Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do

     The joint was jumpin’, as they say, in Harlem last night. My first visit to the famed Lenox Lounge. They’d all played there. Charlie, Louis, Ella, Cab, Thelonious. (Don’t I sound cool using just the first names of deceased famous jazz musicians.) In the Zebra Room, the elderly owner was kind enough to show me where Billie Holiday used to sit between sets. (First booth on the left when you walk through the swinging doors.)
     A Billie Holiday pretender was doing her interpretations of Lover Man and Them There Eyes as I mixed and mingled with the crowd.
     "I’ve been comin’ here since nineteen forty-five," a saggy-faced old man at the end of the bar told me. He wore a black leather hat and spoke through loose gums. "I’ve seen ‘em all. Lena Horne. Miles Davis. Sarah Vaughan."
     A pretty young waitress walked by carrying a tray of full wet glasses. The old man’s head turned as she passed.
     "Not to be rude," I said, "but aren’t you a little old to be checking out young girls?"
     "Son, I am seventy-eight years old. But it don’t matter if you’re seventy-eight or twenty-eight, a pretty girl still gets your heart pumpin’."
     "That sucks. I was hoping I’d calm down as I get older."
     "No such luck."
     "Well how do you handle it?" I asked
     "There’s only one thing you can do."
     "What’s that?"
     The old man smiled and raised his glass of Hennessey.
     "Close your eyes. And visualize."

Broadway Jim Sosnicky