The Eternal Intern (Contemporary Romantic Comedy) (2 page)

Chapter 2

The beginning of the end

I
was fifteen as I started my first internship. At that time I was full of energy and joy for the job. Give me a break, it was my first internship, how the heck could I have possibly known that this is only the beginning of the end.

I started on a Monday. It was a sunny warm day in March. The radio station was about thirty minutes away from my house. It was in the heart of the city. THE CITY, not the suburbs. Alone that fact was exciting enough for me. I had to take the train with all the white collar people in their suits and ties. I felt important.

One of my first tasks at the station was to interview school kids about Michael Jackson. They were just about four or five years younger than me, but I was very nervous. I went to the school as the kids were about to leave for home. I entered the school yard and was able to meet the kids as they were just getting out through the main entrance of the building. I stopped in the middle of the yard, took a deep breath and whispered to myself “Okay Patrick, here we go, this is what you always wanted to do. Now go and write history.” I must admit, I do tend to be a little melodramatic at times.

I approached the little kids, there were about fifteen or twenty of them, and switched the microphone on. As soon as I started to talk to the kids I felt extremely relieved. It was actually fun. All the tension I created for myself was suddenly gone. You must understand, even interviewing people that still get dressed by their mothers can be very nerve
-racking. Just as I was about to leave the school one of the boys I interviewed approached me. He took his green backpack off his shoulders, put it in front of his feet, opened it and got a white sheet of paper and a blue pen with a ridiculous but kind of cool Spider-man picture on it out. He raised them in my direction.

“Would you give me a signature, Sir?
,” he asks me politely but with a nervous vibration in his voice.

“Sure
,” I replied astonished and somehow proud.

Look at me. I'm fifteen, I always wanted to be famous and here I am now, giving my first fan an autograph. Well in my eyes he was a fan.

I gave him what he asked for, patted his blond head of hair and said with full but still kind of high-pitched voice “Here you go son. Keep it in a safe place, soon it will be worth some money.”

I smiled
, daydreaming that if there is one fan, there will be more. The kid looked up at me with his big blue eyes and said “Thanks Sir, my mom will be happy about this. She always said that I should get the name of the stranger I am talking to”.

“Why?” I asked surprised.

“Well, she always says I shouldn't talk to strangers but if I have to, I should get their name for my protection”.

Well, a smart mother
, I thought to myself.

“Oh,
ok. Well then, ahem, give it to your mom,” I confirmed, blushing.

We all start small. But I was happy anyways. I felt that there
was so much waiting for me out there. Sooo much. Oh, boy was I sooo wrong.

The internship ended as
quickly as it started. I spent most of my time sending letters to a girl in England I met the summer before at a wedding. I was lying literally about nearly everything in the letter. She was nineteen and I pretended I was nineteen as well. I still haven't figured out how one can mistake a nineteen year old with a fifteen year old braces-wearing chump with big yellow spots on his forehead and no sign of facial hair whatsoever. I actually looked more like twelve.

T
he years went by and that first radio internship really created the fever in me to make it in this industry. My dad always brought magazines home that he pinched from the doctor’s office. There was always a big range of topics. Sports, cars, world news, and science, to name a few. But now and then there was this magazine among them that had its editorial office in my city. I was always looking at it again and again. It was about the lifestyle in the city. It reported about the new clubs that just opened, which restaurants were trendy, and which artist released his new album. Topics that moved the world. Well, topics which moved my world so much that I applied for an internship.

About two weeks later, it was a cloudy summer day in June, I received a call from a man named Marc.

“Hello Patrick, this is Marc Harper from the Citylights Magazine speaking. I got your resume and I liked what I read. Can you come over to the office for an interview?” the voice sounded very pleasant but still quite young.

“Sure Mr. Harper, I'd love to
.”

Right at that moment as these words left my lips, my mom yelled from downstairs up to my room “PARTICK
! PATRICK! DO YOU HAVE ANY DIRTY UNDERWEAR? I AM ABOUT TO WASH WHITES.”

