Tuesday I spent the day in continual mope-mode since there was still no sign of Mike or Courtney. I tried to read but was too distracted so I ended up just hanging around the room. In addition to my lack of social interaction, a massive heat wave had taken over Oxford, giving us 90-degree days and equally hot nights. I felt like my brain was melting in the humidity and everyone tried not to move too much since it was so hot. Marissa/Melissa succumbed to heat stroke on Monday and I was much more careful to hydrate after her near-collapse in law class.
I trudged over to law tutorial at three, not feeling particularly prepared and still not feeling particularly happy. I was very much reminded of the Sims when their different levels get too low and they get too depressed to do much of anything. I wished whoever was playing my game would do something to cheer me up. Sadly, however, there was no overlord of my game/life so I took matters into my own hands. After leaving a muggy law tutorial, I bee-lined for my phone and called up Courtney to ask her to help me with my laundry. I was a first-timer at Oxford and, while Mike was probably more knowledgeable about the whole process, I had already tried to find him once on Monday with no luck so I went to Courtney. Everything basically got better after that phone call.
Courtney helped me with my laundry and we discussed her paper on Anne Sexton. It was pretty wonderful since I felt genuinely helpful and able to help her organize her thoughts. I was also pleased to discover that I could help with poetry to a certain extent; previously, I had thought myself basically useless when it came to poetry. It didn't inspire me to sign up for a poetry course or anything, but I liked using that commonly abandoned side of my brain.
Since the UMass Summer Seminar was dead set on not allowing me to see my friends this week, it had assigned me to both balcony dinner on Monday and high table dinner at Tuesday. This didn't sit well with me and when Mike showed up ("You're alive!" "You're alive!"), I just told him to come get me at seven, screw going to pre-lecture drinks with the high table people. So he went off to change and I went off to collect my laundry. I got it all back (why is clean laundry always heavier than dirty laundry?) and decided in a spur-of-the-moment thing to wear my special, papaya-colored Oxford dress. I was already dressed quite nicely for the day and it could have passed for the dinner, but I wanted to look extra pretty for reasons that I think should be apparent since you know who was coming to get me for the lecture.
It was sweltering at the less-than-thrilling lecture about Mary Woolstonecraft. We were seated in our "usual" seats at the back where at least we got a very slight breeze from the open door. It was completely still in the room and everyone was just quietly stewing in their own sweat. The lecturerer droned on, totally oblivious to the heat in her passion for the subject. The highlight of the lecture came when John and Abigail Adams entered the narrative since Abigail had been a big supporter of Woolstonecraft while in London (and once back in MA). The lecturerer told us the Adamses were in London and then said, "But of course you know why." There was a continued dead silence. "Don't you?" she queried. Obviously, the room was at a loss. She nodded to herself and turned into a professor. "Why was John Adams in London at this time?" If it hadn't been so hot, I'm sure crickets would have roused themselves to do some appropriate chirping. "Anyone?" I raised my hand. "Anyone at all?" She finally caught sight of me and looked quite pleased before even hearing my response. "Yes?" "He was the first ambassador," I said clearly. She looked even more pleased and nodded her agreement. A titter swept the room and Mike leaned over to me. "Hey, are you a history major, by chance?" he joked. It was a good moment. Additionally, Bill Speck was seated at the end of my row and heard the whole thing. Take that Bill Speck!
On the way over from the lecture to the main hall, Courtney informed me that high table was more a suggestion than an actual mandate. I was pretty giddy about that and decided to just sit with my friends since I was having such a wonderful night. Dinner was lovely and I found myself seated in between Mike and Yuan and across from Courtney. This was the first formal dinner I've actually enjoyed, despite the unrelenting heat. When we finally spilled out of the main hall a few hours later (formal dinner takes forever), the temperature had dropped pleasantly and it was actually nice out for the first time in days. I was pretty giddy over this and, since I was wearing The Dress, I did a little twirl of glee. I felt about twelve, but I have never shirked from an opportunity to be a little girl again.
Mike, Yuan, Courtney and myself adjourned to my room. Courtney had an 8-page paper due the next day that she had yet to start so she left fairly quickly to go get some energy drinks from Sainsbury's and start the paper. At this juncture, Yuan asked if we could watch the Reduced Shakespeare Company! Mike groaned (he'd been battling The Winter's Tale for the better part of the past two weeks) but eventually agreed once I promised him there was only a very little history in it. We watched, we laughed (how could you not?!) and had generally good times. After the showing, Yuan headed off to bed like a good little student but Mike didn't really want to move at all. By this point, bugs had basically taken over my room and were everywhere, crawling all over the ceiling and flitting about in an extremely annoying manner. So we came up with the brilliant idea of opening the window and turning off the lights so all the bugs would realize how much lighter it is outside and just go out there. It seemed more sane than trying to kill all of them. So we turned off the lights, threw open the window and plunked down on the fainting couch to wait the experiment out.
