( the latter end of 2010, as 2011 approaches )
who are you to make me feel so good?
who are we to tell ourselves that we're
misunderstood?
who am i to say i'm always yours?
Something about being supposedly “old” tells Oxford that he really ought to be above certain things. For crying out loud, he’s been around for longer than a millennium, which is far more than what most of your regular folk could say. He feels that while he hasn’t physically aged more than a decade in all this time, he should have developed, by now, some sense of humility or learnt how to be sensible. However, this most certainly is not the case, as Oxford’s general attitude to most thinks is not unlike that of a petulant teenager’s, and his levels of maturity are honestly rather abysmal. Life is still one incredible little secondary school drama, and sometimes he wonders if he should take to writing soaps. His myriad of experiences have given him more than enough potential material to work with.
This line of thought is overwhelmingly brought on by the state of his somewhat tangled personal life. He’s never been quite sure when it turned into such an incredible mess, but he knows that he can’t untangle it now without potentially damaging some of the threads. He knows that severing them is at once something he will not allow and something that is relatively impossible. As much as he may dislike, for example, Milton Keynes, this is largely because Keynes is as exciting as the concrete he constantly moans about, and also because he is so young. He hasn’t lived through all these centuries with Keynes.
No, he’s shared these years predominantly with Bath and Cambridge, and they are ultimately closer to him than just about all other cities. He likes to tell himself that it is natural after all this time to have developed certain affections for the two of them, but it is growing increasingly certain that these affections of his are distinctly stronger for one over the other.
The pull that Cambridge has on Oxford, he theorises, stems largely from their constant need to approach any matter with competition and arguments. Though he would most likely never admit it aloud (at least certainly not to Cambridge himself), Oxford sees Cambridge as his exact equal; they excel in different areas, but they are both nearly unmatched in these said areas. They are both incredibly old, and they have shared enough time over the centuries to have developed a very strong attachment to each other. Oxford knows this without Cambridge needing to tell him. He knows that they will each most likely rush to each other’s defence if someone else was to dare criticise them - Durham being a prime example - and when they stop fighting, they actually have incredibly civilised conversations. Despite the endless battles, Oxford will rarely say no to Cambridge’s company.
Oxford bitterly and irritably wonders if the strength of his attraction to Cambridge (in fact, his love, dare he think the word) is at all due to his simultaneous attraction to brittle, breakable ties. His situation is not exactly stable, after all. He knows the emotional risks, if you’ll excuse the hint of melodrama, of being very much involved with Bath and also being very much involved with Cambridge are rather high and quite likely to implode on him at any given moment.
Bath’s more than obvious infatuation with him is also understandable. Vanity speaks here, with Oxford and his overwhelmingly handsome architecture and self. He certainly can’t blame Bath for wanting him, but he can blame himself for fuelling the desire. Needless to say, he has never really rejected any of Bath’s flirtatious advances. She’s a beautiful and intelligent city, after all. She has seniority and class. Yet for all her intelligence, she rarely seems to use it nowadays. For years, Oxford truly harboured a deep affection for Bath that bordered on love, at least until more modern times hit. The ever-present problem of inescapable pride that plagues all cities seems to have caught Bath at a certain age and simply remained there. While Cambridge and Oxford bicker and compare their modern qualities and advances, Bath seems stuck on medieval and Roman heritage, to a point where it’s difficult to coax her into thinking of anything else. By god, she has much to be proud of, and she needn’t stick to the Romans simply because they provided her with her wonderful baths.
The conversations grow irritating. There is no end to the insipid flattery and the mindless compliments that, while entirely genuinely, do not inspire much in Oxford. Little by little he feels his heart and mind gravitate towards Cambridge.
Cambridge is unpredictable and volatile. He is a familiar mystery that Oxford loves to fight with on an intellectual and bantering level as much as he enjoys it as much as on the physical. Sex is always rather exciting, he has to admit. The struggle for dominance rages even in the bedroom - or wherever else they might be “enjoying each other’s company” - and in all honesty it’s fun. Their quips and sniping don’t end just because they’re naked. Oxford has spent enough mornings inspecting mildly amusing, faint bruises on his wrists and elsewhere due to the roughness he and Cambridge sometimes exert on each other. It’s all rather childish in the end, deriving pleasure from something very much adult as well as wrestling like reckless school children. He’s fallen off the bed plenty of times in the wake of wild and largely uncontrolled rolling. When they aren’t seriously attempting to anger each other, the petty little insults and remarks are just fodder for their strange, erratic camaraderie.
