Chapter I: Arrival
I always wondered what life in the US is like. I've seen things on TV that inexplicably both disgust and amuse me but I've never had the chance to experience any of it, personally. I guess living in a small European country that's still struggling with the economic crisis I have never had the means to travel anywhere, pretty much. Well, not until recently. A couple of years ago I've met this guy on the internet and we clicked the first second of the conversation. I remained in contact with him throughout years, but as we chatted I'd meet more and more of his friends from real life and I have to say he grew to be one of my best friends, if not THE best. Anyway, back to the story, I am 21 years old, currently finished my second year of college. Don't act surprised, I'm not a flunky, it's just the way it is here – we start college at the age of 19. So this year I managed to pass every subject I had and get into the state budget. This means I could study the next year for free. Well, with a big success such as this one, I was now able to afford more stuff, as I no longer had to pay huge amounts of cash for education. For a few years now my pen-pal in the US has been inviting me to his home in Ohio. We've been kind of day dreaming, in rare cases even dreaming, about meeting each other in person some day. And now it's here. I've managed to finally persuade my mom to let me go. Yeah, I need permission even though I'm a big boy. After all, she's my main source of income. I'm kind of too lazy to actually make my own money so my mom pretty much still gives me allowance. Anyway, if it wasn't for her I'd never be able to gather enough money for the trip in the first place, but on the bright side I get a free stay in the States! It's now July 12th, 2014. and I depart tomorrow. I'm hoping to see all of my internet buddies then. It's an opportunity of a life time!
The next day, I surprisingly got up quite early, opposed to my usual. Noon. Yes, I know, I'm a lazy bum but I can't help it. I never had anything worth getting up for before, until today. Not only did I woke up early, but I had trouble sleeping last night as well. Must be from all the excitement. I think this is possibly even the first time in my life to wake up before my mother. As I was rolling around the bed still in my underwear, I could hear birds singing outside, letting me know it will be another beautiful sunny summer day outside. The light was penetrating through the blinds and was going straight to my face, which was kind of pissing me off but I wasn't going to let anything ruining this day, so I stood up and went to the washroom to wash my face and wake up already. I was walking around the house like a zombie, dragging myself across the hallway. I mean what normal person gets up at 7AM on a Saturday? So I walked myself over to the sink and splashed my face good a few times and looked in the mirror and thought: "Today's your day, dude. Don't fuck up". I kind of set it up as a mission to have the best time of my life right then and there with my best friends whom I've never even met in my life before. But like the lyrics in that new Summer hit 2014. say: "Ain't nothin' gon' hold us down tonight!". Okay, maybe that's a bit too much, I do plan to have fun but I don't mean stuff like streaking across the town wearing nothing but female undergarments fun like the dudes on the video. Casual get wasted at a party and have a conversation kind of fun. By the time I was done with refreshing and imagining all these different cool scenarios in my head about the trip, I heard a noise in the back. I must've woken up my mom, she's clearly not used to noises around the house while she's sleeping. So I went out and saw her rubbing her eyes looking at me standing before her in front of the bathroom, like she couldn't believe it.
"I'm going to assume you had to use the can and are going back to bed now, huh?"
"Nah, I'm actually up"
She immediately puts on a grin and her eyes shrink as she views me with distrust, as if I'm being sarcastic about it: "Yeah, right. What's the matter, couldn't sleep before the big day?"
"Well, yeah, I had some trouble, but I did fall asleep eventually. I don't know why I'm up, to be honest, but I'm not going back to bed if that's what you're wondering"
She immediately turned around as if she lost interest in this unusual phenomena. "What do you plan on doing now, then?" she asked as she was entering the living room.
I scratched my head for a bit because I really hadn't thought about it so I stuttered the first thing that popped to my mind: "I'm… going… jogging?"
She halted immediately and turned around with a curious face: "Jogging? When did you start jogging?"
"Hey, I jogged before."
"That was last year and you went on three runs and stopped after the first rain fell."
"Well the weather is fine today"
She chuckled a bit but then let me have my way.
Few hours later, it was time to leave the house and head out on my journey. I could tell my mom had a hard time letting go, she had that worried face like any mother does, sending their child far away from them.
"I'll be okay, mom. I'll get you something nice" I told her, attempting to comfort. She smiled and told me to get in the car. Once we got to the airport my dad showed up and wished me good luck. He and my mom had lived separately since my second year of high school. I won't get into details but they're not on bad terms or anything. My immediate family was there with me, now my best friends are waiting on the other side. I am so fired up about it now I am barely holding down my excitement. I have a huge smile on my face I could eat a banana sideways. My parents saw it and put on a smile of their own as they are happy for me and how far I've come in life. I wouldn't hesitate to say they are proud of me. After all, I'm awesome.
