I try to wake Justin up. He looks like he just o.d.’d on prescription drugs. A gossamer string of saliva dangles from the corner of his mouth onto the pillow. I shake several times. H e swats at me. Says what.
"Dude, that was Trevor. We need to be downstairs in fifteen minutes so we can continue on with our tour of Stratford.”
We arrive down into the lobby, Justin straggling, yawning behind me, into a lagoon of red coats. There are dual random punches into he back of my shoulder as I swivel around I notice that it is Mark, his camera lassoed around his neck as if he had been commissioned to chronicle our here-and-back again aloha through the medium of film. Even though we have been told during lunch to wear our red jackets at all times so that everyone on the trip recognizes us Mark stoically refrains in a way that drips with coolness and international chic. Every time Mark sees me he acknowledges me as if we are old drinking brothers, as if we hail from the same academic fraternity, as if we have known each other all of our lives.
"You guys ever get that tire fixed?"
"Yeah, it was crazy though. We all had to cram on additional buses for the ride to the hotel."
"Yeah, it was crazy though. We all had to cram on additional buses for the ride to the hotel."
“It’s probably an omen.” Mark says, smiling. For some reason I mistake the word 'omen' for the word Amen and offer out a remedial church choir hallelujah. Mark smiles. I ask him how his group is, lavishing his attention. Every word he says is perfectly enunciated kicking through the coliseum of lips in syllables that somehow form musical notes.
“Our hotel room is pretty funky. It looks like it could pass as a set on Lawrence Welk if there were bubbles.
Mark continues to smile. The groups are being split up. I can hear someone comment Big Ten to give it up. Mark gives me a subtle punch on the shoulder again and tells me to take care brother.
He calls me brother. I wade through a cluster of nylon coats and find the Big Ten concurrently naming off states.
“That kid’s pretty cool.” Justin says to me.
“Yeah,’ I say, still thinking that he looks exactly like Jacob Simeon from Manual. Like someone I have seen wading between classes who never acknowledges me when I say hello in the aquarium hallways of high school.
I think I have found a friend.
I think I have found a friend.
***
Back from this morning is our tour guide Vivian. She stands in front of the group and immediately begins to comment how we’ve had a bit of an interesting start to this adventure now haven’t we with the bus and the flat tire and all that breaking down near Oxford Union, but that we are fortunate since today was one of the least traveled day on our itinerary now aren’t we. After having known the creature that is Vivian for an accumulated total of less than five minutes it occurs to me that Vivian can’t punctuate a sentence without inserting an interrogatory mark at the end like some sort of half-raised Union jack outside Buckingham palace now can she.
She holds up an umbrella as if it were a lighted torch meant to illuminate a cauldron of peace every four years, explaining to us that we should make note of the raised umbrella, especially during instances when we are in London and it is rather crowded. Vivian then holds the unopened umbrella above her head like some sort of sabre. She has cropped bangs and is stylishly dressed Perhaps it is the umbrella (which is refers to as Brolli) but there is something Mary Poppins beating-out-all-the-other-moribund-faced Nannies for the job about her. Our hotel is located maybe two blocks from the towns square of Stratford, near a statue of William Shakespeare being flanked by four of his fictional creations. There is an aura of what is classified as jet lag and lethargy etched into the mass as a whole. When it is time to cross each street Vivian clatters out into the center of each intersection, splays both her arms and legs as if martyred in crucifixion, thwarting traffic with her body, watching as her young ambassadors cross from one side of the street to the other.
Vivian points out the statue of William Shakespeare in the center of town. The statue of Shakespeare is not that different from the statue of Columbus in Bradley park. I think about how in Peoria, it is seven o’clock in the morning. Father has just finished peddling the papers down the avenues Sherman and Moss avenue in West Peoria with Tim Flanagan. On the plinth the immortal bard is seated on his throne almost as if he is taking a dump. Red coats are clotted everywhere around the statue. Every fictional creation is based off of a historical fabrication or a persona of someone Shakespeare must have known in his lifetime. I recognize Hamlet and Lady Macbeth. I have never heard of Prince Hal.
