Manta's Blatant Story-Whoring; read at your own risk.

[Manta Obscura]

How I Lost My Lunch but Gained a Lover
by Manta Obscura

 


From the first moment I saw Leslie, I knew it was meant to be. When she walked into the room for the first time, my heart did the jitterbug and stars filled my eyes. If I had been able to wolf whistle I would have done so. It is probably for the best that such skills eluded me, because this was it. This was love.

I was six years old, a blossoming nerd who liked the Power Rangers and hated physical activity. This wasn't much of a problem though, being so young and having the metabolism that inevitably accompanies such an age. My fat days would come later. Right now, though, I was svelte, goony and proud of it.

The morning that I met Leslie had been a dismal one. It was sunny outside, for one thing, meaning that we would have to go outside to play, which meant that a bee sting was imminent. I was always getting stung by bees as a kid, for reasons unbeknownst to me. I didn't even like honey, so they couldn't have a grudge against me for eating the source of their livelihood. I can only guess that they didn't like kids who wore flannel, which was the primary type of clothing that I wore. I thought flannel would make me big and burly like the Brawny paper towel guy, so I made sure to nag my parents for a new shirt and blue jeans ensemble every birthday and Christmas.

In addition to the assurance of a lunchtime sting, the day's crapulence was compounded by having a morning assembly cancelled. To kids stuck in the middle of a long school day, cancelling an assembly would be like telling an adult that they were cancelling "Free Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll" Day at work. And to make matters worse, the not-to-be assembly was replaced by an addition and subtraction exercise. I was pissed.

So there I was, sitting hopelessly in class and staring blankly at Problem 4, when there came a knock on the door. Mrs. Mayfield, our ancient, bird-faced teacher, perpetually stooped and wearing a constant rictus smirk, swooped down from her perch to answer it, opening the door with her long, skeletal fingers.

And in walked Leslie.

She was tall for a girl; she must have been four and a half feet tall. She had brown hair the color of Tootsie Rolls, and eyes the same shade of blue as Superman's leotard. Her shirt had a picture of Batman fighting the Joker, instead of something stupid and girly like rainbows or ponies. Her shoes were expensive Velcro light-up sneakers, emblazoned with the Ninja Turtles logo on the side. She was a hottie.

My mouth went dry and my hands began to sweat, as if my palms were somehow siphoning the spit from my tongue. I started to feel lightheaded, and I wondered if she had somehow carried in a fast-acting case of the cooties. As a young boy, cooties were a constant threat and I, being an informed young sprat, had heard that girls would often sneak them into class, presumably as a type of germ warfare aimed at bringing down me and my fellow male comrades.

"Settle down, class. I want you all to meet Leslie Parman, our newest student" Mrs. Mayfield squawked in her high, shrill tone. "Leslie just moved here from Los Angeles, California. Now everyone say 'hello' to Leslie."

"Hello, Leslie," I droned out with everyone else. In my head, however, I said it with a lot more emphasis: "Hello, Leslie."

"Now Leslie, find an empty seat wherever you can. Right now we're working on adding!" Mrs. Mayfield said gleefully, as if that were something to be excited about. But I was excited. I had never before met a girl that I didn't loathe with that special brand of inherent disgust that all pre-hormonal boys feel for all pre-hormonal girls; Leslie was the first.

As she demurely picked her way through the labyrinth of chairs and desks to find an empty spot, I prayed that she would choose the one next to me. Having grown up in an agnostic household, I didn't have much experience with prayer and I didn't really know how to pray or whom to pray to, so I decided to just pray to Santa. I figured that, given his reputation of omniscience, he would surely be able to see what a gorgeous creature was walking in my midst and put two and two together, giving me a bit of an early Christmas present. After all, I'd been good all year except for that one morning when I put glue on my little brother's toothbrush.

"Is this seat taken?" a voice asked me, breaking me out of my reverie. I looked up into the cherubic face of Leslie, who was standing over me with a sweet, glowing smile on her face.

