Larry The Lounge Lizard

My friend Larry is a babe magnet. I don’t know why.

Larry’s a good-looking guy, certainly. He’s got blonde hair, blue eyes, that devil-may-care expression, and a well-honed physique. He’s a bit of a fashion plate too. On the face of it, he’s got the qualities to attract lots of women. I don’t know, though. Something seems to be missing. Or, to put it more accurately, I am missing something. I am missing whatever it is that causes otherwise mature, intelligent, strong women to fall into a simpering heap at Larry’s feet.

And they do. Fall in a simpering heap, that is.

Larry is divorced. It was a long time coming, but wasn’t finalized until just a few months ago. The court clerk hadn’t even finished blowing on the papers to dry the ink when the deerhounds gathered in packs, foaming and salivating, circling Larry like so much prey.

It didn’t take Larry long to come to the realization that his inner lounge lizard was ready to be released. Thirteen years of marriage landed on the dung heap, and he was now facing instant – and multiple – gratification.

He told me women asked him out wherever he went. They asked him out at the grocery store, the library, his workplace, the coffee shop. He claimed they stopped him on the street to beg his number or offer to buy him a drink. I quite naturally assumed these stories were creative exaggerations, the salve on a wounded man’s ego, but I discovered while out and about with him one weekend that it was all true. True and just a bit bizarre.

We were at a club, my husband and I, with Larry. The women seemed to come from every nook and cubbyhole, oozing from the walls themselves, offering drinks, dances, kisses, and more as Larry just sat back, martini in hand, accepting the adoration.

“It’s the best,” he said with a disarming grin my way. “I don’t have to do anything. They all come to me. The ladies are hungry and the Larry Buffet is open for business.”

He winked at my husband. “Better look out, Harp. I’ll be stealing your wife too.”

My husband raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think so. You’re not really her type.”

Larry smiled. “I wouldn’t steal her from you, buddy. I don’t go after friends’ wives. But I could take any woman here.” He looked around the room at the pulsating bodies in the ever-changing light of the dance floor. “Married or not.”

“Never mind him,” I said, patting my husband’s hand. “The poor boy’s gone crazy. He’s not lucid.”

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than the herd descended on Larry again, coming from every quadrant of the joint. Tall ones. Short ones. Thin ones. Heavy ones. Blondes, brunettes, and redheads. Busty ones. Leggy ones. Long hair, short hair. Similar and dissimilar, they lined up for a look or a touch. Larry’s dance card was fully punched. He grooved and gyrated and dripped with sweat, and they still wouldn’t leave him alone.

“I don’t get it.” I shook my head, taking another sip of vodka Collins to see if the answer would magically come to me from the frosty glass.

“Larry The Lounge Lizard,” my husband responded, looking mildly fascinated and repulsed at the same time. “Don’t dance with him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I shot back. “We’ve known Larry for years. I don’t see the attraction. Is it pheromones? His favorite sweater? His chiseled pecs?”

My husband glanced down. “I have moobs,” he said sourly. “Maybe it IS the pecs.”

“Look at him slither,” I said, nodding toward the dance floor and signaling the waitress for another vodka Collins. “Larry The Lounge Lizard indeed, unctuous and oily, greaser of the dance floor, smooth operator, babe magnet.”

“That’s his true value in life.” My husband frowned at his empty beer bottle, looking vaguely frustrated.

“Have another,” I said. “I’m going to.”

I watched Larry The Babe Magnet Lounge Lizard work the room, pushing off the women who grabbed at his favorite sweater while he forced his way back to our table. I still couldn’t figure it out.

Maybe, I thought, it’s just that I’m not babe enough to be caught in the dragnet.

Maybe. Maybe another vodka Collins would do the trick.

I laughed as Larry was dragged once more to his feet and urged to the dance floor. I lifted my glass to my husband and looked at him over the rim as I took a sip.

Moobs or no moobs, I knew who the real babe magnet was at our table. And I was taking him home.