Dinner Dance Cruise on the Thames River: Parade Young Columbus for Life (a)...

Harmony is the last to enter the yacht. I am standing next to the entrance of the vessel like a bulletin-brandishing church usher awaiting her arrival. As is seemingly the case she is walking next to Lynn Minton, one step behind her middle-aged gait, as if my princess is Prince Philip to Minton’s Queen Elizabeth. Harmony’s oriental friend Kazu who is not in her group enters with them as well. Harmony is wearing the flowery dappled dress. Bushels of tossed bouquets fleck the fabric. I swear it is reminiscent of the same dress Karen Christmas wore when she kicked my ass two consecutive years running. Harmony is wearing her standard Parade Red coat YC ’93 jacket over her dress. We have just stomped onto the ship and dinner is being presented to us downstairs in little cardboard boxes containing what passes as fried chicken and a sack of chips and a Pepsi. Music and lights are already offering a defibrillating tuneup, intermittent snarls of rhythm escaping between sub-baritone microphone checks.

I smile at Harmony. I say hi.

As always when I see Lynn Minton I feel compelled to stop and shake her hand.

Harmony looks like she doesn’t want to see me. Her oriental friend who speaks a paucity of English  verbs makes a motion with her hand informing Harmony that she is going downstairs.  I try flirting with Harmony. I am trying to be romantic. I am verbally employing  flirtatious witticisms  I have thoroughly mulled over all day.

  
"Nice to see you angel. Didn't recognize you without your halo."

I am failing.

Harmony looks into the direction of her shoes and blushes as we head downstairs. It is packed.  Apparently Parade's gift to us is that we are allowed all the British Pepsi we can drink, which acutely contains  more sugar than american Pepsi, albeit it is served extremely lukewarm. It is hard to move. Three-fourths of the males on this trip under the age of sixteen have opened their dinner and are gorging standing up.  We are the last to be served. Faces are surrounding me in every direction, the faces of those I met in Newark, traveled across the icy lid of an ocean with, skirted throughout the  venal British countryside  before entering the metropolitan cogs of London finding myself on an apical spring evening on the Thames. Before I know it there is a splash of Southern Comfort in my ear. It is Rose. She is calling me Dahlin'. She is molasses and brown sugah. I love her voice. I have spoken with her only tacitly in the lobby. She is smiling. Every time Rose says hello it sounds like  she is smoking a joint, while sneezing before inquiring Howsisuze?

"Dahved, High how is use?"

At first I think she is blathering something about Howard Hughes before I realize she is saying hello. I give Rose a hug. She is on Mark's bus. She is older. She has southern charm. She seems excited to see me. I wish Harmony would feign some semblance of excitement to see me whenever I am around.

I tell Rose I am fine. I tell her it is nice to see her again.

Rose says she was hoping to season me again so that we could dance.

I nod. I look down. I feel awkward. Somehow I have oriented this night to be all about Harmony. Rose is talking to me in her southern accent. It is adorable. For some reason I feel like I am two-timing Harmony by socializing with another girl.

 Before I realize it Rose is handing me a British Pepsi.

"Here's, I gots this for use."

 I already have my British Pepsi plus Harmony's drink in hand. I tell her thank you. I am trying to have a conversation with two people.  The look on Harmony's face conveys that she would be totally content if I would dump her for Rose in this moment of time.

“Here,” I say, holding Harmony's entree, being gallant. Being a gentleman. I feel I am being effusive. I am holding  boxed vittles in my hand above my own above three British Pepsis all balanced precipitously jenga style in my arm. I am looking around. Even though he is apparently untethered Jim Baker is seated across the table from Charles. As is true on the charter bus the bulk of the Big Ten has appropriated the back of the room demarcating some sort of vicarious boundary.

“It’s packed down here.” I tell Harmony, refraining to add that if you weren’t the last one on the yacht we could have probably found a descent place to sit by now. Harmony looks uneasy, offering a little single palm wave at several members of her group as they flash past. Jennifer Flood scowls when she notices that I am holding both our meals. Meg Weaver is smiling at the two of us like an Easter morning cloud.

Like she is madly in love.

There is a tap on my shoulder.

It is Mark. Even when he is holding a boxed receptacle of various chicken parts and a can of British Pepsi he looks like he is posing for a Versace ad.

As has been the case every other time he sees me he addresses me solely as David, mon.

“David mon, it’s like packed down here.” I nod.  Mark begins a philosophical rant about the corporate precursors at Parade neglecting the prescribed foresight to book a dining area that was at least half-way commodious to our needs. Rose keeps asking me if I would like another lukewarm British Pepsi even though I haven't cracked open the one she initially handed me. I am blowing off Rose the way Harmony has blown me off the duration of the trip. It seems almost completely incalculable that 24 hours ago I was on the fringe of flirting with Rita, gleaning her digits on a napkin  the same doilesque color of her forehead, a napkin  that I would somehow almost invariably lose hours later when Harmony was the last thing on my mind.

We are downstairs and it is packed.

There is still nowhere to sit.

Mark makes a rather philosophical comment about how food, albeit essential to the condition of  human beings is vital but oxygen is also somewhat vital as well.  Mark uses the word congested. He smiles at Harmony. He compliments her dress. Suddenly the fibers of the proverbial idea engendering light-bulb seems to erupt in exclamatory fashion above my cerebellum.  I turn to Mark and Harmony, the yin/yang of human friendship on this voyage.

“Hey, we don’t have to stay down here. You guys want to go upstairs and eat? Maybe we can find tables or something?”

