Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents)

by Omar Tyree

  “You okay?” she asked him, leaning over into his face as he rolled over on his back. She wasn’t grinning either. She was seriously concerned about him.

  “See, I knew I shouldn’t have done it again,” she cried. “You’re just too old for this.”

  M.J. ignored what she was saying and mumbled, “Water. I need water.” He could barely get the words out of his mouth to tell her.

  Jessica jumped right up and went to get it for him.

  When she brought a glass of cold water back to him to drink, he sat up and smiled at her.

  “What’s so funny?” she questioned.

  He took the glass and swallowed down the cold water first. He said, “I’m all right now. We got about another hour to go.”

  The man refused to admit defeat. That made Jessica smile again.

  She shook her head and told him, “You’re crazy. How many times you gonna play with death?”

  “Just one more time,” he told her. “Then I’ll call it a night.”

  “Are you serious? You can’t be serious, right?”

  “Why can’t I be? I’m all right now.”

  Jessica continued to shake her head. She stood back up from the bed. “Let me go on and get dressed.”

  “See that, that’s just what I mean. I need a woman who can keep up with me,” he repeated from the bed.

  “No, you need a woman who’s not gonna kill you,” she countered. “Because you can’t even keep up with yourself.”

  “So, what’s all that talk about me trimming my hair down and going out there to get all the young pussy I can get? Ain’t that what you told me?” he reminded her.

  “Yeah, well, I changed my mind,” she responded with a grin. “I still think that you’re a nice man, and you need to be able to stay alive a little longer.”

  She started to walk back toward the kitchen to gather her clothes. M.J. struggled up out of bed to follow her. It was indeed a struggle too. His body felt overexerted.

  “Look at you, you can barely walk now,” Jessica noted, looking back at him.

  “That’s because I’ve been in bed with you for three hours.”

  “And you still want another one,” she quipped. But she went and got dressed anyway.

  “So, you gon’ leave me now without finishing the job?”

  Jessica stopped and chuckled. “Are you kidding me? Your job has been more than done tonight.”

  “Well, what about leaving me some of those pills then. What I owe you, ten dollars a pill?”

  “What, for the Business Man Trips? Because that’s what you need to do, is mellow out. Any of the other pills might kill you.”

  “Look, stop talking ’bout me dying so much. Okay? Now I’m still here.”

  “And I’m gonna make sure I keep you here, too. So we’re gonna be good friends.”

  As she finished getting dressed at his kitchen table, Marion frowned at her. “Friends? Does that mean I don’t get to fuck you no more with a couple of Blue Dolphins?”

  Jessica cracked that easy smile of hers again. “You should be grateful I did you this time. So you can consider yourself special.”

  He smiled back at her. “Is that right?”

  “Yes,” she answered immediately. “Well, let me go on and go, so I can get home, take a bath, and get ready for work in the morning.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “At Jefferson Hospital. I’m a registered nurse.”

  M.J. was stunned. “What? You’re an R.N., and you walking ’round selling sex pills?”

  She grinned. “That’s why I’m qualified to deal them. I know all that they can do, and all of the side effects.”

  M.J. stated, “Well, I’ll be damned! No wonder you like older men. You gotta deal with us in the hospital all the time.”

  “Exactly. But I thought you were one of the healthy ones from all of your Viagra talk.”

  M.J. boasted, “I am healthy.”

  “Just not healthy enough to deal with me,” Jessica concluded. Then she walked toward the door. “But like I said, we can always be friends. So don’t hesitate to call me.”

  It took Marion three days to recuperate from all the fucking he had done that week. He hadn’t used all of his pelvic muscles like that in years! And by the weekend, he remembered to get his gray hair trimmed down nice and neatly.

  “Give me one of them young man’s cuts, low all around, with a nice gray goatee, Harvey,” he told his long-time barber on Page Boulevard after work that Saturday evening. He had just made it into the shop before it closed.

