Love Lessons (14 page)

“They’re making a tofu scramble with clean utensils. It’s too bad I’m not straight, because I think the vegan girl behind me in line was about to blow me on the spot. I’m having them hold a plate for you, and I’ll pick it up when I go back in line.” He glanced at Rose, as if just now realizing she too might need to be cared for. “Hon, you need anything?”

Rose lifted an eyebrow and eyed him with open lechery. “One of you that comes in bi and poly.”

Walter laughed and openly fondled his crotch as he did a brief, exaggerated porn wiggle for Rose. “I’ll be right back, baby, and all this is sitting right next to you, throbbing like a mighty hunter.”

Rose laughed, and Walter grinned.

He put a hand on Kelly’s shoulder and nudged the disappointing tray out of the way for the one he’d prepared. “Eat up, Red. I hear you need to replenish some fluids and nutrients after your shower.”

Kelly was so embarrassed the room spun, and when he recovered himself, Walter had already walked away. Even before Kelly looked at Rose, he could feel the weight of her meaningful stare.

“He doesn’t date,” Kelly said, almost desperate this time. Thank God she couldn’t know how his shoulder tingled from Walter’s touch or how the murmur in Kelly’s ear had made his insides churn into gooey butter.

Rose said nothing, just kept smiling and staring as she drank her coffee.

Chapter Ten

On the last Sunday before Thanksgiving, Kelly went to church.

Even though Williams was right about his wanting to feel part of a community, Kelly didn’t actively try to engage with any of the parishioners. He was polite when they introduced themselves and inquired about him, but he left things at that. Being in church, being in the space, hearing the comforting murmurs of call and response, that’s what he’d come for. The service wasn’t exactly the same as the one he attended back home, but it was close enough to be a balm, and he appreciated it.

He saw Williams across the sanctuary, his entire family in tow. Williams’s wife was beautiful in a way that reminded Kelly of his mother: no makeup, only striking features and a plain but pretty style. The children were an adorable mob, each one towheaded and apple-cheeked from the cold snap that had taken Danby by surprise that morning. Though Williams waved, Kelly didn’t close the distance between them, choosing simply to wave back and observe the happy clan from across the room.

As he headed back to campus—a mile-and-a-half trek leaving him plenty of time to think—he pulled out his phone, rubbing his thumb against his ring as he scrolled through. No messages, no texts, not even from Walter.

None from any potential boyfriend.

He’d gone to lunch with a nice guy from his econ class, someone as bored and lost in the back of the room as he was, and everything looked great until he’d found out Jason already
had
a boyfriend, and he couldn’t wait for Kelly to meet him.

Worst of all? They’d met by being
roommates
.

The fall wind whipped around his ears, making Kelly shrug the collar of his coat higher. He stared at the leaves as they swirled in soft eddies around his shuffling feet. The crunch of leaves and cold burn of wind soothed him, reminding him of walks through his neighborhood back home, the same walks that had helped him first come to terms with his orientation and then how to go about dealing with that reality. Kelly found he wanted to keep walking, keep letting his mind spin slowly, quietly, with no one and nothing to impede it.

He walked so long and far that he missed the cafeteria lunch service, so he swung through a deli on the highway in front of campus and grabbed a soup and sandwich. He watched the couples of all ages, noticing the ones who clung to each other didn’t seem half as connected as the older couples who barely touched at all. He found he couldn’t stop watching an elderly pair who barely spoke, the woman fussing to get more coffee and napkins for her husband whose eyes seemed slightly cloudy and unfocused—all until he looked at his wife. Kelly saw the affection he had for her, his gratitude, his love.

As he finished eating and headed back onto campus, past the lake to say hello to the swans, his insular world felt ridiculous and strange, more so than usual. He wished the rest of the day could be as quiet and pensive as his walk had been, so much so that he took the long, outdoor and out-of-the-way path back to his dorm, which was why he passed Ritche Hall and saw Williams hurrying inside.

Kelly followed.

