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David Webster doesn’t particularly care about Harvard, at least not in the sense that he is invested in Harvard any more than anything else in his life. He cares about Harvard as much as he cares about his childhood or fond memories at the beach or his best friend or his first words or his first kiss or his first fuck or his first fight or his best fight or his worst fight. Every experience is an opportunity to be written about, and that is enough to Webster. He doesn’t care if his first kiss (a boy, three years his senior, in a janitor’s closet in prep school during a basketball game) didn’t go as planned (a girl, preferably shorter than him, after a successful first date). The reality is ironically more writable than the imagined ideal, and thus Webster is pleased.
To Webster, life is not a holy, singular thought. It’s also not a narrative -- at least, not a linear one. It’s just a series of experiences. The only thing that matters is that each experience is awarded equal esteem and equal drama. Each event could branch into a sea of legitimate opportunity, a source of blood and smoke and life that he could transcribe onto paper or lock into his mind: cerebral, empirical evidence of a life lived. Harvard is a minefield rich with potential material -- pure, non-fictional gold that he could turn into a fascinating autobiography. Webster has to be careful, though -- sometimes his fondness for observation betrays his true ambition (experience, experience, experience) and he ends up in the corner, watching critically, blue-silver smoke curling quick and aloof around an infallible smile. He often catches himself, like waking up from a dream, and shouts some terrible nicety to a fellow classmate at a bar, a sloppy caricature of friendship that is somehow more arrogant than sycophantic. It isn’t that he can’t be friendly -- he has plenty of friends -- but he is never sure how much he really cares about them beyond paragraphs of dedication in his book. A funny story here (Webster laughs too loud), an altruistic act here (because that’s what friends do, Webster knows), a betrayal there (overdramatized). Webster reads a lot, and he watches a lot, and he imitates almost-flawlessly. Very few things come naturally to him, Webster realizes (and tries to ignore).
Real emotion usually bites into him like a heart attack. When his sister died, it took him months to recover. When he found himself thinking about what a great chapter this would make, he became sick. When he realized how authentic his heartache was, he found that he was relieved. When he found that he was relieved to be authentic, he threw out his typewriter, marched to the nearest postoffice, and signed up for the army. Harvard made him into a monster, he stresses loudly over too few beers in bars to strangers. He is a sociopath. He wants to see the world legitimately, he adds. That’s why I’ve joined the paratroopers. They’ve got the toughest assignment in the entire army.
“I’ve heard that’s a tough fucking gig,” says a burly-looking man next to him. Webster imitates his thick-shouldered stance, the easy, careless grip on his beer, like no man could touch him. He tries out the curse word on his tongue, fucking, and discovers that he still finds it distasteful. There’s no excuse for crudeness (except when it emerges unannounced, called for in the throes of righteous anger).
He leaves around 3 in the morning from the bar and hails down a cab. The cab that arrives screeches up onto the curb with an angry squeal. The cabbie yells, “Jesus Christ, hurry the fuck up, I wanna make at least a little more money tonight. How the hell ‘m I s’pposed to do that with fuckin’ putzes like you!”
Webster slides into the backseat with a frown and says, “Harvard.” The cabbie tears into the wheel with another sharp squeal.
“Aren’t you technically in the service industry?” he asks the cabbie, who shoots him a glare under a furrowed eye brow and a messy mop of brown hair. His face is surprisingly youthful for such a sharp mouth.
“What -- you want me to call you ‘sir’?”
“No,” Webster says. The glare glances off his forehead. He meets the cabbie’s eyes in the window and continues, “Do you treat all of your passengers so kindly, or is this affection exclusively for me?”
“You sweet-talkin’ me?” The cabbie smacks his gum. Webster finds it almost enticingly insolent, and smiles at him in the rearview window.
“What’s your name?” Webster asks.
The cabbie flicks a nametag taped under the radio dial. “I thought they taught you how to read in college,” he says insultingly, nodding to the Harvard crest at the lapel of Webster’s jacket.
“I’m afraid you thought wrong,” he says. “Joseph Liebgott.”
“‘S’pose you wanna tell me your name now, huh?”
“It’s David Webster.”
“Sounds like a college boy name.”
“I didn’t choose it.”
Liebgott’s lips twist into an inscrutable knot, and Webster accidentally meets his eyes in the rearview mirror again. They’re dark and thirsty; something insatiably predatory lurks there, but somehow, Webster feels unthreatened, like Liebgott is some playground menace he knows he can beat.
