Love Lessons

by Heidi Cullinan

  “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?”

  Hadn’t he just said this? “Everyone’s going to live an individual life whether they think they are or not. Join a church, a cult, follow a flag, hide out like a hermit—you made that choice, and that’s your search for your self. Everyone’s going to be faced with Kool-Aid. They’ll drink it or refuse it, and depending on the context of delivery, the consequences will mark their life.”

  “So what do you think matters, then?” Miller asked, his tone so snide he didn’t have to add wise guy. “If everything everyone does can be explained by their own justifications, where does morality come from?”

  “You can’t find universal or absolute morality any more than you can find universal or absolute truth. I live with my beliefs. You live with yours. You believe sweater vests are sexy and will get you laid, even though it’s never worked. It’s a truth for you, so you go with it. Some people go to church. Other people get high. Some of us get laid. Some of us open our eyes and some of us force them shut. Everybody copes however they can. That’s life. Search for self, hide from it—that is what life is.”

  Miller was all but in a lather, but Williams stayed as cool as a cucumber. “Not allowing one’s self connections, commonalities within social circles—rejecting moral and religious forces isn’t nihilistic?”

  “Well, you count every moral system that doesn’t have a daddy at the top nihilistic, don’t you?”

  Several of the clubbers gasped. Miller looked ready to pop a zit from excessive internal pressure. Williams grinned, looking pleased.

  Kelly looked…blindsided.

  Walter retreated from the argument then, too focused on Kelly. Gone was the happy, socially adept young man Walter had brought into the back room. This Kelly looked like a deer in the headlights. Time, Walter decided, to end this stupid farce.

  “Hey.” Walter nudged Kelly with his elbow and nodded at the door as the others continued to argue around them. “Want to bail?”

  Kelly glanced down at his hands. “You’re having a good time.”

  “What? No. I want a real beer. Come over to Moe’s with me. I mean—unless you’re having a good time.”

  Shaking his head, Kelly eased a little. “No, I’ll go to Moe’s with you.”

  Good. Walter tossed a salute to Williams and a wink to Manchester as he followed his roommate out of the restaurant.

  While Walter had known something was wrong with his roommate, he hadn’t realized quite how serious it was until Kelly not only failed to object when Walter ordered him a beer bu
t drank it down like his new goal in life was to get himself smashed.

  “Whoa.” Walter pulled his own beer closer to himself and sank onto the stool next to Kelly. “Slow down there, sailor.”

  Kelly glowered into his now half-empty glass. “No. I feel like getting drunk.”

  “You’re making a good start on that, I’d say.” Walter took a sip of beer, forcing himself not to think about what had happened the last time Kelly got drunk and how much that still confused him. Focus on right now. Why is Kelly wanting to get drunk? “Okay, I clearly missed something back there at Opie’s. What’s going on?”

  Kelly’s glower deepened. “Nothing,” he grumbled, and finished off his drink. “Another one, please.”

  Well, this was interesting. Walter picked up the pitcher of Pabst and replenished his roommate’s glass, continuing to sip his own moderately as he watched Kelly go at his second glass with the same enthusiasm of his first. It went down a little more slowly, but within fifteen minutes of beginning to drink, Kelly was angling, quite adamantly, for a third helping.

  “No, I don’t think so.” Walter pulled the pitcher more firmly out of Kelly’s reach. “Red, what’s going on here? What the fuck happened?”

  “Nothing happened.” Kelly shoved the glass away from himself, his pretty face screwed up in disgust. “I figured out the truth, is all, and I don’t like it.”

  “Truth at Philosophy Club? That has to be a first. What was it?”

  Kelly’s face was red, partly from alcohol, partly from fury, and partly, Walter realized as his roommate’s countenance transformed once more, shame. “I’m stupid. That’s what.”

  “What? Come on.” Walter shoved Kelly lightly. “Seriously. What happened?”

  “What happened? What happened? I sat there like a moron, that’s what happened. I had no idea what anybody was talking about.” He hunched over his stool. “I couldn’t even come close to following what anyone was saying. I was the valedictorian of my fucking class, but I couldn’t follow anything going on. And you.” He glared at Walter as if he held the sword that had stabbed him.

  “Me?” Walter put his hand on Kelly’s shoulder, but Kelly shook it off.

  “You. Oh my God, I thought they were bad, but you were ten times worse. It was like you were speaking a foreign language.” He propped his elbows on the bar and shoved his hands in his hair. “All I wanted to do was hang out with Rose, and you, and Williams, and feel like I belonged, but now I feel worse than ever. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere.”

  What the fuck? Walter wanted to touch Kelly again, but he didn’t want to be rebuffed, so he moved closer instead, gentling his voice and lowering it so it was almost a whisper. “Red. Honey. You belong. You were great. They loved you.”

  “I had no idea what anyone was talking about.”

  “Well of course not. Most of it was bullshit. Remember, I’ve got almost three years on you for school, and I thought I was going to be pre-law before, so I read all kinds of weird crap while I was home with my mom. I got into philosophy because it helped me think about things, helped me figure out what was important in life. It’s not rocket science, but yeah, you have to read it to get it. Sometimes multiple times.”

  “I tried to read it,” Kelly murmured to the bar. “I couldn’t even get through a page.”

  “So I’ll help you, if you want. Or we forget it. It’s not like you need to read philosophy to survive. Most of it’s common fucking sense, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Common sense that I can’t understand.”

  “Okay, now you’re just whining. Which is fine, but—” He filled Kelly’s beer and passed it back over. “Here. Sip this time, buddy.”

