She was Prissie from Brissie. He was the Nothingman from Nottingham. Why the names? Straightforward where she is concerned. Her name is Priscilla, she is from an Australian city called Brisbane, and Australians generally have a tendency to shorten names.
With him, things are a bit more complicated. He lived in Nottingham, where he studied for a one year MA course in literary linguistics. She spent one year of her studies in English literature in the same city, which is how they met. Initially, she didn’t realise that he wasn’t actually English. But then she noticed it from little things like the slightest hint of a foreign accent or the usage of a wrong preposition. He wouldn’t tell her where he was from. It must have been a country whose citizens don’t enjoy a good reputation all over the world. She suspected it was a country in Central Europe.
He wouldn’t tell her his name either. But then, this was not so important: everyone knew that he was a fan of Pearl Jam, and he especially liked that song he had named himself after. Everyone just knew him by Nothingman, it was his name.
He was quiet and withdrawn, talked only when addressed, and spent a lot of time lost in his own thoughts. He wanted to be a writer, and was often seen sitting down at some place, with pen and paper, but more often than not the pages in front of him remained empty.
She was open and talkative. She made friends at Nottingham in no time. But it was he who fascinated her most. She wanted to draw him out. She wanted to know what was going on behind this silent and mysterious façade he showed to the world, she wanted to see what his real self was like.
She approached him one day as he was sitting down in a lecture room, way before the lecture started, again with an empty page in from of him. He was playing with his pen, and seemed to stare at it in annoyance.
"Hi," she greeted him.
He looked up and his face turned a bright red. It was not the first time she had spoken to him, but he reacted like this almost every time. It seemed like she had called him back to the here and now from a place very far away, a place that existed only in his thoughts.
"Hello," he finally returned her greeting.
"What are you writing?" she asked .
He looked at is writing pad in frustration. "Nothing," he grumbled. "That’s all I ever write. I am not a writer. I just want to be one. But I can’t write it down. It’s all in my head. But I can’t get it out. So I write nothing. And that’s me. Nothingman."
"You just have patience," she replied. "If it’s in there, it will come out. Eventually."
He stared at her. "You don’t think I am wasting my time?" He sounded genuinely surprised.
She shook her head a definite no. "You aren’t. You will get there. Just keep on trying. No good thing comes easily."
After that, it was easy. He confided in her more and more. They started to meet outside the university, sat in cafés together, went to bookstores, strolled along the river Trent, and finally visited each other’s places. She shared a flat with six other students, while he lived in a small apartment of his own. His parents financed his MA course and everything going with it. He didn’t have to work in order to finance his studies, unlike Prissie, who spent three afternoons per week waiting tables in a restaurant. Sometimes she also worked nights.
"Don’t you hate that job?" he asked her one night at his place.
She looked at him. "Why should I?" she wanted to know. "I actually like it. I enjoy meeting people."
He shook is head. "I never have, I never will," he mumbled.
She looked at him intently. "Why is that?" she asked.
"They are like the blank pages in front of me," he began. "Or rather, I should say, they are not blank. They have all kinds of things written on them. But not by me. I can’t get through to them. It’s the words. They are all trapped in my head. Other’s people’s words can get out. Not mine. So all they see is what I am capable of showing them. Which is not much. A silent observer. An excluded bystander. That’s what I am."
She looked at him, touched by his words. Finally she had got a step closer to understanding him. "So you would like to communicate with other people more? But you feel that you can’t?"
He just nodded, looking out of the window.
"You should stop being so hard on yourself," she said, after a moment of silence. "You are not the only one who can’t communicate his true self to the outside world. Aren’t we all a bit like that? Look at me. Everyone just sees me as the cheerful Aussie. But there’s another side to me too."
He looked at her with a crooked smile. "Well, there must be," he agreed. "Otherwise you wouldn’t be here now, spending time with old Notingman."
She looked straight into his face. "You are not nothing. You are so much more. To me. And you should also be more to yourself."
He stared at her. Looked straight into her eyes, as he had never done before. "Why are you so good to me?"
She just gave a little smile. "Have you ever been with a woman?" she asked.
He turned red again. "You mean, as in, if I had a girlfriend before?"
She nodded, hiding a smile.
He shook his head violently. "Me? With a girl? You are funny. There is an invisible wall between me and the others, at all times. How am I supposed to get close to a girl?"
She couldn’t hide her smile this time.
