I remember a certain brother-in-law of mine trying to cut off my sister's pants with a machete when they teenagers. So the weirdest stuff is usually taken from life. I reminded her of this incident today and she gave me a really funny defense for her husband and it is now immortalized as Raph's self defense. I know I may get some OOC comments here, but honestly, I don't think that Leo's as much of an angel as we all portray him to be. And the man gets one day off a year, so we should cut him some slack.
Dear Diary,
We've just woken up from our binge of craziness. Raph and Leo were brushing their teeth together and Raph said, "I bet you had some good dreams last night." That was rather misleading because it was 2pm.
"Shut up, man." Leo kicked him discreetly. "It wasn't that big a deal."
Then they kicked each other in the shins while they were brushing their teeth. I hope they didn't think they were being discreet anymore.
Dear Diary,
Don's determined to find out what they were up to. I told him they were probably trying to get a girl to ask them out, but he thinks there's more to it. I posited the question, "Do we really want to know? I mean, if it's gotten Raph so excited then maybe we're better off not knowing."
Mikey was sitting in the lab reading Emily Dickinson. "Those two get up to evil stuff together a lot. Well, every year or so, anyway. And I'm tired of everybody making it out like I'm the one who's always getting into trouble. I want to see somebody else punished for once. So I'm all for it."
Don was doing something illegal on the computer. He said, "Your motives are truly moving, Mike."
"What are you doing?"
"Just hacking into the Rainbow Club security feed." He said it like he was checking the weather. "We should all be in there. Looks like a continuous tape recording. That's good. I hate it when it takes stills in intervals. Look, there we are."
And there we were. Me and Don dancing together in black and white.
Don squinted at the screen and said, "Boy, do I really dance that badly?"
"Moving on," I said.
Mikey threw down his book and said, "Hey, where am I?"
Don flipped through a few screens and then pointed. "There."
He was sitting at a table, laughing with about ten college age guys. "Where's Raph?" he asked.
There was Raph. I couldn't make out what he was doing. He was with a woman and he had his sai out.
Don asked, "Is he trying to cut off that girl's jeans with his sai?"
We all laughed.
"And last is Leo." Don searched for a second and then scratched his head. "Huh. I can't see him."
"What?" I pushed him aside so that I could see. "He should be there. He didn't leave or anything."
Don rewound the tape again and said, "I don't see him. There's just those people over there and that couple in the booth."
"Guys…" Mikey said.
I said, "Maybe he's in the bathroom."
"Guys…"
"I'll check another camera."
"Guys… he's in the booth," Mikey said through gritted teeth.
Don and me both squinted at the screen and I said, "That isn't him. Those two are totally making out… Holy shit! That is him!"
"Who's that with him?" Don yelled hysterically. "Is it you?"
"I was with you!" Looking back I probably should have said something about how I would never do that.
"Maybe it's your doppelganger," Mikey said helpfully. "Or a mirage. Or we're having a group hallucination."
"It's a mistake," Don said, even as he rewound the tape and replayed the horror show again. "It's gotta be. It isn't him."
"How many other giant turtles did you see there?"
"Three," Mikey said. He didn't seem particularly interested and he was reading his Emily Dickinson again.
I watched the tape as Leo settled into the booth. It took about ten minutes and then they were at each other. "How long were they… involved…?"
Don sped up the tape. "Over an hour."
We both stared at the image of Leo necking, quite enthusiastically, with some woman none of us had ever seen before. It was like staring at something awful and the sheer awfulness of it makes you want to keep watching. Like "Jersey Shore."
Don finally minimized the window and turned to me, looking like somebody with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and said, "We'll never talk about it again! We'll destroy the tapes and pretend it didn't happen! Nobody needs to know."
"What didn't happen?" Leo had to come in the room at that moment.
Mikey said without looking up, "That you didn't totally make out with a strange woman last night."
I cannot describe the awkwardness of that moment. Mikey was loving it. All Leo could manage to say was, "Oh?"
And then I felt a little stupid. We were making a big deal out of it. It wasn't like he slept with her or anything. Ugh. I can't even…
Anyway, I was feeling a little nauseous and Leo was trying to look really innocent and then he said, "How do we know it wasn't you, Mikey? You like kissing girls."
"Nice try, Fearless. I only pecked those girls. You were probably licking her tonsils. (Insert agonized groan from Don) And plus, I don't carry katanas."
"Right." So his one bluff didn't work.
Don was in full blown denial and said, "Right. We'll never talk about it. We'll go destroy the tapes." I think his brain was trapped in a circuit.
I said, "I guess you got over your fear of women, Leo. Congratulations."
"Quit making such a big deal," Leo said. "It's none of your business anyway. Any why are we all talking about me? Don's the one who scored ecstasy last night. If you want to get after somebody, then get after him."
"DONATELLO!" I yelled.
"Hey, I'm not going to take it or anything. It's strictly for research purposes. I'm going to feed it to rats and watch them go crazy."
