Author’s Note: Go ahead and queue up Side B of the Velvet Underground’s Banana album (self titled, 1967). You’ll start at “Heroin.” Press play when the footnote indicates and make sure your player is ready to play you through the subsequent album tracks in order as they happen. Depending on your reading speed, you should experience the music as the characters do in real time. 

James walks across the darkened campus feeling about eight feet tall. Maybe it’s the hash, but maybe it’s also the fact that he’s the tallest of the group by about a half foot. Even Arthur is short. Not that he looks it. He’s actually pretty well-proportioned, with wide shoulders and elegant hands. Not like James, who looks like pulled taffy, all stretched out and spindly. James tries not to stare at him, but it’s hard not to. Arthur’s drunk and high and walking like he’s floating on air, slip-sliding from one cloud to the next. James feels like giggling. Damn—usually this strain doesn’t make him stupid. 

Eve drapes herself on Arthur’s shoulder, whispering something in his ear that makes him laugh. And just like that, James is grounded, his feet too heavy to float after them. God. If he had a quarter for every time Eve made him feel extraneous, he’d be rich enough to get the fuck out of here. Go to New York or San Francisco or London. Play music. Be someone other than Eve’s Jim. 

When they arrive at the Comstock dorm entrance, Arthur grins and tells them to come up for a night cap. The way he says it reminds James of Cary Grant or Rock Hudson, with an air of debonair confidence he hasn’t seen before. So far, Arthur has given off the socially-awkward nerd archetype, complete with the uniform of glasses, too-high trousers, and button-up shirt, like he’s about to give some sort of business presentation. He seems to have decent taste in music, but the guy’s been on edge all evening. It’s a bit of a relief to see him loaded, teetering on his feet like they’re round on the bottom. Proves he isn’t an actual robot. 

Eve is touching Deb’s hand, and James gets the sinking feeling he’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight. So he agrees to the nightcap, if for no other reason than he doesn’t want to go back and listen to Eve’s overwrought sex noises just yet. Maybe if the drinks are stiff enough, she’ll pass out before she can take her clothes off, and he’ll be able to actually sleep in his own bed (or his half of one, anyway). Maybe he can leave her with her new pet nerd, and James can sprawl out and sleep deep for once. The prospect sets the corner of his mouth twitching for a smile as he follows said nerd up the steps to his room. He can’t help but notice Arthur is well proportioned from this angle too. The thought is amusing but ultimately empty, since this guy is clearly another besotted dog in Eve’s pack. He already checked with James about whether or not they were together, for chrissakes. For a nerd, he wasn’t messing around. 

The room Arthur lets them into is small, with a narrow, single bed in one corner, a side table and window across from the door, and a wardrobe in the opposite corner. There’s a record player on the side table. James crosses and peers over to see what’s on the turn-table as Deb and Eve tumble onto the bed in a pile of grassy giggles. The Velvet Underground. Well, fuck. Maybe he’s not such a square after all. James looks up at Arthur with a new lens of respect. Which he completely doesn’t deserve, as he’s half-hanging, half-falling into his wardrobe babbling on about whiskey. 

No point in asking him about it. James just lifts the needle and starts the record over again. It’s on side B, which starts with “Heroin”. Fuck yeah—the twanging guitar feels like an old friend.¹ 

“Oh, I love this song,” Arthur moans, just as the guitar begins to strum. Fascinating. James looks up at him again. He’s pulled his shirt off and is wiggling out of his trousers, shedding his nerd uniform and tossing it on an adjacent chair. James looks away, even though he really doesn’t want to, a swath of hairless skin and wide shoulders staining the backs of his eyes. Fucking inconvenient. He rubs his eyes to get rid of it. 

“Ooh, are we getting naked?” Eve titters. James’ eyes snap open, and he glares at her, shaking his head. She pouts back, but Deb pulls her down on the bed and cops a feel in a way only another girl can get away with. Eve laughs and tries to tickle Deb, and then they’re just rolling around, wrestling, and making a nest of Arthur’s sheets. 

