Pimpin' at 90

Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Márquez (2005)

Márquez is a member of the upper echelon of serious writers; have you read many books better than 100 Years of Solitude? Nonetheless, sometimes you may not be up for a 200 character, 10 generation epic. No? This 115 page gem is like the Splenda version of Márquez, all the flavor, easier to handle.

On the eve of his 90th birthday, a lifelong bachelor, utterly alone in the decaying house of his long dead parents, connected to the world only by the Sunday column he is still allowed to write for the local newspaper, feels the strong need for one more adventure; a wild night with a young virgin. After some trouble, it is arranged but presented with the peaceful sleep of the girl that has been carefully selected for him, he merely watches her and thus begins to grow the love that in his 90 years he has never known. Though his meager finances can barely afford it, the need to see her grows, as does his love for her, exponentially. Like a teenager in love for the first time, he can't sleep, loses weight, can only think of their next meeting when he'll be able so see her sleep, her body providing answers to the questions he thinks but doesn't vocalize. This impossible, but vital love affair sustains him for another year and through it the twists and turns of love makes him see what he never did; at the age of 90 he becomes a new man, love opening his eyes before they close forever.

"I have never gone to bed with a woman I didn't pay, and the few who weren't in the profession I persuaded, by argument or by force, to take money even if they threw it in the trash. When I was twenty I began to keep a record listing name, age, place and a brief notation on the circumstances and style of lovemaking. By the time I was fifty there were 514 women with whom I had been at least once. I stopped making the list when my body no longer allowed me to have so many and I could keep track of them without paper. I had my own ethics. I never took part in orgies or in public encounters, and I did not share secrets or recount an adventure of the body or the soul, because from the time I was young I realized that none goes unpunished."

"The secretaries presented me with three pairs of silk undershorts printed with kisses, and a card in which they offered to remove them for me. It occurred to me that among the charms of old age are the provocations our young female friends permit themselves because they think we are out of commission."

"For a week I did not take off my mechanic's coverall, day or night, I did not bathe or shave or brush my teeth, because love taught me too late that you groom yourself for someone, and I'd never had anyone to do that for."

"The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it."