Guys, guys, guys — this is my life’s passion. For real this time
BY ANNABEL MARSHALL — almarshall@ucdavis.edu
Two people crossed paths in front of the CoHo. From an outsider’s perspective, they had nothing in common, no reason to stop or even glance at each other. Two ships passing in the night.
But soulmates are real, at least for this one time.
Sophia Frances. Art history major. She’s an amateur scorpion breeder, much to her landlord’s delight. She only shaves above the knee. When she types “Grindr,” it autocorrects to “Gryffindor.”
In her apartment, all of the walls are painted a shade of green she found at the thrift store. The paint probably contains uranium. On her desk, she has a framed photo of J. D. Salinger that she tells everyone is her grandfather from “the war.”
Liam Gallagher, no relation. Biochemistry and molecular biology major. His best attempt at a pick-up line is, “Do you know Italian?” He doesn’t know Italian. His ex-girlfriend just came out as straight again. She thought she was gay, but it turns out it was just him.
In middle school, his claim to fame was that he could vomit on command. Currently, he receives about four texts per week. All of the remaining notifications are from Reddit. When he types Grindr, it autocorrects to Gryffindor.
Lately, Sophia has been mulling over something. She’s been pondering it in the way only Elliot-Smith-listening, Doc-Martens-wearing, Emerson-reading new-age hippies can. And she’s come to a conclusion: It’s time to switch majors.
Turns out art history isn’t just appreciating the old masters with a reverence that grants inner peace. You also have to memorize an avalanche of names, and the ones that aren’t Ninja Turtles are hard to remember.
And all of her friends are in bands, which is emotionally exhausting. It might sound fun to have friends in bands, but that’s only until you’re being asked to three gigs a week at different janky bars, and someone is always trying to hand you a CD of their latest LP, and you don’t have the heart to tell them that you don’t even have a CD player. Also, it’s not actually the most lucrative major. Pause for surprise. Now she thinks it’s time for a 180 into everyone’s classic Plan B: pharmaceutical research.
Liam isn’t doing too hot either. He just heard a professor say, “Actually, everything you’ve learned about this up until now was massively oversimplified,” for the fourth time this quarter. It has been weeks since he’s made eye contact with someone who didn’t look like they wanted to set their backpack on fire.
He buys four cartons of ice cream in different flavors to prepare for the aftermath of a conversation he’d been dreading for nine months. He is telling his parents that he is dropping out of biochem to pursue a graduate program in museum studies, the first step in which was majoring in art history. In fact, he is on his way home to call them up.
He doesn’t even register Sophia as she passes, flouncing in a skirt that was forty dollars more than the retail price because it was from a vintage store in Portland. She doesn’t bother to look at him, his lab goggles still imprinted on his face, running on forty minutes of sleep.
In this moment, they are perfect. And they are oblivious. They have no idea of the harmony of their souls, that they vibrate at the same wavelength. They have no idea that exactly one year later, they will be in exactly the same place, walking the same way. Liam will be wearing Teva sandals and sipping an oat milk latte. He will have spent half of his paycheck on oat milk. Sophia will be clutching an unfinished pre-lab and will be texting her friends to say, no, she can’t make it tonight. Or any other night.
They will be exactly as happy as they were a year ago.
Written by: Annabel Marshall — almarshall@ucdavis.edu
Disclaimer: (This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