I didn't know what to do. I was jumping around in my room pressing my hand against the
mouthpiece of the phone, hoping that Marc wouldn't hear anything. I don't really know why I was jumping. Some weird kind of panic reaction.

”PATRICK, DO YOU HEAR ME?  PATRICK? ANSWER YOUR MOTHER!!!”

The other side of the phone line remained silent. I was so ashamed. Marc must have heard it. I pressed my hand even harder against the speaker and screamed through my open door that I was on the phone. My mother didn't reply. I removed my hand from the phone waiting about two seconds and asked very firmly when I can come for the interview.

“Would next Monday at 4 p.m. be
ok with you?“.

I acknowledged
the time and was delighted and relieved that he must not have heard my mother’s yelling.

As the day of the interview arrived I put on my best jeans, shaved the little hair I had on my face and jumped on my bike. That wasn't the best idea. Being all sweaty at an interview doesn't give you the additional points you need to get the gig. The building was on the outskirts of an industrial park right beside a large green field. It was very peaceful out here. As I walked up to the second floor where the office was located
, I tried to think of what he might ask me. As I entered the large office, I saw Marc sitting opposite to the entrance. A short, extremely thin man behind a large desk. He didn't look a day older than twenty-five. Later, I found out that he was actually thirty four, only drank two pints of milk a day and ate nothing else than soup. And if he wasn't in the office, he was sun bathing his ridiculously orange skin in a tanning studio. He worked like a mad man. He got to the office at 7 a.m. and left around 11 p.m. Every day of the week. Now that is what I call commitment. He wore a long-sleeved white sweater and a pair of blue jeans. In the two years I worked for him I never saw him dressed in anything else but that. Either he only had white long sleeved sweaters and blue jeans in his wardrobe or he always wore the same. I never found out.

He told me that the internship would be unpaid but he would give me some newly released CD's, concert tickets, and club entries for free in exchange for my work.

Wait, did he say no money but concert tickets and club entries for free? I was seventeen years old and lived with my parents. I didn't need money, I needed social status. And that is precisely what I was about to get. 

The team was very small.
In addition to Marc, who owned the magazine, there was Paul. He was a small and pale black-haired guy who was surely still sleeping in his parent’s bed because he was afraid of the dark. And then there was Loretta a daughter of Italian immigrants. She just broke up with her boyfriend after dating him for five years. I was not sad about that fact. She was a stunner; the classical Sophia Loren type. Very curvy, full red lips, long hazelnut brown curly hair, and black eyes that you can get yourself lost in. She was, after Samantha Fox, my second big crush in life. It was clear that I would not have a chance with her. My hairstyle was parted perfectly down the middle. In other words, if you would have colored the front of my hair golden it would have looked like the “M” in the McDonald's sign. Looking back today, I wish I would still have that much hair.

I had permanent braces on my teeth and was wearing Harry Potter style glasses. It’s hard to believe
, but I wasn't the best looking man at the time.

I mostly worked three
weekdays after school and on the weekends for the magazine, mainly writing about the music scene. Now and then I had to go to night clubs or concerts to report from them. I loved it. I got into nightclubs with a VIP status and got backstage tickets for the Spice Girls, Tom Jones, Robby Williams, you name it. Suddenly I had friends, and girls started to be interested in me. Well, they were more interested in the fact that I got them VIP and backstage access into the hottest clubs and concerts in town. But I didn't care. The job did not help me lose my virginity, but at least in my fantasy it did.

On a cold November night I went with eleven friends from school to a big DJ
competition in the hottest club in town. Being young and naive I really thought the eleven individuals were my friends. But clearly they just wanted to use my connections to get into the club. I did consider that scenario somehow but I didn't want to put too much thought into it. We all met about a block away from the club. After we were complete, I walked up to the club passing the long waiting line with my entourage behind me. I felt like a mafia boss. In my head I heard the Bee Gees playing “Night Fever”. I even tried to walk like John Travolta. I must have looked ridiculous. I wore a cheap black suit with a white shirt and a black tie. Absolutely overdressed. Not the last time I would make this mistake.

