>studying in campus library with friend >just finished

File: james-joyce-9358676-2-raw.jpg (45KB, 620x874px) Image search: [Google]

45KB, 620x874px

>studying in campus library with friend
>just finished four hours of latin grammar >Wheelock's and Lingua Latina rest on the table next to my copy of Ulysses
>take a break, shooting the shit with friend before starting to work on going through Ulysses again.
>girl I've seen on this library floor every day for a while now passes by, smiling
>semi-joke with friend about heading through the bookstacks over to her table to get her number
>our conversation transitions into some esoteric degenerate inside joke shit, and when my friend cracks a funny line I decide to lift my ass and rip one.
>it was a low rumbling, warm, quiet one,a GOOD one, and so I tell my friend that I did it, and he's like, "dude what the hell," because in all my four years of college I haven't farted in the lib.
>we laugh
>we laugh
>girl comes around the corner and up to me, staring at my books on the table
>I freeze. Throat dried, lip-locked, swallowing for a gulp.
>She points at book nervously. "Hey, I've seen you a couple times and it would kill me not to ask. What do you think of Joyce?"
>I stutter and begin to respond with my entry-level interpretation: "Well, I like the way he captures the minutiae of everyday life, really, and, and..."
>She helps me out by nervously bringing up the Latin. "Oh, Latin too? Wow, are you-"
>she pauses. she blinks a couple times.
>oh god
>I smell my shit fumes
>my friend is frozen and i'm trembling. The girl's brow pulls down and her lips furl in disgust. "Oh my god," she says. "I'm sorry. I gotta go."
>she storms away
>my friend shakes his head in embarassment, and to cover my ass I stand up and yell, "Wait, where are you going! It was just getting Joycean in here!"

>mfw she didn't turn out to be my Nora