks of the ‘American Dream’, rotting. One girl in my dorm, a gorgeous looking, athletic, popular, intelligent freshman named Joanna discussed the ins and outs of trying to get into one of the sororities, over bagels one day in the canteen. Joanna had a shortlist of three. The one she most wanted to get into, Pi Kappa whatever, was her favourite, the top of her list, but she was a little nervous. She didn’t think she would get in, the reason being she was Jewish, and Pi Krappy whatever didn’t usually take Jewish girls. I practically threw my lunch up all over her. She was desperate to get into some mock Tudor shit-hole of a house with a bunch of tight arsed wasps who wouldn’t like her anyway because she was Jewish. I told her you would never get it in Britain. We make our own friends when we get to college I explained, trying hard not to sound like her rabbi. We go down to the pub and have a legal drink at a sensible age, and make friends that way, half cut. We don’t discuss how much our parents earn. What about the class system in England she had said? I told her I had a lecture to go to, and she was too bright a girl to be doing something so stupid as join a sorority.

I wasn’t going to a fraternity party, therefore, that evening, but to the pub, Henry’s, where all the ‘foreigners’ went – Aussies, Brits, Kiwis, Paddies – for the birthday of one of the guys from university back home. You see I hadn’t braved this new world on my own – there were at least fifteen students from my university with me, and that’s not even counting all those from the other British universities. What with not actually having to pass any courses, it was more like a multicultural holiday camp with racial tension and inadequate air
conditioning, than work. It was Jon’s birthday, and we all congregated in the pub, which we did most nights anyway. It wasn’t like all the other bars – the ‘sports bars’ – with their neon lights and blonde-haired waitresses, and TV screens and dozens of pool tables. It was dirtier, dingier – all the bar staff looked slightly tortured and, if not unattractive, they all had tattoos at least. The tables were made of old battered wood and engraved with fifty years’ worth of drunken etchings by students missing lectures. It reminded us of home. On these occasions, we would drink until the birthday boy or girl threw up. This was generally about ten p.m., as they had invariably been in the pub all day. I don’t know why I told Dale this, but I did.

‘No actually, Dale, I am not going to a fraternity party, I’m just not in that date-rape mood tonight. And besides, I’m always scared I’ll spot you hiding in the bushes, weeping in loneliness and wanking over bikini-clad freshers – and that’s just the boys.’

Dale swore at me under his breath.

‘I am actually going to the pub.’ I continued to stand and stare expectantly at him, waiting for him to leave, nodding towards the door, holding up my towel, wet hair dripping all over the floor, as I needed him to go before I could put the towel covering my body on my head.

‘I don’t see why I have to leave. I won’t look; I’m working.’ Dale stared down at the letters on his typewriter, supposedly in concentration.

‘Oh Dale, just get out, will you – I shouldn’t have to walk on eggshells to get a little fucking privacy in my
own
room. Joleen’s not even here,’ and with that, Joleen walked in and practically had a seizure at the sight of me in my towel, standing in front of Dale, begging him for something, even if the something was his speedy exit.

She turned on me straight away. ‘What the fuck are you
doing – can’t you put some fucking clothes on?’ She spat the words at me, which she pretty much did whenever she talked anyway.

Joleen’s sudden appearance in the room meant Dale’s attitude towards me changed completely.

‘Nicola, can’t I stay for a little while? I yearn to kiss your milky white shoulders.’ He looked at me, looked at Joleen, and then back at me again, a smile playing on his lips.

‘They are not milky white. Get out.’

And for once, Joleen agreed with me.

‘Yeah, Dale, leave while she gets dressed for God’s sake, she’s just a prick tease.’

Dale grabbed his Marlboros from the desk and pushed past me, his proximity immediately making me want to get straight back in the shower.

‘Thank you, Jesus, at last!’ I muttered as he left.

‘What was that? What did you say?’ He spun around and, for a moment, he was a froth of anger and spite, but almost instantly he recovered himself, and forced a smile. ‘Oh Nicola, remember, you’ll never meet an American who loves you like I do. They don’t get how ironic you are – they’re all assholes. They think you’re just some uptight Brit who wouldn’t know her ass from her elbow in bed, but I know you’d go like a greyhound.’

