I Like My Girls a Little Bit Older

You Know

I Like My Girls

a Little Bit Older

Friday, July 12 th , 2024

Despite its lowest-bidder manufacturing and fascist symbolism, that shield-shaped hunk of brass gave me hope that I might find happiness. As I departed Chief Plaut's office without it, I found myself lost. And as I approached the welcome mat of my own home, I still had no idea where my heart was.

An hour before my shift would have ended, I fumbled my key into the cheap lock protecting my apartment from intruders with less dexterity than I'd have after a fifth of a fifth, dreading what I must do next to survive—one of many uncomfortable changes I anticipated would be coming to my already uncomfortable life. I turned the key, pushed open the flimsy hollow core door, and edged the steel-reinforced toes of my boots into my dusty-dingy studio apartment.

I surveyed its unimpressive contents: threadbare couch (all wear and tear thanks to my ass alone), aughts-era plasma TV (with the Martian Marine main menu burned into the screen), outdated PlayBox U game console (which had started having issues reading discs 8 months prior), 16-year-old laptop Shash bought me for college (which I stopped using a few years back upon figuring out that everything it could do could be accomplished with my phone without having to get out of bed), plain wooden box containing the plastic-wrapped bricks of my mother's ashes (which I had no idea where to spread), cramped kitchen (with electric stove that took an hour to boil water and mother-to-daughter hand-me-down microwave whose carousel had ceased to carouse two years prior), equally cramped closet (filled mostly with blue uniforms I no longer had any use for), pair of mismatched dressers (whose drawers either skipped off the tracks or tipped over and out when opened all the way), combination safe (which I wanted to move but which was too damn bulky to lift by myself), and my most prized luxury: my king-size bed (which I had cleared of clutter just the night before because the mess had accumulated to the point there was no longer enough room for me to lie down).

I considered the value of each of my possessions and tried to plan out which I could sell to stretch my funds and which I absolutely needed. "Couch..." I mumbled, "...20 bucks tops on DansForum; TV... might be able to sell it as an antique—let's say 30; console... auction on Awkshion. stuff for parts, same for the laptop..."

"How much do you think you could get for the ashes?" asked Shash as she sidled up next to me. She had haunted me since I identified her cadaver.

"I am not selling those."

"They take up space."

"They're the only thing I have left of my mother."

"You got Banana Shark."

"Fine, they're the only thing I have left that fits in my apartment." She pinched me. "Ah!"

"There's me."

"You aren't always around for me to talk to. The ashes are there for whenever I need to... um..."

"Hold the door open? Fill a sandbox? Start a Zen garden? Replace the kitty litter?"

"Ugh."

"Relax, I was joshin' ya. Mostly."

"I know. Please try to be serious and constructive right now."

"Have you ever known me to be serious?"

"When you told me never to trust men."

"That lesson is more important than deciding what to do with the ashes."

"I don't feel that way."

"If you come across someone who collects strangers' ashes, you could probably get at least 10 bucks for them."

"They're in my custody, not yours, I decide what to do with them."

"Excuse me? Those are mine, Esti."

I ignored her. "When I have the money... I'll buy a nice urn."

"Save your money. Spread them at ground zero," she suggested in an accent cultivated between Bushwick and the East River.

"I don't think the City of New York would let me do that. And I would expect you to have a little more respect for the worst tragedy to hit your city."

"Not ground zero of 9/11, ground zero of the place the accident happened."

"In the middle of the street?"

"Exactly."

"California Health and Safety Code Section 7116 specifies that scattered remains can't be 'distinguishable to the public'—and a street is about as 'public' as it gets."

"Then pay your grandparents a visit and give the ashes to them."

"I don't have the patience for flippant suggestions right now."

"I'm being perfectly serious. Let them decide what to do with the ashes."

"No, you aren't being serious. I don't even know where they live."

"I'll tell you where they live if you promise to give them the ashes."

I shook my head. "I thought the whole point of the cremation was to give them the middle finger and scare them away from us forever. And now you want me to hunt them down and rub salt in their wounds?"

"You could piss them off even more by using your dear old Mamaleh's ashes as kitty litter."

I pinched the bridge of my nose and groaned. "You are needlessly cruel sometimes, you know that?"

"Do you love me anyways?"

"In life and in death."

"You swear?"

I raised my hand in oath. "I swear that I will love you until the end of time and since the beginning of time." And then she left me all alone, as I had been for the past nearly 13 years, standing in the doorway, half-in and half-out of my apartment. Here my mind wandered for several minutes as I tried to accept my new life without my livelihood and lifelong dream, tried to make plans for it... but the more I planned for my future, the more surreal my situation became.

