Exams. End of fourth year.
Two things I’ve learned in the last day and a half. One: if your eyes shut while you’re walking, you can fall onto the road. Two: shaving does not improve the concentration, at least, not beyond the moment you finish shaving.
The problem: neither of these things constitutes epidemiology. Neither makes me more comfortable with generating P values, or more acquainted with the subtleties of metanalysis. All I know is that metanalysis has the word ‘anal’ in the middle and that hasn’t been funny since three-thirty this morning. But the pre-dawn hours are desperate, everyone knows that.
I’m losing it. Four years (eight semesters) into this degree and losing it. So far, a total modest kind of success story, but that’s about to change.
I am at the stage of believing that milkshakes become fascinating if you add a banana. Of telling myself I can have a toilet break after every even-numbered page as a reward for work well done. Of believing that twanging a rubber band against my wrist can keep me awake and make me pass this exam. Even though, as you slip into inappropriate sleep, the first thing you don’t do is twang and you end up just cutting off the blood supply to your hand.
I tell my mother it’s not working, nothing’s working any more and she says, ‘Maybe you need a break, Philby.’
So I go right off at her, of course. Does she want me to fail?
Eight minutes ago I went to the toilet. What does she think this is? I’ve got plenty of breaks built into the routine. It’s the bits in between that are killing me.
And she says, ‘That’s quite a welt you’ve got on your wrist, Philby,’ and she confiscates the rubber band. ‘Now,’ she says, knowing that I don’t take confiscation lightly, ‘I’m going to make you a nice savoury-mince jaffle. And a milkshake.’
With the promise of an added banana, she gets the truce she wants and I don’t have to go off at her about the rubber band. Besides, I’ve got plenty more in my room.
‘Can I call this a meal?’
‘Yes, you can,’ she says, ‘if it helps.’
‘It helps, I get fifteen minutes for meals.’
I’m sure the others aren’t having these problems. I tell myself that to get me going while I eat the first half of my savoury-mince jaffle. I tell myself there’s a high probability (P<0.05) that the others aren’t having these problems. That they’re cruising with this stats stuff. Declining intrusive offers of jaffles so that they can squeeze in a few more analyses of variance (if there is such a thing) before tomorrow’s exam.
But even that doesn’t help. I can’t scare myself any more with other people’s study habits. I can’t scare myself with the thought of a supp in the holidays, ’cause I’m expecting it now. Expecting it ever since three-thirty a.m..
I’m gone. Four years, eight semesters and very nearly two-thirds of the way through this degree and I’ve hit the wall and slid down it like old fruit.
Frank Green comes over. I ask him how he’s going with the epidemiology.
Frank Green says he has an all-over tan, baby. Frank Green has been to the gym. Combed his hair, far too much. Bought groceries, made lasagna for eight (and eaten five portions overnight), washed and fiddled with his old Valiant so thoroughly you’d have to call it detailed.
‘Definition of perfect,’ he says as he shows me over it. ‘Definition of way-fucking perfect, baby.’
As he shows me the customised driver’s seat, runs his hands over the brand-new bed of beads in a way that looks far too close to genuine affection. And he drives with three gonks now, on different parts of the dashboard, and seven hanging airfresheners, since, he says, six proved insufficient to distract his sinuses from their problems with seasonal change.
And he paces up and down, squirting drops into his eyes as though he drinks through his corneas, burping big, salty, lemon-lime burps and turning them into words. Frank Green has reached the edge and travelled beyond it. Frank Green is maxed-out on Gatorade. Frank Green has a Daniel Boone hat.
He is coping very badly with our end of fourth year exams. And I’m not looking good, but Frank is in a state of raging, open disrepair.
‘But don’t let me get in the way,’ he says, and blows in my ear when I get back to my desk.
Gently, admittedly, but it’s still blowing in my goddamn ear, and I already had a bit of a concentration problem. He unravels a paper clip and pokes my ear lobes with it.
‘Big lobes, big lobes,’ he says. ‘Hey, is that a savoury-mince jaffle?’
‘And it’s all yours,’ I tell him. ‘But only as a present for quietly fucking off. Baby.’
And he dances behind me, as though there’s a special dance you do when you get a jaffle and I’ve just never known it. And he dances out of the room, with only two brief curtain calls to mark his departure.
I hear a splash and he’s in our pool. In our pool, wading up and down, arms above his head para-military style and chanting, ‘I’m mad as hell and I just can’t take it any more.’
And I want to tell him, no, it wasn’t that kind of mad, but it wouldn’t seem right. And besides, I’m studying, that’s what this book’s for. This book I’m gazing at. This book that refuses to infiltrate my resolutely unthinking brain.
And Frank’s wading and chanting, wading and chanting, and my mother brings him a pile of savoury-mince jaffles on a plate, and a milkshake. With a cocktail umbrella bobbing around on top, pinned to a maraschino cherry. And then, a separate appearance to give him a broad-brimmed hat, and I think he sings her something from The Gondoliers. She applauds, but that’s only politeness. He’s doing a shocking job of it.
Meanwhile, I have an appointment with a trance to get to, and I only come back when I lean forward onto the unravelled paperclip, which I’m now holding in my hand.
And there’s less noise outside, and I look out again and Frank’s still wading. Still with one arm above his head, clicking his fingers, but he’s got the kitchen phone in his other hand, dragged out the full length of its extension cord.
I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t want to.
So back to the books. Back to the gazing and achievement of little. Back to the menace of the paperclip, held in front of my forehead in case I drift again. And I do drift, of course I drift, but this time into a dream involving a sharp stabbing pain that just gets worse and worse.
Then Frank’s in my room. In my room with my sister’s towel around his waist (which will, in time, mean trouble) and a beer in one hand.
‘I’ve been putting in some calls,’ he says, like a man with better options than he actually has.
‘And drinking my beer, too.’
‘Yeah, yeah. They come in sixes. You’re supposed to share them. Anyway, stop the study for a sec. You’ll want to hear this.’
And he tells me about the calls. Tells me Jenny Blair’s bought four tubes of toothpaste and she’s already onto the second. Tells me Slats is crying so much his nose is running. Tells me Oscar Wong told him to fuck off cause he’d never had a day like this with his Pac Man before.
‘Oscar Wong,’ he tells me, ‘is in awe of himself, and that’s a quote.’
‘Yeah, a Greg Norman quote.’
‘Yeah, but you get it, don’t you?’
‘What?’
‘They’re gone, aren’t they? I’ve got this exam pretty much pissed in if I can keep my cool. I made ten calls out there, and I can name three people I’ve got beaten already.’
‘Biased sample. You picked them deliberately.’
‘It’ll still stack up. What do you want, a metanalysis? Slats is so gone he’s losing snot over it. I’ve got a four sewn up unless I cop some serious sunburn. P less than point-o-five, no worries. So I only came in to borrow some suncream.’
‘So what do you know about variance?’ I ask him.
‘Nothing,’ he says.
So we split the beers and drink three each, and for hours at least it won’t matter that they were my father’s.
I’ve got four people beaten now, four out of eleven, and even though the methods are questionable, it should extrapolate just enough.