The statue of Sir Falstaff seems to fill Vivian with much pleasure as she discusses the bilious antics of this divine creation.
In the middle of Vivian’s soliloquy immortalizing the bard a girl maybe a year older from what must be group five or six stands directly in front of me.
“Do you want an Amarillo pin?” The lady says to me, introducing herself as Elias. Her cheek is thoroughly blushed so that it looks like a sunrise is transpiring across the texture of her cheekbones every time her lips snap out a smile.
Before I have a chance to properly respond to her query, her fingers gracefully begin to attack my Young Columbus jacket near the lapel, as if she were adjusting a sloppily affixed homecoming boutonnière seconds before the remedial high school photograph. I smile down at her, wondering if the scent entering my body is from her or from the continent I have waited seemingly forever to see.
Vivian continues to gesticulate with her umbrella in the fashion of a baton twirler, leading the masses of pubescent scarlet clots into the idyllic aorta of Stratford-upon-Avon. I look at the Amarillo TX pin sprouting out of my label like a medal of honor and reflect when the girl was pinning it to my coat, just beneath the slope of my chin, her lips nano-fractions away from my lips, her breath and tongue and blonde hair and England, the river Avon close by, the statue of William Shakespeare in my imminent vision as I try not to think about reading Romeo and Juliet in Mr. Reents’ FRESHMAN comp class just three months before, trying to think about biting my thumb and then hers in a fit of poetic ardor, trying not to think about then moving to each skipped dactyl, sucking on them the way a baby might coddle a pacifier between the orifice of its lips. I try not to think about Juliet telling Romeo that he kisses by the book or when Mr. Reents informed the class what was meant by the proper definition of a Maiden Head.
I think about all this in England as Elias finishes piercing the pin into the less-than-twenty-four hour vinyl flesh of my parade Yong Columbus '93’jacket, wondering if perhaps her eyes will elevate to the longitude of my vision and perhaps, the shared realization that the reason we have found ourselves together, under the penumbra of the immortal bard, is because we have some sort of rapport. Elias then continues to pin Amarillo TX pins to the rest of the Big ten, like a junior high cheerleader giving blowjobs in the abandon baseball dugout after lacrosse practice in the rich side of town.
She appears to have enough pins for everybody on the trip.
***
Once his own personalized Amarillo TX pin in affixed Jim Baker ( looks at Elias from behind, swiping his chin up and down). When I point ahead at Vivian Baker replies by saying shit, Harry. What gives. Shit.
Once his own personalized Amarillo TX pin in affixed Jim Baker ( looks at Elias from behind, swiping his chin up and down). When I point ahead at Vivian Baker replies by saying shit, Harry. What gives. Shit.
***
We make an ambulatory ellipse around Stratford-and-Avon walking from the statue of William Shakespeare to the Trinity church where the bard is buried to Hall’s croft which he bought and moved into once he arrived back home to Stratford from London to the house where he was purportedly born. The group is still soporific, the bulk having been awake for thirty plus hours. At Trinity church Vivian tells us that both Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same exact date April 21 years and then she asks us how that can be. There are listless shrugs. Someone is the back says that they are both writers and then offers the word manifest destiny.
“Actually it is the difference between the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calendar. Cervantes actually died 11 days earlier yet isn't it interesting that two literary deities of such renown share the same paragraph of death on their tombstone?”
There are collective nods. The church is eloquent. Organ pipes sprawling like chrome stalactites on the back of the knave.
The bard is buried in the front of the church. In the chancel. It feels like I am going up to the altar to receive communion when I walk above his grave. Vivian is talking. Jim Baker is pointing towards the baptismal font and inquiring if it is some sort of urinal.
I look back at Baker and tell him to shhhhhh! by holding my finger up to my lip sexually frustrated-middle aged librarian style.
Baker retorts back by scowling in m direction. He is making a scowl. He says what, looking exactly like my nemesis Aron Rothman back home.
