We are told that we will be dismissed each group one at a
time and to be sure we ferry our luggage to the bus.
There are four buses transferring the Young Columbus winners from the Holiday Inn to Newark international airport less than a mile a way As we will discern the entire trip we are bus number one.
We load the bus. Several of the escorts get on our bus. I recognize Frank McNulty the CEO of Parade. Trevor is seated next to me. Charles rises up form his seat as if he has just risen from hibernation and performs a head count. The buses are idling. There is the smell of vinyl. In less than five minutes we will be arriving at the airport. In les than five minutes the summation of everything will begin.
The last person to board the charter bus is FRESH VOICES Lynn Minton. Everyone on the bus suddenly looks are her as if she is a librarian who just blew over her index finger and told us to hush. She is struggling with her luggage.
“You are the one we are not supposed to talk to.” adds
Justin, rather brazenly. If Lynn Minton interviews us
for our Fresh Voices column all of we are all-to-cognizant to the fact that the
only visage we have ever known will appear in a column in the weekly magazine
with the self-proclaimed largest circulation on the planet. All of us are trying not to be toadies. All
of us are admirably failing. Spencer has usurped my wished for role as ring
leader of the group #3. She smiles. The
counselors are walking up and down the central aisles of the bus counting with
their chins like train conductor vouching for tickets.
For some reason Lynn Minton has two large carry ons.
She is trying to stuff both in the overhead compartment. No one is helping her.
Spencer appears to be doing an imitation of someone name Luwanda.
“Here,” I say, Grapping her bag, placing them in the
compartment above her head.
Lynn Minton smiles at me. She nods.
“Why Thank you young man. Thank you very much.”
I respond by nodding. I sit down next to Justin
“Show off,” He says, under his breath.
I wonder what my photo would look like nationally
syndicated in PARADE.
***
We arrive back at Newark. We are at the international hub. It looks like an entirely different airport. We are to grab our baggage and check it in before we enter the terminal. Spencer is behind me. He has not sat down the entire trip. I have had 24 cups of coffee and I am direly in need of a refill. As the bus idles we go outside and grab our luggage.
"You know who you look like?" Spencer adds. I say who.
"It's your hair. It looks just like Harry Connick Jr. It's you hair."
I tell him thanks. Spencer says that that is what he is going to refer to me as the entire trip.
He tells me that now on my name will be Harry.
Harry.
We each grasp the handle of our respective luggage, entering the gravitationally tilting our shoulders to one side due to the weight we have brought.
***
They are known as the Italian girls and they are hot. They are from Staten Island and Astoria respectively. They have long auburn hair. They talk very fast. They are sexy. Their lips looks like the entrance to an underground subway stop on the lower east side. They are the Italian girls. Group number three just cannot stop ogling.
They have their luggage. They are behind us in line. Chris from Lincoln Nebraska can't stop saying that those girls are hot. They are behind us. Justin says that they are hot but they are no where near as hot as his girlfriend back is Nebraska City is. The Italian are giggling. Every member of group three-the insurgent group, the group of kids who are Freshman who have two counselors has a hardon. Spencer is the cultural harlequin. He keeps on feigning that he is inadvertently tripping. The girls are laughing. They are smiling. I turn around.One of the Italian girls seems to be smiling just at me.
The majority our group has placed their PARADE jackets on. I am the only one in the group who refrains.
It is time to go inside.
It is time to leave.
Once again I try entering the gate of
security and once again I am thwarted by a red siren erupting into a nasal shrill, whistling
at me in annoyance tempo the metal detector goes off.
“Shit,” I think to myself, reaching
down into the interior of my pocket, taking out the British pounds I have
already exchanged, slapping them down like petrified confetti into the side
basket. I then doff the ring that was my
confirmation gift from my grandmother, the ring that has my initials DVB
branded in the interior band, the ring which my mother told me upon receiving
it that it was by no means not to go on the slender fingers of a girl. I then
unsnap the hook claps to the identity bracelet given to me on Christmas last
year by Renae. I step back again and begin to casually strut through the framed
orifice of the vertical rectangular framed.
Once again a nasal beep
reverberates. Behind me my fellow Young Columbians are lined up like blood
cells in their red coats, waiting to leave their home soil and board.
