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| Alveston manor: Disco #1 |
We spill into the lobby of the Moathouse en route to the Disco each anticipating something, overtly feminine and eternal lodged in the lock and dam of our fifteen year old arms by the end of the night, our necks lolling around in the direction of our fellow swanked-up crew, there are scents and there is longing and there is wonder and there is the sound of my counselor telling me Big Ten Give it up. Only half of us it appears are wearing our standard YC 93 crimson jackets. In the lobby there is no sight of Mark. I bump into Heath whom I met at Newark. Heath who is from Iowa and was purportedly on the same plane I was on leaving O'hare only none of us saw him until after we arrived. He is wearing a tie. The second I inquire how he enjoyed the Roman Baths today I hear Trevor saying Big Ten give it up again.
The disco is located at a banquet hall across the field from the Moathouse. Across the field where I saw British youth playing soccer this morning. We are walking in a single file line. I am next to Josh,
The disco is located at a banquet hall across the field from the Moathouse. Across the field where I saw British youth playing soccer this morning. We are walking in a single file line. I am next to Josh,
"So you guys going running again tomorrow morning?"
Josh says probably in a flippant monotone. He says that I should have been there this morning. He says that he thought I was a serious athlete. I tell him I am. He is tilting his head as if he is not so sure.
"Well, if you want to join us we will probably be leaving around 6:45. You have to get up early. We kind of have a running club. You have to come early and you have to be committed and you have to be ready."
I tell him I am more than committed. I tell him that if I had a choice I all but would have jettisoned our plenary tour of Bath today and just run feral and emotionally untethered through the dales and vertiginous swills of the British countryside. I tell him that my track coach who has won conference 12 years in a row made me promise to run every chance I could get.
Josh shrugs. He says meet in the lobby at 6:15.
I tell him okay. I tell him I can't wait.
***
‘You have to sit guy-girl-guy-girl.” Liz Madigan and Mary Jo, a public relations specialist at PARADE suggest as we enter the banquet hall. It is more of a joke christened by middle-aged ladies wish to witness anxiety-riddled teenage boys siting next to thoroughly make-up'd teenage girls. Jim Baker says fuck that, Big Ten ho! I imminently abandon my fellow brothers and search for older, feminine pastures. In the center of the banquet hall is a vestigial wooden rectangular rink that will later serve as the makeshift dance floor. The DJ is a bald middle-aged Brit wearing a track suit . Elevator Muzak emanates from the speaker in chimes. This is my first chance to eschew the juvenile gravity of the the Big Ten giving me a chance to maladroitly mingle with other Young Columbuses from different buses. My glasses are off. There is a strobe-light ball that looks like it was usurped from an earlier prototype of Sputnik flanked by several sub-woofers.
Even nearsighted it is hard to ignore the fact that several of the girls are dressed to kill.
. There is no sight of the Italian duet. The Amarillo girl is busy stapling pins on everything with a neck.. At the far corner of the dance floor I see them seated next to each other. They are older.
One has long spume of blonde hair dripping into her shoulders as if it is a blonde curtain fraught with swells and curls. The other has an almost altar boy haircut, black hair. Bangs slicing down her forehead, breaching right when they meet the curious fizz of her eyebrows. Another woman wears a cool almost psychedelic headband with curly hair as well. It is hard not to note that out of all the tables here, these ladies are the intellectual-feminists of the trip. Another woman, ginger haired and thin-jowl sits next to them. Even nearsighted it is hard to ignore the fact that several of the girls are dressed to kill.
. There is no sight of the Italian duet. The Amarillo girl is busy stapling pins on everything with a neck.. At the far corner of the dance floor I see them seated next to each other. They are older.
With my glasses off I move in to pursue my prey.
"Hi," I say, rather tersely. I sit next to the ginger-haired girl. She smiles. She has a mellifluous southern accent. Her name is Rose. I am borderline obsequiously mannered. I stretch out my hand and introduce myself. With the exception of Rose the girls are shy and academic. The Blonde haired girl introduces herself as Sheila. The girl with the cool bandanna is seated three shoulders down is christened with a magnetic smile and is named Greta.
The girl with the paige-boy identifies herself as Tamara. She shakes my hand very quickly and then looks down.
