I am irked at Nat. We are the Big Ten. As I sit down at the dinner table Josh is passing our 3 X 5 note cards. We practiced for maybe fifteen minutes before dinner and it is clear that none of us know what we are doing. During dinner there is a prevailing feeling that each group has the ingredients for the best skit. The Big Ten is going over cues. We are doing a synopsis of the trip from a crotch-scratching juvenile BIG TEN perspective. We are brilliant. We are making fun of the No Fowling signs. We are culturally eviscerating everything innately anglophile and internationally awkward. It sounds like we are hazing a locker room lisping Rick Steves into a perennial state of European wedgiedom.
Before the skit night gala convenes Liz stands in front of the group.
Liz states that this is the last time that we will have our meeting since tomorrow night is our official farewell to England at Great Forrest Renaissance. Liz asks how many of us thought our trip to England was exactly as he or she anticipated followed by claps. She states that this has probably been one of the best Young Columbus trips out of all the ones she has coordinated. More applause echoes throughout the den of the dinning hall. She notes that this is really the last time we will have an opportunity to meet as a group and that our counselors will have more exact details tomorrow but now is the time to start getting stuff together as in re-packing our suitcases so to speak.
That after almost ten days are voyage is almost over.
That soon we will be going home.
Liz notes that the judges for the contest are to be the four bus drivers' as well as two of PARADE's escorts. She states that the winners will receive 150 pounds each. Second place will pocket100 pounds each and third place will receive 50. Fifty pounds is still equal to 75 American dollars or roughly one week collecting.
Simple math shows that PARADE has invested almost 5000 worth of prize money siphoned out amongst the winning groups.
Even though the Big Ten have only rehearsed our skit for fifteen minutes we are certain we are in.
I look around the room. Nearly all the groups are now seated together. Harmony, Jennifer Flood and Miss Arkansas have jettisoned the couples tables and is seated with their respective troops. Even Lover Boy I-just-coughed-I didn't-say-anything-racist Nat is seated with his clan.
The skits start off youngest to oldest. In addition to serving as the coordinators both Liz and Mary Jo serve as co-MC's, each introducing the groups one at a time in numerical order, youngest to oldest starting with Group #1. The skits have less to do with showcasing random aberrant talent like belly whistling and more of self-parodying certain facets of our soon-too-be-punctuated sojourn; the bulk of one-acts being molded off of idle-improv, sloppy summer camp seconds. Dan’s group performs some sort of prosaic rhyme in which each kid recites a verse while trying not to look down on a sheath of paper and is over in two minutes. Simone's group performs a synopsis of the trip to England resembling a cheer. Daisy looks bored. She is not facing Spencer in the slightest.
Nearly all the groups mention how every meal we seem to eat on this trip consist of roast beef and potatoes.
Jim Baker dips his chin in my direction.
“These skits are pussies, man.” He says to me.
For the first time on this trip I agree with his postulation.
The Big Ten is up next. We still have no clue what we are doing. We are third. It is our turn. Trevor sounds way too much like a little league Coach when he tells us to just g out there and have fun, guys.
The sense that we are leaving in 36 hours has not even dawned on us yet.
Somehow we are going to be here forever.
Somehow we are never going to leave.
***
I’ll never forget the blue of the sky the day you returned home from Europe. My sister Jenn will tell me a year later.
It was the most beautiful shade of blue she says she has ever seen.
***
MC Liz comes to the front of the stage and says next up is group number three. Perfunctory cap-gun claps are heard. I can hear Mark yell GO David! from the audience below. The last time I have performed in front of an audience this size was Music Man last summer. As we are headed up the stairs Eagle Scout Josh crossed himself twice en route to the stage.
We are doing a Big Ten reenactment of the trip. We are performing YC '93 as seen through the brim of beer googles.
We have no clue what we are doing.
Spencer is our narrator. He carols out A BIG TEN tour of England. We arrive overseas we are jet lagged and pretend to fall down in a complete row while going through customs. We are the Big Ten. Spencer then states that the next thing the Big Ten experienced was the food. We hold up a sign. Day 1: Roast Beef and Potatoes. Day 2: Roast Beef and Potatoes. Day 5248: Roast Beef and Potatoes.
