We looked like exactly what we were as we headed downtown that night.
Mom looked like a hooker if we're being honest here. Her hair ws slicked back, I think she had used Vaseline to get that look. Her face was over-made up, especially the bright blue eyeshadow and the scarlet lipstick. Big hoop earrings and a jangly bracelet I had never seen before completed the image. Her blouse was very sheer making the fact that she seemed to have forgotten her bra obvious. Her skirt ended in the middle of her thighs, showing some of the dark at the top of her nylons. When she moved quickly and it swung a little you could see the hooks of her garter belt. Stiletto heels with ankle straps, classic "fuck me' shoes in other words, completed her image of MILF on the make.
For me, it was more the preppy college Senior look. I had on a blue button-down, Oxford cloth shirt, khaki pants, black loafers, and, yes, white socks. I looked like I had just stepped off of the campus quad. I shaved carefully and got into my drawer for my horn-rimmed glasses. I figured out, young, that they gave me an enhanced nerdy look that, combined with my ability to be kind of clumsy appealed to a certain kind of woman. Okay, it was my cougar hunting outfit.
We grinned at each other, looking each other up and down. No words were necessary, of course. The Hive had placed the knowledge of what we were to do directly into our minds.
She drove of course. Her Prius was one of her little treasures. The radio played that classical music she liked so much and that sounded to me like, well, I'm not sure what it sounded like. I just knew I didn't like it.
We were in the outskirts of town and I had no idea where we were going. But my Rider was happy and so was I.
When she pulled into a parking spot I looked at the sign and saw we were at a place I had seen advertised.
Crickets
was advertised heavily on television as a "fun for all ages" dance club. The television ads made it look like a cross between the sort of supper club you might see in one of those movies from the 1940s or 1950s, something with, maybe, Cab Calloway leading the band in front of a big dance floor, or maybe that club where Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye met Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen in
White Christmas
.
Inside, it lived up to the hype. It was an interesting crowd too. We sat and just people-watched for a while, she drank her screwdriver, and I my beer. Over there, a young couple looking like a high school couple having their after-the-prom dinner were almost pornographic the way they were necking. At the other extreme, another table held a couple I guessed to be in their 70s. Both were good-looking in that silver-haired, well-tended, well-manicured way older wealthy people can be.
It was that kind of a place.
And yes, there was a live band playing dance music.
Our first night of deliberately spreading The Hive went well.
We would approach a table with a couple and mom would approach the man, saying the little speech she had worked out.
"My son is off to college and I want him to dance with other partners so he'll be ready for the college girls," she would say, "so may we have this dance?"
When she was working it out I had thought it was pretty, well, that old word "hokey" fits.
But the thing is, it worked.
The first couple we approached was, I swear, Ward and June Cleaver. They just exuded that prosperous, suburban, two kids, two cars, backyard barbecues, and mowing the grass on the weekend level of comfort. When he looked mom up and down he drew a frown from his wife but then she looked up at me, took my offered hand, and said, "let's dance, handsome."
On the floor, the band was playing something I vaguely recognized but couldn't name. It had a nice 3/4 beat, though, waltz time, and I picked up the beat, stepped off on the "one," and had her going in a passable box step in a few steps. I was a much better dancer than she was.
But I enjoyed it. She was, well, matronly is a good word. Those two kids playing in the backyard showed in her hips and missing waist. The bit of cleavage on decorous display and the pearls at her throat added to the image of a soccer mom on date night. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't fat, just, well, that silly made-up word "mombod" fits.
She was obviously enjoying the attention as I made my silly small talk.
I faked a sneeze and when I put my hand back on her waist the worm of a germinal Rider started up the material of her dress. It had disappeared into her hair before the music ended.
Before the night was over I had started 27 new Riders on their way.
In the Prius, I was surprised when I realized where she was going.
We pulled up at my grandmother's house.
I knew that mom and gramma had a, well, let's say a complicated relationship but I hadn't expected this.
It was late by then, a little after two in the morning. We had closed
Crickets
down. I knew mom had a key to gramma's house. But she didn't use it. Instead, she rang the doorbell over and over and actually "pounded" on the door with a closed fist.
Finally, the door opened and gramma stood there.
If you Google "images of gramma" you'll see my grandmother there. She's the prototype, I swear she is. About five-foot nuthin' and about 250 pounds, she's as wide as she is tall and I always thought that old phrase "cute as a button" fit her perfectly. Grey hair was going everywhere this morning, and she looked exactly like what she was, a 60-something woman just awakened from a sound sleep.
And there was one of those thoughts, not mine but mine.
I didn't say anything, I just stepped behind her while she and mom were bitching at each other, and pulled the top of her robe down her arms to about the elbows, effectively pinning her.
"DAVID!!!" she yelled, the shock obvious in her voice.
I didn't do anything, just stood and held her like that.
And watched as mom took one of the baby Riders out of her nose and held it for gramma to see. It was like watching one of those cheap horror movies. On the script, it might have read something like