“Are you Jewish?” Webster asks.
“Yeah -- was it the nose or the name that gave me away?” Liebgott asks defiantly, like he thinks Webster might suddenly reveal himself to be an anti-Semite.
“The star,” says Webster, keeping his voice carefully monotone, staring at the delicate silver chain glinting between the pale, bony knobs of Liebgott’s collarbone. He watches Liebgott swallow with a dim sense of satisfaction.
“Webster’s not a Jewish name,” Liebgott says eventually.
“Does that mean you’re going to stop talking to me?” Webster asks, half-teasing.
“Hey,” Liebgott says, half-sternly. “I don’t roll that way, not like you conceited college fucks, alright? Think they’re so superior...barkin’ orders at me...talking about their fuckin’ useless books and their shitty art, lookin’ at me like I don’t know nothin’...” Liebgott mumbles on, glancing out the window.
“I’m talking to you,” Webster says.
“Yeah, so what?”
Webster stays quiet and stares at Liebgott. He has skinny knees which he has clearly tried to hide behind his baggy clothes, but Webster eyes the sharp, tiny jut of bone with a fond eye. His wrists are the same -- razor-thin and razor-sharp -- with cutting little knuckles and ragged, chewed-up fingernails.
“I’m joining the army, you know.”
“Oh, yeah? Good for you.”
Webster chooses to ignore the sarcasm. “Thanks. I leave for training in a few weeks. Have you ever been to Toccoa, Georgia?”
“No.”
“Neither have I. It’s probably scorching. I’ve got an aunt who used to live in the South; when I asked her how it was and all she said was “sweaty.” Can you believe that?”
“No.”
“Me neither. I wonder what they’re going to have us do.”
“Eh, some of you they’ll keep for training. The rotten ones they’ll kill on the spot.”
Webster’s eyes widen. “Are you serious?”
Liebgott levels him with a long stare, and doesn’t crack. “You think I’d lie to you ‘bout something like that? Listen, college boy, I’ve fuckin’ been there.”
Webster stares back. “You’re joking.”
“‘Course I’m fucking joking, dipshit. How the hell’d a dumb fuck like you get into Harvard?”
Webster clenches his jaw, pressing forward in his seat to get as far as he can into Liebgott’s space without jumping into the front seat. He doesn’t exactly appreciate his naivety being taken advantage of. “Oh yeah? How the hell did an insolent imbecile like you even get a job?” He says, his voice raising well above his careful monotone for the first time since he’s stepped into the cab.
Liebgott slams on the break. “That’s it. Get the fuck out of my cab!”
“No.”
“I’ll fuckin’ drag your ass out, punk, don’t you fuckin’ think I won’t. Get. Out.”
“If you kick me out, I’ll have you fired immediately. Your cab and your ass belongs to the city of Boston. All it will take is one simple phone call.”
“Oh, don’t give me that bullshit.”
“Then shut the hell up and drive. Now.”
“Don’t you fuckin’ try to tell me what to do!”
“It’s in the goddamn job description!” Webster roars.
It only takes about three seconds of heated, mutual glaring before Liebgott storms out of the car and rips open Webster’s door.
“Get out!”
“No.”
“Get. Out!”
“No!”
“Fine, college boy!” Liebgott snarls, reaching into the cab and catching Webster in a headlock, bodily dragging him out of the car. Webster lands a solid kick in Liebgott’s stomach, promptly knocking him off his feet and onto the pavement. Liebgott jumps up immediately with his arm cocked, kneeing Webster up against the car.
“You little shit,” Webster growls, grabbing Liebgott by the arms and flipping them around so that Liebgott is pinned against the car. Liebgott thrashes violently, digging his pathetic nails in Webster’s biceps and kicking the living crap out of Webster’s shins, but Webster has enough weight and leverage on him to flip Liebgott around onto his front.
“You fucking bastard, you little fuck -- I'll kill you!” Liebgott bellows, but half his face is flattened against the cab, and so his protests are muffled. Even so, he’s impressively loud.
“Shut the fuck up, you’re making a scene!” Webster hisses.
“I’m makin’ a scene?! You fucker--!”
