succulent sixteen...

 

It is the 31^st of March. Today is Renae’s sixteenth birthday.   I have not forgotten.

 

I call her up. I have not talked with her on the phone since the week before I won the Young Columbus. The day I broke up with her. The day she wished death on me.

 

Somehow I just feel that Renae will have me back. Somehow I feel that if I can elucidate to her that I had to sacrifice my unbridled barometer of lust 

 

When I call up Debbie don’t call me Mrs. Howard answers the phone. She recognized my voice. I ask if I may please speak with Renae.  She tells me just a minute.

It feels like I wait three-quarters of a neglected lifetime.

She picks up the phone and says hello.

"Renae hey, this is David."

There is a pause. After thirty seconds she says hello very meekly.

'Hey, listen, I know we parted on bad terms and everything but I just wanted to call and wish you a happy birthday. Happy sweet 16."

 

There is more of a pause. Renae begins to talk. She doesn't seem elated to hear my voice as somehow I thought she might. She is telling me about accumulating her license. She is talking about David Best like they are new found Best friends. She is talking about Laura and Amy, the friends I had through her that I lost after we broke up. 

 

“And I was first in line this morning at the DMV and I took the written test and got my license. Dad’s been letting me use the firebird all day. I’ve already picked David, Laura and Amy up and all we did was just go to the mall and just cruise.”

 

She tells me that her grandfather gave her a hundred dollar bill.

 

I tell her that it’s not like she’s never driven her father back from the bar drunk before.

 

            She refuses to reply. It seems like she doesn’t want to hear my voice. There is more pause.

 

“Well, I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday…” I pause, ever since Renae wished death on me she has yet to inquire anything about my life. “That and to tell you that I’m really busy getting all packed and everything for London.  I leave in thirteen days. Everything seems surreal.”

 

Renae refuses to comment. A gravid silence sips between us. I feel impelled to say omething significance and important.

 \

“Well maybe now that you have a vehicle we could get together some time. I mean, it’s been a while. It seemed like when we were dating that we never got a chance to really see each other. It’ll be good to see you once again.”

 

Renae tells me that maybe then tells me that she’s really busy and then tells me that she needs to go she wants to show her drivers license like an unblemished report card to Kristi’s mom.

 

“Okay, well, I just wanted to call and wish you a happy birthday. May this year sate the wildest wish of your every waking dream.”

 

Renae responds to my thoroughly rehearsed poetic blessing by saying okay and bye very quickly before my ears register a click and then the nasal hiccupping drone of someone who has hung up on the other end.

 

I look at the itinerary. I wonder how Renae’s body might have felt like in mine.

 

 I wonder if it would have felt like spring.

 

I wonder if it will feel like Europe come two week time.

Our Itinerary...

 



It arrives in the mail with directions informing me whom I am to meet once I arrive off the plane. A glossed sheet with the words OUR ITINERARY scribed on the front, a cadre of a British infantry guards. The itinerary is glossed and shiny, professional—a constitutional  via corporate America congratulating us for wining the award. It arrives with a cursory note detailing everything we can expect to find. There is a packet in which are tickets for our domestic flights are kept. The ticket for our flight overseas is being taken care of by parade. There is a back pack that we are instructed to wear at the airports on route to Newark so that we can recognize other YC finalists.  There is also a fanny hip back which I just blatantly out of principle refuse to wear. Both articles of luggage are constellation-less black and have the PARADE logo embroidered on them in the red lettering.

Mom says that she thinks the hip-pack is pretty neat. I tell her that I will never wear it out of principle.

 

There are dual luggage tags with the flaring YOUNG COLUMBUS  emblem blazoned like a fiery compass in the center as if an unblinking eye. One for our PARADE logo’d backpack and one for our suitcase. There also are three pages informing us what items we need to pack for our  incumbent sojourn as well as a list of rules what Young Columbus and the manner in which we as world traveling delegates are expected to conduct ourselves. I pick up the glossed sheath of exposition and begin to read. This is what I have waited for. Both dad and mom seem to flank me on either side of the couch as we go over my itinerary.  We land at London but are imminently chartered from Heathrow towards Stratford-on-Avon where it appears that we will set up camp for the first four days. We will be traversing around the British country side, taking in landscapes I have never heard of—Warrick castle and Blenheim palace as well as  dual afternoons in Bath England and Oxford University respectively before the remainder of out tour is picked up adjourning to London.

 

 

 

 

I make an oral note telling my parents that I just can’t wait to see London.

My parents continue to peruse over my itinerary. Dad holds the list of what male Young Columbus recipients are expected to pack. Mom says look you guys will be going to Harrods and Madame Tusuads and even spending the afternoon at Windsor castle. Mom then notes again that she shares the same birthday as the queen. Dad points at the itinerary and proclaims that it looks like we are scheduled to have meeting with several dignitaries.

“The Lord Mayor of Stratford-on-Avon and the Lord mayor of London and the American ambassador.”

Mom then tells me wow, Dave.

 

 

Wow

 

                                                                             ***

 

The mid-inlet of the brochure, what is referred to as the YC 93 news letter.  In thick blue capitalized font there is a proclamation inviting us to meet counselors. They are college students less than a decade older than even the youngest YC recipient. They come from Northwestern, Georgetown and Springfield College. The come from the University of Michigan. They come from Furman College, from the University of North Carolina and the University of Tennessee. They are all clean cut and academically privileged. They somehow all seem to be emblematic of the future that awaits us.