Vivian enunciates very properly as she escorts us
through Trinity cathedral, where the soil and dust and perhaps a mold riddled femur,
a rib-cage half-open in a morbid yawn stuffed with scrolls, the decomposed
Styrofoam yellow skull and sunken nasal socket of the greatest scribe to have
ever flung his thoughts onto the drip of the page lay burrowed before us like a welcome
matt to the Norton Anthology of British Literature. None of the Big Ten seems interested. A few seventh graders in Group #1 look scared.
“When Shakespeare died he did leave us a bit of a mystery, though.” Vivian asserts.
“Many critics even wonder how the wealth of Shakespeare’s corpus could have possibly been composed with such formidable fluidity and grace and poetry for a playwright who did not even have the equivalency today of a grade school education. Many of his plays are attributed to the composition of his rival and fellow playwright Ben Johnson. Many critics also feel that if they could unearth his grave the answer to this historical query might be discerned in the interior of his coffin however there is a curse on the front of his grave.”
Vivian clears her throat before reading reciting epitaph. It sounds like she is entering an oral reading competition:
Good friend, for Jesus'
sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man
that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
After reciting the curse Spencer raises his hand above his shoulders twittering his fingers in the direction of the straw-haired girl whose name I have learned is Daisy. I am thinking of William Shakespeare,
thinking of Mr. Reents who in the beginning of Romeo and Juliet reenacted the whole biting the thumb scene by rising up his middle finger and saying that this is what they mean in today’s vernacular. Behind me I snap photographs of the steel applause of the organ pipes, thinking about my mother back home. Somehow I feel it would be rude to snap a picture of Shakespeare's grave.
Ahead of me the Big Ten is purposely bumping into things. Jim Baker walks up to the Guest registry at the side of the church. He scribbles something then begins to laugh uncontrollably.
"What did you write?" I inquire in a series of innocuous blinks. Baker looks around to verify if Trevor or Charles are nearby
"I totally wrote that William Shakespeare was a total pussy."
The members of the Big Ten are laughing.
"No", I say, leaving the group even though Vivian is pointing the opposite way with her umbrella. It is rude. I can't believe Baker won a trip like this. I can't believe I am surrounded with a bunch of
Harry is a FAG!!!
I ink out Baker's drivel. I then copy the opening stanza of sonnet 116.
I then write Thank you, will.
Thanks.
***
When I come back outside the church Baker is falling on the ground. Spencer and Daisy are close enough to hold hands. Everyone is laughing.
"Gotya Harry." Baker says.
All I can think is that I want to enjoy my trip. All I can think about is somehow this means war.
***
"Go lick the cover of your fucking Depeche Mode album, Harry before sticking it up your ass." Charles glances at Baker and then myself inquiring if there is a problem."
"No," I tell Charles, who I started calling Sir Charles because we are in England.
"No problem at all."
***
As the group cavorts though Stratford-Upon-Avon there is a feeling of spring splashing around in the clouds overhead buffeted by sheets of wind, the sun licking various rays, the feeling of energy and green mingling with the surrounding bodies—in the park near the statue of Shakespeare . the red coated army of somewhat privileged American youth are busy snapping up pictures of everything as if the only way they can breathe is by clicking the snout of their lens. Midway through our tour of Stratford-upon-Avon the sun begins to peck its way from the Defensive linemen of gray clouds. There is a rich blue massaged into the fabric of the overhead air. I try to look for the girl who has just given me a Armadillo Texas pin, thinking that she might somehow be the one I was meant to meet here, not cognizant to the actions that she has been circling the group and pricking everyone’s label with a complimentary Armadillo TX pin.
I stop and notice the lovers'.
I stop and notice the lovers'.
It is a park and there are four of them seated on
the same park bench on a bucolic timeless spring day. They are bohemians. They
are lounged on each other, limbs forming w’s and bridges across the other
shoulders with the lithe anatomy of their limbs. They are beautiful. They are
lovers. They are bohemians. They look like one. Both girls have long hair
tattered jeans and sunglasses only one has thick black hair and one fiery
orange. Both the boys have short haired. One is dyed green. They are wearing
skinny jeans.
They are bohemians. They are lovers.
Their legs are draped over the other. They are
forming a curtain of limbs. They are touching each other in subtle hints of
breath. They are still-life, statuesque. They are timeless. They are beautiful
in a Keatsian truth-is-beauty urn inflection. I can’t stop looking at them. I
am fifteen years of age.
