Score!  (sorta)

            by Johan Philippine

 

The National Young Leader’s Conference (NYLC) staff was waiting for me at baggage claim 2. The NYLC was a conference in Washington, D.C. for students 14-18 years old. Its main focus was leadership, with strong emphases on its role in history and politics. I walked up to the staff with a springy gait, eager to meet someone new. One of the people waiting around saw me walking to them. Instantly, she turned away from another guy, smiled and gave me an enthused “Hey there! How’s it going?”

“What, so this new kid appears and I no longer have any attention? Lame.”

“Shut up, Rob,” came a third voice. The first was a middle-aged woman with an NYLC t-shirt, the second was a bushy-haired guy, and the third was from a plump girl. Introductions ensued, and I was checked off on the roll. My peers were Rob and Liz, both from some town in New Jersey. The others who were attending were all sitting down, reading. Determined to be sociable for once in my life, I joined Rob and Liz for a stroll through the airport, leaving my books with the staff. Cue awkward small talk.

“Nice hat dude,” started Rob.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Where are you from?”

 “Berkeley.” Comprehension flashed across their faces. “So where are you guys from?” They looked at each other.

“We’re from New Jersey,” Liz answered. “We come from the same school.”

“Unfortunately,” Rob added. Before indignant Liz could say anything else, he exclaimed “Oh look! Pizza Hut! Man I could really go for some pizza right now.” Liz hit him with her purse.

“New Jersey, then. You guys don’t seem to have an accent at all.”

“Accents are for losers,” Rob proclaimed. “Only snooty rich people have them.”

“That’s not true! You know that New Yorkers have accents when we go to the city.”

“That’s just because New Yorkers all hate everything not New York and need to feel different and special.”

On the bus from the airport to the hotel, we sat in the back with a late arrival named Garret. Garret was from New York. We all talked about interests, where we were from, and what our favorite color of toe cheese was. Incidentally, Garret and Rob were both huge music fans. Garret was a bit eccentric though. I later learned that “batshit insane” also described him well. In any case, we were determined to all be roommates. After bartering with the room coordinator, we managed to get a room together. We wound our way through the halls, and I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.

Later that night, after unpacking, I met my faculty advisor (FA) Tom. He was a bulky guy in his late twenties with brown hair and a bow tie. Tom was awesome, but neither Rob nor Garret were in my Leadership Group Meeting (LGM). Once we had all met our FA’s, Rob, Garret and I went to the dining hall to eat dinner. We took our servings of veggie lasagna that was so overcooked the cheese had bubbled and stuck to the pot. A note about me: I don’t eat much out of the vegetable group. Luckily for me, there was also some undercooked mac and cheese, and stale bread to break our teeth on. Rob picked our table for us – one packed with giggling girls with room for three more. It was inevitable that during the course of the meal, a high-pitched voice would say:

“YOU’RE FRENCH?! LIKE, REALLY FRENCH?”

I forced a smile. “Yea, and I was just in Paris this morning.”

“OH MY GOD THAT’S SO EXCITING! SAY SOMETHING IN FRENCH!” And so on. Rob and Garret didn’t seem to mind that all those girls were airheads. Garret managed to scare them away by unleashing a string of lewd obscenities one after the other, including a one-man version of the penis game. The rules of the penis game are that each participant must yell “penis” louder than the person before them until either it’s impossible to shout any louder or until someone is told/forced to stop. I didn’t stick around to see Garret finish.

After dinner, we all sat down in the Sheraton’s Grand Ballroom to listen to Abdul Henderson speak. Abdul Henderson was a marine who served in Iraq and refused to go back for a second tour of service. After the speech, I returned to my room with Rob to find that Garret had already gotten back, and was wearing nothing but his tighty whities. He was also incredibly hairy.

“DUDE!”

“WRONG!”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with tighty whities, guys.” He didn’t seem phased by us at all. There was a knock at the door. I quickly turned around away from Garret and opened the door.