Mark says yes by offering a subtle smile. Harmony nods. We venture upstairs, I am holding our food as if it is sacrosanct, as if it has a pulse, as if it is a child we will never conceive. Mark is leading the way.  When I get the main deck where the dance is I feel feet behind me. Several members of Bus 4 have accompanied us. There is the polite boy from Alabama and Rose, trailing us like a caboose. Greta the vegetarian is not with us but Sheila and Rachel are close by. On the far end of the dance floor near the front of the ship are three tables. Harmony takes her coat off and rests it on the back of a chair. The middle-aged slightly balding DJ looks exactly like the middle-aged slightly balding DJ in Stratford. He is playing the electric staccato, the constituting opening chords of  Baba O'Riley while pastel beams of light ricochet in every direction. Before I can turn to Harmony informing her that this is nice Sam and Vinny come lumbering up the stairs. Vinny has his camcorder parroted into his eye. He is still narrating his documentary. He is circumnavigating the table serving as an unwarranted interlocutor. Mark gives him a peace sign. Sheila bats a strand of blonde hair in front of her forehead before holding one hand over her right eye as if she is reading oversize vowels in an ophthalmologist's office informing Vinny, no, she's really shy. Rachel seems to monopolize the video stating that she is in London and everything is beautiful prattling on for five minutes.

 Like Mark's friend Denis, Vinny likes to begin each of his sentence with the word Yo. Sometime's when he referring to the female gender he uses two syllables.

"Yo and there's Tony next to his beautiful gurl-wherrl. Tony give us some insight into London brother. Give us your perspective about how you feel right now."

I feel compelled to halt Vinny informing him that Harmony isn't my girl when Heath just seems to appear out of nowhere. I didn't see Heath walk up the stairs yet he is sitting with us. I like Heath even though every time I have a conversation with him he basically just nods, Vinny continues to scan his camcorder across the flesh of the table. Someone most have forgotten to tell Heath that he didn't have to wear his Ambassador-sating tie. The tables are lunchroom standard each seating four as if we are expected to play bridge.

            “Hey,” Mark says, in his cool hip perennially curious monotone. “Let’s move these tables together so we can all sit as one."

I help Mark smash the tables together. There is enough for all of us. We are cultural insurgents. We are feasting together. We have engendered our own banquet. A poetic potluck. The hosts of our own feast. We are laughing. We are independent. We are unchaperoned. For perhaps the first time in the trip I am surrounded solely by the individuals who inspire me. Mark with his adroit observational panache and cultural apercus. Harmony with her grace and fortuitous benevolence and smile I just can't get  a b-sides Depeche Mode enough of. Sam with his jocular asides. I sit between Harmony and the polite Baptist boy from Alabama.  Before he breaks into his box containing battered chicken he closes his eyes. It is obvious he is praying. As I have for the entire trip the Gideon bible is lodged in my right pocket. With respect to his face it looks like he is defecating. His eyes are scrunched into his sockets. He is praying with his eyes closed and his lips hushed but he does offer out an audible Amen the moment he opens his eyes.

 We are feasting. For the first time in this trip in its entirety I am not surrounded by the Big Ten. I am surrounded by those I love. We are laughing. We are carousing in the way young people not privy to alcoholic beverages are capable of carousing. The night is young with the scrim of dusk the color of  raspberry-tea bleeding in the canyon of the west. Rose keeps calling me dahlin' in front of Harmony. Sam is laughing in spectated chokes. Like Heath Sam also is still wearing the tie he wore earlier in the day. He takes great liberty at prodding his finger in the center of the knot and loosening the noose, telling Harmony that he would start asphyxiating if he wore that tie any longer before asking her if you know what I mean with a standard elbow-to-the-rib-cage. For a second I think about Rita and wonder where she is eating, thinking that I need to apologize to her for last night. Rose dissipates and goes down stairs coming back with two more British Pepsis, handing them to me.  Harmony is engaging in a conversation with Sheila and Rachel, all the while Vinny continues to annotate commentary under his breath, saying things like nice and yes. My thoughts seemingly revert back to Rita. I wonder why it seemed almost preordained that I would notarize a bond of the heart, glean the digits of her hotel number on a napkin and then lose them, almost in a way I can't explicate in words. I wonder why I gravitated like a kamikaze angel towards an american naval base when Harmony finally called me back last night. 

I wonder if I would be seated next to Harmony  

  Scattered members of the tribe follow our foray. Music is sprinkled in the back ground.  As I look up I see Justin from my group has pulled up a chair and is seated behind me. Justin is stoic. I'm surprised he is with us.

“Don’t you want to eat with the Big Ten?”

"There's not enough room downstairs." He says, mater-of-factly, between chomps like he is talking about fishing tackle.

"You don't feel uncomfortable do you? I mean, you don't know any of these guys."

 Justin shrugs. He is biting into his deep fried poultry as if it is not quite dead.  Even though the DJ is still setting up music is playing. He is making adjustments on the lights. I am inwardly thrilled that my roommate wishes to hangout and spend time with my friends.Sam says that he can't understand why anyone would want to eat downstairs when you just can't beat this view, elbow-ribcage  eh. I set my meal next to Harmony. We are laughing. We are exiled from the remainder of the group. It is just us.

Mark looks around.

"This is like the coolest part of the trip so far."

Everyone around the table nods while chewing. Discussion seems to evolve around pending skit night and how lame everyone thought the perfunctory US ambassador was earlier in the day. Mark sounds like he is writing a ransom note when he states that if he is mandated to wear a tie one more day in the trip there are going to be some serious consequences. 

I am finally in London. I have the girl of my dreams next to me and the coolest friend I could ever imagine. 