I make a vow that I will remember them forever.
Jim Baker turns and asks me what I think I am
looking at.
I tell him nothing. He says that everyone is skinny over
here.
Chris and several kids are pointing at pictures reading
No fowling while cackling aloud.
There is something about the river Avon that reminds me of a flat and horizontal tear.
***
There is something about the river Avon that reminds me of a flat and horizontal tear.
***
Although I’d defy saying it later on life in after 45 minutes of being shepherded around Stratford it seems pretty certain that the bulk of our group is getting a little sick about hearing about William Shakespeare.
Big Ten Jim Baker (i.e. Iowa) turns back and asks Kenny Houle (ie, Minnesota) where William Shakespeare used to take a shit.
Another member of the Big Ten stresses that that is a good point, since they didn’t have urinals or toilet paper or anything like that back then so they probably just went around randomly squatting leaving little souvenirs of themselves everywhere they went.
Another member of the Big Ten states in a rather 4-ayechish fashion that if you think about it, there’s really not a whole lot of difference between human feces and that of a horse and everyone was riding horses while storming castles and pillaging villages back then anyway.
I look at them as if they are being uncouth. I envision Mark and the other intellectual titans somehow engaging in a discussion about post-renaissance art and the aesthetic ramifications between Shakespeare’s dramas and the posy rhetoric allure of his sonnets.
I have been up for what seems like twin decades. I look around downtown Stratford looking for any place to purchase a cup-o-coffee. Since hearing about the curse on Shakespeare’s grave the sun seems to split as if in ribbons and the bulbous manatee-heavy clouds that have accompanied us since the wheels of our plane skidded down on foreign soil have completely dissipated. The sky is a sheet of extended aquatic blue that could almost be classified as azure There is something in the air that is reminiscent of spring linen. Something that feels brand new and eternal.
Someone spots a McDonalds before locating Trevor at the top of the helm and inquiring if he thinks its okay
I plunge into my side pocket and rattle the copper flavored coins together as if keeping the beat in a maraca trio. Trying desperately to be witty I note that since I’ve accumulated all these quote pounds I guess its time for me to lose some weight.
Justin looks at me funny. Jim Baker is halfway inside the atrium of the restaurant when he verbally bitches something about them not having an extra value meal. The sandwich and drink containers look like they were salvaged from the ‘84 Reagan-Bush campaign era. Trevor tells us not to order anything that looks like beer since it is a well known fact on the University of Michigan campus that all McDonalds featured in the British Isles and contiguous Europe sell beer on tap. Baker informs the cashier that they are called fries not chips and then says the word “fucker” under his breath. Chris chomps into breaded seed of his BIG MAC bun and then publically points to it and says that the meat over here tastes kinda funny.
My group is bonding over the subtle idiosyncrasies of American fast food manna vs. that of its bastard European dual. It seems like everyone in the group has found something to bond and something in common and that after knowing each other for almost 16 straight hours and traveled at route that two hundred of years earlier took our ancestors months we have finally found a common thread of disdain over which we shall bond.
I am at the back of the line. The prices here are listed at three times the US dollar before being though no one seems to mind. Spencer orders a McChicken. I want to tell Spencer that this is what all the American kids eat in the back seat of their parent’s Mazda after they lose their virginity at in the suburban driveway of some post-prom gala but I refrain. Even though I reluctantly doffed my Manual cross-country coated garb I don’t want to looks like a tourist. Even though I have spent the last three years of my post-pubescent life fighting to win this contest and to travel some place I have never been before I still act like I don’t want to be a part of this thing.
The lady behind the counter asks me in an accent culled from My Fair Lady what it is I would like.
“Coffee.” I say, mentally cogitating that its something like thirty cups since I left Peoria.
I tell her I want it straight up and black.
I take a swig. Coffee is coffee on either side of the Atlantic. It is black and grainy and heavy and sluices across the quilt of the tongue and then seems to interiorly traverse across the glens of my anatomy before jump-kicking some part of my brain making things seem fully cognizant and alive and vibrant.