“Alright everyone!” Arthur calls out and when James turns, his heart accelerates along with the drums. The nerd is wearing a creamy silk robe with delicate embroidered butterflies perched on green leaves that cascade down sleeves that practically drag on the floor. Robin’s egg blue and verdant green, orange, and red flow together on a creamy white canvas and there, displaying it, is bespectacled, unmistakably well-proportioned Arthur. Behind his glasses, his eyes are hooded and hazy. He grins blithely at James and gives a sleeve a playful flourish. A flirtatious flourish? James desperately hopes he isn’t blushing. Because Arthur is beautiful. How had he not noticed that earlier? His sultry eyes, his sharp, angular face, his dark hair slipping into his eyes as he bends to dig in the wardrobe. His mouth. God. The cloth cascading over his form, draping him in a fantasy of idyllic nature captured in silk threads the kind only women get to wear, and usually only in the privacy of their own bedrooms. James swallows hard. 

Eve squeals. “Darling, you are stunning! I love this!” 

She bounds from the bed to run her fingers over the silk. Arthur doesn’t seem to perceive her. He’s reaching up high to the shelf above the clothing rack, standing on tiptoes. At Eve’s touch, he loses his balance and falls into her. And even loaded, scarcely able to keep himself upright, he is beautiful, as elegant as Elizabeth Taylor or Rita Hayworth or Cary Grant. The viola drone in the song snaps James’ THC-saturated brain into relentless focus. Arthur’s smile spreads across his face, his full lips blooming, and James is hypnotized. He is everything James tries to be. Elegant and androgynous and enigmatic, a melding of masculine and feminine draped in silk, eyes dancing with joy. 

Arthur looks up at James, shines that bright smile upon him. And James can’t look away, trapped in the dark, velvety depths of eyes magnified by his glasses. Eve hums, arm and arm with Arthur, and James’ eyes flick to her. She quirks a brow knowingly, her eyes narrowed and amused. James looks sharply away, back down, back to the record. He fumbles in his pockets for his cigarettes. Anything to do with his hands, anything that’ll shield him from the siren call of desires that keep making empty promises, that time and again lead him to disappointment, a reminder of how incongruent his yearnings and his reality are and always will be. 

“This robe is incredible, darling,” Eve says to Arthur. James steals a glance. She’s still touching him. It makes James’ lip curl, so he turns and tries to hide it. 

“It’s a kimono,” Arthur informs proudly. “It was my obaasan’s.” 

Eve doesn’t reply, probably because she doesn’t want to admit she doesn’t know what an obaasan is. James pulls a cigarette out of his pack and sticks it between his lips. Just the smell of fresh tobacco is a relief. He reaches for his lighter, but then there’s a hand on his shoulder. James turns, sees Arthur looking up at him (god, it’s such an inadequate name for the other-wordly creature that’s making his heart pound like the mallets on the Velvet’s tom drum). His eyes are so open, so seeing, and James feels like his skin is transparent, like his soul is on display. 

“‘Scuse me,” the creature says, his Midwest accent dissonant with his elegant hands reaching down. The viola scrapes and screams on the track, the way James’ blood screams in his ears. Arthur bends to open the drawer of the side table, still searching, and James can just see the nape of his neck, soft and creamy between the silk and his dark hair. James wants to press his fingertips to that skin, press his lips to it. Feel that silk against his bare skin. He stops his hand from reaching out. 

“Well hell,” Arthur says, standing up straight, oblivious to what he’s doing to James, even though he’d been bent over right next to him and has had every opportunity to notice. “What was it that I was looking for again?” 

“Whiskey, darling,” Eve calls out. She had draped herself over the chair strewn with the rumpled disguise Arthur wore to hide his secret identity. Her eyes are half-lidded and tired.

“Right!” Arthur tries to charge away but stumbles and almost falls onto the record player. James reaches out and catches him before he sits on one of the best records of all time. Gathered in his arms, the slight and silky waist under his hands, warm and alive and real and—fuck, how? How is this person real? He smiles self-deprecatingly up at James, rubs his face as if trying to wake up. James wishes he could kiss those pink, round lips, wishes the others would dissolve into another plane of reality, so he can be the only one in Arthur’s view. That the rest of the building would disintegrate, and it would be just him and Arthur in this room, listening to this music, for all eternity. It would be a lot better than real life, that was for damn sure. 

