Come Together

Move on, you kids who read for the filthy anecdotes and an affirmation of your own bad habits.  This is a week of chastity.  I thought about getting in the infamous story of the Starburst Cluster, but you’ve heard that one before, and you probably don’t want to hear it again. 

Instead: my personal tutor.  My personal tutor is not a man of many words. He specialises in insects – something to do with insects – and he was absent all last Lent term researching beetles in South America. He grew a hugely impressive beard and it stuck. He has his little repertoire of concern. “Have you got any personal problems?  Are you healthy?”  “He tends to fall asleep,” a third year told me, pre-first encounter. “You have to keep him interested.”  So first meeting, I ended up telling him I was bisexual. 

He woke up, at least.  He muttered something about parthenogenesis, and he was, as it transpired, rather intrigued. “It doesn’t really matter, I don’t think,” he said, “about boys and girls. All that matters in sex,” he said, “is chemistry. And that is something you either have, or have not.”

A year and a half later: our termly meeting. Problems, numerous. Liver, shrivelled. Swine flu, averted. “And how goes chemistry?” The Beard asked. Sly fox. My fury, at Anna’s empty virginity wine bottle, probably torpedoed by PanzerFresher, hadn’t abated. We had chemistry. Her vinyl and her evening visits and my refusals. And fate. The vomit-clogged sink which dumped her next door to me. All of the missed evenings spent fantasising about fucking Charlie.

“So you see,” I said, “it’s complicated.”

We sat in silence. I imagined him groping Argentine breasts in a salsa club in Buenos Aires.

“All you need,” he said, “is Didier Dagueneau Silex. 2007.”

I just looked at him. Slowly, a plan began to form. A little cheesy. A little expensive. But worth it. 

I made the Laithwaites order that evening. I hadn’t seen PanzerFresher on our corridor all week.  The Neanderthal nightly groans had subsided. “They’re on the rocks,” Charlie reported. “He plays ice hockey.  They have cheerleaders.” Charlie was dressed as a baboon. Pink cardboard was sellotaped to his ass. I struggled to recall what the appeal had been.

I listened to the Beatles through the wall and waited for the bottle to arrive.

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