The Gloucester

The hotel is called the Gloucester and it is cosmopolitan and is located in a section of London christened Kensington not far from Hyde park. Near the entrance of the hotel there are quite a few Japanese businessmen in suits milling around smoking Benson and Hedges cigarettes,There are five different flags hanging above the side of the fifteen story building. There are several gift shops, two classy bars, a breakfast dining area and a currency exchange  depot where we can cash travels cheques.

We wait on the side of the bus with our luggage while our counselors get our keys. 

“You guys are on  the third floor,” Trevor notes, “So it shouldn't be hard to forget. Just think Group three."

One by one each group enters the Gloucester toting luggage, headed for the signs reading Lifts.

Charles notes that we will go to our room and relax for forty-five minutes and then have dinner downstairs. In the center of the lobby is a statue of a golden stag surrounded by couches.

I am elated to be in London. The rest of the Big Ten just cannot refrain from bitching.  For a galactic- interim it appears that the Daisy Train has come to a halt. When Jim looks at the statue of the Stag he adds a that’s gay.

We file into the lift like fallen troops. The sun is ashing out in the direction of home casting a pastel mauve distillation of light in the east.  Justin seems to be in a hurry to get to the hotel room.  As is the case with the trip Boy/ Girls alternate floors, however it appears that Daisy's group is crashing on  the far side of floor three.

The elevator lets go of a subtle bling. We reel our luggage in the hallway. I am tired. My glasses are in the side pocket of my PARADE jacket. More than anything else I want to unpack and go for a quick run before dinner but I know that is out of the question. I am wheeling my luggage into the direction of my room.  As we get to the door I hear Jim laughing out of control.  He is pointing. Three rooms down in the center of the hallway there is a man in his underwear. He is flouncing up and down as if on a pogo ball.  His belly is slightly hanging over the elastic brim of his briefs. There is a bottle of J& B scotch next to him.

He is talking with a strong cockney accent. He is rattling his torso. Even with my glasses off I swear he looks familiar.

“Fancy a drink now do ya?” He says, bobbing up and down. He then places his free hand in his underwear and continues to flounce.

There is a retarded man who is with him. The retarded man walks with a limp. The British man is rattling his torso again. He mutters something unintelligible. He falls down. He takes another swig from the emerald stem of the bottle of Scotch.  He is laughing.  He rattles his torso again and talks about giving something a little nip.

I am waiting for Jim to say this is gay but instead he points and says that this is like the coolest thing he has ever seen. He is laughing, He is saying this guy cracks me up. For a second I think he is going to reach down into his pocket and toss him a few errant pounds.

The man stumbles up again. He looks around and says we have a fine crop hear now, don’t we?  With my glasses off it looks like he is placing his right hand down the front of his extremely bleached briefs when I realize that the man looks almost exactly like my English teacher Larry Reents. I remember Mr. Reents telling me that he was going to be in Europe at the same time I was. I remember him always using the third person pronoun when talking about traveling. I can’t stop and think about when Mr. Reents sat in front of the classroom and fed us the British colloquial  and Andrew Brinker fell down when he said that  Willy is a penis.

Trevor says don’t look at him.

“Everyone go straight to your room.”

Sir Charles yelps out Baker’s first name.

Charles is unlocking his room. The man again is naked with the exception of his briefs. He is sticking his fingers in his underwear. I begin to smile. He seems harmless. Only drunk.

Sir Charles is entering his room. The retarded man limps next to Charles. He has his hand little tea-up spout style on his waist. He is asking Sir Charles if he cares to have a nip.

Sir Charles is professional. He is completely ignoring the stranger. When the bespectacled man asks if he would care for a nip Charles refuses to give him eye contact. He responds by saying no, sir.

He refers to the stranger as a sir.

                                                                              ***

Our hotel room faces over Brompton  avenue. The traffic below is nonstop. Pedestrians hiss past. Harrods is purportedly just down the road. Justin tells me that since I got the bed closest to the window at the Moat House he is entitled to the bed closest to the window now that we have checked into our hotel in London, claiming turf by spiking his Parade carry-on on the mattress closest to the window.

I tell him I don’t care even though I want to be close to the window. I tell him that its not like he hasn’t pillaged an entire package of Fig Newtons that my mom packed in my suitcase. Justin retorts claiming that it wasn’t just him but half the Big Ten.

"Your bed is closest to the phone anyway. You’ll probably be talking to that girl who dissed you last night." 

I tell him that her name is Harmony. Justin says whatever.

“How ‘bout this.  Cleaning service will be in every morning while we’re out touring the city to change our sheets and stuff. We only had three nights in Stratford.  We have five nights in London. How about I have the bed the last night, just so I can look out the window. That will still give you one extra night to be next to the window for the duration of the trip.