It is a cheesy skit but the audience is laughing. I can see the ampersand cosigning the emblem for 150 British pounds forming in Eagle Scout Josh’s iris’s every time he blinks.
The audience continues to laugh when Spencer states says that when we arrived from a long trip we stunk so we had to stop at BATH to shower.
We pretend to be showering. The audience continues to laugh. Jim Baker is rattling his torso much more than any human should be allowed while taking a shower.
It is my cue. Now I am on:
Spencer says that next the Big Ten visited the realm for Shakespeare in Stratford Upon Avon.
I am giving the tour. In a way it feels like I am emulating mark’s tour guide who looks just like John Major. I am talking about William Shakespeare. I have my YC 93 red jacket knotted around my waist. I am to pantomime that I am doing a slide presentation of William Shakespeare, talking about visiting William Shakespeare’s dog house.
"This is William Shakespeare's dead horse. This is William Shakespeare's out house. This is the thatch of earth where William Shakesperare once relieved himself before devising the creature known as Dedemona while fondlng his quill."
My humor is subtle yet incisive There ire more laughter. There are more ampersand pound emblmes stowed in Josh's eyes.
Spencer continues on with our tour.
 |
| 3/4th of the immortal Big Ten |
Jim Baker lifts up his top and begins to flash the guard. Half of the audience is falling off their chairs. You can tell by the co-emmceees reaction that we have gone too far. Jim Baker then pretends that he is mooning the stoic guard. He then pretends that he is dry humping one of their legs. There is more laughter. Spencer is trying to move on to the next scene. Jim won’t stop. He is making a live-long-and prosper V-sign with his fingers and tongue. He is undulating his hips. I give him a look as if to tell him Jim stop now. Jim is doing what looks like a strip tease on stage. He is bending over. He won’t stop. Spencer is suppose to go on with his next cue only he has frozen. From the audience I can see Sir Charles mouth out Jim’s name while keep his teeth clenched. I step up.
"Finally we saw the Queen."
Spencer steps out on the stage. He pretends that he is wearing stilettos. He is smiling. He is blowing kisses. Jim Baker has to go all Wayne's World capitulating on the caps of his knees while giving Queen Spencer a 'We're not worthy' salute. The audience loves it.
We end the skit by announcing that falling into a nest of bodies on stage.
There is clapping. Even with my glasses off I can see Harmony smiling in my direction. Eagle Scout Josh has that look in his eyes as if to say yes, we did it.
For a milisecond I feel we are in.
The Big Ten exits in exultation. Even though Baker's antics were sophomoric. We are the Big Ten.
We are one.
***
It has been ninety days since our European sojourn and even though I have mailed five missive ejaculating the cursive of my chest Harmony has completely dissipated. There is no sight of her. She has yet to be in Parade. She has not written. It is like whatever we harbored meant nothing. It is like we never met. It is like she inexplicably wants nothing to do with me.
It is like I meant nothing to her.
It is like the dream trip never existed at all.
***
The night continues. The bulk of the skits are admittedly forgettable. One group tries making a human pyramid of the tower of London and then topples. Another group performs quotes imitations of the Parade escorts being snobby which is somehow meant to be funny although no one is laughing. One group performs a counter Young Columbus where British Kids travel to the US and have fun with malapropisms.
There is a lighthearted jab at several of the encounters with queer Brit’s crashing at the hotel. There are several ill-timed raps performed by privileged white boys that is just plain wrong.
The Italian duet’s group have a skit where they pretend they are a bunch of senile ladies walking through London. 90 percent of every sit mentions an anglophile disdain for the French. 100 percent of the skits mention beef.
A group of Boys from Bus Two pretend that they are visiting the Royal Family before they
break out into a chorus of You've Lost That Loving Feeling. They are down on both knees although it is ambiguous whom they are serenading.