I was lost, and there wasn't anybody around to give me directions. I hadn't had a tangible person to guide me since that Cadillac deprived me of the only one I loved.

After a few minutes of disorientation, I decided to kick off my shoes and lie down; the couch was the closest comfortable spot for that, so I chose it to flop onto. A few seconds later, I finally accepted my new reality, and my thoughts came crashing down—and with them, doubt, panic, guilt, self-hatred, and a complete absence of hope.

I became glued to the couch, immobile, for uncountable hours. I wasted away, the breeze from the air conditioner slowly eroding me one atom at a time, like wind chipping away at a mountain. At this rate I would be reduced to ash, too, in a few million years.

Setting my sights on joining my mother, I decided to wait for my body to decompose into dust, for the wind to carry away into the sky. Eventually, though, I became exhausted by doing nothing, and my restless body screamed silently, begging me to get up and move around. So I focused on wiggling my toes, flexing my ankles, and bending my knees; I curled my fingers, bunched them into fists, and rotated my wrists; I switched my attention from limb to limb, moving muscles one-by-one, working towards my core. Eventually, I was able to rub my eyes, twist my spine in a half push-up, and right myself onto my fat ass.

I was alone, and the longing for companionship I had felt in my now-leaking soul throughout the last twelve years and eleven months was no longer a dull ache but a searing, pulsating agony. For the first time since puberty, I could not quell my need for interaction with another human being, a friend with a heartbeat. The psychologist who had evaluated my fitness-for-duty had forced me to realize that I needed friends, even a single pal to spend a little time with every other month, if I had any desire to 'survive another year' of my 'self-destructive maladaptations'.

Bars are full of people looking for friends, but were radioactive for someone with my particular curse. Going back to college would be a great idea—except for the whole business of me paying tuition while I was on a fixed income, as well as the risk of developing a reputation as that 34-year-old square who's awkwardly (or creepily) trying to befriend youths only a few years past half her age. That left me with... what? "How the hell do I make friends at 34?"

"You never played much with the other kids," she reminded me. "When the two of us weren't wreaking havoc, your eyes were glued to the tube, either a game or a movie or a show."

"You know how much they hated me. You've been through the same shit I have."

"Well... I actually haven't. I went to school with other little redheads. I was normal back home."

"You were an atheist in a religious community."

"Yeah, but I kept that a secret, so no one picked on me or excluded me. I had friends. You didn't. You need some."

"I know I do, I can feel it. I just don't know how."

"Start with your hobbies."

"I don't have any."

"You play games."

"I play one game."

"Can you play it with others?"

A light bulb flipped on, burning brightly, but not blindingly. This question, my friend, was—if you have not already guessed—the inflection point in my miserable life. "Yes, actually. There's a matchmaking system that will pair me up with strangers who like the game as much as I do."

"Then get to it."

So I set out to find potential friends via the forum with which I was most familiar. I booted up my ancient PlayBox U, picked a multiplayer game at random from my collection of one, and entered the cooperative matchmaking lobby. The servers offered me a partner with zero ping within two minutes, which I accepted with desperation and without hesitation. HalenBunny entered my Martian Marine lobby, and I donned my headset (which was good for its microphone but no longer produced sound through the earphones, forcing me to pass game and voice audio through the TV).

"Which level are we playing, Lou Peckinpaw?" asked the sultry contralto of a woman much older than myself. "By the way, that's an interesting gamersign."

I was not expecting a fellow woman, let alone someone who had orbited the sun at least 10 times more than I had. "Thanks. Hmm... Terran Interloper."

"That happens to be my favorite. Difficulty?"

"Hmm. Can you handle nightmare?"

"That's my setting of choice. And while you're configuring the game... turn on all the skulls."

I smirked. "Sure. I can chew a chili pepper without breaking a sweat." I enabled all of the challenge modifiers—known colloquially as 'skulls'—adding several unpredictable, frustrating, and perennially humorous tweaks to the game's normal mechanics, such as grenades flying like bullets and ricocheting off walls like Superballs, enemies' corpses exploding 3 seconds after death, vehicles always driving like they're on ice, and so on.

"Very good. Let's snuff out some Heavenly Lights."

We launched into the middle of an orbital ambush on our scouting party by the luminous legions of the Heavenly Lights Alliance, a coalition of light-based lifeforms religiously hell-bent on eradicating all matter-based life in the universe. Despite piling on a dozen challenge-multiplying game modifiers, we mowed them down left and right, above and below. We had each other's sixes, we traded with each other for our favorite weapons, we carefully rationed ammunition and power ups... we were immortal, and we were in all respects a compatible and deadly pair of cybernetic space soldiers.

