J

im’s friends, bandmates, and even Nick the roofer who hated music, cautioned him not to take a side gig working with his hands.

“Have a tough time rockin’ out with this,” Nick would say, flashing a wedding-ringed stump—the remains of a circular saw mangling.

But no words of warning could stop Jim from joining the roofing crew. For one thing, he needed the money. Music paid in drink and pussy, as Jim would often brag, and in that, it was one of the highest-wage jobs around. Nonetheless, he had to pay rent and eat like everyone else and unlike many of his musician pals, Jim refused to rely on women for financial support. It wasn’t that he was a particularly scrupulous person. No one would accuse Jim of that. But given that his father, grandfather, and uncles had all

been tradesmen—mostly carpenters and electricians—handy work was in his bones. More than anything, though, it was one of his dad’s old sayings that caused Jim to exchange guitar and picks for hammer and nails when he was back from the road.

“If it was work they wouldn’t call it playin’ the guitar,” James Sr. would lecture young Jim when he was “fiddle-fartin’ around with that gizmo” instead of looking for a job.

From his dad’s constant haranguing, Jim grew his own disregard for the instrument. Over time, the guitar became useful to him only in satiating his strong desires for sex and booze—things any construction worker, including James Sr., could understand.

Nick and the guys envied Jim nearly to the point of resentment. He had screwed more women than all six of them combined, even when you added in their tall tales, stretchers, and total fabrications. From morning til sundown, the laborers leaned into the gory details of Jim’s every pickup line, unzip, and hip thrust as they tore off roofs and nailed down new ones, imagining themselves in the lucky lad’s place.

Although he never explained his carnal philosophy to his coworkers, and they never thought to ask, Jim took care to have sex only once with any particular woman in any particular town, and within the encounter to have only one type of sex. This approach, which Jim developed early in his touring career, prevented the messiness of emotional entanglements and kept the memories clear in his body and mind. But Jim didn’t rely on memories alone. In his apartment, he kept a highly organized log of names, dates, and cities with headers for each type of intercourse: BJ, Vaginal, Anal, and Pussy Eating. “The four foundations of fornication” as Jim called them—a title he thought would make a great band name too. Though Jim also enjoyed handjobs and had received many in his life, he’d decided early on not to include them on his lusty list. To his thinking, they were only a half-step above masturbation. And while he enjoyed masturbation as well, and engaged in it more often than most, Jim considered that to be a mere bodily function—on par with eating, sleeping, and shitting—bearing almost no relationship to sex at all.

On the day it happened, Jim had just gotten back from tour with the New Wave retro act Neon and the Signs. It wasn’t Jim’s usual type of tour. He was more of a black t-shirt and blue jeans rock n’ roller. Still, the “waver gig” gave him his fill of free drink and pussy, same as any tour. On their Midwest run, Neon and the Signs played twelve shows in twelve cities and Jim had a different woman in every one. As per usual, he couldn’t wait to get home and add the recent conquests to his long catalog of sexual encounters. And so he did.

At his desk, Jim pulled out various colored pens—blue for BJ, pink for vaginal, brown for anal, red for pussy eating—and got to work filling in the names, dates, and cities of each session. After the new additions, Jim counted the full tally. Two hundred and twenty-seven BJs. A hundred and thirty-two vaginals. Twenty-eight anals. And the rest pussy eating. Three hundred ninety-nine total. For Jim, the four hundred mark had been an important milestone to pass and he was positive that Sarah—the woman he went down on in the hotel breakfast room in Cleveland—was in fact number four hundred. Though he counted and recounted, she was only three hundred and ninety-nine. Her place in Jim’s chronicle of copulating suddenly seemed much less significant.

It was devastating to Jim. He’d been running the details through his mind more diligently than ever, readying himself to tell the roofers every moment and movement of number four hundred. How he watched her before the show. How he figured out her personality type based on the color and style of her clothes. How he pretended to like her friend better at first. How he shot glances her way every time he finished a solo. How he told her he needed a ride to the hotel afterward because the band left without him. How he pretended to like every cheesy song she played in the car on the drive over. And, ultimately, how he ate Fruit Loops out of her pussy in the breakfast room of a two and half star hotel near the Cleveland airport where her orgasmic screams were so loud someone called the cops. But none of that mattered anymore. Sarah would only ever be number three hundred and ninetynine. Frustratedly, Jim grabbed his tool belt and left to meet Nick and the guys at the job site.

As he tacked toe board jacks onto a pitched roof that chilly, early morning, Jim contemplated when and where he might complete his four hundredth sex session. He’d learned the hard way how much chaos it brought to sleep with women who lived in or around Cincinnati. They’d show up at a local gig or even find out where he lived. Better to restrict his womanizing to the road, he thought. Only problem was, his next tour wasn’t for two weeks.

