Keeping Hope Alive

Too many of us when we reach a certain age, got too tired of jumping through the hoops it takes of maneuvering through yet another relationship. It's much easier to just let the whole thing go. It's just not worth the effort any more. That's pretty much how I thought.

After two failed marriages and way too many other failed attempts at relationships, it's often easier to just let that whole thing go. Kinda makes you feel dead inside though, thinking that your life is over (except you keep on living). There's only so much that watching TV and going out to music alone can do for you.

And that's pretty much how I was feeling. It was hard enough going to movies and eating out alone, but going to hear music? Or going to the theater? So you sit at home and melt into the couch and then melt into your bed.

Going grocery shopping is the high point of most of my weeks. If the sun is out and it's warm, going for walks in the park. (Except that most parks are filled with children and families running around, making you feel even lonelier.)

No, I didn't have any children. And too many of my friends have since either gone their own ways, or worse yet, died.

I'm too old for any dating scene. No longer lively enough to go to a gym. Yeah, you might say that I'm in dire straights, just crawling along waiting for whatever fate my body has in store for me.

Of course, I didn't know that I was soon going to meet a senior citizen tornado that would defy all of my "declining years" experience.

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Meandering through the aisles at the local store can be a way to postpone loneliness, but then you're often confronted by younger versions of what you could have been but weren't. And then there's the whole couples/families thing again.

So I was surprised when on one trip, I felt a tug on my shirt sleeve from behind. I turned around to start to scold whoever it was, but what I saw was a kindly but perplexed face. "Would you mind reaching up on that top shelf for me and getting that jar of pickles please?"

She didn't look much older than I was, but I noticed that she had a bit of palsy in her right hand and I felt sorry for her. Imagine, someone making me feel younger than I am. That was her.

Handing the jar to her, I was about to turn away. "Thank you for that. An old woman has to find whatever help that she can these days."

Old? Yes, she looked on the older side, but not as old as the implication in her voice said she thought she was. "I'm glad I could help," I told her, preparing to move away again.

"I was wondering," she began, "If you would like some company while you're shopping."

I turned to look at her again, and looked harder this time. She had curly steel grey hair and lines in her face, but I didn't necessarily see a much older woman than I was, and I'm sixty-seven. It's not as if she looked too old to be shopping by herself.

But she had a soft pleading look in her eyes that screamed 'I'm lonely, can you spend some time with me?'

Of course, it mirrored what I had been feeling, so I gently laid my hand on hers and looked into her eyes. I suddenly saw hope there staring back at me. There was also a hint of a tear forming in her left eye as well.

Well, an afternoon shopping with this 'older lady' (who again looked to be my age) might not be a bad thing. "What else do you need?" I asked her, as gently as I could.

"Oh, well that might be a loaded question," she replied, with a hint of playfulness coming through.

"What other groceries do you need?" I asked, this time phrasing it more on point, wondering, 'What am I getting myself into?'

"Oh, just a few things. I'm here just to get out of the house mainly," she said, with what could have been a wink, or could have been a tremor in her right eye.

Hmmmmm, I thought. Is this her playing a game? Or is she flirting with me? It had been so long since a woman had flirted with me, I wasn't sure now that I could see the difference.

"My name is Margaret, by the way, but you can call me Maggie" she said with a smile. After a second hesitation on why part, "And your name is?" she prompted.

"Trevor."

"Oh! As in the English actor Trevor Howard?" She asked rather spritely. Most people even of our age wouldn't have gotten the reference.

"Precisely," I said in my best English accent.

"I must say!" She said in a much better accent than mine.

"Were you an actor?" I asked her, now getting intrigued. She was getting more 'interesting' by the minute.

"Once an, Actor, always an actor," she said, this time with a definite wink. And then she stopped stooping so much, and began straightening up more.

"Would I have known you from any roles?" I asked her. Maybe she was just acting like she was an old lady before, I thought. Or rather, I hoped. I thought I saw her demeanor change subtly and take on a more younger seeming attitude.

"Oh, I doubt that. I always played the best friend or later the mother roles. Not exactly leading material. And you?"

"I had one upon a time come to be an actor here. I fell into writing however instead."

"Good fall," she said with a smirk. "Anything I would have known or seen?"

"I'm afraid not. Mostly I was a re-writer. Perking up the odd script with dialogue. Never really a big winner for me either."