 

 A life that teems with promise.

 

Mom tells me that they all look like fine and responsible young men and women. I look at each window, a still-life portrait from Picasso’s blue period and ponder which counselor will escort me on the trip that will alter the periphery of my life on this planet.

 

Dad tells me that they all seem to have graduated from expensive colleges and don’t you think they probably just could have gotten their pre-rec’s out of the way at a junior college first or something.

 

“I wonder if any of them have ever been overseas before?” I ask my mom. Interiorly I wonder if they  were awarded the contest in the same fashion in which I did. If they had to present themselves in front of a panel and delineate why they were deserving of chauffeuring an arbitrary flock of teenagers through Europe.

 

“Which one do you think is yours?” My sister Beth inquires.

 

“I don’t know. I imagine it will probably be a male.”

 

I assess the slopes of each of their faces.  I look at their eyes, hinting with promise. I wonder how they are experiencing the bulk of their collegiate trajectory. I wonder what they are like. I wonder what they know.

“They look like fine young men and women.” My father notes again. Adding that I am sure I will meet several mentors on the trip indeed.

 

 

                                                                                                     

                                                                     ***


I decide to call Nat one final time.  I have called twice and both times he was not around so I left a message. Someone who appears to be his sister picks up the phone. He is a grade older than Renae but a grade younger than Dawn Michelle. He is a junior.

 

I use my mature voice. For some reason I keep on internally referring to him as Nate. It’s only when I think of the bug that I allude to his as gnat.

 

 

“Hi, May I speak with Gnat, Please…”

 

I want to compare itineraries. I want to ask him if he is pumped.

 

From the opposite end of the phone there is a hello.

 

I say hello. I say gnat. There is a warbling acknowledgement that sounds like he is brushing his teeth with sandpaper.

 

“I say hey, this is David from Peoria, we’re going to be going to England in a few weeks and I just thought I call to see if you were….”

 

Before I can finish speaking the phone hiccups into an audible click before emptying out into a vacant drone. I don’t understand what I could have possibly done to piss my future Young Columbus brother off. I decide to call again. His voice picks up. I remember my manners. I say hello. When I say may I speak with Nat the call hangs up again.

 

“It’s probably a bad reception.” Mom notes, stating that Nat does live in rural Tazewell county.

 

“Yeah,” I accede to the warm platter of my mother’s voice, “Probably a bad reception indeed.”

 

 

March the 24th is a Monday. It is warm enough for the distant runners to run outside.

The snow is beginning to subside in taupe rainbow-afflicted puddles. In track and field distance is constituted by anything 400 meters plus. On days we are not doing speed work we all run the same amount the milers and two milers normally running ahead in a bubble. The half-milers plus lagging behind, talking, jesting each other, often taking a short-cut still finishing well behind the distant elite. We stretch across the fresh vernal earth at Madison golf course. We take off running through West Peoria, cutting across, running down Bradley quad, making it to Main street taking a hard right at running central, wending our way to Moss avenue a mile and a half of old Peoria money furnished in the fashion of monopoly mansions, arriving back into West Peoria only to dip in to the southend and finish in a sprint in front of the high school.

I run next to Hans LoGrotto. We have separated from the pack near the two miler mark. The two of us are avg. less than six minute miles.

 

I have won a trip to Britain and all I can think about is how I can make it back to Bollingbrook, Illinois. I have the searing opus of SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION lodged in the front part of my brain along with music by the 77's.

The last hundred meters Hans and I vie each other for position. For speed, jockeying towards the finish where the cheer leaders are still practicing even though football and basketball seasons both are over.

We sprint. Coach is waiting as well. The sun is beating down. I wonder if the red-haloed girl from up north dons a cheer leading uniform. I wonder what her lanky legs resemble under the helm of her outfit.

 

Hans LoGrotto and I finish at the same moment. Bending over. Coach looks at us and nods, informing that we finished a rather grueling five-mile course in less than thirty minutes.

 

We go for a mile cool down run. Logrotto informs coach that the reason we were trekking so fast across Bradley campus was because all the girls were lying out sun tanning. 

Joe is my closest competitor. His mile time avg’s in the five-twenties.

 

Both of us have a goal to break five minutes in the mile sometime this year.

                                                                        ***

The next day I sit with the shy girl with the gentle civil war china doll cheekbones for lunch. I sit next to the girl who is shy. She is sitting by herself.  No one knows who she is. I ask her if this seat is taken. She smiles. She is shy. She looks down.

"Hi, I'm Dave." I say, jutting out my arm. There is a bible next to her teal lunch tray. She identifies herself as Jennifer. Jennifer-Rose. She says she is lonely. She says that she just transferred here from Woodruff and that she hasn’t made friends here.

“I only went to Woodruff for a year. My dad moved up here from southern Illinois.”

I love the subtle twang in her voice. She tells me she was born in Viennes Illinois which doesn’t sounds at all as it should.

"You're actually in my math class only you never see me."

I say Mrs. Peabody. She says yes.

"Yeah, I sit at the front. Mrs. Peabody and myself kinda loathe each other. I had her advance algebra class early in the semester and is just marred my GPA so I transferred to tan easier class."

Jennufer Rose says that she doesn't think  that this class is that easy.