  Harvey Greenfield, a few years younger than M.J. at fifty-nine, with plenty of gray of his own, grunted, “Uh-oh. What’s her name?” Then he started laughing. “That gray hair is the first thing to go when old guys like us fall in love again. Guys start dying it black and everything.”

  M.J. laughed with him and couldn’t deny it. “She told me I would look more handsome with it trimmed down, Harvey. And you know you gotta do what a woman tell you, if that’s gon’ make her like you more.”

  “Yeah, as long as she don’t start changing everything about you,” Harvey warned. “But a good haircut and a goatee ain’t bad. So, how old is she?”

  M.J. grinned. “Twenty-nine.”

  Harvey froze. “Man, you ’bout to kill yourself. Are you crazy?”

  “I am now,” M.J. quipped with a chuckle.

  “Shit, you know how many old guys kill themselves messing around with them young girls? And it may not be that same night, but the damage is accumulative.”

  M.J. argued, “Well, how come Hugh Hefner can have three young girlfriends and still get away with? And he’s eighty-something.”

  “Hell, you know how much ass Hugh Hefner dun’ had in his life? Gettin’ young women is like breathing for him. That man just know what the hell he doing. But you ain’t no damn Hugh Hefner. And you ’bout to kill yourself. You even got me afraid to cut your damn hair now.”

  At that point, a few of the other guys who were left inside the shop overheard them and began to laugh out loud.

  “Look, Harvey, go on and cut down my hair now,” M.J. demanded.

  Harvey stared at him for another minute before he shook his head. “Mmmt, mmmt, mmmph,” he grunted. “You got your plot of land already picked out for your burial?”

  The guys inside the shop continued to laugh hard, but M.J. only smiled. Then he joked back, “And you make sure they put it on my tombstone, ‘He died in some pussy.’”

  “Hey now, watch your mouth up in my shop, man. You know I don’t go for that kind of language in here,” Harvey told him. “Now I’ll let a few small ones slide, but that word there is out of bounds. What if I had women and children in here?”

  “But you don’t,” M.J. told him. “We all men up in here now. And men love pussy. Now go on and cut my hair down.”

  After getting his fresh low haircut and trimmed goatee at the barbershop, Marion Jefferson looked damned good! He looked like a magazine model for older men. The pharmaceutical companies could put him in a Viagra commercial.

  Since the barbershop was only a few blocks away from his apartment building, he strolled through the St. Louis streets toward home feeling good. He mumbled, “I gotta do this more often, walk around and take things in.”

  He could even feel the cool evening breeze whipping over his head now. I’m gon’ need to wear me a hat until I can get used to this, he told himself. He continued to stroke the smoothness of his goatee as he walked. It felt good to him.

  His walk to the barbershop that evening was all a part of his change of attitude to get back in shape for fucking. He didn’t look out of shape physically, or at least for his age, but he damn sure couldn’t keep up with the circulation and respiratory he needed to stay busy in the bedroom. So he wanted to make a few changes, including more check-up trips to the doctor to make sure his heart was all right for it.

  Then he decided to call Jessica back on her cell phone.

  As soon as she answered th
e line, he told her, “You were right.”

  She paused. “Right about what?”

  “About me getting a low haircut, and trimming up this gray goatee. I look good and feel even better now,” he bragged.

  Jessica laughed over the line. “You got it cut?”

  “And I’m walking home from the barbershop now. In fact, if you don’t believe me, then I can get you a second opinion right now.”

  He saw a group of young women with kids, having a conversation on the sidewalk in front of them. He planned to ask them.

  Jessica continued to laugh. “I know you look good. That’s why I told you to do it. But who you gonna ask?”

  “These young mothers standing out here with their kids. They look younger than you.”

  “They probably are. But twenty-nine ain’t that young,” she noted. “Maybe a little young for you though.”

  “Not with how I feel right now. I could swing with the rookies tonight.”

  Jessica couldn’t stop laughing. “I miss talking to you. You are so crazy.”

  “Crazy like an old fox,” he bragged again. His swagger was increasing by the minute. So he asked the opinions of the young mothers out in front of him.