I enjoyed the people standing in line looking at me enviously. Somehow, I felt respected.

Even though I had guaranteed entrance into the club I still got nervous when I stood in front of the bouncer.

“Hello Sir, Patrick plus eleven
,” I said trying to avoid the bouncer’s eyes. He looked into his big brown leather book that was lying on a stand in front of him. He focused on the page for about ten seconds. It felt like five hours to me.

“Patrick plus eleven? Mhhh?” he mumbled looking over the pages.

My tension rose. If I am not on the list what would my friends think of me and especially the people in the line I just passed very arrogantly? The bouncer’s eyes moved up and down, left and right along the page.

“Oh, yes here we go. Patrick plus eleven! Welcome Sir, I hope you enjoy the evening
,” he smiled at me opening the door to the club. I was relieved, and felt fifty pounds lighter.

The music was pounding out on the streets. It was a glorious feeling. I felt like the king of the world that night. We stepped inside and became part of the action. Blue lights, red lights, green lights, they flashed in a disturbing but harmonic way. The place was hop
ping, absolutely packed with good looking people. Young, barely dressed girls moving their hips on the dance floor as if they were making love to it, and always about eight guys around them hoping to get some attention from them. I walked straight up to the bar and ordered a Martini. I don't really like Vodka but I thought if James Bond drinks it and gets laid it has to work for me.

The bartender shouted in my direction ”LEMON TWIST OR OLIVES?”.

I glared at him. What the heck does he mean?

“NO, I JUST WANT THE MARTINI, THANK YOU”.

“I UNDERSTAND, BUT WITH A LEMON TWIST OR OLIVES?” he asked again leaning towards me.

I got agitated. I replied again, this time very confident “NO JUST THE DRINK, NO SNACKS. NOT HUNGRY RIGHT NOW!”.

The bar keeper glared at me like I had ten heads, turned away and proceeded to make the drink for me. What an idiot I thought.

As I was waiting for the Martini I looked around. It was a great spot here at the bar. It was at the end of the room and had a great view on the dance floor and the couches around it. My friends spread out. Some were dancing, others were trying to hit on girls.

I stayed in the back and enjoyed the people watching. Actually, I was just too darn shy because I never had a girl in my life before. Well, I once had a little holiday adventure with a Spanish girl. I was sixteen, she was twenty one but she thought I was twenty. I really like to fool the girls about my true age. But that was nearly two years ago.

The music was vibrating through my body and made me feel alive. I
looked around the club, “So many good looking girls,” I thought to myself. But to my discomfort there were a lot of good looking guys there, too. Competition
,
I didn’t like. I was fooling myself. I would have never had the courage to approach a girl and try to engage her into a conversation. I didn't even know what to say.
Hello? Do you come here often? Like the music?
Terrible openers. I dropped the idea and kept glancing over the dance floor. As I was looking around, a familiar but beautiful face grabbed my attention.
Loretta? The hottie from work was her!
- she was the reason I wake up every morning with damp underwear -  My eyes were following every move she made on the dance floor. She looked amazing in her tight black dress. Her naked shoulders were moving to the rhythm of the music. Her hips circled with the beat as if she was one with the music. She tossed her head to all sides and stroked her beautiful curly hair. She looked like she was enjoying herself immensely. I couldn't take my eyes off her. Suddenly, she smiled in my direction.
She noticed me
, I realized in disbelieve. I didn't smile back, I felt like a thief that got caught. I was looking around the place to act like I hadn't seen her. The song came to an end and the DJ started the next. Loretta stopped dancing and whispered something into her girlfriend’s ear. Her head turned into my direction
. Oh my god, oh my god, she’s coming over
. I tried to relax myself.
Ok Patrick, stay cool. Do exactly what you read in your flirt guide book
, I mumbled to myself. She was getting closer and closer. I took a deep breath and tried to be as cool as possible, but in reality my stomach turned.
Oh boy here she is, right in front of me.