It is a banquet. It is a feast. We are carousing. We are affable. The boat seems to nod up the eddies of the Thames in systematic bobbles, making transitory ellipses every time it turns, heading back up the river in the direction of Tower Bridge, all the while we are dancing, we are holding each other, our bodies forming an unknown alphabet configuring corporeal hierglyochis, forming the distilled sound of  what remedially passes for joy. Harmony seems happy to be next to me  Mark, in his gregarious yet-listening nature is talking with everyone. Somehow at this moment everything is perfect.  We are feasting. Rose keeps on hitting on me. It is a feast, our viands in front of us arrayed in boxes a la  Magi largess. It is a feast, the vessel seems to drizzle down the banks of the Thames. It is a feast and for once it seems that everything has emotionally coalesced inside the yearning EKG of my chest. It is a feast and the woman I have somehow pledged myself to is smiling before biting down into her drumstick. It is a feast and the music the DJ is playing is late/seventies early 80’s, he is playing Steve Perry, he is telling us all not to stop believing as if we are signing some kind of pledge.

It is a feast and Mark is just the coolest human being I have ever met.

It is a feast and it just seems cool that my roommate Justin has decided to hang out with my friends on his own volition.

It is a feast and I am surrounded by those I love.

It is a feast, a last supper sans Judas yet still consecrated, joviality and blessings spilling across the shoreline of the elongated checkered table I assisted Mark in welding together. It is a feast and ten years ago I was only five, in Mrs. Schneider’s Kindergarten class, writing sonnets out of Crayola to Alicia Durham, collecting pending released action figures for RETURN OF THE JEDI which is to be released at the end of May, 1983, only five fingers years of age, my father adhering the plastic guns to the interior palms of Chewbacca the Wookie and Lando  Calrissian, my father who sits in the living room every night after reading Rick Baker in the Journal Star and does devotions before reading Newberry award winning books to his children, my God-fearing father who dips down on one knee as if he is proposing to Jesus and  prays with his progeny fairy-tale seconds before the distilled darkness of childhood swallows us into the plum of night. It is a feast and I am fifteen years of age and I only started paying copious attention to the framed image blinking in front of me in the bathroom mirror as I brush my teeth less than four years ago, when I entered puberty, when I woke up with anatomical jam nectared to the white of my thighs the summer of Batman t-shirts and Bell Biv Devoe when I fell asleep in the air-conditioned living room heralding dreams I never thought possible, that setting sun right now looks like a dyslexic sunrise over West Peoria in reverse, the mornings I wake up unstrapping the heaps of mass-produced periodicals of thought that will inform home owners about the status of the planet. Who is elected. Who we loathe. Those countries that are to be sociologically christened as enemies on this continent we found ourselves gradually appropriating, usurping, raping, pillaging, disseminating diseases, claiming for the name of a King, for a God who shares the texture and hue of our inbred flesh.

It is a feast and, as I will learn later, life appropriates energy from life. Every microcosmic prism of usurped energy spilling forward feeding a life that is yet to come.

It is a feast and we are biting into our vittles. We are nourishing our fifteen year old anatomies. We are gnawing into hormone engendering proteins. We are anticipating for the moment that the lights will hush even more and music will emanate across the top level of the boat. We are laughing. We are bartering anecdotes about this whole Young Columbus experience. How we were lauded in our communities and then shipped to New York and how a week ago we were total strangers and had no clue the other existed and how less than a week from now we will find ourselves back home separated from each other and, in a way, be total strangers once again. 

Vinny still has his eye lodged in the socket of the camcorder gesticulating about this moment in time. He is stating that everything is perfect. He is stating that this is the London, yo. That we are here.

This is London.

It is a feast and I am surrounded by everyone I love.

It is a feast. Hallelujah.

The victory of our God.

                                                                             ***

"Well, It's not like I'd  never contact you again." Harmony says, two and a half years later after a botched visit. After she'd asked if I'd like to come and be a part of the ceremony, after I got drunk for the first time by drinking a bottle of non-chilled Champagne left over from New Years while listening to La Boheme thinking about her clad in a electric sheet of ivory.


I am the same age as Mark was when I met him. I am a senior in high school.


It's not like I would never contact you again.

                                                                          ***


The dance begins. The bald-headed DJ is beginning to become obnoxious in his playlist. He is playing the Ecclesiastical chroniclings of the Byrds. He is playing Buffalo Springfield and the Monkees. During Daydream Believer both Mary Jo and Liz Madigan get on the dance floor and dance like recently Middle-aged ladies vying for a tossed bouquet at a wedding reception. Vivian has a look on her face that says Smashing which, I will learn (in additional to Bloody hell and bollocks and wanker) in the British term for just about everything. Appx. 38 percent of the Young Columbusians 93' are milling around the dance floor, with 40 percent still downstairs eating, gratuitously partaking on 2nds and 3rds on all the British Pepsi they can drink. Rose has been on the dance floor by herself since the first song, dancing like she is wearing beer goggles while her ankles straddle the planetary center of a pogoball. The remainder Young Columbusians are mainly on the back deck. It is spring. The on-again-off-again blustery weather we have incurred this entire trip has lifted reveling a spring night that is nothing short of golden leaving a supernal sense of awe.

I want Harmony to dance with me. I want her to dance with me right now.

Harmony still has not given any facial indication  that she wishes to dance.

As if there is no irony the first almost bona fide couple on the dance floor is Nat and his belle. They are holding hands viz knuckles and fists They are waggling as if they have been on a cruise and are endeavoring to keep their equilibrium after two days. They are dancing and in a way it is almost serene and beautiful because they only thing they are looking at is each other's forehead in a junior high sock-hop slow dance sort of fashion. The DJ continues to play thoroughly anthologized tunes as if he is setting up for a sub-thirteen Bar Mitzvah. By the time the DJ is muting the brass chorus of Sweet Caroline so that the audience can phonetically bra-hah-wrah the unsolicited chorus the dance floor is fraught with distilled bodies of youth.  Harmony gets up and begins to gesticulate her arms as if she is making a cheer on the second chorus.More fellow Young Columbusians are making their way upstairs.  Everyone has his/her arms pointed to the west of the vessel stating the obvious that the  panorama of the setting sun staining the side of  Big Ben and Parliament should notably be plastered on a postcard before attacking it with cameras. The octagonal spire constituting central Tower looks like either a deformed penis or something usurped from the passages of Tolkein.  Music escapes the speakers in a melange of invisible stain glass baubles. I ask Harmony if she would like to dance. She says lets wait for a few number until more people pervade the floor. I am cajoling. I tell her comeon. I tell her she only gets one chance to dance into the moonlight while in London. 