  “Ahh, excuse me, ladies. I don’t mean you no harm. I need one of you guys to tell this young woman on the phone whether I look good for an old man or not.”

  The young St. Louis mothers immediately looked at each other and laughed. Then they all observed him seriously.

  “Yeah, I’ll tell her,” the boldest young mother answered. She took M.J.’s cell phone. “Yeah, he looks good. He look like he just got a haircut. And he got that smell, too, you know from the barbershop.”

  She listened to Jessica’s response and laughed again. “Is that right?” She eyed M.J. with a grin. “Well, I’m scared’a him.”

  “Don’t be scared of me. I’m a friendly old man,” he teased her.

  “Yeah, I bet,” the bold, twenty-something mother countered with a smile. She handed his cell phone back to him. “Y’all have a good time tonight.”

  When M.J. got back on the line, he asked Jessica, “What you say to her?”

  “I told her you think you can swing with people her age. That’s why you gave her the phone, right? I’m not slow. I read people’s real intentions all the time.”

  M.J. ignored her comments. “Well, you know I want to see you again tonight.”

  “I have my son with me this weekend. And you remember what I told, right?”

  “What, about gettin’ my haircut? I did that already,” he cracked.

  She chuckled. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Well, I’m gettin’ myself back in shape for you right now.”

  Jessica laughed. “You gon’ have to do a lot more than walking and getting haircuts to hang with me,” she challenged.

  “Well, that’s what I’m gonna do then. Anything you need me to. I promise.”

  He made her laugh again. “Well, I’ll call you back a little later. I gotta do quality time with my son right now. I answered to make sure that you were all right.”

  “Yeah, I’m all right,” he told her. “But you call me back then.”

  When he hung up the phone with her, he thought about it. “Yeah, she’s with her son tonight. So ain’t nothing going on there,” he grumbled.

  Then he overheard some younger guys, standing outside of their clean and souped-up cars, talking about going to the movies.

  “Yo, you see that Notorious movie yet? I heard it’s good. I’m ’bout to go see it with my girl tonight.”

  “Yeah, I’ll probably see it tonight. I ain’t got nuttin’ else to do. But why would you take your girl to that? That’s where you meet girls at a movie like that. A Biggie movie’ll get ’em right. Especially downtown when they’re ready to party afterwards.”

  M.J. grinned, taking it all in. He hadn’t been out to the movies since the past summer, with his grandchildren. They all wanted to see Will Smith flying around to save the day in Hancock.

  Shit, maybe I need to go to the movies, he mused. “I damn sure don’t wanna sit around in the house tonight,” he mumbled to himself. “And I don’t want no old pussy tonight either,” he stated in reference to his older sex partner. By the time he made it back to his apartment, he decided that he would go to the movies.

  I can go right downtown by myself, and probably head over to East St. Louis or the Riverboat tonight, he plotted.

  “Then I can try out this new look and see how many phone numbers I get.”

  At 9:05 P.M., Marion stood in line at the multiplex movie theater downtown. He wore stylish dark-blue slacks, black shoes, a leather St. Louis Rams jacket he hadn’t worn in years, and some fresh cologne patted on with his new haircut and goatee. And as soon as the line started to fill up with young folks in the teens, twenties, and thirties, three young women walked up to the stand right behind him, all wearing ass-hugging jeans

  M.J. angled himself to get a look and thought, Damn, right behind me! I don’t even get a chance to concentrate out here!

  One of the girls, who were all in their twenties, gave him a quick eye to acknowledge his look, or something. M.J. jumped right on it.

  “Hey, how you doin’ tonight?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she answered civilly.

  Then the other two looked at him. M.J. didn’t waste any time with them either.

  “So, I hear this Biggie flick is a pretty good movie. What you guys hear?” he asked them all.

  They all nodded.

  “I heard it was good,” one of then answered. She wasn’t the prettiest though. The prettiest girl had the least to say. She only stared.

  “Then y’all gon’ go party afterwards, right?” M.J. asked as the line moved forward.