“Take your shoes off. and your belt” The custom
agent demands. Near the far end of the conveyor belt one of the stunningly
attractive Italian girls is looking at me and offers out a feint blush of
encouragement. Justin sounds like a great step Uncle references someone named
Pete, commenting for his sake just keep something on now why don’t you. Jim
Baker of Colorado is telling me to take it off. To take it all off. My shoes are now doffed
as if entering some sort of mosque. The security guard is padding my chest in a
patter of frisks as if he is looking for a gram of cocaine tucked somewhere on
my body. He then makes a gesture with his staff which suggests that I am to
walk through the opening again. Taking a calculated gulp of air and trying not
to lose it.
I step through the metal detector again.
I am trying to get dressed by slinging on my belt. The hot Italian
girls are blushing.
Everyone is from a different vector of the country. Everyone
sounds different.
It is hushed. I am embarrassed. From behind me there is applause. Someone
yells out the moniker Harry. All I want I another cup of coffee.
As I enter the terminal Chris turns to me.
I look down.
I smile.
As I enter the terminal Chris turns to me.
"That Italian girl was totally checking you out man."
There is less than two hours before we are scheduled to leave.
***
Inside the terminal there is an area that looks like it
could pass for the lower level of the mall. There are bookstores and clothing
shops and restaurants. We continue to wait .It is almost as if we are going on some sort of a ship. There is a languor and there is boredom. There is uneasiness. The counselor for the younger groups insist they form a circle and stay in one place. Some of the kids have started a
game of Uno. I sit next to Josh and he begins to tell me about Colorado and the
altitude. Several members of group number three continue to comment just how
hot the Italian girls are. I have yet to
put on my red jacket. Part of me wants to stand out. Part of me years for an
intellectual conversation like the type I had last summer.
I am seated next to Josh who boasts that he is an Eagle Scout in training.
I am seated next to Josh who boasts that he is an Eagle Scout in training.
“I saw on the back of your jacket that you run cross-country.”
“Yeah actually my mom made me this jacket for
Christmas. Cross-country is kind of my passion.”
He smiles. He says he runs but just recreationally.
“It’s track season right now. I promised my track
Coach that I would run everyday overseas..”
Josh nods. He seems interested.
“I was talking to a couple of counselors and maybe we
could get a group of us together and go running a couple of times.
I tell the future Eagle Scout that that’s what I was
hoping. I tell him that I would love to garner a group of guys together and run
every morning in Egland.
Next to us is Bryan Ferry from Alaska. His eyebrows
perch up.
“You’re a runner man?”
I tell him yeah. I tell him it’s my passion. He asks
me what I run. I tell the sixteen and thirty-two hundred.
“Yeah, I’m thinking about going out for the track
team. The coach says I should be a distance runner. Before we left I ran a 4:40
mile.”
I look
at him in dyslexic enlightenment. I bust my ass every day after class and
I still can't break five minutes.. I couldn’t even topple
the time I ran last year at eight grade state meet last Thurs when I got dogged
by the great grandson of Peoria’s most conspicuous atheist.
“Yeah ran 4:40?” Bryan doesn’t look like an
athlete. He sounds nonchalant like it
was no big deal.
Josh says that he runs every day and that he ran 18:01
on his cross-country team in sectional. I tell him that I ran a sub sixteen
once in practice.
Bodies flood past us in a steady throng. There is
anxiety. Several older members have lounged across three or four seats.
Apparently it has been rumored that the Italian girl won the contest by making
a front page of how the newspaper would look in 2050 and then was called back
for the Interview and received the trip.
The younger boys still look nervous. A few seem like they are ready to
cry.
Mark is standing all on his own. There is a magazine curled
under his shoulder like a plaque.
“How is your group? We are in group #3.”
Mark says really then replies that his is group number ten.
“My counselor Michael is really cool. Just like an older brother.”
I tell Mark that it is really overwhelming just how many kids are on this trip. Every time you turn around its like you are meeting someone new. He nods. I tell him that I still can't get over how everyone has a different accent.
“When I was talking to my mom on the phone back at the hotel I told her that I
just realized that she had a Southern accent.”
We laugh. Mark uses the neologism. He says that two boys in his group used the word mental and that, with the exception of Wayne's World, he hasn't heard that expression used since circa 1989.
