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

by Omar Tyree

  “Nothing,” he whimpered.

  “You said you had what the doctor ordered, right? So what do you have?” Derrick pressed him.

  “A dick,” Marcus answered meekly.

  Derrick wasn’t expecting that. So when his son looked up to catch his eyes, they were both shocked by it. The father was so stunned that he had to look away.

  “You don’t use that word,” he told his son sternly. But he couldn’t look at him when he said it. “That’s a real grown-up word, and you know it.” He then looked at his son and added, “And if I ever hear you say it again…”

  Derrick then paused, feeling guilty. But so what? He was a grown man who reserved the right to be grown.

  “When you get to be of age, you’re gonna find that there’s a right and a wrong time to use certain words. But since you’re still in grade school, now is definitely not the time for it. You hear me?”

  Marcus nodded obediently. They were now pulling onto Interstate 405 toward downtown. Derrick was far from finished with him.

  “So, what do you mean when you say you can go all night long? Did you really say that?” he asked his son.

  Marcus attempted to sit there quietly again. The open and honest approach wasn’t working so well for him now. But there was no way around it. His father was right on top of him inside the truck.

  “Marcus, did you say that or not?” Derrick pressed him.

  “I said it,” he mumbled.

  “And what do you mean by that?”

  Marcus felt trapped. He knew that his honest answer would only lead to more reprimand. Nevertheless, he let it out.

  “Umm…I can make her…” He paused and looked his father in the eyes before he finished. “…talk all night.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “You know…how it feels.”

  “How what feels?”

  Finally, Marcus shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

  “Exactly,” Derrick repeated. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. And what’s a ‘big girl’ supposed to be able to handle from you?”

  His father was grilling his ass hard now. And it was all coming out on instinct.

  Marcus sat there in the truck as stiff as a statue. He couldn’t even look his father in the eyes anymore.

  “Now you see why you can’t talk like a grown-up in school? Because you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Derrick repeated. “So you want to be a boy, and enjoy yourself doing sports, playing tag, marbles, and other things that little boys do. You hear me? You’re not ready to be a grown-up yet.”

  After his rant, Derrick calmed down and allowed his son to breathe again.

  “You hungry. You want something to eat?” he asked him.

  Marcus nodded. “Can we go to Wendy’s?”

  He saw the Wendy’s sign on the upcoming exit as they reached Interstate 5 for downtown.

  “All right. Wendy’s it is,” his father agreed cheerfully.

  As soon as they pulled into the parking lot to move into the drive-thru line, a big-behind woman in black jeans climbed out of her car and bent over to fix her shoe strap. She did so right beside the truck as they passed her by.

  “Jesus…” Derrick stated and immediately caught himself.

  Okay, now I have to watch everything I say around him, he thought.

  They received their food and drove back out into the street to return to the interstate for downtown.

  Marcus took one bite of his burger and said, “Daddy, what’s a blow job?” as if he were asking about flavors of bubble gum.

  Derrick took a sip of his large drink and chilled. Then he set it back down in his cup holder. Now ain’t this some shit, he pondered to himself. He thought that the worst of their talk was over, but evidently it was not.

  “Where’d you here that word from?” he asked his son.

  “Two women were talking about it at the coffee shop.”

  Marcus continued to chomp down his Wendy’s burger as if it was nothing.

  Yeah, we’re definitely gonna have to find him a new after-school hangout, Derrick convinced himself.

  “First of all, don’t ever repeat that question or use those words again. They are very serious words,” he emphasized.

  Marcus had a look of intrigue on his face. But what do the words mean? he still seemed to be asking.

  But that one was out of his father’s range to answer.

  “You don’t even think about those words. Those word are…off limits,” Derrick insisted. He felt guilty and ridiculous at the same time. How utterly embarrassing were adults and the things that they chose to say and do? At the same time, he realized that the more he backed down from explaining the word, the more his son would probably think about it.