I nod my chin and ask if I can sit here. Rose smiles and says please.
We continue to talk. The only other male sitting in near proximity appears to have some sort of trouble communicating. The bald-headed DJ dims the light and does a little groovy dance as he skirts past our table, asking us if we are ready to boogie-woogie in an uppity British accent. Several of the girls cup their hands over their lips as giggles erupt from their face. Rose seems to take a liking to me. I have my eyes set solely on Tamara, the girl with the short hair. The girls look bored, forming a sporadic smile in my direction. When I inquire which part of the trip the girls are looking forward to seeing most it seems to be unanimous that they can’t wait to see Stonehenge. I feel like mentioning that Stonehenge is not on the itinerary at all, but for some reason remain stiffed lipped, allowing them to relish in the possibility.
I turn the creature with the golden hair and inquire about her.
“What’s your story?” I ask.
“I’m an artist,” Sheila says.
“Could you draw me?” I inquire.
“No,” she says, a slight blush humming along her good china colored face. “I could draw your hands though.”
“My hand?” I inquire again, as if asking God what part of my body I am to masturbate with, as if just realizing now that I have two separate dactyl bearing vessels attached to both of my wrists.
“Yes,” she says again, “I could draw your hands.”
All these girls are on the same bus as Mark. The philosophical Mayflower. Bus #4. I tell them that I am on bus number one. I tell that I am friends with Mark. They say that they have seen the two of us talking. Rose says that it looks like we somehow knew each other and were friends’ before the trip began. I tell her that I first saw him on the shuttle bus en route from Newark to the Holiday Inn where we first congregated but that I couldn’t stop looking at him because he really reminded me of someone I knew from back home.
Rose says oh. Her southern accent is alluring.She tells me that she can’t wait to dance. I look at the girl with the short hair. She is different from the other girl with the altar-boy haircut whose name was pulled in a fucking drawing for having an afternoon route half-my size. She is scholarly. There is something coy and almost calculated and subtle in the slight movements of her neck. When she cuts into her entrée (ie, chicken Parmesan, first night sans beef) it looks like she is cutting into a vivisected lab experiment for enriched bio.
Everyone has their dinner with the exception of Greta,
Greta who like Mark speaks beautiful clear ravishing English, words exiting her smile in trumpeted sentences spilling out from the cove of her lips in such a manner that one could
swear they see little inky flags connoting quarter notes on classical sheet music attached to each declarative sentence she orally engenders.
“Was there a problem with you original entrée?” I inquire. Greta blushes.
"No," She says, smiling.
Greta has a separate meal prepared for her and it is brought out by one of the staff members
covered in its own sports
dome dish, steam rising from the fresh rivets of green and red produce in
applause. As if royalty she looks at it, politely nodding her chin in an assenting manner, as the dish is deposited in front of her, wisps of steam quavering above a polite heap of vegetables. My chin swivels as if attached to the ball bearings in an office
chair into the direction of Greta, the girl wearing the bandanna with wavy
drape of auburn hair, who likes like she would be right at home sipping exotic
tea, talking about yoga in the New age emporium
that is across the street from my house back home.
I turn to Greta. I tell her I like her hippie bandanna. She tells me she is an actress. I try to be precocious. I’ve never met a bona fide vegetarian before. I try to be witty. I ask her if the reason she became a vegetarian was because she read Upton Sinclair's the Jungle or was it because she took a field trip to the Oscar Meyer factory when she was in third grade. She doesn’t laugh. She tells me it was a conscious and moral decisions based on the life and liberty of all viable creations. She tells me that her cool older sister is a vegetarian.
I fall just a little bit in love.
I turn to Tamara. I ask her if she ever considered it. She nonchalantly looks down and says no. She then says that she feels that food is substance and the majority of inhabitants dwelling on what we have deemed this planet have a paucity of clean water or toilet paper much less food.
I concur by nodding my chin. I am fifteen. I won’t even know what the word concur means for another three years. But I concur.
Over at the Big Ten table Spencer is seated next to Daisy. Jim Baker has his right hand under his left arm and is flapping it up and down making ruffled surrogate farting sounds.
