Dirtbag on [excerpts] mode.

Little Manhattan made me think of who I am back then. The gooey, romanticized and much-forgotten puppy love was what the cute little movie narrates throughout its plot. It breathes everything that’s juvenile and precocious at the same time. Though I have to admit that its petty infatuated scenes somewhat made an impact of major irritation on me (like kids holding hands and kids kissing, what the fuck), I have nothing against the movie. It happens for a number of reasons, and we can’t blame those cute little kids for thinking about love: it’s part of growing up, anyway.

It made me remember myself way back fourth grade: I used to have a sleek, hair-gelled crowning glory with a seemingly stiff appearance - “even lizards can die once it jumps on your hair”, as my Dad puts it. I’m such a fat slob back then, though I’m pretty neat to look at but still a slob in my own little ways (I flunked Math back then, and that stigma fueled my hatred towards numbers).

I used to have this ultimate crush who happened to sit right next to me when I was in grade four, though I won’t make trouble by revealing her name here. She’s just this chinky-eyed girl who’s really slim, wears a sando-bra under her school uniform (I don’t know why that detail was very much vivid on my mind, lol) and smart and really sweet and all. Anyway, we were practically having this boyfriend-girlfriend thing way when we were in grade five: we used to hold hands on our way to the school cafeteria, and there we’ll eat together the way the Kristine-Jericho love team does it on Pangako Sa’Yo (which was rampant back then), though of course our sweetness still conforms with the school policies (we were in a Catholic school back then). Then I’ll play chess with some friends and she’ll cheer me up to do the right moves and pawn all those dimwits. Those kind of stuff, it makes you smile for a while even if it’s slightly distracting.

In short, we do what kids do when they assume that they’re in love or something like it.

There were a lot of contingencies and third parties with that puppy love relationship: I never thought that even my best friend would suddenly turn his back on me just because he wants to take that risky step of laying a finger on my ultimate crush. But it went out smoothly.

When I was in sixth grade, though, I suddenly felt like moving away from her. I can’t recall every scene or every bit of it, but I was suddenly moved by the saying that we kids “don’t really know what love means”. We might have assume that the holding-hands-while-walking thing is love, but it’s just puppy love. There’s a whole lot more out there, waiting for us on the big High School building.

So there. We’re definitely close to be engaged in a much more intimate relationship (but no sex, of course I am a well-bred blue-blooded boy back then) but I decided to stop courting her since well, there’s more to come. I don’t know - I’m just not ready to take the next step since I’m practically a newly-circumcised bastard (at fifth grade, that is) and she was on her way developing all the boobs and menstruation and all. I don’t give a damn about that: sex is at the least of my plans back then. It’s just that maybe we should just be friends with a past; friends who can flirt each other, friends who have this intense passion to hug or even kiss each other (I have no idea if she feels the same way towards me, but I don’t care). But we’re kids.

Like what Rosemary Telesco said on Little Manhattan, “I’m just twelve. I don’t even know what love is!”

Of course we graduated; she was even included on the Top 10 of the honors list.

After that, we virtually had no communication since she transferred to another school (due to financial problems, she told me). I was definitely miserable during those months but not to the point where I skip meals or cry day and night - just miserable. Lonely. It’s identical with how E.R Frank ended her teenage fiction “Friction” - the protagonist was lonely, just lonely, since her boyfriend-figure went away to an all-boys exclusive school and the next thing she felt, she wasn’t looking forward to school. There’s no point of returning to her school without him. Saaad.

I seldom text her since we don’t have things in common anyway and we don’t have anything to talk about. Though I saw her when I was in Third Year High on a nationwide school paper/journalism competition and she told me I looked older and better and slimmer than my almost-sumo wrestler figure back then. She was still beautiful, of course.

Six years after, she’s a part-time cashier at Wendy’s, according to my well-paid sources. I actually intended to talk about her in front of the cashier while ordering Frostee and burgers and fries for my friend and the cashier suddenly threw this sinister look on us (saying hey, you’re talking about my co-worker) while shouting our orders on the crew. It confirmed the news. But hey, there’s no big deal about it: she’s really a decent girl who wants to help her family and study at the same time, and it’s good to know she wasn’t even pregnant (though my well-paid sources confirmed that she have had relationships with boy 1, boy 2, boy 3 and an endless list of boys).

And here I am, writing a post about her, somehow making her bite her tongue and hopefully let her know that I’ve missed her while watching Little Manhattan on HBO.

_{Oh, I totally forgot that my liking towards her started when we were in second grade. I was her partner on some dance presentation (that’s a Janet Jackson song entitled Together Again).}

This post is tagged: E.R Frank, Friction, Frostee, Janet Jackson, Little Manhattan, Pangako Sa'Yo, Rosemary Telesco, Together Again, Wendy's