Hey there honey…

On Thanksgiving I saw my grandma at the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale.  It was lunchtime.  She sat with her assigned table mates, Bobby and Matt.  Bobby calls everybody honey.  He uses the word like people use salt:  “Hey there honey!  Haven’t seen you in a while honey!  Happy Thanksgiving there honey,” he says.

Matt’s a small man who speaks softly.  He was asleep in his chair wearing his white disposable bib when I came.  When I sat down, he woke up.

“Ohhh!  Good to see you!  You look great!”  He said.

“Yeah, you look great there honey,” says Bobby.

Bobby told us that the cook there is Italian.  “Yeah, they make the spaghetti here downstairs honey.  They make it there.  The cook’s Italian.  They make it good there honey.”

Today the attendants served the seniors turkey dinner.  But Bobby always talks about  spaghetti.

I’ve chatted with Bobby and Matt before.  I found out that Bobby used to be an undertaker’s assistant.  He worked for his uncle and says he never got paid.  “No he didn’t pay me honey, no.”

Behind us at another table was the woman who takes her shoes off and puts her feet up on the table.  Today she had taken her shirt off, so she sat there topless, no bra.  Her feet were on the table as usual.

“Hey honey put some clothes on there honey!”  Bobby said.

“Oh that woman’s crazy,” grandma said, making a shooing motion.

“Leave her alone,” said Matt, looking back again.  Then Matt told me, “I wonder if I went over there and told her to stand on the table if she’d do a dance for me.”

“Ahahahaha!  You mean like a stripper?” I said.  Matt cracks me up with these bits.  Matt laughed too.  The old woman, she didn’t look bad.

Lust, Dementia and Depends

The gnarled branches of a majestic, ancient tree with veined leaves telling tales of — shit!  I wanted to say this, poetically, like Unfettered BS or Boomie Bol in their renderings – I wanted to be classy, but I just can’t do it.  I was trying not to tell you straight up and crass the tale of ancient old ass people damned near fucking at the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale.  “Look at ‘em — look!  They do this every damn day,” my ninety year old grandma said as we were leaving the TV room.  I turn around and holy shit, these two, gray bird, lovey doveys were a gnarled intertwined, unabashed hump-fest, tonguing away, arthritic hands pawing, ripping at each other from their chairs, with their walkers just inches away I tell you.

Vantastic, I say!  I told you I wanted to recruit 90 year olds for my “outer-limits” porno movie.  Well I think I found my leads.

My first installment will be called “Lust, Dementia, Decay and Depends.”

Outer-Limits Porn

I’m thinking of writing porn.  Everyone’s doing it.  But mine would be “outer-limits” porn.  My movie would have canned goods (But absolutely NO can openers!), Brillo pads, coffee filters, extension cords (naughty, eh?), and the entire cast, except for me, would be ninety years old – excluding my grandmother – how dare you imagine that I would allow my grandma to be in such filth!  You might have guessed that I cooked up (cooked up – ha!) this idea while in my kitchen.

I watched a snippet of Don Juan DeMarco with Johnny Depp, Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway.  Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway are old in it and they’re married.  There’s a scene with them in bed.  They kissed.  It got me horny.  That’s right — I think old people are hot — forget y’all!  I was mad they didn’t get butt naked.

I’ve written about my WWII veteran friend who’s one sexy bastid.  He’s eighty-six.  He raps, old school, and he killed bad people.  You can’t touch that.

I respect him too much so he can’t be in my movie even though he’s muy hotto and I know he would blow it up.  I just can’t see pimping him like that.  Plus he’s too young.  But I’ll interview some of his friends and some people from the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale – that’s where grandma is.  And I know oldsters who visit the gallery where I work.

It’ll be a problem if they don’t want to get naked.  But there won’t be animals in this movie for those of you into that kind of thing – blech!  I’ll keep you posted if I decide to do it or not.  Oh yeah, and no oxygen tanks because I’m using blow torches.