"You've been playing this game a long time," she observed.

"I can tell you're experienced, too."

"I picked this game up a few summers back, but I can tell that you have much more than that under your belt—you're practically carrying the game."

"Well... I have been playing since launch day."

"That was about... 2000, or 2001, so assuming you came out of the womb with your fingers wrapped around a controller, you'd be at least 21 or 22 by now. But... you're comfortable playing a game with someone older than yourself, so I'm guessing you've got quite a few more years than that, maybe... 35."

"Close, 34. How old are you?"

"Guess."

"Hm. 45."

"You got one digit right."

"Forty... six."

"Nope."

"You're 55?"

"The correct digit was in the wrong place, but you aren't far off. 57 as of the last day of last month."

"Happy birthday, Bunny. Mine was today."

"Happy birthday to you, too! It's pretty rare for someone under 50 to make their gamersign a furry-flavored reference to a detective comedy from 1978."

"What about it is 'furry-flavored'?"

She chuckled. "Are you kidding me? 'Peckinpaw', substituting P-A-W instead of P-A-U-G-H?"

"Oh—well, I needed to shorten the name to fit the 12-character maximum, I never intended to make it 'furry'." Not consciously, anyway.

"I see... So you aren't a furry."

"You sound disappointed."

"I might be."

"Then I must presume that you are a furry."

"Are you cool with that?"

"I'm cool. Fursuits, forums, art, cons, porn, whatever—have fun, explore your identity, express yourself wherever, however you want."

"And how about... yiffing?" She stretched the word mischievously.

"Um... I don't know how it works, but as long as it's consensual and everybody is enjoying themselves, I'm happy for them."

"I'm glad you see furrydom that way. You mentioned furry porn."

"I've never seen it," I lied as unhastily as I could. "I don't look at it."

"Never?"

"I'm not interested in anthro— I'm into human women. Exclusively."

"Women only? Well, I just happen to be bisexual. Soo..."

She didn't finish her sentence, but I knew where she was going. "This is a very interesting direction you're taking our conversation. You're over one-and-a-half times my age."

"I agree. It is interesting. So?"

"So..." She's 57. I'm 34. She's an adult. I'm an adult, too. And I'm not a young adult—puberty ended over a decade-and-a-half ago, I'm anatomically fully developed, I'm starting to get wrinkles and white hairs, I've had time on this earth to learn about people, I don't live under a parent's roof, I'm just about halfway to retirement age—hell, I'm already applying for my pension now that I'm considered too disabled to do my job—and I even have a 401K. Life is short, and even an optimistic estimate would place me over a third of the way through it.

We're both mature adults, we can cyber if we both want to. Assuming I can figure out how it works.

"Bah," I scoffed. "Age doesn't bother me, and..." 57 divided by 2 plus 7 is... 351/2. "... I'm only a year-and-a-half under according to the half-plus-seven rule—close enough for hand grenades—we can lie about our birthdays if anyone starts asking questions."

"I'm glad you're so open-minded. I'm into some things, things that might be a little weird to some people—so if you'd prefer being the one who sets the pace, you can share your own kinks and we can explore those first."

"Kinks? I don't have any. I guess I'm... boring."

"My girl, you are 34, and you're telling me you haven't done any kind of exploration? Are you still a virgin?"

I bit my lip and confessed, "Yes."

"Would you like to ameliorate that?"

My rapidly mending heart decided to improvise a spirited drum and bass tune titled 'Ameliorating Your Virginity'. I could only mumble, "I-I-I... don't... know if I..."

"If we live close enough to each other... we could maybe meet somewhere in the middle."

"Why are you so... interested in me, when we've just met?"

"Because you're a girl gamer, and a very skilled one. I find that attractive. Hell, you've been playing video games for decades and you could probably stomp me at any game ever made. And that's fucking sexy."

"Wow. You... um... know how to flatter a girl." I allowed myself to smile at the first compliment I'd ever consciously accepted as sincere flirtation.

Not that I accepted it wholeheartedly. I got up, approached my closet's sliding door, carefully peeled away the Martian Marine and L. A. Noire posters with which I had deliberately taped over the full-length mirror, and assessed my appearance for the first time in many years.

Red, frizzy, shoulder-length hair drawn up into a bun that met the bare-minimum criteria for professionalism—I pulled out my hair tie and let it down, admired it as soft, incandescent lighting played along my tight copper curls, combed my fingers through it to appreciate its texture and bounce. It needed a trim and some conditioner... but it was still pretty. Contrasting it were green eyes that alluded to something other than pure Ashkenazi, vibrant hints towards the ancestry of the man who my mother refused to talk about. Beneath those, freckles generously dusted my nose and cheeks—a nice bit of texture to break up the shocking paleness of my skin.