There are two forgettable skits followed by Harmony's group. Harmony still has her hair in a cinnamon bun and is wearing her glasses. Jim tells me that she looks like a librarian and that maybe I should reorganize her card catalogue if you know what I mean. Eagle Scout Josh shushes. Every member of Harmony’s group ferries their seat from the dinner table in front of them on to the stage and then configure their chairs into parabola. They begin by pattering their palms on their lap and reciting a limerick about beef. Meg Weaver looks like she has a hard time with finding the beat at first and then smiles at herself when she realizes she is off. Miss Arkansas still looks like she is crying. It is clever. It is the fifth consecutive skit to mention beef. It is also the shortest. Kazu has a line that no one in the room can understand. There are claps but the skit is by far the shortest at just under two minutes.
The Big Ten is at least in the top three. Everyone at the Big Ten table begins to nod our heads as if saying bring it on.
Then comes Sam's group.
Sam’s skit is ingenious. The boys line up at first to see the Changing of the Guard which involves passing a jock strap between a sentence of adolescent bodies with each member of the group stepping into the jock strap, striking a frivolous pose before stepping out, handing the bandied-protective apparatus to the next Young Columbusian in line. Sam is the last one to step into the Guard. He lets go of a snap as the waistband flaps against his ample torso.
There is laughter.
The audience is in stitches.
I am looking at Vinny. I can't believe what sort of a day he has had. He is smiling. The expression sewn into his lips are indicative that he is a part of something.
The next part of the speech has Counselor Eric performing some sort of rap where whatever he states the group poses in hieroglyphic poses.
The third portion of their skit entails a search for Queen Elizabeth in which the smallest member of Sam’s cadre comes out dressed as the purported Queen, wearing Our Wendy’s ravishing emerald dress from last night. Everyone is laughing, chuckling hysterics, falling down on the ground at the sight of one of our own in drag.
The audience is in stitches. The audience is falling apart. At the completion of the skit they garner a standing ovation.
Sam was last in line. He has worn the jock strap, the official Guard around his waist for the entire performance all the while Jim Baker continues to state that that is an Open Jewels waiting to happen if he ever did see one.
"That was good," I lean over and tell Jim who has loathed me this entire trip.
"Fuck that," Jim says, reaching down between his legs and scratching his crotch.
***
"I love you, my friend, and never forget that." She says to me, in her handwriting, on the back of the picture. I am in front of the Eiffel tower holding her in front of me kissing her forehead. Kissing her eyes. Kissing every atomic swirl of the Olin Mills photo with the bad teddy Bear perm she sent me three months ago.
It is just over a year later and I am in Paris, the city I have longed to traipse across the cobbled meridian and labyrinthine avenues for so long.
It is just over a year later and in a way she has come back to me.
It is just over a year later and I am still, somehow, all alone.
***
It is the older bus and it is the girls. They are maybe all juniors in high school. It is Rita's group. Josh turns around the table and states that by his calculation we are at least in third place. The girls walk across the stage. They are dressed in their Young Columbus white-t’s jean shorts and socks. In a way they look like they are attending an anti-penis post prom sleepover. It is Josh's girlfriend with the copious blush's group. They are giggling like they are in elementary school reading a Judy Blume novel about sex during USSR. They drape a sheet across the stage in makeshift curtain stance. Both Rita and Elias are seated nativity-style posture with their hands behind their back.The girls are giggling. The girl with the copious blush is the narrator. From behind the antipodes of the sheet comes foreign limbs. They are performing bind cosmetics. The limbs looks like an octopus with a dyslexic tentacle. They are brushing each other’s teeth. They are putting on make-up smeared in Basquiat stands across forehead and chin. They are applying Moose and Hairspray.
The audience is laughing. Almost everyone has seen this skit done before in oen inflection or another.
This is Eagle Scout Josh’s girlfriends group. They are using the top classified Skit we abandoned because Jim Baker deemed it gay.
The entire Big Ten swivels in the direction of the Eagle Scout.
Josh says what. Spin Doctor Kenny says sleeping with the Enemy. Baker notes that the only thing Eagle Scout Josh is sleeping with is his thumb up his ass or maybe that bear Harry bought that fat girl. Sir Charles motions each of us to shhh!!!!