Harmony smiles. I continue to wheedle.

"You want to dance now?"

She barters back a silent nod. We seem to float and then jitter into the center of the dance floor at the end of Sweet Caroline our movements consisting almost entirely of jumping up and down like we are trying to crack a scale . There is laughter. The song seamlessly segues into the  RED HOT CHILLI PEPPERS. It is not quite a waltz. It is paean of hurt in three-four time. Mark is dancing with the spritely cheeked girl from Greta’s group. He is dancing with Rachel who wouldn't shut up at dinner when the camera was in her face, She is small. He is cool. They lock hands as if forming a Valentine's Day heart with  glued palms.   It is hard to describe just how they are dancing. One second they are waltzing the next it is a cavorting. She is smiling.. He is nonchalant. I didn’t know it was possible to dance to Under the Bridge. Mark is debonair. He is classy. A pentimento ridge of overhead light screeches against the tamped  dalliance of settling  clouds. I am holding Harmony. We are dancing the way we danced in Strartford only we are closer. The blood circulating below the gasoline pump of my loins is secondary only to the blood circulating inside the aortic wreath of my chest.

I have finally found her.

With my prominent Bavarian beak I motion with my nose.

"Look at Mark."

Harmony smiles. She adds a he's really cool. The sun continues to squint behind Mark and Rachel. Their legs are forming pyramids as they waltz, their bodies forming an embryonic Aristophanes bulb of linearity. I don't think I have ever seen anyone dance to this song the way Mark is dancing to this song.  They are holding each others' hands as if they are praying. They are skirting across the floor as if they are one sweeping integer. Rachel is looking at Mark the way I wish Harmony would look at me. Mark is stoic-chic. He is dancing while Anthony Kiedis is sentimentally ejaculating about how he never wants to wade in the pond of loneliness and sorrow unearthed that day under the existential penumbra of a what passes for a bridge, of what passes for a slate connecting land-masses into the contiguous gulf of reality ever again.

Harmony and I are dancing nothing like that. We just sort of stand and face each other sporadically tilt as if we are on a jilting elevator in need of repair.

"Yeah," I affirm Harmony's  original statement.

"Mark is a really cool guy indeed."

The song ends. I am still can't stop looking at Mark and Rachel.

The music accelerates, sprinting in snaps backed with an earnest beat. Slowly the Big Ten begins to colonize the dance floor with Spin Doctors Kenny doing a standing long jump, posing like wrestler in front of several members of Daisy’s group before standing long jumping back off the floor again. Several members of Daisy group looks like they are doing a cross-between the hokey-pokey and the bunny hop gyrating their bodies across variegated prisms of light. The slate of the dance floor is broken off into suburban area codes, with delegates of Bus #1 and @ #2 milling around the DJ's console. Spencer seems to have adopted some sort of zigzag dance where he fianchettos across the dance floor with his hand in his pocket and then falls down like a corpse near the younger girls. The DJ is playing a Suzanne Vega remix to which I am direly trying to find Mark, to tell him that I remember that when I met him he was wearing a Suzanne Vega t-shirt but he seems to have dissipated in a.mist after Red Hot Chili Peppers, leaving Rachel semi-starry eyed and spellbound. I am assaying the paradigm of the dance floor. There is movement and there is life. Bodies titter in almost post-coital contortions. There is movement and there is sweat and there is laughter. The light flashes on the plinth of the forehead of the creature I have somehow made a covenant with all of four nights ago, the woman semi-waggling her anatomy in front of me right now.  

The song is diachronically searing. Suzanne Vega is a Pomo foreman shifting gears in an industrial wasteland whose entrance slightly resembles the poster of the Pompideu center Madame Suhr showed us in Paris. The chorus is meditative and almost impossible not to sing along to in a dripping cadence of repetitive duhs. Once the Suzanne Vega song ends the DJ sputters into the microphone about slowing things down a tad. The song commences with a cosmic distillation.  A lost yawn. I wreath my arms behind her neck. Harmony's  fingers form a seat belt behind my waist. We are shifting our shared weight to one foot and then to the other. The British DJ is commenting how this duet was quite a hit on the other side of the pond with your MTV and all that. We are dancing slowly. It is the beginning part of the galactic ballad. A serene yawn across the dark pond of the charted Carl Sagan universe.

“This is nice,” I tell her. Harmony volleys back with a smile. We are dancing. We are holding each other. They are playing the song that reminds me of last summer. Harmony's eyes are the color of Holiday nutmeg. They correlate perfectly with her hair. Her eyelashes seem to keep beat in metronomic blinks. We are dancing back and forth.  We are swaying. We are holding the other. I am swimming in her eyes. I try not to think about my date with Renae when we she bought this CD and we couldn’t refrain from making out with the minty fog of her breath in the icy mid November precipitation when her body was a carousel of moisture and warmth.

Part of me wants to start quoting the lyrics.

I wonder if I will kiss Harmony.

I wonder if the hours I have monopolized looking at myself in the mirror rehearsing the mechanics of my young Columbus speech, the twin years of frustration, the yearning to find myself in Paris.