As he pondered the problem, Tommy, another laborer on the crew, humped a seventy-pound bag of shingles up a forty-foot ladder and flopped them off his shoulder onto the board Jim was standing on. One of the rusty metal jacks that held the toe board, and Jim on top of it, snapped with the sudden extra weight, sending Jim and the shingles skidding along the roof and sixteen feet down to a concrete driveway where Nick stood sipping coffee.

“Fuckin’ A Jim. Y’alright?” Nick asked, bending over the fallen crew member.

Jim rolled off his right hand with a groan. To his horror, one of his fingers was bent in an unnatural direction.

“Told you ‘bout those hands,” Nick said matter-of-factly, loading Jim into his pickup.

After X-rays, it was determined Jim not only had two badly broken fingers but also a wrist fracture.

At home, Jim sat staring at the cast, worrying that he’d never play guitar again. Though music had become ever less important to him over his ten years of performing, he knew without it he didn’t stand a chance of boinking all those beauties in all those towns. It was the guitar that brought them in. That and Jim’s sixth sense about which women to pursue. But the guitar was part of that too. It gave him the confidence to approach women in the first place. Without the guitar, he’d be the same as Nick and Tommy. Just another chump hanging his nuts off the edge of a roof, waiting for payday to blow his wad at the bar. Maybe he’d never even cross the four-hundred mark. Stuck at three-ninety-nine for the rest of his miserable life.

Lying around the house all day, Jim got hornier than hell. Though he tried masturbating with his left, Jim was a solid right-hander. Every time he tried yanking it with his southpaw it felt creepily like a child was touching his dick, or, at best, an extremely awkward stranger. Unfortunately for Jim, there was nothing in his persona that was ambidextrous. His left only accomplished the small things in life, like scratching his head or holding nails for his hammer hand. He didn’t so much as pick his nose with the left. In the few brawls he’d ever been in, Jim’s right did all the punching while his left hung low, merely threatening to join in the fight. And when it came to guitar playing, the left only made simple chords and fingerings. All smoke and mirrors. His fast-picking right hand did all the real work.

No guitar, no pussy, and not even able to pull his own pud, all Jim could do was drink—and that wasn’t free anymore.

A few days after the accident, Nick came by with groceries and a bottle of Old Crow. Jim figured his boss was extending the kindness in an attempt to prevent a potential lawsuit, but he was glad for the company just the same. Hungover and self-pitiful, Jim joked drearily about his sexual deprivation, waving his heavily plastered right hand over his crotch.

“Dude, I got just the place for you,” Nick said. “A little handjob hut off’a Route 27 . . .”

Jim started to protest. Though he didn’t say it out loud, paying for it was for chumps and losers, and it took a particular type of loser—someone like Nick—to pay for a handjob.

“It’s on me, bro,” Nick said, sensing Jim’s hangup.

Jim knew he couldn’t drive with his left, so Nick took the day off and drove Jim himself. The whole way over Nick went on and on about an old lady at the massage place who gave “great hand.” Jim didn’t engage with the banter, figuring his boss was setting him up to be the butt of a dumb joke.

Nick pulled into a strip mall and drove past a liquor store, a vaping store, a pizza parlor, a pawn shop, and a Tai Kwon Do studio, finally parking in a far corner of the lot across from a payday advance place.

“Ask for the Ol’ Lady. Trust me,” Nick whispered as they walked through a tinted door below a small sign for Diamond Star Massage.

A cute Asian woman at the counter welcomed them. Jim checked out her tits and wished he could play guitar for her. She’d probably do him in the bathroom for free, he thought.

Nick piped up, “He wants the Ol’ . . .”

Jim interrupted, “I want the hottest youngest chick you got.”

Jim was led to a small undecorated room with a massage table in the center. He disrobed and lay down, covering himself with the thin sheet provided, wondering how often they were cleaned. More often than his own, he decided, staring at a vulva-shaped stain on the popcorn ceiling that gave him a stiffy.

The hottest youngest woman at Diamond Star walked into Jim’s room looking at her phone. She chewed gum and squirted something in her hand from a plastic pump bottle near the door, never once averting her eyes from the device. The lotion-filled hand found Jim’s penis under the sheet and fondled it noncommittally while she remained fixated on her phone. Though she had earbuds in, Jim could tell she was deep into a TV show by the way she stopped stroking every time something interesting happened. Unfortunately for Jim, something interesting happened every time he was about to ejaculate.

Fifteen minutes after she began, an alarm went off on Diamond Star’s hottest youngest woman’s phone.