The shape of my face though... I shook my head. Shash, despite having a nearly identical face... I had no idea how she could be so pretty despite having nearly the same outward appearance.

Descending further, I examined my breasts; they were not at all flattered by my no-nonsense police uniform, so I undid a couple buttons to get a better look at my cleavage—and the fact became more apparent that my breasts were more generous in proportion than the average pair found on a 5'2" frame, albeit appropriately so for those of someone whose weight fell well-within the limits of what modern medicine considered obese for a woman of my height. Too big. They bounced flamboyantly when I ran, and at times I had to shield my cleavage to avoid distracting people. Shash said they were better than hers, but I disagreed.

Even beneath my uniform, my hips and buttocks were visibly on the more expansive side, and after factoring in the generous fluff in all the wrong places, I had to avert my eyes because, I thought to myself, that is the reflection of a hideous bag of lard and bones.

Shash had taken every opportunity to reassure me that I was 'cute', yet my clinical depression and general lack of self-love compelled me to believe otherwise. Who could possibly find me attractive? She'll be turned off when we finally meet. This is hopeless—but... I need a friend. I can be ugly and still be her friend.

"Lou? Are you there?"

"Huh? Yeah. I'm... still here."

"You weren't responding, I was beginning to wonder if the connection dropped."

"Oh. Sorry," I mumbled. "I was... looking at... reading a pop-up on the screen. Um. Call me 'Andrea'."

"Nice to meet you, Andrea, I'm Judith. Would you be interested in meeting up?"

"I... guess. Sure. Definitely. But if meeting in the middle's more than a day trip, I'm gonna hafta do some serious budgeting first."

"I'm not opposed to working something out. How far are you from Santa Virginia?"

"Ah—Are you screwing with me?"

"No. What makes you think that?"

"I live in Santa Virginia."

"That's quite a coincidence... but it isn't that strange. It's a big city, and it makes sense when you consider the fact that our pings are zero."

"True. Okay, what part of town do you live in?" I countered.

"I'm in Hillside."

Okay... this is a little weird. "I'm in Hillside."

"Um. Do you know where... Matteo's Apartments are?"

And now it's gotten plain spooky, because... "Yes. I lease... a room... here."

There was a moment of silence as we both processed the cosmic coincidence, which she broke. "What's your room number?"

"Two-oh-one."

"Two... oh-one?" she asked incredulously.

"You heard me correctly."

"Oh, for fuck's sake..." I heard her headset clacking on a hard surface through my television—then heard the thump of a door being shut in the next apartment over and, simultaneously, the same sound through the TV's speakers. Three seconds after that, somebody knocked on my door.

"No way," I murmured. "No fucking way." With my mind clouded by wonder at such a coincidence, I answered the door and was greeted by a handsomely beautiful and (at 6'1") very tall blonde with sharp amber eyes framed by defined-yet-soft and somewhat time-worn features; in agreement with her pinot-supple face were the gently-etched muscles visible on the parts of her body not covered by her Black Sabbath T-shirt, green boxer shorts, and Crocs painted to look like half-submerged sharks.

And then a quiet fragrance,

carried to

me on a subtle current

to my nose,

bashed in my skull with its

intensity

of character. It sang of

coffee, dark-

roasted and freshly ground,

squeezed through French press

and poured while hot to be

consumed as jet—

and I for once enjoyed

my mug without

the cream or sugar

to adulterate.

It would seem, I realized, that I have what people refer to as a 'type'.

"You're that redhead cop from next door," inferred my new friend with a disdainful tone and a sharp glare.

"Not... anymore." I continued to look her up and down. I'm not intimidated by your height. I'm inspired.

"You quit?" Her distrust was not going anywhere.

"Let go. Unfit for duty." I want to climb you like a tree and gobble up all your peaches.

"You've heard of ACAB, right?"

The all-too-familiar acronym pulled me out of my reverie and caused me to wince. "Yeah. That one... it hurts. All the leftists on Hootr and HiBall are constantly repeating it like it's a religious mantra. I know every reason why. The more they believe it when they say it, the more it hurts. People hate me for being a cop, and they hate me even more for being a PEO. But I've never been able to come up with an argument to prove either is a bad reason to treat me like dirt. I am a bastard."

Her harsh expression softened into bewilderment. "Huh. That's an unexpectedly negative self-evaluation for a pig... But I hafta ask, PEO as in...?"