"Well if you like, I'd be happy to help you with it. I was in Mrs. Peabody advanced algebra class for masochists and all she did was disparage me and I got low C's. It totally marred my GPA so I transferred to this class." Jennifer looks down. She is coy. I look at the bible next to her tray. Somehow I feel like confessing to her that I carry a diminutive Gideon bible in my front pocket at all times. The bell is about to ring. I need to get back to the remainder of Mr. Reents Maybe tomorrow we can sit together and do lunch and go over math."

Jennifer Rose says that she would like that.

She thanks me for sitting with her.

She tells me it is good to have a friend.


                                                                ***

 After practice the cheerleaders continue to form human pyramids and aerially flip each other. Tree boughs are giving birth to albino buds that seem to wink. Everytime we inhale the air is invitingly crisp and enter our body with a benevolent huff. It is spring. Everything is brand new. Coach says that he realizes that most of the sub-milers often just look at these work out as a jog and that they only go half the allocated amount that the distant runners go. Coach says that he admires our heart and how we wear it on our sleeve.

 

We go and shower.  Logratto was born in Europe. is uncircumcised unit looks like some kind of root that was left in the dry cellar and sprung more roots. When he asks for shampoo I try not to look at his uncircumcised penis, a peel banana wrapped in a hot dog bun.

 

I wait in front of the school, trying not to think about what the red headed girl is doing right now. Trying not to think if she thinks I am a freak. Trying to figure out how I can find her again. I have doffed my running shoes for my boots. The station wagon arrives. Mom beeps several times. We are giving Hans Logrotto a ride home. As I enter the car she barters an oversized package that cost over four U.S. dollars to mail.

 

“This came for you today Dave. It finally came.”

 

She holds it up.

 

Mother calls me by my first name. She calls me David. She is smiling. She tells me that it has finally arrived. The package from New York. The package from Parade magazine.

After all this time it has finally arrived.

Spring is here.

Songs of Faith and Devotion

The cover of Songs of faith and devotions is the color of Lent boarded by bleeding merlot frame in which the visages of the band in its entire foursome stare unglazed through violet hexagrams, splotches of purple seminally shattered, pensive  Most Depeche mode albums don’t even have pictures of the band inside the lyric notes let alone adorning the cover.  The title SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION looks like it was finger-painted by a four year old.

This is the band I have more or less lived for since last summer whose tape I first bought four years ago with the image of the wilted phoenix that was a flower suspended in deep space on the cover. the tape I bought last summer under the title CATCHING UP WITH which I listened to incessantly, the CD CONSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN being the first CD I eve purchased.

There is a distilled eeriness. After ten  studio album this is  the first release where the band on the cover. I keep getting Dave Gahan and Martin Gore confused.  Martin Gore looks like he uses the same amount of hairspray as I do.

  Dave Gahan;’s hair is long and he looks more like he has just finished reading Faust and is seriously getting ready to tempt a desert -meditating Jesus into sin. Andrew Wilder looks like a nerd trying to fit in via a pair of sunglasses. Martin Gore retains a look of austereness welded in the angular features of his jawline. Unbeknownst to any of the band members at the time this is the last album that Fletch will be a part of. 

Tim asks me what I have in my hand. I tell him it’s my favorite band.

“I didn’t even know they had a new album coming out. All year I’ve been listening to Depeche mode and the Cure and dreaming about England and here they release a new album days before I am scheduled to depart.

Tim Shrugs. I was going to buy either Black celebration or Music for the Masses but this takes precedence.

Tim has already made it a note that the band looks Satanic.

“The cover alone looks like a Ouija board.”

Tim always wears purple. I refrain from saying anything.

“I can’t wait to listen to it. This band is one of my best friends.”

On the way back home from the Youth gathering I open up the road atlas of the United states and flattened open the state of Illinois, the state I have lived in all my life, the stat which when flapped open like a centerfold and splayed down in front of my vision looks like it is about to be dissected on a lab table in some junior high biology class by some nerdy looking white kid wearing goggles over his glasses, hoisting up his scalpel wearing laytex gloves. The map is elongated liver shaped, needled with blue and red arteries that treacle down the state in a rivulet highway— blood tears going nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I think about the girl I met on the dance floor and about my maladroit dancing skills—about the mosh pit of bodies globed together in a rattled cluster of limbs and elbows and movements—the supernova of youth banging and fucking into the pre-dawn sunrise of a pending millennium—enervating and exhausting limbs in a clanging dither of noise and reverberation—a frenzied interior gallop clamoring into an orbital wad of pulsating sweat and frenzy endeavoring to become one with one another, endeavoring to become one with the searing acceleration of a culture gyrating wayward away from it’s own interior ethos—and at this spiritual assembly the youth bang their limbs together, tackling their shoulder, sliding their bodies into a mass of bellowing oneness accompanied by the music of Peal Jam—a song which reminds them what it feels like to be alive rather than the alternative.

 

I think about my own slip into the mosh pit, into the clamoring soil of arms and limbs in a failed endeavor to impress a female I had just met. I wonder what she thought when I slid into the frenzied puddle of youth, when I dived in my boots, my glasses folded up in my side pocket like a check book—like the green bible I ferry with me at all times to remind about the culminating temptation of lust. In the back seat of the minivan ferry us down the same sleek artery of land I am perusing over, I think about that girl I tried to impress—I think about the place where I am to travel off to, the future memories to be consummated, the sight of stammering sunsets yet to come wondering to myself if flying feels like the inner matrix of diving into a mosh pit in an endeavor to impress a curly red-headed girl you just met under the din of the dance floor, under the embryonic stutter of strobe lights, as if dancing in an agitated atomic clamor of banging-limbed youth could possibly give birth to something meaningful.

