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

by Omar Tyree

  As a grown man about to reach my thirties, I could sense when a woman was a hard catch and a possible tease. So once I heard her bullshit answer, I had that vibe about Carol. She wanted things on her terms, and I didn’t like the prospect of that. She seemed spoiled by her options, like a lot of D.C./Maryland women. They made it seem like the world revolved around them instead of the sun. I didn’t realize that until I started dating women from other places.

  “Why are you all quiet over there?” Catherine asked me.

  “Oh, I’m just listening to the music,” I lied.

  Carol grinned. “Whatever. He’s mad now because I won’t commit to liking him yet.” She was egging me on now.

  “Well, we just hanging out, kicking it,” Catherine stated. “Guys get too fucking serious out here.”

  That was it for me. I was ready to leave those ungrateful bitches with the check and see how serious they got. Then the food arrived.

  “It’s about time,” Catherine stated.

  “Well, we wanted to bring it all out together,” our waitress explained.

  “Why? We didn’t order together. They ordered way later than we did,” Catherine reminded her.

  “Um, well, you know, we figured it’d be easier to bring it all out on one tray.”

  “Yeah, and now my damn steak and potato is probably cold, while their shit is hot,” Catherine continued whining.

  “Ahh, no, we kept it pretty hot, actually,” our waitress countered.

  Alonzo popped back over to the table. “I see the food is ready? Right on time, too. I’m ready to eat a horse in here. But the cow’ll do for now.”

  “As long as it ain’t fish and breasts, hunh?” Catherine teased him, sparking the conversation back up again.

  L shrugged. “Nah, I’d eat some fish and breasts if I had to. But I ordered steak tonight. So I’m gon’ eat that.”

  I no longer had anything to say about it. As far as I was concerned, it was a wasted night with wasted money on the table. I didn’t even have an appetite anymore. All I could think about was how women could get a free-ass dinner before leaving a man hanging. I could feel it before the dinner was even finished. The only thing I could do was waste more money trying harder to chase the bitch. So I figured that maybe I should take one for the team and let Alonzo have her back. They were both his women anyway.

  “Hey, man, what you thinking about over there?” he asked me on cue.

  I was considering leaving the place and calling up a few women of my own before it got too late. One bird in the hand is better than two in a bush, right?

  But before I could answer, I could feel Carol staring at me. I turned to face her. “What, you wanna answer that for me?” I was in a grown man’s attitudinal, survival mode. It was the same reason why Alonzo had to step away from the table for a minute. When your ego can’t take the shit, you step away to recuperate.

  Carol shook her head and read my emotional manhood. “Guy’s egos are so damn fragile sometimes. I can’t stand that. I mean, be a fucking man about it!”

  L and I looked at each other and laughed over our food to break the tension. The woman was really challenging us like suckers. And I thought that she was the tactful one.

  L asked me, “What the hell happened when I left?”

  Carol continued to rub it in on me. “He got his little feelings hurt.”

  I shook my head and kept grinning. What else could I do? But then I got real frank on her. I said, “You know what, you’re the kind of woman who really makes a man wanna…” And I stopped it right there.

  Everyone at the table started laughing but me. I was too serious to laugh. Carol was the kind of deceiving woman who made a guy want to fuck her, while standing up against a brick wall in an alleyway somewhere. She made you want to be violent with her!

  “Well, say what you wanna say then,” she teased me.

  Now I could see why Alonzo had walked away from her.

  I opened my mouth and said, “You make a man really wanna fuck you hard.” She had asked me for it, right?

  They all broke out laughing again. Even I chuckled. But I didn’t want to go there.

  Carol looked at me. “You wish.”

  “You wish I’d bend your ass over backwards, too,” I told her.

  I didn’t know what had gotten into me, but it was all coming out in a rush. That cat-eyed woman was like an beautiful devil, I swear to you.

  L joked, “Yo, dog, slow down over there. We just met these girls.”

  The joke was all on me now. I was the fool who had lost his cool at the dinner table.