“Room check! Come over here with your name tags.” It was a FA who was checking to see if we were in our rooms on time, for the 11:00 curfew. Rob and I had our nametags on around our necks, and got checked off immediately. Garret got his from his bed, and walked up to the guy after us. The look on the FA’s face was priceless: it was a mix of disgust and fear that has been imbedded in my memory forever. He quickly scribbled something on his notepad and walked away. Severely jet lagged, I quickly undressed and joined the covers on the bed.

~

REET REET REET REET! I bolted up, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I looked around. Oh right, I’m in a hotel room. There’s Rob, there’s Garret, and there’s the damn alarm clock. I reached out to turn if off, fumbling around in the dark. Rob grunted.

“What time is it?” asked Garret, buried beneath his covers. The alarm clock was still angrily beeping at us, flashing 6:00. I got tired of searching for the right button and gave the alarm a good whack. Defeated at last, it fell silent.

“It’s 6 AM.” I yawned. “I’ll take the first shower.” I threw off the covers and gasped in surprise. “Putain de- why is it so damn cold in here?” Not waiting for an answer, I grabbed some clothes from my bag and ran into the bathroom. I took my shower. From the other side of the door, I heard a high-pitched shriek, followed by “Oh my god! Guys, my nipples are erect!” The thermostat had been set to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and Garret’s cot was directly below the AC.

Rob’s excessive and blatant flirting with anyone of the female gender and Garret’s stiff nipples were starting to bother me, so I went directly to breakfast after showering to avoid eating with them. As before, the food was terrible. I sat down at a random table and talked to some people from I don’t know where. They were so boring and uninteresting that I didn’t bother to remember their names after I left the table.

After a short LGM, we boarded buses to go to the Mall. If you haven’t been to D.C., the Mall is the strip between Capitol Hill and the Washington monument. Along this strip lie the many Smithsonian museums, which were the main attractions of the day. My bus started with the Holocaust memorial, which I had already been through the last time I was in D.C. I think they must have hired the same guy who designed the Ikea layout – you have to go through the whole building in order to reach the exit. I wasn’t too keen on watching the videos behind the cement barriers again, so I went through the museum quickly. Those were the types of videos depicting the most gruesome acts committed during the Holocaust, and were behind cement barriers so children and the squeamish could be shielded from seeing them. Since I had gone through so quickly, there weren’t many somewhat-familiar faces around. After waiting for a few minutes, I went outside and started wandering around the Mall.

 “Hey, look at him! He looks so lonely. We should go up and say hi to him!” The girl who had just spoken wasn’t very far from me, so I heard what she said quite clearly. Nevertheless, I smiled and walked up to them. I tipped my hat and greeted them.

“Hi guys! Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all!” answered the guy the girl was talking to, “we’re headed for the Washington monument.” His name was Carmen, and hers was Jamie. Introductions ensued, and I struggled to remember their names for the rest of that day: Lisa, Mike, Nick and Derek.

We spent the next hour or so walking around the Mall, trying to find someplace to eat lunch. We decided to eat in the cafeteria of the National Museum of American History, which had extremely greasy and overpriced food. I had a square foot of pepperoni pizza and an orange for ten dollars. We all sat down and swapped stories from home. The most hilarious thing to talk about was the different accents we all had. Well...the different accents Jamie and Nick had. The rest of us were pretty normal.

“I don’t have an accent!” said an exasperated Jamie, with her thick accent. She had a kind of nasal twang associated with the Ohio-Indiana etc. region, and denied it vehemently. “You guys are the ones who sound funny.” We kept making fun of her for a few minutes until she struck back:

 “Stop making fun of me or I’ll whack you in the back! I swear I will!” Jamie put up her fists like a boxer would and made an angry face at Mike. We all burst out laughing, but we decided to stop being assholes for the rest of the day. We told each other jokes, and all became fast friends.