My stomach turned circles, like my dog Boris when he chased his tail. Ignoring her question, I sat there dumbfounded, staring at her as if she were a holy figure, like an angel or Jombi the Genie. I could feel the heat suffusing my face, just like it did whenever mom invited her young and well-endowed friend Yolanda over to visit.

"Um, hello? Can I sit here?" she asked again, obviously trying to muscle through my awkward silence.

Despite my mouth feeling like the Sahara in dry season, I was determined to respond. After all, I didn't want her to give up on me and sit with someone else, like my archrival Tyler, who owned the Ninja Turtles Pizza Thrower and the optional Pizzaboard, sold separately. I couldn't compete with that. I needed to say something clever, something witty, something that would let her know that I was the guy that she'd want to play toys with.

"Uh . . . erm . . . eh . . ." I said. Not the most eloquent thing I've ever said to a woman but, admittedly, not the least eloquent, either.

"Is that a yes?" she asked, quizzically yet patiently.

"Y-y-ye-" I began.

She never did hear the sibilant that would have signaled her to sit down. Right then my breakfast Pop Tart decided that it was tired of my intestines pushing it around, and it came back, and up, with a vengeance. Right onto Leslie. In full, bright, strawberry-colored glory.

To my credit, I didn't puke a lot on her, although what I did was delivered with the force of a fire hose, painting her dark blue shirt a shade of salmon pink that, if looked at out of context, would probably have been quite pretty. In context, however, it was quite disgusting, not to mention embarrassing for both her and me. I was pretty sure that I had just made a rather unfavorable first impression.

The rest of that day is a blur to me. All I remember is being swiftly ushered out of the room in Mrs. Mayfield's bony talons and being taken to see the school nurse, a rather unlikable and mannish woman who could not really do anything other than tell students to lie down for awhile. But that was okay with me. If I had had my way, I would have lay on the uncomfortable nurse's office bed for the rest of my life, unseen by any of my classmates ever again, especially Leslie. I would have come out of hiding only to pee, watch Ninja Turtles, and grab the occasional Pop Tart in the morning.

*               *               *

After this episode I was understandably less-than-excited to face the following day at school, but my parents were immune to all my cries of protest. Parents never understand the severity of certain situations, and how those situations demand certain unorthodox privileges, like being allowed to skip school or put peanut butter on macaroni. Opulent creature comforts like this were called for at times when the spirit was bruised beyond normal modes of repair.

Alas, my rhetorical remonstrations fell on deaf ears, and the next day I was skulking into school, fully prepared for an unrelenting barrage of malefic verbal missiles to be hurled my way.

"Hey, Jacob," they would all say, "what's the difference between you and a spitting cobra?"

"I don't know," I would answer idiotically.

"At least a spitting cobra gives a warning before it strikes!"

Besides being a practical impossibility because of its level of sophistication for first-graders, such banter would undoubtedly weather the already tenuous foundation of coolness that I had been able to eke out thus far.

Because of all of this, I entered class with a drained, defeated aura and a beaten quality in my gait. It seemed to me that, in every corner of the room, my classmates were conspiring about what my new nickname should be. I was betting on "Chuck" or "Ralph," although given the acerbic nature of some of the students there, possibilities like "Barf Kid" or "The one kid who upchucked on Leslie" were equally likely.

I couldn't bear to meet eyes with anyone, for fear that I would find in their gaze tiny, invisible "Permanent nerd" stamps, ready to engrave the baleful moniker upon me forever. I put my head down, cradling my face in my arms in "7-up" style.

Dear Lord Santa, I prayed, please, please just let this day be over. I promise I'll never puke again, except on liver-and-onion night.

"Are you okay?" a voice asked me, interrupting my prayer.

Having been so engrossed in my prayers and camouflage, I hadn't even heard anyone approach me. I idly wondered if it was the first jeerer, come to deliver their taunt in person. If it was, I wasn't going to fuel their derision with a face-to-face confrontation. I merely grunted an indeterminable reply.

After a few moments the voice spoke again, asking, "Are you sure you're okay? You didn't seem good yesterday."