Though he hesitated at the professor’s open door, Williams beamed at Kelly. “What a lovely surprise. Come on in.” He regarded Kelly as he sat down, and his expression schooled to concern. “What’s on your mind?”

Kelly hadn’t really known why he’d gone into the building until that moment, but at Williams’s inquiry, all became clear. “I’ve been thinking more about what I expected and why Hope has been a little disappointing. I think I’ve figured it out.”

“Oh?” Williams settled back in his chair in a half slouch and laced his fingers over his midsection. “Let’s hear it.”

“I think I expected, or really, assumed, that going to college would mean growing up. That everything about being at college, at Hope, would be moving me toward that. Except I don’t always feel like it is. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it seems even more ridiculous than high school.”

Williams’s expression was wry. “I hate to break it to you, but that doesn’t go away after college. It’s pretty much a constant state.”

“But
why
?” Kelly could feel himself almost whining and tried to rein himself in, but it was difficult. “I don’t understand. If I’m not supposed to grow up in college, when the hell am I?”

“Ah. That right there, Mr. Davidson, is where you begin to go wrong. There is no
supposed to
. There’s no magic ruler by which we’re all judged and weighed, not in this life. If you wait for someone to tell you it’s time to grow up, you’ll wait forever. Some people, quite happily, do just that. They don’t do anything until they’re forced to by circumstance.”

“Well, that’s awful.”

“You might see if you can squeeze in a few philosophy courses next semester. I know they’ve cut that department down to nearly nothing, but I think you might enjoy the academic exercise.”

It seemed an unsatisfying response to people being lazy and awful by definition, to take a course about why they might be so, but Kelly didn’t want to point that out. “I’m not sure I’ll have time. I was planning on switching over to history education, and I hear that major has a really tight timeline.”

“
Teaching
. Well, far be it from me to countermand the education department, but my advice, as an educator myself? Make the time for that philosophy class, Kelly, if you truly do plan to be a teacher. Because those people who wait forever to grow will be all over your schoolroom.”

Kelly was starting to feel more depressed by the minute. “So you’re saying don’t bother trying to help them?”

“Not even close. I’m saying get inside people’s heads a little before you try to fill the spaces there.”

“Isn’t that psychology?”

“It might be. It might be both.” Williams’s smile was slow and knowing, and something about the back end of it made Kelly’s skin prickle. Like Williams knew a secret, and if Kelly were very good and patient, he’d let him in on it.

Kelly, however, wasn’t feeling very patient. “How am I supposed to find out?”

“Have you heard of the Philosophy Club?”

“Yeah, Rose has talked about it a few times.” She’d tried to get Kelly to come, but the reading list made Kelly’s eyes cross.

Williams pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Kelly. “We’re having a meeting on Tuesday afternoon in the back room at Opie’s. Why don’t you come? You don’t have to do the reading. Just show up and see what you think.” He winked. “I’ll buy your dinner, though, if you can rope Walter into joining you.”

Kelly still wasn’t sure about this, but he supposed at the very least he’d have something good to eat. “Okay.”

“Great. See you there.” He leaned back in his chair. “I’m serious about that meal too. Round of drinks to go with it. Root beer, of course, even though I know Walter got you an ID.”

“I’ve never used it,” Kelly said, blushing.

Williams laughed. “Tuesday.”

“Tuesday,” Kelly agreed.

Chapter Eleven

Walter had stayed away from Philosophy Club for good reason, which he remembered within three minutes of attending the backroom meeting at Opie’s with Kelly. For starters, all the club members were overeager nerds with inflated senses of importance—Ethan Miller, ten o’clock—and weighed down by nagging self-doubt. The only professor there Walter could stand was Williams, and he was the only one not officially a member of the philosophy department. Everyone in the club—professors included, except for Williams—did a weird battle for attention that drove Walter crazy. Worst of all, though, was the way the students didn’t have the first clue about philosophy outside of parroting back what their professors said or they read on Wikipedia. This was what had driven him away two years ago, and none of it appeared to have fixed itself in his absence.

