More Oscar

When Oscar was a little boy, he liked girls and they liked him. He had so many girlfriends even though he was stout and would become fat. His mother attired him in the finest clothes and made sure his hair was cut. But that was then, before his size increased to mammoth proportions and his head changed shape. That was back when his eyes flashed and he had appealing cheeks. Everybody fell in love with him then. And he was aggressive then, calling out to passing girls and women. But then, finally, a member of the Seventh-day Adventists made a complaint to his grandmother. She shut him down. "This is not a cabaret!"

The narrator says this was the Golden age for Oscar. It reached its climax in the fall when he was seven. He had two girlfriends at the time, Maritza Chacon --- Lola's friend --- and Olga Polanco. Olga, though, came from a seeder environment, one that didn't please his mother because it included a house full of beer drinking Puerto Ricans who hung out too much on their porch. Besides that, Olga with smelly. But Oscar liked how quiet she was and how he could wrestle with her and that she was interested in his Star Trek dolls. Maritza, on the other hand was just beautiful.

At the bus stop they stood close to each other, sometimes in secret they held hands, and a couple of times they kissed each other on the cheeks, first Maritza then Olga. Always in hiding. It all lasted for just a week. Maritza demanded that it be either her Oscar was interested in or Olga. It bummed Oscar out. When his mother asked him what the matter was, and he said it was girls, his mother hauled him to his feet by his ear. His sister, Lola, tried to stop his mother. But his mother threw him to the floor. Oscar, even though he had no father to show him the ropes, lacked an aggressive behavior and had no fighting instincts.

Of course Maritza won out. She was beautiful over against Olga. She didn't smell bad. Her mother would let her eat to come over. It had all made Olga cry. "Shaking like a rag in her hand-me-downs and in the shoes that were four sizes too big! Snots pouring out her nose and everything!" Later in life, Oscar felt badly --- even guilty --- when he saw Olga and wondered if his choice had somehow contributed to her decision to be a wreck as an individual.