Webster hushes him violently, shaking him by the arms. Liebgott lurches backward with one powerful thrust, taking Webster by surprise and successfully unhinging his grip. Liebgott then tackles him to the ground, straddling his hips and laying into his face with a flurry of fists. Webster manages to throw his arm over his face for protection, using his elbow to throw off Liebgott and finally regain the upper hand, pinning Liebgott’s wrists to the ground and baring over his body like a bulldog.
Webster, for his part, and despite his upper-middle class upbringing and overpriced education, has been in his fair share of fights -- usually in bars, and usually with men who have a tough time swallowing Webster’s “creepy staring” and “cocky smile.” Webster isn’t even particularly conceited; in fact, compared to his classmates, he’s relatively well-meaning and usually more sympathetic. He’s won and lost in equal measure. He’s reasonably built -- broad-shouldered, well-muscled, but not unattractively bulky -- and a good fighter, especially if someone appeals to his considerable temper. Webster no longer minds being misunderstood -- it happens so frequently now that it barely even registers, resulting in a kind of uncaring naivety that often rubs people the wrong way. But he sometimes gets lonely, and recognizing that he’s lonely sets him off like nothing else. It disrupts his illusion that he’s living a full life (because who can live a full life when they’re alone?). He’s tried to make friends, tried to be nice, tried to be what he thinks people want -- but you’ll never be what people want, only what people expect. And that only pisses Webster off even more.
So he joined the army. How could you be lonely in a place like that? Friendship is the only thing that men have, even in death. Webster can at least recognize that.
He tries to keep his face as cool and unfazed as possible while Liebgott unabashedly thrashes and screams obscenities at him at the top of his lungs. Webster flinches at his passion -- his raw, purpling face and his sweaty hair and his striking eyes, wet and dark and raging with fury. He releases his wrists and stands up. The street is mostly empty. He expected a crowd of amused spectators, perhaps a few rowdy boys chanting ‘fight!’ He’s disappointed.
Liebgott stays laying on the ground, not tensely but surprisingly lax -- it’s not passive, but confident, like he knows Webster won’t jump him again. He stares unflinchingly when Webster passes him a cigarette.
“Where’d you learn to fight like that, college boy.”
“Probably the same place that you did,” Webster says, and his monotone has returned. He takes a drag of his cigarette, and sits on the ground next to Liebgott’s head. They sit quietly, propped up against the cab on the side of the street. If people stare at them, neither man takes any notice.
“Doubt. Any education I got is one hundred percent street, rich boy.”
“Well I took fighting classes, okay. Tae Kwon Do 101. Introductory Boxing. Got A’s in them, too.”
Liebgott blows a fume of smoke into his face. It stings Webster’s eyes.
“It was a joke.”
“Nah, babe, see, jokes are funny.”
Webster shakes his head and says, “You know I actually do have places to be, so, if you don’t mind--”
“I mind,” Liebgott jumps up from the ground, and grabs Webster around the arm. Webster stares at the hand, unblinking, grinning slowly.
“Hey, what you smilin’ about? I’m not even done with you yet, ‘m just takin’ a break.”
Webster nods, still smiling. “I know. We could take it to my place.”
“You askin’ me out?”
“Maybe.”
Liebgott releases his arm quickly, like it’s burning him. “Sounds fuckin’ queer to me,” Liebgott says, and it’s harsh -- harsh enough that Webster takes a step back. Webster thinks his eyes are a little scared -- defensive, his mind supplies hopefully -- but his voice is hard and his jaw is serious, so Webster backs off.
He’s known he was gay since he realized that he enjoyed his prep school experiments just a bit more than the other boys; experimenting is in David’s nature, but this -- this might be real. Girls are nice too; sometimes, he still fucks them if the mood strikes him -- long, skinny girls with sharp shoulder blades and dark, soft hair that he buries his noises into when he fucks them from behind. It just so happens that he likes to fuck long, skinny boys the same way, and more often. You can be rougher with boys, more careless. Girls are so intoxicating; their smell, their taste, the way you can get drunk off of them, off every sense -- but boys require less thought. David thinks so much already during the day -- in school, in writing, at work -- that when it comes to fucking, he likes something he can hold down and bite and suck bruises into, thoughtlessly. He can give into every passion without consequence.
Liebgott, he knows, is exactly his type -- a long, skinny boy with dark, soft-looking hair and a mean smile -- something he can fight and probably, eventually, defeat, with his mouth and his cock and his hands. Something he can feel under his fingers, hard enough for his nerves to memorize the sensation, to record and mull over later, so that he doesn’t have to think when it’s actually happening.
