I met the Jims (yes, plural) the night after the Alex fiasco. I’ve never been one to make out in the parking lot of my neighborhood bar, but, after this disaster, you can bet your ass I’m going to cop a feel before the clothes start hitting the bedroom floor.
I went back to the pub the night after Alex-With-Tongue and passed a couple of interesting characters on the way in the door. Both of them were young and good-looking in a scruffy, I’ve-worked-hard-all-day-and-it-shows sort of way. Both had a can of Old Mill. I usually avoid the Old Mill types where the beer is more than cheap, but these two looked interesting. The blonde one I’d seen around the neighborhood several times. I smiled at them and they shifted on their barstools, unsure of what to do.
I ordered my hand job (a drink and an inside joke) and went to the back patio for a few moments alone. I know it seems strange to go to a bar to drink alone, but I do like 15 minutes of quiet once in a while. And I love watching the light rail and freeway traffic pass from the back patio at the pub. I wonder where those drivers headed in such a hurry on a Saturday night and try to picture justification scenarios for all their aggressive driving.
Within 5 minutes, the Jims approached me and sat at my table. Jim blonde was definitely interested, but Jim brown was good looking, smart, and had a dimple.
Jim brown was more than a bit on the arrogant side. He let me know right away that he had a good-paying, high-end job. A little on the tall side at six feet and then some ( I happen to like men under six feet), he had those brown eyes and that three-day growth of beard that makes me weak in the knees and a little stupid. I set my sights on Jim brown. I wasn’t planning on anything long-term with the guy. I was just planning to take him home and get him naked. I also have this thing for cocky. Arrogance is a bit over the top, but it’s a closer approximation than shy.
Did he ask me what I did for a living? No. But most men take two steps back when they learn about my profession, so I just played along. Like I said, I just wanted to get him naked. He was fairly good looking and the whole time he was talking, I was imagining him without his clothes. He told me he was moving out of state the following week: another plus. There would be no long-term entanglements with Jim brown. No running across him again in some awkward social situation that might turn sour at any moment. Or so I thought.
As he went on about himself, I thought: I need this. I deserve this. And I’m not doing anything this guy hasn’t done many, many times in his life to women. Fuck it, I’m going to fuck him and forget him.
It wasn’t long before Jim blonde got disgusted with the conversation because it was obvious Jim brown and I were flirting heavily and he was out of the picture.
“So,” said Jim blonde, turning to Jim brown. “Are we gonna go to that cougar bar or not?”
“Cougar bar?” My interest was piqued. “You’re checking out a cougar bar? I’ve never been to one.”
Jim brown’s dimple made a charming appearance. “We looked them up online before we came here.” He pointed across the highway to another rather unpromising building. “That’s one, right there.”
“You two like older women?” I looked into their faces and smiled.
“God, yes,” said Jim brown. “Young women are so stupid and shallow. Can’t take their constant texting, their stupid conversation, and their insecurity. With older women, it’s different.”
“Different how?” I was curious.
“They don’t lie and cheat on you constantly to try and make you jealous,” said Jim blonde. “They don’t play games.”
“Like cancelling dates at the last minute just to piss you off and make you mad,” said Jim brown. “Like texting you constantly about stupid shit. Like talking for hours about who was wearing what and how it made her look fat. I mean, who fucking cares, right? And they talk about their friends behind their backs like they hate them. They’re constantly playing games with everyone.”
“And older women? “
Jim brown smiled. “They’re honest. ‘This is the way it is.’ And they’re not constantly telling you what you should be doing, what kind of car to drive, and complaining about your friends.”
“I’m just curious. You see, I’ve noticed this phenomenon since I’ve been single again – the only guys that hit on me are young. Much TOO young.”
“Why too young?” said Jim blonde.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “It’s flattering as all hell, and most of them are drop-dead gorgeous and funny. . .”
Jim brown grinned and his dimple reappeared. “But they don’t know crap in bed.”