  “She asked for me it, man. You heard her.”

  I was embarrassed by it, but it felt good, to be honest. You had to say what you had to say sometimes. Then I got back to eating my salmon to ease the edge I felt at the table.

  “Now he’s eating the fish again, hunh?” Catherine teased me.

  I kept eating my food and ignored them all. And Alonzo was laughing his ass off. That was his kind of “fun”; unadulterated caveman shit. He couldn’t eat his food or drink without laughing more.

  “Yeah, I feel you, man,” he uttered through his giggles.

  “You feel him how?” Catherine asked him. She had long been forgotten about that evening. Not even her cleavage or freeway dress could enhance her lack of allure that night. Her girlfriend had bested her for both of us.

  “I feel what he’s taking about,” L answered.

  Catherine looked across the table at Carol.

  Carol was still smiling, seemingly amused by it all.

  All of a sudden, Catherine asked her, “Bitch, what’s so damn funny?”

  Carol paused. She seeemed surprised by her friend’s outburst. Then she snapped, “Whatever the hell I think is funny.”

  “So, you were obviously out here trying to be all cute again,” Catherine presumed.

  “Oh, I don’t have to try. I am cute. It’s your bitch-ass who needs all the attention. Just look at how you dress,” she countered.

  At first, I thought they were engaged in rough girlfriend talk, like when black men call each other nigga. But once Catherine tried to reach across the table and grab Carol by her hair, that idea was off.

  “Oh, shit,” L responded. He grabbed Catherine back across the table. I moved my hands to protect Carol from her friend as well. But that all seemed to make Catherine more adamant to get at her.

  “Bitch, I’m tired of your fucking ass, showing off!” Catherine shouted across the table.

  “Well, why don’t you stop calling me up to go out with your ass, and learn to get a real personality?” Carol shouted back. “Then maybe all your niggas’ll stop trying to get at me so much!”

  The shit was loud and embarrassing at that point. People were starting to turn away from the music and look back at our table. Then the bouncers rushed over.

  “Hey, what’s going on over here?” one asked.

  “Oh, we got it,” L told them. He stood Catherine up to pull her away.

  “Get the fuck off me!” she cursed at him. “If you want that bitch, too, then go get her then!”

  Alonzo let her go as she turned and looked toward the exit. At least a third of the people inside the jazz club were watching us now.

  Catherine turned back and hollered, “Have a nice night, bitch!”

  “Yeah, fuck you, too!” Carol screamed with her middle finger up.

  L and I were both shocked by it. We looked at each other and said, “Damn,” in unison.

  “I guess that’s your ride,” I commented to Carol.

  She frowned and shrugged it off. “I know how to catch a fucking cab.”

  “Well, you don’t have to do that, if you don’t want,” I told her. “I can drive you back home.”

  “I don’t think my man would like that shit. In fact, I know he wouldn’t.”

  Alonzo heard that and started chuckling. I wondered if he had known the shit all along.

  “Well, how come you didn’t say that earlier?�
� I asked.

  She grabbed her purse from the table and snapped, “I didn’t need to. We don’t know each other like that.”

  “Oh, but I can pay for your damn dinner though, right?” I snapped back at her. I didn’t understand the fairness of women sometimes.

  But then she pulled out two twenty-dollar bills and threw them at me.

  “Here, motherfucker! You satisfied now? Eat your fuckin’ fish wit’ it!”

  I looked over at Alonzo, standing there staring, and he started laughing his ass off as Carol headed for the door.

  I shook my head. “Man…don’t you ever ask me to go on another blind double-date again in your life!” Then I tossed a fifty-dollar bill on the table with Carol’s twenties.

  L took all of the money off the table and placed a hundred-dollar bill down to pay for everything.

  “Look, man, what do you want me to say?” he asked me. “I didn’t know they had a feud like that. Women are catty, man. And homegirl even had catty eyes.”

  I started toward the door myself. That was one of my favorite spots to relax in. But someone else in there could write a column about me now.

