so long, jimmy : 1

It was some lonely Friday at the end of the first term of my second year. My Fridays were invariably spent in solitude, peering into my books on economics and wishing that whole fucked-up system to hell. I remember that it was Friday exactly because it was lonely and quiet, a state not often to be encountered in our house. At the time, I was living with four other second-year students in Hillfields, in an all-male shack provided by our university. On Fridays, the lads would go out, have a drink at the Anchor and Arms and then mooch to the Colli to get either laid or shitfaced. Sometimes both. I could have joined them, but found that looking for enlightenment in my books while others were looking for their legs on the floor of some shitty bog gave me a certain advantage over my fellow students. As I was burning with ambition and hell-bent on outdoing the preppy fuckers at Warwick, staying in on a Friday night seemed not an extortionate price to pay. There was still Saturday, and the good gigs were all during the week, anyways.
This night, too, I stayed in and tried to come to terms with inequity funds. The atmosphere in the house was quiet and tranquil; nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was not until I heard a knock on our front door and went downstairs only to find Jimmy standing there, smug smile, bloodstained t-shirt, bag in hand that I became acutely aware of the volatility of my situation. Jimmy nodded, strode ride past me and through the corridor, and sat down on our kitchen sofa without further ado.
I had met Jimmy the summer before, at a gig of the Dead Crooners – a band that I mostly remember for their loud, if not particularly refined guitar play. I’d already had a few and pretended that I was having a good time when I saw Jimmy standing at the counter, waiting for his pint. Smiling, suave, standing out by a mile. He exuded a certain coolness, like a thin layer of ice surrounding him. He was the master of cool. I stood and watched, imagined that if the girl next to him got any closer, I might be able to see her breath waft off in little, hazy, white clouds. As I stood there gaping, Jimmy turned around and looked in my direction. Trying to follow his gaze, I turned, too. A group of girls talking animatedly; nothing special about them, they weren’t even looking our way. Next thing, there was a hand slapping me on my back, and someone said, “Hey, mate, want a drink?” Not in that usual pub-manner, short and dropping the utmost possible number of syllables. It was more a flow of words, you know, where cannot make out were the one begins and the other ends. It was Jimmy’s voice, I realised as I slowly turned my head. His hand rested comfortably on my shoulder. To describe Jimmy, all you needed were s-words: suave, smiling, self-confident, a little smug, too. In short: stupefying. Amazed and at a loss for words, I smiled back and gestured towards my half-empty glass.