  Kelly did sip. He stayed hunched over, his anger bleeding into sorrow. “Nothing’s like I thought it would be. Nothing.”

  Walter gave in and put his hand on Kelly’s back, making slow circles. “What isn’t like you thought it would be? And don’t say everything.”

  “It is everything. School. Classes. Guys.” He took a bigger drink of beer. “Don’t tell me you told me so, either. I feel like a fucking failure. I don’t know what it is I want to do instead of this. I don’t want to go home. I mean, I do. But I don’t.”

  “Kel, there isn’t a freshman alive who doesn’t get to this point of college and feel that way. And take it from someone who did go home: that doesn’t help.”

  Kelly frowned at Walter. “I thought you went home because of your mom.”

  “Yeah. Well, that wasn’t the only reason.” Walter drained the last of his glass and stared out toward the dance floor, which was starting to fill up. “You want to talk about feeling stupid? I was at Northwestern, hon. Everyone was so serious and so fucking smart I felt like I should be taking out their garbage, not going to class with them. I couldn’t even hook up with a guy without feeling like we were competing. So when things went bad at home, it was a great excuse to bail. Except it was the stupidest thing I’d ever done. Everyone else was off at school. Everyone else was moving forward.” He ran his finger around the rim of his glass. “It still feels weird most of the time, being the wrong age. It’s especially shit this year, with Cara gone. I can’t shake the feeling like I got off the merry-go-round and can’t quite get back on.”

  “I don’t know that I ever got on it.” Kelly’s fingers tightened around his glass. “I’m always waiting. Always having an excuse. I can’t go out for football, I have asthma. I can’t come out, I’m from a small town. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. But I thought I’d come here and it would all be okay. It’s not. I still can’t. Can’t go take a shower without getting harassed. Can’t eat the same pizza as everybody else. Can’t have a double room because I have to have an air conditioner. Can’t eat in the cafeteria. Can’t go to a club meeting without feeling like an idiot. Can’t date because I’m a fucking chicken.”

  “You’re not dating because you have standards,” Walter corrected.

  “No. I hardly try. I keep hoping some magic guy will walk up to me so I don’t have to do it. Sometimes I think maybe I should let someone fuck me, let it mean nothing, but then I get scared of that.”

  What the shit was this? “Well you fucking should be scared. You don’t want it to mean nothing.”

  “That’s what you do.”

  Walter sighed and ran his hand down Kelly’s back, letting it fall away. “No. I don’t go up to some random guy and let them fuck me. It does matter. I pick guys I think I can have a fun time with. It doesn’t mean nothing, not like the black hole in your tone. It means a good time. A release. An escape from the shit of life for a little while. That’s not the same thing as nothing.”

  “Well, I don’t know how to do that.” He spun his glass clumsily on its coaster. “I wish I hadn’t told you I wanted to save myself for dating. I wish you’d have flirted with me and taken me to bed like you do everybody else.”

  Walter went still, his body running hot and cold. “What?”

  Kelly watched his glass as he turned it round and round. “I wish I’d been one of your freshman conquests. I wish I wasn’t sitting here a stupid virgin on top of everything else. I wish I weren’t so fucking scared. I wish I could have fun for a little while.”

  Walter had no idea what he was supposed to say. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. Kelly was smashed, he reminded himself. Upset. He needed Walter to take care of him right now.

  I wish I’d been one of your freshman conquests. I wish you’d taken me to bed. The words stirred the memory of Kelly making love to his neck. They reminded him too that he wasn’t taking everyone to bed this year. He’d put in a good few weeks of man-whoring, and now…

  Now…

  Walter swallowed hard. “Kelly,” he whispered, the name almost a plea.

  Kelly clenched his fists against the sides of his head, hunching over the bar. “I shouldn’t have said that. Now it’s going to be weird again between us.”

  Wait, what? “When has it been weird?”


  Kelly lifted his head to give Walter an accusatory look. “Only since Luna’s party. You know, the last time I was a drunken idiot.”

  Walter was totally lost now. They’d been weird? “We haven’t been weird. We’re fine.”

  Kelly kept glowering. “You’re weird. I’m weird. Because I fucked that up too.”

  Enough of this shit. Walter shoved the beer away from his roommate, turned him forcibly on the stool and gripped his shoulders hard as he looked him squarely in the eye. “You aren’t weird, and you haven’t fucked anything up.”

  “You told me no.” The hurt on Kelly’s face cut Walter like a knife.

  “You were drunk,” Walter pointed out.

  “You’d tell me no now.”

  Fuck. “Honey, you’re drunk now too.”

  Not that drunk, though, not as drunk as Walter had thought, and as Kelly stared him down, Walter got chills. “If I could work up the courage to ask you sober, you’d tell me no again. Because you don’t want to sleep with me.”

  Not for the reason you’re thinking, baby. Walter managed, just, not to say that out loud.

  Except he’d heard it, and he did know the reason why. And it scared the ever-loving shit out of him.

  He tried a new tactic. “You’ll feel better after you go home tomorrow for break. You’ll be with your family, and they’ll restore your confidence, and you’ll come back and kick the ass of that stupid Philosophy Club.”

  “I can’t go back there, ever. I felt like an idiot.”

  “I’ll help you make sense of it.” Why was he encouraging Kelly to go there? He didn’t know, just that talking about that was safer than why he couldn’t sleep with him.

  “You’d have to dumb it down pretty far for me to get it. You have to dumb everything down for me.”

  Walter was starting to get annoyed with all this self-pity. “I don’t dumb anything down for you. I like you how you are, Kelly. Just how you are.”