Justin says it is a deal.

There is a frazzled knock on our door. Justin says shit, its that gay dude.

He is beginning to panic. I tell him calm down. There is another knock. Justin suggests hiding in the bathroom.

Unlike in the motels in America the door does not have a keyhole. Justin s is hobbling up and down like he is trying to mount a pogo stick wearing beer-goggles. He asks again what we should do. I tell him to just chill a second. I tell him to let me think.

There is a final knock. I press the left-hemisphere of my body against the door.

“Who is it?” I inquire. Justin shoots me a look as if I am crazy. I reach for the lock and tentatively open the door. Justin seems to be pointing with his eyes that if I need him while I am being sodomized he will be in the bathroom, cowering.

With the door slightly open I feel a push. I then hear a familiar voice. They are congratulating us. It is Charles and Trevor.

"My boys, my boys," Charles says, alluding to the fact that I  asked who it was before opening the door. Both of the counselors are giving high-fives.  Trevor says that you guys don’t want to get putt from the ruff do you now.” I have no clue what he is alluding to but I nod.

“We’re gonna have a meeting,"                                


Before I know it the entire Big Ten plus Trevor and Sir Charles is filing into my room. Kevin and Banky are sitting on my bed. Spencer helps himself to the open packet of Fig Newtons. Trevor says that he rounded up everyone and knocked on our door because he knows that Harry here is responsible and knows not just to let anyone into his room.

“We are in a big city now guys so we have top use caution here.” Sir Charles notes.

Trevor adds a yeah, you don’t know what those guys are on. They could be on drugs.

Trevor continues to note that this isn't hickville. Stratford was a pretty small town but London is one of the largest metropolitan cities on the planet so that we need to use caution even when out with the group in public.

"You guys are doing a real good. Just need to be careful."

Jim is laughing. I can't help but think that the man with his hands in his underwear looked just like my high school English teacher. I can't help but think that for the most part, even though he was drunk, he was also innocuous.

Trevor says also.

"Also, and Liz will go over this tonight. You guys are not allowed to leave the hotel by yourselves."

Sir Charles is nodding. He is stating that there are a lot of weirdos out there and we are just trying to look out after you. Trevor says to be sure to buddy up when we are out touring the city over the next five days so that you do not get lost.

The Big Ten is nodding. We do  a huddle. We each state our Big Ten vicarious delegated state and then emit a marinesque hoorah as if we are going to war. Trevor looks at both Justin and myself and thanks us for our hospitality.  We conclude the meeting by Trevor telling us that it's time to go to dinner.The Big Ten is walking ahead of me. Jim has been referring to the inebriated-bloke in his underwear "that crazy fucked up gay dude,"  cursing when he is out of ear shot of Trevor and Sir Charles. En route to the elevator Jim looks back at myself and Chris.

"The funny thing was, that crazy fucked -up gay dude in his panties was looking at you Harry. He was looking at you as if he knew you from somewhere. "

He was looking at you as if you two were friends.

                                                                                   ***

 As the Big Ten begins to  board the elevator I tell them wait, looking for the stairs. Justin is trying to remind me that we are not suppose to leave the group especially with all these gay-drunk people around when the elevator door hushes closes. I am isolated in the ranks of my own group.  It seems hard to fathom that we started the day in Stratford. That we hit the glory of Blemheim palace and Oxford. I hit the stairs and fumble into lobby, wading in a sea of red  There is a touring recalcitrance amongst the Young Columbus group as a whole. We have conquered the flooding svelte moss of the British countryside. We have arrived back in the meteoric nest of the city where we landed all of 85 hours earlier, back when we were only strangers wearing freshly-packed vinyl jackets with luggage and no stamps in the wings of our passports.  Now we have traveled together, we have feasted together, we have flirted, danced and fallen in love with our anglophile soil, this dyslexic liver of Britain, a continent of Patriarchy and poetry and long life.

A continent of England.

