DIRTY OLD MAN!

Mr. Ben grabbed my breast. Claimed it was an accident but the old geezer had a grip on my bittie like he was hanging on for dear life. It caught me off guard because I wasn’t expecting it. Mr. Ben didn’t expect the slap I gave him either. It was reflex. Not enough to hurt but enough to get his attention. He grabbed and I popped him good. Then he apologized, but not before sharing that he had nicknamed my girls – Dove and Daisy. I let him know real quick that I don’t play like that and he better not think he can. And just as quickly as it happened, the awkward moment passed and Mr. Ben was back to his usual self like nothing had happened at all.

Seems Mr. Ben and the lady friend are officially on the outs with each other. Apparently her dragon is still fired up and he can’t be bothered anymore. Unfortunately his love connection with the new gal in the church choir isn’t happening like he’d hoped. Apparently girlfriend likes her men much younger and Mr. Ben is sporting just a touch too much gray for her liking. But he’s not giving up hope. He’s got his eye on a woman at the local diner. Something about him, her, and cherry pie that was just a touch more information than I was in the mood for.

I have to wonder if men ever stop thinking about sex? Is there ever an age when sportin’ wood stops being the exercise of choice? Mr. Ben will be 93 on his next birthday and I swear the man is more consumed with what he can do now at 92 than he ever worried about at 22. I just about wet my pants when he told me about his recent search for a porno movie that would help him “get to the gusto”. He wasn’t interested in your typical hardcore triple X pornography because that left nothing to the imagination. Apparently hardcore porn gets him going much too quick for his liking and he’s not interested in “getting to the finish line too quick”. He settled on a Kama Sutra video but it seems that has its drawbacks as well. Mr. Ben says neither he nor his lady friends can bend that way anymore. Bones be creaking and cracking so loud that they’re afraid one or the other might break something. And during the course of our conversation I realized why Mr. Ben keeps seeking out my attention and advice.

I write romance. Mr. Ben has never read any of my books in full, but he believes I just have to be writing how-to manuals. According to him, I must know what I’m doing to be able to write about how other folks are doing it. I tried to explain that I write about loving relationships and couples with regular problems just trying to get through a regular day, doing regular things. Unfortunately, Mr. Ben couldn’t comprehend that romance novels are about more than sex because why would all “us women be readin’ books like that” if we weren’t reading it for the “nookie”. The conversation served to remind me that Mr. Ben is an old man no matter how young his spirit. A dirty old man at that, with many a preconceived notion about what romance is and what it isn’t.

I still don’t think he got it, even though I tried to explain until I was blue in the face. Finally, I just gave him a copy of my newest book and sent him home to read. Told his dirty mind not to come back here until he’d read it from cover to cover, then we could talk. As he walked out the door, flipping through the pages, Mr. Ben was all grin, his wide smile beaming from one ear to the other. And then I couldn’t help wondering if he was happy about the book, or if Dove and Daisy were still on his old dirty little mind.