Behind me Trevor is talking with Chris about Weber inadvertently calling a time out a week ago, costing their school the title.I point at the magazine. I ask him what he is reading.
“It’s a Details magazine.” There is something about the way he says the word details. Something about the way it slips out of his mouth.
“I bought the issue earlier this morning. The one with Martin Gore from Depeche Mode on the cover. It’s in my bag. I’ve been reading it all day.”
Mark’s mouth becomes agape as if issuing a correlating look of surprise. Part of me wants to tell him that the guy in O’hare who sold me the copy of the magazine seemed to already know that I was a DM fan and that I was bound for England.
That he seemed to know everything about me.
I look at Mark again like I have known him all our life.
I look at Mark again like I have known him all our life.
He is not wearing his crimson jacket either.
“Depeche mode. That explains about the hair then.”
“Yeah,” I say interfacing with the coolest human being I have perhaps ever met. “Depeche mode totally.
"I love Johnny Depp man. I really loved him in Edwards Scissor Hands. It looked like he just auditioned for the Cure."
Mark smiles. He gleans the analogy.
"Yes." He says in perfect English. "He did."
It is the beginning of my preregrination to inkown places.
Somehow I have found a beautiful friend.
From behind me I can hear Trevor stating that we need to get together as a group. From behind me I can hear a lady with a British accent talking into a microphone, a loud speaker, claiming that first class passengers it is time to board.
***
The plane is arrayed three commodious seats aisle, six seats
in the center of the plane another isle and then two more spacious set. The
plane is divided into three vectors. In the center of each vector there is a
giant moving screen with an animation sequence informing us what we are to do
if the plane needs to make an emergency landing 30,000 feet above the icy
swells of the north Atlantic.
It is 7:30 and it is already dark outside.
For the third time this day I have somehow managed to
inveigle an window seat. For the third time today I will watch from the side of
the plane as the late-20th century vessel of aerial travel coughs
and sputters and jangles, the entrails of Boeing exhaling while its digestive
inhabitants are sedate, docile, nonchalantly acting like there nothing wrong at
all. Overhead compartments are being
flapped up and bags are being shoved in geometrical patterns. Someone with an
authentic British accent tells one of the boys from Dan’s group that he
sincerely hopes there is no soluble liquid in his carry on that could perhaps
leak.
Exactly one-third of Group#3 has boarded. I am seated next
to Trevor. Justin is on the aisle seat. For some reason Justin is astounding by
the size of each seat. He is playing with the nobs, adjusting it forward and
back.
He then gets up and heads towards the back looking for
Chris.
There is a tap from behind me. A man who looks like he could
be a billionaire executive for Lloyds of London. He is clad in a pinstripe suit
and has aquiline features
He seems disgruntled that he seemingly is surrounded by a
bevy of high school kids.
“You need to keep your seat upright before the plane takes
off or it’s a safety hazard.” He says. I am polite. I want to tell him that its
my seat its Trevor’s seat only Justin was sitting in it fucking with the
I tell him thank you.
He looks back at me disgruntled, ruffles a copy of the
London Times in front of his face like a shield. And attractive black lady
wearing glasses sits next to him and simply nods at my peon antics.
“I’m sorry again.” I look back, hoping maybe to instigate a
conversation, his face completely burrowed in an abbreviated crosses and dashed
hyphens of the Dow and Nasdaq plus signs.
As before the plane is beginning to titter. It sounds as if
it is trying to exhale, to sneeze the clod of red coats out past the windows of
the cockpit seeping over them on the flat of the runway below.
Trevor is next to me and pulls me aside and asks me if that
gentlemen behind me was causing me problems. I shake my head no.
It is to be a seven hour flight. There is a sound of
guttural thrusts beneath us as the British stewardesses with the most beautiful
accent I have ever heard and suddenly everything is a dream. It is like we are
neurons lodges in someone else’s skull firing randomly firing back and forth
engendering cosmic synapses. With my eyes squinting half into the realm of
dreams there are red coats everywhere. We are blasting across the icy blanket
of the Atlantic.
We are leaving as a unit that will come back somehow
changed.
In a blink we are overhead ear-drums searing earlobes unsure where this vessel is taking us.
It will be a ten days before we will be coming home.
We are gone.
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