There is an old man leaning on a stick talking at Lucy. His voice is loud, he wears hearing aids. “In which department did you study?”
“Oh, I haven’t been to Oxford,” says Lucy cheerfully, sipping Champagne. “Those two guys over there brought us along.”
He looks confused by the answer. “We are PhD students at the University of Edinburgh but those guys have studied at Oxford,” I add.
“So what kind of job do you do?” Lucy asks.
“What did you just say?”
The old man points at his ears to indicate his hearing difficulties.
“What kind of job do you do?” Lucy repeats at a volume the whole room can pick up.
“I am retired!”
“Oh, really?” Lucy says, very loudly again, and as if this were beguiling stuff.
I whisper to Lucy, “Of course he’s retired. He is at least ninety and has eyebrows that look like cat whiskers. Only Popes are still active at this age.”
“I didn’t notice. Shall we check the kitchen for more Champagne?”
Chris walks quickly towards us. “I think it’s time to go somewhere else,” he says.
You don’t want us to go into the kitchen, do you?
“Have you donated money yet?” I ask playfully.
“I am donating my life to the academic system, I think that’s enough.”
We walk towards the exit and wait for Alex to finish his conversation. The middle-aged lady is walking him out. She hands over her telephone number with the words, “We live so close by, let’s meet up soon.”
She casts a disapproving look towards Lucy and me, smiles at Alex and walks back inside.
“She desperately wants to get fucked,” I whisper in Lucy’s ear.
“Yup. But she won’t get it. This is not a place to pull. Trying it in here just makes you look desperate.”
“I bet he’ll meet her in a few days.”
“You care?”
“No.”
The four of us set off for The Voodoo Rooms, an unashamedly decorative night club in the New Town; escaping the paltry party of money-grubbing, modern academia for old-fashioned grandeur and devil-may-care fun.
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_33
Chapter 33
Karin Bodewits1
(1)Munich, Germany
Karin Bodewits
Email: [email protected]
Around me, I see a tidy room featuring a perfectly made bed and a closed wooden wardrobe. There is a small bedside table sporting one book neatly placed on the top left corner of it. I presume the inhabitant is currently reading it. On the other side of the table is a perfectly ordered bookshelf. Various items, including a bottle of cologne, Scottish whisky and a baseball glove sit on top. It is obvious this man lives in solitude. There is not the faintest whiff of an intrusion from a partner and any traces of short-term liaisons have been meticulously erased.
He stands behind me and grabs my hips. He kisses my cheek bone and I turn my head so our lips can reach each other. With his hands he slightly presses my jaws, forcing my mouth to open and let his tongue slide in. He pulls softly on my ponytail and shivers go through my belly. He is in charge of me. Superior. This is a whole new ballgame to me. I’m the girl; normally I dictate the rules of engagement. But due to the age difference this feels natural. He takes the lead and I follow. And God, this guy is triggering.
He turns me around so I face him and abruptly takes a step backwards. “You can stay if you want, but nothing can happen,” he says. “I can’t risk my career.”
“Okay,” I say, not really understanding why I would be a risk to his career. What kind of sexually transmitted disease do you have that stops you from wanting intercourse?
I feel disappointed about his statement, and the abrupt termination of intimacy. At the same time, I am drunk; lying next to someone for a change would be lovely, whereas performing might be a bit of an effort anyway – excess alcohol doesn’t put anyone at the top of their game, though they often think otherwise at the time…
He undresses to his boxer shorts, walks to the wardrobe and opens it. The clothes within are perfectly arranged, of course. He takes out a T-shirt and hands it to me. “Here, you can wear that.”
He goes to the bathroom and I take the opportunity to change into his T-shirt. It is far too large for me and far from sexy, but it feels oddly nice to be in his clothes. I hear the toilet flushing and he returns to bed. He presses himself up against my back. “You’ve got such soft legs,” he whispers and playfully kisses below my ear.
I try to turn around to face him but he embraces me with his strong arms.
I can’t help wondering if intimacy and tension will build up between us while we sleep in the same bed, his body wrapped around mine, and if this will give rise to uncontrollable desire and sexual abandon.
It doesn’t. But it was a nice thought to fall asleep on.
When I wake up, a breeze is wafting through the open window. It cools my face and chest, but it is still far too warm in the bed. Alex is as close to me as when we fell asleep. I am terribly thirsty and I suspect there will be a smell from my mouth suggesting a rat died in it some weeks ago. However, I am surprised to feel more at peace than I have felt at any time during the previous year. If I had the choice, and if he could turn his body temperature down by about three degrees, then I would lie here in his arms forever.
The T-shirt on my back feels wet from sweat, I don’t know if it’s his or mine, probably a mixture. I try to establish more physical space between us without waking him up, but I do not succeed. He moves his head up and kisses me on my cheekbone. He checks his mobile for the time and, with sudden impatience, springs from the bed and strides to the bathroom.