  The young women giggled like teenagers. The old man was right on point; he looked hip, too. And he smelled good.

  “Yeah, probably,” they admitted in unison.

  M.J. chuckled. “And you guys aren’t meeting anybody in here, other girlfriends, or guys or something?”

  They all frowned it off. “No, it’s just us,” the first girl answered. But the prettiest was still the most reserved in the middle.

  She’s probably the one with the crazy, young boyfriend, he assumed. It’s always the pretty ones who got the biggest assholes for men.

  So he kept going after her on the sly, to find out if he was right. His swagger was that strong that night.

  “You know, I don’t get out to the movies much, but I know it ain’t as fun watching by yourself. So if you guys would let me sit next to you, I would buy you all some popcorn or nachos just for the company.”

  He made it come across like a no-hands-on business deal. The young women all looked at each other and responded with receptive shrugs.

  “Okay, I mean, you can sit with us,” the first one responded again. She was the one who had eyed him first, and she was the second most attractive.

  He thought, I better lean more toward her if she’s that open to me, in case I can’t get near the finest one.

  He was mapping it all out in his wise, old head. He figured the first girl was the most confident and assertive. She seemed to be their local leader.

  “All right. Good. Ladies first.”

  He stepped aside so they could buy their tickets in front of him.

  “Thank you,” the prettiest woman finally spoke up and smiled.

  “Oh, no, you guys deserve it. I’m just being a gentleman,” he told them. Slowly but surely, he planned to work himself into their system. Now he knew that the pretty and shy one responded to being pampered.

  Yeah, this is gonna be a new ball game for me, he convinced himself. I’m gon’ keep my look right, get my wind and stamina back up, and go hard with these young ones.

  He walked into the theater with them, and they were already beginning to stand around him and chat as if he were an old friend who had known them for years.

  “What was the last movie you saw?
” the prettiest one asked him in the refreshment line.

  Okay, she’s opening up to me now, he marveled. But he kept his old man’s cool and answered, “Hancock, with Will Smith.”

  “Oh, I still haven’t seen that movie yet.” She said it with abundant energy and a sly smile.

  M.J. had to force himself to hold his sly tongue. He couldn’t come off too eager with her, but he could feel her vibe already.

  She’s gonna let me take her out as long as she has the time, and as long as I have money in my pocket, he predicted. And then she gon’ fall right IN my pocket.

  He was already thinking about how wild she could be in bed under the influence of a Blue Dolphin pill; her and her lead girlfriend. They could get it both together.

  Jessica is right, he told himself. If I look right and act right, then I can catch a whole lot of these young broads. And I may not be Hugh Hefner, but I’m still alive, got’ dammit! And if these young, fine motherfuckers are gonna kill me, then so be it. I’m gon’ die in some pussy.

  So he dug into his pocket at the front of the refreshment line and paid for their popcorn.

  THE STRIPPER CLUB BANDIT

  Outside the state of Nevada—where there are hundreds of Las Vegas showgirls to entertain a voyeuristic man from sun up to sundown on the West Coast—Atlanta, Georgia, is known for its abundant list of strip clubs and adult nightlife on the East Coast. In fact, George Tatum, a shipping company worker from Decatur, couldn’t seem to get enough of them; the pole climbing, sliding, spinning, bending, lap dancing, pussy popping, ass bouncing, acrobatic splits, hip twisting, pelvis pumping, and everything else. Only problem was, Georgie wanted to do more than watch. He wanted to take the strippers home with him; either that or take them to a hotel room for a more private party. But that was against most of the strip club rules, and against most of the dancers’ rules, particularly with “Georgie.” The man was one ugly motherfucker. And he knew it, too. So despite his constant offerings of money, the performing women were understandingly leery of him. Nevertheless, all it took was one of them to say yes to fulfill Georgie’s fantasy.

  “Come on, baby, I’ll give you something extra. Something way extra,” he solicited. “I know you could use the money. It’s a tough economy out there.”