I Am What I Am by John Barrowman (white hot kiss .TXT) 📕

That evening, we went to dinner at a restaurant in the Gaslight District. It was one that a friend who was a regular at Comic-Con had recommended to me. After a wonderful meal and, admittedly, a couple or three bottles of wine,9 I let my dad savour the last morsel of his cream-laden dessert, paid the bill and then stood up. As is usually the case at a Barrowman family dinner, there’d been lots of terrific table talk, so we’d been having a good laugh throughout most of the evening. I had the perfect way to close out our night, but I wasn’t going to tell anyone until I had a head start.

We were nearing the front door of the restaurant when I suddenly grabbed my mum and dad and shoved them out the door in front of me. I whistled for a rickshaw, pushed them on and jumped up next to them, just as Carole, Clare and Scott were emerging from the restaurant.10 They figured out quickly what I was going to do because I could see their eyes darting around looking for another rickshaw.

‘I’ll race you,’ I yelled. ‘Round the block. Winner gets twenty bucks!’

Carole and Clare were now clambering on a second rickshaw and screaming at Scott to hurry up. The drivers soon realized what was up, and that there was extra money involved in this for them, too.

‘Go!’

Our driver took off like his rickshaw had wings. I’ve never seen anyone pedal so fast in my entire life. He could have generated electricity. Both bikes took the turn faster than was probably legal and suddenly we were in slow-moving traffic, trickling through the main streets of the Gaslight District. Think of it like duelling rickshaws along Old Compton Street in central London on a Saturday night. Our driver cut in front of two cabs and almost took out a group of Japanese tourists. My mum called back to them, ‘Sorry, sorry,’ as the rickshaw darted in and out of traffic like a pinball.

I hope, readers, you can appreciate how hard this was for the poor driver: hauling three adults, one of them me, at rubber-burning speed, while another rickshaw was chasing his tail – and gaining on him all the time.

At the second turn, before heading into the home stretch, the rickshaw carrying Carole, Scott and Clare got caught at a pedestrian crossing. They had to stop. I could hear the words ‘no fair’ echoing behind me when my rickshaw driver risked life and limb and jumped us onto the pavement, avoiding the next crowded intersection.

From the beginning, Carole, Scott and Clare’s rickshaw driver was at a bit of a disadvantage because they’d been slower off the mark,11 but I could see their driver had calf muscles that suggested he did more than pedal rickshaws during the tourist season. By the time we were all headed down the home stretch, weaving in and out of traffic, they’d almost caught up with us.

Something had to be done.

Up ahead and to my right, I could see a public parking lot. I told my driver to cut through the lot, missing the next block of traffic and, I hoped, bringing us back out in front of the restaurant where this Grand Prix had begun. Luckily for me, he was willing to take the risk. Once again, he shot the bike up on the pavement, and pedalled madly through the lot.

Carole’s driver saw what had happened, but he figured he had strength on his side. He stayed on the street. My dad, meanwhile, was bobbing forward and back next to me in the rickshaw, as if his momentum would somehow help our pace.

Readers, my tactic paid off. Amid a cacophony of partying pedestrians, honking cars really annoyed with us, and blaring music from nearby clubs, I let out a cheer that rose above all of this when my rickshaw got to the restaurant inches before the other one.

I paid for the rides, tipped both drivers really well, and gave the prize money to the driver of my rickshaw. While we were all laughing and catching our breath, a group of Comic-Con fans came running up to us.

‘I knew it! I knew that was Captain Jack I saw in a rickshaw.’

Needless to say, when Team Barrowman returned to the hotel, we all needed some refreshments. And then, after I’d made sure my parents were safely in their room, Carole, Clare, Scott and I ended up playing an unintentional game of ‘Ding Dong Ditch’.

For those of you who may not know what this is, it’s essentially the game that every child – no matter where he or she grew up – has played at some point in his or her childhood. You chase around your neighbourhood, ringing doorbells and running away.12

Gav, who had accompanied me on this trip, hadn’t joined us for dinner that night because he had an early flight back to the UK the next morning. So, I decided to play the game on him. In my version of the prank, I didn’t plan to ‘ditch’ after he answered; I planned to moon him when he opened his door.

By this time, Scott had given up on the three of us and he’d headed to our room. With Carole and Clare watching the hallway behind me for other guests or, God forbid, security, I loosened my belt and my jeans, ready to drop them when Gav came to his door.

I banged on room 316.13 Nothing happened. I banged again. This time, in the spirit of the evening’s events, I began singing Gav’s name to the tune of ‘A Bicycle Built for Two’.

‘Gavin, Gavin, give me your answer do.’

Suddenly, Clare hissed,14 ‘Security!’

I started to run, forgetting that I’d loosened my belt. While I was at full sprint, my jeans locked around my knees and down I went, sliding face first across the carpet at maximum speed.

Clare and Carole leapt over me, laughing hysterically and calling out, ‘Payback!’