He was reading Materials, whatever that meant, and constantly getting internships at MIT. He was also captain of the first VIII (which I thought was a rowing thing), played football for the men’s seconds, and had recently returned from Uganda, where he’d been part of a team that was repairing a health center. All of which made him the perfect person to do fund-raising telethons…except for the temporarily-sounding-like-Emperor-Palpatine thing. That would have probably been pretty off-putting.
“In Stephen Fry’s autobiography—” I began.
“Which one? The man’s written more autobiographies than you’ve written essays.”
I mimed being stabbed through the heart. “Impugned! But he said he did well at Cambridge by memorizing a set of first-quality essays and then shoehorning them into whatever question happened to be on the paper.”
Nik nodded. “Sounds like a good plan.”
“With one minor drawback.”
“What?”
“I haven’t written any first-quality essays.” They were mostly seconds and upper seconds, and one returned to sender because it was about Finnegans Wake, and I’d written it stoned at half four in the morning when the book had taken on this terrible clarity and I’d been briefly convinced that maybe I was brilliant after all.
“You can still memorize what you’ve got.”
“Except they’re so banal and half-arsed it hardly seems worth it.” I sighed. “I swear to God, I found one that opened ‘Bleak House, the Victorian novel by the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens’…Oh my God, I’ve wasted three years of my life.”
“You haven’t wasted them,” Nik said consolingly. “You just haven’t done any work in them.”
I made sad otter noises.
“Seriously, it’ll be fine. Worst-case scenario is you get a two-two.”
“Worst-case scenario is I fail or get a third.”
“And imagine how glamorous that’ll be.”
“I won’t look like a loser?”
“No, you’ll look like a misunderstood genius.”
Nik’s voice was getting even more sinister and whispery. Great, I was essentially making a sick person comfort me. “Maybe you shouldn’t be talking. Does it hurt?”
“No, but it’s weird as hell. It’s like my voice has just disappeared.”
I offered a sheepish smile by way of apology for being self-absorbed. “Did you make a dodgy deal with a sea witch? Don’t you know, you’ve gotta kiss de girl.”
“I’m worried I’ll give de girl a throat infection.”
Unscrewing the cap, I took a swig of wine straight from the bottle. “There was something seriously wrong with that guy.”
“What guy?”
“Prince Eric.”
“What’s wrong with Prince Eric? He was kind to animals, lived in a palace. Good dimples.”
“Yeah, but how can you respect a man who needs a singing lobster to tell him when to make a move?”
Nik gave me a withering look. “Sebastian’s a crab.”
“How can you remember that? Are you sure you’re mostly straight?”
“He was a comedy sidekick with a racist accent. You don’t forget that shit unless you’re too busy speculating about whether the male lead is any good in bed.”
“You’re right,” I conceded. “That is pretty gay.”
I took the opportunity to consume more alcohol. A toast. To myself: Disney queer failing Oxford.
“So,” asked Nik slyly, “who would you go for?”
I made a thoughtful hmmming noise. “It’s a hard one.”
“Or you’re hoping it is.”
“You do know”—I regarded him with severity—“that not every observation your token pansexual friend makes is a cock joke, right?”
“I would, if my token pansexual friend made fewer cock jokes.” He waved a hand imperiously. “Come on, Arden, who’s it going to be?”
Maybe the telethon had left me in a funny mood but I found myself wondering how I’d feel when I looked back on this: another night with my best friend in a dreamy, golden city, talking about the Disney princes I’d like to bang. I wondered if I’d still understand or if I’d think I was ridiculous. Or if I’d feel some sense of loss. “Well,” I said, “it’s not exactly a great pool, is it?”
“Bunch of hot royals? Jesus, man, what are you looking for?”
“Um, somebody real? Somebody who loves me? Somebody who’ll fold me up like a fishing stool and fuck my brains out. Give me that and I’d scorn to change my state with kings.”
“From the amount of people who’ve trooped through here, doesn’t seem like you’re short of volunteers.”
I pulled my knees to my chin and let my gaze drift out the window to the quad below. A typical Oxford night: green grass and ancient stone, ghosts of the gold-washed dark. “Eh, they’re all Erics.”
“They’re taking dating advice from crabs?”
“There are no crabs anywhere near my sex life, thank you very much.” He gave a wheezy laugh, and gratified, as I always was to please him, I went on. “Which leaves me with…God…the early princes are kind of nonentities, aren’t they? And on the date-rapey side in the case of Phillip. And Aladdin’s out, obviously.”
Nik raised his brows.
“Not because he’s Middle Eastern. Because he’s a delinquent. I know I’m not exactly awesome, but I think I can do better than a homeless man.”
“You’ll have a degree in English. You’re going to be Aladdin.”
“Oh shut up.” I ran quickly through the pantheon. It was slightly scary how much Disney I’d watched over the years, some of it fairly recently. “Prince Naveen is cute with his ukulele.”
“I thought you didn’t like hipsters.”
“Good point, well made. Better be Prince Adam, then.”
A slight pause. “Sorry, who?”
“From Beauty and the Beast,” I mumbled. “Y’know, the Beast.”
A more substantial pause. “Is this your way of coming out as a furry?”
“What? No! Fuck you.”
“Dream on, gayboy.”
“I do, I really do, thinking of your bronzed and manly thews clenching around me in undeniable homosexual ecstasy.”
“My…thews are homosexual?” His ears had gone pink.
“By association when they’re clenched around me.”
“Look.” He did have an excellent, firm voice, a little bit football captain, a little bit headmaster. “Can we go back to you fancying animals, please?”
“I don’t fancy animals. The Beast is only symbolically bestial.”
“I know I’m a scientist and therefore don’t understand these complex literary motifs, but it looks pretty literal to me when he’s beating up wolves and roaring.”
“Okay, so he’s protective, passionate, strong—”
“—has a tail.”
I gave him a look. “Has clearly suffered but is not less deserving of love for that.”
“Yeah, but what kind of prick denies a beggar woman a loaf of bread?”