“Are you a fuckin’ queer?” Liebgott demands.
Webster swallows, feeling both hopelessly attracted to Liebgott and simultaneously repulsed by him. Somehow he never expects to be rejected, which he can attribute to both ego and delusion. He feels embarrassed -- a sensation he hates -- because embarrassment only affects people who are alone.
“Are you?” Webster returns instead of answering, voice surprisingly flat and unaffected.
“No.”
“Do you...have a girlfriend?”
“No,” Liebgott says defensively. “But I still ain’t a fuckin’ queer like you.”
Webster licks his lips. “You know what? I’m just going to go; I’ll catch another cab.”
He starts to walk away, until he remembers that he never paid his tab. “Wait! Here’s twenty bucks...” he trails off, digging into his pocket for the cash.
“Save it, I don’t want your money,” Liebgott says sharply.
“No, really, take it--”
“Look, college boy, I don’t need your fucking money, and ‘no’ means no, got it?”
Webster stuffs his money back into his pocket. “Fine,” he says shortly.
“Good.”
Webster leaves. He goes to a bar, uses the money he was going to give to Liebgott to buy a beer for a long, skinny girl with dark hair. He brings her back to his dormitory, and fucks her harder than he’s ever dared to fuck a girl before.
--
The next time they meet at a bar near Harvard that David frequents when he doesn’t want to see anyone he knows. It’s a seedy little place that lacks even the pretension of being fashionably impoverished. It isn’t trendy; stuck-up college students don’t even visit it ironically. It is just a hole in the wall with one unshaven bartender and a row of stools with cracked leather seats and the kind of florescent lights that manage to drain everything of color and life.
Of course David and Joe would meet again in a place that looks like death.
Joe is sitting alone at the end of the bar, nursing a beer and occasionally glancing up at the snowy TV screen which shows a baseball game on ESPN, sometimes interrupting the commentator with his own snarky narration. David studies him carefully. Joe has a bruise under his eye that was not there the last time they saw each other. It’s swollen and angry, like he’s been scratching at it. His mouth also contains a new scar, evidence of a busted lip. Curled around the glass like that as he swallows down beer, David can’t help but think that those lips look even more red and obscene than the last time.
He calls the bartender over and buys Liebgott a beer.
Webster watches Liebgott’s eyebrows furrow in confusion when the beer appears in front of him. He looks around, and Webster has a smile waiting for him.
“You’re a fuckin’ creep, you know that.” Joe doesn’t have to raise his voice; besides the bartender, they are completely alone.
“Is that how you greet the man that just bought you a drink? Obviously your manners are just as disturbingly nonexistent as the last time we saw each other.”
“Fucking prick...I didn’t even ask for this! I’m doing perfectly fine with the one beer I got.”
“Why, are you a lightweight? You look like a lightweight. You’re scrawny.”
“Oh, I’m fuckin’ scrawny, huh? Asshole, I’ll show you scrawny--” Joe growls, smacking his beer onto the counter and stalking over to Webster, who continues to study him, unflinching.
“Do you have some sort of fetish for losing fights?” Webster asks quietly, standing up when Liebgott reaches him. He’s bigger than Liebgott, in height and width, but he stares up at Webster like he’s the playground bully, and Webster is his victim. It doesn’t make sense to Webster, but sometimes he likes it when things don’t make sense, if he’s in the mood for it. To be honest, he has enough self-confidence that Liebgott couldn’t ever actually intimidate him, not really. What Webster has in spades is boredom -- always -- and Liebgott is a fucking mystery he’d like to spend some time on.
“I should just kick your ass, you fuckin’ college prick,” Liebgott snarls.
“I’d say the same to you, but...” Webster says quietly in that same infuriating monotone, stroking his thumb along Liebgott’s bruised cheekbone, finding it surprisingly soft -- pale, smooth, except for that smudge of violet-red. “It looks like someone beat me to it.”
Liebgott punches him in the face, right across the nose. The bartender shouts a protest, but Webster raises his hand to silence him, looking Liebgott dead in the eye as he wipes away the trickle of blood steadily streaming from his nose.
“I’m not going to hit you back.”
“That’s ‘cause you’re a fuckin’ weak-ass pussy.”
“Sure,” Webster acquiesces with an infuriating little grin, eyes blue and steady on Liebgott’s, like he’s thinking of some private joke that Liebgott hasn’t been let in on.
