Tighten Up

You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. […] For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.— Dale Carnegie

The old man danced just as good as he walked.

He wore his Halloween costume to The Brothers Barber Shoppe.  Went back even though they had raised their prices.  No more telling folks how you’re paying the same as 1980.

He wore beige corduroy slacks, a vertically-striped dress shirt left over from long forgotten workplace abuse and a pair of decades-old shoes back when he was a bachelor with money.

Oh, the good old days.  That time between the invention of birth control pills and the AIDS epidemic. That interlude was the sweet spot for an American male.  Life is timing.  Tighten up.

The shoes were woven betasseled brown leather loafers by Massimo Emporio.  That’s Italian.  Size 12, ladies.  Still fit.  Probably thirty years old.  Back in the day, Nordstrom’s on Broadway had the most outstanding examples of feminine pulchritude pushing footwear.

He had another thirty-year-old pair of shoes.  There had been a different sales girl.

Nobody could guess what he was dressed as.  He was dressed like a guy going to his doctor’s to get bad news, then breakfast.

A senior fade is now $14.  Actually still cheaper than that beauty parlor in an alley off Northwest 23rd back when he was young.

“The Price Is Right’ playing on both televisions.  Some lady guessed too high, missed prize package with a BMW.  Somebody’s having a worse day than I am, the old man thought.

Bennie is not here.  Bennie is supposed to be here.  It’s Tuesday.  No Bennie.

Mohammed, seems to be the owner, I never asked, is working on the head of the cutest black boy you have ever seen.  I wanted to call my agent.  I called my granddaughter.  This kid was cute.

Can you, can you, the old man was practically stuttering, can you do that for me?

Mohammed couldn’t.  He’s a black Muslim small business owner who doesn’t vote.  He relied upon his faith.  Wise choice.

Best he could do was tighten up the old man.

The old man didn’t get out much.  You probably know that by now.  And why.  Best for everybody.

He didn’t get out much.  So, he was kinda bottled up.  Maybe a case of verbal spewing.  Like kids at recess in the springtime.

Where were we?

The old man had been talking to a buddy from way back.  Many fast runs.  Bunch of slow runs.

Anyway, he tells about a guy ready to sacrifice his freedom for his principles, what he believes in.  His code, he might have said.

The old man told him, my code is… I don’t sacrifice my liberty.  Spent his whole life dodging cops and ex-wives and padded rooms.  No, thank you.

Tighten up.

Aging asks questions about freedom.

Can you lift that?  One of my favorites.

Which reminded the old man of his second most favorite joke.

Things turn romantic and the young redhead asks, ‘How about we go upstairs and make mad, passionate love?’

And he says, ‘I can go upstairs or I can have sex, but I can’t do both.’

As days and years passed, the less funny that joke got.