Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (21 page)

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.

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.”

Georgie was at it again inside Peaches & Cream, a Northwest Atlanta strip club. The place was dark and cozy, and five minutes away from Interstate 85.

Instead of responding to his desperate pleas to pay her extra for a private party away from the safe haven of business at the club, the olive-skinned stripper from Lebanon continued to ignore the wrinkle-faced man. She twisted and twirled her bare hips and ass in front of him to Ludacris’ hit song, “Money Maker.”

Georgie reached out from his chair, and placed his large brown hands on her smooth thighs to pull her closer to the erection that was quickly rising inside of his pants.

“No, you don’t
touch me!
” the stripper turned and barked at him as if he were an unruly child.

Georgie was confused and looked up at her from his chair. “Well, you touched
me.
What’s the difference?”

Her long, limber body; light-brown eyes, baby-smooth face, and thick brown hair all added to her scintillating allure. But she was all about business.

“I give you a dance, but you are
not
to touch.”

Georgie sized up the foreign stripper and didn’t like her attitude. No one else at the club spoke to him that contemptuously. And her hard foreign accent made it seem worse.

He snapped, “Well, go on somewhere else then. Lap dance your ass out of my face. You don’t deserve my money.”

The man may have been unattractive, but he still had a healthy ego. And he figured he worked too hard to be told what he could or could not do by a stripper.

The woman grabbed her bra and panties from where she had placed them on the small round table and began to redress in haste. But Georgie was already eyeing the next performer nearby, who had a much larger ass.

“This one here is more my type anyway. She got an ass I can hold onto.”

The Lebanese stripper stormed off toward the dressing room without another word. And it didn’t hurt Georgie’s feelings at all. He still had money to spend for attention.

“Hey, baby girl, come see about me over here,” he told the next woman with the large rump shaker. He took out a large wad of dollar bills and waved them in her direction.

“What, you got something you wanna give me, Daddy?” the stripper teased him. She was a satiny-smooth, dark-brown woman, in a hot-pink bra and panty set with white lace. And boy, was her ass round. It looked like two chocolate bowling balls had been pushed together.

Georgie told her, “Yeah, I need you to sit up on this brown pickle and help me count these dead presidents.”

“Are they dead
Benjamins?
”

“No, but they
could
be if you treat me real nice for it.”

The brown stripper smiled. “Well, what do I need to do to make that
happen?” She began to work her thick brown legs inside of his at his seat, undaunted by his awful looks.

“You gotta do a little more than lap dance to get them Benjamins. But if you want ’em, you can definitely get ’em.”

The stripper grinned and continued to work her rhythmic hips to the bass-thumping music, while spreading the old man’s legs wider at his chair.

To his surprise, she asked him, “How many Benjamins you got on you?” She began to wiggle out of her hot-pink panties and bra like a magician performing a rope act.

Georgie raised his wrinkled brow and wondered if he had finally found a willing stripper to take him up on his fantasy.

“How many I need to make it happen?”

The huge-assed woman continued to strip, dance, and smile, while the old man’s full erection began to leak with anticipation inside his pants.

“I’ll let you know if you treat
me
nice,” she quipped.

“Treat you nice how?”

She looked at his large wad of small bills. “How much money is that? You may want to add some
Lincolns
to it,
at least,
” she added, in reference to five-dollar bills.

Georgie laughed it off. “Well, let’s see how well you dance for me first.”

As the next pulsating song popped on, the stripper backed up between his legs and began to bounce her naked ass up and down against his hard-on as fast as a bumblebee’s wings.

“Shit, girl, you gon’ make me drop the bomb up in here. Save some of that action for later on for these Benjamins.”

The stripper ignored him and continued to bounce her rump shaker against his crotch. But her strong tease only made Georgie more desperate.

“What time you get off?” He could already imagine himself sticking her between her two bowling balls from behind, quick and powerfully, while she bent over the bed of a cheap hotel room. But the stripper shook her head and continued to ignore him.

“You hear me?” he pressed her.