"Parking Enforcement Officer. It's a more dignified title than meter maid. Not that we have any dignity."

"Hm. Yeah, the most pathetic of all the swine, though hardly the most loathsome—that title goes to Vice. But you're not a cop anymore, which means you're not a bastard anymore."

Then she smiled at me. She... she gave me her smile. Even though I was a cop. You sweep me off my feet, hold me up by my fat ass so that I can wrap my legs around your waist and cling to you and kiss you... "That's... the most reassuring thing I've heard in over a decade. Maybe I'm not a horrible person. Just kind of... worthless."

That precious smile disappeared— Left me, abandoned me. —to be replaced with her pitying stare. "You have some real self-esteem issues, don't you?"

"Is knowing that I'm objectively lazy and incompetent a 'self-esteem issue', or am I simply being honest with myself?"

She rested a hand on my shoulder and gave me a couple pats. "I'll fix you up." She helped herself to my couch.

"I don't need or even deserve—‍" Be her friend. Doctor Huygen's orders. Don't question her kindness. I have no friends, I need a friend, she wants to be my friend, just be her God damn friend. "—I mean, I don't need a lot of help, but—I'll accept it—and I appreciate your kindness."

"Oh, but you do need a lot of help. You're an ex-cop—you need to be rehabilitated, and you need a new career, and you're never gonna get a new job as long as you're convinced that you're good for nothing. This isn't going to be easy, you understand?"

I joined her on the couch. "I guess you're right. Thanks. But this is a lot to promise someone you met a few hours ago through a video game."

"With a computer server as our matchmaker, yes—but you should know that I've been around the sun my fair share of times and I've learned to be an efficient judge of character, able to delve past the surfaces of personalities quicker than most people can. You seem alright, despite being a cop in a past life. You need help and I want to help you. There's something about you that I really like—not your video game expertise, something more vital—and I want to figure out what it is. And now that we know we're next-door neighbors, we can be friends!"

"'Friends'..." I did it. Now all I hafta do is not drive her away with my pathetic personality and my hideous face and my grotesque body. "What would you like to do as... friends?" Like maybe draping your mass over me like a weighted blanket while kissing my entire face, my chest, my belly, my...

"Depends on how far you want to take it. I have quite a few friends already, but I'm not super close to any of them, but you..." She smiled slyly. "I'd like to get really close to you—if you know what I mean."

"Right. You expressed a certain interest in me."

Her response was to spread her mischievous smile into a devilish grin.

"Well, I have no experience, unless you count having my ass groped by college girls in the showers after cross country..."

"Was it consensual?"

"It gave me funny feelings, but... I... liked it. The same thing happens at work all the time." The echo of the sentence rang painfully loudly, so I quickly added, "But I don't like it at work."

"I'm sorry to hear that, but you didn't answer my question. Have you ever consented to having your ass touched?"

"No. Um—well... I guess... in a way..."

"If consent isn't communicated enthusiastically, it isn't actually consent."

The episode in the showers played out in my head; I avoided thinking about the episodes at work. "It's more complicated than that, and I only started processing my feelings about being touched a few minutes ago. It didn't bother me at the time, though, and still doesn't."

"If you say you don't mind, then I guess we can say that no harm was done—but it still doesn't count towards your experience. So... would you be interested in an arrangement?"

This is happening so... fast. But... I am curious. I want to know what it's like to actually be with a real woman. In many diverse ways. "I would like to... try."

"Then we're fuckbuddies!"

My head reeled. But I'm ugly as sin... "Fuckbuddies..."

"Don't tell me you've never heard of a 'fuckbuddy', pal."

"Oh, I know what they are... It's just that... all of a sudden, I have someone in my life who I'm going to regularly... engage in... sex with."

"Deal?" She offered her hand.

She has a nice face, and rich eyes, and there's an alluring heft to the muscles in her arms, and she... smells good, and I like how freaking small I feel next to her—I want to sit in her lap, or be picked up by her and cradled in her arms like a bride on her way to consummating her marriage. I should have fun while I still have a few years of youth left—and she's got the experience to help me make the best of them. Yeah, fuck it, I'm in. I accepted her hand and gave her a healthy shake and a hearty "It's a deal."

"Would you like me to take the lead?"

"For reasons I shouldn't have to explain... yes, I would appreciate that."

"You got it." She leaned in; I closed my eyes and parted my lips, expecting hers to meet mine.

Instead of a kiss on the mouth, though, I felt a wet pressure on the side of my neck, and then a vibration in my throat, and I thanked God that I was seated because my legs instantly turned to jelly.