Liebgott reaches back to punch him again, but Webster catches his wrist mid-swing. “Stop.”
“Let go of me.”
“Are you going to try to punch me again?”
“Probably,” Liebgott shrugs, with a quick, sharp grin -- again, that insolence that Webster finds so curiously enticing. He releases his wrist.
“You know -- if you responded to people buying you drinks like a normal human being, i.e. accepting it with a ‘thank you’ as opposed to punching them in the face, we could actually be having a decent time right now.”
“You forget, college boy, that I didn’t fuckin’ come here to have a ‘decent time’ with you; I told you last time I wasn’t a goddamn queer, and if you keep forcing it on me, I swear to god I’ll make sure you never fuckin’ forget it.”
Webster’s lip twitches, the first slip in his perfect, unfazed facade.
“Fine. I guess I’ll just be going then.”
“Yeah, buddy. You will.”
Webster swallows and glances at the bartender, a little desperately, before leaving. He looks back, expecting to see Joe at his seat again, watching the game, just as he’d found him, but instead he’s drinking the beer Webster bought for him, stroking his own bruised cheek.
--
The last place Webster would expect to have his third encounter with Joseph D. Liebgott was a public library. Webster doesn’t have to go to the public library in Boston; the libraries at Harvard are bigger and nicer and better and he has full access to them, but it’s like with the bar. He likes to feel separate from Harvard. Different. It reinforces his loneliness but it also makes him feel like he has an edge; ultimately, his own self-image, no matter how contrived, is more important.
Joe is sitting alone at a table in the back of the library. He looks like he might be attempting discretion, curled up in a lonely tweed chair with a comic book resting on his bony knees, but there’s a wide stream of sunlight glittering with tiny dust particles that seems to isolate him. Webster can’t look away. Joe’s tongue pokes out of the corner of his mouth in concentration, hollowing out his cheeks. He looks up. Webster feels his cheeks flush but he doesn’t stop staring.
Liebgott shakes his head, jaw clenching, and ignores him, pointedly turning the page. But now that Webster knows he’s been caught, he doesn’t feel bad about approaching him regardless of how badly he’s unwanted.
“I never thought I would see you in a library.”
“Never thought I’d meet a guy who manages to get into Harvard but doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘leave me the fuck alone or say goodbye to your fuckin’ balls.’” Liebgott is trying to look tough, and to anyone else, he would probably be succeeding, but Webster is so intent on projecting his own desperation that all he sees in Liebgott’s face is his own wanting staring back at him. He tries another approach.
“Look, I...I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. I really am.”
“I’m not queer.”
Webster runs a hand through his hair in exasperation. “What is your obsession with homosexuality? I...may be gay...”
Liebgott raises his eyebrows.
“...but that doesn’t mean that every relationship I pursue with a man intends to be sexual, okay? Maybe I just want to be your friend.”
“That’s literally the lamest fuckin’ thing I’ve ever heard in my goddamn life,” Liebgott says shortly.
Webster swallows.
“You really that lonely that the only guy you’re trailin’ after is the one who shoved you out of his cab and then beat the shit outta you?”
“You came out of that altercation looking a lot worse than I did. I won that fight and you know it.”
“Whatever, college boy, either way -- it’s not like I gave you any reason to stick around, eh? Unless you want another fight,” he says pointedly.
“I don’t want to fight.”
“Then what do you want?” Liebgott’s voice raises significantly, and a librarian whips her head around to shush them.
“Hey, fuck you!” Liebgott yells.
Her eyes narrow as she stalks over to them. “Out!” she hisses.
“Fine, bitch.” Liebgott says, tucking his comic under his arm and leaving without a second glance.
“That doesn’t belong to you!”
“Calm down, lady, I already checked it out.”
She turns on Webster. “You’re out, too!”
Webster sighs and follows Liebgott outside into the thick Boston sunshine. “You got me kicked out the library,” he says flatly.
“Whatever, they always let me back in,” he says with a quick grin, before he remembers himself, and the grin folds itself into a scowl. “Now is there anything else Your Royal College Boy requires or can I get back to reading in peace?”
Webster bites his lip. “What...what are you reading?” He asks, pathetically.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, I’m outta here,” Liebgott snarls, turning on his heel and stomping away down the street. Every muscle in Webster itches to follow him, but he forces himself to remain rigid -- perfectly self-controlled, and perfectly alone.