I felt my eyebrows go up. “Precisely. And I get tired of teaching. And you run out of things to talk about very quickly. There’s not a lot of there there.”
The Jims looked at one another and smiled. Jim blonde laughed, once.
“What?” I wanted in on the joke.
Jim brown answered. “That’s what we like about older women: what you see is what you get, darling. See, you’re honest. Blunt, even.”
“I’ve been accused of that, many times.”
“And that’s why older guys don’t like you,” said Jim blonde.
Surprised, again. “Yes. I suppose it is. I don’t tend egos very well.”
Jim blonde leaned back in his chair and smiled knowingly. “They DO watch you, you know. I watched you come in and every man in the place looked around and kept looking.” He lit a cigarette. “So how do they approach you, older guys?”
I laughed. “Arrogant bastards. They hand me their business cards and say something like, ‘Here, call me some time.’ I have a whole fucking BOWL of business cards at home. Think I’ve called one of those assholes? No.”
“Do they talk to you first?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Good question.” I took a long sip of my drink. “I think most of them are looking at the 22-year-old waitress who’s only after a big tip, fake laughs at everything they say and actually thinks they’re gross. As for me, because I look like I’m in my thirties, they figure I must be desperate for a man because I’m older. The clingy type. But the clingy types are all the younger women, really. I’m not interested in marriage.”
The Jims looked at one another.
“Desperate?” Said Jim brown. “You think they think you’re desperate?”
“You’re gorgeous,” said Jim blonde, making a last-ditch effort to wrest my attention his way. “You’re fucking hot.”
It worked for a moment. I smiled at him. Then I picked up my drink. “I AM going through a short dry spell,” I muttered into my glass.
Jim brown’s eyes locked with mine for a few seconds, then he looked away, over the highway to the cougar bar. “I think you should go with us,” he said, quietly.
I grinned. “You’re inviting me?”
“Why not?” He rose to his feet and stretched, his shorts hanging low on his hips, revealing a slightly furry and very firm belly below the hem of his t-shirt.
I love hair on a man. His fur looked soft. (Metrosexuals, take note: what is pleasing to the eye may not be pleasing to the hand. Razor stubble is razor stubble no matter where on the corpus it happens to be located. And ladies: beard burn can happen in the most delicate of places.)
Jim blonde turned and met my eyes. “You’re different. Come and see desperate. It’s late. You’ll get to see the bottom of the barrel, I think. ”
“I hope not, for your sake,” I said.
He grinned sardonically.
So I followed them into the pub and we began the process of tabbing out.
“Namaste,” said a voice behind me.
I turned and smiled. It was Joshua, a beautiful young man I met at the pub. “Namaste, Joshua,” I said, giving him a warm hug.
Joshua, I simply adore. His eyes light up in any conversation, especially when the subject leans toward philosophy or religion. Olive-skinned and about five foot eight (perfect height), he’s as solid as a rock. His smile is radiant, his laugh sincere, and his humor subtle and never mean. There’s not a mean bone in him.
Joshua’s friend (not, not ‘friend,’ just friend) Cliff was with him. I looked up at Cliff and smiled.
“You leaving so soon?” said Cliff, his Southern accent warming my heart. Cliff sounds like molasses, pecan pie, chicken-and-dumplings and jambalaya all rolled into one. He sounds like home.
“These two are taking me to a cougar bar,” I said, my Southern accent making a slight appearance. I pointed at the Jims, who were done paying their tab.
Cliff looked puzzled for a moment, then he grinned like the cat that ate the canary. “Well, show ‘em off.”
I was puzzled for a moment, then glanced down at The Girls.
“You got ‘em, ma’am,” said Cliff, shaking his head. “So show ‘em off.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling myself blush a little.
“Don’t mention it, ma’am.” He looked at me slyly. Then, he grinned again.