I ask all the girls what they thought of Bath today. It is almost unanimous decisions that it was okay. Just okay. Although Greta says that it was really cool that it was built over a Celtic pagan site.
“No,” She says, blushing. “I’m a Unitarian. But I do believe in self-healing”
“Self-healing?”
“Self-healing.” I see splotches of purple encircle her visage like an aureole. I revert the subject manner back to vegetarianism. In seventh grade at the Lutheran grade school I attended Coach Mooney asked the class en masse what sort of people sometime don’t consider fish to be a meat and I thought of Lent and raised my hand and said Catholics. To which he replied no and then said Vegetarians.
I ask her if she still eats fish. Greta smiles again. The purple splotches around her dimples appear.
“No,” She volleys back before her vision sinks down into her lap, her eyelids folding down like a napkin.
***
The dinner is over. I am next to Tamara. She is the only one I want to dance with.
She tells me that she doesn't dance.
“I don’t dance.” She tells me. Before saying really. I ask her why.
“I just never dance.”
I ask her didn't she go to prom or anything like that. She tells me no.
“That’s not me. The whole people dancing thing just isn't me.”
I ask her what she does. She tells me she comes home and studies all the time. I ask her if that ever gets boring. She tells me no.
I begin to implore. She is all by herself at the far end of Alvestone manner looking at the WAY OUT sign as if agreeing with it. The Big Ten is on the far end of the dance floor not really moving. Spencer occasionally makes motions with his arms tucked into the pits of his arms as if he is trying out Dedalus’ latest fledge. The seventh grade girls on our bus begin to laugh.
“Just one dance.” I say again, to Tamara, brazenly informing her that she doesn’t know, she might like it.
Tamara says she’s pretty certain that she won’t.
“So that’s it? You’re just going to stand by yourself all night and not socialize?”
The lights transition from pre-dusk to black. Strobe lights begin to stutter and then vacillate and then spill. Even though I am at the antipodal side of the dance floor I can see Spencer jutting his chin in a certain manner amidst more giggles more than likely parlaying to them the way everyone dances in the state of Utah.
Still No sight of the Italian girls from New York.
Tamara turns in my direction.
“You should go on and dance.” She says. I reply back by saying what.
“You should go on and dance with your friends and I’ll watch over here.”
I tell her I’m not dancing unless she dances. She tells me that is just not happening.
“I just don’t dance. It’s not you. I just don’t dance.”
I ask her if she’s going to sit here the entire night. She responds in the affirmative. I employ the rhetoric that everyone employed on me in high school when the coaches endeavored to reel me into joining an extra-curricular activity. I ask her doesn’t she want to look back and remember this trip as being something significant. She tells me that it is significant. She won a trip to England.
“Go dance. Have fun.” She tells me in a not quite admonishing patois but almost. I swipe my head again and say no.
She tells me to go dance. She tells me that if I like I can leave my red-nylon young Columbus jacket next to her and she will watch it for me if I like. She tells me that she wants me to have fun. She tells me that she wants me to dance.
Somehow I am slowly falling in love with Tamara. Somehow I
am falling in love the fact that she doesn’t want to dance. Somehow I am
falling in love with each self-conscious neuron frenetically jisming behind the
ebullient coconut skull of hers.
The music continues to ache its entrancing pull of it
baritone from various sub-woofers stationed around the room like Raphael
cherubs.
“Go dance.” She tells me again.
“I’m not going unless I am accompanied. I don’t dance very well by myself.”
Tamara blushes again by looking down as if counting the bouquets of quantum molecules in her sneakers.
` . Tamara is telling me the line about how she doesn't dance. I love her modest paige boy haircut. I love how she looks like the rich cross country girl from Richwoods who is the valedictorian of her class. I love how she is loves Peter Paul and Mary and how she is planning on going to Harvard next semester. I love how she sort've reminds me of her mom with cropped bangs and a gentle chin. I love how she has friends in the same bus with Mark, the coolest human being I have ever met—friends who wear cool headbands. Friends who are artists and vegetarians. Friends who are older. Seniors. I love how I somehow accumulated the adolescent audacity to sit at their table even though they were all clumped together—the cultural pariahs while the bulk of the Big Ten was busy monopolizing their time with the girls from Simon's group,girls with bangs and braces, the girls who looked like they just learned how to fasten the front of a training bra yesterday and then realized it was inside out.