Unfortunately, Kelly seemed to find it all intoxicatingly wonderful, and not just because Rose welcomed him like the prodigal son and brought him deep into the flock. Eyes wide and posture upright, Kelly sat in the middle of the fray, alert and eager and trying to keep up with conversations, joining in tentatively when invited. He accepted flirtations from girls and boys alike, returning them with polite overtures of his own. He brought the same good-boy earnestness he always did, and somehow that brought up the level of the whole affair, at least as far as Walter was concerned. Either that or the show Kelly put on was simply that good.

Except underneath the nice-boy mask, he was still the Kelly Walter knew. Allergic, idealistic, I-hide-that-I-masturbate Kelly who watched
Doctor Who
and
Big Bang Theory
torrents with Walter until they were passing out against each other on the futon.

Philosophy Club was stupid as ever, but Kelly was there. Walter stayed. He drank root beer and ate pizza. He took the handout dictating next week’s reading list.

He argued with Ethan Miller about Michel Foucault.

He hadn’t meant to let himself be lured into that mess, but he couldn’t help it when they were doing such a hack job of arguing Foucault’s positions. Williams was no help, feeding them the line he and Walter had spent an hour debating just one week prior: Should, as Foucault says, life be about nothing more than finding one’s true self? Should complete individuality be the sole purpose of life?

“Absolutely not.” Miller stuck his nose in the air as he said this, casting several
watch me, I’m so cool
glances Kelly’s way. “Nihilistic philosophy gets us nowhere. We’re meant to work together, or everything is chaos. Society is mutual sacrifice for a common good.”

This was the same prattle Miller had offered up the last time Walter had come, and it didn’t piss him off any less now. “For fuck’s sake. Foucault isn’t nihilistic. He may be influenced by Nietzsche, but he didn’t sit in his damn lap. Of course, are you arguing metaphysical, moral or existential nihilism? I’ll give you the moral argument, but then everything short of religious faith is nihilistic if you want it to be.”

Miller looked ready to do murder but could only sputter. Most of the table had gone slack-jawed, though a couple sophomores were flipping through their notes as if they might find a foothold in the conversation there. Walter sank back in his chair, annoyed, mostly at himself. That’s right, this was the
other
reason he never came to Philosophy Club.

Before Walter could check to see how Kelly was taking all this, Williams jumped in. “So you agree with Foucault, Walter, that our life’s purpose is to find our true self and nurture it?”

Williams knew damn well his thoughts were more complex than that, and he knew now this whole evening was a trap, because this was one of Williams’s favorite arguments. This was his advisor trying to drive home his opinion that Walter and everyone else in the world needed a nanny, that nobody could function completely alone, that it wasn’t healthy. Which was fine, Walter would do this dance anywhere.

Except he found he did not want to do it in front of Kelly, not without being able to understand how Kelly would take his answer. Out of the corner of his vision he could see Kelly’s eyes widening, but without out-and-out staring him down, he couldn’t get a good read. Was Kelly impressed? Turned off? What was he thinking?

“Do you think life is a search for our true self, Walter?” Williams leaned over the table, eyes dancing with mischief. “If you do think so, do you think it matters how we achieve that search for self?”

Walter stopped trying to read Kelly and faced the professor down. “I think searching for self is all anyone does, yes, but probably about two percent of the people alive actually think of it that way. As for how we achieve it—well, that’s the crux, isn’t it? Of course it matters, but the problem is everyone thinks they’re a saint, because everyone can justify their own actions.” Williams gave him the eyebrow, but he barreled on. “Everybody’s the hero of their own story. So sure, they’re living their true self, or fighting it. Why are they doing it, though? That tells you more of who and what someone is than whatever weird script they’re following.”

Rose Manchester—green bandana today—leaned forward and frowned curiously at Walter. “So what do you think of the original question, then? Should complete individuality be the sole purpose of life?”