Open Jewels , after the tower of London, aesthetic Aqua Net and everything you ever mistook for the chorus of your life is about to change....

After the Tower of London I am walking to my place in the back of the bus, thinking about the elusive french girl I will never see again, commencing to sulk while wonder why Harmony always looks at me like I am carrying an unpronounceable STD when just below my navel I feel a thud, keeling over.

“What the hell.” I look back, Jim Baker is heckling. Justin and Chris have their arms clasped over their crotch like they are trying to thwart a corner kick. Everyone is laughing. Trevor and Charles are no where in sight.

“Hey fucker, open jewels.”

“What?”

Spin Doctors Kenny too has his hands clasped over loins when he begins to tell me the rules.

“You have to keep your crotch guarded. If it’s unguarded it is open jewels which means that anyone who perceives your crown jewels as being unguarded has the right to pummel them.”

“This is crazy.” I tell them, wishing I was on Mark’s bus. Wishing I was harboring a deep intellectual discussion with vegetarian Greta or Harvard bound Tamera. Jim replies back by stating whatever Depeche mode before flagellating his limbs towards my crotch again.

I catch his wrist and then slap him on the top of his head. Jim is laughing. With his free hand Jim swings in the direction above my loins. I step back. I pop him on the top of his head again., with more physical torque than the previous fluff blow.   While witnessing our altercation Kenny makes contact with Justin, yelling out open jewels. I slap Jim on the head again. I tell him I don’t feel like playing. I tell him just to let me be. Through the tint of the window I hope someone from Parade reeking of authority is observing what appears to be my own group, group number three, the eternal BIG TEN endeavoring to wildly sodomize each other..

There is a voice behind us. It is Sir Charles. He is calling us guys. He is telling us guys, common, stop fooling around now.

I am pissed that I haven’t seen Harmony all day. I am pissed she was so elusive last night. I am pissed that I just had a fleeting out-of-body epiphanic transactions with a french seraph who I will never bat eyes on again.  I am pissed that I am not with Mark at all times or getting to know his group and have intellectual discourses on the bus that if it were part of the Columbus flotilla would surely be the Santa Maria. I am pissed that I am in London and after three years of vying and endeavoring to win this contest I am here and feel all alone and the only intimacy I have is a fellow wanna be jock from Colorado attempting to milk my testicles with his own fist.

Charles again tells us to knock it off and behave because the bus is getting ready to go and Vivian is about to start talking.The moment Charles’ head swivels counting towards the front of the bus my hand slams down on the top of Jim Baker’s brow, as hard as I fucking can. I have not struck anyone with disdain since fuckhead Aron Rothman in the hallway when he wouldn't shut up about Patrick and Coach Mann bailed me out.

Jim steps back. Charles’ head turns.

“Geezus dude. Harry I was just joshing with you, man.”

The rest of the Big Ten is quiet for the rest of the ride home. I sit in the back corner of the bus. When we reach into the Gloucester are told me have two hours chill time to unwind before we leave for dinner.

 We board the hotel elevator Justin is again bending over holding his crotch. Spencer is smiling

“Open jewels” he says, a smile minted on his face.

Spencer takes a swing towards my crotch. I am still pee-o'hd. I grappled his wrist in my hand and begin to squeeze it like a brain putty stress relief orb.  Before the elevator hiccups a bling shut I kick him as hard as I fucking can. I don’t care if he is the adorable Jester who everyone is in love with on the trip. I don’t care that everyone he meets the first thing he states is that he is from Utah and that he goes to a posh high school of 2000 and there is only one white kid in his high school I don’t care that every member of Daisy’s group looks at him as if he is clad in armor and has just proposed  to them in front of a Mariachi band.

I am  beyond pissed. For the first time I don't want to be here. For the first time since I heard that Josh Smith won the contest in 1990 when I was in sixth grade I don't want to be a Young Columbus. For the first time this entire sojourn I wish I was running the arteries of West Peoria, cutting through the humid glens of Bradley park.


For the first time this entire trip I want to leave.

Spencer is still peeled over. For reasons that defy virile responsibility I kick him again as hard as I fucking can.

