After Class

“So he couldn’t put the condom on?!”
“It was almost cute.”
“Yeah, but that’s disappointing.”
“We still had a good time. He wants me to call him this week.”
“Well, you should hear about Spencer.” “Is he going to go to jail?”
“I don’t think so. His parents are well-to-do. I stayed up late with him last night putting together a plan.”
“How’s he going to get out of it?”
“He’s going to file an appeal, get a real lawyer, and hopefully get let off with a fine.”
“When’s that going to happen?”
“It’s hard to say. He’s really nervous. I mean, he is an idiot, for letting that happen in the first place, but now that he might be in trouble, I don’t know, he’s been much more stoic about the whole thing. He hasn’t even smoked since his trial.”
“Are you going to keep seeing him?”
“Yeah, definitely. I’ve never met anyone like him before. It’s just unfortunate that I meet him on the verge of criminality. What about Marcus?”
“I think something’s a little off about him. I’ll call him again, it’s the polite thing to do.”
“It’s so fucked up how all of this happened at once.”
“Yeah, it’s definitely fucked up if these guys become boyfriends.”
“Shhhhh. I’m not even saying that word for a while.”
“Well, do you want to get some lunch?”
“Sure,” Missy agreed.
They walked through the central campus strip, even though there was not much of a campus to speak of. It was well-integrated with the city. There were the typical sights of the prototypical campus town—slightly exotic restaurants, bars with sports on, record stores, head shops, used book stores, professors walking slowly down the sidewalks with some form of smoking implement, groups of girls in their Fall best, chatting on cell phones one after another, stopping to look in boutique windows, talking rapidly back and forth, immediate grasp of knowledge, groups of boys that could have been jocks a year or two before, and had now become frat boys, stoners, and all of them weekend alcoholics. Where Missy, Jeanne and Marcus fit into this social strata was ambiguous. They were a mix of all the types, and they were none of the types. Today, Missy and Jeanne decided on Middle Eastern cuisine—falafel.
Missy asked, “Do you want to get together tonight and read some of Northanger Abbey?”
“I’ve got other work I have to do tonight. I was planning on doing it tomorrow.”
“Well, that’s okay with me. You’ve got any more class today?”
“No, I think I’m just going back to the dorm. Study.”
“So I have to ask, do you feel more normal now, after Marcus?”
“Well, I know how to put on a condom better than he does.”
“You’re more experienced.”
“Yeah, but he’s still better at sounding normal than me.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He just sounds calm, at ease, relaxed, I feel like I’m always rushing towards the next thing that has to be done. Maybe physically I might be more normal, but inside is where normality counts.”
“You might be wrong there. I’d say it’s the other way around.”
“You think it pays to be normal on the outside, not the inside?”
“Exactly. That might be your problem with it.”
Jeanne thought for a moment.
“Well, no matter what it is, I think I proved I can get along with most people.”
“It’s a good quality.”
“I guess I’ll give you another update when I go on a date with him, or something.”
“Well, you don’t need to know anything about me and Spencer, except, well, he knows how to put a condom on.”