WTF Old Guys!

At first, I thought it was a fluke. One does not have a double X chromosome and work retail without getting hit on. I've been told I look young for my age, thus did not see much issue with a wide age-range of males across the counter making passes at me. But at some point the pie chart widened to Pac-Man proportions. Most of the men who flirt with me at work are senior citizens.

Las Vegas does have a prodigious population of seniors. One can't drive down the street without passing an assisted-living facility or seniors-only apartment complex. There are entire off-strip casinos claimed by the elderly, where crossing to the movie theater means negotiating a blue-haired swath of pensioners scattered amongst wheelchairs and walkers, through a miasma of cigarette smoke, denture cream and entropy.

When I worked at MatchMaker International, (which holds the number four spot of favorite employers after Borders, the Columbus Metropolitan Library, and C.O.S.I. Center of Science and Industry,) I quickly learned the age wave disparity between the sexes in our membership. Where there were few women between 21-30 to balance the glut of desperately seeking men of that age, the flip occurs after 60 with only a handful of healthy gentleman seniors interested in companionship amongst the sea of widows anxious to fill their lonely days. Also, men are jerks who refuse to date anyone a week older than them, prefer their ladies skinny, never married and, if at all possible, Asian. (Stocky Ms. Nakamura went out with over thirty men who immediately complained she wasn't the Asian they were looking for.)

Further, the older a man gets, the younger his target for sexual advances become.

I fall into this Goldilocks zone of being over twenty years younger, bosomy, and approachable in my customer service. I like to sell things, and my preferred methods involve an affable demeanor and grinning effort to make the customer feel intelligent and discerning. With the more sharply dressed and polite people, I will shake hands and make a brief physical connection. I don't have a record run of upsells, donations and rewards cards because I'm standoffish. Feminine wiles work, bitches.

This is why I think I'm gaining a steady following of both local and tourist senior citizens. I treat everyone like they matter. I value their opinions and listen diligently to the pearls of wisdom anyone feels like dropping for me. I think long and hard about the best way to satisfy their literary needs and laugh delightedly at their jokes. I am a geisha bookseller.

Anyone receptive will react to such a thing. And I don't know a red-blooded man with a long life behind him and a shorter one ahead who doesn't like making the little lady smile.

But dude, don't give me your phone number. It's not going to happen.