Chris makes a silent sound saying ouch. Spencer is on the floor of the elevator being over-dramatic stating Harry, Harry sweet Harry, I may want to have kids someday.

“Dude, quit fucking around man.”

The elevator door swooshes open. The Big  Ten is quiet.

As I turn the hallway and head for my room without Justin. Behind me I hear Jim Baker.

“Harry is fucking crazy yo. Look at him,. He is fucking crazy indeed.”

                                                                    

                                                                            ***

            “Did you see those magazines over there where you open them up and everything pops out?” My English teacher asks as I return home, a smile rubbed into his face.

                                                                               ***

It occurs to me after my failed conversation with Harmony in the last three days that I hate this place. That I despise the puerile antics of the BIG TEN. That I again don’t want to be here.

That I want to leave.

                                                         


                                                                    ***

After arriving back to the Gloucester I push my way to the front of the bus. I refrain from thanking Vivian or waving at Chris the bus driver. I leap out on the wrong side of the road and enter the lobby of the Gloucester on my own.  Several young columbusians are idling around the lobby. Next to the Stag is Rita who waves out my name only I am too flustered to see her. I press the button to the  elevator and enter, my black YC bookbag still leaking off my shoulder.

With the exception on going on a walk with Mark I Hyde park I  have despised every part of this day. Several members of Daisy’s group are lingering in the hallway. They started calling me Harry as well, asking me if I have seen Spencer, Harry.  I slide in the plastic credit card into my door. When it blinks green I enter, spiking my young Columbus 93 bag containing the hard café t-shirts for my sisters on the bed like a football.

I scream. Tears seem to skid out from under my sockets. I am the place I have always wanted to be and I am somehow all alone.

The traffic is skidding past Brompton road.  The city is alive. Even though is has been raining intermittently throughout the day, it feels like spring.

I go over to the phone and begin to attack it with finger punches.

It sounds like the word bring every time it rings. It brings several times in a row. There is no answer. I wait four seconds. I attack the digits to her room again

After the fourth ring she picks up. There is a hello.

It is her voice. I feel impelled to slough the cynicism and become Mr. Romantic.”

“So, did my little mermaid find enjoy her crown jewels?”

“Oh, yes baby, it made me all wet.”

It is Jennifer. There is laughter in the background.

“Jennifer, just give me Harmony. I need to talk to her.”

She just got out of the shower. She’s rubbing her entire body up and down with lotion.”

“Jennifer I’m not fucking around. Where is she—I really need to talk with her.”

There is a pause. I can hear hiccupping giggles on antipodal end of the line.

I told you Harry she’s in the shower. She’s all lathered up. You should see her.”

I am pissed. Justin enters the room not looking in my direction. He heads over to my suitcase and begins to pilfer through my luggage searching for what seems like the infinite supply of fig Newtons my mom stowed in my suitcase.

I’m sick of everyone addressing me as Harry and the other half thinking I am that kid off a b-rated television show.

“Jennifer put her on I know she’s there.”

“Oh, she’s there, and your Little Mermaid is all nice and wet and she’s waiting for you.”

I try to get assertive. There are more giggles before Jennifer Flood clears her throat.

“Look Harmony’s not here. I left her a message that you called last night.”

I correct Jennifer Flood and state that I thought you said Harmony was in the shower. She says yeah.

Jennifer Flood is beginning to talk to me like she is a baby sitter and I am eight years old trying to watch porn through the staticky fizz of late-night basic cable.

“Well, I didn’t call to talk with Harmony I called to speak with you.”

Jennifer lets go of a what?

“Yeah. How was your day in London? Did you enjoy the Madame Tussauds and Hard Rock Café?”

She is silent.

“I can’t talk with you right now. I’m busy.”

I remember how Jennifer Flood was x-rated flirting with me the other night. I’m jousting back. If she wants me to be lewd I’ll be lewd. If she wants me to be dirty I’ll be dirty.

“I’d bet you look really sexy wearing your Hard Rock Café London t-shirt.”

Over the phone an audible what.

“Yeah, I bet it looks really sexy on you. I bet you are wearing it right now.I bet it correlates with the sunrise of your smile. I bet it correlates perfectly with your angel wings.”