"Well," her eyes began sparkling. "Then we wouldn't be in competition then, would we?"

Competition? Her veneer of 'old lady' was beginning to fall by the wayside the more and more we talked. Perhaps getting to know this woman would be of more interest than I had previously thought.

Suddenly, she had a look of -- something -- cross her face. Panic?

The beginning of restlessness?

"I think I'm growing tired of shopping, " she said suddenly, looking up and even more directly into my eyes. "Shall we go and have coffee? I could use to get off my feet. Couldn't you?"

Suddenly, shopping wasn't on the top of my mind either. "There's this coffee shop--" I began to say, and then she interrupted me with...

"Chandlers. I go there a couple of days a week. Gets me out of the house."

I usually go to another more hipster coffee shop and not the kind that Chandlers represents, but I said, "Of course. We can walk down there. If you're not too tired from shopping, that is."

Threading her left arm through mine, she sang, "We're off to see the coffee wizard!" Oh, my.

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An hour later, Maggie had shed her 'old woman' persona pretty much in favor of an aging hipster one; of which I was more than happy to accommodate the difference of.

"Oh, I wish I'd run across you a few years ago," she said at one point. We were surrounded by people who could be our grand children, but she was smiling and doing a lot of winking at me. "But I was still married then."

I wish I had too, I began thinking. But instead I asked, "How long ago did your husband die?" Regretting it as soon as I said it.

"Oh, he didn't die. He left me for the younger woman that he had gone and gotten pregnant. The bastard!" Oh.

"I'm sorry about that. I--"

"That's ok. I have a better outlook on life since then." Then she got a gleam in her eye, and asked, "You didn't drive here, did you?"

"No. I usually walk to go shopping, and then if I buy too much, and have to catch a rideshare back home."

"Well," she said brightly. "I only live another four blocks further than here. Perhaps you could walk an old girl home?"

I was glad too, but I was not sure where this was leading to. I stood and hooked my arm out for her to grab hold of, and when she took it, I escorted her out the front door. Walking past several 'youngsters' looking up and grinning as we did. 'How quaint,' I saw one of those smirks register. Not in those terms of course, but...

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When I got her to her front door, she asked, "Do you have anything planned for the rest of the afternoon?" When I shrugged my head no, she almost exploded it with, "Care to come in and fuck me?"

"I'm-- What?"

"You didn't think that I was that old did you? It's been a while. And I think that I can finally get over the bastard. Can you still get it up?" She asked, even more bluntly.

"Well, I..."

"Guess we'll find out then, won't we?" And with that, she dragged me in the house and shoved the front door closed with my back. Turning around to me, she held out her hand and asked, "Care to help an old girl get down?"

I figured for some reason, that she meant 'down to untie her shoes.' Instead, her hand reached up to undo something else. "Oh, My--" I began to say, but that changed quickly to "Oh, my God!" As she had my male equipment out of my pants and into her mouth before I could say, 'What the--?'

I was soon in a position past when I wasn't sure I could still rise to the occasion of. She looked up at me and smiled though, telling me, "Had to make sure the old equipment still worked!" She looked up at me with a devilish smile. "And the oil's topped up too!" She grinned.

It had been so long since a woman had given me a blow job, and here was this 'old lady' (now my old lady?) doing it. And not doing that bad of a job of it at that.

I was erect now, and she grabbed my shirt and told me, "Got to get off of my knees! Help me up!" I reached down and took her under the arms and brought her up to give her a kiss.

I wasn't sure if I still had the strength to pick her up -- not that she seemed to weight all that much --but I tried. Shuffling off my shorts, I asked her to point to her bedroom. Which she did. "That-a-way, Cowboy!

When I got her there, I lay her gently down on the top of her bed, and began carefully unbuttoning the front of her blouse. She quickly brushed away my hand and sat up. "We don't got all day," she said, as she pulled her blouse up and over her head. Raising her hips, she unzipped and pushed her pants and 'granny pants' down, leaving only her bra covering her d-cup sagging breasts.

"I know they ain't the perkiest, but I still have them," and she pulled the bra off too. "And they're still all mine, too!"

She was right. They both sagged quickly to the side once free of the restraints of her bra, but her nipples were standing firmly at attention. "Get that shirt off, and start paying attention to my tits," she said with a sideways smirk

Yes, she was a grandmotherly type. Skin flowed everywhere and her stomach had its radiating lines of direction. But, all in all, she was still in pretty good form. Not what I might have suspected from someone our age.

