Mr. Sexy Old Guy
In my early 20s, I lived in an old building in an artsy section of Pittsburgh. Back then we would have called the neighborhood hip. The building was six stories high and you could take a final stairway up to the roof. James Taylor was singing about rooftops the year I moved in and I liked going up there at night and watching people’s lives. All those lit-up windows now seem like a precursor to social media posts. I was teaching and taking grad courses at Pitt. I had already been married and divorced before I graduated as an undergrad. I wasn’t dating anyone at that moment but I did notice this very hot, “older” man at the bus stop. I’m guessing he was in his 40s. I learned from his conversations with others on the corner that he was an art professor at a prestigious college in town. There were a lot of us on that corner early on weekday mornings. Sometimes the bus was so full that it didn’t even stop. I took that bus and then another one from downtown up to the Northside to teach in the projects. Mr. Sexy Old Guy and I never exchanged any words, not even a hello, but we obviously were very aware of each other.
Twenty-something young women, at least in my experience, think hot 40-year old men are extra hot. I sure did. I knew he lived upstairs in the building — I lived on the first floor — but I didn’t know which floor or which apartment was his. The building had pretty tight security. You needed a code to get in. There was a live-in building manager. The neighborhood was a mix of arts, music, good food, expensive stores, and some fairly rough inhabitants. The cops walked their beats with German Shepards. The one in the building’s immediate vicinity was named Adolph. The dog, not the policeman. The cop told us to yell “Adolph” if we ever found ourselves in trouble.
The building was old enough that my apartment not only had regular windows but also had a window in the kitchen that opened onto an airshaft that went up through the center of the building. The apartments also had house phones. These were black wall phones that would only connect you to other apartments. You could dial any apartment number and the phone in that apartment would start to ring. I was only friends with one girl who lived across the hall. We never used our house phones because we could knock on each other’s doors. Since she was the only person in the building I knew, my house phone never rang. My apartment was one large room with a separate eat-in kitchen and a bathroom.
So Mr. Sexy Old Guy and I continued to trade smoldering side-eye looks at each other at the bus stop, but still we never talked to each other. I thought about him. A lot. I have forgotten his name but I’m pretty sure it began with a “K”. One night, really late, there was a knock at my door. Being young I assumed it was safe to open the door without asking who it was because, you know, security building. When I opened the door, Mr. Sexy Old Guy was standing in the hall. Still smoldering. Still silent. I could take a hint so I took his hand, led him to my bed. We smoldered. A lot. We didn’t talk. I don’t think we utter any noises at all. Pretty unusual while smoldering but somehow we both decided that was how it was going to be. A few years earlier I had attended a Marcel Marceau show with my mother. After watching this world famous mime give an amazing performance the entire crowd without saying a word to each other all mimed clapping their hands. The silence between Mr. Sexy Old Guy and I was kind of like that.
This went on for quite a while. He showed up sporadically but frequently. I was cool with that. I still wasn’t seeing anyone and I wasn’t in love with the man. It was more of an in lust kind of situation. We still didn’t speak or acknowledge each other at the bus stop. We never sat or stood near each other on the bus either. We still smoldered on the corner but there wasn’t any more side-eye going on. We held our smolders inside like a primitive human carrying a precious, still hot coal to light a fire at their next location. Then everything changed. He showed up as usual. I took his hand as usual. We smoldered. But. Towards the end of the smoldering I caught a whiff. Of another woman. Not cool. Not because he had been with someone else. This wasn’t an exclusive situation, but rather because he came to me directly after being with someone else. A courtesy shower would have been in order. It irked me. A lot. Not going to unpack that here. But needless to say when he left I closed the door not just on him for the evening, but on the entire relationship. Whatever kind of relationship it had been, it was over.
The next morning at the bus stop I was no longer attracted to him in any way other than to recognize his Mr. Sexy Old Guy status. I was done. A friend in one of my grad classes introduced me to this cool guy David who I fell for. David was very good at smoldering too. One night when David was over and we were having a pre smoldering moment, there was a knock on the door. I knew it had to be Mr. Sexy Old Guy because the girl across the hall went to bed super early. I had told David about the situation. We ignored the knocking. The knocking got increasingly louder and very intense. David, who had a voice in the lower tenor, higher baritone range, threw his voice down to a bass level and yelled, “Get the f#ck out of here!” The knocking stopped. Mr. Sexy Old Guy started calling me on the house phone. He didn’t talk. He just stayed on the line. At first I’d hang up and then eventually I stopped answering. Every once in a while there would be a quiet tentative knock on my door late at night that I would ignore. Eventually it all stopped. I never felt scared, just wanted. Wanted when I was no longer interested in being wanted.
It turned out that my intuition was right. I found out later that Mr. Sexy Old Guy lived upstairs with a woman and that they were supposedly in an exclusive relationship. I wasn’t willing to smolder with anyone else’s somebody. I didn’t even smolder with the best friend or brother of someone I had been with before. Still don’t. Can’t say that I’d never but hope that’s true. Meanwhile, I’m sure it may have truly benefited both Mr. Sexy Old Guy and I if we could have processed what happened between us, but we never talked.
Cinse Bonino
2023