We ended up talking for about two hours while waiting for the bugs to leave. It was nice. I know I mentioned this before, but I really like this moment in friendship when there's still so much you just don't know about the other person. There are so many mysteries and, if they're as set on friendship as you are, they slowly unveil their life for you and the number of mysteries subside. Telling someone else about your life and your context also makes you examine things that are so ordinary to you that you don't often think on them. But then you have to explain it to another person and it makes you think about it. It was quite a lovely night.
At some point Lauren returned and said we should relocate since she wanted to sleep. We were both half asleep on the couch anyway, but Mike dutifully got up and headed for the door. I just wanted to sleep at that point, so I declined his offer to come hang out in his room. So he asked what I was doing tomorrow to which I replied that I had no idea and he gave basically the same answer back to me and departed. I then spent the time in between his leaving and my drifting off to sleep replaying certain portions of our conversation in my head, trying to figure out if, like in Much Ado About Nothing, there was a double meaning in anything he had said. As ever, most things were ambiguous and could be taken any which way. But I was still highly satisfied with the whole evening and went to bed content, a first for the week.
Wednesday promised more of the horrible heat of Monday and Tuesday. I set out into town early in the day to avoid the sun but it was still quite warm out. Bill Speck had told me to get this book called Britain and the American Revolution edited by H.T. Dickinson but I had been having absolutely no luck finding it. The Trinity Library didn't have it (no surprise there), Blackwell's had stopped stocking it a few months back and I didn't have a Bodleian card. So I went to the other bookstores in town, come to find none of them stocked it. I was getting fairly annoyed with this quest and was basically on the verge of just doing without and simply sticking to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Declaration of Independence to write my paper. I resolved to inquire if Bill Speck himself had a copy of the stupid book that he could perhaps lend me.
So I went off to Bill Speck's class. Surprisingly, it was a complete joy. Finally, a good time in Bill Speck's class! Wednesday classes are always hit or miss since there is no reading for Wednesdays so he can just throw anything at us and then get annoying when we aren't prepared for it. This week, however, he brought in eight separate accounts of what happened on Lexington Green in April 1775 and asked us to read them and rate them in order from most credible to least credible. We were in two groups, coincidentally boys v. girls ("Too bad for them!" Felicia commented in true Smithie fashion) so he was going to compare how we rated things. After rating each document, we then had to defend our position to the class so it was a really good hour. Needless to say, us girls wiped the floor.
After such a good class, I headed straight to Exeter College. I knew their library had a copy of Dickinson's book and, while I had e-mailed their librarian, I had gotten no reply so I decided to inquire in person. The porter waved me in without a second thought and helpfully directed me to the library. After a few bits of good fortune (a keypad being out of order and allowing me access into a building I ordinarily couldn't have gotten into), I found myself at the door to the library. Exeter College is about the same size as Trinity but rather prettier, like most other colleges at Oxford. Their library is quite happily situated in the middle of a lovely English garden with benches and amazingly green grass. Flowers and other plant-life climb up the walls of the little, Gothic-inspired building. The library looks like a miniature Gothic cathedral, which is pretty adorable.
So I got all the way to the door of the library only to fail there. I needed an identification card to allow me access and there was no one inside the library to let me in. Not really all that downcast by this turn of events, I headed back to Trinity to talk to our librarian to see if there was anything she could do. There wasn't (she seems pretty ineffectual) and, after thanking her profusely for doing everything I myself had already done, I headed back up to the main floor and the exit of Trinity Library. Some random nice boy leaped to hold the door open for me which was quite pleasant and I came out into the ground level of Trinity Library. I came out of the stacks, turned towards the door and who should I see staring a little slip of paper with great consternation but Mike himself. I, of course, stopped dead and he looked up. Asking me to wait for him, he slipped into a stack and started pouring over the shelves in search of his book. I took to looking around myself and found a pretty hilarious set of volumes that were simply a publication of all the random pamphlets found in some Lord's house after he died. It looked old as sin and there was quite funny account of some remarkably stubborn guy's interrogation before a judge. The stubborn man would not be remotely helpful to any of the questioning. You could just hear the judge being on the verge of completely exploding with annoyance at the insolence before him.
I somehow tore myself away from the collection and followed Mike outside. As it turned out, he was about to go scouting for some kind of architectural marvel to do his final presentation on and asked if I'd like to go see the Canterbury Quadrangle at St. John's College. I agreed and we set off once more. We ended up walking around Oxford for basically the rest of the afternoon. It was very leisurely and relaxing. I knew I had all kinds of reading to be doing (what else is new?) but it was nice to just walk about. We ended up back at the park at Christ's Church and bought some ice cream from a little vendor before wandering around in the park and along the Thames. I feel like I'm in a movie.
We eventually came back because it was so hot and we had run out of water and were sweating all over the place. We came back to my room and decided it was high time we all took a trip again. Ireland was the general plan but then we thought perhaps Wales or maybe Scotland. This was just the beginning of many hours to come of general indecision regarding future travel, eventually involving both Yuan and Courtney.