Arthur chuckles and slips out of James’ arms. He spins to the music, his sleeves flying out in a perfect circle. He’s only got boxer shorts underneath. His skin is smooth, creamy like the silk, nearly hairless on his chest and thighs. James glances down at his own skirt. When he made this, he’d thought it was audacious and free. He doesn’t even know what free is. But Arthur does, spinning and laughing and howling along with Lou Reed. The guitar screams. The viola shrieks. The drum slams like a racing heartbeat. Then everything quiets, slows down, rests. And when it does, Arthur lies flat on the floor, a tumble of disheveled silk and errant strands of hair, his eyes closed and breathing heavy as he smiles up at nothing.²

“Well, if there’s no whiskey, I wanna go,” Deb drawls, regarding Arthur with an impatient expression. “It’s almost 3 am.” 

“Ugh, yes,” Eve puts in from her chair. “If we don’t go, I’m gonna fall asleep.” 

Deb rises and crosses quickly to her. “Don’t fall asleep, Evey.” 

James rolls his eyes at them. Deb is worse than a desperate poser trying to pull a date at a dive bar. If she knew he was thinking that, she’d chop off his balls. 

Deb takes Eve by the arm and leads her to the door. Arthur still lies on the floor. James isn’t sure if he’s passed out, but the two girls just step over him. 

“You go on, I’ll be right out,” James says to them. 

Deb glances back, regarding Arthur then James with bored eyes. She shrugs and follows Eve out the door without a word. 

James gets to his knees on the floor next to Arthur. “Hey, man. Wake up.” 

Arthur stirs. Grins. Wiggles into his robe. 

“You can’t sleep on the floor.” 

Arthur pouts. His upper lip is like an unfurled petal. “This song is appropriate.” 

“What?” James looks up at the record player. The next song had come on. 

“There she goes,” Arthur sings and his hand flops towards the door. 

“Yeah, but you’ll see her tomorrow. At band practice.” 

“Fly, fly fly!” Arthur sings resignedly before finally opening his eyes. His glasses are all askew. 

James offers him his hand and pulls him up off the floor. 

“Do you need to take this off before you sleep?” he asks, even though the idea of removing the spectacular robe from Arthur’s bare shoulders makes his brain sort of short-circuit. 

“No, I like to sleep in it,” Arthur slurs and turns towards his bed. He spins too far though, stumbles, and James catches him by the waist. This only takes them both off balance, though, and they fall onto the bed together. 

James swallows hard to keep his composure. It’s hard. He’s had a lot to drink, and smoke too (although he didn’t guzzle a gin-wine martini like Arthur had). His hand is on the warm, silk curve of Arthur’s narrow hip. James pushes himself up and scrambles back to his feet, almost getting tangled up in his skirt. Arthur sighs extravagantly and clambers around on his bed, elegant silk tangling in sharp contrast with awkward, boney knees and plaid boxer shorts. The incongruence should ruin the spell James is under, but it doesn’t. Not at all. He wants to run his hands up those legs, feel the fine hair resist his palms, press kisses under the edges of the cotton plaid shorts, smell the musk of Arthur’s cock beneath them. 

James shakes his head. These are inappropriate thoughts, entirely non-consensual. If Arthur knew he was being thought of like this, he would probably flinch away in disgust. And even if he wouldn’t, now is not a time to find that out for sure. With the amount of alcohol Arthur had, James can’t count on him to object, even if he would whole-heartedly do so were he sober. And James isn’t the kind of man to push his advantage.

“You need anything, man?” James asks, crossing his arms over his chest and stooping a bit to conceal any errant tent that might be threatening the drape of his woefully inadequate skirt.

“Mm-mm,” Arthur replies, shaking his head. His eyes are closed. He pushes a hand down his stomach to adjust himself. James’ mouth goes dry, eyes dilating in. Now. He needs to leave right now. 

“Cool, see you tomorrow,” James grits out as he turns and strides quickly out the door. The strains of Nico singing “I’ll be Your Mirror” haunt him as he stalks down the hallway, his arms still crossed tightly over his chest. 

Fuck.

1. “Heroin” The Velvet Underground ↩︎
2. “There She Goes Again” The Velvet Underground ↩︎