Chapter Text
A Twinkie Kind of Day
by Cat_Willow2
Dr. Lawrence Fleinhardt was having a personal and professional crisis. The 44 year old professor felt bored, unfulfilled, and washed up.
It was lunch time, and Larry was eating at his desk. He just didn’t feel like walking all the way to the faculty dining room and having the same conversations with the same people. Sitting at his old, friendly desk, Larry unfolded his lunch bag (paper, of course; he had no use for all the disposable plastic bags and containers people used these days that just went to landfills) and took out an apple, a tomato and cheese sandwich, a bag of chips, and a double pack of Twinkies. Larry had a terrible sweet tooth and tried not to indulge it too often, but this morning he had somehow known it was going to be a Twinkie kind of day.
Larry had been a professor of Physics and Cosmology at CalSci for 13 years. Most of that time, he had felt comfortable there, imparting knowledge about science and the universe, logic and living to the thousands of students who had passed through his classes at the venerable institution. There was also his usually satisfying research to occupy him and give him a sense of being tied into his fields and with other scientists around the world.
Lately, however, Larry had become uncertain about his role in advanced education. He wasn’t sure he was connecting with his students in the ways they needed to ingest not only the course material, but also the more elusive personal understanding they would need to effectively master the sciences. He was no longer sure that he was the role model they needed to send them out into an ever more complex and demanding world. Although generally well-liked, Larry was quite aware that he was somewhat of a joke among his students, who often mimicked his gestures, his voice, and his sometimes (even he had to admit) obscure digressions. And it was becoming more difficult to even relate to fellow professors.
Larry wrinkled his nose at the stale white bread sandwich. He despised white bread; it stuck to the backs of his teeth. He’d bought it when he was in a hurry and didn’t get his customary honey wheat, but he felt obligated to eat it. The white bread squish effect was amplified by the Velveeta cheese, which also had that stick-in-the-mouth feeling. It was great for grilled cheese sandwiches, which were Larry’s specialty but weren’t nearly as good cold, which was the case with many things in life. The distant cosmos held light and excitement and promise, but the here and now offered cold cheese sandwiches and lonely lunches spent hiding from one’s colleagues. Larry sighed. He set the sandwich down and resolved to never eat white bread or cold Velveeta again. A new Fleinhardt manifesto! Larry shook his head and issued a small smile its honor.
Although he never thought it would be possible, the research was getting a little stale, too. Larry was working in areas that seemed to hold little interest for his colleagues, here or at other institutions. No-one else was seeing the same theoretical implications he was, and his writings weren’t eliciting the attention he had dreamed they would. To be honest, his work had outgrown his facility with the advanced math needed to express or test his theories, and he would need a very talented collaborator in order to fully pursue the more fascinating areas. The likelihood of that happening was, well, unlikely.
Now, the lovely Victorian house he’d bought a couple of years earlier was a nice distraction from his professional ennui, and he enjoyed learning the skills needed to gradually restore his home. The physical work itself was rewarding as he admired the results of his restoration. He was also learning about the outer embellishment and inner décor and furnishings of the period, feeding his lifelong appreciation for the past and its continuity with both the present and the unknowable future. It gave him a sense of belonging. The only drawback to the project was that he was doing it alone. He saw people in paint shops and antique stores, but he had fewer and fewer actual friends whom he saw outside of work.
The Fleinhardt family had historically remained close knit, but everyone else lived far from California and only got together as a clan for holidays. Larry almost felt that he had a closer relationship with his house than he did with people. Matter may be interconnected in ways humans have only begun to understand, but sometimes it’s important to see that connection, to touch it. To touch someone.
Turning to the apple, Larry carefully examined its contours and noted that the vertical axis did not allow it to sit on the desk properly, with dignity and grace. If the bottom of the apple was set firmly on the desk, the stem pointed askew at a nearly 80 deg. angle. Off kilter. Just like everything else, of late. Larry regarded the apple as a depressing monument to the current state of his life. He placed it next to the sandwich on his desk.
Larry used to socialize with some of his coworkers, but they all had families now and didn’t need a middle-aged, single hanger-on. People sometimes arranged blind dates and otherwise tried to find nice women for Larry. Women who wouldn’t mind dating a science geek with a questionable wardrobe and a sociability repertoire of paralyzing shyness and hyperactive excitability. He was long used to being in the "nice" category that he knew was a kiss of death to women. Nevertheless, Larry enjoyed the friendship of a few single women CalSci professors who occasionally hauled him around as an escort to social events, thus temporarily elevating his social status, he supposed.