 

I find Bollingbrook on the map and vow to make it back there some day. Wondering if there was some sort of a way I could find the red headed angel of the dance floor once again.  

 

It is the twenty-first of March. In three weeks I will leave.

Sunday is the last day of the gathering. I wake up at 5, perhaps I am still on route time. I lace up my reeboks and circle the carpeted contours of the hotel floor in a light flurry. I think about how cool my dad is to do the route when I am gone. When I am done I back in the room where Eggplant Elmore and Hale are still out for the count. Unlike last night Hale’s snoring has subsided where he only gutturally seems to inhale gravel every six or so exchanged breaths. It is March 21^st. Exactly one month from now I will be entering my final day of England. From the balcony of our hotel room I see the industrial spatter of the L-train shooting from O’hare into the nylon tint of the city.

The city looks like a geometrical sail.

                                                               ***

“So are you in love with that girl now? The small one. The one from Wisconsin.”

“She told me she had a boyfriend. She told me she is going to college in a couple of months.”

“Yeah, but she was dancing with her head pressed against your chest. It’s like you were cradling her.”

I don’t know what to think. I can tell that Eggplant is ready to suggest that none of these girls are hotter than Renae only feeling I should retort by bringing up a ‘you-would-know you were masturbating to the pic-of-my-ex.' It is the final morning of the conference. We are leaving at noon to go back home.

I’ll find that red headed girl.

I turn toward Eggplant Elmore.

I tell him I will find the red headed girl once again.

Lutheran Youth encounter and the wayward sniff of the redheaded girl...

I wake up early in the morning and look out the window and dig into my back pack and reel out a carton of Fig Newtons, chomping down hard, taking diligent sips from the coffee I brewed in the hotel room, listening to my best friend Hale looking as if he passed out early as if from a night of drinking, snoring hard, his mouth wielded ajar, his lungs rattling with all the bulk and occasional hiss of a healthy carbonator. The radiator in the room is located beneath the window like a beer gut and purrs out an ached racket emanating warmth. There is a bedtime sheet of snow outside glazed, reflecting a frosty mid-march sun as if it were a peach pebble in the canvas of white. The world seems brand new. In less than a week my glossed itinerary will arrive from Parade in a package in mail which mom will hand to me after track practice with an excited smile beaming across her face—the itinerary telling me where I will be shuffled throughout the continent of England, what sights my vision shall imbibe, what flights I shall catch. Detailing what copse dream pastures I shall stroll over. But for now, in this hotel room, in a frosty morning in mid-march, I am all alone, my best friend asleep on the bed I recently arose from—a cup of coffee and a magazine about spiritual-charged grunge music laying next to the Chicago Tribune I purchased in the hotel gift shop. The sound of Airplanes leaving O’Hare in thick draughts of thrust and exhaust every ten minutes—the mechanical blitz and roar and searing overhead—wings splayed as if in balletic posture.   

It is the largest hotel I have ever been in.

From the entrance lobby there are four translucent glass elevators that shoot up. There are twenty floors, each floor resembling a the size of an indoor track.

In the morning I see students running around the perimeter.

Hale tells me I should go running. I tell him I will.

I wonder if I will meander into the sight of the red headed girl.

It never occurs to me that I shall be leaving from O’hare in only a handful of days. That exactly a month from now will be my last night in London and I shall be packing to come home to the place I have already left. I lace up my rebooks and run. I am running around the contours of the building. I am pushing myself. I am thinking about how track season is just beginning to convene. I am blasting off. There is England in the somehow distance future even though I have not received anything tangible in the mail pertaining to my trip with the exception of my passport. I am running thinking about the girl I met the night before under the strobe lights while moshing to Pearl jam at the dance.

I am taking off and I am flying, watching as the glass elevators shoot up like beams.

Somewhere there is the red headed girl. Somewhere I only have a modicum of time to find her again before I leave.

                                                                    
                                                    ***

 

During the day we are mandated to go to three of the four conferences. I go to a conference about abortion, telling us how the single-cell organism whose belly is now outside its body is still a valid person with a soul that has a architectural plan by Jesus. They then show us a twenty-minute video of late term abortions. Several females wearing their boyfriends’ varsity jackets in the group begin to cry.   I go to is about inner-city gang hosted by an ex-motorcycle gang member with a mullet who sound as if he has never heard of the Vice Lords. I am vowing to find the red haired creature again. The girl I tersely danced with. The girl who laughed when I skidded into the corporeal dip of the mosh pit, flouncing around my limbs for nano-second teardrop of eternity; a sneeze in the grandmother’s quilt of time and pace where for a moment we felt like one integer fumbling off the corporeal grid of being while locked in the avenue of the others arms.

I am looking for the red headed girl.

I stop at a panel about Christian Death Metal and get inundated with fliers of Long Hair bands I have never heard of before.  Kings X. Sixpence None the Richer. Petra. I recognize Stryper as the band that wore yellow spandex and looked like Thundercats in the late 8o’s.

 

I am look for the red headed girl. I am looking to purchase a souvenir of the weekend.

Eggplant Elmore is next to me. He seems freaked out from the sessions on abortion.

“You are looking for that girl from last night. That girl you danced with during that Wayne’s World song.”

There has been no sight of the red-headed girl all day. David Hale says he is bored.

 
  

“Dave man, the girls here. There are like girls everywhere here.”