She looked up at me admiring her body, and asked me, "Anything wrong? You were expecting--"

"No. Not at all. It's just been a while--"

"Well, don't just stand there! It's time to service the old gal, and get her fluids up to snuff," she growled at me, moving her legs further and further apart invitingly.

I crawled onto the bed. "Don't you want to pull down the sheets first?"

"My daughter will just have to deal with whatever fluids we leave behind when she gets her ass here, day after tomorrow. No need to dawdle. Get that tongue down here, and take this old woman for a ride! I didn't wait all this time for someone to give me an inspection before testing out the equipment."

This was turning into some kind of afternoon.

I lay myself down between her spread legs, not knowing how well she kept her 'equipment' cleaned and lubricated. I didn't want to find out the wrong way that she was stale and needed a panty change.

Touching my tongue to her inner thighs, I began a slow journey up her legs, until I was within smelling distance. Not bad, I thought. Dipping my 'dipstick' into her 'oil reserve,' I was surprised to find that she didn't taste or smell like I expected an old woman might.

I began lapping up her juice (of which there was a certain amount of it already flowing). Then I drove my tongue into her 'tunnel of love,' and heard her first moan, accompanied by feeling her first tremor. "Oh, yes," she moaned and shook. "Now that's more like it."

I began getting further into lapping up her slit and her juices began flowing quite freely for an older woman. I hadn't expected this.

"Yes! Ride 'Em, Cowboy!" She just about shouted, followed with an, "Oh, God! Yes!" Her bucking bronco was riding waves of pleasure that I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to give her.

Electricity lifted her butt and hips off the bed, with a quaking shaking response. Her body thudded back down in an instant, and she began gasping for breathe, raggedly pulling in air while her body kept on trembling for a while.

After a few minutes, she looked up at me and said "Now that's what I'm talking about!"

I laughed at this. Not your average Little Old Lady speak, that's for damned sure.

"What?" She asked, giggling. "I haven't forgotten the Seventies, you know. Even now, getting into my seventies!"

Grabbing at what little hair I still had, she whispered loudly at me, "Get yourself up here, mister! We ain't done yet!"

While I knew that she was on the moist side now, I still wasn't sure if I wasn't going to hurt her if I came inside of her. After all, many women our age, needed a little 'liquid help' to allow the 'fiddling' to continue.

"Now let me know if--"

"Just stick it in and find out!" Was all that she'd tell me. "I"m sure that the fluid level will be more than adequate for your old man pushing and pulling."

Ok, I thought. Here it goes.

I slid myself in, slowly at first, and then found that she was more than 'lubed' up for the 'pushing and pulling.' She wrapped her legs up around me as if to hold on for dear life I thought. Instead, she began doing the pulling (if I didn't start pumping fast enough). "I'll let you know if I start hurting. That's it. Faster and faster. A little harder. And... Yeah! Make me feel alive again, Trev!"

We began heating up and I felt both of us starting to climb that hill building to a heart attack! (Well, hopefully not.)

"Punch it, Baby! Send the Old Girl to heaven!"

The Orgasm that hit almost sent me to heaven, all right. I was breathing heavier than I had in decades, as she screamed as she squealed, "Holy SHIT!"

She was like the San Fransisco earthquake when she came. I had a second of worry about whether we would both survive this. Then I remembered that phrase about sex and death, "What a way to go!"

About ten minutes later after our breathing became closer to normal, I asked her hesitantly, "You still there?"

I didn't hear an answer for a good minute or two. But when she finally did, she whispered, "Now, that's what keeps hope alive!"

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I moved out of my little cubby hole apartment and in with Maggie about two months later. We didn't have that kind of an afternoon again except for one every week or two, but we kept each other happy nonetheless.

She kept me happy until I was in my hospital bed after what was likely to be my last heart attack. I was only seventy-two, but what a last four years we had together. With her at my side, I said goodbye to the woman that had become the love of my life.

"Thank you," I whispered to her past my breathing tubes.

Sobbing softly, she said, "I won't be long behind, Cowboy. Stay saddled up for our last ride home. Ok?" I squeezed her hand one last time and left. This is my last story that I'm leaving to you and her.