  Fuck! Derrick cursed himself. This little motherfucker gon’ back school and…

  He didn’t even want to think about it, but he had to. What if Marcus slipped up with some even nastier words at school?

  Yeah, I gotta nip this shit in the bud, right now, Derrick told himself. His son’s intrigue in grown conversation and sexuality was so important to him that he pulled over on the side of the highway and slammed the truck in park.

  “Okay, son, how many other words and things do you know about that we need to talk about? Because you got me a little concerned right now. And if you go back to school and say any of these things, you may not be able to go back there, and you’ll have us both looking crazy.”

  “I’m not gonna say anything,” Marcus promised his father.

  However, there was no way for Derrick to believe him. He wasn’t sure if Marcus understood what to say and what not to say.

  Derrick said, “Look, son, I don’t know what you know right now. And if you don’t know the difference between grown conversations and kids’ conversation, then you’re about to scare me to death, man. Now tell me everything.”

  Marcus looked at him and whined, “Everything?”

  Derrick nodded. “Yes, everything. Now give me all the words that you know.” “You’re not gonna be mad at me?”

  “I’m gonna be mad, if you let these words slip out. Now I need to know what you know so I’m not blindsided by it. And then I can help you to understand what you can’t say and why.”

  Marcus took a deep breath and muttered, “Fuckin’.”

  “Now you know you can’t say that, right? Now what else?”

  Marcus paused and added, “…Pussy.”

  Derrick grimaced from simply hearing the words. Each time his son let one out, he peeked at his father’s face to see how he would respond to it.

  “Ass.”

  “Keep ’em going,” Derrick told him.

  Marcus obliged. “Suck my dick. Eat my pussy. Oh, shit. Fuck me right. I’m cummin’. Give it to me harder…”

  Finally, Derrick shook his head and covered his face in shame. “You’ve been listening in through my door at night, haven’t you?”

  Marcus looked into his father’s eyes again before he answered. “Yes.”

  Derrick took another calming breath and continued to shake his head, not at his son, but at himself. He had been a reckless, damn fool!

  “What the hell was I thinking?” he asked himself out loud. “I can’t blame you for hearing this stuff, man.” Then he looked his son in the eyes and said, “But you do know that you’re not supposed to say ’em. Don’t you? That’s why you’re telling me these words now. You know they’re wong.”

  He son nodded. “Yes,” he admitted.

  “Good. And in the meantime…” Derrick stopped himself in mid-sentence. He didn’t want to tell his son out in the open that he planned to stop dating so many women, just in case he would change his mind. But he did need to find a more secure way of dealing with the women that he did date.

  “So…how do you feel about me having women over at night?” he asked his son.

  Marcus shrugged. “I don’t know… They just noisy, I guess.”

  Maybe I’ll just tell these women
to shut up, Derrick mused with a grin. But that would take away from the whole fun of love talk. Maybe I’ll fuck ’em now at their house, he thought. He surely didn’t plan to give up fucking all together. He had to figure out what to do with his midnight-roaming son.

  “So, how long have you been listening in?”

  “For weeks,” Marcus noted.

  Derrick came to the only sane conclusion. “Well, I’ll tell you what, if you stay away from these words, and don’t get into trouble at school, then when you’re ready, I’ll answer all of your questions about grown-up stuff. But right now, son, you’re only nine years old. And you really need to leave these words alone. Okay?”

  He looked into his son’s eyes and awaited his response.

  “Okay.”

  “Good,” his father told him. He then slapped his Cadillac Escalade in drive and returned to Interstate 5 toward downtown. Derrick had no idea whether or not his son would make it through the rest of the school year without slipping up with his words again. But he was forced to have to trust him. In the meantime, he figured he had a lot of changes to make regarding his lifestyle and daily routine. He had a young and impressionable son to look out for now.

  We need to check out the YMCA’s after-school program as soon as possible, he told himself.

  But before going to check out the Y, Derrick wanted to make sure his staff was set at the coffee shop. And as soon as he stepped foot into his shop with his son in tow, Jennifer Selig, his notoriously flirty staff manager, blurted, “Hey, baby, how was school today?”