I wonder if everything I have ever wanted will somehow be notarized with a kiss.

As the tune is ending I can see several members of Tamera’s group who are familiar with New Wave music keening like they know this song. A squeal emits from the speaker. A feral hi-pitched menstrual caterwaul of loss. It is Harmony. I am planted in the sub-atomic soil of the moment.  I am holding her. Her fingernails seem to bite into the back of my neck in a series of passionate pecks.

When the song ends it is almost involuntary. My lips dart and sprint from  the southern topography of my visage, my  decade and a half-year old lips now squinting into the bulls-eye center of Harmony's forehead.  The kiss is terse. Less than a nano-second. Harmony has her arms wreathed around the back of my anatomy and is reeling herself into my body.

 Her skin feels like spring.

There is a silence after Shakespeare's Sister, as if someone inscrutable orienting our every dictation on the polar side of the staticky metaphysical  television screen pressed the start button on the Nintendo control pad wanting us to pause. We are looking at each other. The songs are getting more techno laced, industrial driven. The balding Middle-aged DJ who looks exactly like the middle-aged DJ in Stratford has a much more extensive strobe light set than his dual-chinned doppelganger.  Iridescent flickers of escaped light surfs across the dance floor in stuttering lilts. Perhaps I was suppose to kiss more than just her forehead. Perhaps she wanted me to blithely skim the top of my lips above hers, if only for a moment.

Only if to verify if everything surrounding us is somehow real.

The dance floor is flooded with youth. The whole time Nat has been dancing in the middle of the dance floor with the high-pitched squeaky girl I can't stand hailing from Mark's home state. 

I can still still taste Harmony's forehead on my tongue. She looks at me, blinking several times as if previously choreographed.

"I have sometime to ask you."

I ask Harmony what. For a second she seems apprehensive. For a second she seems all alone.

“I told someone I would dance with them.” Harmony says, looking at me as if for marketing endorsement.

"What?"

"I told someone last night that I would look for him and dance with him. It's no problem is it? If it is don't worry about it."

There is something adhered to Harmony's voice which sounds like she is asking for permission to stay out after curfew.

"No problem."

"You sure?"

"Of course." I say again, not exactly sure what is happening.

"Okay, great!!!" Harmony states like she is excited, doing what looks like a backwards pirouette into the stream of bodies sewn together on the floor. For a moment she was in the basket of my arms and the next thing I know I am somehow all alone. Music is still sputtering the tunes of a wayward youth, ensconced in the farrago of twisting limbs, shouts, thoroughly caffeinated teenagers performing calisthenics while standing in place.

I turn around.

I wonder if Harmony has found that man she was looking for.

There is a tap on my shoulder. I turn around. It is Kazu. Harmony's oriental friend, the one who doesn't speak English.

She begins to communicate to me in a series of hand-charades. At first I think she is talking about Harmony then it looks like she is operating a car with an over-sized drivers' wheel

"Dance? You want to dance?"

Kazu nods several times very quickly.

"I'd be honored." I tell her, lassoing my left hand behind her waist, swaying back and forth to the rhythm of the music, the bob and rustle of the vessel we are planted on. I am trying not to think about Harmony. I am trying not to think that I inwardly pissed her off. That I let her down. That my affections were all some sort of juvenile joke between trollop Jennifer Flood and herself.

Kazu is looking at me she is smiling. The middle-aged DJ is playing a pale-ale acoustic power ballad that I used to listen to all of a year ago, when I used to flirt with Renae Holiday by saying something witty to David Best on the phone while he paused and employed two-way calling relaying to Renae what I had said, pressing down on the semi-colon of the receiver, telling me that Renae is in stitches. It is the song I listened to at Faith Missionary church on junior high night with Tim Flanagan when I was flirting with the girl with the Limestone jacket and the braces. It is the song that was always #1 KZ93's most requested Top 8 at 8 that I listened to while drooling about the incumbency of high school while my dad took me to the Meinen field every night after he got off of work and I became the fastest 8th grader in the mile is central Illinois and, intrinsically, the second fastest in the state,  plowing around the orbit of the track thinking of Karen Christmas in Paris, the winner of that years' Young Columbus contest, thinking of her smile as I sprinted into the gun lap, wildly conjecturing over the people she would meet, feeling the saltine splash of her smile as the first time she witnesses Eiffel tower or loses herself in the framed architecture of the Louvre all the while being immersed in the language I love wonder what it would like to be awarded the opportunity of a lifetime.

Wondering what it would be like to be here right now.

Kazu is trying to tell me something. She is making a motion with her fingertips which resemble two people having sex. My head vacillates from twin shoulders. I don't know what she is conveying. She is pounding her hands together rock-paper-scissors fashion.  She is trying to tell me something. At first I think she is telling me that Harmony doesn't give a fuck about me. That I am somehow her windup toddler-appeasing nickelodeon. She points again. I realize what she is trying to say.

She is stating that she loves this song.


"Yes," I tell her, "I do too."

     



                                                                          ***

"It's just that if this happened right now we may never see each other again. You may forget about me I'll just be another rung in your belt to gloat about in the locker room of your psyche so to speak."

She says, hours later, giving my hand a little squeeze.


                                                                           ***

                                                     

At the end of the dance with the Kazu I unwittingly bow as if am entering the Vietnamese grocery store on Main street back in Peoria.  The next song is up-tempo. The Italian girls from the first day  seem to be in the group of high school juniors who are too cool to dance and just idle around the circumference of the dance floor and watching junior highers speculate and drool. I go to take a picture of the sunset and once again the altar boy wannabe Big Tenner seemingly jumps out of nowhere and blocks my shot.  It is London and it is youth.For reasons that have to do with principle I adamantly refuse to dance to either YMCA or Achy-breaky Heart. Ibib Electric Slide. I wonder if Harmony is dancing with the person she wanted to be with. Perhaps I am smothering her. Perhaps she just doesn’t want to be around me. As I walk  in the direction of the back deck. There seems to be about twenty kids at all times who are not into dancing idling on the back deck. 

