I was working on my third beer and watching some stupid baseball game on television. I know enough about baseball to understand my once-a-year trip to the ballpark but didn't care enough to have this particular game hold my interest. My friend who had lured me here had gone home and I was about to do just that myself. "Oh, well," I was thinking, "I need to study for that test anyway." I was in my senior year, and finally getting around to making up classes outside of my Education major, so I needed to work hard to maintain my 4.0 Grade Point Average.
"Hey, sailor, buy a girl a drink?" the voice asked.
I turned, spinning on my bar stool, and looked, then looked down.
She was a short woman, I guessed no more than 5 feet tall even in the moderately high heels she wore.
It would be impossible to imagine a woman more out of place here. This was a college bar, plain and simple. Balls clicked on a pool table, the beeping of the various electronic games was a constant background sound, and that weird clack sound of plastic darts being thrown at a plastic dartboard set up a counterpoint.
And she was anything but a college student.
I guessed her at a minimum of 70 years old, and a maximum of 80, although I gave myself a plus or minus 5 years on that estimate.
She had that white hair shot through with grey that I've always found attractive on women of a certain age. She was cute as a button and she looked ridiculous.
It was like she had dressed specifically to look like a damn whore.
Her blouse had a scoop neck that showed about six inches of cleavage, obviously helped by a push-up bra that left her soft pale breasts, showing those tiny wrinkles some old women with big boobs get, on display. The blouse ended about two inches above her spandex pants showing pale, slightly cellulite-dimpled skin. The spandex was skin tight, drawing attention to her bubble butt and round hips. On her feet she wore moderately high heels, not spikes, those sort of broad heels that were all the rage for a while, with open toes showing pudgy pink toes with red nails, and ankle straps, what the college girls I hang with called their "fuck me" shoes.
And I felt like I should know her.
"Am I that forgettable, Davey?" she asked, batting her eyes, blue eyes that I couldn't help notice were, as that old song from the
Zombies
went, "clear and bright."
It was the tone when she said my name as a pet name, "Davey," not the "Dave" I normally go by, that triggered the memory.
"Cleo?" I asked and the smile that spread slowly across her face stripped decades from it. Oh, she was still the same age, but she looked so damn happy she seemed young.
"So, buy a girl a drink?" she asked for the second time.
I laughed, called up the bar, "Hey, Maggie," and hopped off of the barstool. As Maggie approached I laid my arm across Cleo's back, finding her softness interesting.
"Whatever my new best girl wants," I said, "on my tab."
Cleo grinned up at me and said, "A pitcher of whatever's on tap and two mugs. I think I'll give drinking lessons tonight."
I handed her the mugs, picked up the pitcher, and led her off to the other room. In there, the music was much lower and you could have a conversation. Couples usually wound up in there when they hooked up.
We sat across from each other in one of the well-worn booths. I adjusted my butt around the tear in the vinyl and said, "Well, what's been going on for the past 20 years?"
Cleo was my grandmother's best friend. Growing up I spent almost as much time with Gramma as I did with Mom, and Cleo was often around. But I was a kid and she barely impinged on my consciousness at the time. You know how it is with kids. We have narrow fields of interest and the attention spans of hyperglycemic fruit flies.
"Well," she said, and drew a deep breath before going on.
"I suppose I should start with this," she said, taking a drink from her beer before going on. She touched my hands with hers and met my eyes, all seriousness. "I have syphilis."
As conversation stoppers go, that pretty much tops them all in my experience.
"Don't worry, Davey," she said, a little giggle in her voice, "I'm not contagious. I was treated back in 1976. Penicillin is a great thing. But a few of the little buggers hid out in my brain and, well, here I am, a half-century later, and it's back."
She paused, and took a healthy drink from the mug, leaving a cute little foam mustache before she went on.
"Soooooooooo," she said, drawing the vowel out dramatically, "you didn't run screaming from the room."
"No," I chuckled, "This is a story I HAVE to hear."
"It's an old story, Davey," she said, smiling, "well, at least until last November. Gregory, my husband, I don't think you ever met him, brought it home from a business trip. When I got the rash and my pussy [
I felt a little rush at her use of the word pussy, I don't know why.
] started leaking I went to the doctor, got diagnosed, and got treated with a giant shot of penicillin. I confronted Gregory and told him to keep his fucking [
another little rush at that word.
] dick in his pants or I'd cut the fucking thing off. And we were happy for the next 30 years."
She smiled, took another drink, refilled our mugs, and went on.
"Gregory died, well, Gregory was killed at work, and I entered my new life as a widow, doing all of those things a widow does. I worked the polls on election day, served as the Chairwoman for the Fall Cleanup, and attended the Historical Society meetings, all of those things a crone is expected to do. And then," and here she paused and met my eyes with an almost elfin smile, "I got the itch. I started masturbating frequently, something I had never done before. I ordered, you know," and she blushed quite prettily, "toys off of the internet and played with them until it's all I was doing. I'd masturbate until I was exhausted enough to sleep and then wake up and do it again before I even went to the bathroom."