     

There is a malleable fracas, the tinge of youth.  Four glass elevators shoot out in the center of the lobby like transparent aortic valves.  There are fifteen floors. For reason's unknown to mankind Elmore again asks if I just so happen to every now and again here from Renae Holiday even though he know the answer. Hale inquires if I ever just so happen to speak with our good friend Dawn Michelle.

I say know two times in a row as if I am precocious.

“So you’re not dating anyone since you broke Renae’s heart?”

I tell him that I didn’t break her heart. I tell him that I thought I was doing the honorable Christian thing to do since I couldn’t blink at Renae without fantasizing about her without picturing her panties handcuffed around the bony probes of her ankles.

There was a girl named Tabitha although it didn’t work out. I’m really not looking

“You should’ve stayed with Renae. Renae’s hotter than any of the girls here. Plus she’s not as religious You could’ve really fooled around with her. She probably would have let you gone all the way..”

I tell Eggplant Elmore that that’s the whole point. He says what. I say to seminally fall in love with a religious girl. He says why.

“I don’t know."

Eggplant tells me that he wouldn’t be surprised if Renae ends up dating David Best once again.

“Hey are like best friends. They talk with each other every night the phone. They are like Best friends.”

Eggplant says that isn’t ironic that Renae was with Best for so long and then she was crazy about me and I blew it and now it looks like she is getting back together with Best again.

            I say no.
It is March 20^th.  I still have not received any sort of itinerary or plane tickets.

I have no clue where I will be in one month’s time.

                                                      



                                                                           ****

They watch on the screen of the same television they use to watch Lawrence Welk every Saturday night. The same television they use to watch Bonanza (his favorite show) when he was all of what they could only surmise was four years old in earth years. They watch with a glass ashtray that is full of Jelly beans on the coffee table and tv trays parked in front of separate recliners. They watch as the grandfather clock seems to audibly click in tempo with the cantering of hoofs. They watch the coffin with the upside-down pyramid imprisoning what looks like coiled reptile being drug through the center of a faraway city, a city that is still partially in ruins, architectural cavities exposed steel frames.

They watch as a union of heroes march with heads down in solemn deference.

They watch because no one on the planet with the expectation of his fiancé knows his identity. They watch because they have lost him, lost him again after having given up hope, this creature that seemed to sprout from the arable field of Midwestern corn. They watch because it was long accepted that they would be a childless couple even though she prayed and then he appeared, like Moses, in what Pa referred to as a galactic nickelodeon.  They watch as the world is mourning. As the president elect (who right wing Pa just plain can’t stand because he’s a draft dodger and a sonuvabitch) eulogizes him. They watch, realizing they are helpless, as his body is ferried out of the carriage, as it is eulogized in front of a weeping city, a city he saved, they watch as his body is placed in a mausoleum erected by the long haired son of his oldest adversary.

Pa is telling Martha that we lost him all over again.

There is only one thing they can do.

                                                                      ****


After the conference on new an exciting trends in  Christian Death metal music I pick up a CD with three scantily-clad Indian Gurus on the cover. The CD has the title  PRAY NAKED. It is by a band I have never heard of before. A band whose name is the last two digits of the year I was born.

"That CD looks gay."

Eggplant Elmore said.

I have never heard a song by the band. I am buying them because the appellation of their name is the year I am born.

"You are buying that CD? But you never even heard of that band before."

Yes, I tell Eggplant Elmore, in the affirmative.


                        

He can tell I am still thinking about the red headed girl.



                                                                 ***

The last conference I attend is about HIV. The lady who runs it is classy. She has a swaying long dress. She talks about HIV in the Christian community and Christ’s message of unyielding Love. The conference is cut short by a parental chaperon in the back room. He sounds like my friend Tim. He is talking about living by the sword and dying by the sword. The classy lady running the conference says that her brother was a Christian and loved the Lord yet he was a theatre major and moved to New York and contracted HIV when he was twenty.

The man in the back of the room stands up. He is adamant.

 
He says that the bible says and eye for an eye. He sounds like an idiot when he says that God created Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve. He says that AIDS is God’s plague for punishing homosexuality.

He leaves the room is disgust before the session ends.

The classy lady asks us if we have any questions.

The room is silent.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

                                                           ***   

 

That night the entire  conference meets again. There is a praise band in the auditorium. There is a Christians Rap group from the inner city of Chicago. They are promulgating Jesus, yo. Everything is Yo Jesus. It is Jesus. Heavenly Jesus. Jesus is still alright with me.  The main draw is someone named Bob Lenz. He has peachy-red cheeks and a mullet. He is from someplace called Appleton Wisconsin.  He travels around the country and speaks with youth. He is open about is apparent addiction to pornography. Everyone is laughing. He has mullet that somehow doesn’t look dated and/or country. He has an aura of kindness. He is talking about collecting embarrassing stories and then shares the stories with the audience. There is a story about a young girl going skiing who has to use the bathroom so she squats behind a copse of alpine evergreen and ends of skiing down the mountain with her ski-pants lassoed around her ankles. There is a story about a high school couple who are making out and it is the first time the girl (who is a purported hotty) just orally ingested what appears to be a Shamrock Shake from McDonalds and really has to burp only she doesn’t want to think her potential boyfriend coy so she tries to swallow and ends up ripping a backfire burp like a bullfrog into his lips.

Everyone is ewing. Everyone is cheering. Everyone is yelling the name Bob. It is Bob. It is Bob Lenz.

