The prowlers

Today Eve is a case-in-point. She is about 4.5 feet tall, hunch included, with smile wrinkles deeply traces around her mouth and mischievous eyes not dulled a bit by her ninety years. For some reason, she reminds me of a meerkat, the way she carries herself, never up to her full height, but always looking like she is about to call out to someone or be otherwise up to no good. That said, she also loves her domain, among the other pensioners, World War II vets, farmers, schoolteachers, and they love her.

She's a celebrity of sorts at Lunch Club--she has a walk-on role in the Bourne town pantomime, where she plays the villager who catches the Big Bad Wolf--and Ryan and I are obligated (as it goes with old ladies) to come over and give her a hug, and Even and I often joke about the significance of our names. Today, though, she's standing up. I bring over some water and a gentleman at her table I don't know stands up and Eve grabs my hand. The gentleman proceeds to get the whole room's attention and says, "You may know that we have two young men from America helping us. Well, this is Eve," he points, "and this is Adam." The whole room gasps.

"You know what Eve did to Adam, right?" Oh, they know, and he doesn't need to say anything as Eve pulls out an apple and presents it to me. Now I can either run away and hide or enjoy the moment, so I take it and take a huge bite, though, as I begin to hold it high, someone shouts, too late, "But it's the apple of temptation!" But the deed is done. Then Trevor pops up completely randomly from the middle of the room and says, "Adam! Did you eat of the apple I have forbidden you?" I say nothing until I have hidden from Trevor behind the minuscule form of Eve, when, safe from his momentarily-deified eyes, I say the only logical thing one can say in that situation: "The woman made me do it!"

Everybody laughs and I shake my head with a mixture of disbelief and awesomeness for having pulled it off so well; a heterogeneous mixture, however, because no disbelief or sense of awesomeness can hide the uncomfortableness of being hit on by old ladies. It is as if all propriety has gone out the window and, if they want to flirt, they say what they want to say.

Looking at women my own age, I wonder if I would want this or be terrified by such forthrightness. I am a dreamer, and I must say that I am attracted to a woman who can support me when I'm right and tell me when she thinks I'm wrong with no ifs, ands, or buts, though in a loving way. Yet this is a type of forthrightness that I believe only elderly folks can get away with without seeming creepy. It's likened to Rev and I sitting our grandkids down one day and going through an animated reading of the entire script of Star Wars: A New Hope. We could do that now, but it would be weird; if we do it then, the kids have to listen, because it's grandpa and grandpa's Turkish-speaking little brother.

Granted, I've worked at Starbucks in Dupont Circle and getting hit on by people whose personalities, ages, and genders I am not interested in no longer bothers me. It doesn't much flatter me, but I deal with it well. I am Spiderman, after all. Yet Ryan and I will hang out with Eve any time, because she's as mischievous and ready for a joke as we are. In front of everyone, she gives me another apple and points out Ryan on the other side of the room and says, "This is for your friend, there." So Eve is awesome, as are so many tenderhearted old folks who regularly warm us with their company. Yet, like Starbucks, there are always a few who cross the line into uncomfortable/hilarious-if-you-look-at-it-right territory, as a woman did who just had cataracts surgery who wanted a hug before she dropped her hand to my rear and said, "Oh! I'll touch your bum." I laugh and give her friends a hug too, because, honestly, I don't know how even Spiderman would have dealt with that.