Mikey was giggling across the room. "Nobody look at me. I'm the good one."
Raph pushed Leo through the doorway and said, "What's everybody looking at? Is that you and her?" He rushed over to look at the screen. "Wow, look at you. You're really going at it. I thought you were exaggerating. Good technique."
"Raph, you're not helping," I said.
"Good. I wasn't trying to help."
"Turn that off!" Leo said.
Don had the video looping in the background and I think it was weirding him out. As he turned it off he said, "Raph, why were you trying to cut off a girl's pants?"
"Cut off her pants?" He screwed up his face like it took a lot of thought to remember since he does it so often, you know. "Oh, yeah. Well, I was just cutting up the legs. It wasn't like I started at the waistband or anything. And she gave me her phone number so… We were having a contest to see who could get the most phone numbers."
That explained a lot.
Raph elbowed Leo and said, "Did you get Miss Kissyface's number?"
Leo shook his head.
"You're a real player, huh?" Raph was really enjoying this. He revels when Leo gets himself into trouble. It's so rare. "How many did you get anyway?"
"Four." Definitely not as much bravado as last night.
"I got seven. But one was a dude. I asked a girl and then the guy next to her handed one over too."
Raph has this problem where he can't figure out when people want him to shut up. I think it's because he's usually so sullen that he's never had to develop the talent of tact and I think we're all secretly afraid of him too. "But what you got was better than a phone number."
"Would you shut up!" Leo had lecture face. It's ironic since his behavior was in question here. Not ours.
Master Splinter had been listening in the living room the whole time and casually entered the lab and then whacked Leo in the stomach with his cane. Mikey and Raph both collapsed in fits. I gasped with shock. Don just raised his eyebrow ridges.
"You know that I allow much leeway on Halloween," Splinter said. I could tell that he was about to breath flames. "But I would at least expect you, Leonardo, to have common respect for women."
"I did! I mean, I do! She asked me… It was…" He hung his head as he rubbed his gut.
"That is all that I have to say for now. You will do 500 flips."
Raph was sobering up, but Mikey could hardly breathe.
So Leo went straightaway to do his 500 flips. I don't know how Splinter knew he'd done 500. I guess they use the honor system. It took him the rest of the night. I think he was probably relieved to have an excuse to get away from us and I suspect that was the real reason for the length of the punishment because Splinter didn't look nearly as infuriated a few minutes later.
I heard Mikey say as I left, "You guys should have let me play. I got two phone numbers and I wasn't even trying."
Dear Diary,
Splinter asked me to have a talk with Leo. THE talk. Makes sense. Splinter doesn't have any expertise in this area.
So Leo came over under the guise of a mission to fix a simple problem with my toilet. It wasn't really a guise, I guess. I was going to make him do that first before I humiliated him.
"Why didn't you ask Don?" he asked as he put the toilet tank lid in the bathtub.
"Isn't he busy watching those rats of his die of drug overdoses? He's pretty sick sometimes."
He was fiddling around with the parts inside the tank. "Well, maybe he's working out what happened with that Doctor from Hades. You know, working it out in his own way. His own sick Donny way."
Leo finished fixing the toilet. It was pretty easy. I mean, I was going to do it myself before Splinter asked me to talk to him. He was about to leave and I said, "Sit down here. We need to have a talk."
He sat on the toilet lid.
"No, go sit on the couch." So he blindly obeyed and I followed him. I like it when they listen. I stood in front of him, while he looked up at me and I stuttered for a whole thirty seconds and wrung my hands. Then I finally said, "We need to have a talk about… about… something important… about… uh…"
"Sex?" he provided.
"Yeah, about that." Ugh. "Anyway, it seems appropriate now that you're nearly seventeen and you're maturing faster than your brothers."
He didn't look embarrassed. Maybe a little annoyed and surprised. "I'm flattered that you've noticed."
Yuck. Ick. "Well, I'm going to tell you what the women in the O'Neil family have been passing down from mother to daughter for generations. It's the best advice my mother had for me and now I'm giving it to you."
He was sitting up, all prim and proper. He had to look really wide eyed right then. "Thank you."
I took a deep breath and said, "Sex is evil. Don't do it. You'll get pregnant the first time and birth control doesn't really work."
He cocked his head a little and looked suspicious. "Are you making fun of me?"
"No, that's what my mother said to me, although looking back it isn't really appropriate in your case."
"I don't see myself getting pregnant, no."
Failed attempt. What to say next. What to say next. Nothing came to me.
He said, "You don't have anything to worry about. I won't get anybody pregnant. I physically can't. Well, the fault isn't on my end, if you know what I mean."
Yes, I did know what he meant. Gross. Yuck. "How do you know you can't get anybody pregnant?"
He went very red and was quiet for a second and said, "Have you ever seen our… we aren't compatible. Trust me."
I started giggling. That kind of really embarrassed giggling that you can't repress. I tried to block out what he had said. I think this conversation has scarred me for life. And I have to do it three more times. What am I going to say to Raph!
