CALVIN

four: the mirror exercise

"LEE LOO LO LA, LEE LOO LO LA, LEE LOO LO LA, LEE LOO LO LA. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. PA-PA PA, BA-BA BA; TA-TA TA, DA-DA DA; KA-KA KA, GA-GA GA..."

"Do you want to come smoke with me?" Denis whispered at my shoulder.

"Mate, why are you even in theatre?"

"MYYYYYYY MAMAAAAA! YOURRRRRR MAMAAAAA! HIS..... MAMAAAAAAAAAAaaaaa..."

"I don't want to do all of this."

"This is literally just the warm-up," I said.

"I know that. Still don't want to do it."

"Why is smoking always your priority? Don't go calling me when you end up alone on a hospital bed with stage four lung cancer when you're thirty-nine."

"Why do you always have to make me feel shit about my addiction?"

"Oh," I looked at him in pain. "Oh no. Don't try to make me pity you. That's just low, mate."

"It's addiction, Elias. Because of my emotional trauma."

"I didn't know pissing all over the sanidienst during Integration counts as emotional trauma."

"I'll go for a smoke on my own, then." he walked away.

"You really have no other friends?" I asked.

"Whatever, Elias. At least now I know you're not one of them."

"Ouch."

Denis walked up the stairs and out of the Aula.

Otis did this thing where he expects his students to understand what he means and then when you don't he gets all emotional about it. I almost just didn't ask for clarification anymore, because before he'd clarify anything he'd just take a few tense pauses and give me looks as if I'm stupid. It was sort of internally destructive, for a student, but it's just one of those things you get used to. 

"I think we're supposed to choose partners," Calvin said, appearing in front of me.

"Are we?" I asked, looking around. I saw Cara across the stage and thought that maybe I could reach her quick enough to make Calvin think I was thinking about her all along.

"Yeah, kind of," he said. "We're doing this mirroring exercise."

"Ah, the good old mirror. Do you want to be my partner, then?"

"Guess so," he said. 

So I'm pretty sure the mirroring exercise was my only form of therapy, at that point. It was really quite relaxing. It works like this: you get a partner (only one - fuck you, polygamists), and you stand about three feet apart facing each other. One of you is the leader, and the leader has to move their hands and arms and head very slowly, so that the follower could copy the movements precisely without visually focusing on them. This lasted for about six minutes and was almost entirely pointless.

"Who's the leader?" I asked. "Do you want to be the leader? You can be the leader."

"You can be the leader."

"I just... I don't really know about that. You're the new one here. I think, honestly, you should be the leader. It's like, my peace offering, to you."

"I've been in this school longer than you've been." Calvin said, starting with the movements. I copied him.

"Oof. I'm sorry about that."

He laughed. There was an intense sort of focus reverberating between us. Our fingers were only inches apart as they moved in sync. So were our elbows, and our shoulders, and our jaws. It was taxing, but meditating, work.

"Why'd you come here?" he asked.

"Unique question."

He laughed again, almost apologetically. I decided to humour him and answer.

"My mum won the lottery and after reading 'I Am Malala' decided that the most important thing in the world for me is education, so she Googled the best International Baccalaureate schools in Europe and this one came up. Four days later I was on a plane to Germany."

"How much of the lottery did she win?"

"Seventy-five thousand dollars," I said. "It's not much, but she thought it was enough to send me to this school." I laughed. 

"You're very Australian."

I cocked my head. "No. How did you know?"

"Usually Australians are supposed to be tall. And hot."

"Usually British people are supposed to be polite."

"You're clearly lying. I'm one of the most polite people in this school."

"That makes us even, then. Because I'm hot and tall."

"Maybe you're one of those things."

"Which one?"

"I'm taller than you. And I'm not tall."

"You're not taller than me. We're the same height."

"That's..." he shook his head, which meant I had to, too, "... very not true."

"So why do you live with your dad?" I asked.

He turned his head away in exasperation. "Unique question," he said. I shrugged.

"Just seems a bit unfair, from our perspective. He's the principal of the oberstufe and you live in his house, in your own room. The rest of us need to put up with our roommates jerking off on the floor, you know."

"Who jerks off on the floor?"

"Patrick."

"Is he your roommate?"

"Unfortunately."

"Why unfortunately? He must help you with all of your homework."

"The only class we have together is modern history," I said. "And the most he's done for me about that was accidentally open my porn history."

Calvin laughed. "Did he like what he saw?"

"Strangely, yes. Which makes me feel kind of conflicted."

"Why?"

I wasn't really able to answer that question. Otis yelled at all of us to gather around in a circle again. Me and Calvin drifted apart. We didn't really see and we definitely didn't talk to each other for the rest of the day. I decided that the principal's son was a teetering friendship most students assumed was entirely unavailable - myself included. So I went back to house 19 on my own later that night, to see Patrick reading his personal statement on his laptop, at his desk.

"You know you're not supposed to write that until, like, next year, right?"

"I just want to get it over with. At least have an idea of what I'm going to tell the universities. Does 'My father was nearly elected Chancellor of Germany in 2005, and this experience has given me a fonder relationship with the politics of the western world' make me sound like an asshole?"

"Little bit, yeah." I said. "I don't think I'd mention your father, to be honest. It also takes up your word count. Just talk about yourself, mate."

"What's there to talk about?" he said painfully, covering his face with his hands. "I'm boring. My life is boring. I just study and watch the John Oliver show and jerk off."

"You have a whole fat year to do interesting things to write about. Go to Sri Lanka and help the sick people, or something. Start a campaign to get fur banned at this school. There's lots you could do."

"How was theatre?"

"Whatever." I started leaving the room, knowing Patrick was smirking to himself, but I turned back at the last minute. "I know what you should write in your personal statement. Write about your gay agenda and how you try to shove it down your roommate's fucking throat."

"You wouldn't even gag," he said, as I shut the door behind me.