I love Cliff to death. He has that subtle Southern charm that eludes Northern men: the aw-shucks approach that can melt a woman’s heart with a sly look and a smart remark. And he’s a beautiful, as well: a tall, lanky, blonde. He stoops slightly, to appear shorter than he is. Always dressed in jeans, that one. I can’t imagine him in a suit.
Joshua locked in conversation, so the two Jims and I wandered out without me saying good bye. I drove the couple of blocks: it was getting late and I didn’t want to have to walk far to get to my car.
I beat the Jims to the front door of the bar and waited.
The inn is a low-slung building, a throwback to the forties when roadhouses were dens of iniquity. It is also very small. The music inside was raucous. It was late and I hoped the band was due to stop playing soon. I hate places where you have to shout the whole time. I turned as I heard the Jims come down the sidewalk.
We made our entrance together.
My first thought: I am in Hell.
The three of us paused just inside the door to get our bearings.
The band was playing a Scorpions tune and seemed to think that volume is a fair substitute for raw talent. They were obviously still clinging to the someday-I’ll-get-my-big-break rock-star dream, they all had big hair and leather pants. But they were also all over fifty and smelled slightly of herpes and the clap.
But the women. Oh, God in Heaven, please don’t put me in that same category. . .
Don’t get me wrong: I KNOW I sometimes overdress the part, especially where The Girls are concerned. But, outside of Halloween, you wouldn’t catch me dead in fishnets, a Wonderbra, a tight leather skirt and a leopard-print rayon top for all the tea in China, and I LIKE tea. These women did, indeed, reek of desperation and nail polish. They were probably professionals and all of above-average intelligence and income, but they looked like 10-dollar hookers.
“Yep,” sighed Jim blonde before he wandered off. “The bottom of the barrel. It’s too late.”
Most of the women were just shy of 60 and dressed like the young 20-something clubbers in LoDo. Their makeup was much too dark and was laid on with a trowel. Their eyebrows were painted on, their over-highlighted and over-colored hair was stiffened with so much hair spray that it wouldn’t blow in the wind of a high-end hurricane, and their heels I couldn’t have walked in to save my life. Their faces looked hungry as they scanned Jim brown up and down.
I moved closer to him, a little scared of a cat fight.
“What do you think of THAT one?” He pointed at a woman sitting at the bar.
She was 55 if a day. She wore a cloth version of a fisherman’s cap and a tank top with nothing beneath. Don’t get me wrong: I do the same from time to time, but her breasts that looked like they’d been sucked dry by life. In the words of a Texan friend of mine, she looked like she’d been rode hard and put away wet. She was smiling at Jim brown. For a brief moment, I was jealous, but then looked up into his face and saw he was grinning at me.
“I think she likes you,” I said, sighing and resigning myself to the adventure, letting go of my agenda. Tao, Titania. Be in sync with the Tao. “But she’s 55 if she’s a day. If you want tits and a pussy for a night, go right ahead. But she’s rather angular and saggy at the same time. She looks intelligent enough, though. Outside of this place, I might like her.”
He made a huh noise and walked over to order his drink. I followed. He leaned on the bar and looked over his shoulder at me and smiled.
Damn that dimple. In sync with the Tao, Titania. In sync with the Tao. Let go of the agenda.
I ordered the house white wine and was generous with the tip. I had to drive home and wasn’t interested in running a tab.
I turned to watch the dancers. There was one very large, young woman dancing with a groper twice her age. I sighed. I still carry around a bit of the Fat Girl mentality, even though I lost the pounds long ago and am now more fit than ever.
Fat women are loving to a fault: they lose themselves in their relationships and fail to pick up their power and wield it for fear of alienating someone. They have beautiful personalities and are so far out of touch with their inner bitch that others take advantage of them shamelessly. Their sins are so very obvious to the rest of the world that they’re easy targets for ridicule. Others’ sins remain hidden, but fat women’s sins are public. They’re pariahs. Useful scapegoats for the rest of society. Fat men face some of the same challenges, but the world is not nearly so brutal to them because society doesn’t measure men’s worth solely by beauty. Our society is so very, very hypocritical and fucked up.