Sex with Bath on the other hand is rather tame and boringly romantic. Candles or a roaring fireplace, anything to set some kind of mood or scene. Oxford guiltily has to admit that such moments of intimacy have been transferred from reality to some of his inexplicable and awful novels, mostly because they fit with the sickeningly sappy quality of such novels, but in time he think he’s just been spoiled by Cambridge’s capricious and volatile moods and approaches. There isn’t the same wiggle room, to coin an inelegant and “modern” phrase, with Bath. She expects a certain level of decorum, and will settle for nothing more and nothing less. Every so often, this is soothing, and while it is always gratifying, Oxford feels now that these evenings end on a muffled, old note that has long been out of tune.
The underlying problem with the whole situation is that it is a sort of vicious circle of strong emotions that are mostly unrequited. Bath’s manners are too simpering for Oxford to believe that she is in love with him, and though he thinks that his own quiet admiration of Cambridge is testament to something deeper, he is to Cambridge what Bath is to him. A temporary (though frequent) lover for the night, a warm body to share a bed with, and not much beyond that.
Sometimes Oxford consoles himself with the thought that in the end, he is not a being that was truly made to love much beyond … well, himself. This isn’t really the most pleasant or comforting of consolations, but it lowers his expectations enough. It isn’t as though he has faced an unending emotional struggle throughout the years - these doubts and feelings have been fairly recent, in a city’s terms at least, having arisen about a hundred years ago, or so. But he is a city, a not-entirely-at-all-human being that might live for thousands and thousands of years. “Love” is not exactly a luxury that he can indulge in. Cities fight too much amongst each other, and given that physical aging barely ever happens, pursuing a meaningful relationship with those who aren’t cities just isn’t even the slightest bit sensible.
It simply isn’t something that’s “meant to be”. Eventually he assumes the love will fade, and it will stop preying on his mind in time. He has no illusions - or at least, that’s what he tells himself.
who are we to tell ourselves that we're
misunderstood?
who am i to say i'm always yours?
Something about being supposedly “old” tells Oxford that he really ought to be above certain things. For crying out loud, he’s been around for longer than a millennium, which is far more than what most of your regular folk could say. He feels that while he hasn’t physically aged more than a decade in all this time, he should have developed, by now, some sense of humility or learnt how to be sensible. However, this most certainly is not the case, as Oxford’s general attitude to most thinks is not unlike that of a petulant teenager’s, and his levels of maturity are honestly rather abysmal. Life is still one incredible little secondary school drama, and sometimes he wonders if he should take to writing soaps. His myriad of experiences have given him more than enough potential material to work with.
This line of thought is overwhelmingly brought on by the state of his somewhat tangled personal life. He’s never been quite sure when it turned into such an incredible mess, but he knows that he can’t untangle it now without potentially damaging some of the threads. He knows that severing them is at once something he will not allow and something that is relatively impossible. As much as he may dislike, for example, Milton Keynes, this is largely because Keynes is as exciting as the concrete he constantly moans about, and also because he is so young. He hasn’t lived through all these centuries with Keynes.
No, he’s shared these years predominantly with Bath and Cambridge, and they are ultimately closer to him than just about all other cities. He likes to tell himself that it is natural after all this time to have developed certain affections for the two of them, but it is growing increasingly certain that these affections of his are distinctly stronger for one over the other.
The pull that Cambridge has on Oxford, he theorises, stems largely from their constant need to approach any matter with competition and arguments. Though he would most likely never admit it aloud (at least certainly not to Cambridge himself), Oxford sees Cambridge as his exact equal; they excel in different areas, but they are both nearly unmatched in these said areas. They are both incredibly old, and they have shared enough time over the centuries to have developed a very strong attachment to each other. Oxford knows this without Cambridge needing to tell him. He knows that they will each most likely rush to each other’s defence if someone else was to dare criticise them - Durham being a prime example - and when they stop fighting, they actually have incredibly civilised conversations. Despite the endless battles, Oxford will rarely say no to Cambridge’s company.