Sir Charles rhetorically inquires that dinner isn’t for another two and a half hours so I’m more than welcome just to partake and to eat. I tell him I’m fine. Spencer finishes his sandwich by sucking on each finger as if plagiarizing a commercial. He looks at me with my Styrofoam chalice. Before telling me that in Utah, none of the McDonald’s carry coffee because consumption of caffeine is considered a sin compliments of the Mormon faith.
“I guess I am going to sin until I can sin no more.” I say, before partaking in an ameliorated slurp.
***
***
The Big ten en bulk walks out of McDonald’s ahead of
me with the exception of Jim Baker and
Justin. My glasses are off. I am thinking about the lover’s on the park bench.
I am thinking awash in stream of British pedestrians. I am thinking about the
girl with the Amarillo pin. I look
ahead at Bryan Ferry and wonder how on earth he was capable of running a sub
five minute mile. We cross with several other older groups. A boy in Nat’s
group has a moustache and is inexplicably wearing a trench coat. People are
inquiring Spencer about the straw-headed girl who has been following him around
who is apparently from Michigan. I take another grainy. Slurp...My glasses are off
when we come to the intersection of another group. There have been surreptitious
Italian girl sightings. When I look to my left I see Mark. He smiles. I flick
the gilded strand of hair leaking in the center of his forehead. I smile. I
continue to walk on.
I am in the back. Only Jim Baker and Justin are behind
me.
“You fucker.” It is Jim Baker.
“What?”
“Are you just stupid or are you a motherfucking insane
that guy back there was totally going to kick your ass.”
I have no clue what he is talking about. I tell him to
quit antagonizing me.
“That dude whose hair you just went up to and randomly
flicked. He looked like he was going to come up to you and kicked your ass.”
“That wasn’t a random dude. That was my friend Mark.”
Justin is looking at me with seriousness. Baker says
mark my ass.
“Who the hell do you think you are? Just walk right up
to someone random and start flicking at them.
I am beyond embarrassed. I am apprehensive. I swear it
was Mark. A myriad of thoughts begin to swell and percolate inside my fifteen
year old skull. I inadvertently accosted a local. I think about what Liz Madigan
told us during orientation about once we are on British soil we are no longer
covered by US law. I think about the discipline bus. I wonder what constitutes
assault under UK law.
“I thought it was my friend. I thought it was Mark.”
“Well it wasn’t you asswipe. He literally was looking
at you like he was about ready to kick your ass and then one of his friends calmed him down.”
Jim Baker asks
me what’s wrong with me. All I can think about is that I assaulted a citizen of
this country of which I am a guest.
“Harry you are fucking nuts. Put your glasses back on.
Now.”
I obey.
Baker punctuates his harangue by calling me a pussy.
You, William Shakespeare and Depeche Mode. You’re all
a bunch of fucking ussies Harry.
Pussies.
We arrive back at the hotel I am sure I am to be
deported.
I am in England. I am four thousand miles and a leapt
ocean away from home. I am agog with strangers.
I have no clue just where the hell I am.
***
“It’s shepherd’s pie,” I say, hammering more pepper on the main course. Jim makes sure that Trevor and Charles are not looking before saying that it looks like shepherd’s shit.
The entire table laughs. I flag the waitress down and order another cup of coffee. Since having left Peoria I have had consumed, in my estimate, thirty( plus) cups. Two (plus)cups for every year I have been on this planet. Still I am extremely enervated.
Chris wonders why they can serve tea and coffee gratis but we have to pay to get a decent coke with our meal. Jim continues to dissect his shepherd’s pie as if he’s in biology class before commenting that if he would have known we would have had ordered two more quarter pounders and whatever passes for fries during our jaunt around Stratford.
I slice into my shepherd pie. I tell the group it is amazing.
“I mean, we’re in England. We need to try new stuff. Meet new people. Have new experiences. Meet new people.”
“Like you met that person after you left McDonalds. He was about ready to kick your fucking ass.”
Jim imminently interjects.