Now I was confused. If this was a jeer, then it wasn't a particularly effective or to-the-point one. Plus, the voice sounded way too kind to be a heckler. Tentatively, I looked up.

And there, like a miraculous angel, stood Leslie, puke-free and faintly smiling. She wore a red and black Thundercats shirt, along with Pac-Man hair clips and Scooby Doo sneakers, a walking avatar of all things good and wonderful in the world. The air around her smelled of Play-Doh, an aroma which, to this day, makes my heart feel light and fluttery. My breath caught in my throat and my thoughts turned slow as rolling sludge. The muscles in my throat clenched like my grandpa's grip on a mound of pistachios.

"Well? Are you okay?" she asked again.

I stared back stupidly, unable to speak. All that I could manage was to nod slightly, like a bobblehead with a warped spring. I'm sure she was impressed with my eloquence.

"Okay. Well, I'm just going to sit down this time without asking," she said as she slid into the seat next to me. As she did the scent of Play-Doh hit me even stronger, and I could practically taste and feel the salty confection rolling along my tongue.

"You can really puke," she said, looking over at me. I felt my face burn bright.

". . . sorry," I managed to mew.

She smirked. "It's okay. Don't worry about it." She tossed her hair in a way that made my legs shake, adding bluntly, "I puked on my dog Schubert last week when I was sick."

Though it intrigued me to think that such a seraphic figure could be in any way connected to such an inglorious activity as puking, I did not have the nerve or audacity to ask her to elucidate. Instead I just stared blankly in what I hoped was an expression of open and rapt attention.

"Schubert's a good dog," she continued, "but sometimes he gets rough with my other dogs."

"You have other dogs?" I asked, drawn out of my meek silence by the idea. I had never known anyone who had more than one dog, unless you count my friend Patrick, who had two Chihuahuas named Peekaboo and Peekatwo. But as everyone knows, Chihuahuas only count as a quarter of a dog anyway, so he didn't really even own one dog.

"Yeah! I have Snowy, who's big and white, and Dipper, who's white but not as white as Snowy. And then there's Bubba, who's starting to lose his fur. He's getting kind of old."

Four dogs? I thought. No one has four dogs! This woman is a goddess.

I was in love, head over heels. Sitting beside me was a beautiful, interesting girl, a girl who liked cool stuff for a change, and who had four dogs. Here was a girl who could get puked on and smile about it. Here was the girl for me.

Mustering up all of my courage, I popped the question:

"Leslie, do you want to play on the swings together at recess?"

*               *               *

"There's no way that that's right, Les," I said, shaking my head.

"Jacob Dean, come on," she said, smirking impishly. She always called me by my first and last name when she wanted me to do something, probably because she knew that it worked. Six years of my own parents doing it had conditioned me to respond like an automaton, acquiescing to whatever demand followed the statement of my full moniker. But even so, I wasn't going to give up without a fight.

"But it tastes gross, Les, and how do you even know that it'll give us powers?"

She put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes. It was her signature expression when she was talking to me. "My memere always says that you are what you eat, right?"

"Right," I mumbled, grudgingly.

Leslie's grandma, who she called her "memere," seemed to have a whole slew of aphorisms that she had given Leslie and which Leslie had become skilled at pulling out at a moment's notice, usually to persuade me to try something or another. I had only met Leslie's memere once, when she chaperoned a field trip to the zoo, but I was so thoroughly impressed by her striking resemblance to the witch in Snow White that I was inclined to believe anything that she said, lest she cast a spell on me or something. Hence, I always took it quite seriously when Leslie told me something on her memere's authority.

"Well, then, why wouldn't it work with grass and flowers, too?" she asked. "We could have plant magic!"

Though I had no idea what "plant magic" was, it did sound pretty cool. But something about eating handfuls of the dry, dusty, who-knows-where-it's-been grass behind the school's swing set made me cringe.

"But if that's true, then how come we don't get magic from eating other stuff, too?" I asked. "I ate a hamburger yesterday, and I don't have hamburger magic!"

"Of course not," Leslie said, loftily. "Meat doesn't have as much magic as a plant."

"Why not?"

