Looking for Love at 93: A Fiction Short Story

I’m Henry Lorgan, a freelance writer, and I just received an assignment for the monthly AARP magazine. The subject to be written about is finding companionship, or love, at an older age. So I started to read the personals in the daily papers here in New York City and I found a great one. Let me tell you what it read:

Healthy ak at 93. Female misfortunes have left me lonely and forlorn. Two coop apartments in Bayside, Queens, NYC. Can’t drive an auto or read small print, otherwise brain and body function well including CPA tax work, swimming, dancing, health club, social conversation that is intellectual and stimulating. Your companionship will make living worthwhile for both of us. Box JS. Send picture.

I sent a reply to the box number and received a call from Strong Hardt. He invited me to come over to his coop and there he would tell me the rest of the story. (For those of you who don’t know what the initials ak in the ad meant, AK in Yiddish means alter kocker, or in English it translates into old man.)

Hardt told me that he and his girlfriend had lived in one of the coop apartments and in the other apartment had lived his other girlfriend, each not knowing of the other. As a CPA he had taken his own financial advice and had accumulated a great amount of wealth.

He had passed most of it on to his children and grandchildren, and was still doing tax returns for many of his old tax clients. Therefore with his Social Security monthly check and dividends from his long-time investments, plus the earnings from his tax work, he was still living high.

The girlfriend that he had lived with was an 87-year-old widow, while the so-called mistress girlfriend was a younger 83.

The women had both moved out of the coop within the same month and for the same reason. “I was too demanding in wanting to have sex with them at least five times a week, and they told me that they could just not handle that much sexual activity.”

As to the dancing it was more of line dancing, whereby the movement was not as much as ballroom dancing. He could also do some of these dances sitting down as they might only require hand or foot movements that could be done sitting in a chair. He did swim every day but only did a few laps because, as soon as he entered the water, he got a terrific urge to urinate and so one lap up and one lap back and a quick exit from the pool and a run for the men’s room.

He had been a volume reader in his youth and, as there was a local library about two blocks from the coop, he had volunteered to lead a Great Books discussion program. He would, during the summer, travel out to the local horseracing track and spend a lovely summer day trying to handicap the races. He could do all this because he was in fine physical health, although he had a little prostate trouble but not enough to endanger his sexual abilities.

The purpose of the ad was to again have a live-in girlfriend and a mistress girlfriend so as to continue the previous lifestyle.

I hope Hardt’s story when published in the AARP magazine will be an inspiration to all of us men who are once again looking for love, or is it just lust?

Albert Zimbler is a 92-year-old author of six humor short story books on Amazon of which MORE DATING AND MATING SECRETS OF SENIORS AND OTHER HUMOR SHORT STORIES is the latest. He also teaches senior improv.

Click here for an interview of Al Zimbler on “The Daily Author.”