I look at Hale. He is smiling though he says it is a long day and he is tired. Elmore is acting weird as well. We are lifting our hands in surrender posture to Jesus. We are singing hallelujahs. We are saying back and forth. I still have the cool CD with the title PRAYING NAKED by the band who goes by the last two digits of the year I was born. It is Jesus. It is Go Jesus. It is only Jesus can save us because we were innately born evil. Jesus who is the son of God via metaphysical-uterine conception via a fourteen year old. Jesus who is Jews only (shhh) the Jews have never accepted him. Jesus who becomes part of my body every other Sunday when bread is transubstantiated into his body and a shot of wine from a disposal plastic shot glass mesomorphs into he blood type dripped from his veins.

Jesus who will, come three weeks time, be nailed to a plywood plus sign and die for every sin I have ever committed. Every unpure thought. Every word. Every deed. How I am a perennial fuckup. How I am no good. How if I were somehow perfect and refrain from nursing thoughts of feminine idolatry I would have made State this year in Cross Country. I would not have been injured. I would not be  struggling all the time in Mrs. Peabody’s math class earlier in the year. I would have a photographic memory. I would still be with Renae even though I would tell her that my heart is sewn to the Lord and that whatever pulsating biological predilection aka sin the two of us feel must wait until our union is solidified in front of the altar of Christ.

Jesus who, even though I ferrying around the wallet sized Gideon bible with me everywhere I go I still am a sinner

Jesus who will die because he loves us oh-so much yet will come again.

They will visit the tomb will be empty.

He will rise again.

He will be dead for thee days.

And three days after that I will find myself in London.


                                                 ***

 We order deep dish pizza from Giordano’s in Chicago. My cool Youth Counselor is talking with his roommate from college who plays bass in the stage band. Everyone is still talking about cool Bob Lentz is.

I have never seen pizza like this in my life. It looks like a steaming tomato pie. Elmore comments that it looks like miscarried road kill. By the time we are done eating it is 9:30. There is another dance tonight. It is my final chance to find the red headed girl.

I turn to both Hale and Eggplant.

"Man, come-on, we gotta go.”

Hale says that he is tired. He says that he needs to take a little nap. Eggplant Elmore takes two glances at me before stating that he just wants to walk around and enjoy his last night here in Chicago.

“This isn’t Chicago. This is Rosemont. This is a hotel and a youth gathering. You are supposed to be socializing with people your own age from other parts of the Midwest.”

Eggplant Elmore is upset. He shrugs. He tells me to quit being so belligerent.

“You just want to go to the dance so you can see that red headed girl once again.”

I am meeting friends who share my faith. I turn back to Hale.

“Dave comeon man. There’s girls downstairs.”

Dave asks me if I think that the dance tonight will be just like the dance from last night and if so o no because dances bore him.

I am on the search for the red headed girl. I am a hunter. She is somewhere here.

As I get on the elevator I hear something I have not heard all year at Manual. There are three lads and they are looking at me.

“Hey man. You look just like that kid off of Blossom. What’s his name? Tony.”

I smile. I tell them thanks. They are from Naperville. One of his cohorts speaks next.

“Yeah, we actually ran into him at Great America over the summer. Apparently he has roots in Chicago.  He’s a really cool dude.”

I nod again. I tell them thanks. for watching. They laugh/ I try to make what I conceive to be small talk.   I tell him just how cool I though Bob Lenz was tonight. I tell him that I really enjoyed listening to all of his crazy embarrassing anecdotes. They smile. They tell me that Bob is the bomb.

“Yeah, we are on our way to the dance. Would you like to join us?”

I would.




A feel-good song by REM emanates over the speakers.


They are already calling me Tony.


"This is how we dance to this song," Their dance is somewhere between a skip and a caffeinated  frolic.

I am having so much fun. The dance is in a smaller conference room then it was last night. My friends are referring to me as Tony. I have  all but forgotten about the red head girl and the fiasco from the night before. Everyone is dancing. Everyone is accepting. Everyone is crazy. For perhaps the first time since Music Man last  summer youth  feels like it is new.

Everyone feels that they are somehow one.

Paul Westerberg comes on. I am going crazy. I pogo up and down. I turn to my new best friends form Naperville.

“My friends would really love this. Is it cool if I run up to the hotel room real quick and get them.” 

They tell me it is all cool. They tell me Go Tony!!!! They are pumping their fists. They are chanting my doppelganger’s name.”

There are participants to the youth gathering everywhere. They are gregarious. Even the shy ones. Everyone is talking. Everyone is pro-Jesus. Everyone is high on Christ. Everyone is having cathartic hotel room emotionally wrenching bible studies.  Everyone is giving everyone else hugs.

I slit my key that looks like a credit card into the winking emerald slit of the hotel room door.Hale is in one bed. He is passed out as if he just case-raced a six pack. He is snoring. It sounds like a chainsaw having a fake orgasm only it is repetitive, abrasively jarring to the earlobes.

 Elmore is on the opposite bed wearing headphones.

 “I can’t sleep at all because of your friend.”

Elmore has the third bed all to himself. I see his jeans and boxers forming a denim and flannel puddle near the side of the bed. He is wearing a shirt. Hi cheek are hummel-slash rosemary.  It looks like he is groping an NES advantage beneath his sheets. 

“ Dude, you caught me at a bad time.”

Something is going on. Eggplant Elmore never refers to me by the moniker dude.