She is saying nothing. From over the phone I swear I can hear her smile, I remember how she kept saying that Harmony was stripping on the opposite end of the phone the other night before hanging up. She wants me to talk dirty to her. She wants to me to be curt. She wants me to foist abuse on her using the flaying time signature of my tongue.

Game on.

“Yeah, I bet your wearing your Hard Rock café t-shirt right now. I bet that’s all you are wearing. Just your HardRock café shirt. That and panties.”

Suddenly there is a pause. I feel like I am getting an erection speaking with Harmony’s roommate.

I wonder if I am sounding like Jim Baker. I wonder if I am sounding like an asshole.

“What color?”

“What?”

“You told me I’m wearing a Hard Rock Café t-shirt and panties. What color?”

"They are white. White with little hearts on them, like crimson tears. Frilly. You are in room and you are wearing your Hard Rock café t-shirt and panties and you are thinking about someone you loss who immeasurably hurt you and how you feel all alone in London and you wish you had someone just to buckle their arms around and hold you baby.”

There is a pause. For a second my entire is anatomy shaped like the steeple at Christ Lutheran Church. I am rising. Jennifer Flood is sexy. She has stage-curtain bangs. I am trying somehow to touch her yet I am trying to touch Harmony. I want her to convey to Harmony that I’m not unfledged. That I am serious. That I felt I somehow connected with Harmony in Stratford, dancing with her the other night, amorously holding her atop the burrowed chipped calcium of the greatest writer who has ever lived; dancing on top of Shakespeare’s grave.

“You’re wrong.”

Jennifer Flood retorts back to me as if she is reading a verdict.

“What?”

“You are wrong. It’s not white. I bought a black Hard Rock Café t-shirt. I’m wearing it now.”

There is a pause. It is awkward. I swivel around and notice that Justin has since entered the hotel toom and has been listening to me talk dirty to someone I hardly know.

His mouth is agape. I wasn’t trying to woo Jennifer Flood. I was trying to achieve Harmony.

“Well can you have you-know-who, our little devil with wings phone us as soon as she comes in. I think about her all the time. I really miss her. I’m an addict. I’m in Harmony withdrawal.”

Jennifer Flood says yes, I will. She tells me to quit calling so damn much. She uses the word damn.  She says that she will convey to Harmony.

As I say fine. As I leave I tell her one more thing.

“You do look sexy in that shirt you are wearing.”

Jenny pauses. Instead of saying goodbye I say the word Cheers as I hang up the hotel room phone.  I hear the tulip of her voice one last time. I swear she calls me Harry. I swear she calls me Tony.

Turns out she is calling me by my name.

“David,”

“Yeah.”

“I will tell Harmony that you called.”

The phone hanging up sounds like two lips clicking together.

It sounds like a kiss.

It sounds like London in Spring.

                                                                                ***

After I hang up the phone Justin marches in the room. He says I don’t know why you have to be so crazy all the time. He says that the Big Ten was just fooling around.

“Maybe I didn’t want to play that Open Jewels game where they are pelting each other in the crotch.”

Justin Shrugs He says it was no big deal. He says dude, you are weird.

I am determined to go somewhere. I might even leave the hotel. I  might leave the contours of the hotel and I might just never come back.

I readily concur with what Mark was saying in Hyde Park about feeling constricted.

I need more hairspray.  Back home I go through a can and a half-a-week of Aqua Net. I keep a can in my backpack at school so I can duck into the bathroom during lunch, ensconce myself in a stall and more or less re-spray. I am almost out.  Justin has admitted to using his fair share claiming that it was only because he wanted top look good attending the dance even though none of the girls on the trip  purportedly look as good as his girlfriend back home.

“You used it for more than just the dance. You use it when I leave and go to breakfast every morning.”

Justin shrugs. He says that it is no big deal. We are bickering like we are wearing tampons.

"Just quit. Hell, you don't even seem to appreciate the significant cultural implications of this trip." I tell him, sounding scholarly. Justin looks back at me and tells me to quit sounding like a damn dictionary. It is the first time on this trip I have heard him curse.