Dinner was all right, I mistakenly took a lamp kebab which Mike kindly took from me. This left me with some cheesy, fried vegetable patties, some carrots, a roll and lots of water. I tasted good and I was quite full by the time we left. Mike had a showing of a bizarre Clint Eastwood film called Pale Rider for his Romance Lit class at eight and I went along. It was an extraordinarily poorly written, poorly acted and poorly directed film that would have been great fun to mock if other people hadn't been around. I still muttered to myself sporadically and Amy or Mike would sometimes pick up on my mutterings.
After the movie, we came back to my room and were almost immediately shooed out by Lauren. I don't know when I became the crazy roommate who stays out until all hours of the night and morning and she became the one who goes to bed at ten, but we switched over at some point and it's quite discombobulating. Anyway, I decided it was high time I got some actual work done so I grabbed my laptop, my notebook and my handy copy of Common Sense by Thomas Paine and changed into my boxers before following Mike upstairs.
Mike quickly grew tired to reading both Great Expectations and The Idylls of the King by Tennyson. It was still unbearably hot and it was hard to focus on anything. So he set up shop at his computer arranging "Hotel California" for his a cappella group, Wicked Pitch. And cue awesomeness. I finished Paine at around 12:30 and then stole his camera to copy his Paris pictures onto my desktop. When it finished uploading at around 1:20, I had nearly 1,000 pictures from Paris. I think if I just get Yuan's camera, I'll be up there. I told you took way too many pictures.
Mike and I hung out watching Parisian videos he took and flipping through the pictures on my laptop when Nastassja showed up, drunk and broke into Mike's sleeping room-mate, Sam's, room. Maniacal laughter from Nastassja ensued and we weren't sure whether she was going to devour him and offer him up to Satan or have sex with him. I decided at about this point that I didn't really want to be there for whichever option Nastassja chose and said I was going back downstairs. Mike begged me not to leave him with Sam and drunken, evil Nastassja so I told him to feel free to come downstairs and set up camp there. He shrugged and said he's probably be down in a bit. I nodded, still feeling quite awake and left to the dulcet sounds of continuing maniacal laughter coming out of Sam's room.
As promised, Mike appeared a few minutes later. He hadn't really thought they would have sex but then, after pondering what usually happens with a girl shows up drunk in a guy's room at three in the morning, he agreed with my assessment of the situation. He had dutifully brought Idylls of the King was attempting to get through it. After a bit, he remarked how he really just wanted to go to sleep but he also really did not want to go back into his room. I offered up the couch, my floor, whatever but we were both pretty confused about what to do since neither of us had ever been sexiled. You won't believe it, but we actually ended up deciding that it would probably just be the most comfortable for all parties if Mike slept in the bed with me. I'm not even sure how this went down and I was there.
Surprisingly, it wasn't at all weird. Probably because we slept next to each other in Paris. The bed was actually bigger than I thought and we both had plenty of room. (When I say "plenty" I mean we weren't hitting each other in the face with our respective elbows, but it was still tight.) I find my life increasingly like the life of some other girl who is way cooler than me. This girl is awesome. She attends Oxford University and goes off to Paris for a weekend holiday and is totally chill about letting guys crash in her bed. She even says witty things occasionally and has moments of social competence. I really can't believe this life over here is actually me living it. Things are actually happening to me over here! I'm finally getting to have a life that I can tell other people about without having to worry about boring them to tears.
Mike's alarm went off at eight and he scooted out and back to his room. Happily, Lauren was still asleep or I would have gotten quite the interrogation from that quarter if she had seen Mike leave my room at eight in the morning. I haven't seen him since so I don't know how this will change anything, probably not at all. I starting to think there is some supremely unkissable, undateable quality about me. I should just buy ten cats and an old farmhouse and be done with it. So now I'm sitting here at my computer, pondering over everything and basically letting my little crush wane. Crushes never last very long with me, probably because they never really go anywhere. This was the first time probably since Evan I've had a crush on someone who might actually have reciprocated at some point. But I forgot to factor in my undateable quality so now I'm back to being perfectly happy being Mike's buddy. If he didn't make a move on me at any point in the last twenty-four hours, is he really ever going to? Seems unlikely. He had ample opportunity.
So I take the words of the girls around me and the relayed conversations at face value. He likes me and that's enough for me to know right now. He likes me and he thinks I'm really smart, which makes me feel great. I've always had this side of me that fears people thinking I'm a complete ditz and I'm kind of simultaneously realizing how great it is to be a "smart girl." I shouldn't have to fear showing my intelligence so I just speak up and share whatever tidbit I've got. At this point, I've decided I'm not changing in an attempt to lure males. This is me, I don't want to have to act around you. Either you like me as me or you don't. Thank you, Smith.
Love love love,
Corey
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