3
That March, I finally took the step of joining the high school theater club, something I'd been planning for some time and as a result of which ended up making a bunch of new friends and starring in my first Shakespeare play as the main love interest within the first month. I guess that's when I got serious about the whole acting gig because suddenly my afternoons were full of rehearsal practice and learning lines and stitching costumes, while the mornings went by in the boring lessons of the American Civil War or a play-by-play analysis of a Hemingway story. I would leave the house at seven every morning and return when the moon was overhead and the streetlamps were burning bright. That was the year my school workload had suddenly doubled and I barely had time for anything else because I wanted that scholarship to a good university. It was my golden ticket out of Queens knowing that my deadbeat dad would never pay for anything that had to do with me. But it became hard to keep the intensity up for a consistent period because also around that time, I started dating Harry Osborn.
I'd met him at a house party down in one of the la scenic routes by the East River overlooking the Manhattan Island. Word had reached my ear in the locker rooms one day that some guy from our school had arranged this big crazy midnight rave for everyone on the weekend in a million-dollar studio apartment owned by his dad. No way did I fall for that nonsense but I knew, all the same, I needed to see it for myself just in case it was true, and it was thinking that I'd ended up outside the building where the whole thing was supposed to be going down. And it was while I was making my way up to the thirtieth floor in a glass elevator with a jaw-dropping view of the city that I couldn't bring myself to believe that someone as rich as that went to the same school as me. Of course, by the end of the night, I would know that someone was Harry Osborn, the son of the rich tycoon investor Norman Osborn.
My first memory of him was seeing this cool, handsome guy with nice breezy hair tugging me to a makeshift dance floor in his crowded kitchen, where literally hundreds of people were shaking to the stereo music playing in his living hall. He took the drinks from my hand and asked me to join him on the floor with the suave and promiscuous manner of a young Patrick Dempsey. We both ended up taking his advice, allowing the frenetic energy of the beats to carry us away for a while like the alcohol had done to my senses and the pulsing music had done to our awareness of space as we jumped and twisted and shimmied our way across the huddle of strangers. It wasn't too long after that I found myself on a black leather sofa with the plastic wraps still on where our bodies were pressed together and our hands were all over each other and our mouths were locked in some kind of intergalactic docking maneuver while the plastic of the armrest kept squeaking against the back of my shirt. He happened to be a good kisser too. Clearly, he was used to fucking around a lot.
But just like that, the next morning, Harry and I had suddenly become a thing. It happened so abruptly that even I was taken aback by the speed of how it had all gone through and more so by how quickly it was accepted in the school halls when people saw us holding hands or kissing in public or talking in whispers in the locker room. There was no cacophony or clamoring or odd looks as there had been for Peter and Gwen, none of that disruptive talk behind our backs of how much of a shock it was to see us as a couple. Instead, it was just a plain line of approval and cheeky smirks and hand gestures from my friends and other people that knew me, and for some reason, I found myself strangely disappointed by it all. I had kind of harbored this feeling secretly of wanting to stick out just a little bit and now it seemed like that wasn't going to be the case at all. "Look," Liz told me when I asked her about it. "You're hot," she said pointing at me, "and he's rich." Then she brought both her fists together like two cars were colliding, "You know, it's just meant to be," and as much as I appreciated her stark honesty from time to time, I didn't really buy that. Not that I came up with any better explanation on my own later on because I didn't.
Instead, I just decided to focus on what I did have, and the mad excursions Harry took me on for the next few months acted as a reminder of that very notion. Sometimes, it was down to the most expensive bakery shop in the vicinity for a pound of cake I'd never be able to afford even if I worked for a lifetime, or sometimes it was a great seat for a game between the New York Jets and the New England Patriots, or sometimes it was for a round of ice skating down at the Rockefeller Center. I vaguely remember going down to the car dealership with him one weekend and by the end of the night, driving cross-country in a convertible beauty that he'd just bought as an impulse purchase, my hair flying against the wind of the empty midnight highway. That was just the kind of person he was – like wind blowing north or south on a whim. I doubt he was showing off either because living on the high, rat packing, jumbo-jet tracks of extravagance was Harry's style, and trust me when I say I wasn't complaining. In fact, far from it, I reveled in his aura, his scent, his reckless abandonment, and his free-spirited nature. Because there was something liberating in it for me too. Maybe, that's when I got a taste for that kind of life myself.