The Big Ten have just gotten off the elevator and are acting like the Big Ten. In the far side-pocket of the lobby I can make out Sam and several members of his group. For the first time this entire trip Vinny doesn’t have his camcorder plugged above his cheekbone.  Sheila is a curtain of curls. Tamara is next to Greta and Rose and shoots me a little wave before swiveling the opposite direction.  Since boarding the Daisy Train the hot Italian Girls have all but fallen off the hormonal radar of the Big Ten. For the first time in the trip Amarillo Tx. girl has run out of pins. The floor at the Gloucester is just ostentatiously shiny, making one wish more female traveling companions chose to wear a skirt to dinner other than, say,  Lynn Minton. I was somehow hoping to saunter into Harmony but she is nowhere in sight. John Major from Mark's group sees me and offers me an expression as if to say, what pouting again now are we?  I am lonely.  I am estranged. I am thinking about the man in the hallway. It seems uncanny. He looked exactly like my cool English teacher at Manual who said he was going to be in Europe at the same time. I am thinking about how Bob and Frank on my route would who gave me a fifty dollar bill to take over seas would probably love to have him over for cocktails at one of their parties. It seems like I am exiled from my own peers and not allowed to hang out with those individuals who derive beauty for something else other than flatulent jokes.

. Those who become enamored with architectural ache that has managed to subside over the abating snap of the season.

Those who feel.

There is a voice behind me. It is calling, telling me to stop. It is a voice I haven’t heard since in the states. I turn around. For reasons known only to his overtly white small town Westernized variation of a deity  Nat Pflederer has completely ignored me the entire trip. When I first saw his angular visage in the Journal Star christening him as the county winner I thought I had found a cohort. A brother. A friend. When I first saw him I imagined I would be driving out to hickville Tremont after receiving my Drivers’ license in the autumn to reminisce over the trip we have somehow found ourselves winning, touring a continent we have transiently found ourselves a part of, swapping shoebox photo doubles of the beautiful girls who have accompanied us on our journey.

Nat has blown me off the entire trip. Every time I have endeavored to have a conversation he has acted snooty and curt.

I am happy to see him. I am smiling. Perhaps he was jetlagged or had difficulty adjusting to the British clime. Perhaps he realized that we are essentially two hobbits from the same midwestern shire. Perhaps he has seen me interfacing with cool Mark or members from Bus #4 and decided to jettison whatever preconceived notions he harbored about me.

I am happy to see him. Nat has finally acknowledged that I have a body temperature and a pulse.

“Wait,” Nat’s voice is lucid, in my direction.

“Hey!!” I say, smiling at Nat. He is holding hands with his blonde haired girlfriend who is in Harmony’s group. On bus number four Mark’s group has christened him with the moniker Lover Boy Nat. Nat is on bus #3. He is on the same bus as Harmony.

“Hey man,” I say again, excited to see him.

“Wait,” Nat replies, looking the other direction. He has a nonplussed expression sewn into the furl of his bottom lip. For a minute he looks like he concentrating passing kidney stones. Nat then gesticulates past me, not even skimming the brow of my forehead with his averring eyes.

“Yeah?” I say, inquisitive.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” Is all Nat says, greeting a member of his group idled directly behind me near the gilded stag.

Nat jests past me laughing one arm stapled into the interior palm of his so-called significant other, holding his head back in a fashion, cackling, as if he is in goddamn VISA commercial or something and just discerned that he can finally afford to have the good things in life.

It occurs to me only after he said it that this was the most words Nat has said to me on this trip.

I look back in Nat’s direction.

I look at the Gilded Stag.                                                                                   

I tell Nat no I was talking to you.

Only you don’t have ears to hear.

I walk back to my group. I file into the dining area, the caboose on the Daisy Train of the Big Ten.

                                                                           ***

“His girlfriend on the trip was the other winner from Arkansas.” Mark notes, seven years and a stillborn eternity later, we have just circulated a homemade pipe made out of aluminum and containing marijuana counter clockwise in the attic of the house I rent. The year 2000 is less than 45 hours away and we are partying with two lesbians and my roommate who has short cropped hair and goes by the name Drunk Mike who grows psilocybin mushrooms in a neon aquarium in his bedroom. A lesbian named Red is reading passages out of a bible she has found in the room and we are smiling and laughing and sometimes, for the allayed seconds of our existence life seems more or less at ease.

                             
                                                                         ***

Near the entrance to the conference/dinning room the Big Ten are leap-frogging on each other’s back Trevor is telling us that its time to cool it guys. It’s time to eat. Even though we don’t have to eat as a group there still is an unwritten mandate that we dine as one while in the hotel. Josh has purportedly made some sort of pre-dinner arrangements so that he can sit next to the girl with the copious blush.

As I walk in I see Mark holding a glass.

“Did you get the waiter to serve you anymore whiskey at dinner?”

Mark smiles, shoots me a look insinuating that I should muffle my observations.

“Hey,” Mark adds, “I haven’t sat with you for dinner yet. I was wondering if I could sit at your table tonight?"

I am almost appalled. I don't know why he wishes to dine with the Big Ten.

"No, really, you don't have to man."

