The Old Man in the Club (6 page)

Elliott shook his head. He almost got emotional. “Whatever comes of this, this is the best day I have had since I got out of Lorton Reformatory,” he said. “To know there is someone out here like you—and that man who helped you—gives me hope.”

By the end of the week, Elliott had a job at Georgetown University. And his friendship with Danette continued over the years and lasted through his marriage to his children's mom and heightened the last years of her life.

She was as influential over him as anyone, and her words of living
the life he desired brought him to live the life he missed out on when he was locked up. That was a reason he sought younger women; he didn't get to do it when he was their age.

“I understand the motivation, as you explain it,”
Dr. Nottingham, his therapist, said when he told her of his intentions. “But you cannot get back the years lost in prison, no matter how unjust your conviction was. Life goes on and you have to travel with it.”

“Are you saying, doctor, that I'm wrong for wanting to live the life that was taken away from me?”

“I'm saying you
can't
live the life that was taken away from you,” she answered. “It's gone. No matter what you do, how many young women you have relationships with, it does not mitigate the fact that those years are gone and that you cannot get them back.”

Elliott trusted his therapist—she kept him sane when he struggled to regain his life—but he was not so sure about her position.

“Elliott,” she said, “could this all be about feeding your ego? In many cases when men feel the need to spread themselves among many women, they are nourishing an insecurity or an ego that they believe needs that kind of attention.”

“I don't know, Dr. Nottingham; maybe so,” he answered. “But what I do know is that it feels good. I feel younger. I feel like I'm getting back on the system that ruined my life. I'm not living in the past. But I'm capturing a piece of it that was lost. I don't see anything wrong with that.”

“I'll leave it at that for today,” she said. “As long as you're trying to get back at the system that ruined your life, you're not completely letting go and moving on with your life. And that's my concern, that you go on and live a productive life. I'm so proud of you. You've shown amazing strength to persevere over the years. I don't want you to sabotage your gains by trying to live a bygone time of your life.”

Dr. Nottingham's points were taken into serious consideration. In Elliott's quiet moments, he contemplated what he was doing. He remained doused in anger and bitterness about his conviction. It was not overwhelming—Dr. Nottingham and others before her talked him through that phase—but it was there, it was real. He knew it would always be there. But he felt something when engaging young women like Tamara. He felt outside of his body and away from his recent past, and he could see himself as a twenty-something sitting there in the scene. That's what kept him on course, despite Dr. Nottingham's cogent perspective.

That's what he needed to feel like his time in prison was not a total waste.

“Thank you for a nice time, Mr. Thomas. #SuperSeniorCitizen”

That was the text message Tamara sent to Elliott's cell phone not long after he returned from his walk. He smiled and texted her back: “4 years before I'm a senior citizen. So get me while I'm young.”

It was Tamara's time to smile. She was smitten and surprised: A man older than her father would have been was her new lover. She never would have expected that, but she felt more at ease and comfortable with him than she ever had with a man in her age range.

After shopping with her mom and while watching recorded episodes of
Love & Hip Hop,
Tamara tried to figure out how she went out with Elliott, let alone bedded him. The answers did not come easy and, really, only added to her confusion.

“What does this say about me?” she said aloud.

Family members had told her growing up that she was an “old soul,” that she had “been here before” and that she was “ahead of her time.” At family reunions, instead of hanging with the preteens when she was twelve or with the young adults when she was a
teenager, she always lingered with her much older aunts and uncles. And they allowed her to hang with them because she was comfortable and contributed interesting elements to conversations.

Tamara never told anyone about her attraction to teachers in school or professors in college. She played along when her friends talked admirably about the school's athletes or the cute guys. But she never fully bought in. The man with a little gray hair and a lot of experiences piqued her curiosity. A lot.

Around 9 p.m., when Elliott had just awakened from a nap before going to the club, Tamara sent him a text message. Inadvertently, her mom influenced her to contact him. While shopping, Tamara told her mother about Elliott. Tamara did not share that Elliott was older than her mom, but she did say enough for her mom to endorse him.

“His name is Elliott and I feel much more mature when I'm with him,” she said as they looked at dresses in the DKNY store. “His energy is different. He's not all over the place like guys I have dated. He's calm and assured and comforting. I've never felt that way with a man.”

“I think you should focus on your career,” her mother said. “But who am I fooling? You don't listen to me.”

Mother and daughter laughed.

“Really, though, when you can feel secure and like you're growing with a man, then that's a good thing. A rare thing,” she said. “Trust me, I know. Your father had the same effect on me when we met. Now don't take that to mean you should marry this man. I'm just saying embrace him but take it slowly. Let everything play out naturally. Don't go trying to force anything.”

“No, that's not me, Ma,” Tamara said.

“So when are you going to see him again?” her mother asked.

“I wanted to see him tonight. But he said he has to go to a party.”

“And you left it at?” her mother asked. “If you want to see him, you should let him know. Maybe he would pass on the party. Why let him go out to a party and meet someone else when you're really interested in him? I'm not pushing you to be aggressive. I'm just saying don't be too lackadaisical.”

The advice her mom gave ricocheted in Tamara's head, leading to her text message: “Do you have to go to that party?”

Elliott received the message as he was about to start shaving. He put down the razor to respond.

“Have to go? No. I want to go. But why?” he responded.

“I was thinking I would come over and hang out with you.”

Elliott smiled and shook his head upon reading the text. Then he said aloud: “I see. Well, look at this.”

He wanted to cancel his plans and tell her to come over. But Elliott analyzed women up and down, and he deduced that seeing her on back-to-back nights would convey the wrong message. So he texted her: “That sounds good. But I committed to being there and I don't want to be a no-show.”

