The Saga of Charlie and Mabel

As a Valentine treat, I’m reviving a little romantic tale of an amorous, adventurous couple.

Charlie was a regular guy living a regular life.  Then he met Mabel and he slipped over the edge.  Mabel was a force of nature, a combination Earth Mother/Ruth Bader Ginsberg no-nonsense intellectual feminine feminist who believed the world was a place filled with lovely poems, but we need to work hard to set them free.  Charlie was smitten.

On the third date, she invited him to her house for dinner.  She prepared a hearty meal of Buddha fingers and heaping bowls of savory gibberish with a tasty sage and onion gravy.  Charlie had never been an adventurous eater.  He had always been a burger and fries kind of guy.  But he didn’t want to miss his chance with the alluring Mabel.  He wolfed down the juicy meal and then—well, after an hour or so, munching on cream mints, waiting for the food to settle–Charlie and Mabel hit the sheets.

Charlie was a serious guy, not prone to one-night stands, so of course he was still there in the morning, waking to the smell of frying potatoes and onions.  He kicked back the blanket on Mabel’s narrow bed to discover with horror that sometime during the night he had grown dragon feet.  They were scaly and reptilian with nails as white and opaque as chunks of quartz.  He sat there in his beefy boxers, his mouth agape as his eyes looked furtively around the bedroom, wondering if he were still asleep or if he had slipped into an alternate universe where he was neither mammal nor reptile but some strange hybrid.  Mabel burst through the bedroom door in a blue silk kimono carrying a steaming cup of chai tea and a bowl of fresh berries.

“Oh, my God,” she said gleefully.  “I’m surprised.  I’ve never seen the spell take effect so quickly!!”  She dropped the tea and fruit, the better to jump his bones, and Charlie surrendered to the joy of the moment.

The years passed and Charlie learned that when you allow your creative brain to set in, anything is possible. Aging is a choice and we can make our own magic.  It’s true that sometimes he finds himself craving light, but as Mabel has taught him, you can only find the sun if you’re willing to walk through the darkness.