The girl behind Rita is the tall blond who looks like she starts center and jumps for balls tossed by refs. She is voluntarily orchestrating her arms only she cannot see Rita's face. She is getting toothpaste over Rita's forehead.
Baker says that he is waiting for them to start smearing lube on each other and lick it off but with the Lesbos we have on stage they’d probably start applying Vagisil cream.
The estrogen level in the room is beginning to escalate that even Jim Baker looks like he could lay an egg.
The audience is laughing in the explosive manner in which they laughed during Sam’s skit. Baker is looking at Eagle Scout Josh stating that he can’t waits til those Lesbians start fist-fucking each other with tampons.
It is the first time that I realize that Elias Das is in Rita’s group.
I think about Elias Das and the Amarillo Texas pins. I can't take my eyes off of Rita. It is some contorted inflection of fate that I lost her number the night she gave it to me after eating at The George. Rita is being blatzed with shampoo and conditioner. She has no voluntary control of her limbs.
The girls are getting uber-feminine in a way that makes uber- straight men uncomfortable. There is talk of waxing upper lips. There is deodorant and nail polish.
Rita looks less like a clown and more like a snow angel getting baptized with cosmetics. I am watching her get doused.
I am spellbound.
I have pledged everything inside my chest towards the sight of Harmony's smile still I just can't stop gazing at Rita.
I am just a little bit in love.
It is apparent after Rita's skit that there is no way that ours will even make the top three.
Eagle Scout Josh is already walking with a limp. He looks as if he is watching a lifeboat full of puppies sink in the arctic ocean.
There is applause mingles with reverberating claps of laughter as the skit ends. The entire table is looking at Josh like he is Benedict Arnold.
"Dude," Is all Jim Baker can say.
***
It is three hours before I return back to Europe for the third time in three years. I can getting retribution. I struck out swinging the Young Columbus contest I have gone back. I could not ever have fathomed going back to England let alone Europe. I have gone to Europe every year in high school.
It is the only education I have known.
It is two in the morning when she calls. When I pick up the phone I a almost certain it is Harmony.
It is not.
It is Harmony's mother.
I have read Beowulf three times this year in AP English.
I know the wrath of the mother's scorn.
***
After Rita's skit Nat Pflederer group is the next group to perform. As I glance over at Harmony's table Miss Arkansas is still a faucet of tears. The moustache man in the ubiquitous trench coat who kinda looks like Paul McCartney circa WINGS era begins to narrate. The skit makes no sense. One second they are in London the next they are battling some vicarious army. One-third of the armada of Nat's group are bona fide Dungeon and Dragon nerds. Everyone is mock fighting and then everyone is bona fide fighting. At the table where Miss Arkansas is seated and she appear to be giving Nat a hankerchief wave that says God speed.
Somehow in the middle of the skit all the boys get into a mock mosh-pit and the skit ends with them all pretending to be dead on stage.
Liz Madigan looks over at the groups counselor as if to say it’s a suppose to be a skit not a scrum.
It was the worse skit so far.