“I thought he was someone else.” I tell Jim. I tell the table. Everyone is still prodding the silver tines of their utensils into the slathered dish in front of them. No one really seems to care. There is laughter at some tables, everyone is rolling from side to side like a bowling pin that adamantly refuses to topple into the floorboard of the lane.
***
I wave at Nat three tables over and he again pretends not to see me. I wonder if I m invisible. I wonder if I exist at ll.
***
***
I wave at Nat three tables over and he again pretends not to see me. I wonder if I m invisible. I wonder if I exist at ll.
***
We slide our key into the metallic slot of our hotel
room door and watch as the green light blinks granting us access. We then topple on our respective mattresses,
exhausted, arms spread out. It has been a long day. We are terminally jet
lagged. We get up and unzip our suitcases. Justin asks if he can help himself
to some of the Fig Newtons my mom packed two days ago.
Justin then reaches
in his bag for a bible. He goes over to the side of his bed and gets down on
one knee as if he is spotting a football for a point-after attempt.
“What are you doing,” I inquire to Justin.
“I’m getting ready to do my devotions.” He says.
I think about how my parents will be doing devotions every night after dinner and dishes, after the news when dad cracks open a hardcover spine and takes joy and pleasure in reading to his children.
I think about Shakespeare, the inscrutable wisps of his curse hovering above his ashy remnants like a waft of smoke lingering above a surfeited ashtray in a Midwestern bowling alley, the bard, like Yorrick, his skull and sockets and teeth, perhaps a few threads of his hair that has somehow managed not to deteriorate, and a curse that sifts above his remnants waiting for those who would be so brazen enough to prod through the joints and rotted calcium of the greatest writer the globe theater of the planet has produced.
The curse, wafted in a billow of smoke, cackling, hissing.
I think about Mark and how cool he is and the bobbled embarrassment I felt when I flicked his doppelgangers hair. I think about how it always reminds me of my father when I do stuff like that—my father who is thousands of miles away, reading his own devotions to his progeny, pointing at the mossy configuration of jigsaw continents, reading something he found on line to my siblings that will describe the place where I am at today. Dad who will still get up at 5:00am and do my paper route with Tim Flanagan, offering to give Tim Flanagan more than a fair share for his assistance before he drives Tim down to early bird PE and when Father tells him to have a good day, Tim will respond merely by saying, “yep” in lieu of a thank you. I pick up my journal and begin to write wondering
why it feels like whenever I write it feels like I am actually talking into the
gaunt cheeks of Coach Ricca. I feel like telling Coach how I feel the moment
Nat Pflederer for some reason made up his mind to be obnoxious and snooty all I
wanted to do was run. I wanted to tell him that moment I saw where fuckhead Jim
Baker wrote my name in the Church Guest book at Stratford-upon-Avon all I
wanted to do was escape into the neon
green dales of the British countryside, punching my upper limbs as hard as I can past cars
whizzing past me, dyslexic steering wheels, fields dotted with 500 year old cemeteries,
sheep farms dotting the pastures like bolls of feral cotton. I want to tell
Coach that the moment I realized that I flicked a totally random person’s hair
I wanted to sprint across the upside-down blanket of the ocean and hide.
I want to
tell Coach that I am thankful that I won this trip yet, 24 hours into the trip
of a lifetime, I feel like I have felt every nanosecond inside Manual high
school.
I feel all alone.
I want to tell him how there’s a seminally-pudgy
blonde haired Eskimo boy from Alaska who swears he can run a sub-four-minute mile.
I offer out a yawn that from Justin’s vantage looks
like I am trying to shovel something beak first with talons between my lips.
Getting down on one knee, I whip out the green Gideon bible I always have
stowed in my back pocket.
I don’t know what I am praying for yet I am praying.
I am saying thank you. Thank you Lord, for all of
this.
The bones of William Shakespeare are less than 800
meters away.
I take off the amarillo pin and, much in the same
fashion as I did with the stranger who I mistook as being Mark, flick it across
the room, listening to the echo of a fallen ping somewhere in the carpeted
distance.
It is the end of the first day of my sojourn.
My lids seem to fall into the cusp of my forehead.
After all this time there is rest.
After all this time there is rest.
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