2. Carter
CARTER
My friend, E, swung his golf club and rather than hitting the golf ball, he knocked up a chunk of grass making me laugh. “These people gon’ send yo’ ass a bill for messing up their lawn.”
“I don’t know why you got me doing this white people shit anyway,” he sucked his teeth making me laugh harder.
“I got you doing it, or you begged me to teach you ‘cus you want to come out here when the Hot Girls Golf Club is here?”
“Oh yeah.” He perked up at the mention of the black, female golf club that frequented the country club that I attended.
I actually found a few years ago that golf relaxed me.
I had spent too many years of my life around the hustle and bustle.
My age was starting to show ‘cus I liked quiet shit.
Golf, fishing, riding motorcycles. I was forty-eight, and my life was the calmest that it had ever been. Up until a few months ago.
“How is Shani doing?” E asked as if he could read my mind.
His question about my ex-wife made me push out a sigh. “She still won’t talk much. I don’t think it’s because she can’t. She just doesn’t want to. Every time she can’t think of a word or stumbles over her words, she gets frustrated and cries.”
“Damn,” E shook his head.
I had known E for twenty-eight years. He was at my wedding.
I dated Shani for four years before we got married.
We were married for ten years and had been divorced for thirteen years.
E knew Shani. He was there for the proposal, the marriage, and the divorce.
He was also there when I got the news that she’d suffered a stroke.
She stayed in the hospital for a month and rehabilitation center for six weeks.
There was no way she was ready to live alone.
Her mother wasn’t in the position to care for her.
Our son was in prison, and our daughter lived in an apartment building on the third floor. Shani couldn’t climb stairs.
Our daughter had started the process of looking for a home to buy, so her mother could live with her.
Everything that she liked had stairs. Because my kids didn’t want Shani in a home, I let her come live with me until my daughter’s housing situation was taken care of.
I had stairs too, but I had a guest room on the first floor that Shani was occupying.
She used to be one feisty chick. I had stories for days about her running up on me on the block hitting me with bottles, flushing my dope down the toilet, fighting my side chicks.
Seeing her barely weighing one hundred twenty pounds, looking fragile and weak, barely being able to talk.
That shit hurt. It hurt a lot. I wasn’t in love with Shani anymore, but I would love her for life.
Life was ironic as hell. I felt like I was in the best shape of my life meanwhile, Shani was fighting for hers.
I stopped eating pork five years ago. I worked out four times a week, and I hadn’t drunk a soda in two years.
I wasn’t on any medication. Not for high blood pressure or any other ailments.
My dick still worked, and my stamina was great.
I was at my best, and she was at her worst. That shit was crazy to me.
“Is that what life is now?” I asked as we walked toward the back nine, or the last nine holes rather.
“What you mean?” E asked. “Got damn,” he openly admired two women riding by in a golf cart. They were black, and they were beautiful. “Oh yeah, I need to step my golf game up. I didn’t even know black women liked this shit.”
“Didn’t you just say that you and Nicole were talking about living together?”
“Man,” E sighed. “We are because we’ve been together for two years but bro,” E shook his head. “I really do like having my own space. If she moves in with me, I think our relationship might go downhill.”
Confusion made me frown. “Wasn’t it you that brought up moving in together?”
“Yeah, ‘cus I was drunk and on that dumb shit. Nicole is thirteen years younger than me. If she’s thirty-five then she’s probably getting the attention of men in their late twenties. It just seemed odd to me that after two years she wanted to continue to live apart. That shit is sneaky to me.”
The way I laughed made E stop in his tracks. The harder I laughed, the more irritated he became. He glared at me with a frown while shaking his head. “Shit isn’t that funny, dawg.”
“It is because let me find out Big Money, E is insecure. Young niggas got you shook. It’s not just the younger women dating younger men these days. The older women are doing it too.”
“Yeah, and I can’t compete with those young niggas. I don’t sell dope no more. I do very well for myself, but I’m not buying $10,000 bags just because. Maybe for a birthday or something. You know how we used to blow money on women. Those days are over for me, dawg.”