 I valiantly attempted to finish my pizza, but after countless bites and munches, I realized it was a battle I could not win. Defeated, I got up to throw away what little pizza I had left.

“Wait a second buddy!” I froze. “You’re not leaving any pepperoni on that pizza are you?” I turned around and met Jamie’s very serious gaze.

“I...uh...There was too...much of it for me.” The others were watching me – and I wasn’t the only one not finishing my food. That didn’t seem to matter though.

“Well, if you’re gonna throw it away, at least eat the pepperoni. Those pigs had to die so you could eat them!” At a loss for what to say, I sat down and picked off the pepperoni from the pizza and started eating it. I was beginning to feel a bit sick to my stomach. This pizza was covered in pepperoni, and the piece I had left had enough for two regular slices. I made a nice little stack before actually eating them, and I tried to hide some of them under the pizza when I though Jamie wasn’t looking.

“Hey! I see you trying to hide those. Don’t think I don’t!” She waggled her finger at me. I turned beet red, but I played it off with a chuckle at her finger wagging. The others laughed. I submissively ate the remaining rounds of meat, and took another bite out of the pizza for good measure. I felt like I was going to explode. I got up to throw away the bit I had left, trying to avoid eye contact with anyone. Lisa looked over in my direction at that time, and I failed. I must’ve made a funny face, because she flashed me a smile. I must have looked funny. Pretty girls never ever smile at me in a good way. I quietly made my way to the trash, trying to figure out what had just happened. She turned back to her conversation with Carmen and Jamie. A few minutes later, our eyes randomly met again. This time however, hers widened and she gave me a kind of “stop staring at me” look. I wasn’t staring, I swear. All too often, I’m a victim of the “glance and look away quickly after your eyes meet accidentally” game. I tend to look around the room I’m in a lot, but that usually gets me in trouble. I can’t help it. I also have a rampant imagination, so each time that happens I curse at myself for being an idiot, and I think to myself “now she thinks I’m a creep.” My imagination makes me sad.

After lunch, we decided to go to the National Museum of Natural History. It was another one of the museums I had already been to, but I didn’t mind going back because it was such a huge museum.

“Hey look!” exclaimed Carmen, “the Hope Diamond is on display. You guys want to go see it?” Carmen was learning a lot about jewels and such, and had taken to bringing one of those eye-magnifiers jewelers have in order to determine the quality of its cut. Seeing the biggest diamond in the world was not something he would pass up. He, Jamie, Nick and Derek went up to see it, while Mike, Lisa and I went to the dinosaur fossils exhibit. We weren’t huge fans of rocks, and Mike really wanted to see the fossils.

“Man, T-rexes are so awesome,” said Mike, gazing up at the skeleton with big, dreamy eyes. “I’m so happy seeing this I feel like I’m a three year old who just got a bag full of lollipops.” He started walking through the galleries, taking dozens of pictures. Lisa and I followed behind.

“So uh...what do you like doing in your spare time?” I asked Lisa.

“Hmm? Oh.” She had been looking at a particularly long fossil of an eel-like creature stretched along the ceiling of the “undersea animals” hallway. “Well, I play the guitar, and read books. Sometimes I play the games that my dad makes.” She went on to explain to me what kind of games they were, how she writes her own songs, and what our hobbies were. We kept talking and talking, well into the Pre-Cambrian exhibit.

Twenty minutes later, we had to make our way back to the bus pickup area. We said goodbye, and parted ways.

~

At any time we had for ourselves, I searched for them. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, ice cream socials and such were all spent with the new friends I had made. I had found a group of people I was really happy with – we had the same humor, the same hobbies, and the same political views. Well...almost. Carmen was a hard-line right-wing conservative who believed strongly in family values and chivalry. He wanted to be a Marine as soon as he could get a commission. What surprised me the most about him though was that he wasn’t a total jackass or an idiot like the politicians on his side of the political spectrum seem to be. Despite some of our differences, we all got along well, and got to know each other pretty well. Nothing major happened until Tuesday though.