And with that, Dale stalked off down the hall to sit in his room for the rest of the evening, watching sci-fi shit on TV.

I pushed my way into the pub, past the moronic doorman who maintained every time I went in there and showed him my ID, that I had ‘forged it wrong’, and got my dates mixed up. There was no fourteenth month he said, every time. And every time I calmly explained to him that I was British, and we write our days and months the other way round, the right way round. The aisles were narrow, and crowded, and it took me ten minutes to get to the big seats at the back where my friends were sitting. Jon had been there most of the day, and was looking a little worse for wear. In American terms, anybody who goes to the pub at lunchtime is a drunk, pure and simple, even if you only drink lemonade all day. Jon was at the finding it hard to speak and control his limbs stage. The boys were all playing ‘My Penis Is’, their favourite game. I pushed in beside Jake, grabbed a glass and filled it from the pitcher in the middle of the table. ‘My Penis Is’ was a game that Martin had brought with him from home. They sat around, started with the letter A, and then described their penis, but they had to ‘drink as they think’. So Martin would start and say ‘My penis is aromatic,’ at which point the boys would cheer, and it would be someone else’s turn.

‘My penis is astronomical’ the next guy would say, and the cheering would start again, and so on. They obviously hadn’t been playing for long, because they were only on the letter B. Jon had just said ‘My penis is bacon’ and the game had stopped for twenty minutes while the boys cried with laughter. I didn’t get it, but then I hadn’t been in the pub since midday. Sitting opposite Jon was a guy I hadn’t seen before.

He was obviously tall, but sitting down, so I couldn’t tell quite how tall. He had the body of a footballer who drank too much – slim, with vague muscle definition that he was already losing with every sip of beer he took. The top three buttons of his shirt were undone and I could see a mildly hairy chest poking out from beneath the denim. His hair was spiked at the front, and he had obviously been nurturing his sideburns for a good year. What I noticed most was his laugh. It was loud. And the smile that preceded the laugh almost made me dizzy. It was a huge, face-altering smile. It was a smile that could capsize small boats. He was obviously good-looking, but, more than that, he seemed over the moon with the world, with himself. When he laughed, as the boys all laughed at how funny all their ‘peni’ – plural of penis? – were turning out to be, it was the closest I had come to a religious experience since school.

When he stood up and got his wallet out to get another four pitchers of beer, he did something peculiar – he jogged to the bar. And all the people seemed to let him through. It was a casual jog, not hurrying to get beer, or to go for a ‘slash’ as the boys endearingly put it. He just jogged because his body seemed to want to, it seemed the most natural thing to do. I had to fight the blush from taking over my cheeks as I watched him. I asked Jake who he was.

‘Oh, haven’t you met Charlie?’

I knew I would have remembered.

I watched him as he made his way back from the bar,
somehow balancing four pitchers of beer, spilling a little on people’s shoes, but faced with that smile nobody seemed to care. It was a Tom Cruise, fifty million dollar, all-encompassing, I own the world and the world loves me smile. Of course, none of this was going to mean a thing if he was stupid. I couldn’t do stupid; it was just too depressing. It was going to hinge on his answer to ‘My Penis Is’.

The boys decided you couldn’t top ‘bacon’ and moved onto the letter C. Charlie was drinking a lot of his pint, trying to think of what his penis ‘was’.

‘Come on, Charlie, ss’get ss move on!’ Jon shouted a little too enthusiastically.

Charlie was still drinking, his eyes widening as he thought, spluttering out beer as he laughed at the others all staring at him and laughing, banging their palms on the table to hurry him up. He slammed his pint down suddenly,

‘My penis is cathartic!’ he yelled, and all the boys went a little quiet. A couple of them tittered embarrassed, and Jon went, ‘Eh? It’s what?’

‘You know, cathartic, like relaxing, you know,’ Charlie justified.

‘Nah, mate, haven’t got a s’clue what you’re talking about,’ Jon said.

‘I know what he means, they can be … cathartic …’ I said, without thinking, forgetting my ‘play it cool’ rules straight away.