“Sorry. Duty calling. In just seventy-three minutes from now there will be fifty students sitting in a lecture theatre waiting for me.”
“Has semester started already?”
“Yep.”
Within seconds he is showering.
“I’ve been enrolling new students since Tuesday and started lecturing on Wednesday, meaning summer break is passé,” he says, not looking overly excited at the toast with melted butter on his breakfast plate.
“How are the freshies?” I ask.
I don’t mention that Lucy and I have already met several of them, in an underground pub. We had known there would be a party taking place for new undergraduates of the University of Edinburgh, and we were keen to find out if the guys would still hit on us, or if we were now too old for teens. I think it was only partly a search for reassurance about our market value; I think we were also both quite enthusiastic about the idea of taking a young energetic guy home. There were plenty of post-spotty cute boys at the party, and some had nice holiday tans; a rarity among poor PhD students. Others had obviously spent years optimising their biceps and toning their virile young bodies. No doubt about it, there were hotties among them. However, after several conversations featuring revelations such as “my mum is a great cook” and “my parents are such great company,” their allure dwindled to zero. Slightly disorientated, Lucy and I had gone back above ground.
“It’s the usual mixed bag: some excellent students, some who can’t read letters or emails, many who cannot write properly, some who can’t wake up in time for their first ever lecture, and some perennials deluded about their abilities and just basically circling the drain,” Alex says.
“Had any mums on the phone spelling out the learning difficulties and dietary wishes of their beloved and talented offspring?”
Mark told us he had been ear-bashed by just such a mum on the phone last semester. She had taken issue with the marking, and was adamant her son should have been scored higher. Where she acquired her in-depth knowledge of biochemistry was a moot point which she didn’t care to broach.
“Not yet, but it will come. The high season is around the first exams. It’s ge
tting worse every year.”
“Did your mum phone the university when you were an undergrad?”
He glares momentarily but smiles, realising I’m joking. The helicoptering phenomenon is new but expanding at a terrifying rate.
“Sorry, need to go, help yourself,” he says, gets into his jacket and closes the door behind him.
I am alone in his flat. Still wearing his T-shirt, I walk to the small kitchen-cum-living room. Though I’m pretty sure he showed me around yesterday evening, it feels like I’m entering the room for the first time. Like his bedroom, it is all very tidy, rather mysterious, not deathly, but as if there is no active presence inhabiting this place; as if the person living here has been beamed away via a time machine. A red squirrel sits on the outside window sill eating nuts, which Alex presumably left there for it.
The kitchen is sterile, all food and cutlery neatly packed away in the different cupboards. The only thing standing on the working top is an espresso machine with two small clean cups next to it. That it’s two cups is the only thing to suggest anyone else ever visits this space.
I stretch out leisurely while one of the cups fills with coffee. I see the squirrel observing my every move from the other side of the window. The previous evening was playing on my mind. It had started with the silly Oxford University Alumni Party and had vastly improved when we arrived in The Voodoo Rooms. I soon matched Lucy for ludicrous alcohol intake and badly wanted to dance. Alex and Chris clearly had no interest in dancing, and hung by the bar.
“Is this Chris not something for you?” I had asked Lucy during one of our smokes outside the pub.
“Are you kidding me?”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Pretty much everything! He just told me I should drop by his flat to check out his stuffed dogs. Apparently he is collecting them. After Dr. Wilson’s virtual cat…”
“Okay, he’s out.”
We had chatted the whole evening, though less than six hours later I can’t recall any of the topics. It doesn’t matter. It definitely had been one of the better nights in recent history. The tiny clock on the table next to the sofa is telling me that it is already past nine. Just to be a bit rebellious, I place the empty coffee cup in the middle of the working top. I’m sure it will disturb him when he comes home later. My chaotic personality and his pedantic self are such a misfit. Very slowly I undress, savouring memories of the previous night. I get into the shower and wash myself with his soap. I like the sensuality but then I find it a bit disturbing to smell of shower gel for men when I am out of the shower. For a short moment I consider putting his T-shirt on again, but after lifting it from the bathroom floor I realise it smells of Bell’s Whisky, testosterone, sweat and… There’s no way I can have it near my freshly washed body…
My head starts pounding as soon as my eyes make contact with broad daylight. I slowly walk to my flat to change into jeans and sneakers. I pack some sports clothes, in case I get the chance to run today, and cycle to the university. A few feet after the last set of traffic lights before campus, a police car abruptly cuts me off the road. I have to stop. Two tall policemen get out of the car.
“What made you cycle through red lights?”
“Did I cycle through red?” I say, truly not sure if I did or not.
“You don’t know?”
“Not really, no.”
“We’ve followed you for the last few minutes. You cycled through five red lights in a row!” the more sympathetic looking guy states. Yikes, what happens here?
“Five?”
“Yes, five.”
“Is there a problem with that?”