She finally turned to face him, while still grinning. “Baby, I can’t go anywhere with you. So don’t worry about when I get off.”

Georgie looked up at her, confused again. “Well, how you expect to get these Benjamins you want?”

“By dancing, honey.”

In a knee-jerk reaction, the old man shoved his right thigh into her naked ass and snapped, “Shit, you know got’ damn well you ain’t gettin’ no hundred dollars for no damn
lap
dancing. Where the back rooms at for privacy?”

Peaches & Cream didn’t even have a back room. The strippers there made all of their money out in the open.

The woman jumped up from him, appalled. “Baby, you need to be happy I even came near your ugly ass. Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

She stepped away with her bra and panties in hand before Georgie could respond.

“Bitch,” he spat toward her bare back. He still had his money in hand, so he began to look around the club for his next solicitation. Gyrating panties, bras, pussies and titties of every hue, size, and shape were all around the club. However, each man had to wait patiently for an unattended performer to move in his direction for service.

But on the other side of the club, the two strippers Georgie had already miffed, were informing the boss and his team of bouncers about the man’s crassness.

“Yes, and he keeps talking about paying us outside the club. And it creeps me
out,
” the Lebanese woman explained with a cringe.

Johnny, a tall, slick-haired, older white man, wearing a button-up shirt and slacks, had heard enough. He nodded his graying head and told his bouncers, “Okay, get him out of here, and tell him not to come back until he learns to abide by our rules and treat these ladies with respect.”

Georgie was so focused on propositioning the next dynamite stripper for something more than lap dancing, that he never saw the two huge bouncers approaching him from his right. They were both dressed in all black and towered over six feet.

One of the bouncers kicked the right leg of Georgie’s chair to get his attention through the distraction of music and exotic dancing.

“All right, let’s go. You’re no longer welcomed here.”

Georgie grimaced and asked, “What I do?

The second bouncer, who moved to the left side of his chair to surround him, was even less cordial.

“If you don’t get the fuck up right now, we’re gonna carry your ass out. Now act like you wanna walk out on your own while you still have the chance.”

You can’t talk to your elders like that,
Georgie thought to himself without voicing it. But when he viewed the bitter looks of ill intent on the faces of the two monstrous bouncers, he realized he had no choice. So he climbed to his feet to walk out on his own.

“I still don’t know what I did wrong,” he mumbled on his way out.

Neither bouncer responded to him. An explanation wasn’t their concern.

“Well, I should
at least
get my money back if I’m not allowed to stay.” Georgie pouted.

“Hey, Sherry, Johnny said to give this man his ten dollars back,” the bouncer in front informed the older white woman behind the cashier’s booth at the front entrance.

Sherry looked the wrinkled older man over and dug into the register to pull out a ten-dollar bill without a word.

“Thank you,” Georgie told her.

Once the two bouncers made it outside with him, the lead man informed him, “Next time, you learn how to treat the women here with respect, or don’t bother to come back. And we do know what you look like,” he added.

Georgie joked. “All right, I’ve learned my lesson. Can I come back in now? I got ten dollars.”

He waved the money he had gotten back from the cash register in his right hand.

“Not tonight you’re not. You’re lucky the man is allowing you to come back in here at all. Because I wouldn’t. A bad apple is a bad apple.”

Georgie said, “Yeah, well, that’s why you’re not the boss. And a
real
boss knows that good business is good business.”

Both bouncers ignored Georgie’s continuous comments and returned inside.

Georgie turned and walked toward his car, feeling incomplete and lonely.

“Shit. Maybe I should’a been easier on those girls.”

He climbed into his silver Jetta in the parking lot. The man remained unmarried with one grown daughter, who lived in Macon with her relatives. Her mother had gotten pregnant after dating Georgie for two months after she had graduated from high school twenty-seven years ago. Her highly religious family didn’t believe in abortion. Nor did they believe that George Tatum was a good match for their daughter. So they decided to move to Macon, raise their granddaughter on their own, and marry off their daughter for a more virtuous family, while cutting all ties to the father of her first child.