Safe

Safe

I hadn’t seen the old man since before Christmas. He turned 81 a few days after Christmas.

A few weeks after Christmas, I picked him up to take him out for a belated birthday and Christmas meal and give him his birthday and Christmas gifts.

I gave him a used karaoke machine I got from the thrift store. He’d seen one months earlier and I refused to loan him the money for it since his trailer’s already full of shit and his daughter would go ballistic at his accumulating even more shit – like a used karaoke machine for a (then) 80-year-old man. But he pissed and moaned so much about the fucking karaoke machine that when I went back to the thrift store and there was another karaoke machine, I bought it for him.

Anyway, he was delighted at the karaoke machine. He said he couldn’t believe I remembered.

I put it inside his trailer while we went out to eat.

But all the time we were out he fretted that his junkie granddaughter and her girlfriend might fuck with his karaoke machine while he was gone.

I told him to call his granddaughter and tell her to leave it the fuck alone.

But he wouldn’t.

I said, “If I’d known the karaoke machine was gonna cause you this much stress, I wouldn’t have gotten it for you.”

He said, “No. I’m glad you got it. It’s just those bitches can’t keep their hands off things that aren’t theirs. They fuck with everything I get. I got a blender and one of ’em lost the fucking lid.”

“What do need a blender for?”

“Eggnog.”

“You’re gonna make eggnog? Just buy it. It’s a lot easier.”

“Yeah, but they don’t sell it all year long, so sometimes you gotta make it. And somebody gave me some mix and I wanna use it. There isn’t any point in wasting it.”

“Alright,” I said.

Then he said, “My daughter got me a safe for Christmas.”

The old man doesn’t have a fucking penny to his name. And everything he owns is junk. It didn’t make much sense why he’d need a safe.

“So what did you put in your safe?”

“All my homemade porno tapes,” he said. “And pictures.”

Much to my chagrin, I’ve been told plenty of times about his homemade porno tapes.

He reminded me, “You know, I got one of me with two women.”

“Yeah. You’ve told me many times.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, some guys will tell you they’ve had two women at once. They’ll tell you, but I got proof.”

“Yeah. You’ve told me that too. Many times.”

“Well, it’s true.”

I said, “You’re daughter’s gonna be in for a shock someday when she comes across you on those porno tapes.”

“She already knows about them,” the old man said.

I didn’t know what to say.

“Plus, I put my Rolex in the safe.”

“You got a Rolex?”

“Well, it’s a fake, but it don’t really matter.”

“At least your safe’s not empty.”

“I needed one,” he said.

“And now you got one.”

“Yeah,” the old man said.