"...and so Margo tilted her head back a little, you know, that way she does when she thinks she's looking all imperious and wise but she's really just giving you a good look straight up her nostrils? And she was all, 'Well, maybe it's different now than it was when I was in grad school,' and it's like, oh my god, Margo, we get it. You think you're so much better than us because you have your Master's. As if we don't all know your real degree was from XYU, right?" Paul gave Lois a playful swat on the shoulder, snorting so hard with laughter he almost choked on his pad thai.
Lois laughed too, but it was the kind of laughter you gave when you were hanging out with an old friend and the atmosphere was so warm and convivial and cheerful that everything was kind of funny, even the jokes you didn't get. It soon faded into a slightly confused expression Paul must have noticed, because he said to her, "Oh, come on. You can't really tell me you forgot about XYU?" Which only made Lois's brow furrow even deeper in bewilderment, because she genuinely had no idea what he was talking about at all. She gave him a shrug, taking a mouthful of noodles to forestall further questions until she had a few moments to reflect back on her long-faded college memories.
But Paul set his spoon down and gave her a surprised look. "Okay, seriously, you really don't remember? We had two classes together that semester, Linguistics and Alternative Strategies in Psychology, and Shari was part of our study group only we kept making excuses to split off because that was the year she was big into the 'yonic consciousness' and kept trying out bits from that godawful one-woman show she was working on about the 'ineffable sacrality of the Divine Cunt'? Come on, that has to ring a bell for you. We all had to attend the premiere."
Lois nodded and swallowed. "Okay, yes, I remember that semester, and I remember Shari's show, but what does that have to do with this 'XU' thing?" Lois knew that wasn't right, but it felt weird to make a big deal about the odd little discrepancy between her memories and Paul's. If they had some inside joke ten years ago now, surely it couldn't be genuinely important, could it?
Judging by the curious expression on his face, it apparently could. Lois set her spoon down and turned slightly on the couch to face him. "You're really serious?" he asked, fixing her with a skeptical stare that reminded her of the frustrating attempts they made to hypnotize each other back during their brief flirtation with a Psych major. "You don't remember anything about XYU? Because, I mean, I thought it was all just kind of, you know, role-playing, but...."
Lois rolled her eyes. "No, I don't remember XYU. That was why you were telling me about it, so I could remember it and we could get back to gossiping about Margo and the whole 'reply all' incident, right?" She sighed. Obviously she'd known Paul for well over a decade now, and she was used to the way he sometimes went down conversational rabbit holes she didn't really care about, but it could get kind of exhausting. She could already feel herself beginning to zone out despite her best efforts to pay attention.
Paul nodded, but he continued to scrutinize her with that same skeptical gaze as he continued. "So yeah, that semester we spent a lot of time doing one-on-one study sessions, and, y'know, kind of dipping our toes into that whole 'friends with benefits' idea." Lois certainly didn't remember that happening, but the last thing she wanted to do was distract Paul away from his distraction with an argument about something she didn't even remember happening, so she just settled back against the arm of the couch and fixed her features into an expression of polite interest she didn't really feel.
"And so yeah," Paul continued, "we were just making jokes about 'yonic' this and 'yonic' that, all the time, because everything was 'yonic' if you listened to Shari. Bowls were 'yonic', drinking cups were 'yonic', everything that had a divot deeper than an inch became an expression of yonic consciousness. I think your purse was yonic that semester, wasn't it?" Lois let out a little chuckle and a nod. She definitely remembered that part, and she had to admit it was kind of funny even if her brain was already glazing over with enforced patience until Paul could get his shaggy dog story on track.
"And we were working on a project for that linguistics class, digging into the Greek prefixes and how they applied to English words, and we were getting pretty punchy by the end, especially because we were combining it with that unit on hypnotherapy and you had gotten so fucking fractionated by all those practice sessions that you couldn't stop giggling." That definitely didn't sound right--Paul had never succeeded in getting her to go under, not once in what felt like an interminable number of tries, but again, Lois didn't want to get bogged down in contradicting him. Especially because they were talking about something she'd already admitted she didn't remember very well.
That didn't stop her from rolling her eyes yet again, but if Paul noticed he didn't say anything. "So we were all the way down to 'xylo', and the only word we could think of for it was 'xylophone', but you had to have three examples for every prefix and we had to dig out an actual physical dictionary to find something we could write down. And I think we used 'xylocarp', and we just had the biggest laugh pretending it meant 'wooden fish' like you really needed a word for it, and then we got to 'xylophagous', which meant 'wood eating', and here we are both in our twenties and combining our study sessions with weed and booze and sex, and...."
He shrugged. "It kind of became a running bit, y'know? Any time I wanted a blowjob, I asked if you were feeling xylophagous. Because I figured you wanted to eat my wood." Lois fought the instinct as hard as she could, but she couldn't stop herself. She rolled her eyes again, so hard this time she wondered for a moment if she'd even be able to get them to look straight at Paul again. He'd always had a crush on her, sure, but she thought that was over and done with when he started dating Tabitha and she got engaged to Jim. Why he had to start making up stories about the past like this, just because they were both single again and hanging out more, Lois had absolutely no idea.
But correcting him felt too much like work. Too much like effort, especially when she was feeling pleasantly full of pad thai and the apartment was stultifyingly warm and all she really wanted to do was curl up on the couch and take a nap. So instead she simply smiled and nodded and let her eyes glaze over in blank indifference until the story ended. Let Paul remember their college years however he wanted. She didn't care anymore.
