Do Granny
Story fragment piece by Clark Humphrey
7/29/97
A 58-year-old woman, dressed in beach cap, sandals, pink sunglasses, and loose, comfortable clothing, is wandering along what she thinks is a public beach, putting the occasional seashell into a loose-fitting canvas beach bag and trailing behind a battery-powered metal detector, which so far today has not peeped for anything but bottle caps.Around a bend, she confronts what’s obviously a private beach segment: landscaped little bluff cleaved in two by a gravel pathway up to a slightly rundown house. Five young women and/or old girls, all topless. Three bottomless, the other two in thongs.
Two of them are reading paperbacks while lying on towels, exchanging droll barbs about whether the getting or the dumping of a man is the most enjoyable part of a relationship. The other three are sprinting down the short walkway from what appears to be a plastic backyard hot tub, ready to follow up the hot-water experience with a cold-water skin brace.
As their bare feet “innocently” kick cold salt water onto their Bain de Soleil-smeared friends on the towels, the sunbather who’s lying on her stomach jumps up, looks for the culprit, spots our fully-clothed metal-detector walker.
Does she scream, reach for her clothes (nowhere in immediate sight), or shoo her away? No, she smiles, calls her “Granny” (something she doesn’t show immediate offense about), and invites her to join them for a soon-to-be-eaten lunch. She agrees.
She doesn’t undress (beyond her cap), but does sit up on a convenient small hillside rock and allows the women to run around and service her with beer, chips/salsa, and a microwaved hot dog. In exchange, she regales them with stories about some of the odd and not-really valuable things she’s found with her trusty metal detector.
About fifteen minutes or so into this routine, a young man or an old boy comes running up the beach from the other way. It needn’t be said he finds the sight of the young women and/or old girls a most pleasant surprise. The women can tell this from the enlargement of his eyes and mouth and cutoffs.
The older woman looks a little disoriented and confused; but one particular young woman, the one who had initially been splashed by her friends and who was now sharing a Bud Light with extra-extra-extra lime with the older woman, immediately has an idea. She whispers to the older woman that she, the older woman, is jealous. Not of the younger women’s beauty or audacity but of the man, who this very moment threatens to take the attention of all the young women and leave the older woman back alone again with only her metal detector for company.
The Bud Light drinker immediately announces a plan. She announces the man can have any one of the young women of his choice, except for one who’s more or less in a relationship and another who’s having her period (this remark visibly embarrasses the older woman but not the woman in question).
The condition in the deal: The man has to agree to “do Granny first.”
Granny, who has not been previously consulted on this deal, is the focus of everyone’s attention, including the man’s. She can see his eyes capturing her figure and she can sense his mind subtracting her clothes from the received image. She can sense both him and the other women excitedly awaiting her reply of refusal or agreement.