Stephanie, Consuela, and Ariana

An Excerpt from “Time of My Life” (Forthcoming)

A little while before all these events came to pass, Freshman year, and perhaps thoroughly along the same lines, I found what could only be described as what I thought was eureka, or some Diocletian retreat.

I mentioned that I was someone who came from Florida originally?

Well, my first encounter with someone who happened to be from South Florida, while in Illinois happened to be two girls who lived near me in those suburbs of Chicago.

After me, and David, got done playing squash indoors, we moved outside near the pool, to rest, and relax.

When I met them, they were in the hot tub at my communities clubhouse. It was dark, and the scene is so vivid that I occasionally still reminisce about them, and their whereabouts.

As I was with my friend David, and they were older than us, they at first presumed that we were going to the local community college.

After contriving some sentences in Spanish to them, I had firmly convinced them that we were in both high school, and college!

Consuela, who was as beautiful as the girls that I can recall back in Florida, was shy and reserved. While her cousin Ariana, was more talkative, though probate.

This was a scene which had played out many a’ time beforehand with me, but one that I was now attempting to seize, this time to my own advantage.

My friend, Stephanie Palomares, who I was attempting to make my girlfriend after all, was snide at any remark I made about them, and her nonchalant, though incisive commentary on Consuela, and her apparent folly. I took, out of my neglect to know such things at the time, as something which all girls, and women did, whenever they saw another woman, that they for whatever reason, chose not to have friendly relations with, at all.

After walking them back to their home, I can recall waiting outside of their upstairs window until the lights came on.

As I stared up at her, Consuela, in between the volleyball nets, and sand, I knew that I instantly had found my latest, and perhaps greatest High School Crush.

Later, during what was supposed to be a Turnabout Dance, where the girls ask the boys to be their date, I attempted to sway Consuela’s emotions toward me, and have delivered to her a half dozen pair of roses, which were available in the school’s cafeteria for sale. Upon serendipity, I came across the hall monitors, as they were delivering them, class by class. I waited outside her classroom, so that I could have the first impressions of how she felt.

As they were being delivered and she saw the name, I saw her smile, and she seemed to be comforted by the angle which I chose.

“This must be like Diocletian!”, I declared to myself! “Like Ticonderoga!”

However, as I saw Ariana, her cousin, whisper something in her ear, she at first nodded, and then smiled more broadly.

But, as Ariana motioned to the front of the classroom where I now stood, she quickly showed her intemperance, and was now merely satisfied, with the arrival, of this set of roses.

To make it worst, I was already on my way to hand deliver the chocolates, from Russel Stover’s, which I thought would deliver the final edge I needed, to formally ask her to Turnabout.

As I attempted to deliver them, her intemperance grew to despair, and then finally embarrassment, as Michael Ayala, the school’s Captain, and Head Amateur Wrestler, a Wilmer Valderrama look alike, was coming in quickly behind me, to deliver his own, dozen or more set of flowers, and chocolates!  

As the teacher asked me to please leave, so that she could teach the class, I felt my embarrassment climax, and then stabilize.  

By then, my futile attempts to open my box of chocolates for her, so that we could at least share one, had become quite the extraordinary scene!

Ultimately, it was an aborted attempt to attend my first High School dance.

It’s here, like in so many other chances, I would learn, for me, love, is a losing game.

 I came away from that particular engagement proud of my efforts, but upset and embarrassed at the circumstances, and inconsequentiality of my actions.

And my friend David Morris, even said that it became a hot topic of conversation in the school cafeteria.

Later, I would see Consuela during a college summer break, in Palatine, only this time at her local community College.

Stephanie, someone whom I’d been closer too, had eventually moved away.

While in Medical School, however, I was surprised to see Stephanie’s name, and face in one of my Selected Studies in Surgery classes be passed along to me, in an article with her in it.

I could only laugh as it showed her, and at least two other of her now friends (later I would learn at least three), receiving several Plastic Surgery Operations, all at the same time, and all together.

The amount, and the former I knew, which had done the deed, was something which had begun to place a smile on my face, the instant I knew she was okay.