"Because plants grow, of course! When was the last time you saw a piece of meat grow?"

This made sense enough. I hadn't ever seen my hamburger grow although, given my liking of them, I wouldn't have minded it if they did.

"Besides," Leslie continued, "When you cook something, like you do a hamburger, a lot of the magic gets taken out of it. You gotta eat it without cooking it."

I considered this for a moment, and asked, "How do you know all of this, Les?"

She just casually shrugged, as if to say, It's common knowledge, you fool.

Leslie knew a lot of neat things, things that parents and teachers didn't tell you. She knew about magic, monsters, and all manner of strange and fantastical people and places. She knew family who knew friends who knew family of friends that had personally witnessed secondhand accounts of the Lock Ness Monster. At lunchtime she would often tell me about Bigfoot, or Atlantis, or how Bigfoot sunk Atlantis.

How could I not believe her?

"Okay, I'll try some," I said, and my heart soared when I saw Leslie grin and clap in reply. I reached down, grabbed a hank of the foul, dusty lawn clippings and pulled. Not wanting to seem like a wimp, I quickly thrust the dirty grass into my mouth and began to chew, praying to Santa that the powers would be worth the taste.

*               *               *

That school year, Leslie and I were inseparable. We spent whole days together talking about everything and nothing. I would tell her about why monkeys were the coolest animal in existence, and she would explain to me the underlying physics behind spit-wad shooting. Many a recess was spent just wandering and telling stories and legends that each of us had picked up throughout our years. I would ask her to tell me about famous actors and actresses that I thought she had surely met out on the West Coast. After all, only actors, actresses and Lassie lived out in Los Angeles, I thought. She, in turn, would ask me to tell her about the ghosts and monsters that lived around here, like the Skeleton Man that lived at Loveland Castle. I especially liked telling her about the Skeleton Man because, invariably, fear would overtake her and she would cling to me in a strong, clenching hug.

During class time we would hold hands when the teacher wasn't looking, and pass notes to each other. Granted, since both of us were barely literate, the notes mainly consisted of drawings and doodles of various unrecognizable figures and a few short, blocky words, but it was the thought that counted.

On one memorable occasion at recess, I even "went all the way" with Leslie: I kissed her on the cheek beneath the slide. She told me not to tell, though, because she was afraid that all of the other girls would laugh at her. In a true show of chivalry I agreed to honor her request, just as long as she promised to let me kiss her again.

The days went on like that, some memorable, some not, with most settling into a rhythm of sober joyfulness that comes from the contented fulfillment of early love and friendship. I cannot recall all of the memories or list them in rote, for each was one of those simple, golden experiences that flares brightly for just an instant, like a shooting star, and then vanishes into the subtle oblivion of thoughtless satisfaction. Suffice it to say that those days with Leslie were bright, luminous and joyful, some of the happiest times in all my days as a child.

Star showers cannot last forever, though, and neither can our golden days. The days with Leslie ended, as all eras tend to do. I didn't understand then what "custody battles" or "visitation rights" were, and I didn't care. I just knew that I was losing Leslie, and that the distance between me and her was one that I could not bridge.

The day that she left she gave me a note under the slide, and told me not to open it until that night. Then she kissed me, this time on the lips, and hugged me even though I had not even begun to tell the story of the Skeleton Man.

*               *               *

That night before bed, I put on my Flash pajamas. But I didn't feel like running; I felt like reading. Crawling into bed, I unfurled the note that Leslie had slipped me, turned on my flashlight in the dark, and began to read. In her big, blocky letters, the simple note said only this:

Remember me.

                Love,

                Leslie

[Iason Ouabache]

  That was beautiful, man.

[Manta Obscura]

  That was beautiful, man.

Thanks, Iason.

[East Coast Hustle]

no shit! that was great, dude. you gotta write more.

[Manta Obscura]

no shit! that was great, dude. you gotta write more.

Thanks, ECH. I'm refining a writing piece right now, so I'll have to post it when I get done.

[Eve]

Awesome, Manta.

[shadowfurry23]

is I believe the proper response.

Lovely stuff.  A+++ would read again.