Very few people, and no-one in his family, knew that Larry was bisexual. Larry had not undertaken a formal study regarding his relative attraction to the sexes, as he tried to see individuals as more than the sum of their relevant parts. In general, however, he had found men to be more attractive and exciting than most women he’d been with. He also usually felt more comfortable, or at least less uncomfortable, with men. He was not sure about how most men felt about his social skills because few men talked about such things, and most of his relationships with men had been brief and primarily sexual. Since he was still carefully ensconced in the closet, no-one was setting up real dates for him with men, and he despised the bar scene.
Larry had tried to realistically assess the probability of finding a true soul mate, or at least someone he could spend quality time with. Although he would never be a movie or television star, he didn’t believe he was a particularly unattractive man. It was true that his height was somewhat lower than average, and his forehead somewhat higher (Larry refused to consider the word "balding"), but he’d had compliments on his "arresting" blue eyes and modest smile. Although he was quite aware that he was considered eccentric (some said "kooky," but not to his face), he didn’t believe that was necessarily a bad thing and that conventionality was, indeed, highly over-rated.
Oddly, Larry found that his intelligence did not make a great deal of difference to people; most seemed far less concerned with what went on in his head than with what went on in their own. This was a very good thing, as they usually did not notice his sometimes crippling social awkwardness right away or that his arresting blue eyes frequently darted toward empty doorways in search of escape. Conversely, friends and family had told him that his odd gestures and his tendency to speak tangentially added to his Ivory Tower reputation. In the end, Larry saw no need to change the essence of who he was, even if that were possible. What was he to do, take Normal Gestures 101 at the local community college?
Despite his seeming inability to make lasting human ties, Larry had always felt confident in his place in the fabric of time and space, which was the reason he went into cosmology in the first place; it was where he belonged. But he was tired of his secluded, near monastic life. Although he tried to remain patient and hopeful, Larry was facing a crisis of faith that the universe truly did have a way of bringing matter together, not just dispersing it farther apart.
The bag of chips, of course, was all smashed to hell. Although he had, for once, remembered to put his lunch sack on top of the books in his shoulder bag, the bag was so full that the weight shifted and the lunch bag got caught between books, anyway. He should have been able to predict that eventuality, even without mesospheric mathematical abilities. Oh well, Larry hated baked chips anyway. The lovely salty, greasy kind tasted better and worked well with the (grilled!) Velveeta cheese and Twinkies to clog his arteries beyond redemption. "Note to self: lunch food is to be as flavorful and unhealthy as possibly. This rule to be strictly enforced!"
Actually, there was only one person with whom he was interested in having a relationship, but that was very unlikely to happen. Larry accepted that fact. Although he had known this person for several years, he had not developed his terrible fascination until recently, when he noticed that the awkwardness of youth had transformed into radiant adulthood. Social taboos were still present but were now much less critical in this case, and his dream was temptingly proximate. Larry still kept himself apart, however, allowing himself only occasional glimpses and fantasies. Dignity was cold comfort, but it was better than losing his self-respect by chasing someone who, while now an adult and a respected professional, was still literally young enough to be his offspring.
Perhaps it was time to move on, to apply to other schools where he might start afresh, where he would not feel like Tantalus, with temptation painfully close but not to be touched. He could find somewhere closer to his aging mother and other family members. He had a lot invested in the house, but in this market, the sale price would more than make up for his renovation expenses. But it was painful to think of leaving CalSci and LA, selling his home and abandoning hope of love…. Love?! A ridiculous theory and unlikely to be testable. He had a crush and nothing more.
In search of rescue from the rest of his depressing lunch and his ruminations on his depressing life, Larry picked up the final element of his lunch, the Twinkie package. He held it in his hands for a minute, as though it were a talisman against his encroaching career Armageddon. Or perhaps a harbinger of better things to come. "Most likely a paunchier waist and tooth decay."
The office door opened, and someone stepped inside the doorway. Still engrossed with his largely uneaten meal and the promise of Twinkies yet to come, Larry didn’t look up and uncharitably hoped the person would think he was praying (which we wasn’t) or cogitating (which he was) and just go away. Instead he heard a voice.
"Dr. Fleinhardt? Remember me?"
Larry stiffened at the voice, so recognizable and compelling. It was the intense, brilliant, and now 21 year old, Dr. Charles E. Eppes.
end part 1