Both policemen look surprised by my question. The less sympathetic one is clearly annoyed and takes out a block of paper ready to write down my personal details and launch into dreary legal shenanigans. But the other policeman steps in front of him and gestures to hold fire, for now.
“You are not allowed to cycle through red lights. You know that, right?”
“Not really, no. I thought the traffic lights were just for cars.”
“Where are you from?”
“The Netherlands.”
“In the Netherlands you are allowed to cycle through red lights?”
“Yes, of course,” I say, as if this is the most normal thing on the planet and I have never heard anything else.
“We had a Dutch girl before, saying exactly the same.” Good girl!
“Are you studying here?” he asks, pointing at the university buildings next to us.
“Yes, I am.”
“How long have you been here?”
“A couple of weeks.”
I know my story won’t stand up if I tell them I just started the third year of my PhD.
“We should really tell the university to give a list of traffic rules to foreign students. What department are you in?”
“Chemistry.”
“PhD?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.” He looks at me with deep respect. Oh, if you but knew, kindly, innocent policeman… “We should go and talk to them.”
He said that a bit too enthusiastically for my liking. I desperately hope he does not come up with the idea that I take them to the university. Mark would definitely not be pleased to see a policeman standing in his office, and I strongly doubt he would confirm my claim that I just started my PhD – though he would happily add a couple of years to my sentence if he could.
“I’m terribly sorry; next time I will wait until it’s green,” I say, hopefully ending the conversation.
“Off you go,” he says and even gives me a friendly wink. I get on my bike and cycle the last bit.
I ignore my headache and walk into the lab feeling full of positive energy. Mark is standing at the bench, talking to Linn. I feel Mark’s eyes peering at me as I pass the benches on my way to the office. Just before I reach the office door he addresses me.
“You missed Barry’s talk!”
He is clearly boiling with anger. Shit. The departmental talk…
I feel the morning’s happiness fade to familiar nothingness as I turn towards him.
“Sorry, I forgot about it.”
“You forgot about it?”
He obviously doesn’t believe me, shaking his head and leaning on the bench with his hand. “Where have you been?”
“At home.”
“Where is Lucy?”
“I don’t know.”
I wait for a few seconds, but it seems that neither of us has anything to add to the conversation, so I turn round to enter the office. Quickly I drop off my bag and coat, grab a Styrofoam container from the sink and head out of the lab to fetch ice. I’m not actually sure if I need any ice for my experiments today, but it is good to have some physical distance from Mark.
At a slow pace I walk over the glass bridge to the new side of the building, hoping that Mark is safely ensconced in his office by the time I return. For a few minutes I watch the machine spitting out flakes of ice. I fill up my bucket and, again, slowly make my way back to the lab. The sun is not far from the top of the sky and I am thinking about the evening before. My body is re-filling with positive energy as it had done this morning. I stayed over at the hottest lecturer in the university. With a year to go, all I can hope for is distraction. The possibility of sex tantalises regularly, but today it’s weird to think that sometimes it is sex we didn’t actually have which raises the spirits and keeps us soldiering on.
It is helping me get through this PhD, knowing that there is more to life than this. And this actually doesn’t matter in reality; just going through the motions to collect a title. Normally I don’t have the spiritual strength to be so depressingly honest…
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_34
Chapter 34
Karin Bodewits1
(1)Munich, Germany
Karin Bodewits
Email: office@karinbod
ewits.com
My Nokia telephone beeps from somewhere deep in my dreams and as I slowly gain consciousness I strongly suspect it has been beeping for a very long time. I reach out to the pillow next to me; since Daniel left Edinburgh it mostly hosts my mobile, often accompanied by my laptop. My eyes feel heavy and dry when I finally open them to check the time. 9:30 a.m. Shit, two hours later than I wanted to get up.
When I wrench my body from the bed I consider my options, and lying back down is oh-so tempting. As time passes studying for my PhD, it becomes harder and harder to get out of bed. It has been a long time since I’ve been first to arrive in the lab in the morning. Apart from a brute desire to get out of the lab as soon as my obligatory three years are over, I appear bereft of motivation.
In recent weeks I have unsuccessfully tried to ignore the fact that this PhD is the big thing in my life. It all seems so long ago, in a different life, that I studied hard for my bachelor’s and master’s degrees, to graduate with good marks; when I studied so much and got complimented for the work I was doing, which I found fascinating.
There is a pile of clothes next to the bed. I pull out the jeans and a bra, and throw the rest in the washing basket. Slowly I walk to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I look in the mirror and wipe some cold water around my eyes before making my lashes darker with mascara and picking a top to wear. I feel like I am putting on protective armour.
The only person in the office is Logan, sitting behind one of the shared computers.
“Good morning,” I say, and Logan turns in my direction.
“Morning, Ka. You look great!”
“Thanks for the sarcasm.”
“You went to the pub?”
You Must Be Very Intelligent Page 30
