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Right in the Balls
Maybe I shouldn’t have kicked Lionel Rodriguez in the balls, since that got this whole thing started. It was a sunny day, with lots of chirping birds and squawking ferrets—though I believe the ferrets were just my imagination. Ferrets don’t squawk, and they are very rare in the Philippines after all. Cars could be heard as they passed by our school, and Lionel and I faced each other in the playground.
He kept on shrieking, “Sam has big ears!”
I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t listen. He kept on repeating, and I kept on fuming at him.
Lionel was a scraggly little boy with curly black hair and a nose that looked like it belonged to a weasel. His beady eyes twinkled as he kept on shrieking at me. I—like any other six-year-old girl would have done if put in that situation—walked over to him and kicked him right in his nuts. Lionel dropped to his knees, clutching himself and still shrieking, but this time in a much louder voice with more colorful language than his immature insult of my ears.
Our teacher immediately ran out of the classroom to the scene of the crime. She took one look at Lionel and grabbed me by the ear. She dragged me inside and started lecturing on proper decorum that children my age should master and observe. I guess it never occurred to her that I was just six. It never occurred to anybody.
Lionel didn’t speak to me for the rest of the school year, not that I expected him to. He transferred to a different school the next year, and I never saw him again.
Grown ups and members of the opposite sex have been wary of me since that incident. Perhaps, I have been wary of them also.
“In the flesh,” I said, smiling back though I wasn’t sure if the smiled reached my eyes. I sat down in front of him and told myself to endure an entire meal with dirt personified.
It had been nine years since that incident at the playground. I had grown into a somewhat underweight young lady, but was still apt to kick an offending male in the balls. I had done it a total of six times already.
I was at a posh café, enduring what I though to be punishment for not finding the opposite sex exactly pleasant. Was it my fault that the male species was made up of grimy slime balls? My older sister thought it her mission in life to find me a suitable boyfriend. However, it seemed that this time she had looked outside of the human race. The so-called date who was standing in front of me was about to kill me with his onion-breath.
“Your sister and I know each other from this summer class we took together,” whatever his name was said. “I’m a couple of years older than you, but she thought we’d hit it off.”
“I don’t see why,” I said, somewhat rudely. Seeing that he really was making an effort to be nice, I recoiled and decided to try another tactic. This person/bulk of flesh who was sitting in front of me did not deserve my wrath for my sister. I leaned back and looked at him in the eye. “Listen, I think you’re a nice guy, and I want to save both our time. From this brief encounter, I don’t think we have anything in common at all, and I’m not really searching for a relationship or a partner.” He looked shocked, so I took advantage of his distraction by putting my money on the table. “I’m paying for what I ate.” I shrugged at him with a smile. “Let’s just pretend we never met, or never went on this ridiculously mismatched date.”
I stood up and walked out of the café. Checking my watch, I realized I still had enough time before my sister found out and raised hell, so I could still go to the mall for a few more hours. I walked on, not bothering to look back at the café and see how my former date was processing the whole situation.
I walked to the mall, which was near enough for me not to get tired or sweaty. Stepping inside, I let the guard check my purse, wondering where I should go first. I decided to go to the secondhand bookstore.
My eyes wandered over every guy I passed by on my way to the bookstore. The guys I saw confirmed the theory that I had long developed. The good looking and nice guys were mostly taken. The ugly and nice guys were taken too. Don’t even bother about ugly and rude guys. Good-looking guys who were still single, on the other hand, were most likely rude and had been passed from one female to another, each girl realizing that he was not worth her time. So, why bother with leftovers? Plus, good-looking guys who were nice and single were most likely gay.
After entering the bookstore, I examined the paperbacks. There wasn’t a Judy Blume or Anne Tyler book in sight. I carefully ignored the romance novels with the melodramatic covers to avoid spewing out my guts right then and there.
Sure, I liked sentimental novels, but not ones where the heroine throws herself at the hero in the first few chapters. It was a downright insult to my gender. Romance novels just cultivated the hopes of women of finding a perfect mate, instead of waking them up and helping them realize that no such mate exists or would ever exist.
I looked through the paperbacks, hoping to find some new author or perhaps a Mary Higgins Clark novel at the least. Engrossed with the blurb on the back cover of an Elmore Leonard novel, I was annoyed when someone said, “Sam, is that you?”
I looked up, tucking the book under one arm and saw a person who looked vaguely familiar standing in front of me. I became suspicious in an instant. Psychos were always amuck in my dear beloved Iloilo City. “Do I know you?”
“I don’t believe this,” the stranger said, shaking his head. “You don’t remember me anymore? You kicked me in, um, a sensitive area when we were in kindergarten.”
I stared at him and it dawned in me. Lionel Rodriguez—with a less weasel-like nose and slightly nicer eyes—was standing in front of me. “Now, I remember. That was almost a decade ago. You still recognize me?”
“Who could forget someone like you?” Lionel said, grinning. I knew what he was talking about.
We continued talking right there in that cramped second hand bookstore. I discovered that he had been in the same school he had transferred in since kindergarten. We liked the same books and movies, and we were about to move on to other topics until my cellphone started ringing.
I was sure that it could be no one else but my sister who had no doubt prepared a lecture for me on decorum, containing insights very similar to what my kindergarten teacher had shared nine years ago.
“Sam, do you know what you just did?” Lisa, my sister, said. “You just walked out on one of my closest friends! What were you thinking? Do you have any consideration at all for other people’s feelings?”
I covered the mouthpiece of my cellphone and tried to smile at Lionel and held up my hand at him. “Just a second.”
“Are listening to me? Sam, are you still there? Sam!” Lisa said in a much louder voice. “Tell me where you are right this second.”
“I’m in a bookstore talking to a boy I haven’t seen in almost ten years,” I said, “and you know what? I’m having a good time.”
It was my turn to ask if Lisa was still on the line. She didn’t answer for so long that I thought she dropped her phone, until her mouth took possession of her entire body. “Sam, you let me know what this boy’s name is. I want to know everything about him, who his parents are, where he goes to school, how old he is. Does he have a police—“
I ended the call, sick of listening to Lisa’s stupid diatribe. Turning back to Lionel, I saw that his eyes were twinkling just as I remembered them and he was grinning. He leaned against a shelf and said, “You know, I think you have smaller ears now.”
“Thanks,” I said, grinning back.
Before we separated, he asked for my number. And you know what I did?
I gave it to him. I decided that maybe, just maybe, my guys-suck-pessimistic view of the world should end where it started. Maybe kicking Lionel Rodriguez’s balls in kindergarten wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Author's Note:
My second one shot on FP... It's short, but I really like the story. I'd appreciate reviews, guys. Thanks in advance.
