Mideval Banquet: a faretheewell (a)

We enter the mansion. There are thick wooden tables sprawled out  from each side with an aisle in  the middle. The walls are adorned with several severed thoroughly taxidermied Boar and Stag heads. There are Knights. It seems like everyone is wearing tights.There is a Jester. The sound of what is either a 4/4 baroque fugue or a Dungeons & Dragons funeral dirge pipes off in the distance. I swear I hear a harpsichord even though no harpsichord is visible in the room.  Spencer seems to be more affable making miming motions that he is ready to joust. The overhead lights are dim, part of a chandelier that looks like a wheel culled from a pioneer wagon.

All of the tables have candles.

 It doesn’t take long for Jim Baker to swivel around commenting that this is some serious gay shit, dude.

Everyone is seated at tables like they are posing for the last supper a la Da Vinci style.

I look around.  Her bus has already arrived.

Harmony is seated near the front of the room.

 As the Big Ten walks in they take a left. The entrance is flanked by what look like Beefeaters.  I head towards Harmony’s table. Baker asks me where the fuck do I think I am going.

“ I'm gonna go sit with Harmony, man. It’s the last night.”

“Like hell you are sitting with Harmony. This is the last night bro. This is the Big Ten. This is our fraternity. This is it.”

It seems weird that Jim is showcasing zeal. It seems odd that Jim, who has patronized me into  psychological skittles this entire trip wants to hangout the last dinner of the trip.

I have long since garnered approval from Trevor and Sir Charles  to feast with Harmony at every meal.  

"Sorry man," Both Justin and Chris moan as if they are in an antacid commercial. Jim keeps on going.

"Like hell bro. The Big Ten is always just more than the Big Ten, The Big Ten is our frat, or, where you come from, a gang. We are one, we are the Big Ten man."

I turn back around and say sorry.

“Look, even Spencer is sitting with us. He’s not abandoning us for Daisy."

I tell Baker that that is because Spencer and Daisy are again engaged in one of their hourly tiffs. I tell Baker that everyone involved in the  the whole Daisy Train shenanigans-shit were almost responsible for PARADE filing whatever passes as a missing person/runaway suit. That her parents would then almost ineluctably sue PARADE. That there would probably be some international hostage crisis that would notably arrive out of this with Sixty Minutes even covering a segment. That there would be an article about autonomy and youth in the New York Times Sunday magazine. That the trip would subsequently be canceled as parents' would not approve of their progeny traveling overseas in such a program where their offsprings invariably disappear into a seedy mist of european underground prostitution.

That Trevor and Sir Charles would miss out on graduation in a could of weeks.

That Liz Madigan was about ready to claw my ass with patriotic pincers and according to her I was being considered with what my narcissistic left-out mind can only fathom would be a one-on-one interview with Lynn Minton on the emotional tumult facing adolescence today.

 That the integrity and continuity of the Young Columbus program as a whole was almost permanently marred.

That the trip would be no more.

"I'm sitting with Harmony." I tell Jim.

Baker says come on bro. He  iterates again that this is the last night.

I look back.


                                   


I tell Baker I am not his Bro.