“Come on.” I say Rose is already on the dance floor. Greta seems to have dissipated in her own private tonal new wave aura. Sheila maudlin-cheeked artist girl is being aloof as well. Somehow I have made it clear to both Rose and the Artist that my affection lie solely for the brilliant hydrant sized savant with the crisp haircut.
“Come on.” I say again, pinching her fingers, trying to lure her out into the neon chess board of the floor.
“Its okay,” She says again, telling me that really, she doesn't dance. She's never danced. Not even when she went to Homecoming last year. Not even at her sisters' wedding. She says its just not her cup of tea. She says she is happy right here. She tells me to dance on my own. That she will be watching me. That her witnessing the flagellation and spin of my limbs shadowed beneath a prismatic orb will somehow make her happy. Make her content.
“Fine,” I tell her, as if stamping my foot down inside my mouth mentally as if in Little Lord Fauntelroy type pout.
“ We don't have to dance. We can just sit here and have an intellectual discussion. We can just talk. I really enjoy talking to you. I think we have a lot in common.”
Tamara looks at me with her lips cuts open in stuttered confusion. Before telling me to go dance.
“You like dancing. You should dance. I'm quite content over here just watching people. That's what I do. I watch people. I’m an ontologist.”
“You don’t understand,” she says, subversively, “I’ll have fun if you have fun. I’ll be living vicariously through you.”
I say no. She tells me go dance. She tells me that I am welcome to leave my red coat next to her so she can watch it so that it doesn’t get confused with the rest of the group. I ask her if her if she is having fun. She says yes. She tells me that she will watch my coat.
I say okay. I enter the electronic slate and bass din of the dancefloor. The quantum molecular structures of Shakespeare’s atoms are hovering close, perhaps in the air, like a transient cartoon bubbles of fleeting of dialogue. As I did with Bollingbrook a month earlier I skid out on the dance floor not really sure of what I am doing, knowing only that if I flail and contort my limbs in syndicated cadence to the sound being emanated from the speakers placed on the far end of the wooden dance floor others will somehow gravitate towards my directionThe song they are playing is Informer by Snow. I despise this song. The Big Ten seems to dance by jumping in place in a stilted manner suggestive that there testicles are stowed a la Prince Albert style between there loins. On the dance floor shades of youth continue to sprout. Everyone is dancing, limbs thrashing as if induced by the breeze of a tropical storm. There are shadows encroaching. Everyone is dancing. Everyone is endeavoring to become one synapsed-metered beat. Everyone is endeavoring to become one with the decimating tunes.Shakespeare’s grave is 400 meters away. One fourth of the distance in which I run my signature race back home. Through the scurry of alighted limbs and seizure-inducing tics I see Tamara, still staid, my jacket next to her, a conceded British flag seminally lowered after the Battle of Bunker hill.
The song has ended. I got to find Tamara again.
I find her unmoved. The DJ forgoes playing the latest hits and decides to cater to the noveau riche playing songs people have heard at wedding receptions. He plays the electric slide.
Tamara looks at me and makes a Lady Macbeth out-out motion as if she is trying to dry her hands sans towel telling me to join the throng. I smile. My vision is averted only when I see Mark, by himself also, his body half-out the window\ as if attempting voluntary defenestration.
“Don’t jump its not worth it.” I tell Mark trying to be witty. He smiles. He then begins to lower the back portion of his body further out the window until he is almost all the way out. I smile. As a four year old asking for a push on a swing he reels himself back in.
“You don’t like dancing?” I inquire, to Mark, the coolest human being I have ever met.
“I only dance to hard-core techno and to certain rave tunes with succinct bass modulation.” Mark says, before telling me that there is this all ages club he sometimes goes to in Tulsa that only plays that kind of music where they danced all night long.
He looks at me and smiles. I ask him what sort of music he is into.
“My favorite band is The Smiths.” Mark says, naming a group I have never heard of. before.
“Only you can only really dance to a couple of songs.”
“What sort of music do they play?”
“Hard to describe. Kind of reminiscent of Depeche without the keyboards but not really. Its more emotive than anything else.”