"I mean, here we are in London man, the whole Big Ten. We are waltzing through history. He are seeing things that are thousands of years old and all you guys want to do is pound each other in the goddamn nuts."

Justin Shrugs. He says that he's happy being a self-contained member of the Big Ten. He says he doesn't understand what my problem is. He wants to know why I'm always trying to hang out with the other buses. Why I am always trying to be something I'm not.

I finger my hairspray and listen as it whistles an epitaph of emptiness.

"There's 150 kids on this trip from all over the United states. You should be interacting. You should be meeting people, having discussions, exploring new ideas. Not to mention, the girls are hot. We have no girls on our bus.

Justin starts to get mad. He tells me that he is happy on our bus. He tells me that he told me before that he already has a girlfriend back home in Nebraska City, Nebraska.

“ Yah I’m gonna start calling your girlfriend back home Ol’ Yeller. That sounds like a good name for her. Good old ol’ yeller.”

Justin is pissed. He takes off his Big Ten give-it-up Michigan cap and hurls it at me like an impotent boomerang.

It misses. I am irked. I am not retreating.

"Just you and Ol' Yeller sitting around not even licking each other cause you are spiritually spaded. Nothing like a bitch that won't fetch or roll over, is there now.."

Justin is pissed.

“Don’t be saying that. We’re both Christians. We’re both saving ourselves for marriage, for our wedding night.”

“Your saving your what for your what?”

“You know what. We are saving sex. We are saving sex for when we get married.”

I tell him that there’s nothing wrong with that. I tell him that that is the way I feel most of the time. I then tell him that he is only fourteen years old. He is only a freshman in high school. I take the empty cylinder of Aqua Net and heave it like a baton as Justin bites back.

“What about the chain you keep on wearing?” I ask him what. He points to my wrist. To the identity bracelet that Renae gave me.

“It’s from my ex-girlfriend. She gave it to me for Christmas. I gave her a copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

Justin heckles.

“I bet she was twice as hot as Harmony. I bet she was skinny. She was probably a skinny blonde hair girl. And you broke up with her because you wanted to go on this trip. You had this scene in your head where you were going to finally win the trip and meet Harmony and she was going to be the girl of your dreams only it wasn’t Harmony it could’ve been any girl and Harmony was the first one you  thought you connected with so of course this trip has to be all about her.”

I tell him to shut up. He continues.

“I bet secretly inside you are still in love with that girl  only you felt that you wouldn’t win this trip unless you had to give her up or something. Like if you took he where she needed to be God would punish you. That you would not be here at all.”

I think about the college girls next door. I think about what she looked like when she was wearing only panties.

“Dude, I’m just as Christian as you.”

“Just saying man.”

Just saying.

I reach into the interior of my wrist and pinch open the Identity bracelet. I slap it down on my bed. It ricochets up and lands on the floor, looking like a spliced DNA strand. I pick up Justin’s MICHIGAN hat and toss it back to him as trying to make par in a Frisbee golf tournament.  I walk up to my cylinder of aqua net and give it one final healthy rattle before padding my pockets to verify the presence of pounds.

“Listen, just don’t talk anymore shit about Harmony. For some reasons I care about her. I care about her more than you care about Old Yeller in Iowa.”

“Nebraska! And don’t call her Old Yeller!”

I say the title to the movie Old Yeller three times in a row, stomping my foot down after the last accentuated “errr.” Justin curls both fists. He looks like a bull ready to joust at a matador waving a scarlet cape.

“Okay Just don’t bring up Harmony. And don’t use my fucking hairspray.”

Justin offers up a you are so weird. I ignore him. I open the door to our hotel room and slam it as hard as a I can.   Some of the pictures adorning the wall begin to rattle. I am headed for the elevator.  En route I bump almost headfirst into Josh walking with the girl wearing excessive blush.

“Don’t forget that tonight we have skit rehearsal.”

I shrug. I press the illuminated button leading south on the elevator . I press it again. Nothing seems to be happening. Finally the doors part open like a stage curtain. Inside is Sam. Addressing me as Tony.

I’m not in a mood to talk.

