The Hoarder Looks For Love

“You’re interesting,” he says. “I like interesting women.”

“Interesting usually means that you don’t like me, but want sex.”

“I don’t usually have sex with older women.”

“What does age have to do with sex?”

“Everything, my darling.”

The quarantine is mandated to lock down. The death toll rises. Cases rise. I met Larry Bernstein at a Zoom Singles Site. He’s a retired periodontist and advertised that he’s 70 and looking for love. In his singles photograph he’s tall, standing on a mountain, wearing ski clothes. But tonight we’re zooming and he’s this tiny man with a big head sitting in the middle of floor to ceiling, stacks of boxes, appliances, things.

God, I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but the hoarding and filth are so bad you can almost smell it through the computer screen. He complains about the social distancing, and refuses to wear a mask. “All this crap about personal hygiene. How often can you wash your hands?”

While he recites what he’s looking for in a relationship, what he “expects,” as he has so much money he doesn’t know what to do with it and how lucky any woman he chooses will be, I wonder what happens to make an accomplished once handsome man transition to this hoarding hermit? Like knots in a beautiful ball of yarn, in our life’s journey, sometimes, we get gnarled up. And we don’t see ourselves as we are and only as we were or think we are.So anyway, I’m feeling sorry for him, trying to make conversation, but he only wants to talk about how “lousy,” life is, how really horrible it is getting “old,” and that his last brain MRI showed a “shadow,” and I’m getting depressed.

“Old, you’re not old,” I emphasize. “Old is only a label and it has nothing to do with age.”

“Who says? Einstein?” he shouts. “What the fuck do you think it has to do with?”

“What I mean is that age is not a number. It’s who you are. How you feel about yourself,. From the day we’re born we age. It’s a gift.”

“A gift to shit in my pants?” he shouts louder. “To choke when I chew? Pee when I laugh? Who told you this garbage about being happy when you’re old? You’re a cougar. You’re an old hippie activist. Old,” he repeats.

“I don’t like labels. But if you insist, I love being old then.”

“Fuck! Fuck your age activist garbage! If you love being old why do you wear feathers in your hair, braids like an Indian Squaw, hippie boots, and green stockings? Most old ladies wear outdated Chanel tweed jackets and carry nice ugly Berkin bags their kids hocked their houses for to give her on her 80th birthday.”

“Well, I’m zooming out,” I say. “… It’s been…interesting. I have to get to work. I…”

“Your books are crap!” he continues. “I bought them used on Amazon. A waste. All your male lovers in your books end up on the crap side. I’m looking for a woman who wants a serious relationship. Who will appreciate what I give her. No wonder you’re alone. How can you find love during the fucking pandemic and when you’re old?

I click off.

An hour later, I’m on the phone with my friend Marilyn Mumps. A sixty-one year old dentist, she’s married to Wang Wong, a well known internist. Marilyn is a huge gossip and loves to talk on the phone. I tell her about the awful date with the hoarder. “Honey, the pickings are worse than ever. Either they’re in quarantine, sick with the Covid, or God forgive me on ventilators. Bunny Blumenthal met that lawyer rat at a social distance meet up and she fucks him. Do you think he called the next day? Or the day after? He uses social distancing as an excuse.”

“Of course.” I laugh. “The emotional retards are in bliss with the social distancing.”

“On top of it,” Marilyn continues, “… she got a sex toy stuck up her ass.”

“Well, I still believe in love. In fate.”

“Honey, I believe in staying alive. Gotta go. Wang is home.”

By, BarbaraRoseBrooker-From her the book she is working on-The Corona Diaries And Other Things-

She is the author of many books. Her latest novel, published Feb 2020, Post Hill Press/Simon Schuster is in all bookstores, and on Amazon, Kindle, and soon released on AUDIO!

www.barbararosebrooker (see Barbara’s TV appearances, and podcasts on her website)