But the boys all cheered, and I drank some beer, caught Charlie’s eye, and he winked at me, and mouthed ‘thanks’. I honestly, literally, nearly fell off my chair. If there hadn’t been a big wooden armrest between me and the floor, I would have been face down in the grime and beer and cigarette butts. Which would have been a good look.

‘Nah, mate, I don’t think we should let him have it – he’s
got to think of s’another one.’ Jon was lashed, but it was his birthday, his game, his rules.

‘Alright, alright, Jon, mate, it is your birthday.’ Charlie took a sip of his beer, put it squarely back on the table, and announced, ‘My penis is crooked.’

The boys cheered and raised their glasses, and I raised my eyebrows at Charlie, who raised his glass at me. I downed my beer, looked away at the rest of the bar, and felt my neck. I looked back at Charlie, who was watching me, as intended. I wondered how desperate I had become, whether it had been so long that anybody was looking good, and whether I was actually dreaming this perfectly ordinary guy into the man I wanted to meet. I put my beer down, and resolved not to drink too much, to ensure I was seeing straight. The game continued, but my concentration was shot to hell.

Later on in the evening, when Jon had passed out, and was proudly propped up at a table in the corner, his glasses falling off one side of his face, I was chatting to Jake about who had missed the most lectures that week. We were almost proud; no we actually were proud. I just don’t know what we managed to do with our time – we had ten hours a week, maximum, yet I couldn’t make it to half of them. Unfortunately we weren’t actually required to pass the exams at the end of it, just attend the lectures. But the lectures were all so crowded, nobody knew if you were there or not, and if we didn’t have to pass the exam at the end of it, our reasoning was simple: we didn’t need to go, so we weren’t going to go.

I kept one eye on Charlie as he wandered back from the bar again, a couple of drinks in hand, smiling at everybody around him, including a couple of cheerleader types who stared at him as he walked past. Jake noticed my eye wandering, and before I could protest, was calling him over. Charlie put the
drinks down on the table, grabbed his beer, and squeezed in next to me.

‘I preferred cathartic to crooked, so much less graphic.’ I gave him a grimace.

‘But no less accurate. We haven’t been introduced – I’m Charlie,’ and he held out his hand. I offered him my hand back, and we shook on it.

‘Are you here for the year?’

This was the most important question – if he was only here for one term, as were some of the other Brits abroad that we had met, I felt my world would crumble. It was already Halloween. He would have to go home soon

‘Yeah, you?’ he smiled, and I resolved to look down at the table instead of directly at him, at least until I could relax.

‘Yep, but I’m looking forward to going home for Christmas. Just not finding the accent appealing. I need to talk to some English men.’

‘What am I, Scotch mist?’ he asked.

‘No, but yours is crooked, remember?’ I practically coughed my answer out. He was having a bizarre effect on me. I just didn’t get like this around men; I was always the one in control. Jake was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, with horror, as if I had morphed into a pigtailed, giggling schoolgirl freak in the space of an evening. I tried to fight it as best I could.

‘It isn’t crooked at all actually, it’s straight as a pool cue – that was just a game.’

‘Oh right, well you would say that, who wants to be crooked?’ I managed.

‘Are you going to make me prove it?’ he asked, trying to catch my eye as I looked sternly at a knot in the wood of our table. I coughed slightly.

‘Maybe later,’ I mustered, and looked up, and into, those eyes. Which is when I saw that they were different colours – one dark
brown, the colour of old wood, almost dull, one bright blue, the colour of Greek pottery, a bright summery glistening blue, seeming to reflect sunlight that wasn’t even there.

‘Your eyes are different colours,’ I said, without thinking. I’m sure he hadn’t realized, and was grateful to me for pointing it out.

‘Yeah, I know,’ he replied and looked away. And suddenly I knew I had blown it. It’s not as if it was a disability, but it was very possible that he was sensitive about it, or defensive, and I had just thrown it out there. I may as well have called him ‘freak.’