Oxford bitterly and irritably wonders if the strength of his attraction to Cambridge (in fact, his love, dare he think the word) is at all due to his simultaneous attraction to brittle, breakable ties. His situation is not exactly stable, after all. He knows the emotional risks, if you’ll excuse the hint of melodrama, of being very much involved with Bath and also being very much involved with Cambridge are rather high and quite likely to implode on him at any given moment.
Bath’s more than obvious infatuation with him is also understandable. Vanity speaks here, with Oxford and his overwhelmingly handsome architecture and self. He certainly can’t blame Bath for wanting him, but he can blame himself for fuelling the desire. Needless to say, he has never really rejected any of Bath’s flirtatious advances. She’s a beautiful and intelligent city, after all. She has seniority and class. Yet for all her intelligence, she rarely seems to use it nowadays. For years, Oxford truly harboured a deep affection for Bath that bordered on love, at least until more modern times hit. The ever-present problem of inescapable pride that plagues all cities seems to have caught Bath at a certain age and simply remained there. While Cambridge and Oxford bicker and compare their modern qualities and advances, Bath seems stuck on medieval and Roman heritage, to a point where it’s difficult to coax her into thinking of anything else. By god, she has much to be proud of, and she needn’t stick to the Romans simply because they provided her with her wonderful baths.
The conversations grow irritating. There is no end to the insipid flattery and the mindless compliments that, while entirely genuinely, do not inspire much in Oxford. Little by little he feels his heart and mind gravitate towards Cambridge.
Cambridge is unpredictable and volatile. He is a familiar mystery that Oxford loves to fight with on an intellectual and bantering level as much as he enjoys it as much as on the physical. Sex is always rather exciting, he has to admit. The struggle for dominance rages even in the bedroom - or wherever else they might be “enjoying each other’s company” - and in all honesty it’s fun. Their quips and sniping don’t end just because they’re naked. Oxford has spent enough mornings inspecting mildly amusing, faint bruises on his wrists and elsewhere due to the roughness he and Cambridge sometimes exert on each other. It’s all rather childish in the end, deriving pleasure from something very much adult as well as wrestling like reckless school children. He’s fallen off the bed plenty of times in the wake of wild and largely uncontrolled rolling. When they aren’t seriously attempting to anger each other, the petty little insults and remarks are just fodder for their strange, erratic camaraderie.
Sex with Bath on the other hand is rather tame and boringly romantic. Candles or a roaring fireplace, anything to set some kind of mood or scene. Oxford guiltily has to admit that such moments of intimacy have been transferred from reality to some of his inexplicable and awful novels, mostly because they fit with the sickeningly sappy quality of such novels, but in time he think he’s just been spoiled by Cambridge’s capricious and volatile moods and approaches. There isn’t the same wiggle room, to coin an inelegant and “modern” phrase, with Bath. She expects a certain level of decorum, and will settle for nothing more and nothing less. Every so often, this is soothing, and while it is always gratifying, Oxford feels now that these evenings end on a muffled, old note that has long been out of tune.
The underlying problem with the whole situation is that it is a sort of vicious circle of strong emotions that are mostly unrequited. Bath’s manners are too simpering for Oxford to believe that she is in love with him, and though he thinks that his own quiet admiration of Cambridge is testament to something deeper, he is to Cambridge what Bath is to him. A temporary (though frequent) lover for the night, a warm body to share a bed with, and not much beyond that.
Sometimes Oxford consoles himself with the thought that in the end, he is not a being that was truly made to love much beyond … well, himself. This isn’t really the most pleasant or comforting of consolations, but it lowers his expectations enough. It isn’t as though he has faced an unending emotional struggle throughout the years - these doubts and feelings have been fairly recent, in a city’s terms at least, having arisen about a hundred years ago, or so. But he is a city, a not-entirely-at-all-human being that might live for thousands and thousands of years. “Love” is not exactly a luxury that he can indulge in. Cities fight too much amongst each other, and given that physical aging barely ever happens, pursuing a meaningful relationship with those who aren’t cities just isn’t even the slightest bit sensible.
It simply isn’t something that’s “meant to be”. Eventually he assumes the love will fade, and it will stop preying on his mind in time. He has no illusions - or at least, that’s what he tells himself.