--
Webster doesn’t appreciate organized sports but every Friday night the boys on his hall usually throw together a game of rugby, weather permitting. Webster likes rugby. It’s horribly dangerous, and it’s messy, but his broad shoulders and thick build means he’s naturally good at it (Webster likes anything he’s naturally good at). When he’s winning, he doesn’t become careless and overconfident like most players; instead he becomes hyper focused, as if he’s trying to impressive the self he was five minutes ago. When he’s losing, however, he becomes unstoppable; rugby teases aggression out of him, coaxes it out of him like an animal from a cage. Violence suits him, when appropriate. After the game (they win) the boys visit a nearby bar, populated with Harvard students just like Webster, who are constantly possessed by an urgent need to get off the campus (and yet, and yet, they all end up in the same place, talking about the same things, fucking the same people, but Webster won’t.)
Webster doesn’t drink on winning nights. He’d rather store the memory lucid, clean. Drinking is for forgetting.
So when he finally leaves the bar after nearly two hours of observing his teammates down beer after beer after shot, he is still in the mindset of winning (productive, rather than celebratory), and he will use that to justify why he thinks he can save a certain surly-mouthed, Jewish cabbie from a pair of men who are much too large to be fighting someone as small and skinny as Joseph D. Liebgott.
They have him pinned up against the wall (a job that almost requires both of their strength in its entirety, judging by Liebgott’s impressive amount of thrashing, and cursing, and bearing his teeth), spitting blood onto their shoes from a cracked mouth (as red and obscene as ever). Webster can’t make out the insults they’re hurling at him. One of them sees him approaching, but Webster is too quick; he grabs the smaller one by the back of his head and slams him, face-first, into the brick wall. The other one jumps him immediately. Webster barely has time for the thought thank god for sobriety before he’s dodging the fist, and slamming his own into the thug’s face. The punch disorients him enough that Webster can quickly land a forceful round of hits, and the man falls to the ground with his partner, beaten.
Webster meet’s Liebgott’s eyes. His eyelashes make long shadows in the dirty alleyway, long, spidery lines that fall on his cheeks, one of which bears a bright red patch, which will wake up as a bruise tomorrow. Liebgott should look vulnerable like this, Webster thinks. Maybe he should even look grateful. Webster’s disappointed. All that’s there is wet, naked fury. Webster opens his mouth to say something, but there’s nothing to say. Does he say sorry? (For what...protecting him? For coming too late?) Does he say something sarcastic?
Instead, something stupid: “Did you know them?”
Liebgott spits blood on his shoes.
“Joe...” Webster likes saying that. Joe. As if...
“I’m not your fuckin’ buddy, okay? I’m not queer, I’m not your friend, and I’m not fuckin’ weak, alright? I don’t need you to come up and act like you’re some big fuckin’ hero. I can handle myself,” Liebgott snarls, voice raw and hoarse. Webster looks at his throat and finds fingermarks, like he’s been choked.
“Well forgive me for trying to help you then, okay? Forgive me for not wanting to see you get your ass kicked.” He goes for hurt, thinking maybe, maybe, it will touch the conscience that it now appears Liebgott doesn’t have. But instead he just sounds angry. Childish. As furious as Liebgott looks.
“You better get the fuck outta my way or so help you God,” Liebgott breathes, and Webster can practically see the steam coming out of his ears, eyes bruising.
“No.”
Liebgott throws him into the wall. Webster supposes it should hurt.
--
In the following weeks, Webster never once looks for Liebgott’s cabbie, nor does he read Flash Gordon, nor does he visit the bar that looks like death. He doesn’t stealthily follow skinny boys with floppy brown hair in train stations. He doesn’t stop to look if he hears someone say “Joe” in a crowded shopping center. He doesn’t volunteer to interview cab drivers for an article for the university newspaper. Instead:
He reads Kafka and eats Chinese takeout in lobby of his dormitory.
He reads Fitzgerald and sips a cappuccino at a coffee shop on campus.
He reads Hamlet and drinks whiskey at a student-run bar.
He avoids his own room at all costs. His bed is always empty. He sleeps with random girls he meets at Frat parties he doesn’t belong to and he always passes out in their beds, despite not drinking enough to even feel more than tipsy. It’s a trick he learned in prep school when he didn’t want to deal with parents. It hasn’t failed him yet.
