red jacket

In a way it feels like we have just been in a movie for the last three hours straight and someone just flicked on the lights and it is taking a minute to get visually adjusted to what passes as reality. From behind me someone says Big Ten give it up right as Harmony’s forehead appears in front of my vision. For a second I feel like gloating thinking that romantically I escorted her on a whimsical post-prom of her dreams. There are hugs.  Spencer is looking at Daisy even though for half the night she was intentionally ignoring him by flirting with other members of the Big Ten.A member from Nat's group is walking on his hands across the now vacant lot of the dance floor. I tell Lynn Minton who-we-are-not allowed to talk to that she is quite and dancer. Nat still has his chin in the air as if his neck is lodged in an uppity brace. 


There is a element of a burly bartender having just proclaimed last call. The counselors are corralling the group into each respective sub-group counting heads. Daisy and Spencer are looking at each other in the exactly same visual inflection in which they were looking at each other after the first dance in Stratford even though for the majority of the night Daisy has apparently been playing hard to get.

For a moment I have lost Harmony in the field of youth and again she appears before me. 

Harmony seems frazzled.

"You alright?" I turn to Harmony.

“ My coat, I can’t find my coat.” Harmony says, 

I tell Harmony that I will help her look..

We push apart the table that, what seems like a lifetime earlier, we welded to together to feast as one. 

Several lads from Dan’s group apparently eschewed the dance floor the entire night and constructed a pyramid out of half-drunk Pepsi silos. Sam notices us and asks of is anything is wrong.

"Her coat. Harmony can't find her coat."

Sam imminently offers assistance.We are pillaging for Harmony’s coat and it is nowhere to be found.

We weed through the remnants of the night.Sam is rummaging near the hull picking up empty boxed receptacles that contained our  dinner hours earlier.I look back to Harmony. I ask her if she sees it.  Sam sounds like a Boy Scout when he openly inquires if there are any characteristics  about the jacket that distinguish it from every other scarlet jacket in the room. The almond tint in Harmony's eyes is beginning to swell. She looks like she is ready to cry. 

 A splash of wind gushes through the side of the vessel.Being the gentleman, I place my coat around her shoulders. We continue to pillage the heap of coats in the corner. A young member of Daisy's group is flooded with tears and Simone has that look etched into her face as if to say here we go again.  Spencer is exorbitantly numb.

Finally Harmony finds it. She says the word oh. She holds it up by the hood.

"Soda. Someone accidentally spilled soda on my coat."

There are continents of dried splotches, syrupy remnants from an overturned soda can. Harmony looks sad she says oh well.

I step in. I give her a quick hug.

“I tell you what, let me take this home tonight, I’ll clean it, and you can meet me tomorrow morning."

I tell Harmony that she can just wear my coat until then since it is windy outside.

Harmony looks at me with at an almost glazed look stowed in her eyes.  Suddenly I realize that she is swallowed by her entire group. She is wearing my coat. It is like she is trying to thank me. I am holding her coat like a matador. 


We are huddling together. We are leaving the yacht as one.

Somebody yells out hey yo, Big Ten give it up.

I look down into Harmony's coat and smile.

                                                                  ***

The night on the bus ride back to the Gloucester I dandle Harmony's Pepsi-stained afflicted coat in my arms like a new born.

I lose myself past my reflection. Lost in the neon lights of London.

For the first time this entire trip the city is mine.

                                                         

                                                                   ***

“Yur whupped!!!”

Justin says, I tell him that its no big deal. I tell him that her coat had splotched of Pepsi on it and needed to be clean.

Justin again reiterates that dude, you are so whupped.

He inquires what happened to my coat. I told her that I let Harmony wear my jacket back and that we would switch them in the morning.

Justin tells me that I am whupped again.

                                                                  

                                                                         ***

                                      

“I didn’t realize Nat’s girlfriend was in your group.”

Harmony says yeah. Harmony says actually. I say what.

“Actually he told Jennifer Flood that it wasn’t a good idea for me  to be seen hanging around you. He said you were trouble. He said you went to an all black high school where all there are gangbangers and thugs. He called you a ghetto paperboy.”

“What else did he say?”

"He said that you won this trip out of pity. He misused the term affirmative action. He said that the only reason you won the trip was because the Journal Star wanted to award the city winner was because it would look good if someone of your low income stature to be seen with someone like him. He said if it was just you and himself in the contest he would quash you like a cicada."

I see myself in front of the mirror rehearsing my speech for an incessant catalog of hours. I see Nat’s sniveling visage floating in the paper the day of the contest. I remember thinking how cool he seemed. I ask Harmony when he Jennifer Flood told her all this. She said it was when we were en route from Oxford to London.