The next skit is Sheila's and Tamera's group. It is the clan of Artemis. It is the intellectual savants. Much in the same inflection that Harmony's group lugged their chairs up on the stage this group is also holding their chairs in front of the as if they are giving birth to late 20th century upholstery. Greta is seated the center of the you of chairs. There is silence' Greta holds out her arms and says the word silence. It is like she is a hippie conductor. Greta then pretends she is some sort of medium and closes her eyes and begins channeling what she perceives as Deep Thoughts. Greta states a witticism invariably about the French or beef before massaging the sides of her temple again stating Deep thoughts. With her bandanna she looks like a gypsy. Even though she is parodying a Saturday Night Live Skit that clearly resonates with everyone above Bus #2 people are laughing. As Greta presses the tips of her fingers and says Deep Thought Dimas swipes his head back and forth and says, ‘Greta.' Both Sheila and Tamera look like they are along for the ride. Mark’s dancing femme whose name I have learned in Moran performs her lines with annoying alacrity which sounds like she is talking about plaque in a toothpaste commercial. Greta has her eyes bruised shut as if she is conducting some sort of séance. The minute Greta places her splayed bangles-clad hands into her bandanna clad temple and begins to have deep thoughts again it happens, I am still looking at myself in the reflection of the mirror near the table where I was sitting at with Harmony and Nat, the self-christening couples table. I am watching all of our skits simultaneously at once. I see myself, again, pretending to be giving a narrative of Shakespeare’s life only this time the entire cluster of YC is behind me. Somehow I can see each of our lives in various stages. Harmony was actually an adorable toddler wearing Osh-kosh suspenders and brownie smeared above her. I see Mark with longer hair and a Goatee looking like he is playing lead guitar for Alice in Chains. I see Mike from the group inheriting a job title that none of us can imagine. Meg Weaver is traveling the scalp of the globe. She is wearing a field hockey outfit trampling up and down the field that has somehow become eastern Europe. It is the stage and we are gamboling across it. It is the stage and we are at all stages of our lives. It is the stage and we are performing the asinine skit that Josh wanted us to perform only I have Jim Baker's limbs and someone else's uncircumcised cock in my and like a sock puppet.
I am seeing all of us on stage at one time. Nat Plederer is praying to the same God I worship and he is nodding his head and somehow for once he is not a Dick.
I see the Polite Baptist Boy from Alabama wearing a white robe ad getting baptized by complete immersion. I see Our Wendy wearing a black robe brandishing a gavel judging sentences.
It is juggling all around. Everything is deep thoughts and everything is leaving.
Trevor is getting arrested for a DUI. She-Wolfe Simone is lost in the streets of New York amongst the clutter of Manhattan We are in this moment and it is eternity. I see Mark only he has really long hair and a goatee and he looks like a hippie. I see Moran the Minx who I thought was Rachel who danced with Mark last night. Again Greta is saying deep thoughts. Again the room is oscillating like an aluminum merry-go-round. I am seeing vignettes of each of us. One of the hot as shit Italian girls is middle age and an accountant and just looks successful. I rotating. I am upside down. Greta continues massaging her temples goading each of us to have deep thoughts. She is talk about the trip.
I see Eagle Scout Josh going to the high school where mass murder occurred. I see him writing letters to the Girl wearing the copious blush. There is a picture of Dylan attending Harvard Law and Rabbi Dan writing bestsellers about his faith. Spencer is successful boating a commodious Mormon family working in politics at Salt Lake. Everything is swirling around like a kaleidoscope. I can hear Greta’s voice followed by the laughter of all my peers. I am having nothing short of Deep Thought. I see Rose and she is wearing her sunglasses only the moment she takes them off she is completely naked. Grabbing my hand squeezing parts of my wrist. I am looking at the Chocatawawee Heather with the demure makeup and she is being handed what looks like a shale plaque bearing half the Ten Commandments from the Polite Baptist Boy. I am floating. I am skidding through the lateral vicissitudes of time.
I see Daisy. Her face is sheepish. She is alone and crying and for some reason it is the saddest thing on the planet to watch Daisy cry.
It is Deep Thoughts.
Miss Arkansas is again walking through the room only she has dumped Nat and is successful. Longhorn is playing a banjo dedicating numbers to his Grandfather. We are all an inextricable sinewy link in the chorus of time and everything is swirling in a psychedelic navel, a pinwheel, a windmill of eternity. I am blinking as Greta continues to goad Deep Thoughts. There are more parodies from the trip. There are more jabs at the French from our encounter with the French. The blades are cutting faster in a series of blinks. It is like they are cutting into a cirrus with cosmic welts. There are screams. There are diagnostic by men in very white coats. There is lack of breath and paucity of insight.
I am reaching for Harmony. Just as in the vision the night before I am grasping Harmony only the front of her head looks exactly like the back of her head. I am losing my virginity to someone named Janus. I am on a plane and I am flying trying to recover something irreparably lost. I am on a plane and I am leaving all over again to capture the filched oxygen of youth.