Tuesday night was “Making your voice heard” night. That’s right – it was time for Karaoke. I had managed to convince a few people to sing “Sweet Home Alabama” with me, including Bama boy (Nick’s nickname – the guy from Alabama) and Mike. Unfortunately, the DJ’s didn’t have that song. What kind of a DJ doesn’t have Sweet Home Alabama? A lame DJ. We decided to sing “Stacy’s Mom” instead. Despite our inability to sing, we were a rousing success, and received a standing ovation. That may have been due to the fact that there were more people than chairs, but I decided to ignore that bit of information. After our song, we went back to the table where Carmen, Derek and the girls were waiting for us.

“How awful was that guys?” I asked with a smile, knowing full well how bad we were.

“You guys were great!” replied Lisa with a smile. I sat down next to her. The next singer had started singing, and we had to talk loudly in order to hear each other.

“You’re going up and singing something too, right?” She had told me she wanted to sing something.

“Yea, I’ll be singing 'Something to Talk About', by Bonnie Raitt.” Was it a hint of some sort? That song is about how there’s gossip about how two people are pretty close and everyone thinks they’re going out, but they’re not, so they should. Maybe it was a prod in the “Ask me out already” direction, but if it was, I didn’t get it. I can be quite dense at times. “I’m really nervous,” she added.

“I’m sure you’ll do great!” I told her.

“Aw, thanks! That’s sweet!” Score! Plus ten points for me. See, I was kind of interested, but I hadn’t been making any real effort up till that point to ask her out. In fact, I had never made much effort to ask a girl out before. There was one time, but the outcome was so tragic I won’t recount it here and now. Her song was next – and she did a fantastic job of singing it.

“Let’s go dance!” suggested Jamie.

“Hey, good idea!” Lisa added.

“You guys go ahead. If I start dancing, someone will get some broken ribs.” They stared at me blankly. “You know...from laughing too hard.” Jamie rolled her eyes.

“Come on, it’ll be fun!” Lisa was insisting.

“I don’t dance.” Minus twenty points for me. I was convinced not dancing would be better than revealing my true lack of dancing skills, as I might have poked out someone’s eye with my elbow or knee or something. Lisa sat back down next to me, a bit dejectedly, and Jamie and Mike and Nick went up to dance. Carmen had disappeared to go argue with someone, and Derek was nowhere to be found, even though he had done an amazing cover of a swing song, complete with dance moves and everything. That guy had some balls. At that time, mine were nowhere to be found.

“Tell me more about the songs you write.” I thought some conversation might improve my situation a bit.

“Well, they’re kind of like folk songs. They sound a lot better than what I just sang I promise.” Before I could say anything, she kept going. “I have a CD with my best songs on it. I’m thinking of singing one of them for the talent show, I brought my guitar along.”

Pause.

“I play the guitar too you know.”

            “Oh yea? How long have you been playing?”

            “Hmm...About ten years.” Gasp. “On and off though, I’ve moved around a bit. I’m not nearly as good as I should be.” We talked up until the last song, which was a slow song. It wasn’t going to be sung by anyone but the real artist, so it was pretty special.

“Come on Johan, let’s go dance...please?”

“I...”Blast, man, think! You can do slow dances! “Ok, let’s go!” She smiled, and led me to the dance floor by the hand.

“Hey...I thought you didn’t dance!” teased Jamie.

“I guess I do now!” I riposted with a grin.

“Hey look! Jojo’s dancing! He’s dancing with a girl!” I cringed. That was Rob, yelling from his table, which was again overflowing with empty-headed damsels giggling at his every remark.

“Way to go Jojo! Woo! Grab her ass!” And that was Garret. They had taken to calling me Jojo for some reason. When I rotated to face them, I gave them a wink and exaggerated big smile for good measure so they could shut the hell up.

Although we had started dancing at a respectful, “just friends” distance, we had slowly inched towards each other as the song went on until her head was resting on my shoulder. Talk about a warm fuzzy feeling.