They Wouldn’t Give Me Any Cake

 

I was going to write about having sex with Clark Gable for the 4^th time but instead I chose cake.  Besides, my interludes with Clark Gable may start to read like a Twilight Zone episode.  A lonely lady conjures the spirit of CG.  He tells her how brilliant she is and he whispers in her ear, ‘I understand you lover’, then he tells her to ‘Come sit, sit right here my dear.  YES that’s it, that’s it!  Right…ah yes there.’

I tried to get a piece of cake at the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale when I visited grandma at lunchtime. They rolled it out on a cart and I ran to it like a jack rabbit in the woods. “Oooo ooo-ooo can I have a piece?”  It looked so good, like they bought it from a classy bakery.  It didn’t look like supermarket sheet cake – which are absolutely fine with me as well.  It had thick white frosting with pink piping around the edges and a fruity red filling – I’m starting to breath heavily.

They wouldn’t give me a piece.  “It fah de residents,” the lady said before handing out pieces to the old people.  My g’ma got a piece.  I thought about just snatching it from her before she said, “You want mine?”  She had dug into it and heaved a piece into her mouth.  She’d already messed around with it and when she talks sometimes particles fly out of her mouth back onto her plate – “Uh, no thanks,” I said.

Her table mates, “Matthew” and “Methuselah” had cake.  Matthew said he’d give me his – the sweetie!  He was more concerned about spaghetti.  “They make it here honey,” he says.  Matthew peppers every other sentence to you with “honey.”  “The cook over there, he’s Italian, honey.  I spoke to him the other day, he said they’d give it to us on Wednesday.” Methuselah had fallen earlier in the day poor thing.  We talked about that.  He said that the lump on his head didn’t hurt and wondered if there was a part of the head where you didn’t feel as much pain.  I said I didn’t know.  Methuselah was thinking about writing a book about the lump on his head to make people feel sorry for him.  My g’ma said they get cake for all of the residents with birthdays during the same month.  “Oh that’s right.  Isn’t it my birthday today?”  She said suddenly.  “It’s May 8^th grandma, your birthday’s February 7^th,” I said.  “Oh yes, that’s right,” she said laughing.  I left there without getting cake.  But I’ll be there at lunchtime at the beginning of next month when maybe they have another nice cake.

At The Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale

Grandma Hattie finally got her eye classes from the optician at the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale.  She lives here.  I went with her today for her exercise class on the terrace overlooking the Hudson River.  Debbie would lead the class in exercises today.  We walked to the terrace through the hall in a procession of oldsters, some in wheelchairs, others pushing walkers, and the others walking slow as hell.  Grandma Hattie was behind me.  “Your hair looks terrible,” she said.  “Well your wig looks terrible!”  I said it loudly because she needs a hearing aid but won’t wear one.  She’s stubborn sometimes I think just to exercise her right, even when it doesn’t make any sense.  My grandma and I have a history of bickering, but I love being around her.  I see her once a week during good times.

I know the exercise teacher Debbie outside of the Hebrew Home because she visited where I work often.  I work at a botanical garden also overlooking the Hudson only a half a mile away from the Hebrew Home.

After Debbie and the nurse’s aids sat all of the oldsters out on the terrace, she started her old people work-out routine.  They stay in the chair the whole time.  She did arms, neck, hips, legs, waist, and head things.  I did them to encourage my g’ma to do them because she had said “I don’t feel like doing no exercising.”  But sometimes all you need is a little push, I say.  My Grandma Hattie was on the left and there was another old lady Hattie on my right it turns out.  My Grandma Hattie is 90 years old.  She sat with her hand under her chin for the first round of exercises but warmed up slowly and began doing them.  It was warm today, an unnatural 85 degrees.  I didn’t like it.

I did the exercises with the oldsters and was worried because I began to tire out.  I was relieved when the good-natured exercise teacher Debbie said that she was wearing herself out as well.  She huffed out in exhaustion after reps of leg lifts from her chair.  I jog and work out, but I’m mentally wearing myself out which helps in weakening my  stamina – those exercises went on for a half an hour and damn if I wasn’t through!  I wonder if it can count as a legitimate workout for me today…