  “Yeah, you didn’t help matters much by getting into it with her,” I reminded Alonzo. He had started it all.

  As we walked back out after the commotion, Carol was already jumping into a taxi, and Catherine was nowhere to be found.

  Alonzo told me, “Look, man, it’s just one of them nights, S. But it’s early, man. Let’s go do something else.”

  I frowned at him. “Are you bugged, man? I’m not going out somewhere else after this. I need to relax with people I already know. And I don’t even think I know you sometimes.”

  I was already walking toward my car on V Street to leave.

  L screamed across the street at me. “Come on, man, stop girlin’!”

  I could still hear him laughing.

  I immediately jumped on my cell phone and called a woman who really knew how to act with a man.

  “Hey, Felicia, is it too late? It’s Sean.”

  “No, I was just about to go out,” she answered.

  I looked at my watch. “At midnight, you just going out?”

  She chuckled. “Well, I didn’t feel like going to sleep yet. What are you doing?”

  “I’m coming to see you,” I told her. The adrenaline of the night had me all pumped up for it.

  Felicia paused. “Umm…okay. Where are you?”

  “I’m down on V Street. So I could hit your place on Connecticut in like, ten minutes. Tops.”

  She laughed. “You in a hurry?”

  “Nah, I’m just, ah…tired of all this extra commotion for one night. So don’t leave yet. I’ll be there.”

  She paused again. “Oh…okay. I’ll see you when you get here then.”

  “Now that’s a fucking woman,” I grinned and told myself as soon as I hung up her. Felicia was originally from Memphis, Tennessee, and she was a real dime piece, too.

  ALONZO BRADSHAW

  Naw, naw, naw, man, that ain’t even how it went. First of all, S called me up asking what I was about to get into, because he was tired of sitting around in the house with his girl, Felicia. Well, she’s not really his girl, but he fucks with her the most. He goes over there and plays chess, board games, cards, watches movies on DVD, and all other kinds of shit before he tightens her up. But he wanted to get out and do something else that night, because the girl is boring as hell. I mean, she look good and all that, but she’s just a damn homebody. So I told him I had these two girlfriends I had met a week ago, and he said, “All right, let’s do it.”

  So I told him he could pick the place, because I knew he would bitch about where I would want to take them, like to Hooters or the ESPN Zone. And this guy chooses a damn jazz club on U Street. Now, I don’t mind the new U Street corridor, because that shit is happening now the way Georgetown used to be. But a jazz club with two new women? That’s the kind of place you go with a woman you’ve already known for a while; because it’s too laid-back for new conversations, you know? It ain’t like the old jazz clubs up in Harlem where couples would throw down on the dance floor and really get to know each other. These new jazz clubs remind me of fucking museums. They lack excitement to me.

  Anyway, we show up at this place called The Revue a little late, after waiting for these girls to park their car, and there’s this long-ass line going all the way to the corner. Now I promote and throw parties in D.C., and I know everybody who works them, so I’m not standing in no damn lines. But this guy actually walks to the back of the line like he’s a damn nobody. And I told his ass to let them know that he’s a nationally syndicated columnist for the Gannett newspapers in there, and that he could put their spot on the map all over the country with just one article.

  He tells me, “Nah, man, I’m a regular customer like everybody else.” That’s the way Sean is; he never tries to bring attention to himself.

  But as I watch the damn line at this place, I can see that it’s not moving, so there’s no sense in us waiting there. Either we’re gonna get in or we’re not. Then I spotted my man Reggie Mack inside, working with security. So I called him out to talk to me.

  “Hey, what’s up, man? What can you do to get me in the bar?”

  Reggie Mack owed from many prior occasions, so there wasn’t even an argument.

  He looked back inside and said, “Let me see what I can do. How many you got?”

  “Four.” And that was it. I called S and the two girls to the front of the line.

  Now the girl Catherine, who I knew the best, was the loud type. So she walks to the front of the line and starts running her damn mouth.

  “It’s about time. It’s chilly out here.”

  She was wearing this damn two-piece, black-and-gold outfit, looking like she wanted to fuck anybody who asked her that night.

