
Chapter 1: Perry, Jo, and the Lord
“Call me Perry. Perry Stroker.”
I had just awoken from a pleasing little doze, after a most enjoyable congress, but as usual, could not remember my exact location until the fog cleared. Jo shifted her weight so that instead of her elbows pressing down on the bed beside me, they were pressing into my stomach.
“I know what to call you. I remember the names of all the men I go to bed with, at least until I get up. I asked you a question.”
“And … it was about the Congress of Vienna?” I hazarded. “Or the final outcome of the 1948 World Series? Or the boundary conditions for the Big Bang?”
“You may have thought that was a Big Bang, but it was definitely middle-sized. Quite pleasant though … in parts. No, I asked why you aren’t a billionaire.”
“Well, I think there is only one thing standing in my way.”
“And that would be?” asked Jo.
“Lack of money.”
“Duh… So, I was doing a research project yesterday, on Amazon. There are at least 1,500 romance novels about billionaires. Most of the billionaires are young, ripped, and unbelievably sexy. Considering your general ignorance of how the world functions,” Jo said, “you are probably unaware that there is even a special category of books called ‘bad-boy billionaires’.” She was always scathing about my failings to follow popular culture.
I decided I had better show some interest. “So, why is that an issue?”
“In reality, there are currently about 2,700 billionaires worldwide. Not enough to go ‘round.”
“Wow,” I said, “even fewer billionaires than there are black rhinos. Does that mean they’re an endangered species, and we should set up protected areas for billionaires? Watering holes inside Neiman-Marcus? But think about it: Most of them are old, chubby, and only sexy because they’re rich. Maybe there are only about two who are actually desirable for themselves, so the ratio of fantasy to reality could easily be a thousand to one.”
Jo shrugged. “But there are very few erotic novels written about dirty old men. In fact, I couldn’t find a single autobiography of a dirty old man, despite the millions of them that must be out there. So I checked that out, and conservatively, there might be 100 million who might fall into the demographic worldwide, and my count reveals fewer than a hundred novels and memoirs, so the ratio is closer to one to one million. There are, of course, a number of clean old men, who think only pure thoughts, but they probably all belong to religious organizations. They can probably be safely ignored in the data sample, and besides, there are plenty of books for them. So, why don’t you write your memoirs?”
It occurred to me that the term in itself was déclassé, reminiscent of well-hidden stores in England and lonely masturbation fantasies, such as the deflowering of young virgins (who are increasingly in short supply).
“I prefer not to think of myself as a dirty old man. I am, truth be told, a dignified elderly gentleman.”
“A dignified elderly gentleman would not leave his fingers in there.” She giggled. I had, in fact, provided some digital stimulation to Jo a few minutes earlier, and just possibly had dozed off without correcting the situation.
I lay there and thought about it for a few minutes. A gentleman? I know that the only infallible rule is that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one. “Can an astrophysicist be a gentleman?” I enquired.
She snorted. “I’m never sure if you are an astrophysicist fantasizing about being a neurosurgeon or a neurosurgeon fantasizing about being an astrophysicist.”
“Well, the Chinese sage Zhuangzi once dreamt he was a butterfly, and for the rest of his life worried as to whether he was a butterfly dreaming he was a philosopher or a philosopher dreaming he was a butterfly.”
“You really are a pompous idiot.” Jo knows how to hurt a man. “I’ll worry about you being a butterfly when I see you laying eggs on milkweed. Gentlemen never do that.”
“Well, a gentleman knows how to dance,” I offered.
“Batting zero for one so far.”
“And doesn't follow fashion, and … a gentleman never blow-dries his hair.”
“True, but you’ve been waiting all your life for fashion to catch up. And what hair? So, you don’t get any points there.”
“You are so hard on me. A perfect gentleman is a bad boy with impeccable manners, and how else did I inveigle you into bed? He also brings his partner breakfast in bed, ruins his lover’s lipstick, but not her mascara, and is never unintentionally rude―”
“You have never brought me breakfast in bed. And what you just did to me was kind of rude,” she interjected.
“You didn’t seem to have any complaints. Well, more practical things. A gentleman knows to support his weight on his elbows. And whether in bed or going through a doorway, a gentleman never comes before a lady.”
Jo grinned. “Or as Lana Turner said, ‘A gentleman is simply a patient wolf.’ So, forget the dignified crap. You are just depraved. Amazing you aren’t chasing twenty-year-olds.”
“I’m not that broke.”
“I said ‘depraved,’ not ‘deprived.’ You really ought to wear your hearing aids when you are in bed with a lady.”
Jo shifted her generously endowed body a little bit and leaned forward, so she sat across me with her breasts hanging down to my chest. Most depraved elderly gentlemen, in fact, prefer ladies of their own age and shape. Not only are they far more willing, to the extent of being positively forward in their attentions, but they are far less tiring and far more forgiving of minor (purely temporary) failures of the flesh.
“Well,” I observed, “Lord Chesterfield said, ‘The position is ridiculous, the pleasure momentary, and the expense damnable,’ except he probably didn’t."
“Even if he did say it, he got it wrong. The websites are free, and the dinner you just bought me doesn’t add up to much in the cosmic scheme of things.”
“True, and maybe the pleasure is momentary when one is twenty, but one of the advantages of old age is that, as a depraved elderly gentleman, I am no longer quite so trigger-happy. Pleasure can be drawn out and enjoyed. We have enjoyed many conversations while in sexual congress.”
“Like what?” she replied.
“Well, from the mundane ‘Can you shift over a bit?’ to a deeply satisfying discussion of the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Conversations go so much better when embedded in appreciative flesh. Sex is wasted on the young.”
“Okay,” she said, “but the positions, every damn one of them, are ridiculous. Pity it’s so much fun.”
“Well, we all know:
There was a young lady of Norway
Who hung from her heels in a doorway
She said to her boyfriend, “Fred
Get up from the bed
I think I’ve found just one more way”
“I know,” she said. “Every time I read Cosmopolitan, there are ‘ten new positions to try out this weekend.’ They go from being mildly undignified to full-out idiotic and probably dangerous to one’s health.”
“And that is another reason for elderly gentlemen to look for lascivious companions of their own age: The risk of contusions or breakages is far less. And I am happy to say you meet that criterion.”
“In that case,” said Jo, “you have spent a lot of your life in ridiculous positions. Tell me about them.”
“A gentleman never tells.”
“This one does,” she said, and shifted her weight so that her elbows dug into my stomach again.