Men of a Certain Age (Lover of a Much Younger Woman)
I wish I’d never met you. I’m too old.
She giggles. For me?
Much. I mean, I’m too old to fall in love with you, as I have.
He thinks about her while she’s asleep. When the mask of the femme fatale that she dons — she thinks, for his benefit — drops. He thinks about her then, because it’s the only time she’s ever silent. The only time Nimbe allows him to think, at all. Whenever thoughts stray, he scoots down on the thin, rough mattress. Lips to cold knuckles that he tries, in vain to edge back under blanket. Even in sleep, Nimbe clutches at the outside world, and all that it’s promised her. Clutches at the air, for fear he might go away in the night? No, he does not trick himself thus. The actor grows old, and too bitter for his own wiliness.
His lover clutches at life, and smiles where folk his age would know to blush. Delights in all the things she does not yet know, and he fawns, tripping over her. Naive, and charming, harbinger of his second youth.
His Nimbe’s not perfect, the man knows. Her nose too big and curious, her cheeks wide and flat, not graceful in the way of women past, but squashed. Like somebody stepped on her, straddled her great island-fare nose, one foot on either side, and stomped.
His Nimbe’s not hideous, either. When they’re a-walking, joined at the hip, Siamese twins with one mother missing, the actor sees men — old men, men his own age — leer. Feels their eyes trace and reveal her full, cone breasts, palm her tight belly, smother themselves under rum-bottle-thighs.
The actor loves her thighs, and breasts, and belly, and the thing he loves best? Her white, clean neck. Loves watching the skin strain taut and effortless against her jugular. Loves watching the muscles contract as she swallows, or stretch war-tug as she laughs. He loves, loves, loves, but the actor’s too old for love. He swore to himself once, pinky-promise in the mirror, that he’d fallen off hard times.
Men at this age are destined for fishing, and meals that the other will insist on paying.
They’re made for holding the elevator door, and watching the young girl who lives just above them exit airily into the night, with her jeans pressed crisp and tight.
Men like him kick back on Miles Davis and call it class. He’s still just young enough for his taste to be vintage, not outdated. Not yet.
And girls like Nimbe, they fall in love with said men. Drive their minds inside out, so that the old men are left stooping in the dark, in the night, caressing translucent-blue knuckles in the moonlight.
Nimbe’s hands smell of acetone, and leaf moisturiser. She’s at an age where she can yet splay anything on her face, and look divine.
The actor’s fingers smell of nicotine and old typewriter dust. He’s been using it to track his life. He’s supposed to be writing a memoir. They’ve trusted him with it, because some of the plays he wrote for himself were halfway alright. A good job he’s done, too, written about everything under the sun, just about, except for her. This splinter he doesn’t quite know how to fit into the story of his life.
When he wants to be crass, he’ll sit down and crank out three pages about the girl he’s been fucking, before tearing them to shreds, so that the world forgets they ever existed. His version of screaming his heart out to the abyss, and always, seeing her walk through the doorway, ask him how his writing went, that’s the abyss’s way of screaming back.
Haha. The abyss can laugh. And what a time it has, on the actor’s dime.
The actor’s bedded countless women, so many he’s serialized love. He’s loved them fat, short, tall, winding, with gazelle legs, and round mother breasts, flat-chested, and short-haired. Plump. Playing his mistress, his cousin, his daughter, his landlord, his Gorgon, the actor’s seduced them all. Some days, he wishes they’d call. That one would ring, give him a reason to abandon Nimbe.
Except they won’t. The actor tore up his old number when they moved in together. Now, the actor will go days without receiving one single, misled call.
I wish I’d never met you, the man echoes, but his lover’s gone to sleep. Nimbe rolls away from him, revealing one fine, freckled shoulder. The actor’s low back creaks. He rolls to the other side in that way that lets him stand without disturbing her.
Feet shuffle-dance into slippers. The actor disappears into the bathroom. Away from her, he will plot his escape, for escape he must. His work, his life, his very art is at stake. The actor’s had young lovers, several, and they all looked at him adoring, and clueless, in the way only youth can be. Making him feel refreshed, reassured, reborn. All looked at him as if his love, this time-stamped affair was the high point of their lives. Before they went on to acquire husbands, and houses, and shop at all the nice, clean places where matrons go to die.
Nimbe, she looks at him like he might be a mistake. With eyes that don’t always have time for him. After all, there’s so much else to see. Leaning back against the ice-sliver toilet tank, the actor fears that one day, Nimbe will refuse to look at him, and then, like all childhood fantasies, he’ll disappear. A bad dream, vanished under dawning light.
This is a sister-text of something I wrote back in October, called Lover of a Much Older Man.
Thanks for reading.
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