WEDNESDAY
24 OCTOBER, 1996
DORIAN

               I shut my score notebook and slip it into my backpack. At this point, I might as well stop bringing it with me: I haven't written a single bar in weeks. Today was no exception to my new routine of sitting on the piano bench and staring out the window. Autumn seized Oxford in a single coup this year and leaves are torn from their boughs at a quick enough rate to hold my focus for an hour.

I'm about to leave the music room when my tutor, Richard, beckons me over. 'Dorian, could I chat with you for a bit?'

My palms go clammy from one hot flush and I regret putting my jacket on inside.

Richard smiles curtly though it does little to assuage the cretins in my stomach. 'How are you?' He watches me as he shuts the several cardboard files he was working on over the hour. 'Is everything alright?'

Subtext is as evident as a nail shot through one's foot, yet I can't identify what it is he's actually asking. 'Yeah, I'm good.'

He hums and without further sugarcoating, arrives at the destination. 'You seem to be lacking focus lately.'

Uncertain whether the pause is intended for me to respond or merely for effect, I nod.

'Frankly, I'm going to need to see more effort from you, Dorian. Just because you did well on the written assessments, doesn't mean you get to slack off for your creative ones. I understand that everyone has their off days, but you hardly have on days. This is Oxford. Do you know how many people would kill to be in your position right now? If nothing else, you have to respect them enough to not waste your time here.'

I nod again and try to stack a defence for myself but the words crumble as if I was building them from sand.

He's right. What am I supposed to say, I'm too lonely and heartbroken for my creativity to flow right now? I leeched all the joy from my memories and all the melancholy from my misery at Julliard, and now, all I have left of inspiration is a shrivelled prune. Regardless of honesty, I doubt it would scrape me much sympathy. What excuse do I have?

'I'm sorry. I'll do better.'

'Okay.' Richard smiles, though doubt is still etched into the wrinkles around his eyes. 'I'll see you next week, then.'

I exit the building significantly more dejected than I entered. I could have sworn I already hit the bottom. Sighing, I return my headphones over my ears and change the cassette from my most recent one of desultory recordings to that of December 1990.

I find the part I'm looking for without a single error. The moment his voice streams into me, dread's anchor is torn from my pelvis and the current washes it far to sea. I'll get a few hours of peace.

'I'm recording this in secret so I gotta whisper. I wanna read you suttin. I wrote it on the coach this morning so don't expect no sonnet. It's just thoughts. Thoughts about you, obviously.' 

A faint smile on my face, I head to an Asda a few bus stops away. The shops nearest Oxford colleges are also noticeably more expensive and even if they weren't, the closest to comfort I get these days is listening to recordings of Isaiah as I sit on a bus.

This one is, for obvious reasons, my favourite. If I was told my room was on fire and I could save only one thing, I wouldn't choose any of my work, my recorder, or even the acoustic guitar I've lately been experimenting with, I would choose this tape. I listen to it before every exam and performance or when the library is too loud and the sound of my own breathing makes me want to cry. It's the only thing that relieves that noxious sense of homesickness that tries to drown me every few months.

Homesickness... What a ridiculous notion.

There's nowhere I ever felt less safe than in that cluster of walls and surveillance I was supposed to consider a home. Isaiah and I understood each other that way, that we desired nothing more than to leave Halsett. We spent our whole lives talking about the day we'd get out.

Yet... I can't think of another name for it. "Homesick" is the only one that fits, if not maybe "heartbroken". They're the same thing when home is a person.

Isaiah's soliloquy ends just as the bus reaches my stop. 'I just wanna ask you to do one thing when you find this: compose a song about us.'

Shay, don't you know that every scrap of music I've written is about you? Even before I met you, when I was six and I would hum or drum my fingers, they were always about you as though my soul kept calling out to yours to let you know we're on our way. They're about you still, though the line is dead.

In the way one leaves their phone off its stand to avoid calls, Isaiah is out of reach now. If I bring it up to him when we accidentally bump into each other at the library and don't have the decency to pretend we didn't recognise the other, he'll shrug and say, "sorry, I was on another call" and turn away. I'll listen to your dial tone for the rest of my life.

When I enter the heavy air-conditioning and white lighting of the shop, I allow the recording to drift to the back of my mind and focus on finding everything I need on my shopping list. My smile persists.

The kitchen is the one place where I'm connected to my culture. All of them, wholly and equally.

My parents were rigorous to raise my brothers and me English. Though my mother was born and raised in Kingston, I wouldn't have known what Jamaica's flag looks like if I didn't seek out the knowledge on my own. Of all small talk, the worst question will always be "where are you from?" The few people I spoke to at Julliard never quite believed me when I answered Jamaica and I always folded on the first repeat. "Really?" they'd say, and I'd correct myself: England.

How was I supposed to feel Jamaican beside Isaiah, who dances with intuitive control of his hips I'll never master and tells me to drink soursop leaf tea whenever I stress over things he deems unnecessary?

The second time we met, he greeted me with, "Yow. Wah gwaan, cuz? Everyting criss?" I didn't understand a word, and said "sure" because it felt like a response that could be accurate to whatever he meant. He caught me immediately but smiled politely and translated: "Hi. What's up? Is everything good?"

