Mr Hormone

“Mr. Hormone”, that was what I called him.

People like to say that he was a well-rehearsed guy with a chat up routine and lines, pre-prepared to perfection. I hate to disappoint, but this is clearly untrue. Admittedly, I too have often wished that nobody could be so lucky. The truth: he was born like that.

Mr H was blessed with an innate ability to look at a lady and after hardly any enquiries, play her like a musical instrument, managing to tune correctly and gain adequate pitch. Even the hardest ones that took longer to crack, he could always master; he’d always come up with an award winning composition.

            Despite the heartache that he leaves in his trail of fun, not one person has a negative word to say about him. The hormone who sleeps around and cannot resist the charms of the female of the species is a nice guy.

I once had the fortune to spend a vacation in Cuba with this reputed legend.

Sleep is important to him as I well discovered, trying to rustle him out of his pit to take a boat out to sea, his attacks were all in a witty fashion rather than plain anger.

 

“You are a bad, bad man, you are death(giggle)”, he chirped in his Mediterranean broken English.

 

 “Not the light, please, oh you bastard.”

You see, I had the cheeky audacity to introduce this Mediterranean man (who rose at two in the afternoon, only coming alive at the evening meal), to a thing, a concept most alien to him, the “morning”.

I often let my imagination ponder over how he became a womanising gigolo. One idea was that he had internal radar innate to his system. Perhaps, at birth in native Spain, he was picked out of hundreds of new born infants, to be given a gift in the pursuit of technical advances. He was  bundled from his mother after the endurance training that calls itself labour, to be surgically installed with a minute device, that will detect female genitalia up to fifty yards. He was then quickly given back to his mother who had been in too much agonising post birth soreness to notice her new born was out of the room. Suspicions arose in kindergarten when he was found luring girls to the boys washrooms, shrugged off as innocent play. With age the radar helped him adjust to far more advanced games of doctors and nurses. Much to the scientist’s elation, their expensive research had paid off and now with conclusion reached, the end of the experiment meant that Mr. H was blessed with this gift for the rest of his days.

Even on a tour of the island, the magic worked. He and I had sped around taking in the fort of Havana, the Che Guevara Memorial and lots of bars. Water here was known as Rum.  We were ferried around on a motorbike with a two-seated plastic ball attached to it. He did not even have quality time to converse with our bandana clad sweaty guide. I noted she had not shaved her legs, although her warm smile distracted from this. In the back of the cart we sang along to the booming noise of Boney M, “Daddy Cool”, “Rasputin” and “Brown girl in the ring”. A din that caused the locals to look in disgust at the western tourists spoiling the solitude of Sunday Morning, drunk up and livid and it wasn’t even twelve yet.

Stopping at one more bar that promised to be the last. How much can one liver take? The humane thing to do in this poverty-stricken area was to invite our female chauffeur in for liquid refreshment. An offer gladly received and a rare invitation from the notably tight fisted Europeans.

I returned from the bathroom - that made me crave western sanitation, sweet smelling toilet duck and comfy roll, not school tracing paper that cuts as it cleans - only to discover the woman anxiously bombarding him with photo snaps, family moments of her two boy kin thrust upon a potential future daddy. After the pictures, came the address and telephone number. She scrawled something in his native tongue that obviously being British, I could not comprehend. I am certain it wasn’t an invitation to take tea and a tuna-cucumber sandwich in her home. The hormone had struck again and just the chance of him meeting her in the future allowed her to cut the bill of our ferrying around the city in half. Gracias senorita.

I remember him telling me a story one afternoon as we sailed effortlessly along the calm ocean. I am sure it was the Lady of the Sea helping us along, hoping he might plunge into her waters. The tale focused on a meeting with his on/off girlfriend. A lady he professed to love but what his heart and what his pants wanted were two contrasting things. The fact that she lived in Paris made the whole relationship somewhat loose.

The stress of her unplanned arrival made him become somewhat uneasy with the collections of colour photos he had accumulated and adorned his bedroom walls. The pictures were a celebration of female exquisiteness. The exhibition never changed but was constantly added to. It was his passion.

I asked him what he said to the new recruits, the ladies he brought to his gallery, about the pictorial conquests. To which he replied without faltering,

 

“I tell them that they are my family.”

On hearing of his girlfriend’s arrival, he stripped the walls of these trophies. Just as he pulled off the last one, he heard the noise of the taxi in the drive, the slamming of the metal door followed by the harsh ding-dong of the clapped out doorbell. Having no time to think about storage he bundled the mitigating evidence under the scene of the crime, the bed. Otherwise known as his playground, where he liked to swing, slide and climb the frames of females, occasionally falling.