In the center of the bed I can tell Eggplant has an erection. It is pretty clear he is trying to conceal something. I think about Mattoon. I think about how I would have run at least thirty second faster that night if Beano and the gang weren’t getting off watching so much porn.

“Elmore, what are you doing?” we’re at a Lutheran Youth Gathering, you shouldn’t be choking the chicken.”

He tells me that he’s not. He tells me that my fat best friend is snoring and the fracas is curtailing his ability to crash so that he has to relax.

I notice he has something burrowed under the side pillow. I ask him what he is looking at. He says nothing. He tries to change the subject. He asks me if I found the red headed girl I was so enamored with last night.

“No, what are you looking at man? Let me see?”

Whatever he is looking at it is clear he is in almost pre-jerkoff mode. He has something buried beneath the pillow. I wonder if like Mattoon he found porn stowed beneath the bed.I reach for the pillow even though I can care less. He is telling me no. He is laughing one second. The next he seems ashamed. The next his lips morph into a chalky hyphen telling mandating no. For some reason I think it is gay porn. For some reason I picture Eggplant having a polaroid of a penis beneath his pillow. I reach on top of the mound of fluff. Both our hands are piled on top of the pillow. He is claiming that he is going to tell our youth counselor that I am harassing him. Behind us Hale’s snore sound like a thoroughly rehearsed tympani in an Wagnerian opera. With my free hand I begin to tickle him. He is laughing. The second he  laughs I reach beneath the pillow.

I pull out a picture I seen before every day of my life for the past five months.

It is the picture of Renae.

*****

They pillage his bedroom. The baseball and glove. A scrap book. His first piece of journalism from the Smallville newspaper. A model airplane he played with when he was younger. A teddy bear. They are savaging for mementos. They are collecting the bric-a-brac. They are arraying it in the contours of a tin box. The two of them are crying. They are old. Pa is a vet of Korea and has had been having heart palpitations since he refuses to take his medicine. Martha is diabetic.  It is cold late-autumnal rain. He wears his Stetson hat. He is walking into the field with a shovel and a makeshift urn. They walk to the strip of land where they found him almost exactly 35 years ago.  Pa begins to dig in a manner which suggests he is shoveling snow, in a manner which suggests he is exonerating the past, rugged Kansas soil dripping with every spike into the earth. He is digging out the crater he once found his son. He is planting him back in the earth.

They are filling the earth with relics of his pulse.

He takes the box and places it in the hole, saying a prayer.

The two of them hold each other.

They are saying goodbye.

                                                                        ***

It is the picture of Renae. The photo Renae Holiday gave to me on our quote “first” official date even though we hung out several times already. It is the picture that is always in my front pocket, often next to the Gideon bible.

The first thing I feel like asking him is how he got doubles of the picture. I look at the picture again. By the craggily creases nibbled around the contours of the glossy paper I can tell that it is my picture.

“Wait, how did you?”

Eggplant has both his arms up around chin like he is expecting me to strike him.

The picture is always in the back pocket. Even though I broke up with Renae somehow I have this feeling that we welded a connection. Somehow I feel that we will be together someday.

Eggplant tells me not to hate him.

“Elmore where did you get this?”

I tell him that I didn’t realize the picture was missing. He tells me that he was going to put in back in that big old suitcase of mine when he was done with it.

“You were jerking off to Renae Holiday?”

Eggplant says no. He says he was just admiring the picture for aesthetical purposes. I tell him aesthetical purposes my ass. I say with your pants off. Elmore stops and looks at me with an egret countenance sewn to his lips.

“How did you find this? Normally I keep it in my back pocket.”

I tell him that this picture is really dear to me.

“Last night while you were at the dance and were trying to impress that red headed girl by moshing and started flailing around like Charlie Brown who just missed a football. It fell on the floor and I picked it up.”

Eggplant tells me that I didn’t see him because I had my glasses off. He tells me that when I was picking everything up the picture just sort of floated his direction like it was the Holy Spirit in butterfly guise.

“It’s your own fault. You really don’t understand how much you effed her heart up. You really hurt her. You hurt her on the inside. Even in our French class she had to leave and go see a counselor. She was just crying all the time.”

I reach in my pocket and place the picture against the padded white of my loins.

I want to yell at Eggplant. I want to tell him that I never even masturbated to Reane Holiday even though every time I shushed the lids of my eyes I saw her naked, her twin legs dual peninsulas beckoning the virile port of my anatomy into the center of her body to dock.

I am pissed. Hale is still snoring. I am seething with rage. Fucking Eggplant Elmore. Eggplant who couldn’t stop gossiping all the time when I first started dating Renae. Eggplant who badgered me incessantly about how many bases I had rounded in my relationship when we first started dating. Eggplant who told me that, even though we are purported staunch Christians and our saving ourselves for marriage, I should have effed her first when we broke up while standing over me at the Listerine scented urinal in the bathroom before Sunday school.

Eggplant remains silent. He then tells me not to tell anyone about this. I look at Hale. There is still half a Giordano’s deep dish pizza that is cold and looks like an abortion on the night stand next to his bed.

I look at the picture of Renae. The creature that I felt that I needed to crucify in order to embark in the direction of an anglophile nirvana.

“Hey man, why thanks for finding this picture. Seriously I really appreciate it. The picture really means a lot to me. Renae really means a lot to me. She’s really a special girl.”

Eggplant is still mute. My anger is beginning to dissipate.

