By Samuel Armen

It was a Wednesday night, approaching 21:00 (11PM). We had just returned home from an evening outing and still had plenty of energy to spare. In result, all 21 of us interns ventured outside to the backyard by the barbeque, open space, and below the stairs that led up to the pool. Here we would learn how our group would spend our nights when we did not go bar-hopping, lounge-hopping, or clubbing.

Together, we sat in a circle, some of us with drinks in our hands, some of us without, and began various conversations which unified in a game: Never Have I Ever. The game consists of everyone putting ten fingers up, one person saying an activity that he or she has never done, and everyone who has done the activity has to lower a finger. The questions are often embarrassing and personal, adding a group-gossip feel to the game. The person with no fingers left loses – or wins – depending on who you’re talking to.

The revelatory game proved to be a hit. Everyone was laughing, consistently, whether you put a finger down or left it up. Apparently I was the forth wildest out of 21 interns – I wasn’t sure if I was to feel honored or disappointed with myself for being such a beastly human.

Evidently I must have wanted to be at least slightly less wild because the fifth wildest person and I ended up going up the stairs and lying by the pool. At first there were four of us. The other two were far-less wild according to their numerical digit (Pun intended, if one knows what ‘digits’ are). These more tamed individuals rested with us from 1AM until 2:30. The whole time we rested, our eyes faced the stars, our feet dipped in the cool water, and our hands relaxed on the backs of our heads as we drifted from conversation to conversation: detailing memories we’ve already captured, jokes we’ll always laugh at, the results of the the game our group just finished, our opinions of the last five days, our internships, who or what we missed back home, and what we wanted to do for the next four weeks.

As mentioned earlier, the two lesser-wild folks stayed until 2:30AM. After they left, it was just number five and I. Together, her and I shared a conversation that lasted more than 2 hours. The dominant topic was aesthetic, it generally revolved around beauty.

“Who do you think is the prettiest girl?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Everyone in this group has something great about them.”

We painted maps of our fellow interns; the round cheeks and enthusiastic smile of a particularly adorable girl, the intense green-yellow eyes of a gorgeous female, the mature poise and attractive relaxation of one of the men, the cuteness of one of the boy’s timidity and reserve.

“You know you’re beautiful too, right?” I said to her.

I felt a hint of awkwardness on her side of the ten seconds that passed by. As always, it felt like a heaviness on the senses; a burdensome weight on sensation that renders easy movements and regular processes into strenuous difficulties. Knowing that awkwardness is at least a two-sided mechanism, I focused on holding onto my relaxation. I knew what I had said was absolutely true; I could tell the majority of people in our group that they are beautiful without batting an eye or feeling the slightest suspicion that I’ve been seduced by the shaping of subjectivity.

“I feel that it’s mostly the beautiful people who don’t know their beautiful.”

I thought of how true beauty in a person often begets humility which in turn begets the stupefaction of self-image. I turned to her; she was smiling then, with the portrait of the stars curved in her eyes. That particular conversation began around 3AM – and we did not leave until 4:30 AM.