Mark is brilliant. Emotive. To my left is Tamara still safeguarding my jacket. Still all alone. Sheila, the artist who can draw my hands somehow has found her. They both seem aloof. I ask Mark if he has met both Tamara and Sheila. Mark says yes, they are on the same bus.
Mark is brilliant. Emotive. To my left is Tamara still safeguarding my jacket. Still all alone. Sheila, the artist who can draw my hands somehow has found her. They both seem aloof. I ask Mark if he has met both Tamara and Sheila. Mark says yes, they are on the same bus.
Bus number four.
“Can I see you guys for second,” Mark says, to the three of us, all at once.
“I was wondering if I could take a picture of all three of you.” Perfect English. He arranges the three of us in a less overt manner than the snooty New York photographer earlier in the day did when he snapped the group photograph outside the university of Bath. Mark's camera also looks expensive. Sheila’s tresses just seem to drip everywhere past her shoulders. Tamara’s smile is somewhat of a half-hyphen, her eyelids always appear to be optically arrowed at the feet of whoever she is talking to. Mark takes one snap and then says thank you. Sheila goes over to converse with Mark. Their hair is the same color. An angel whose halo has melted dying its forehead a shade of gold.
I stand next to Tamara again. She is still standoffish. I ask her how she is doing. She says fine. Mark and Sheila the artist join us, forming an almost pentagon of angles and limbs. The DJ has quit playing the electric slide and has transitioned into something that permeates with beat. I make a motion with my arms that maybe the four of us should joining the masses and adjourn on the dance floor. Mark contemplates, makes a face like a blind oenophile discerning the year and vintage before commenting that this seems like something perhaps he could dance to. Sheila agrees. We begin to walk towards the pond of hiccuping lights. I look back I see Tamara by herself. I make a futile motion for her to join us, in which she again hushes out her unsplayed palm.
I continue to dance, roving as if in an imperceptible kayak across the dance floor, my limbs paddling above my torso as if treading water. I am in the center of the dance floor. Kenny of the Big Ten has already requested that the DJ play the Spin Doctors and is lifting one of the girls from Daisy’s group in the air. Josh the future Eagle scout seems to be monopolizing all of his time with a girl lathered in excessive blush. Spencer is doing what appears to be a Mormon-moonwalk in front of Daisy, who is perennially laughing by cupping her hands over her mouth as if she is afraid of spreading germs.
None of the Italian girls are in sight. Neither is the girl with the Amarillo pin. Sans Lois Lane as well.
Feeling that I have somehow successfully segregated myself from the Big Ten I continue to dance alone, under snaps and flashes, alone, finding myself on the slate of the wooden court orbited by bodies, orbited by fellow winners of the award that has been the scattered pulse of my breath for the last three years.
I am still dancing by myself.
Mark and Sheila dance together yet not touching, Mark having premeditated almost geometric movements with his limbs. Sheila, an erotic plume of blonde hair, periodically banging as if she is in the front row of a Winger concert, dancing together, not looking at each other, not touching, responding only to the bass exhalation accompanying the lyrics and the temp through the yawp of the speakers.
Mark and Sheila dance together yet not touching, Mark having premeditated almost geometric movements with his limbs. Sheila, an erotic plume of blonde hair, periodically banging as if she is in the front row of a Winger concert, dancing together, not looking at each other, not touching, responding only to the bass exhalation accompanying the lyrics and the temp through the yawp of the speakers.
We are dancing.
With my glasses off I can’t see Tamara. The DJ starts playing the goddamn why-em-see-aye, commenting that it was a hit originally on this side of the pond before everyone starts configuring their limbs in choreographed hieroglyphs. The bulk of the older kids have stationed their chairs around the rouge-flavored hymn of the dance floor. A student from one of Nat’s group migrates to the center of the floor and begins to lasso his body in rhythmic configurations before contorting his limbs and swiveling on his back in the fashion of a dyslexic oscillating fan while everyone dances around him offering subtle claps and shouting out gavel-instigating “yeahs” of encouragement. I look for Mark. Some of the female counselors are dancing with their shoes off but nearly all of the male counselors are seated or standing respectively around the dance floor as if they are life guards at some summer pool. Nearly all of the Big Ten are dancing with Daisy’s group on what would be classified as the shallow end of the pool. There is no sight of Amarillo girl or the Italian duet.