Except it wasn’t freaky; it wasn’t unattractive at all. Even the smallest defects aren’t tolerated these days. The beauty is in the details, the flaws, the imperfections that make us different, somebody once said, but it isn’t true any more. If you have a problem, in this plastic-coated world, just fix it. Have your teeth straightened, your nose fixed, your ears pinned. The surface should be pretty, almost bland, even if underneath there is a mess of scars and emotional tears. If you had told me previously that I would find somebody with different-coloured eyes attractive, I would have been surprised. But with Charlie, it just seemed right. It stopped his face from being completely perfect, but made it so at the same time. I had to correct my outburst, I had to rectify my massive faux pas.

My cheeks suddenly burned with the blood rushing to my face, and I bit my lip and tried to maintain eye contact without getting embarrassed.

‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just, well, you don’t see many like it!’

I was making it worse, he sounded like the bearded lady at the circus, or the smallest man on earth.

‘It’s fine, your eyes are brown, one of mine is blue, one’s brown. It’s nothing.’ He shrugged, but with a serious look
on his face. He looked away, and I looked at the table, at the graffiti that had been etched in with penknives over the years, and swore in my head. Charlie adjusted himself in his seat, and I prepared myself for him to get up and leave. He stood up, and stretched his legs. I turned to talk to Jake, to mask my crushing disappointment, and suddenly heard Charlie’s voice in my ear. I moved slightly, to face him, as he leaned in and whispered,

‘So, what halls are you in?’

‘I’m over in Toulouse. You?’

‘Just opposite – Parker Hall.’

‘I’m surprised I haven’t noticed you before … and not because of the eyes or anything.’ Jesus! What was wrong with me? I sounded like a Nazi!

But Charlie ignored it and carried on talking.

‘Shall I walk you home?’ He cut straight to the chase.

‘Okay, I think there’ll be a few of us though, Jake is in Parker as well.’

‘I meant now.’ Charlie stared me straight in the eye.

‘Sure, why not, I’ve had enough.’ I mustered all my confidence, flushed slightly, grabbed my coat and, with my head down, squeezed myself out of the bar, with Charlie breathing down my neck the whole way.

It was cold as we walked towards the quad, which was the quickest way to get home. We chatted, nowhere near touching each other, and at points he even jogged backwards, trying to expel some of the energy that obviously whizzed around his body at all times. We joked, and made a vague date to see a film together that we both claimed to want to see, but no date was fixed as we passed the library. The cold had really started to set in, and I felt my nose turning red. In the dark I couldn’t make out his smile as readily, but I could hear his laugh, which sounded smaller out here, underneath the huge Illinois sky.

‘I’m surprised I haven’t met you before,’ I said, to fill a
sudden silence as we started to walk past the law buildings, towards the flower conservatory.

‘I’ve only met Jon a couple of times,’ Charlie said.

‘Oh, I thought you knew all those guys really well.’

‘No, I only met some of them for the first time tonight.’ He didn’t smile at this, but slapped himself to keep warm. I prayed inside I wasn’t boring him, that he hadn’t expected me to be a much funnier, livelier person than I was.

‘Who have you been hanging out with then?’ I asked, for something to say, boring even myself.

‘Oh, some fraternity boys – my roommate is in Pi Kappa Chi, so I kind of got in with them.’

‘Right, great – been to many parties?’ I sounded far more impressed than I had discussing them with Dale. In truth, I was massively disappointed – he wasn’t part of our gang, not really, our Brits-abroad gang, us against the world, failing to bond quite properly with our hosts.

‘A few, they’re all kind of the same. They aren’t great actually. They all act like they’re your best mate, straight away, just because you can play basketball or whatever.’

‘Maybe they just liked you.’ I don’t know why I was making excuses for the frat boys, something to say again, I suppose, and I couldn’t imagine anybody not loving him. I was actually sticking up for myself, in a twisted way.

‘Maybe,’ and he smiled again.

‘Just loveable, I guess,’ he said quickly, and then looked down, embarrassed at himself, at something he seemed to know about himself, that didn’t sit well with him. And instantly I knew that Charlie wasn’t quite as confident as I had first thought – but the world loved him anyway, and chose to overlook all the flaws he felt in himself, for the good stuff they could see. For the world, that smile was everything. For Charlie, that wasn’t quite right.