I am on a plane and I am leaving only somehow I will never come back.
There is the jilt of the body, the ache of the loins, the gradual release.
We are having deep thoughts. We are falling into skit night. I am in the back of the room.
I am floating overhead. Harmony is dressed all in white. I am bobbling. I am falling.
There is no way I can avoid the tympanic crash.
There is no way I cannot get hurt falling from such a high distance above.
***
It is the maternal voice I heard the weekend I returned from England when I called the west coast, befuddled, the operator giving a collect call even though that is not what I told her. It is a voice that is maternal and arm. It is a voice that a year earlier I could feel blush on the antipodal side of the phone as she caroled out her daughters name, the most beautiful name I have ever heard. It is a voice that is smiling and now she is calling me in Peoria, three years after I held her daughter under the nuclear bangs of the sunset on the Thames.
She is telling me that she misses her daughter.
She is telling me that she doesn't know her daughter anymore.
She is telling me that she has somehow lost Harmony.
She is telling me that harmony is gone.
***
After Deep Thoughts there are three skits left. The polite bot from Alabama skit is part a Jeopardy quiz show and part Carnac the Magnificent with nearly all of the predisposed what is queries having something to do with beef. Our Wendy's group does a parody of the trip similar of the Big Ten. Heather from Choctachatchee Florida keeps pretending to be French performing what will one day be known as photo-bombing pictures.
Mark's group is the last group to perform.
Before Mark gets up with his group he stands up scrutinizes himself in one of the miorred pillars. His skit has a romanesque flare in which the same scenario is played involving the reading of a scroll. I am fifteen. They are titans. I am semi-confused. Mark stands statuesque in the way he did when he was almost exiled from Madame Tussuads. The entire skit Heath seems out of place and somewhat lost. Mark's roommate Travis who has never spoken with me seems to have a salient role. Orlando keeps rewinding a scene and playing the scene over and over again while Denis and Mark's friend Matt have laurel leaves on their head for some reason.
I am lost. I am looking at Mark.
Even though he is standing mannequin posture he gives me a surreptitious smile.
***
"It's just that," I have been rehearsing what to tell Harmony. Two years ago we were in England together. A year later it was like we were just beginning to get to know each other. Four months ago it was like we were somehow each others everything. That we shared a unified pulse.I am looking in the same mirror where I practiced my Young Columbus skit. I am trying to tell her not to go through with it. I am trying to tell her that she hasn't even graduated from high school yet. I am trying to tell her that there really is only her. That I already bought a plane ticket to come out and visit her.
I am trying to tell her just to wait.
Wait.
***
After his skit has ended MC Liz states again lets have a hand for each of the Young Columbus groups. She states that while our judges are tallying up the final scores we have a bonus treat. Liz invites each of the tour guides from each bus will take a moment and address the group as a whole.
Mark's tour guide John Major is the first address the groups. He has chastised me on more than one occasion on the tour. He has his hands behind his back. He is talking about fine young people and the fostering of diplomatic relationships between two nations that were at war with each other when the time most of the buildings we toured were already built. The lady from Bus three who narrated our Tour after our Bus broke down the first day at Oxford Commons is next talking to us like she is giving a testimony at an AA meeting. I swear she says one day at a time. She is getting sentimental. She swipes an invisible tear.
It hits me like a hurled brick a the Tower of London that, quite suddenly, everyone is saying goodbye.
Next is our Tour Guide from Bus #1.
Next is Vivian.
Vivian is elegant. She gives a detailed description of the trip in iambic pentameter. She talks about the lush countryside of Stratford-upon-Avon. She is rhyming. She makes a reference to following the umbrlli. She is really good. While the first two Young Columbus tour guides just made a staid speeches Vivian is making everything rhyme. It is almost like she is somehow one with language. Vivian is witty. Three stanzas into her poem I realize that she is the most erudite and well read of any one on the trip. I think about how she would brandish her Umbrella above her head as a torch.We are reliving the same trip through Vivian's elegant vowels. We are combing over the idyllic knolls where once the Kinghts dipped their chalice before taking an intimate tour of the art at Blenheim Palace. We are under the shadow of Lord Nelson whose laurels we laud before prancing around the statues at Madame Tussueads. Somehow when she is able to make the Big Ten rhyme with ruffian sin everyone erupts. She roasts the parodies of the sojourn. Vivian has a sanguine countenance that I swear is glowing like a Christmas bulb.