“How about this: Get dressed and we’ll go back down to the dance and we’ll meet some real hotties. It wasn’t like last night. No one is moshing. The dance closes at 11 so we have about 45 minutes to get back downstairs and meet the girl of our dreams before we say goodnight and Hale’s skirling snores accompany us to the land of dreams.”

Eggplant says he’s not one for dances. I tell Eggplant that he owes me.

“Beside I met this really cool group of boys.

“Okay.” He says, mandating that he turn around so as not to see him naked.

I look at the picture of Renae. She seems happy. I wonder what she is doing right now.

From behind me Hale continues to snore as if on cue.

                                                               

                                                            ***

 

We arrive back at the dance. They are done playing Paul Westerberg. The crowd has filtered out.  Eggplant looks like he is out of place. The lights are sprinkling across the dance floor. The friends I have been hanging out with earlier in the night who were referring to me as Tony are nowhere to be found. It is sparse but people are dancing.  On the far side of the dance floor there is a girl standing all by herself. She has her arms folded. She is small, petite.  The size of Kim Zmeskal. She has a haircut that looks like a smurf, auburn bangs clipped across her forehead.

She is still dressed to kill.

She looks at me and then looks the opposite direction. Elmore sort of thrusts his shoulders up and down in a nonplussed motion like he doesn’t understand why I insisted he come to the dance.

The DJ makes an announcement that there will be one more dance for the night.

I walk up to the girl who I the size of something gnomish I might find on Bob and Frank’s thoroughly manicured lawn.

“Hey do you want to dance?”

She looks at me. She is smiling. She has an iridescent lavender aura or perhaps it is the strobe lights.

“Wow.” She says. I say what.

She is smiling at me.

“I’m waiting for someone. He was supposed to meet me back here.”

I tell her I am sorry. I apologize. She grapples the interior of my arm and tells me no.

“No, no. It’s not like that at all. I was just…how old are you.”

I tell her I am fifteen. I tell her I am a freshman,

Her eyebrows seem to do a little dance.

“You’re a freshman.”

I tell her yeah, asking her why it is such a big deal. I want to tell her that Dawn Michelle never thought it was a big deal.

“No it’s like, when I was a freshman I never would have had the gall to come up to someone and ask them if they just wanted to dance.”

The DJ is verbalizing that this is the last song and then it’s time for us to get back to our hotel room for 11pm curfew. My friends from Naperville are still nowhere around.

“Look, there’s one song left. I’d be honored if you’d be oblige to dance with me.”

The smurfette size princess presses her hand below her chin, above her bosom as if she is pledge of allegiancing to an unknown flag. She says that as long as I say that so poetically how can she not be compelled to oblige.

We are dancing. The top of her forehead reaches just above my left nipple. We are dancing, We are swaying back and forth in the motion of an animated buoy. I ask her what her name is. She says it is Katie. I tell her mine. She looks at me and smiles. She tells me that she hasn’t danced with a freshman since she was like a freshman herself three years ago. She uses a two words I have never heard before. She uses the words cavalier and gallant.

She is smiling at me. The final song is that damn Whitney Houston song from the Bodyguard soundtrack. She tells me that she loves this song. The only thing I can do is to concur. 

              

                            

Her body smells like warm apples in spring. I try to warble off any noise that remedially might pass for small talk.

“So are you enjoying the conference? Bob Lenz was really something t’night.”

She tells me yeah, she tells more that she’s from the same town in Wisconsin where Bob Lenz is from so she’s heard him several him before although he is still damn near hilarious. She doesn’t use the word damn.

“So you’re a hardcore Lutheran gal then?”

She tells me that she is a hardcore Lutheran gal. That her dad works for AAL which is an acronym for Aid association for Lutherans.  She tells me that she has also just been accepted to Luther, which apparently is some sort of liberal arts college somewhere in northern Iowa.

”If you’re going to Luther, you better watch out for those thesis. I mean I hear there are flying thesis that are nailed everywhere.”

The amplified sub-woofers is giving us a blessing. It is Whitney Houston. She is stating that she hopes life somehow treats us well

“Plus I have a little sister. You would totally love her. She’s only in eighth grade but she’s precocious. She’s adorable. She’s small like me but you would totally love her.”

Katie is placing her head on my chest like she is trying to verify the rhythm of my every aortic pulse. The dance is ending

She asks me where I am from. I tell her I am from a place called Peoria, Illinois. She tells me she has never heard of it.

The song ends. It seems like she has shrunk during the song.

“Thank you for a lovely dance.”

She tells me that this is the best dance she ever had with a freshman.

I am a gentlemen, I protrude my hand and grapple hers in solemn barter of night-punctuating gratitude.

I tell her that the pleasure is all mine. I tell her she’s a princess. I tell her I’m glad that her potential date failed to meet her.

We squeeze each other’s respective hand tersely. The light are coming on. The dance is over.

I leave the dance without once ever seeing the red headed girl the entire day.

Elmore is waiting at the door with the exit sign dripping down room above.

He mentions that the girl I was dancing with was nowhere near as hot as my ex-girlfriend whose picture he was looking at while milking the virility of his manhood to all but fifteen minutes earlier. For some reason Eggplant Elmore tell me that the girl I was dancing with was nowhere near as hot as Renae. That her chin barely came up to my waist.

"You never found that girl." Elmore notes, sounding like he is Encyclopedia Brown.

“No, but I found the girl I somehow was supposed to dance with tonight.”

I think about Katie's scent and smile.