Most of our early conversations consisted of him saying things in Patois and translating them when I stared blankly. Over time, I learnt the patterns of his voice and body language to decipher what he meant even when I couldn't understand the words. His accent diluted too. He faked an upper-class accent every day at Coeus and how long can you fake something before it seeps through?

Those insecurities don't follow me into a kitchen. There's no doubt of me being Jamaican when I cook, and not only that, but I can be both Jamaican and Jewish without conflict. I can fuse dishes from both, make kosher ackee and saltfish or alboronía seasoned with bay leaf and cassia. In the kitchen, they complement each other.

But even cooking is tainted now. It's all but impossible to cook for one person. Food packages always come in the correct size for two or four and adapting a recipe to create one portion will require such nonsense quantities of ingredients they'll be impossible to measure. My favourite dishes only taste half as good when I have no one to share them with.

I miss you in everything I do. Do you?

Does every aspect of your life have a piece bitten out? Or does someone else fill them for you?

Isaiah's life has always been entwined with mine and when the threads were separated, I stopped sowing. I can't stand the idea that he stitched miles and miles without me. I can't stand the thought that he caresses somebody else's wrists.

Whoever came up with the phrase keep in touch was correct. It's exactly his touch I miss.

Hugs are always awkward, I've never felt a high five natural, I overthink every touch I'm forced to endure, and even handshakes make me squirm. Physical contact pounces without warning and by the time I recover enough to fake it, it has already passed and the other person withdraws with a poor impression of my manners (—a respectable man has a firm handshake, Dorian). I prefer at least a foot between me and any person I interact with.

Save for Isaiah. From the fist bumps he insisted to greet me with for eleven years though it was obvious I would never be "cool" enough to do it properly, to the oil he massaged into my scalp until I passed out, I ache for him to touch me. Nothing has felt as natural as running the sole of my foot along the arch of his to check if he's awake or toying with his fingers when we quizzed each other for exams. That's what I long for the most.

Since leaving, the bubble that separates me from the rest of the world has hardened into a fishbowl. Before I could still hear people well enough, could feel their movement in the air around me even when I didn't touch them, could smell the scents of their shampoos and coffees — all things I complained about when they built up into a staircase of distraction but things I'd appreciate more now they've been stripped from me. Now, all I get of other people is to see them and the glass is fogging up.

I always thought it would get easier once I was an adult, that when I left the country for a city as large as New York, I was bound to make friends — by accident if nothing else.

Turns out, when the pond is swapped out for the ocean, all it promises is more predators. A freshwater fish will die in saline solution. I've never been more disconnected from humanity.

It didn't help that for my six months in Rav Eliraz Yeshiva for Boys, I wasn't allowed to speak to a single person other than Rabbi Cohen and "Dr" Aviner. Whatever fortune my parents paid them to make me normal, at least I'm happy to say they managed only the opposite. They didn't "guide" me out of my "reverse inclinations" or make my handshakes any more masculine. I've never been more obviously not normal.

Rav Eliraz managed only to fertilise my love for Isaiah.

Perhaps I'm giving myself too much credit. My love for him wasn't pure and I don't know if it could be now. Fear keeps bleeding into it. Is love always going to be tarnished with the worst of me? The wires of my brain were misplaced when I was born and, rather than a healthy balance, my arteries flood terror into every lobe.

I could have come back sooner. I could have looked for him.

Shame is what kept me there for four years longer than my parents could force me. Perhaps I should have stayed.

The thought drains out of my mind when I open the front door to see three of my flatmates through the indoor windows into the kitchen. Dread drops its anchor into my gut.

It's not that I don't like them, but I prefer to be alone, especially when cooking. They already think I'm weird. I have colour-coded cutting boards and I have to put my headphones on before I do the washing up because the sound of a scraper against metal pierces needles into my brain (which I always thought was true for everybody and others were just better at bracing it, but apparently I'm the only one).

Pausing the tape but leaving my headphones on, I plead the blue FIRE DOOR sticker for strength before I shoulder it open and step into the joined kitchen and sitting room. They sit at the round table playing Uno. So they won't be leaving anytime soon.

I offer them what I hope is a smile. 'Hi.'

Justin and Sam give generic greetings but Lindsay places her cards beside her bowl of cereal.

'Oi, Dorian...' She swivels in her chair to keep me in sight as I move past to leave my shopping on the workbench. Clearly, she's been elected for this. 'We were thinking of having a wee gaff for Bonfire Night round ours. It is a Tuesday so I wanted to check, would that be alright with you?'

I know it's a formality, I know there's nothing I'd like less, but I don't want anything awkward between us (or more awkward, in any case). So I nod. 'Okay.'

'Grand.' She grins. 'And you're welcome to join too. Bring your friends.'

My friends. A bulb lights over my head.

If we have a big party, more people will come around. People will invite other people. If the snowball gathers enough, Isaiah might show up. He's extroverted enough to go to parties. I'll talk to him this time. I promise I will.

A smile tugging at my lips, I nod. 'Bring as many people as you like. I don't mind.'