Student Life | Issue 40

ones of me along the way. There’s
a leather sofa, that I’m pretty sure
was black at one point, and two
mismatched armchairs, one red
and one mustard yellow, with a dark
heavy wooden round coffee table
in the middle with burn marks from
coffee cups and little scratches from
where David dug his pen in when he
got frustrated back during his essay
days. The boys are definitely not
gifted at interior design, it looks a
little bit like they went into a charity
shop and picked one of each style
and threw them together hoping for
the best. Honestly, that’s possibly
what they did. The windows are big;
from ceiling to floor so during the
day the room is bright. The bulb
has gone in their main light though
so once it gets dark, we only have
lamps which leaves the room bathed
in a warm dim glow. It’s here you
can sometimes feel the floating
world. And from the floating world,
the three of us build our own city.
The last time we went there
we were all sat on the floor. Paul
was leaning against the sofa, one
arm stretched out along it and a
beer in his other hand. I was sat
opposite him, leaning against the big
window with a sketchbook perched
on my bent knees, a sketch of Paul
beginning to emerge. I draw Paul
a lot these days, I may have some
unaddressed feelings that I will
confront at some point, but not yet.
I don’t want to upset the balance the
three of us have. But again, this is
not what I’m trying to talk about so
let us move on. David was next to me,
leaning towards me and picking at a
hole in his faded jeans, his shoulder
pressed comfortably into mine. It was
the middle of October, so the glass
was cool on my back in contrast to
David’s body heat at my side. The
coffee table was starting to fill with
empty brown bottles, and the radio
was playing quietly from the kitchen.
‘I’ve been thinking…’ David
starts, the first move of the night,
‘I might quit my job.’ No one says
anything, or even looks at him, but
my pencil stills letting him know I
am listening. David often needs a bit
of time to consider his words, and
if you speak too soon, he’s likely to
decide not to tell you. But if you let
the silence extend then he’s more
honest. So that’s what we do. We wait
for him to finish. ‘I watch the news,
or I look at the world and I think…
there has to be more than this.’
We all know what this is instinctively.
Because we all feel it too. We wake
up, go to work, or in my case the
library, come home and eat dinner,
then we meet up here and watch a
movie, or work on separate projects
then eventually I’ll drive home and
they’ll go to sleep. And we do it again.
But we’re still young enough to have
that belief that maybe we’re different,
the sort of different that makes a
mark, that our ideas are brilliant, and
people just haven’t realised it yet. It
manifests a little differently for all of
us. David wants to fix the world from
the house of commons, whereas Paul
wants to do something a little more
26 • 26 MARCH • ART 2019 • STUDENT • STUDENT LIFE LIFE