I nod.  Harmony says that she didn’t take it very seriously.

It hurts me that the one Young Columbusian from my area code doesn't want any thing to do with me,

"I'm a ghetto paperboy." I say to myself on the opposite end of the phone.

                                                                           ***

 Back in the hotel bathroom I fill the basin with tepid water immerse the rag in the center of the sink like southern baptism, take the rag out into a dripping fist. With my knuckles clenched I then begin to massage the splotches on the jacket in little daubs. After every third daub I bend my nose into the jacket and inhale.  There is something about her coat that smells like an exotic orchard.

“You dance with any hot girls?” I ask Justin, just as he is getting down on one knee on the side of his bed to do his devotions. I am half expecting Justin to snap at me again and to say something all too Nebraskan like how many times do I have to tell you that I have a girlfriend only he refrains.

“Actually, yeah. There were was a girl in Daisy’s group I danced with. Just on the slow dance.”

I tell Justin that I didn’t see him dance with anyone. Justin replies that that was because I had my eyes glued to Harmony all night.

 It was just a dance. It was no big deal. I don’t really like her. I just kind of wanted someone to dance with.”

Justin goes out of his way to inform me that he was thinking about his girlfriend back in Nebraska City, Nebraska the whole time.

I turn on the TV. I am looking for the channel that just plays cool music that always seems to be on in Harmony’s and Jennifer Floods room.  The TV is showing slashes from America.  There is are an armada of tanks. Justin asks what is going on. They are talking about the number of children that were killed. It is somewhere in America.

I tell Justin that I am anticipating a rather significant phone call. I tell Justin that I am giving her fifteen minutes to pee and to shower and to breath, I tell Justin that I really want her to call me but if it takes any longer I’ll call her. I tell Justin that maybe she has already showered and peed and washed her hair and that maybe she lying forlorn on her bed right now, a finger curled around her wet flaxen hair waiting for me to call.

Justin tells me that he needs to do his devotions.

I go back to the bathroom and continue to scrub. I am daubing and attacking the splotches of dried syrup.I keep on drilling my nose into the top of her coat. There is something about Harmony’s perfume that is reminiscent of an apple orchard in autumn. I keep drilling my nose and sniffing as if I am doing lines. I can feel her surrounding my body. I am sniffing. I want to dance with the redcoat. For a second I think that I can lower my pants around my ankles and hold my body in front of the coat, hold my body, the diploma of my flesh and close my eyes and think about her scent and wait for y body to explode until I remember that I am a good boy. 

I am a Christian. 

I have not masturbated the entire trip.

I turn the hot water on again. I swear I can make out her forehead in the glossy red vinyl of the coat. I keep pronouncing Spow-can, Spow-kane. My body is becoming weather vane stiff. My chest is transitioning into a compass. This was the reason I won the trip. This was the reason I failed twice before winning. Somehow she was the reason.

Somehow she is London.

Somehow this trip is all about her.

I could think about what she is doing right now. I can think about her reeling the spring of her dress over the saddle of her hips. I wonder what color bra she is wearing. I wonder if the color of her bra correlates with the color of her underwear. Justin is still in the other room doing his devotions I can hear him ruffling through his bible.Again without thinking I unbutton the top of my Guess jeans, I am holding myself in my hand My eyes are crunched into pebbles. For some reason I can’t keep my eyes open when I am conscious of what I am doing I am picturing her in the bathroom. I am picturing her hanging her dress over the anatomy of the towel rack. I am picturing her examining her body in the mirror before heading to the bathtub twisting the respective H C noses stepping into a pond, reflecting her unclothed body above. I am massaging the diploma of my virility,  releasing the stifled jam of my anatomy. I could release myself on the Young COLUMBUS insignia and it could dry and she could wear me, adorning herself with dried molasses spilled from my body. She could wear an imprint of my dried genetics over her right breast the entire trip without realizing I am on her body unless she walks into a blue-light room. All of a sudden I see Renae. She is naked and she is in front of me with her legs gaped out like scissors. It is after her father’s Christmas party last year at Hammers and we have just put her baby cousin to sleep. We have been making out and somehow it went further then it ever went before. Somehow she is pinwwheeling me inside of her.  I am snapping an acrostic of buttons and straps and she is nodding, it is awkward, there is a moment of pain as our limbs enjoin and she is telling me to bite her, to fuck her, to go further, she does not want me to stop.

From outside the bathroom door I can hear Justin inform me that I am so whupped once again.

Yes, I reply back happily, looking on the continents of splotched syrup on Harmony's coat.

So very whupped indeed.