There is raucous applause after Vivian sonnet. Trevor notes that they Liz really wanted the counselors to do some kind of skit but that their schedules just never seemed to mesh. It is rumored that the female counselors have something in store for the male counselors tomorrow. Liz again takes center stage. She asks for another round for everyone. She states that tomorrow is the last day and those who are meeting with Lynn Minton will receive a separate itinerary. She states that other than that every is expected to meet in the lobby en route towards St.Pauls.
Liz continues to speak to the group as a whole. Obviously she is not referring to the Big Ten when she extols how well behaved and becoming each Young man and young lady on the trip.
She pauses. She holds the card out in front of her.
She states and the winners are:
***
In what feels like a decade but is actually only a few months later in between our 2000 miles transcontinental phone call, where she would recite THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK to me over the phone in her British accent—Harmony tells me about an art exposition she saw done by Native Americans. The picture shows Christopher Columbus as a tyrant. It shows him pillaging the land. It shows him raping the Natives.
Christopher Columbus has a swastika armband. He is giving a Hitler salute.
“But I mean, he was Columbus. He discovered America. He wasn’t that bad.”
Harmony is adamant. She says that Columbus discovered nothing. She says that Columbus stumbled upon a Utopia and foisted religious views on them before appropriating all of their land and slaughtering them with pestilence.
“Yeah, but Columbus. I mean, we were all Young Columbuses.”
Harmony is adamant. She says that we should have been called Young Hitler’s. It would have been more apposite.
She uses the word apposite.
She has just aced her SAT verbal.
***
I see Rita across the room. Her group is celebrating. The girls have each been granting an extra 150 pounds for shopping tomorrow in London. There are several mirrors pillared between us so that it looks like she has three noses, so that it loos like she is cubist. I smile. I lift my thumb in assenting movie critic manner. I see her three noses optically ricocheting off of slabs of glass. For a second I think she sees me and for a second, a weird second, it feels like I am back in the hotel Pere Marquette four months and another lifetime earlier back home. I have just delivered my speech. I have nailed it. There is applause. I am vying for a contest that next to Jesus and Cross country is the most important thing in my life.
Though there is three of her I see her smile. It is as if she is encompassing each facet of whatever trinity there might be.
Sam's group gets second with the caveat that it was close. Ironically Dan's group is third. I felt that at least Mark and Greta's group should have placed.
The judges seem to have some vendetta towards Deep Thoughts.
The second I move towards Rita to congratulate her I am reeled back. Something is tugging at my waist. It is Harmony who I have pledged my trip to somehow be all about. She is hugging me from behind.
She is squeezing me.
It is Harmony.
I want to tell her hat I'm sorry she had to sit through my inane skit. I want to tell her that our skit was a lot better when we rehearsed it even though we had no clue what we were doing. I want to tell her that I really enjoyed her skit even though it was only, like, thirty seconds long.
I look at the trinity of Meg and swivel around and look at Harmony. She is smiling. For a second we just smile at each other sans stating anything at all.
From behind me I can hear Jim Baker postulate about Harry trying to be all romantic in defeat.
Even though Harmony is behind me I can feel her blushing. Her lips are next to my ear. For a second I think she is going to make-out with the side of my neck. Instead her voice floats in my ear as if with wings.
"I gotta go, I'll call you tonight."
Just when I think she is getting ready to kiss the side of my neck she is gone. Ahlex southern alto is shepherding her group together.
I wonder if Nat's girlfriend is still crying.
After ten days there is one more day left.
After ten days this dream will somehow come to an end.
After ten days this dream will somehow be no more.
Love you Greta...yer smile is a seven wonders....
ReplyDelete