Mark is gregarious. He seems to have met everyone on the trip. I am embarrassed. I don;t want him to be subjected to the puerile antics of the notorious clan of which I have found myself a vestigial member,

He sits down between myself and Justin. Spencer is ironically across the table seated with two members of Daisy's group who are not Daisy whose face turns red at everything he says. The table behind us are a mixture of Mark’s group and counselors. The loudest table by far is the table where Nat is seated. It is purportedly the ‘couples’ table. I see Jennifer Flood with a member of Mark’s group. Harmony is nowhere in sight. The entire diner Spencer can't stop purloining the proverbial spotlight in front of our guest.

“Everyone try this,” Spencer notes, “Place the caps of your knees beneath the bottom of the table and everyone lift up at the same time. Pretend you are at a seance.”

The table is hovering. Mark seems to be amused. Jim Baker comments that maybe we can exorcise some of those drunk fruticakes in the the hall upstairs. The girls across the table continue to giggle.

Spencer continues to talk about being a Mormon and how only one kid at his high school is not a virgin. Mark sees intrigued.

“So can you guys listen to music?” Mark inquires.

“Yes, haven’t you ever heard of the Mormon tabernacle Choir?” I jest. A smile bends into a creviced valley north of Mark’s chin. The table laughs with the exception of Spencer who looks at me as if we are dueling for sole proprietary ownership of the Big Ten.

From three tables down I can hear Nat Pflederer with his arm around his supposed girlfriend laughing like he wants to be heard.

                                                                              ***

After dinner as is customary Liz arrives and addresses the group as a whole. She makes it a salient point to note that, as in the Moathouse there are other guests in this hotel as well so we are to act as the mature young adult ambassadors that we are. Like the Moathouse there is also a pool in the hotel and we are instructed by Liz that we are not allowed to use it.

"Also, we've already had a few run-ins so remember to stay with your group at all times."

We are told by Liz that there has been an alteration in our Itinerary, mainly due to the running of the marathon where half the city will be inaccessible. Three tables over I see that the Alabama boy always seems to have his itinerary on him politely remove it from his side jacket.

"Where it says Changing of the Guard at Buckingham palace, scratch that. Tomorrow morning we will be going to Madame Tussuads. Also, before we go to Madame Tussuads we will take a panoramic tour of London. We will also be stopping at Hard Rock Cafe in the morning."

Liz goes out of her way to mention that Most Young Columbuses like to purchase souvenir shirts from the Hard Rock cafe so if you have Travelers Cheques to change into British pounds please do so before leaving tomorrow.

She goes through the list of Birthdays. She states that tomorrow is a full travel day and that we might not have much of an opportunity to meet as a group.

"Monday we are meeting with the US ambassador so remember to wear your Young Columbus attire please."

It is late. The group as a whole is excused. Trevor states Big Ten give it up. He tells us that tomorrow is going to be another big day.

       


                   ***

    

After dinner I say goodbye to Mark. I want to abandon the Big Ten. I want to escape into the city I find myself momentarily inhabiting, a resonating chime in the numerical dirge of Big Ben's hourly soliloquy. I want to emulate Mark and go into the swanky international side bar and get served a virgin whiskey sour and fall in love with a British girl with freckles and bad teeth and a off-kiltered cockney accent that is to die for.  I want to get lost in the neon vivacity of the streets, pole-shifting stop lights, buses the color of our jackets that look like Big Mac's with wheels, I want to flounder across the chorus of Victorian town houses, embracing myself in the gentle peach spritzer of the sunset, a late-night spring zephyr whistling against the back of my neck, imprisoned red phone booths, mailboxes resembling animated space odyssey droids randomly sprouting like hitching posts on every other corner, quoting TS Eliot while ambling against he slinky overbite of the Thames before  descending into the tenebrous gulch and cavity of the underground awaiting the guttural accelerated whorl of an incumbent tube.


                                           

I want to escape into the euclidean cowl-draped silhouetted labyrinthine scratch of the city and feel free.


Nat passes me by with his supposed girlfriend holding hands followed by the lecherous palate of Harmony's roommate Jennifer Flood.  Still there is no sight of the creature I am waiting for. I wave at both Nat and Jennifer.  Nat continues to blatantly ignore me. His girlfriend who Mark will inform me later was, ironically, the only other winner from his state looks at me as if I am carrying the HIV virus and just visibly ejaculated on her grandmother's good wedding china. I am still alone. Perhaps I will meander into Sam or Vinny. The Big Ten is adjourning upstairs. We have been told to stay in a group. I tell Sir Charles that I am going to  cash in some Travelers checques.  I am surrounded by red coats who are idling in the lobby. The kids are older. I see the the boy from San Dimas followed by the sweet lad from Alabama.

