Zeke feels a gnawing dysmorphia. It barks at him from everything he does, with every step he takes and every item of clothing he wears and person he talks to.
He tries to pay attention in his underwater basket weaving class, and that works for a while. He takes physical notes in a faux-leather bound thing he bought in the campus gift shop about the art of physics and promised Levi that he could describe the plot of the class in full detail later today, and for 30 minutes he’s able to keep up with polarization and spin and protons, but once he slips he really slips. (So much for being “passionate about everything,” as he wrote in his essay to this college, “even the things he hates.”)
The most awful part is that Zeke has been through this. He’s been through this many times. This started early in his life, back in his childhood when he was acutely aware that there was something different about him and all of the other kids. He wore a sweatshirt every single day of tenth and eleventh grade because he didn’t want anyone looking at him. He’s an adult now, he thinks to himself. He should be over this.
Zeke even chose the row right before the front row so that he would be forced to be in the constant sightline of the professor. But no, he sits and pretends to look at his phone under the table while actually staring at the way his shirt bunches up with his fat underneath it.
Levi would say something about Camus and how you can’t not play the game to his current dilemma if he brought it up. Zeke would throw a sock at him.
Time’s up (there are no bells here in college, as it turns out) so Zeke packs up his things and leaves. Other students line up to talk to the teacher. College is weird because you can sit in the front row and space out the entire time and there’s no reprimanding, except for how disgusting and horrible Zeke feels. He tries to remember that this is a temporary emotion,
but there are so many things in his head and thoughts he feels bad about that all the therapy isn’t helping. He just walks to the shuttle bus feeling terrible and feeling terrible for feeling terrible for feeling terrible.
Zeke doesn’t want to go back to the apartment, because then he’d be alone. Zeke could go to Levi’s dorm, but he probably shouldn’t head over without pregaming first. The only thing you do with him is get into philosophical debates and intentionally lose when they get too complicated for you to follow. That doesn’t sound awful right now.
He sends a text over to Levi to make sure coming over a few hours early is fine and he’s totally cool with it. Levi responds quickly.
Hey bro
Today is my day off from sex
So if you want to do homework and try to resist having sex with me
That is awesome
Zeke thinks about the theoretical shape and size of Levi’s penis and responds:
It’s very difficult.
Being on the bus makes him try a different idea to be less obsessed with his own body, because there’s something undignified about thinking about all that on the bus. He tries to place himself away from everything else into a beach in Bali. The cool beach air and the waves crashing in front of him, the way the sand feels beneath his toes and the warmth of the sun. It’s nice until he places Levi on the chair next to him who, shirtless, just makes Zeke feel insecure.
He gets off the bus and makes his way to Levi’s.
Levi’s apartment is like the Lucy’s Psychiatry Booth from Charlie Brown, except if gay sex was constantly happening there. There’s no closet (is that a metaphor about how you can be out of the closet in this room?) and no dresser, so Levi’s clothing is literally hanging off of the canopy of his bed. It creates its own canopy, which is weirdly beautiful.
The room is otherwise a guy’s room. A room that a man would live in. There’s half of a couch and a table which they set up for movie nights, there’s his roommate’s bed… that’s kind of it. His roommate sleeps as Levi pokes his head through his curtain of clothing.
“Hi,” Zeke says.
“Shhhh,” Levi responds. “He’s sleeping.”
“Sorry.”
“Do you wanna sit?” Levi laughs.
It’s remarkably comfortable in there. In the most masculine way you can do it, he’s hung up string lights and has these fluffy pillows and a nice comforter. His phone and computer are plugged in and he has a little wall shelf that he has a mug of coffee on. The clothes form a strangely nice curtain. It has texture and smells good and isn’t boring. It’s like the platonic ideal of college study spaces.
Zeke thinks about getting fucked in there, just a little bit. He can’t not think that because Levi is lying right there in a tank top, boxers, and an open robe. Like, what else is there to think? Guys are so much larger in person. He smiles and lays back on the pillow, putting his hands behind his head and smushing some of his homework in the process. Zeke sits cross-legged.
“So… how are you? What’s going on with the underwater basket weaving?”
“It’s riveting.”
“I like how you’re a physics major but you hate physics. Like, people do that with communications or business, not physics.”
“Yeah.”
They sit in silence for a bit. The smile on Levi’s face only grows.
“What?”
“That’s a funny start to a conversation. I like it.”
Zeke doesn’t say anything for a moment, then smiles into his hand. “Yeah.”
“Yeeeeeaaaah!” Levi sits up. “What’s up, man? You’re not your usual self.”
“I’m always like this.”
“But it feels like you’re not enjoying it today.”
“Can I… really talk?”
He stacks up all of his papers and moves them to the side, then taps the bed to indicate a therapy bench. Zeke lies down.
“I’m not feeling good about my body.”
“Aw, buddy.” He lies down next to Zeke. They look at his ceiling together and can see a little bit of the ceiling fan poking in. His roommate coughs on the other side of the clothing curtain. “Is it because of anything in particular?”
“I dunno. I think part of it is because all of my friends are guys and I’m only attracted to guys and you’re just so… like… such a guy, I guess. Ugh. That makes no sense. And there’s something horny about it too, you know, since we’re in college now and this is the place where you’re supposed to fuck and… like I didn’t have to deal with this in high school, you know? It was purely a body thing. And now it’s social. It’s my worth.” Zeke spots a spider on the ceiling and watches it move for a little bit. “You’re guys, you know? It’s hard to divorce… it’s hard to divorce this from the horny part of it, I think, where I think guys are… I dunno.”
Levi sits up and looks at Zeke seriously. He raises an eyebrow. “Are you getting all hot and wet on my bed, dude?”
Zeke stares back at him, waiting for him to break. He does shortly. “Yeah.”
“Yeah.” He pulls one of his readings out. “So… it’s like that amorphous anxiety, right?”
“Right.”
“Can I read something to you?”
“What is it?”
“Just let nature take its course, man! It’s going to apply to your situation.”
“Is it like philosophy?”
“Shut up.”
Zeke giggles and covers his face with one of the pillows. Being squished feels good.
“I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms.”
Zeke immediately forgets about making fun of Levi for reading nerd shit and listens to him eloquently read Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” He’s good at it, too. He adds inflection and tension to all of the right places without seeming too outlandish. “You, gods, since you are the ones who alter these, and all other things, inspire my attempt, and spin out a continuous thread of words, from the world's first origins to my own time.”
He keeps reading. He skips the creating myth and just picks and chooses a few, namely Eros and Psyche and Orpheus and Eurydice. Zeke just sits there and listens, his brain off except for the part which lets the words in and the feelings out. He already wanted to cry by the beginning monologue.
There’s just something about it. “I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms.” Metamorphoses. We’ve been thinking about this forever. We’ve wanted to change forms forever.
And when Zeke is back in his dorm room later, staring at himself in the mirror after his shower, it’s not like anything’s different. He’s still fat. But maybe it doesn’t matter so much anymore.