Chapter Text
“So I stepped back
And I saw myself
And I realised that somewhere along the line
I got lost
Between who I was and who I wanted to be:
Between what the world had made of me,
And who I am.”
There was a polite smattering of applause around the cafe. The girl; Jon thought her name was Katie, smiled a somewhat watery smile and walked past the haphazard ring of white plastic chairs they’d made to take her seat, somewhere near the back. Her delivery had been lacking, voice shaking with nerves as she recited what could charitably be called an average attempt at verse. Jon did not clap.
Instead he sat with his arms tightly folded across his chest and squinted up at the clock. He was fairly sure it was slow, but if he’d gotten his math right then there should only be half an hour left of this ordeal. Jon’s stomach rumbled, and he pursed his lips as the next girl stood up. She clapped her hands, and he didn’t bother trying to hide his scowl. He hated the clappers.
“Smack! You hit me and I hit back .” The rest of the poem was much the same, and Jon wondered whether the girl in question (Alicia?) wouldn’t be better off joining an amateur rap club. He was sure such a thing existed in the university’s frankly unnecessarily long list of societies, and Alicia clearly cared more about percussion than she did about language. She was probably just thrilled to escape the restraints of her undoubtedly upper class upbringing. For a second, Jon imagined her performing her travesty of a recital to a wealthy audience of passive aggressive relatives, all clapping along with the lukewarm enthusiasm of golf spectators.
Jon didn’t actually mean to laugh, despite the opinion of every person his age that he’s ever met - he’s not that much of an asshole. But he laughed anyway, and Alicia went pink, and whilst Jon made a valiant effort to turn the thing into a cough, Alicia hurried back to her seat with bright red cheeks and Jon got a valiant attempt at an actual death glare from the society’s president, Felicity. Jon slumped down in his plastic chair and cleared his throat, feeling his own cheeks colouring. “Sorry, sorry.”
No one replied. After a moment, another girl, wth a cloud of dark hair and bright pink converse trainers, hopped up to the stage. Her mouth is curled in half a grin and she’s about three times as confident as the rest of the evening’s ‘performers.’ Jon sat up a little.
“Hush, crash, sigh, breathe.
Listen to the whisper of the roaring sea.”
It’s the first decent performance of the evening, with the girl - Natalie - letting her voice rise and fall, accelerate and slow like the ocean on which she’d set her metaphor. When Jon applauded he meant it, and he wasn’t entirely paying attention to the empty plastic chair beside him. (He was in a small field of unoccupied white plastic. As the club’s only male member, Jon got the impression that he was tolerated but not welcome, and his attitude had not yet helped.)
When someone sat down heavily into the chair beside him, then, Jon didn’t really look round - more interested in Natalie’s quiet explanation of her process. But then Natalie left the stage, and the person next to him elbowed his rib cage. Jon jerked, and turned to glare, and stopped.
The girl beside him was soft, and freckled, and a study in copper. Her hair was a messy pile of red and orange, her eyes were brown but had turned gold in the evening sunlight slipping through the windows. Her lips were pink and full, and her cheeks and arms were covered in a generous scattering of freckles. The corner of her mouth was pulled halfway to a grin, and the denim strap of her dungarees had slipped off one of her shoulders. She smelled like vanilla and soap and she was wearing chipped green nail polish.
She was very beautiful.
“So why join a Slam Poetry Society if you don’t actually like Slam Poetry?” Her voice was rough and lower than Jon had expected. There was a tiny scar just above her cupid’s bow, and Jon had to remind myself that asking people questions about their scars before you’d learned their name was not, apparently, what you did in polite company.
“Um.” He said, instead, eloquently, as someone else got up onto the stage.
The girl snorted, eyes and nose wrinkling as she did so. Jon really couldn’t stop staring. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
Jon cleared his throat, and leaned a little closer, and told himself it was for no other reason than to avoid interrupting the performance a few feet away from them. “No, I do like it.”
