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