Yeah, I know: news flash, huh?
I smiled at her dancing. “If that’s what you want and need tonight, you go girl,” I said, taking a sip of my wine. “I only pray you find your authentic voice.”
If you want to know how to diet, ask a fat person. They know the calorie count on every food item in the grocery store and on the menu. So don’t offer them advice on how to eat or inspect their plates: they’re making a choice. And walking in their shoes and with all honesty, you’d probably make the same choice. So shut the fuck up and take your self-righteous attitude and shove it.
I tried every diet in the books for years. And I’ve got the determination to not only hold a family together, but to earn a doctorate and post-doctorate degree simultaneously, so it wasn’t a lack of self discipline. Don’t give me that bullshit. Only ONE THING made the difference: rewriting the rules of my life. For years, there was one set for me and another, more liberal and understanding set for everyone else. To be merely assertive would mean I was a – gasp – bitch, no? Well, fuck that fear, girlfriends. The way out is to find your authentic voice and never lose it again.
I watched the large woman moving her body, keeping the rhythm. She could dance, that one. I watched until I realized Jim brown was watching me.
I met his eyes and smiled. “I used to be fat.”
“Me, too,” he said, grinning. He laughed at my surprised look. “I was such a fat bastard, I couldn’t even see my dick. One day, I was in the shower and realized I hadn’t seen my dick in a year. That’s when I started riding my bike.”
That should have been a clue, but it sailed right past me.
I told him about my bike. “I love it. I ride about two or three days per week.”
“I do 30 miles every day.” He looked at the dancers. “Jim went outside. Want to go?”
“Gladly,” I said.
I followed him through the cougars. Every eye was watching him. I expected a hand with blood-red nails to reach out and scratch my face at any moment.
Outside, Jim brown stuck by me, looking over his shoulder from time to time at a very thin, supermodel type in the corner who sat with crossed arms.
“How old do you think she is?” He asked me, tilting his head toward her.
“Over 50, at the very least.”
“Wouldn’t touch that in a million years,” he said, sucking the foam off his upper lip.
“Why not? She’s beautiful,” I said. She was.
“That kind never gives a damned thing to a man,” he said, meeting my eyes. “They’re selfish to the max and think because they’re beautiful that you owe them everything for the privilege of fucking them twice a month while they and stare at the ceiling, bored and hating every minute of it.”
I looked at her again. “I don’t see it.”
“Of course not,” he said, switching on the arrogance again. “You’re a girl.”
A woman, actually, asshole. But I kept my mouth shut. “You speak like you’ve had experience with that type.”
“I had a girlfriend in college who was gorgeous. But she dumped my ass when I got fat.”
I spent the next hour listening and saying, “Uh-huh.” Every time I spoke, he’d interrupt and talk about himself.
You know the type. Unfortunately, they’re much more common than we’d like. Everything relates to something in their life, which is a thinly disguised segue into some other topic they were thinking about the whole time you had the gall and nerve to speak. As soon as you pipe up, their eyes glaze over and they look like they’re making a mental grocery list. Normally, I don’t tolerate these types, but I was having a hard time being Tao and letting go of my agenda, which had nothing whatever to do with talking.
Jim brown came up for air from a story and went in to get another beer. I looked up at the sky over the patio, which was dark due to the lights from the highway and the city. One or two stars shone through.
“Nice hooters,” said a voice.
“Excuse me?” I looked beside me to see a forty-something man. He was a good-looking man with salt-and-pepper hair. He stepped closer to me.
“Nice hooters,” he said, again, grinning.
I frowned. Buddy, I could never, EVER give myself to a man who calls them hooters. Reminds me of bicycle horns and Harpo Marx. They’re breasts. Tits or rack might pass in a passionate moment. But hooters? That’s just slimy.
“You like sex?” He asked it like he was asking me, ‘do you like Chinese food?’