Anyway, I said, "I thought you weren't interested in human women. What happened with this broad at the club?"
He looked down and broke eye contact. "Let's not go there."
"I just wondered if you needed to talk about it. I can't see your brothers being a very sympathetic ear."
Leo motioned for me to sit next to him and then it took him a few minutes to prepare himself to speak. I had a feeling like I didn't want him to start. Finally, he said, "It started off as a game, you know. Just one of those stupid games that Raph likes to play so that he can prove that he's better than me at something." He quickly added, "I usually let him win."
"Yeah, yeah. Anyway."
"It seemed like a good game. Phone numbers are solid proof and they can be counted. I like to flirt, you know." He said it quietly, like he was afraid that somebody would overhear him.
I whispered back, "Yeah, I noticed."
He looked a little shy and then recovered. He said, "It started out well. It only takes a few sweet words to win girls over, it seems. I was disappointed at the lack of a challenge."
"Should have tried to cut their clothes off," I said. "Bet that would have made it more challenging."
"I got four numbers and then moved on to a fifth woman. I think she was a little older than you. She asked me to buy her a drink and when I hesitated, she accused me of being underage. Well, not really accused. Joked."
"What did you say?"
"I played it off. Flirted. She asked me to sit at a booth with her and then she asked me how old I am. I told her that I'm older in spirit than in body."
I rolled my eyes. He's a right Casanova.
"And she said that she was older in spirit than in body." He was getting a soppy expression. "We went through the obligatory cycle of flirtation and eventually I asked for her phone number, but she said, 'Why don't we skip that and go my place?'"
"A woman tried to score with you? Holy crap."
He took it wrong and looked flattered. Then he realized that I was mortified that a thirty-plus year old woman tried to take him home with her and looked sober again. "Anyway, I told her that while…" He hesitated and looked like he was going to clam up.
"Don't worry. I won't say a thing until you're finished."
"I said that while the mind is willing, the flesh is not."
"Ouch. Bet she thought you were gay." I don't know why I said that. Guess I thought it was my turn to talk.
Pink tones were creeping up in his face and I could tell I was getting close to the juicy bit. "I had allowed this to move outside of the game and into a place of action. She said that there was still some hope for her then and I said that I was sorry, but there wasn't. My fate was laid before me. She told me that I'm too young to know that."
"She sounds like a Greek philosopher."
"I believe that I'm paraphrasing. I said it had nothing to do with youth and that… uh… It's kind of embarrassing…" He waited for a signal from me. He wanted to keep talking, but I think he was worried that I was feeling awkward.
"Go on. It's not like you slept with her. Don't get so worried."
He laughed and said, "It does sound trivial when you put it like that. I said that what I… want… doesn't exactly exist." He cleared his throat. "She pointed out that I had just said that my mind was willing. So she told me close my eyes and imagine what I want."
He was getting a little vague and I wondered if he was doing it on purpose. He saw my confused expression and said, "We were much more suggestive in tone and gesture at the time. I know that it sounds lame in the retelling." I guess he didn't want me to think that he'd be seduced by a woman who couldn't keep up with his sexy voice. "But I closed my eyes and you know… I couldn't really see anything. I mean, I didn't picture a human, or anything. But I can't imagine… what would be…"
"Compatible?"
"I suppose so. But then I heard her say that I should take what I need and…"
I was still a mite confused at the inferences, but I said, "Sounds an awful lot like using people to me."
He ignored that statement and said, "Then she kissed me and I… just lost myself in it."
I hoped it wouldn't get into more detail but…
"I imagine that kissing one of our kind is similar to kissing a human. Mouths are mouths."
"Yeah, it is," I said, without thinking.
Leo looked at me knowingly, but chose not to pursue the topic. It was awkwardly quiet for a while and then he said, "I only have one night a year that I can stop being me for a while and this year I chose to drown myself in a woman for hour. I can't see what's so wrong with that."
I wrinkled up my nose. I couldn't help it. It was involuntary. I said, "She told you to image she was a female turtle and then macked on your for an hour."
He elbowed me and said, "You make it sound dirty."
"Bet she has a turtle fetish."
"And that's bad thing?" Good. The stressful part of the story was over. It was okay to laugh now. "Well, it's better than Raph. Do you know how he was picking up girls? He told them that he benches 300 pounds, drives a Maserati, that he's a trained assassin, he used play bass for John Mayer, he's independently wealthy, and he can 'meditate' as long as Sting. Then he claimed that he really wrote 'Your Body is a Wonderland.'"
We cracked up and I had to put my head between my legs. "Oh, that's so wrong. He's as subtle as a…"
"Sai to the head?" he suggested.
So we resolved all that for now. Leo's quick becoming a man and I don't like it at all. As he was leaving he had to say, "And don't worry about me trying anything on human women. If anybody tries to experiment with a human, it'll be sweet innocent Don. Goodnight."
Left me with a whole new mental horror show to deal with.