With my glasses off I can’t see Tamara. The DJ starts playing the goddamn why-em-see-aye, commenting that it was a hit originally on this side of the pond before everyone starts configuring their limbs in choreographed hieroglyphs. The bulk of the older kids have stationed their chairs around the rouge-flavored hymn of the dance floor. A student from one of Nat’s group migrates to the center of the floor and begins to lasso his body in rhythmic configurations before contorting his limbs and swiveling on his back in the fashion of a dyslexic oscillating fan while everyone dances around him offering subtle claps and shouting out gavel-instigating “yeahs” of encouragement. I look for Mark. Some of the female counselors are dancing with their shoes off but nearly all of the male counselors are seated or standing respectively around the dance floor as if they are life guards at some summer pool. Nearly all of the Big Ten are dancing with Daisy’s group on what would be classified as the shallow end of the pool. There is no sight of Amarillo girl or the Italian duet.
I am all alone.
Then I see her.
She is wearing an orchard flavored dress, The same dress that Karen Christmas wore when she won the contest the year before. The dress that I became enamored with while walking out of the Journal Star when Karen Christmas was on the phone presumably calling her mom about her triumph. She is wearing what looks like the exact same dress.
She is dancing all alone. One of the conspicuous Italian lasses, by herself, dancing, in the center of the dance floor.
I move in. Next to her.
“Hi,” I say, watching her move, watching the fashion in which the tempoed light bleat against her body. Watching the way she moves,
“Aren’t you from New York?” I say
“Where?” I say suddenly confused. She smiles. Her smiles correlates perfectly with the orchard that is her dress.
“New York. My mother was born in New York.”
I respond back by saying of course. Her hair of auburn, the hue light makes as it is cast on a boll of hay in the autumnal countryside moments before dusk
There is no Daisy. There is no Tamara. There is no goddam Amarillo girl tacking emblems of her hometown on everything inhaling. At this moment in England there is only the girl with the orchard dress and the ambrosia-cheekbones.
At this moment in England there is only her smile.
We continue to dance. She inquires where I am from. I retort by saying that I am from Peoria. She squints with her entire face and says where. I tell her that it’s the second largest city in Illinois.
We continue to dance. There is a Vietnamese girl close to us who. She comes up to the girl I am dancing with. The girl from Spoke-can Washington. Quickly they hug. She then seems to wade, dissipating behind the lights on the dance floor. She says wait one second. I turn around. She is huddled around several members from her group as if they are discussing a football play. She then returns. She is giddy. She smiles. As we dance I address her as Spokane. I ask Miss Spokane how she is enjoying England so far. I ask her the query I have annoyingly been pelting everyone with on this trip since we left Chicago. I ask her how she won the trip. She smiles.
She tells me that she delivers papers. I reflect a smile back at her.
"I'm a paper boy too!" I am almost jigging in exclamation.
"When I won the trip I thought it would be only paperboys but it seems like half the representatives here never delivered the thick catalog of a Sunday paper in 20 degree weather in their life."
We have the paperboy thing in common. I am creating small talk. I wonder if she won the trip via a raffle.
"When I won the trip I thought it would be only paperboys but it seems like half the representatives here never delivered the thick catalog of a Sunday paper in 20 degree weather in their life."
We have the paperboy thing in common. I am creating small talk. I wonder if she won the trip via a raffle.
“I had to give a speech in front of thirty people to win this.” I say.
She tells me that it was a sole interview just with her and with a deciding jury. I tell her that I wake up every morning at four-thirty to make sure that the bulk of all my papers are delivered on time. She tells me that she wakes up every morning at four. I tell her that that doesn’t count because that’s like sleeping in and waking up at noon here in England.
She looks back at me and smiles.
The balding headed DJ makes a microphoned note of thanking each of us for visiting his country. He then says that he is playing one final song of the night. It is a slow song. Everyone knows what song it is going to be.
It is fucking Whiteny Houston. The song from the Bodyguard soundtrack. The song she didn't write.
It is fucking Whiteny Houston. The song from the Bodyguard soundtrack. The song she didn't write.