I glanced at him, then stared at the door, wondering why Jim brown was taking so long. “Love it,” I said, quietly into my glass, not looking back at him. Then I cursed myself for answering. I cursed myself even more for being honest. Really, I just wanted him to go away. Hooters, indeed.
“Here’s my card,” he said, handing it to me like I was supposed to genuflect.
I took it, frowning, hoping it would encourage him to leave. I didn’t look at it but tossed it on the table.
He smiled a crocodile smile. “Call me sometime.” He didn’t notice the frown. Or the toss.
I almost laughed out loud. Not in a million years, bucko.
He sauntered into the bar, looking at every woman’s ass on the way. A second later, I saw him come out the front door and get onto a Harley parked on the sidewalk. He made the engine roar a few times and generated enough exhaust to stink up the place, then ran his hand through his hair and rode off into the night like he thought he was Brando. There was no one on the back of his motorcycle, which was telling: even in this K-Mart of sex, he was going home alone.
Jim’s second beer went much like the first, and, suddenly, it was last call. I followed him in.
As Jim waited to tab out, the woman in the cap spoke to him. “So you’re a paramedic, huh?”
Jim said nothing, but leaned on the bar.
“Your t-shirt,” said the woman. “It says –“
“Yeah, sure,” he said, nodding. “I’m a paramedic.”
“I’m a nurse.”
Jim stared at the barkeep and said nothing. She was drowning and he was pushing her under.
“I love being in the medical field.” She shifted in her seat and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Don’t you?”
“Sure. Love it.” He signed the credit card receipt and pushed it across the bar. He turned, not looking at her. “See ya.”
He put his hand in the small of my back and we began to move through the crowd.
“You’re not a paramedic, are you?” I said, looking over my shoulder.
“Naw,” he said, grinning. “I get my t-shirts at thrift stores. But some people deserve to be lied to.”
I wonder if that means me.
We wandered out. Jim blonde had walked home earlier, giving up on the one young woman in the bar under 300 pounds. Or, rather, she hadn’t bothered to notice him. Strike two.
“Good night,” I said, reaching up to give Jim brown a big hug. I’d given up the agenda during the second beer. My gut told me he’d be a selfish lover.
Sometimes, I don’t listen to my gut.
“The ubiquitous hug,” he said, sarcastically. He turned to walk away, then turned back. “Where do you live?” He was standing very close, looking into my face.
“About five minutes from here.”
“I’m game,” he said, simply.
I looked up at him. Only one way to find out. I need something good.
“My car’s over there,” I said, pointing.
That’s when everything started to roll downhill very, very fast.
Women need to feel desired. We do. One reason relationships go stale is because men seem to think we’re wired the same way they are: that sex is a drive, like eating or breathing. For us, yes and no. We need to feel SEXY, not like we’re just a substitute for your good right – or left – hand. We need to know you see us as sexy and beautiful and unique. Men complain about women wanting romance, but that’s not quite the accurate word for what we’re after: we want to feel like more than just a hole in the mattress to our men. That night, I wanted to feel desired, even if I wasn’t interested in ever hearing from Jim brown again. For a couple of hours, I wanted to feel desired. Especially after the Alex fiasco.
As soon as we got to my house, he started complaining. “It’s hot in here,” he said.
I turned on the air conditioning.
He made a beeline for the bedroom. I followed him in and he closed the door. He took off his shirt and laid down in the bed.
I walked over, stripping down to my panties on the way.
“I’m scared,” he said, looking up at me. “I feel really scared.”
“Why?” I stretched out next to him. Good Lord. NOW what?
“I just am,” he said, playing with my hair. “It’s weird. I’m intimidated, somehow.”
Oh, great. Just fucking great. This isn’t a man. He’s a boy.
But he came ‘round. A little.
He was an okay kisser. And he was very quiet throughout the whole process. Fairly proficient at the foreplay. I tried to hold myself back a bit so as not to scare him even more.
