Our Songs, Our Story, Our Love.

Chapter 10.

Art Garfunkel was sat in the warm summer sunshine and smiling, happily to himself at the almost illegible scrawl that was written on the piece of blue lined paper he was holding.
Illegible to anyone else that was, but not for him.
He had learned to decipher Paul Simon's seemingly hurried handwriting with absolute ease by now and funnily enough really looked forward to receiving these letters from his friend.
Paul and Art were now attending summer camp but on different campuses as they were both studying completely opposite genre's. Art was into mathematics in a big way and was still following his heart into one day perhaps becoming a teacher or a professor. He had a natural flare for numbers and of working things out. In fact he was extremely talented in that sphere and also in philosophy too.
Artie was clever, intelligent and smart and absolutely adored learning. He was also enjoying summer camp immensely, having made quite a few new friends, with plenty of good looking girls along the way. He would also very often be found singing in the evenings to entertain everyone, which was also making him extremely popular.
In fact Artie was having an absolute ball and the stresses and strains that he'd put himself under from the constant rehearsals with his best friend Paul Simon had been absent from his mind for a good few weeks now.

Paul, on the other hand was not having such a good time on his campus. He found making friends hugely difficult.
Being somewhat introverted and shy amongst people he was not truly familiar with, he was very often found alone wandering around the campus with his guitar slung on his back and taking himself off to play it alone.
Girls were also a big problem for him too.
Now being out of high school and without Artie by his side, Paul now found that attracting the girls to him was becoming pretty much impossible.
Being a viral young teenager Paul was attracted to a lot of the girls at the campus. He had a real eye for the very pretty ones too and although many of them did find him to be cute and funny, they also did not want to be towering over a prospective boyfriend, so they would avoid any sort of physical contact with him.

The age old shortness thing was raising its old, ugly head yet again.

It never seemed to be much of a problem when Paul  performed on the stage with Artie, it really didn't seem to matter how short he was. Artie had also, always made sure of that by either standing just behind him at his shoulder or sitting down on a stool. It was something Artie just did without fuss or bother or even saying a word about it, he just did it. Of course Paul knew what his friend was doing but because Artie just did it, Paul had said nothing.
This was done in Art's quiet, unassuming way and Paul loved him for it.
But now without Artie by his side at campus, Paul really felt out on a limb somehow and in fact grew increasingly lonely. He missed his friend desperately, so would constantly write to him like a real love sick teenager.
Paul also missed being in the studio with his friend, singing together and just generally hanging out. He now realised that he and Artie had developed a real bond with one another and he just could not find that with anyone else.
He missed their shared sense of humour, the laughter they had as well as their talks about baseball and the cars they'd like to one day drive. But most of all he missed the music that they made and of course Artie's wonderful singing voice.

Paul even started to grow increasingly jealous with the others who shared Artie's campus and who were also sharing his voice too and the fact that his friend also seemed to be having such a wonderful time without him, made Paul sink even lower into sadness.

For the first time in his life, Paul now grew depressed and started to find that he was increasingly unable to bring himself to join in on any of the social activities that were being put on for all the students. Of course he had his guitar that he could play for them if he so wished, but so did a lot of others.
Having a guitar and being able to play it was not an uncommon occurrence on campus, although some of the students wouldn't have been so accomplished as Paul Simon was and they certainly would not have had a record deal waiting for them!
But Paul had now chosen to actively distance himself from the social scene somewhat, seemingly to prefer to wallow in his own self pity and could quite often be found all alone either writing songs or writing to Artie, desperately looking forward to the responses to the letters he had sent.