  Then she started beefing with the white couple at the front of the line.

  “You’ll get in soon. And make sure you order some Bailey’s Irish Cream when you do to thaw your cold-ass nose off.”

  I thought the shit was funny myself. But I knew that S wouldn’t want to deal with her. He doesn’t like shit like that, especially around white folks. He thinks black people should always be on their best behavior. So I already knew to let him have her light-eyed girlfriend named Carol. She seemed a lot more civil for him. And she was fine! So I figured I’d take one for the team and let him have her. She was a little thin for my taste anyway. She was one of them slim, classy bitches.

  So anyway, we go inside, and of course, we didn’t have anywhere to sit yet, not even at the bar, and these white folks started tripping.

  “Hey, guys, you’re all in our way over here.”

  Catherine turned around and let this motherfucker have it, quick.

  “Well, if we had a damn seat, we wouldn’t be in your way. Unless you wanna give us your seat.”

  Then her girl Carol tried the civil approach. “We’ll be moving out of your way as soon as we have a table.”

  S was backing down and shit. He started talking about, “Let’s just hang in the corners of the room, or near the back walls until they find us something.”

  I tell you, man, Sean is my boy and all, but that nigga need to take some swagger pills every once and awhile. Because I wasn’t standing against no fucking wall in there.

  Then the second white boy at the table came off at Carol, like he had a personal beef with her or something.

  “Well, what happens if they don’t find you a table?”

  I looked over to S to see if he was gonna speak up on that shit, and he seemed embarrassed by it. So I said something.

  “Hey, man, calm your ass down. They gon’ find us a damn table, all right.”

  That white boy ain’t say shit to me. So Carol looked over and grinned at me. And my boy S was already losing his cool points with her.

  Then they found us a table near the bathroom hallway, and Carol started talking about, “Aw, this is nasty.
I hate being near restaurant bathrooms.”

  Now, we wasn’t all that damn close to the bathrooms. Those bathrooms were way down the hallway. Carol was just trying to get some attention because S was boring, like his girl, Felicia. He acted like he didn’t know what to say to this fine-ass girl. He tried to act way too cool sometimes. So I tried to spark shit up for him.

  “Aw, cut it, girl. You know we all gotta use the bathroom. Or you don’t take shits like that?”

  I mean, I was only kicking the truth, right? Then Catherine jumped in on it.

  “Oh, she takes shits. I’ve smelled them personally.”

  Now I wasn’t trying to go that damn far with it. That shit sounded foul, for real. What kind of bitch smells another bitch’s shits? But I was only trying to mix things up at the table a bit. A jazz club wasn’t my kind of place to take these girls to begin with.

  Well, Carol didn’t like that shit. So she eyed us down across the table and started asking for the menu. Since this was a damn jazz club, instead of a sports bar, everything was overpriced on there. So I let everybody know.

  “Damn, eleven dollars for a garden salad?”

  But Sean jumped on me about that. “Look, man, we grown men in here. We’re not college students at Maryland anymore. And these finer restaurants have to pay the rent.”

  He was always talking that grown-man, price-of-living shit, as if I didn’t know. I knew we were both turning thirty soon. I was just trying to save us both some money by putting it in these girl’s heads that it wasn’t a free-for-all on us in there. We could’ve ended up spending a few hundred dollars in there, easy, and on some girls we barely knew.

  So I told him, “That’s bullshit, man. I know what all these guys have to pay around here. And they all raise the prices, claiming that high-rent shit. But if they’re not getting a good deal on the property, then they’re not gonna be in business long.”

  I knew a lot more about stretching a dollar and doing good business deals than what Sean knew. He was just a damn writer. So I forgave his ignorance on the issue. But the next thing I knew, he hauled off and called my marketing slogan corny.

  “I said, corny? Sean, if the shit works, who gives a fuck if it’s corny or not? ‘A.B.C. you at the show’ works. I don’t say shit about your corny-ass columns sometimes. But some people think the shit is good.”