The Men and the Boys: Marco

This didn't start out as a "Men and the Boys" chapter, but now that I've finished and looked back on the whole thing, it couldn't be more fitting.

I promised I would reveal my second-to-third justification for wanting to go to Jordan, and here it is.

Marco.

Devastatingly sexy, brilliantly smart, sickeningly successful, stupidly goofy Marco. One of my oldest friends, one of my dearest friends, and in life's twisted purposes, the one that got away.

We met at school, nine years ago. I was a cathartic English major, and he was a foreign student in Med school. Foreign meaning, not from here. Foreign meaning, not destined to stay.

Determined to go to Journalism school for my post-grad, I was on the University paper. Being on the paper meant sacrificing many evenings to edit everyone else's mistakes, and the occasional weekend to cover events. That Saturday it was a soccer game between Portugal and Sweden for some international tournament, I don't remember exactly, and I was packed off with a school camera, film and notepad. It was my first photo assignment, and my first sports story too.

It didn't go well, not from the paper's point of view. The coverage wasn't detailed enough, they said. Well of course it wasn't, I love soccer and was too busy jumping up and down in the stands to take notes. The pictures stank, they said. Of course they stank, I had nosebleed seating and the piece of crap school camera kept jamming. The story never made it to print.

Confession: I was also a little busy noticing someone, noticing me. He was sitting a few rows back, all dark curly hair and clearly amused with me and the camera; even more amused at my swearing. At first I was determined not to like him because he cheered everytime Portugal scored (hey, I love Vikings), but there was something about that half-smile that got me. Little by little I started looking over my shoulder to see if he was still noticing... and he always was. Even more, he'd now noticed me noticing him, and made silly faces every time I turned around. I forgave him the Portugese error.

Game over, fans throwing game programs and ticket stubs onto the field, hullabaloo everywhere. I went to take a photo but what a shock, it was jammed. Swearing defiantly then dropping some film, out of nowhere came this whisper in my ear:

"Don't throw the camera over, too."

I whipped around, and there was that killer smile, right beside me. Unfortunately some headcase decided to kick my film in another direction at that very moment so I had to go running after it. Film recovered I looked back up, but he was gone.

I capped it off as a good memory, thinking I would never see him again.