 
Mark is nowhere in sight.

As I am headed outside I hear a voice. She doesn’t know my name. She is addressing me in the second person pronoun
.

“Hey You!!!!”


I tilt my head with glasses still doffed.  In cubist-vision I squint. It is Lois Lane. The student reporter 
I met the first day of the trip in the Holiday Inn Newark.

“How are you?”

“Hey!!!” She is smiling. She gives me a little hug

"Did you ever write your article?"

She can’t hear me. She is lost in the blurred gust of the momentum of youth expressing themselves against the oratory canvas of musical notes. She smiles at me. Surely we have been at least ten feet from each other dozens of times throughout the duration of this trip. She is Lois Lane. In another lifetime we would have met each other under alternative circumstances and found ourselves talking about comparative journalism. She is smiling. She is moving her hands as if she is treading water. She makes a motion for me to join her in the middle of the dance floor. My chin oscillates like a periscope.  Harmony is no where in sight. Several counselors and guests of PARADE are standing on the edge of the dance floor near the back stairs like lifeguards.  There is Mary Jo and there is Liz Madigan who were dancing earlier but are not dancing now.  The more I look at CEO Frank McNulty the more I think about Winston Churchill haranguing the opposition in Parliament.

The polite Baptist boy is standing away from the group. He is smiling. He looks left out.

I walk up next to him.

“Hey man, come dance with us.”

He smiles. With his pointer finger he presses his glasses up into his forehead. A splotch of gel is visible in his hair.

“I’d love to but dancing is against my religion.”

I know he is Christian. I have the gall to ask him what he is. I rhetorically ask him what are you Amish or something? He responds with a smile.

“No. Southern Baptist. Only we don’t dance.”

I think about my shy friend Jennifer Baker who always sits by herself at lunch with her King James bible in tow. I want to confess to him that I am a devout overtly repressed Lutheran. I want to convey to him that I joyfully struggle with the prickly sins of lust on an almost hourly basis. I want to tell him that I have the Gideon bible in my pocket right now.

Instead I change the subject.

“If you guys don’t dance what do you do at wedding receptions. The DJ is pretty much just playing wedding reception songs here.”

The polite Baptist boy smiles.

“We pray for a couple of hours and then we eat a lot of food.”

I can tell he is looking at the girls. Jennifer Flood is idling on the dance floor with her short haired beau who seems to communicate through a series of Cro-Magnon related  snorts. I can tell he would like to dance with her. 

The clouds continue to scuttle past in flashes of opal and meringue dappled with specks of light.

“I admire your beliefs brother but I don’t think  you’ll go to Hell by dancing.”

The polite Baptist Boy smiles at me. He offers a  half-grin.

 “Yeah, probably not.”

The polite Baptist Boy takes a slurp of his Pepsi. There is something endearing in his parlance. As we are standing together Mary Jo and Liz Madigan walk up next to us. As always I feel compelled to shake each of their hand as if I am campaigning and then thank them for this opportunity. They smile at both of us. I do a quick surveillance of the floor Harmony is nowhere in sight. It is the perfect night in London. Everything is mauve dusk and descending. The tracks the DJ is playing seem to be almost identical to the set list the bald headed DJ who liked to Boogie-woogie was playing in Stratford. I look around for any sign of Mark. No sign. Most of the Big Ten seems to have gravitated toward the back of the vessel. The polite Baptist Boy is having a long conversation with both Liz and Mary Jo. As if oriented by impulse I stumble on the side deck, taking a left, traipsing around the circumference of this ship. I am on my own, trying not to dwell on Harmony, looking at the heliotrope-flavored bangs of the sun as it appears to set over the Tower of London.

Even though it is all the tepid-tasting British Pepsi one can drink I still really want a cup of coffee.


                                                                                         ***

“When I do something I do it.”  Harmony tells me decades later. I am hearing her voice again. I am hearing her voice again after all this time.

                                                                                         ***

 The first person I bump into outside on the deck is Tamera. Even though she is an incendiary intellectual savant en route to Harvard in the fall I still want her to like me.  The spring wind seems to fellate the back of my neck the closer I get gto the bow, the hull of the ship slicing into thick curtains of air flecked with  baptizing drizzle of the River Thames. 

 Tamera with her Paige Boy haircut is shy. There is no sight of Greta or Sheila. 

The vessel feels as if it putting less and gliding more. I look at Tamera.

"I told the DJ to play Peter Paul and Mary you can come inside and dance now." 

Tamera smiles without saying a word. She looks as if she is anatomizing the clouds for some sort of experiment for the Weather Channel.   Part of me wonders if I am out on the deck because subconsciously I don't want to witness first hand Harmony dancing with another boy. 

"Seriously, he's in there looking for a hammer and a lemon tree."

Tamera smiles again. I wonder why she is isolated and all alone. I place my elbow on the railing. For a moment the Thames looks less like a defecated taupe-colored punch bowl and more like a mirrored aluminum sheet of lapis lazuli.

I want to instigate a conversation with Tamera but it feels like she is clearly in her own world.  

"I think I saw Greta in there. Rose is in there too. Why don't you go inside and hang out?"

Tamera smiles at me even though every time I speak with her I feel like I am hazarding her intellect. I can see her attending Richwoods back home and being cool intellectual friends with Dawn Michelle. 

"I would go inside and hang out only I'm writing a thesis."

I have no clue what she means. I don't see any apparatuses commonly used to write. Tamera seems to anticipate my musings. She tells me that she is writing her thesis in her head.