As I was passing by security, having my bags checked, my dad was actually holding my mom while they were both waving at me. I honestly haven't seen them holding like that in years. It only emphasized the happiness and I got on the plane like I was already high. Pun intended. After a few moments we were finally in the air and I looked through the little window at the city below and waved at it for the last time. No going back now, all is in check. I'm not panicking at all. Then I find out I'm scared of airplanes. I've never been on one before and I'm definitely not claustrophobic, but I do have somewhat of a fear of heights. I've never really thought about travelling by airplanes before but this was kind of frightening. Wouldn't it be convenient to die like this when I was finally going to catch a break in life? I immediately put myself through all these different movie scenarios where I'm the sole survivor on an uninhabited island, like in Cast Away. If that does happen, Wilson better be there to keep me company. Soon enough, I went into deep thoughts about all sorts of things and completely forgot I was on an airplane. After some time I finally fell asleep. I suppose the lack of sleep from last night finally caught up to me.
Before you knew it, I was flying across the US soil. The voice on the PA woke me up when we were passing over New York City. I've honestly never seen anything like it. It looked like a big cluster of tetris tiles, with the tall, four squares, ones just asserting over the other minor ones. I even saw the Statue of Liberty from up there. I was always big on architecture but instead I went into economics and business. I don't even like economics and business but apparently the architecture college was too expensive and I didn't really have that many alternatives considering my interests. I didn't have any alternatives, actually. Heck, I have no interests. But anyway, I was still kind of squinting when the flight attendant showed up and asked if I'd like anything. I asked for a coffee. I figured I'd need something strong to keep me awake. I was hoping I wouldn't suffer from jet lag 'cause that would seriously throw me off balance. As you may have noticed I'm a guy that loves to sleep in. I might end up sleeping through the day while I'm there, which would kind of ruin the whole point of vacation. I mean who goes to another country just to sleep through the day?
About an hour later I was very close to my destination. I noticed I'm in Ohio when I saw the cornfields. Just kidding. Actually the captain pointed it out, we will be arriving in about 10 minutes. The worst is over. Looks like Cast Away isn't happening after all, although I've always kind of wanted to try out in survival mode. Watching all those movies and people dying in the stupidest ways made me think if it's really like that in real life situations. I figured I'd show all of them how it's done. Maybe I'm just full of myself, though. I guess we'll never know.
The plane has finally landed at the Cleveland airport. My heart is pounding like a drum kit and I'm hoping all goes well. As I make my way through the airport, I notice a blonde male about 6'1 standing not too far away from where I was standing. This was one of those moments when the time stops and everything seems paused and you have that dramatic eye contact. Except this was less romantic. Totally manly. So at this point I'm thinking this trip could get awkward or be pretty awesome and it all depends on this very moment. You know how when you're meeting someone it can get really awkward for the first time if one or both people aren't talking much? I was kind of afraid of that happening because that would mean it would take us a while to feel comfortable being ourselves around each other in person and it would severely diminish the fun. But, luckily, Jake and I just bro hugged like we knew each other for ages. From that point onward it was all normal. We got to his car and I'm just kind of looking around and Cleveland may not be the coolest city for most Americans but in all honesty I was amazed. The city was really looking modern, it's just so different from what I'm used to living in Europe which is a mix of newer structures trying to be adapted to all the old historical buildings made centuries ago. So we are driving around the city, joking and fooling around, and I'm kind of drooling over the windows and screaming inside my head like a teen girl on Justin Bieber's concert. I just can't believe this is happening.
Instead of going straight to his house we went for a drink at a nearby Starbucks coffeehouse. Since we don't have any Starbucks where I come from, I had to trust pansy boy to order me something good. He kind of whispered it to the bartender and he got me this dark gooey thing and it looked really disgusting. He had the evilest smirk on his face and said "bottoms up" and went for his drink. I was just kind of eyeballing this slimy looking "beverage", if you can even call it that, completely disgusted and he was just laughing his ass off. So I dropped some balls, prayed a little and went for it and it turns out it was quite tasty. Jake hates that drink and he thought I would too so he looked disappointed when he saw me finishing it off like a homeless person sucks on a vodka bottle. His disappointment didn't end there 'cause when we were finished, just before paying the bill I stormed out of the coffeehouse in retaliation making him pay the whole thing on his own. He got out a few seconds later, looked at me calmly and said: "We should probably run". Caught me off guard and he started laughing and running towards the car and I was just dug in there with my jaws dropped to the floor. I quickly fastened my pace to catch up to him and got into the car. When we got in he was still laughing and hearing it made me chuckle. When he finally caught some air he tells me he did actually pay the bill. Oh! You got me..
~This is a work in progress and since I'm busy with school may not be updated on a regular basis. The story is original and will evolve into what it's expected. I'm almost done with Chapter I and this is only a fraction of it. The original idea was to write a book, however, it looked more like a blog once I reviewed so I reconsidered. Feedback is welcome and the story is severely influenced by real life. All the main characters are real people and their initial relations are all true.