The girl huffed, but she leaned closer too, and the space between their faces was suddenly both very small and very warm. Their shoulders bumped, and Jon swallowed and tried not to think about it. “Could’ve fooled me. I’m Georgie, by the way.”
“Jon.” Jon paused, and tried to ignore the blind panic that has apparently replaced his higher functions. “What - what are you studying?”
The girl on the stage screamed, “VAGINA!” And Georgie suddenly doubled forward. Jon was half concerned about her, but then she sat back up and pressed a fist to her mouth and her shoulders were silently shaking and her eyes were squeezed shut. Jon found a smile coming onto his own lips, and felt laughter bubbling up in his chest as he watched her trying not to giggle.
Which was, of course, when the girl on stage decided to experiment with repetition.
“VAGINA! VAGINA! VAGINA!”
Georgie let out a muffled squeak, pressing her other arm to her abdomen as she curled forward, and Jon found himself beginning to chuckle, too, as quietly as he could. Felicity glared at them, but somehow, with the red faced girl behind her, that only made it funnier. Some of the cafe’s other patrons: unfortunate customers who had not yet realised that this was Oxford University’s latest Slam Poetry haunt on Tuesday evenings, looked over towards the stage, slightly perplexed.
The girl in question: white and wealthy judging by her haircut and the Jack Wills jumper she was wearing, was red faced as she continued, with what Jon was sure was at least an amateur attempt at feminist literature. Of course, it was hard to concentrate with Georgie giggling beside him and him trying to contain his own laughter.
And then the girl moved onto her final stanza.
“Because for you it’s all about MY BUTTHOLE .”
That did it. Jon accidentally barked a loud laugh at the same time that Georgie took her hand away from her mouth to breathe and wailed with laughter, tears running down her now pink cheeks. The girl on stage immediately stopped, frowning, and Felicity got to her feet. Jon wanted to take her seriously, he really did, but his stomach and his cheeks were hurting from laughter and all he could think about was the expression on one particularly perplexed octogenarian’s face as their latest poet shouted what - he was sure - for her was a very radical sentence.
“Both of you, out, now.” Felicity snapped, and Georgie nodded, getting to her feet and raising her hand when she tried to speak and failed, dissolving into further giggles. Then she grabbed Jon’s arm, and pulled him with her towards the door. Georgie’s hand, soft and firm around his upper arm, was enough to sober him up almost immediately - but he did retain enough of his wits to grab his bag as they left, picking their way through the half empty herd of plastic chairs and making their way out into the later summer evening.
Once they were outside, Georgie immediately began to laugh: a full belly laugh until her face was streaked with tears. Jon watched her and couldn’t stop smiling. He had his bag slung over one shoulder, and part of him thought that perhaps he should leave her to it. But the other part reminded him that it was a warm, clear summer evening, and the sky was threaded with cotton candy pink, and the street was empty and this girl was beautiful and he wanted to be with her.
Also, she still had her hand wrapped around his arm.
After a few minutes: in which time the poets recommenced, judging by the occasional muffled shouts that made their way through the cafe’s glass and plastic door, Georgie ran out of breath and sighed, straightening and scrubbing at her cheeks with the back of her hand. It was only then that she realised, apparently, that she’d been holding Jon’s arm, and she let go immediately with a breathless, smiling, “oh, sorry.”
Jon shook his head. “It’s fine.” He thinks he can feel the imprint of her fingers still, pressed into his skin.
And Georgie had been beautiful before - but now, with her cheeks pink and her eyes bright from laughter, she’s breathtaking. She looks at him, and Jon isn’t sure if she’s waiting for him to say something, and he doesn’t know what to say if she is. The silence stretches, and Jon starts to panic, squeezing the strap of his bag. But then Georgie’s expression softens, and she grins at him. Her left canine has a chip in it.
“Come on. Do you drink?”
Jon nods, and Georgie starts walking down the street. After a moment, Jon follows her. Georgie glances back at him when he does. “Let’s get a beer.”