“What did you think about the Tower of London tour today? Those crown jewels were really something, eh?”

I look down. I am still flustered.

“I need to go down to the lobby Sam.”

"You meeting that girl?" I shake my head back.

“I need some provisions. I’m gonna see if they have anything in the gift shop downstairs. Sometimes they carry provisions.” 

Sam is wearing his Hard Rock Café t-shirt from earlier in the day.  He is also wearing his parade fanny-pack. He gives me a slap on the back. Again he calls me Tony.

“I never realized the show Blossom was so popular until this trip.”

“It’s just you look just like the guy. The alcoholic. The older brother.”

I tell Sam that I was told that last summer when I started doing community theater.”

“There was this make-up lady. I was Charlie the anvil salesman in Music Man. Her name was Dawn. She was gorgeous. When you do theater they make you wear make-up.  She was volunteering as the make-up lady. There’s a certain type of gentlemen that is comfortable grappling a vial of lipstick and applying it to their face but that was never me.”

“She sounds pretty hot.” Sams adds.

“Yeah, and she was brilliant. She kept making it to state in speech in dramatic interpretation. She would do all these  scenes about a young girl who was raped and then tries to get something back.”

Sam looks at me. His fanny pack makes his look like he is awaiting dialysis.  The elevator bings. Sam’s states that this is his floor but he’s not going to get off since he wants to go to the lobby with me. The door seems to exhale shut.  The elevator continues to plummet.

“I guess she was trying to regain innocence. Regain that part of her that wants to see the world as something brand new. That part of her that wants to see the world as something that hasn’t been despoiled or marred. Wants to see life all brand new.”

The elevator shushes open with a bling. I turn to Sam.

“So, has this trip in London been everything you have imagined it to be? I mean, when they first told you  won the trip and you got all the media attention, was this what you envisioned?”

Sam sort of shrugs. He says that it’s not bad over here.

“I mean, it’s not bad. I mean, it’s different and it’s the same. I still miss my ex-girlfriend at home but I love everything about England so far. I love how they call French fries chips. I love how they call the elevator a lift. I love how they drive on the opposite side of the road yet how they basically speak the same language as we do.”

I look back at same and smile. We pass the statue of the steer in the lobby.  Sam asks where we are headed.. I tell him I’ve got an idea.

“Look. There’s no one around. Lets just go AWOL. Let’s screw this whole thing. “

I point to the doors exiting the lobby .

“Let’s just go and experience London on our own for a couple of hours. Let’s just go and really see what it’s like out there. I mean there has to be something out there that they are not showing us on this trip. There has to be.”

Sam is looking at me weird. There is something about him standing over me that looks like Big Ben tilting his head.

The doors for the lobby are automatic and open and close. I make a little pistol with my right and pretend to assassinate the stag just as the doors sashay open.

“Just crazy talk. Let’s go to the gift store. There’s some provisions I need to pick up.”

Sam asks if he can come with me. I look at him. Other than Mark-Andrew he is my closest male friend on the trip. He seems to always have my back.

“Yes.” I tell him. For some reason I tell him thank you.

Inside the gift shop there are several oriental business men on the trip. The magazine rack looks more like a waterfall. The top two tiers are fraught almost completely with pornography.

“My god.” I add.

“I’m surprised more members of your group don’t know about this. We were down here earlier and that lady at the counter sold to nearly all of us.”

“You bought one?”

Sam ushers back a smile. He asks me what I am looking for.

“Hair spray actually.”

I find a cylinder.  It's no Aqua Net but it is hairspray nonetheless. When I take it up to the counter the lady at the register responds by stating that it is eight pound.x Almost thirteen dollars.

Sam looks at me as I drill my arm down into my side pocket.

“Wow you really care about your appearance.”

“Not really. Looking like tony doesn’t come cheap.’ I offer. Sam smiles. The lady behind the counter hands me my purchase back in a bag.

As I get to the elevator Sam is still next to me. I tell him that I am going to go to my room and take a shower before we leave tonight to hit the George for dinner.

“And Sam, man,"

“Yes,” He says.

I tell him thank you.

Thanks.