Kisses and hugs, wine and food filled the evening. He felt that this was what he wanted; hardly seeing his girl made the whole relationship more like an affair. Ironic, considering he was having countless affairs.

 

She had ploughed him with gallons of red wine and lashings of tiger prawns. She knew that this combination acted as an aphrodisiac for a man who did not need any more impetus. She had the something all girls sought after, she knew exactly what made him tick.

            They virtually made love over the remnants of desert and coffee. Ironically, the cake of the day was passion fruit. The embarrassed waiter, who did not know where to look, breathed a sigh of relief as the two left.

            Back at the house, she stripped to her lacy red bra slowly and flicked off her skirt. Causing him to gasp in anticipation of what was coming, her suspenders were blood red. He knew that soon those stairwells to passion would be poised over his stubbled face.

 On turning around to show off her shapely body, she revealed a perfect butt, enhanced by a matching red p.v.c thong that concealed enough to tease his piercing eye.

            He could not hold back any longer, his quivering hands took in every aspect of her smooth flesh, cupping her breasts as he rapidly got out of his shirt and jeans. She helped him unzip with a look of lust and then the two fell to the floor in a crumpled heap that looked somewhat choreographed.

            The duende took over and the white boxer clad Mr. Hormone picked up his girl and threw her onto the bed, diving on top to wrestle with her in the pursuit of love.

            The first crack was somewhat inaudible. But the wriggling and pinning down, holding her hands back, ready to tie to the bed post with any available material, caused a crescendo of shattering. It gave the impression that a glass window had smashed.

She could sense by his eyes, that of a frightened schoolboy, that he had been found out. All was not well. She jumped up in a gymnastic fashion, tossed him off the bed. Hurling back the mattress to unearth, the adulterous pieces of evidence, amongst the splinters of glass.

            The initial reaction made it look like this situation was going to get messy. He gave his characteristic cheeky smile and his,

“Oh come on forget it,” laugh, finalised the situation.

 The surprising outcome, the two continued on the train to the pleasure dome.

“Perhaps” he said to me,” in some strange way, it made it better.”

 

Really, she did not feel that she could complain, having a comparable picture gallery in her Parisian apartment.

            Only Mr. Hormone could turn something like this around in his favour. The man could be a politician, if he so desired.

 

            I often wonder sometimes how he will age. What does the future hold for this lothario? Perhaps, he might lose some of his ability but what with the pills crafted and modified these days he will always have the essence of his earlier self.

            I can picture the nursing home being his last port of call. Here is where he will complete the final mission.

 One of the many children he has fathered will declare that enough is enough and exile him into pensioner hood. I can imagine a husband and wife arguing about having him stay with them.

WIFE: “No, John. I don’t like it when he is in the house, you know that.”HUSBAND: “But come on he is my father.”

WIFE: “Yes and it doesn’t stop him though does it.”

HUSBAND:  “You know what he is like.”

WIFE: “And that makes it okay? How stupid of me.”

HUSBAND:  “It is entirely harmless fun.”

WIFE: “Tell it to my ass.”

HUSBAND:  “He doesn’t mean anything by it and we have talked this over.”

WIFE: “Listen, you know if I slept in a bed on my own, he would slip in with no inhibitions.”

HUSBAND:  “That’s a bit harsh.”

WIFE:  “He offers every time, he is old, not stupid and he plays on that deafness.”

HUSBAND:  “It’s perfectly fine for your parents to come here but my one living relation cannot even…….”

WIFE:  “That won’t work anymore. My mother does not stick her tongue in when she gives you a welcoming peck on the cheek. Enough, its final.”

Obviously, the female residents of Oakwood Retirement Village, would not interest his appetite in any way. Why eat Spam when he had devoured caviar?

            He’d still be handsome, his aging process would be only apparent in his grey toned hair and the chest rag that had lost its colouring.

            Without a doubt he’d soon collect a troupe of nurses who’d take care of all his special needs, falling for the relentless charms of the man. I imagine here he shall live out his days in peace, sleeping and suddenly requiring a bed bath thrice daily because his legs had started to trouble him. Of course this would have nothing to do with the fact the company took on a batch of eighteen year old school leavers.

Ah, Mr Hormone, I reckon when he does inevitably depart this life and they put him down below. In his inimitable true style he will romance Mother Nature. Becoming one with her, making the old dame so, so happy that the day he is buried, flowers will bloom all over.