  Derrick shook his head on cue and said, “His name is Marcus Gamble. And he just told me that he’s not a ‘baby’ anymore.”

  Jennifer looked at them both to see if her boss was only teasing. But once she read that he was serious, she said, “Well, excuuse me. Hey, Marcus, how’s it going? How was school today?” she asked sarcastically.

  Marcus looked up at her and smiled. She was a freckle-faced redhead with an enticing body, dominated by pert titties that always seemed to climb out into his face.

  “It was okay,” he answered. “My dad picked me up early today.”

  Derrick looked around at the normal high-traffic crowd inside of his coffee shop. He wondered if he should have left his son inside the car, reading one of his books for homework.

  Let me make this fast, and get him registered at the Y, he plotted. The usual atmosphere of his Seattle coffee shop was very sexy. Pretty women were everywhere, and that made more confident and assertive men show up. It was all great for business. However, the happening pick-up place that Derrick had obviously created was hardly a safe haven for a boy with great ears and a sharp memory. His father could see that more clearly now.

  “Ah, Jennifer, I’m gonna be gone for a few hours, making some runs with Marcus, so hold down the fort in here for me. Okay?”

  Jennifer looked at him incredulously. “Honey, you need to let your attachment to the shop go. We all understand you have other things to do. You’re the owner, for cyring out loud. So have a little faith in your girl. I can do it, I really can.”

  Everything Jennifer said was flirty and sarcastic, and so were her grins, her eyes, and her curves. The fact that Derrick had been intimate with her on a few occasions didn’t make matters any better for him. So he grimaced at every word of out of her mouth, knowing that his son held a deeper understanding of it all.

  Derrick nodded in haste, ready to leave her as quickly as he could. “Yeah, so I’ll be back then.” He started to move and pushed Marcus toward the door.

  “Hurry back soon, Big D,” another customer teased him. “You know I come down here every day to have my fix,” she emphasized with a devilish chuckle.

  Now there’s another word I gotta watch out for, Derrick assumed. Come and get your fix, baby, he imagined Marcus stating next at school.

  All of sudden, his coffee shop seemed borderline pornographic. With all of the sexy, professional women and opportunistic men inside the room, with a giant, athletic, and sociable black man in the mix as their ringleader, Derrick fantasized that an all-out, verbal orgy could pop off at any minute in front of his son.

  Marcus smiled at it all. He could clearly see his father’s new struggle. And he really liked being around grown-up talk. But an after-school program at the Y was still a much better deal for him. Nevertheless, Marcus would miss the place.

  “Come on, man, let’s go,” his father said, pushing him urgently toward the door.

  Once Derrick got his son back out into the fresh, downtown air of Seattle, he thought, This is crazy! I’ve really built a swinging place in there. But it’s definitely not a place for a kid. I almost feel like a coffee-shop pimp.

  He even smiled at the idea. He liked the sexiness of his shop. He needed to separate his son from it. But then he thought about his bedroom, and the late-night visitations of horny women.

  Yeah, fuck that! I’m not giving up getting pussy, Derrick persisted. So if his little ass won’t let me get mine in peace, without going back to school with the shit on his mind, then I might have to send his ass back to his mother.

  And as they walked back toward the truck, he wondered if his son had ever listened in on his mother fucking someone in her bedroom. But he became gun-shy himself about asking.

  Yeah, I don’t think I want to know that, he told himself with a smirk. That seemed like too much information for him. And some things were simply meant to be left alone, like grown-up talk.

  A GOOD MAN

  “Where are you going?” Antonio Greene asked his young wife. She was his second, at thirty-two years old, and he was fifty-four. He stood at the kitchen sink, washing off dirty dishes to place inside the dishwasher.

  Suzanne Smith-Greene, his wife, pulled on her long, black overcoat at the closet and answered, “Out.”

