Mark-Andrew

 

 

He is sitting there in the back of the Shuttle bus in Newark, NJ and it seems like I have  known him somehow all of my life. He is sitting there, his expensive camera with the chic volcano nozzle he will point at the pending lush continent to chronicle the trip in syncopated slashes and clicks. He is seated there, near the back of the shuttle bus, his eyes the color of Neptune, a curious poignant azure, the type of blue where the horizon of the ocean meets the limitedness of the sky, he is seated three rows behind me, on the tinted lashes of a shuttle bus with the words Holiday and Inn scribed on the side of the vehicle, fonted so that it appears that a tropical storm is billowing and hushing over the top of the appellation, granting each individual letter a slight hurricane-infested tilt and sway. He is seated on the back of the bus, wearing a Suzanne Vega 99.9 degree Fahrenheit t-shirt, his arms fashionably reclined fashionably on the seat in front of him, the back of his hands locked in reverse prayer, smiling. Laughing. Hair so blonde it looks like Midas could be his hair dresser, hair that is fashionably coifed, as if a nimbus of intrigue is slightly hovering above his shoulders, a carousel of collective individual metaphysical acknowledgement. His body exudes a transcendental Romanesque features.

 The inhabitants of the bus are all older. Juniors and seniors, but mostly seniors.

I look at him like I have seen him before, like I have known him my entire life. 

I think about the man with the pony-tail and the pinstriped suit and the laptop at the Peoria airport earlier this morning who gave me a look as if he knew all about me. I think about the short hair lad at the book store who smiled and seemed to somehow acknowledge me and seem to know exactly what I was looking for. I think about the man inside the taxi and the beautiful dark haired woman holding her shoes in the back seat. I think about all this as I take a seat two rows ahead of him. The bulk of my comrades with whom I have been waiting with on the cement slab of earth outside Newark gravitate towards the front of the bus, apprehensive as their necks swerve like periscopes at what will soon be introduced as their fellow peers.

 

They appear to have been waiting for us as long as we have been waiting for them.

Heath sits next to me as I continue to try and not stare the mirrored image of almost spiritual recognition imminently situated behind my neck. I continue to whip my glasses on and off, seeing the world from different blurred and geometrical cubist angles, but visually seeing the bouquet of sight and sound which constitutes the corporeal symphony of the experienced globe nonetheless.

 

Next to the blonde haired lad who I just cannot stop  staring at, the fifteen year old ponds of my own eyes bending inside the convex coliseum of my skull, as if trying to mentally cogitate where I in fact know him from sits a fellow Titan attired completely in black, black jeans and black jean jacket. A black baseball cap, worn as if he is morning the ill-timed death of his favorite minor league prospect. His face is rugged and gaunt, as if he had just spent the previous night in a dessert seeking Marlboro man enlightenment. He is reclining next to my blonde-haired visual familiar and he is wearing boots, and as it turns out, he is from Texas. Another man with blonde hair and glasses so fragile they look like they would disintegrate into a galaxy of neutrinos and quarks simply by adjusting the center back into the area that shadowy shrouds his frontal lobe. He is speaking in a polite monotone effused with grace and decorum. He looks like how I imagine my mother would somehow want me to look like—kind and religious and Christian and skinny and clean, a mirrored demure reflection of the attributes of my father at 19, the kind southern benevolent-faced gentleman sitting next to the blonde Adonis most certainly is—turns out he won the contest by writing an essay as well.

 

Nat enters the shuttle and sits next to a blonde girl with a bad perm who is seated next to a window all by herself. He has not stared directly at me since we stood in line at O’Hare.

 

I gravitate towards the back. Trevor is counting heads by bobbing his chin. Somehow I feel a bond with Heath and can’t understand how a fellow Young Columbusian could have been on the same flight and not have noticed each other. Unlike Nat, he seems to share my pending elation for traveling overseas.

 

“So, you're from Iowa?’

 

Heath smiles and says yes.

 

“Lots of cornfields out there I imagine.”

 

He responds with a yes again. Heath apparently won the contest and part of a school project that he was finalist for and then there was a drawing.

 

“It was more of a raffle.” He says, leaving me just confused.
 

 

A raffle for a trip to London.

We are on our way to orientation.  We are on our way home.