"Are you writing about this trip? About how crazy it is that we are culled from four corners of the continent and that we all somehow met in the place and how we are so close even though our journey is nearly over."

Tamera says no. I ask her what she her thesis is about. She says Mitochondria. 

"?????"

For some reason at first I think she is talking about some feminine-hygiene related disorder then it occurs to me she is pondering over the architecture of  human cells. I have flashbacks to cool Joe Thomas deriding me in Bio.  We are passing Parliament. It looks like a gold filling reflective off the squint of the sun.

"Why are you thinking about Mitochondria?" I inquire, as music is growing louder. Cheers are heard from inside the vessel.

"Because, if you think about it, there must be beyond billions of mitochondria jitter-bugging on the dance floor alone right now.  Maybe even a trillion. They are responding to the chemical changes in the body. Even psychological change.   Even dancing."

"Even love." I say, trying to be romantic for whatever reason.

"Yeah, and loss and change. It's quite fascinating actually."

I nod. We continue to make small talk.  I feel like I have just walked into the varsity locker room of molecular biology without wearing my athletic cup. She mentions names of organelles I have never heard of before. I feign interest by telling her that I am fascinated. This is Tamera. This is the creature I was so enraptured with when I sat down at her table in Stratford-upon-Avon because Liz Madigan insisted that we sit boy-girl-boy-girl and I chose to sit with the cool, nerdy isolated intellectual girls in the back of the room. For first time she seems interested in me. I make a comment that sounds like I am smoking weed and listening to pink Floyd about how it is only when we understand what is truly inside of us that we can fully understand what is outside of us as well.  Tamera smiles again. It occurs to me that if she were wearing glasses and harbored ambivalent sexual proclivities she would look just like Velma from Scooby Doo. 

Walking in my direction is the boy from Texas who always wears the black hat and leather jacket and the boy from San Dimas California. Both are  walking as if on latex stilts while laughing in random chuckles.

"Dude, little Harry Connick Jr," They say, pushing me away from Tamera, placing my head in a arm-lock giving me a noogie even though I vehemently detest people touching my hair.

"Harry Connick we've been fuckin' lookin' for you man!!!."

“You have?” I say, feeling accepted by older members of the Young Columbus tribe.

They are lolling their heads as if they are inebriated hyenas.

“ Oh-Yeah, man.” Texas Longhorn is pointing. he says I am the man twice. Dimas armpit smells like Brut and some sort of heavily distilled alcoholic spirit. When Dimas releases his choke-hold he points back to Tamera.

“That girl is like a Mr. Wizard lesbian. She is like cuckoo Harry. You don’t want to get involved with girls like that.”

“Yeah, we were just talking about Mitochondria.”

“See, Chlamydia, Gonorrhea,  Mitochondria…Lord knows what’s all in that pussy. That girl is fucking cuckoo Harry. Fucking cuckoo as shit. Stay away from that shit.  Just stay away, man. “

“Yeah Harry, stay away man, Girls like that will fuck with you. They will ruin you. You are young man. Young!!!”

Texas boy is slapping me on the back as if he expects me to burp. Dimas is stretching, shouting out a  yeah into the River Thames.  It is obvious they have been drinking. I want to tell them not to act so drunk since Liz and Mary Jo are inside. Before I know it Dimas is holding the back of the neck employing my anatomy as a human shield.

“Harry, cover for us man,” They duck down, passing a bottle of cheap gin between them.

“We got this in the gift store in the hotel man. No ID. No nuthin'."

The boys are laughing. They are heckling. The last thing I need is to get caught mingling with the older boys who are drinking. I am trying to slink away back into the ship. Part of my chest still doesn’t want to acknowledge Harmony’s presence dancing with another guy.

The front of the ship is forming corrugates ripples in the Thames below.

I am still being used as a shield. The boy with the Texas cap takes a swig passing the bottle Dimas who makes it a point to look both ways before imbibing.

“Harry man, come on, you gotta hit this man. This is good shit.”

I’m worried that just by being near them my counselors will sniff the alcohol on me.  I hold up my palm. I tell them that I’m fine. I tell them that I need to get back on the dance floor and locate my date. Just as I am headed back into the boat I feel arms on my shoulders. I am being swiveled around by Dimas. At first I think he is going to place me in another choke-hold. He crooks his knees and bends down like a little league hitting coach telling me to bunt. His breath reeks of cheap gin and nicotine. His eyes are bleary. I can see the prominent knob of his Adam’s apple undulate up and down several times.

“Harry man, thing is dude…”

There’s a pause.          

“You’re young, man. What are you dude, like a sophomore?”

I tell Dimas I’m a freshman. The boy from Texas in the leather coat and leather hat says see man, fuck.

“Fuckin’ freshman yo. Here you are trying to chase those nerdy biology type of chicks.”

“I find them interesting,” I say, Dimas is pressing down on my shoulders as if he is trying to christen a hood ornament for the hull, his alcoholic breath is reeking on my jowls.

“No man. You don’t man no you just fucking don’t man. Those chicks will ruin you. Fuck them.”

Dimas still has me pinned down.  From behind him Longhorn Texas takes another swig.

“ Harry man, you’re only a freshman and you are trying to score with those brainy maxi-pad lookin' chicks?”

I try to tell Dimas I’m not trying to score. Part of him smells like vomit.

“Harry man, listen dude, I want to give you some advice, I mean, you are young man.”

He is blessing me in the fashion of a Pabst Blue Ribbon Polonius. It is clear by now that he is wasted. 

It is clear by now that if I don’t escape the inebriated torque of his shoulders someone constituting authority from PARADE will come out and lambaste the three of us. For a minute Longhorn grapples the deck rail and for a moment I think he might perform a half gainer over it.

