Really? How are you normally then? And for that matter, why aren't you acting normally, in your eyes at least? Because, in my eyes at least, you seem to be the very definition of normal. More specifically, forgettable and by all means personifying the bland . Was I, too, such a bland teenager? I should hope not, but one can never be quite sure. All this talk of boyfriends and ex-boyfriends, and girlfriends and ex-girlfriends, of Facebook profiles and bad pictures ("that's not a good picture of me, let me show you another"). They're English, and what's more is that they're from London. Glitzy London. From the beginning because that's the London we knew, home of the posh. And of the misguidedly proper accents. London, where the girls aren't cute or hot, but fair, and you would find one to be so, properly speaking anyways. It's a clever disguise to be certain, especially at face value. They sound smart, or at least as if, as if they should be. In that tone and meter we usually reserve and stereotype for learned scholars and such in the States. But on this ferry, such stereotypes are as light and withstanding as those discarded Winston's left on the outside tables, empty and tossed asunder by the heavy deck winds, lost in the Channel somewhere between Hoek van Holland and Harwick.
They're teenagers. They're teenagers and the boys act like any group of boy teenagers do when confronted by a sexually attractive girl. It is quite a specific attraction given by this description, one brought on by an attention to detail, played up from head to toe in all the wrong ways. The leather zip-up boots, the constantly applied make-up, and of course, letting those heaving chest kittens breathe. How old was she again? Oh, that's right, seventeen. And so the boys are loud and excited, giddy and without a doubt confused by any thought of sexuality in their constant battle of one-up's-manship. There are tales of strength , primary school conquests (they're a bit younger than she), and the inevitable chest baring on this heavily air-conditioned, cloudy day on the Stenna Holland. The girl reacts in kind and not all too surprisingly, basking in the light of attention, surrounded by this troupe of under-experienced and over zealous suitors clinging to her few and every word.
[from recollection]
I guess I too was once one of those excited bright-eyed boys. But the distance between that time and this is growing, and as the wonder leaves my eyes, these eyes standing here on the back deck port side, they chance upon a rainbow materializing in the ocean spray. A smile. They haven't lost their wonder just yet. Maybe it's all the LCD.