At the same time, I did worry about the dent all those trips were inflicting on his wallet but he'd just shake his head in response like that was the last thing on his mind "It's no big deal. Don't worry about it" and I tried my best not to. Trouble was, at that point in my life I'd never seen or had copious amounts of money to spend or have it spent on me with such profligacy. And it was only natural that I started wondering if I was being a quote-on-quote gold-digger, that it was somehow his incredible ability to procure money out of thin air or open invisible gates to a higher realm that I was enamored with rather than the person he was and if so, what did that make me. A horrible person, no doubt, and that line of thinking often left me feeling so depressed that I deliberately shirked away from it. But then a general spool of insecurities would immediately start unraveling in my mind, which I suppose was the result of dating someone who was so much cooler, popular, and prince-like when compared to the wastrel that I was. One day I even caught myself wondering if he treated all the girls he dated the same way or was this somehow special because I wanted to know the answer to that very badly but was too scared to ask because what if it was yes?
For the time being, however, I just pushed it to the back of my head as I clung on to his arm for dear life, stumbling down one big red carpet event to another in relentless fashion. A Paul McCartney concert one weekend was followed by a movie premiere the next, and then we jumped to a wild circus opening in Central Park after that, and then that was followed by a visit to this gaming arcade close to where I lived. I knew the place very well because it was one of my usual haunts and I had to really persuade him to take me there because it was one of the few places in town we could go to that even I could afford, and it was, generally speaking, quite a sweet spot for the adolescent crowd back in the day and it probably still is. But the day we went there, expecting to see a bunch of strangers either lurking in the corner of the shop smoking a joint or some sick runaway kid illuminated by the light of the digital pinball machine, we were instead greeted by the familiar faces of Peter and Gwen, their gleeful eyes were glued to the screen of a slot machine as the numbers kept changing every second.
They didn't see us when we walked over to the other games spread around the store and while Harry noncommittally tried his hand at the claw machine I kept my eye trained on the shifting crowd around us because I was feeling that same bubble of anxiety rising to the surface of my thoughts.
I don't know how long we stayed there before Peter found us lurking at our spot with Gwen tagging behind him. "Fancy meeting you guys here!" he said pushing his glasses up the ridge of his nose.
"Oh hey, Peter!" Harry said turning from his game.
"You guys know each other?" I asked.
"Yeah, Pete's been tutoring me in algebra for the last year. Of course, I know him. This guy is a lifesaver!" he said patting Peter on the shoulder.
I smiled and turned my attention over to other things as the boys continued their idle chat but then gave up on it when I realized I was too distracted. Maybe it was the simple sounds of the games around us or the flashing lights of the idle screens or the people flooding by us that I found it difficult to concentrate on anything other than the grin plastered across Gwen's face as she looked at me, then back at Peter and I saw the way their hands were intertwined behind their back while mine and Harry's were six feet apart. That's when I followed my gaze to Harry and saw nothing but his gorgeous face and the laidback demeanor it seemed to project and the scowl that was playing on the side of it which he'd been carrying around since I'd asked him to bring me to this place earlier that night. Then, very slowly I shifted my eyes towards Peter and saw him, really saw him and maybe for the first time ever even exploited the chance to figure out what he was all about and when I couldn't find anything other than the awkward lopsided smile he kept trying to hide every now and then, I gave up on this ridiculous game I'd invented on the spot with a sigh on my lips.