  “Does ‘out’ have an actual name?” her husband asked her softly.

  “I’m running out with some friends, Tony. What’s the problem?”

  “Well, where are you headed?” All he needed was a simple answer.

  Instead, Suzanne let out a long, irritated sigh. “Sometimes we make up our minds on the fly. We don’t always know where we want to go. We’re just out having girl talk.”

  “You can have ‘girl talk’ over the phone.”

  That was the last irritable straw for Suzanne. She told him, “You know what, I’ll see you when I get back. Because I can tell you’re in a funky little mood of yours again, where you wanna ask a million questions, like I’m doing something wrong. And if you think that way, then why not come right out and say it?” she challenged him.

  Tony looked away from her and couldn’t bring himself to accuse her in person. But he knew that she was out there running around on him. He loved the woman’s company too much to press the issue. What if, after being discovered, she decided to divorce him and leave? He would be left heart-broken and lonely again. And at his age, a piece of a beautiful woman was better than none. So he backed down from his wife’s heated glare.

  BLOOM!

  The heavy door shut behind her as she walked into the garage and over to her black Mercedes. The garage door raised with a push of her automatic remote, and out she drove into the night for another rendezvous in Boston from her cozy home in the Brookline suburbs.

  Imagine crossing the border of a million-dollar, five- and six-bedroom home community, and driving into the heart of the seedy, project apartments of Boston’s infamous Roxbury, where the crime, despair, hard living and tough breaks of poverty still ran rampant?

  Suzanne Smith-Greene had talked herself into doing exactly that. Her fetish with Roxbury had become her hard dose of reality, to reclaim the edge she felt she had lost in her relationship with a good man in the suburbs. She had lost her feelings of urgency there, and the vital rush of passion. There wasn’t enough excitement in her college professor husband, Harvard tenure or not. The university luncheons, dinners and events that she had attended with him in her mid-twenties had become the excit
ing stuff of yesterday, where soft men spoke of soft issues and the cerebral world of ideas and academics. However, Suzanne still desired the active lives of real men, the hard hands, hard bodies, hard work, and the sweaty funk of physical exertion. She desired their brazen forwardness and lustful stares. She longed for a man’s unapologetic ruggedness, and a forceful, bedroom appetite. And she had found it all in Roxbury.

  As soon as she arrived at the familiar sights of Washington Street from Arbor Way, she made her usual right turn and headed farther south, passing an engaged police cruiser to her left.

  WHURRPP! WHURRPP! WHURRPP!

  The police cruiser’s loud, short chirps warned the traffic to move out of its path, while the illuminated car accelerated up the street in the opposite direction.

  “Something is always going on over here,” Suzanne mumbled. But the commotion of the ’hood had never fazed her. In fact, she liked it. The everyday drama there reminded her that she was still alive and a part of a much bigger, imperfect world.

  She made another right turn into the Chesterfield Homes Apartments complex and spotted a busy mother with a beautiful young daughter, walking hand-in-hand. The little girl of nine looked Suzanne right in her face from the sidewalk, with twinkling, expressive eyes. She didn’t seem concerned about the poverty there in the projects at all.

  “Awwww, isn’t she adorable,” Suzanne cooed from the safety of her car.

  The mother noticed the stare and shook her daughter gently to stop it.

  “Cut it, girl, we don’t know her. She might be out here trying to kidnap you,” the mother warned her daughter. “Them rich people do that to little girls, you know. They try to make you into their little dollbabies.”

  Suzanne noticed the heavy-set mother jerk her daughter’s attention away from her car, while giving the little girl a verbal reprimand. Suzanne continued to watch them from her rearview mirror as she headed toward her destination.

  She was a young, reprimanded daughter herself years ago, while growing up in the Bronx, New York, where her half-Dominican mother warned her never to trust anyone who smiled at her too hard.

  “You are a very pretty girl, Suzanne. So you must watch out for people who are too nice to you. A lot of them will try to take advantage of you and think that you are weak because you’re so pretty.”