The look, which was impressive to me, was surprising nonetheless.

Later, we had a short discourse on the different techniques, and maneuvers which made the surgeries success possible, while I chuckled in class about her newfound fame as a fashion model.

She had apparently moved on to dating NBA, and NFL Football players, and was living in Las Vegas with her friends.

She was already beautiful, but the breast, lips, and buttocks augmentations, only made it appear more so.

Earlier, and perhaps in another life, while there was still filming from what was for me, a chance to model, and a place on YouTube’s then nascent lineup of teen, and teen oriented internet reality shows.

These shows, along with at least one other show for kids from another local school, New Trier High School, along with the shows on ESPN, that would come to see my school play Football, Baseball, and Basketball, constituted the majority of my prestige in high school, and time in front of the camera, and nation, bar-none.

And while the filming was going on, I may have not had any idea, as to the existence, of the proliferation, of its erstwhile production.

And, while I was never an athlete, that would be looked at as a prototypical sports obsessed individual. By the time I graduated from Palatine, in 2002, and as individual, after individual admitted to steroid, and performance enhancing drug use.

I became regarded as one of the most highly recognized Football Quarterbacks in the Nation.

Add to that my studies in Home Economics, and Cuisine, resulting in a successful promotion to a single Michelin Star, upon graduation.

And, I felt more than preoccupied, by the end of my High School, Academic Career.   

This luck, being a part of an elite All-American class, which was pure happenstance, and coincidence, was precipitated, as my School Administrators said, by the amount of fraudulent homework assignments, which were turned in, throughout the four years at Palatine, by my class.

And the schools at the surrounding Suburban Schools.

The rampant culture of drug, and steroid use amongst the football, and sports teams.

As well as the remarks, and very real heroism, which I displayed on the days before, during, and following, the then attacks of 9/11, on the country.     

As for Stephanie, When I last spoke to her, while still in high school, she had described the idea of “simply dying”, and “going away”.

I had anguished over my inability to convince her of not killing herself, and when news erroneously reached me of her death.

I decided to fundraise through a run-a-thon for her, and her families expenses to cover the funeral.

Her mother was someone, whom she had never truly gotten along with, or the crowd which she hung out with, and only added to her sense of alienation back home.

When I attempted to finally contact her mother, and deliver the said amount raised, from the run-a-thon.

I was bewildered, to say the very least, to know that her mother, wasn’t speaking after a series of health problems.

And the most she could provide, was a half-way erroneous account of how “long-ago”, Stephanie had run away from home, and never returned.

 However, her new found fame, so many years later, came, with a sort of sense of sticker shock. Not only was she alive, and thriving, but she also happened to have a successful modeling, and singing career.

Later, we would reconnect over Instagram of all places, and I found it comforting to know that her success, and her name preceded her, even on the internet. Though, I still often wonder if it’s her, I truly am speaking of.

However, as for Consuela back in Palatine?  

Her ability to speak English was much improved, and she even remembered me.

Her choice of friends, however, along with her newfound experience as a Community College attendee, led me to believe that she was less than educated about the World, and its expectations of her.

Having impressed her with my attendance at a prestigious University, I asked her to a movie, and we made out in the back of the theater, which soon proceeded to my car.

Afterwards, I dropped her off at home, and she was soon, towards the end of that summer, consumed by those same crowds that were once perceived, but never fully accepted by me at Palatine.

Later, after our encounter, I was told by her cousin Ariana, that she was pregnant, and expecting.

I knew it wasn’t mine.

I lost contact with Consuela, only later seeing her in Chicago, at Downtown Ogilvy Train Station.

I attempted to see her again, but soon lost contact with her, and her cousin, Ariana.

My impression is that the child, a little girl, had been given up for adoption to a local agency.

Presumably, so that Consuela could maintain her sexually active, and heavily drug dependent, risky social habits.

Her whereabouts remain unknown to this day.

But every time I hear about Venezuela, her hometown Caracas, or the events which may transpire there.

I’m reminded of the time we spent together, and that summer after high school when we first met.