I am a Lutheran lad. I don’t curse. I still can’t stand this fucking song. The next thing I realize her arms are lassoed like a Christmas wreath around my neck and she is reeling me into her body. I can feel the sentences spill out from lips on the side of my neck before the entire side of her body welds into my shoulders. It is like she is some sort of variegated lighted cosmic ocean and my body is a buoy and she is clinging for dear life.
I look down.
I feel like telling her that I can’t stand this fucking song. Can’t stand how anthologized it is. Can’t stand how the incipient a capellic chords seem to snap people together on the dance floor like legos.
Can’t stand any of this shit.
There is only her.
I tell her thank you.
From the optical periphery I see Spencer who I will later learn refused to dance with Daisy but was some cozened to dance with her during the last song. Spencer who is looking at daisy straight in the eye and who points, very simply, with one finger at Daisy, before turning the other way.
The lights seem to come alive like some sort of a spring. The DJ is saying thank you. He is telling us to enjoy his country. Liz Madiagn says something that each individual groups need to get together before traipsing back across the glade leading back from Alveston manor to our hotel.
She is still holding me. The lights have just batted on. She squeezes my hand.
Her group congregates around her. Her counselor is the lanky short-haired blonde from Tennessee who is engaged who all the male counselors are in love with. She is in the same group with the crisped alter-boy haircut who won the contest by randomly winning some drawing while having an afternoon route half my size. She is in one of the older groups that seem to be congregating around her..Although she is a sophomore many in her group are juniors and there is one senior. She is on bus #3. One charter rung lower than Marks'. Ironically she was somewhere on the same bus I found myself on yesterday after the flat tire when we arrived.
The girls seem to be smiling in a way that is convivial. She grasps my hand and then lets go. W/out thinking I plant a half-second kiss on her forehead. I have all but forgotten the brilliant girl with the short hair who is attending Harvard in the fall.
Her hand is still masterlocked in mine,
I tell her my name is David.
“I’m Harmony.” She says.
“Harmony,” I reply, savoring every syllable, saying it slowly, as if blending a chorus of sounds to make mellifluous concert before telling her that it’s a pleasure, giving her hand a little squeeze before she lets go.
She introduces me to members of her group. Her counselor Ahlex is the one who is engaged and who all the male counselors have a drooling crush on, seems disgruntled that I am the only male circumnavigating their pyramid of estrogen.
Harmony points to a girl with dark hair identifying her as her roommate.
“This is Janlle La Falneur.” She says. Her wrists are virgin copy paper white. I give her hand a little squeeze. She doesn't seem to look at me.
“And this is Meg Weaver,” Harmony says, aiming my body in the direction of a woman with frizzy strawberry blonde hair. Her skin is also white, the color and hue of a doily at Versailles. She smiles back, as if radiating the sun.
We tell each other that it is nice to meet you.
I hear Trevor carol that Big Ten is to give it up.
I give Harmony another hug. I tell her that I will see her soon before sauntering back to my group.
Trevor is counting heads. Chris is stating that the girl I was dancing with was pretty hot elbowing me as if we are at a Bachelor party.Someone makes a correlation and says that they thought I was dancing with one of the Italian girls.
I realize I don’t have my jacket. My jacket where my glasses are stowed. The jacket that the girl with the short hair who doesn’t dance was guarding.
I find it still folded over the chair. Tamara is no where in sight. I pick it up.
“Hey yo Big Ten Give it up.”
And we do. In unison. Each of us lifting our hoods over the tops of our collective heads semi-gangster style. Since we are the Big Ten.
Since we are immortal.
We walk back as one to the Moat house.
***
***
“That girl was cute though. I thought she was one of the Italian Girls” Justin says, in our hotel room, after we have just returned
I agree with Justin. He tells me that even though she is kinda cute he still hasn’t seen anyone who could hang with his girlfriend in Nebraska.
Justin tells me that that doesn’t matter. He tells me that he again, has to do his devotions right now.
No way.
“Sucks yaks balls to be you then.” He tells me before hushing his half of the lights off and going to bed, telling me to wake him up only after I come back from running so that he can sleep in.
Yeah, I respond, I didn’t get her number.
Sucks somehow to be me indeed.
Sucks somehow to be me indeed.
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