I am in dire need of someone to talk to who is not from my group who will not treat me like a pariah.

Socially I waylay Alabama. I ask him what he thinks about London so far.  I inquire if he was a blown away by Blenheim palace. I inquire if he is pumped. He tells me that he is tired and turning in early. Several six ft. plus girls from the group featuring he Italian twins who look like they could either be volleyball players or lesbians or both strut past. Being a Young Columbus winner means that you are constantly swallowed by fellow YC recipients from the United States and Guam only 85 percent of the time you are restricted to socializing with those on your bus. A female counselor walks past and I smile. Heath comes up to me and asks if I know where he can cash in some Travelers Checques.  As Liz Madigan and Mary Jo  exit the dining area I swivel the other direction trying to look occupied. I reflect again about the drunk man in the hallways who looked almost exactly like my cool English teacher back home. I wonder if he somehow followed me here.

Just as I am contemplating a juvenile conspiracy I hear a voice. A flower. A stream.

“Hey you, I’ve been looking for you.”

It is Harmony.

I saw you at dinner and I waved only I don’t think you saw me. You were seated next to your friend Mark and the rest of your group."

Harmony looks different. Her auburn hair is tied back into a French braid. She is wearing glasses. In front of her she is holding a dossier of names.

I ask her if she enjoyed Blenheim palace and what she thinks about London so far. She looks like a sexy co-ed studying for midterms. She looks like she is going to cry.

“Hey, you alright?”  Harmony looks down. Part of me thinks she looks like she just miscarried.

“Hey,” I say again, my arms are around her as if I am trying to buckle my forearms into her shoulders.

Harmony is hugging me back. It feels like she is trying to bite into my rib cage via her arms.

She calls me David. Before stating my name she utters the fourth vowel o as if signaling distress. On this trip so far I have mainly been referred to as Harry by the Big Ten, as Illinois during role-call by Trevor and Charles, as “Yo fuckhead,” via Jim Baker, as “Slow-down-there-this-isn’t-a-race” by Dan who takes us running,  as Tony from nearly everyone in Sam’s group, as that dude from Blossom by one-third of the people of this trip who have ever invested an interest in that show, but no one sans the exception of Mark has referred to me as David.

I ask Harmony if she just wants to hang out in the lobby for a second and like talk. She offers a little nod with her chin. We walk past the gilded statue of the stag. Several members of group traveling on Charter four are milling around the lobby debating contemporary issues. We sit on an emerald couch. I try to be an adult. I tell her that everything she tells me will be confidential. She smiles back. She looks like she just got her heart broken. For a minute I wonder if she has been seeing someone else.

“I’m really mad at someone right now. I’m flustered. I’m frustrated. I’m just upset.”

For a minute I think it is me. I inquire who she is upset with. She says the name Lynn Minton.

“Lynn Minton? The columnist for Parade?”

Harmony retorts again with a subtle nod.

“She asked me to find a group of twenty kids from the group to partake in the  afternoon tea with the British kids that PARADE has lined up. She told me that if I helped her out she would guarantee that I would be featured in the FRESH VOICES column in PARADE sometime this summer.”

I am still looking at Harmony. I think about how flustered she seemed this morning at the Rollright stones. I wonder why she failed to mention this before. I connect the emotional dots and discern that it was Lynn Minton she was hanging out with last night when I called her room.

"Anyway, Lynn requested a mixture of the brightest boys and girls on the trip so I rounded up twenty of them. Then she wanted me to make a questionnaire for them to fill out and when I showed her both the list and the questions she snapped at me and said that they weren’t good enough and that she expected better.”

I am stunned. All nuptial-nepotism put aside, I wonder why Harmony didn’t invite me to participate in the discussion.  

Harmony says that it is really good to see you. She says that she has been thinking about you. She says that she is sorry about Jennifer Flood on the phone last night. 

Last night seems like decades ago. It seems hard to believe only 48 hours ago we were dancing on soil fertilized by Shakespeare's bones, holding her close, dancing to that damn Whitney Houston Bodyguard soundtrack song that she didn't even write. I am seeing the creature I mistook for a different creature who I swore had wings when I met her. I am seeing that creature whose name I just can't stop mentally juggling off the tip of my tongue I am seeing that creature I have drooled over for the past two days.

Several of the older counselors walk past the couches telling the older kids debating that it is time to wrap things up and go upstairs. I look at Harmony.

"Hey, do you think that maybe I can call you tonight. You know maybe we can just kick it for a couple of hours on the phone. I really enjoy talking with you."

"Yeah," Harmony says, giving me her room number

“That would be nice. Call me later on tonight.”