Dimas breathes in my face again, before he takes a deep breath. He addresses me as Harry brother. 

Because he is drunk it sounds like Warry Druthers.

“Warry Druthers, the thing is this, in life man...”

He pauses, he raises his finger as if telling me to shhhh, as if pointing towards heaven.

“Warry, thing is, in life man, in life brother,  it is all about Pussy!!!”

Longhorn behind him laughs like how I can only imagine a hyena might heckle. Dimas continues on with his non-mitochondria induced thesis.

  

“Pussy brother. You are young, man. You are like a fucking toddler. You gotta get all up on that when its all fertile and shit. When it’s tight. You gotta lick the helloutta that shit. You gotta put a lime down there and suck that shit dry.”

I am trying to press up on Dimas’ arms. I don’t want to get caught socializing with him any more.. Somehow I was hoping the advice he was to give me would somehow be life-altering and profound.

“Pussy brother. It’s all about Pussy bro. This is the time to hit that shit. You gotta hit that shit when it is young and fresh. Pussy brother and before its full of Mitochondria and shit. Pussy, Harry. It’s all about the twat!”

Both Dimas and Longhorn raise their hands as if they are Vikings. We are heading up the river, toward Tower bridge. In the background I can make out the dome that is St.Pauls which Larry Reents told me atop is the most resplendent view in all of London.

“Pussy!!!!” They are shouting, bartering the bottle of what looks like generic Gin between them. The second Dimas grip begins to lessen  I jet inside the boat. The floor is completely packed. Nat and his girlfriend are still locked in the center of the floor. The polite Baptist boy is still socializing with Liz Madigan. I wonder if I smell like regurgitated distilled spirits since his lips were closer to my lips than I was to Harmony’s lips twenty minutes prior. I am not wearing my glasses. I am not looking where I am going. Outside I can hear Dimas and Longhorn continue to yell out tirades. As I am walk into the pinwheel nest of bodies I bump straight into John Major, the tedious tour guide from Mark’s bus who talks with a disciplinary parlance. He has his hands behind his back like he is guard at the Tate modern.

“Having a bit of too much of fun on the deck now are we?”

Fuck this. I have not gotten along with the John Major look-a-like tour Guide ever since he accused me of not taking the tour seriously at the Rollright stones.

“Excuse me,” I say, not looking directly at him. Even with my glasses off I can tell that he is making minute sniffling sounds with his nose.  Let him rail against Dimas and Longhorn outside.  I don’t care. I didn’t drink. I continue to scope the dance floor to see if I could readily discern Harmony only it is almost impossible to tell with my glasses doffed. I skid in the center of the movement, close enough that Nat looks at me, offering one of his snivel-chinned scowls. The look shooting out of his eyes seem to convey some sort of your-girl-is-not-in your arms sarcasm.  Again my chin transitions into a periscope. Again I am wobbling through the section of the dance floor where dance looks like an apoplexy fit. As I reach the far side of the ship Jim Baker comes up to me and burps in my face.

“Hey fucktard. I’m supposed to apologize to you.”

“You already did Jim,”

“No, but Trevor and Charles are over there,” He points with his nose. “It would be really nice if they would witness a truly sincere apology.”

Music is thumping. It is seems hard to fathom but they are playing the Humpty Dance. I can’t imagine how Loverboy Tremont Nat is undulating his  county torso to such tunes.

“ But you are not sincere. You told me you were gonna get even with me. You told me your apology was superficial and didn’t mean anything.”

“It is. Bro trust me, you are going down. Just act like you are hugging my ass so that Trevor and Charles can see that we’ve kissed and made up so to speak..”

Jim adds that he would never kiss me. That would be gay. Jim opens his arms up like wings. I push him back. I don't want him anywhere near me. 

“Dude, Harry man, what the Hell? You smell like hooch.”

"Jim I don’t smell like hooch. It’s my cologne. It’s English Leather.”

“No, fuck that cheap cologne shit. You smell like booze Harry. I’m gonna tattle on you. I’m gonna tell Trevor and Charles. You smell like moonshine man.”

Again I am facing off with my adversary. He doesn’t have to start this shit. I can’t even cross the boat without incurring some sort of emotional trauma. Jim  wields his right arm around me again. He is raising up his hand pointing down on my forehead.

“Hey yo, everyone, Harry smells like Hooch!!! Harry smells like hooch, yo!!!”

Jim is cackling the way the future frat boys in the back were cackling. No one seems to be paying attention. On the speakers Humpty-Hump is making a proclamation about how he likes his oatmeal lumpy.

“Alright Harry, I have a proposition for you, I won’t tell Charles and Trevor that you have been hitting the bottle if you— "

Jim pauses. He swivels his chin. Trevor and Charles are facing our direction. Before I can calculate exactly what is happening Jim has his arms life-rafted around my body. His chin is on my shoulder. Again I wish I was anywhere else but here. Jim is planting a semblance again that all is well in the pornographic snow-globe of the Big Ten. Again, as was the case with Dimas, his lips are closer to parts of my face than my lips were to Harmony’s countenance while we were dancing.

I can feel Jim's breath hit my ear in the manner of a sucker punch.

“Your ass if grass Harry. Hiram gonna get your ass so busted. Yer ass is grass, Harry.”

Your ass is grass.

Baker pulls back. I am jerking the antipodal direction. John Major still has one finger over his lips looking bemused.

Jim tells me one more thing. I say what.

“Open nuts fucker.”

I am struck in the nads with Baker’s kneecap. I keel over, keening.

The night is young.

              

From behind me I can hear John Major state to no one in particular that we are beginning to act somewhat like an intolerable ruffian, now aren’t we?

I scan the dance floor seeking Harmony.

She is nowhere to be found.