“U can text ur friend now and let them no something came up,” Tamara shot back. The more he refused to give in to her, the more eager she became to get her way.

On the other end, Elliott was tired of texting. He knew he had to with the generation of women he desired; it was their way. But after about two in succession, he had enough.

And instead of texting back, he called her.

“Hi, Elliott,” she said with excitement in her voice. “I wasn't expecting you to call.”

“You want to give me arthritis with all the texting?” he joked. “You just learned something about me. After about three, maybe four texts in a row, I'm done. If it's going to go beyond that, we need to talk.”

“Don't you enjoy the anticipation of what the response is going to be when you receive texts?” Tamara asked. “It's fun. It's a real important way in how we communicate now.”

She paused for a second. “I'm sorry,” Tamara said. “I didn't mean to sound like I was schooling you. I was trying to make a point.”

“It's okay; I'm good,” Elliott said. “And I understand your position. I get to the point sometimes where talking is the best way to go.”

“I understand,” Tamara said. “In my texts, I was trying to say that you'd have way more fun with me than you would at any party.”

She sipped on the glass of Sauvignon Blanc that helped her get more daring. “Don't you agree?”

Elliott got her drift, but his near obsession with frequenting the Atlanta nightlife overwhelmed him. He wanted to answer her, “I don't know.” Instead, he said, “Of course. But I can't cancel on them at this late point. I'm getting dressed. And why do you want to see me anyway?”

He threw in that last question not only as a way of gathering information, but also to take her mind off of why he didn't want her to come over.

“Well, hold on,” she said. Tamara took the remaining half glass of her wine in one gulp. And she even burped after downing it. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I had to finish my wine before I gave you my answer.”

“Which is…?

Tamara blushed.

“My mother told me to,” she started.

“Your
mother?”
Elliott said. “You told your
mother
about me?”

“Not really, not specifically,” she answered. “I told her that you make me feel mature and she gave a little speech about how wonderful it is that a man could do that. And later she told me to assert myself and to keep you from going out to meet other women.”

Elliott said, “How do you and your peers put it? ‘It's not that serious.' ”

“But that's the problem,” Tamara said. “I think it might be that serious. I didn't give you the full picture on how I felt about us being intimate last night. The truth is, it was wonderful. I wasn't trying to compare you to men I have slept with, younger men. But I couldn't help it. It's impossible not to. And it was made more impossible to notice because it was so different.”

Ellliott had not received any complaints from the other two twenty-somethings he had slept with, and he was proud of his performance with her.

“I thought the men I had slept with were doing something,” she said. “I enjoyed it with them, but they were really jumping up and down in me, showing off how long they could go or how big they were—and all of them weren't that big. And there weren't that many, either, so don't get any bad ideas about me.”

Elliott did not respond. He listened. And even in that he was impressed.

“See what I'm saying?” Tamara said. “A younger guy would have had a bunch of questions and interrupted me. You are listening. I love it. Thank you. But anyway, what I was getting at is that younger men basically fucked me. Excuse my language, but it's the truth. They made sure they got theirs. They either were not concerned about pleasing me or didn't know how.

“The worst part is that I was okay with that. I didn't know any better—until last night. In your mind, you probably fucked me, too. But the way it felt on my end was loving and careful but strong and attentive. You caressed me and admired my body with your hands and kissed me delicately on my neck and shoulders and made me feel like a woman, like you cared about how I felt.

“You enjoyed yourself; I could tell. But it wasn't only about you
being pleased. You wanted to please me. And experiencing that made me wet, made me feel alive and made me want to make sure you were pleased. Through you, I experienced for the first time what making love really means. I would never have expected that. But now I want more.”

Elliott smiled. “See, how long would it have taken you to text all that?” he joked.

Tamara laughed. “What can I say? I'd like to believe at some point I would have said, ‘Let's just talk about it.' But you beat me to that.”

“Well, thank you for all those words that will always mean something to me,” Elliott said. “I'm not sure what to say after that except making love to you felt wonderful. Your body is soft and made for caressing. And I want to feel it again.”

Still, he was not going to miss the party. So he came up with a solution. “How about I leave a key for you downstairs and you meet me here around twelve-thirty, one. That'll give me some time to show my face, mingle and get back to you.”

“You have to go to that party, huh?” Tamara asked.

“I made a promise that I would be there and I'm trying to make a compromise with you,” Elliott said. “I had these plans for about three weeks. I'm willing to cut my night short to accommodate you.”

Tamara had a moment where her age showed. “Don't do me any favors,” she snapped.

“Is that what you really want to say to me?” He had vowed to not get overly reactionary to a woman's flippant remarks.
She's just
being a woman,
was his thought process, chauvinistic as it might have sounded.

“You're right. I'm sorry,” Tamara said. “I shouldn't have tried to
get you to break up your plans. Thank you for meeting me halfway on this. I will get there around midnight and pick up the key. But I will text you when I'm on my way.”

She smiled as she said those last words because she had already planned to give Elliott a memorable greeting when he returned home that night.

And that's how they left it, which was good for both sides. Elliott knew he had a fun evening ahead of him even if the party was a dud. Tamara was excited about a chance to feel Elliott's loving again.

R
&B star Melanie Fiona and hip-hop star Chris Brown were performing at Compound, which was the reason Elliott was so determined to go to the club. He liked Melanie Fiona, but was totally unaware of any Chris Brown song. But he believed that the entertainment would bring out a bevy of young beauties for him to peruse.