But sometimes he gets drunk for real, never remembering himself, also finding evidence the next day -- an angry girl from a one-night-stand, a furious bartender from a club he trashed, a police officer he pissed on, and finally, a roommate he punched, resulting in Webster waking up half-naked one morning in a communal shower stall with a half-packed suitcase full of clothes, his RA standing over him with a fresh black eye informing him he can find another place to live, stat.
The school won’t expel him but they also won’t give him a new dorm. The student-run bar won’t even let him through the door. The library won’t have him.
Ten minutes later, he and his suitcase find themselves at the bar that looks like death.
It is completely empty except for the bartender. He orders a rum and coke, staring at the peeling white-tiled ceiling. There is a poem he thinks of as he counts the cracks, whispering to himself.
“If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees, -- if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself.”
He forgets what comes next. “Beer, please,” Webster asks, finishing his drink. “Heineken.”
“Only one drink in him and he’s already talking to himself,” the bartender grumbles. Webster ignores him.
There was one time that he saw Liebgott since he saved him behind the bar. He’s forced himself to bury it underground, really he has, but his mind keeps re-sifting through the sand like that’s its only job -- to maintain a running reel of Liebgott and Webster’s Brief Encounters. Every time he finds even the briefest of escapes in a book or a girl or the bottom of a bottle, his mind turns like a switch back to Liebgott. The last time had been outside of one of his lecture halls that was on the outskirts of the campus. There was a cab waiting there which he dutifully ignored until he heard that voice, hoarse from yelling, shouting at an older man to hurry up. Webster met his eyes, shell-shocked. Liebgott didn’t look shocked, or even angry. Those eyes flipped from angry to scared in all of two seconds -- as if he’d seen a ghost. And Webster didn’t step forward and he didn’t say anything and he was even, for once, the first to look away. But he looked long enough to see those eyes turn hard again -- forced, his mind persisted, forced and reluctant -- before Liebgott licked his lips and drove away, leaving the older man gaping on the street, and Webster alone once more.
A little bell chimes from behind him, shattering his recollection, but Webster doesn’t turn around, even when another body occupies the stool next to him and orders a beer in a painfully familiar voice. “Heineken,” he specifies. Webster feels his eyes on the side of his face. Fucking Liebgott.
“‘I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!’” Webster says, almost defiantly, as if he knows that Liebgott will mock him. “It’s William Carlos Williams. The poet, I mean.” He pretends like he’s directing this to the bartender, who ignores him.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Liebgott says, tonelessly. Webster immediately turns to stare at him. Liebgott has a new bruise he notices instantly, a raw, dirty-green smear on his neck, like a hickey, or a thumb print, as if someone had curled their hand around his neck, forcing their thumb into the delicate flesh.
“Why?” Webster says dryly, already exhausted.
“You’ve got to me the most pathetic, typical fucking son of a bitch there ever was.”
“Please...enlighten me.”
Liebgott scoffs at him, incredulous. “For fuck’s sake, look at yourself! You’re reciting fuckin’ poetry -- and not just any poetry, but the some angsty, sad-ass bitch bullshit -- and drinking alone. I can’t even fuckin’ look at you.”
“Then don’t,” Webster says miserably, taking another swig from his beer. “Leave.”
“Oh, please...I can’t leave you here like this, you’ll probably write a sappy suicide note, in poetry, of course, and try to hang yourself by your tie.”
“Why do you care? You hate me. And I’m not even wearing a goddamn tie.”
“Well you probably have one in that ugly suitcase of yours, which, by the way -- who the fuck brings a suitcase to a bar? You decide it’s trendy to be homeless now or some shit?”
“My roommate kicked me out,” he says shortly.
Liebgott is quiet for a moment. His eyes look darker than ever in the deathly glare of the bar’s fluorescent lighting, scattering his bony contours with shadows. They look almost sad, too, but not sad for Webster. The sadness seems more regretful somehow, or perhaps self-pitying, as if he, not Webster, is the homeless one. His eyelashes practically drip onto his cheeks, Webster thinks. Shit.
“So where you stayin’?”
“I don’t know. A hotel, probably.”
“You’re not stayin’ in a hotel.”
“Yes. I am.”
“No, you’re not...do you know what they do in hotels? They wash the sheets like once a week. Those bedcovers? Never. And there’s bugs fuckin’ everywhere.”
“Well I don’t exactly have any other options.”
