Page 43 of Electric Boy

“Those are mostly my dad’s, actually,” he began defending automatically. “He likes to keep them in my room because there’s less… humidity.”

“Get lost!” Julian remarked and Rahul cringed. “You’ve got Billie Holiday?”

“Y… yes?”

“I love Billie Holiday!”

“You do?”

They were into the second case of beer and the third record in the Billie Holiday Columbia compilation when Julian brought out the spliff. Rahul expressed trepidation, having never smoked grass before, and he had serious doubts about doing so when drunk. But Julian had been reassuring, and in this state he was as trusting as a newborn. They opened the window and shared the spliff between them as they blew the smoke out into the night air. Rahul coughed like the dickens the first few hits, but, eyes watering, he vowed not to be outdone by Julian and proceeded to get the knack of it.

“It’s been hell without you,” Julian slurred. His shape seemed to be coming in and out of focus. Rahul reached out to touch his shoulder to make sure he was real and Julian giggled. “You’re loaded.”

“Not. No. Am not I.” He took a second to regroup. Had there always been this many trees outside his window or had some moved in closer?

“Rahul?”

“What?”

“You’re off your tits,” he cackled.

“Your tits.”

“D’you have a girlfriend now?” he asked, seemingly at random. It was probably the tits that got him on that track, Rahul guessed. “You never said in your letters and I thought you probably was -- would have done by now, wouldn’t you have done?”

“I haven’t done,” Rahul confessed. The windowsill was distractingly scratchy. He lifted his hand so he could focus more on the conversation.

“Must’ve finally managed to kiss a girl though, eh?” Julian snorted, upending his beer to get the last dregs down his throat.

“No,” Rahul said. He ought to have done so more glumly, he realised after the fact. Or else Julian might suspect. But he couldn’t be arsed. Not when Julian was glowing like that with the warm golden light of the lamp shining behind him giving his daft hair a kind of halo. The mournful strains of Billie Holiday’s Jim floated in the air around them. It was the oddest thing; it was like he could feel Billie’s music and see it at the same time. Julian, in that very moment, was “Jim.” Not just the Jim from the lyrics, but the entire song itself. He was the piano and the drums and the smokey voice. How could he tell Julian that he was a song?

“Never even kissed no one?” Julian bemoaned. Well, not no one, was it, Julian? It was you. It’s always been you. “That’s mental, that is.”

He pushed off the windowsill with some effort. He wobbled as he walked away, grabbed another beer, then headed back to Rahul’s desk. He gravitated to that mirror like a very vain moth to a complimentary flame. He sat down heavily in the rickety desk chair.

“You know what your problem is?” he asked rhetorically as he popped open the makeup box and started pulling out all its little drawers and compartments again. Rahul couldn’t be bothered to stop him; he was too busy feeling the way air went into his lungs and expanded them. The human body was terrifyingly intricate.

“It’s that you don’t see Rahul how Rahul is,” Julian answered himself, rubbing a liberal amount of red onto his cheeks. “You see Rahul how the wankers at school saw Rahul. You think ‘oh I’m just a gangly, Northern, jazz freak.’ You need to see you how I see you. I see the best, smartest, loyalest, handsomest, bestest bloke that ever was. If you saw you like that, then you’d run straight up to the nearest girl and kiss the daylights out of her. Right?”

He staggered to his feet, nearly fell flat on his face, then managed to balance himself at the last second and spread his arms in a grand gesture. “Ta-da!” he cried triumphantly. He’d sloppily applied blue to his eyelids, red to his cheeks in two big spots, and red across his lips like a big bloody gash. He looked, if Rahul were being honest, like a drunk tart. Which he supposed he was, in a way. So Rahul began to laugh. And then he couldn’t stop.

“What?” Julian asked, offended. And when Rahul carried on laughing, Julian cracked a smile. The smile turned into a laugh, and before long they were both laughing hard enough to sprain something and couldn’t breathe for the life of them. Julian flung himself hopelessly across Rahul’s bed, arms wrapped around his middle as if trying to push the laughter back in. Rahul sat down next to him, howling and slapping his knee.

Just when they felt their laughter might subside, Julian would say something like “Aren’t I pretty?” and it would set them off again.

Julian rearranged himself so he lay back against the pillows, barking loud, crazed laughter up at the ceiling. When he managed to catch his breath, he asked, “Am I pretty as a girl?”

“Stop,” Rahul begged, his sides splitting. “You’re gonna make me be sick.”

“Am I pretty as a girl, Rahul?” Julian insisted, laughter still bubbling in his chest as he pushed Rahul’s knee with his foot. He looked more like a mad clown than a girl, but you’d have to go to some pretty drastic extremes before you made Julian Collier look anything short of stunning.

“Yes, fine, you’re pretty as a girl.” Rahul chuckled. Thinking of Julian’s prettiness had sobered him some.

“If I were a girl, would you kiss me?” He was still smiling, but only just. It took a second for Rahul to realise how quiet the room had gone. The music seemed to be playing in a different room, or a different century, for how faint it sounded compared to the riotous laughter that had until recently filled the room.

He was drunk, Rahul assured himself. And he was vain. And he was joking. It didn’t mean anything. But Rahul was also drunk, and high, and hopelessly in love, so he said “Yes” with a great deal more feeling than he’d meant to.

Instead of prodding him with his foot, Julian laid his leg over Rahul’s lap. Julian’s face swam in and out of Rahul’s vision. At times so beautiful that it hurt and at times so distorted with its mad paint that it was frightening. His leg was impossibly warm through his jeans. He looked up at Rahul through heavy, half-lidded eyes. Billie crooned somewhere far away.