“Mannnnnn,” I drawled. “I used to be a YN. We both used to be YN’s.
That shit ain’t talking ‘bout nothing. I’m a grown man with grown man money and grown man intentions.
I gives a fuck about a YN. That’s why you have to date women that have things going for themselves.
I couldn’t care less what a woman brings to the table.
She doesn’t even have to have a job, but a woman that has her own, does nice things for herself, and is used to shit, isn’t going to come to you once a week batting her lashes for a purse or some shoes.
If that’s all she wants, she can go get that shit herself. ”
“That sounds nice, but those women come with headaches. If a woman bought her own $400,000 house and is riding around this muhfucka in a Range Rover hopping out in red bottoms, she doesn’t need me for shit but dick.
And the women that only need you for dick be having too much damn mouth.
I like my women needy. Ask me to pay a light bill or something.
Be stressed over an unexpected bill and let Big Daddy come save the day. ”
“And that’s why you’re about to be living with a woman that you really don’t even want to be living with because a woman having her own intimidates you and because she wasn’t begging to live with you, you thought she was cheating. Let me know how that works out for you.”
E did what he always did when I was making sense, and he didn’t have a comeback. He stuck his middle finger up at me. “I love having idiots for friends. There’s never a dull moment,” I laughed.
“Mane fuck outta here. What the hell were you talking about earlier when you said is this what life is now or some gay shit like that?” he grumbled.
“You a corny ass nigga,” I chuckled. “But I mean watching people get sick and die. Watching the people you love get old. Like we all know it’s coming but damn.
” Sometimes when I closed my eyes, all I could see was Shani’s frail body.
She wasn’t the woman that I once knew, and it was bothering me.
Life was unpredictable for everybody but the older a person became, the uncertainties were intimidating.
“I watched my son die, and he was nineteen. That’s just a part of life no matter how old we are.
That cliché saying about living every day like it’s your last wasn’t created for nothing.
There comes a time when we have more time behind us than in front of us.
That shit is scary. And even though we’re young, there are way too many people that didn’t make it to forty-eight.
Just gotta count every day as a blessing. ”
“You can make sense at least once a month,” I bobbed my head. “You aren’t a complete idiot.”
“Aye dig this. I’m about to go find those women. Nicole hasn’t moved in yet, and I’d rather be talking to them than yo’ overly swole ass.”
“Scared that she was cheating, so you asked her to move in with you, and now you’re trying to cheat. The moments when you make sense sure don’t last long.”
“Man fuck you. I just want to talk to them. See if I can get some private lessons.”
All I could do was shake my head. E was gon’ be E.
I’d never lie and say there were no good women around because that would be a lie.
But good didn’t always equate to compatible.
I didn’t have a lot of requirements, but I liked who I liked.
Since I was damn near fifty, I doubted I’d get married again but being alone all day every day for the next however many years wasn’t ideal.
And neither was talking to multiple different women, dealing with various personalities, and insecurities.
All that arguing, toxicity, and bullshit wasn’t for me. I wanted peace.
I never had a problem getting women or being a provider.
Women that had their own didn’t intimidate me.
I had more to offer than money, so I would always be needed no matter how much a woman had of her own.
There were things her money and material possessions couldn’t do for her, and that was where I came in.
Sleeping with different women wasn’t a thrill for me anymore.
I’d had ‘em short, tall, skinny, BBW, light, dark, foreign, you name it. I bedded bottle girls, and I’d slept with a female pilot.
Childish things didn’t excite me anymore.
And for all the women I’d run into since my divorce there was always a reason keeping me from getting in too deep with them.
Bad ass kids, an ignorant ass ex, trust issues.
Hell, I’d even dated a woman that had a great career as a medical billing and coding specialists that ended up in prison for fucking fraud.
I couldn’t make this stuff up. There were times I asked myself if I was being too picky.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I didn’t have to settle for the sake of not growing old alone.