Liebgott shrugs and lowers his eyes. He’s quiet for a minute, two minutes, and then, “Guess you want me to offer you a place to sleep, right?”
Webster finally looks at him, penetrative, demanding. “What?”
“Look, I’m not some heartless fuckin’ bastard okay?” Liebgott rubs at the bruise on his neck reflexively. “Just...just trust me, alright? I ain’t gonna kill you or nothin’. I just want to...”
“Want to what?”
“I don’t know...I’m sorry for I was earlier, okay? You happy? You didn’t...fuck it...you didn’t deserve how I treated you, okay? I’m not some kinda monster, I just...I don’t know, I’ve been having a hard time dealing with some shit lately.”
“Okay.”
“Huh?”
“Okay, I’ll stay with you. Even if I risk you smothering me in my sleep.”
Liebgott grins cruelly. “Jesus, are you always this quick to trust people? Fuckin’ college boy...”
“Goddamnit,” Webster mutters, kicking over his bar stool. He throws his suit case over his shoulder and forces the door open with his foot.
“Wait!”
“No.”
“Jesus, I was kidding, take a fuckin’ joke, Web...”
Web. Webster feels a spike of...something, latching onto his spine, holding him in place.
“Why did you act like you hated me so much?”
“Who said I was acting?”
Webster shoves Liebgott into the wall and turns his back on him, stalking back down the street.
“Okay, I get it, sorry, but man, seriously, learn to take a fuckin’ joke,” Liebgott says, with fake bravado, nerves creeping up his bruised throat.
“Is that how you got those, hmm? Too many jokes?” Webster gestures to Liebgott’s throat, and his cheek, and the smooth, swollen scar on his lip.
Liebgott looks away, guarded. “People in this town don’t like queers much,” he says shortly, drawing the scarred lip into his mouth. Webster chooses to categorize this as a nervous gesture before processing, wait, what--
“You’re gay?”
Liebgott hushes him furiously, pushing him into a nearby alleyway.
“Are you fuckin’ crazy? Seriously, how the fuck a guy like you got into Harvard I have no idea--”
“I’m sorry, I just -- all this time, you --”
Liebgott kisses him, square on the mouth. It should be awful, by anyone’s standards -- both of their lips are chapped, their teeth are everywhere, they smell like cheap beer and Webster’s suitcase is awkwardly digging into his leg, but, but--
It’s the most perfect thing that’s happened to Webster since, well--
He can’t remember. So he stops trying, pulls his mouth away, cups Liebgott’s face in his hands (gently, this time), and does it again.
--
For two months straight, Webster wakes up in the same bed. It’s a wooden, creaking thing that tends to bang against the wall, so they take extra care not to fuck too hard (a sometimes-impossible endeavor, so they take it to the floor, or the wall, or the shower, or the kitchen counter). The apartment itself is cramped but surprisingly clean; Webster takes it upon himself to squish all of Liebgott’s precious comics into a corner in order to make room for his own impressive book collection. He’s been sentenced to the little balcony if he needs to smoke (he set off the fire alarm). He’s not allowed to touch any kitchen appliances except the refrigerator (he burnt toast, and set off the fire alarm again). Webster is not too bothered by these amendments. Liebgott is an unexpectedly excellent cook, and once, after Webster claimed he’d had a ‘fucking terrible day, wrought with every possible monstrosity you can think of,’ Liebgott let Web fuck him on the balcony. They fight too much and their relationship is never welcomed by any institution they enter but somehow every imagined hiccup in their lives never feels much like a hiccup at all. It feels like another promise to each other, like one of Webster’s sappy poems or Liebgott’s violent declarations of love, that no matter what rattles their imperfect cage, they won’t let it in.
“What about the paratroopers?” Liebgott asks one morning, head pillowed on Webster’s chest. “You said, like fuckin’ forever ago, you said--”
“Fuck the paratroopers. They don’t need me.”
Webster loves feeling needed. But this, this -- his hands roaming up and down Joe’s long, wiry back, stretching him out on his stomach, worshipping every individual notch of Joe’s spine with his mouth -- how could he go to war when he has this? Webster got his wish. He tries to remember what loneliness even feels like, for purely writerly purposes, but--
It seems his journal has grown dusty, except for one line, scribbled under a crossed-out Wiliam Carlos Williams poem:
I love you, Joe. I love you. I was born to love you, I am best so.
But besides that brief revision, he’s far too busy to write down a single word.