~

The next day, we had dinner in the hotel. The food was so bad my brain has repressed the memory of what I actually ate. Most of our dinnertime was spent talking anyways, and our group was usually among the last to leave the dining room. So there we were, Mike, Nick, Jamie, Derek, Lisa and I, sitting around our round table, talking about Bushisms. Suddenly, there’s a hand on my leg. Feeling slightly panicked, I reached under the table and grabbed it before anything else could happen. Lisa squeezed my hand back – that’s just what she had been looking for. There was my hyperactive imagination at work. I smiled, she smiled. The world was a good place to live in. Then, the unthinkable happened.

“OH MY GOD! JOJO! HOW COULD YOU? THAT WAS INHUMAN!” We all turned around to see Rob, Garret and their friend Ferris stumble in the door.

“Wha...?”

            “DUDE! THOSE LOGS IN THE BATHROOM WERE SO BIG!” Started Garret.

“OH MAN, AND THEY SMELLED SO BAD TOO!” Continued Rob.

“I COULD SMELL THEM FROM MY ROOM ACROSS THE HALL!” Added Ferris.

“I...didn’t...do it?” I looked back at my tablemates, who were once again all staring right at me. “It wasn’t me! I was here with you guys all along!” Damn Rob and Garret. Damn them to hell. They ran off laughing. Apparently, the room really had smelled awful, but it was no fault of mine. I suspect it was Garret, but nothing was ever confirmed. Everyone laughed, poking fun at me. Lisa smiled at me, and tightened her grip on my hand.

~

Later that night was Game night, but Lisa and I didn’t feel like playing board games. We listened to someone play the piano quite beautifully for several minutes until she stopped.

“Let’s go get my guitar, I could practice for tomorrow night.” We went to her room to get her guitar, and then looked for a secluded spot where we wouldn’t be bothered. The staircase looked empty and out of the way since everyone was at game night, and I thought it would stay that way.

Boy, was I wrong. People got bored of game night pretty fast and our musical hideaway was quickly discovered. People flocked to get their turn at the guitar, and we barely got it to ourselves. We had to stay as well – we weren’t going to leave her guitar behind in the hands of such thieves. When the curfew came around, I walked her back to her room to drop off the guitar.

“Well...Goodnight.” I said.

“Goodnight.” We stood there, looking at each other. She giggled a bit. I moved closer to her. If I’ve learned anything from Hitch, it’s that when a woman waits at her doorstep, it’s because she wants to kiss. Closer. I leaned in, and –

We hugged. For a while, we hugged. This is the part of the movie where you throw popcorn at the screen for the sheer stupidity of the lead character’s actions. There was a voice in the back of my head: Coward. Way to go, Romeo. Not. So much for listening to Hitch, you ball-less twerp. I went to bed mentally beating myself, over and over.

~

Fast forward to dinnertime the next night. We had finished eating dinner, and we were listening to the piano player again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lisa write a little note on a slip of paper. I pretended not to see, and we stayed at the piano for some time. Then it was time to go to our LGMs. We walked down the halls, talking about the upcoming talent show later that night. We got to the staircase.

“Wait. Before you go, I have something for you.”

            “What is it?” She answered my question by giving me the note, then running up the stairs with a playful smile. I read the note: “Un bisou pour toi.” For those of you who can’t read French, that means “A kiss for you.” Warm and fuzzy and tingly too.

~

Three hours later, the talent show began. Lisa went after a guy who finished a Rubik’s cube in 1 minute 45 seconds, with the last 30 seconds done behind his back. He got wild cheering and clapping when he was done. When Lisa finished her song, she got a standing ovation. Rob suggested something to me, but I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear him.

After the show, I once again walked her to her room. Once again, we stood at her door, giggling, bashful little teens that we were.

And once again, we hugged. Except this time, there was something else after the hug.

But I’m not one to kiss and tell.