Sleaze, Unease, And Extra Cheese

For the non-farm crowd, Mr. Cheese USA isn’t exactly a desired moniker. It’s certainly nothing you’d want on file with the post office or, for that matter, in a corporate directory regardless of one’s patriotism or passion for dairy. In fact, excluding Cracker Barrel junkies and deranged Packers fans, the negative connotations wafting from that label – nacho, cheddar, or otherwise – outweigh any eccentric pride.

Scarcely familiar with the man behind the stigma, one might assume he was an oily character, a corny jackass who shakes your hand with a mouse trap under his thumb. He might be a crooning deviant absorbed in an endless lip synch of the Tom Jones catalog, polluting velvety auditoriums and nursing homes for throngs of overweight AARP groupies; the definitive master of chest hair and cheap motel sex. Or perhaps he’s a flatulent repeat offender, bombing toilets with reckless abandon as if the lessons of Hiroshima were lost on his immense ego. Whatever the case, this is not a man you introduce to your friends, unless said friends are sexually depraved soccer moms or those with an anti-hygiene fetish, or prostitutes.

In the spring of 1987, this writer held the designation of Mr. Cheese USA (not proudly, mind you), flaunting a title neither desired nor required, but nonetheless deserved. And while I wasn’t stuffing my crotch with tube socks like an elephantine chastity killer, or attending class with a cheese wheel squirreled in my backpack, my locker’s objectionable scent had saturated the hallway with an intense funk. After all, if you jam enough lunch bags into a barely ventilated cabinet, crush them intermittently with school books, and blend haphazardly for one semester, your curious parfait of loose leaf and lunchmeat won’t play nice in the warm weather. And no, this behavior did not score points with the female contingent, allowing me none of the pubescent luxuries of unclasping training bras while tasting the marvels of Wet N Wild lip gloss. Rather, I was horribly shamed, assuming the slackened posture of a beaten boy-fool; closet full of fromage in lieu of skeletons.

Packed dutifully each morning by mom, the schoolyard staples of juice box, sandwich, and snack were a dietary regiment of which deviation was considered impossible, at least within the two square miles comprising my hometown, and thus, my entire world. That said, while two thirds of that brown bag banquet were digestible enough, the prospect of noshing on unrefrigerated cheese roiled my stomach. As it is, I won’t ingest anything a day past expiration, and maintain a compulsive fear of food left to thaw on countertops, socializing amicably with Listeria and E coli. More often than not, I’m junking perfectly good groceries; essentially parading around some famished third world backwater with an oversized FUCK YOU sign, beating my chest while flipping off every kid with a distended belly. Sally Struthers can plead until she’s blue in the face, but errant habits die hard.

After a winter of mushroom incubation, my flogging commenced on clean-up day. For a certain outspoken teacher, spelunking in my locker played out like the second (equally flawed) unearthing of Al Capone’s vault, assuming good ol' Al valued mold and Trapper Keeper notebooks. Each individual lunch bag, in various states of fungal distress, was commented upon as I stood in a dead-eyed daze. And while this wasn’t some town square hanging wherein every student had joined a ring around our corner of wayward hell – screaming in unison for my crucifixion – enough of a nearby crowd was pretending not to notice this metaphoric spanking.

It’s awkward enough deflecting rhetorical questions like “Doesn’t your mother work hard to buy these cold cuts?” or “What do you think your parents would say if they knew you were disposing of perfectly good food?”, but fielding inquisitive onslaughts with no viable answers is like entering enemy fire, naked and weaponless. Of course, there were answers, but certainly not ones which I’d ever divulge. Namely, cafeteria aides lived for the extraction of lunchmeat from trash bins. Howling in tremendous constipated pain, their vocal disgust roared forth: “Whose lunch is this? Whose GREAT bologna sandwich was THROWN OUT today after only THREE BITES?” I may have been a pack rat, but I was forced into the business by obsessive-compulsive women doubling as aspirant (or very hungry) garbage pickers. If uneaten lunch equated to verbal thrashing, then hidden lunch equated to gastronomic genius, so long as the weather remained cool.

Post-disinfection, my locker received a green sticker (to denote potential “Superfund” status), while fellow students obtained blue, red, and yellow (the happy colors of the mentally adjusted). As a special bonus, my designation as Mr. Cheese USA – born from the pungent odor of lunches long forgotten – was assigned, readying me for a career in lounge crooning or sexual exploitation or, as a matter of appropriate course, the unctuous underbelly of financial sales and trading; where the client’s interests are always served, albeit with a little extra cheese.