He paused to take off his pants and I reached down to put on the condom and . . .
FUCK! No wonder he was scared.
It was tiny. This totally buffed six-footer had a tiny, tiny penis. And I MEAN tiny. The smallest I’d ever seen.
God DAMN IT!!
Since I was on top and driving, I used it to masturbate myself, certain I wouldn’t get to that point any other way. Then I began riding him. Carefully, so as not to lose it in the process.
We switched positions often, but some didn’t work well. Others didn’t work at all. And the ones that DID work didn’t last very long. He had a form of sexual ADHD.
Long story short, we lost the condom. He was too small for even the smallest I had. I used another one, hoping this one would stay put, all the while worrying about the consequences of losing the first one.
Meanwhile, he was squeezing my breasts rather roughly, trying to figure out whether they were fake. It hurt. I told him so and he frowned, still squeezing like he was going to pop them off. A scenario popped into my mind. “Here, I believe this is yours,” he said, grinning sheepishly, handing her breast back. “I’m not sure how to put it back on. Would you be so kind. . . ?”
He tried the me-on-my-side-knee-to-my-chest position, straddling my thigh and I came for the fourth time, this time making lots of noise.
“Finally,” he said like he’d spotted the bus after a long wait. He sighed and pulled out.
I only kept quiet so as not to SCARE you, little boy. “That was number four, by the way. I was just being quiet about the others. Did you come?” I asked, getting up off the bed. “You stayed hard if you did.”
“Oh, yes. A long time ago. I have to get back.”
I looked at the bedroom clock. We’d been at it a whole 20 minutes. I started to get dressed, more than happy to drive him back to Jim blonde’s house. He kissed me once more, fingers inside me, trying to be sly about searching for the lost condom. He didn’t find it. I found it later before I went to bed. He’d come, all right. The damned thing was full.
I drove him home and he held my hand in the car. I dropped him at Jim blonde’s house, which was close to the inn and he scrambled out. As he shut the car door, I closed my eyes and sighed, relieved.
“God DAMN it! Why don’t you LISTEN to me?!” My gut was livid. I could have sworn I actually heard it screaming.
I went to the doctor and got checked out because of the lost condom. Fucker. It just wasn’t worth the risk. I’d never heard of losing a condom before. I’d heard of condoms breaking, but never coming off because was way, way too big.
But that’s not the end of the story.
I saw him about a month later. Moving out of state, my ass.
I was returning a video and was walking back to my car when an SUV pulled into the parking place beside mine, a little too aggressively. I ducked into my car as a couple got out. As I backed out of my space, I noticed the license plates from Jim’s home state. Then I looked at the man and woman standing on the sidewalk beside the video store. They were obviously very comfortable with one another: a couple. They’d been together for quite a while, from appearances.
Jim had pulled out a cigarette and was lighting up. The woman he was with was bent over. She was looking for something in a canvas bag. I looked up into his face and caught his shock of recognition. Then, I saw his fear. The lighter flame stopped on the way to his cigarette and he froze.
I stopped the car for a moment beside them and looked into his eyes and shook my head, letting him know I’d recognized him before I drove off.
On the way home, I was more than a little shaken. I never, ever knowingly touched a man who belongs to another woman. I don’t believe in it. Women have a tough enough time in this man’s world without us stabbing each other in the back, whether we know one another or not. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember if I’d ever asked Jim if he had a girlfriend or a wife. In my state of mind that night, craving that naked human contact, it had probably just slipped my mind. Or maybe I just didn’t want to know.
Asking or not, I had been lied to in a very big way. Did I deserve it? I don’t think so. But I’m absolutely certain SHE didn’t deserve it, that woman bent over the canvas bag.
Now, I always, always, always ask if they’re attached. They may lie and I may not be able to tell they’re lying, but at least my conscience is clear.
And I always, always cop a feel . . .
Confessions of a Denver Cougar 