“Time’s up,” she said, walking out, eyes still glued to her screen.

“I told you,” Nick said on the drive home. “The Ol’ Lady.”

Two days later, still unable to wank and more frustrated than ever, Jim decided to go back to the massage parlor on his own. When the cab dropped him off, Jim clumsily paid the driver with his left hand and then clumsily let himself in the door to Diamond Star.

“I’d like to see the Old Lady,” Jim said sheepishly as he entered.

“Ole Lady not available now,” the receptionist informed him. “Medium-old, ok?”

Jim agreed to see the medium-old lady and waited for her on another massage table in another undecorated room.

The medium-old lady announced herself with a door slam, causing Jim to jump.

“I gotcha babe,” she said, reaching under the sheet with a hand already dripping with lotion. At least Jim hoped it was lotion.

“Oooh. You’re SO big . . .”

Everything about her—her blonde wig, heavily painted face, and large enhanced breasts—looked a little lopsided to Jim.

“. . . oooh, dontcha wanna cum all over these

big tiddies? OOOH . . .”

Her brash style and the way she fist-pumped Jim’s cock like she was trying to yank it off his body made it impossible for him to cum. While he struggled to pry her fingers off his dong, the medium-old lady put her mouth close to Jim’s ear and whispered loudly that she was willing to "try something else.” He wasn’t.

In the lobby, Jim asked when the Old Lady would be available. The receptionist checked her calendar.

“Only opening tomorrow 10 AM. Pay now, ok? Ole Lady don’t touch money.”

Jim took the slot and paid in advance.

Unable to sleep that night, Jim stared at reruns on an out-of-whack TV that, like everything else in his tiny apartment, was furnished by a shady offsite slumlord. He ruminated about the crappy couch, the crappy bed, the crappy three-channel TV, the crappy building, and the crappy neighborhood it all sat in. He lamented the worthlessness of his right hand and the near-worthlessness of his left. He considered that the whole situation was made worse by the fact that his bank account was empty, the Workmans comp checks he received for the accident barely covered his needs, and he was nearly out of beer. To top it all off, the only thing he had to look forward to in his entire lousy life was paying for a handjob from some old lady that occasionally jerked off his stupid boss. He flipped back and forth between cheesy sitcoms on the TV’s three grainy channels, wondering how it had come to this.

Jim called a cab at 9:30 AM the next morning and arrived at Diamond Star five minutes early, eagerly awaiting release. When he walked in, the receptionist handed him an N-95 mask.

“Before see Ole Lady, put mask,” the receptionist said.

Jim looked curiously at the N-95 before snapping it on his face. He followed the receptionist’s directions—first left then all the way down. When he came to a fuzzy welcome mat at the end of the hall, he knocked.

“This is it,” he heard from within.

Inside the room, Jim found the Old Lady sitting in a recliner watching The Price is Right with her own N-95 on. She grabbed the remote from a TV tray and clicked off the show. Jim watched silently as she folded down the foot support and stood up, placing a frilly-edged baking apron over her clothes. She motioned for Jim to sit in the La-Z Boy, and then flipped the lever, popping up his legs.

“Mouth, vaj, or ass?” She asked.

Jim’s face belied his horror at the thought of entering any of the Old Lady’s orifices.

“Pretend time big guy,” she said. “Which hole you wanna do? Or you a kinker . . . pussy eater?”

Jim wasn’t sure what to make of the situation but didn’t think eating pussy was a kink.

“I like . . . BJs, I guess,” he answered.

“You and the rest of ‘em,” she said flatly.

The Old Lady clicked the remote again and pulled out a laptop. The TV came to life with a video of a blonde woman sucking a large pink penis.

“Work for you?” The Old Lady asked. “Color preference, dick size?”

“No, this is fine,” Jim said.

The Old Lady jimmied his jeans off and flung a beach towel over his chest.

He heard the squishy sound of lotion coming from a pump and then felt the Old Lady’s hands gently touch his genitals—one on the penis, one on the testes.

As he watched the video, it was uncanny how the Old Lady followed each movement of the actress’s mouth with her hands—even using her thumb to flick under the head of his dick like a tongue. It was good. In fact, Jim thought, it was better than the real thing. It was so good that Jim didn’t want it to end. In an attempt to avoid premature ejaculation, he looked away from the screen and turned his gaze toward the Old Lady.

“Nothing for you up here, sweetie,” she said.

But the more Jim looked, the more he did find something up there. Though he couldn’t see much of her face, there was something about her gray-blue eyes. They seemed loving. Caring. Forgiving of Jim’s indiscretions, including the one he was engaged in at that moment. Her eyes were putting him at peace with his less-than-peaceful existence.

The Old Lady allowed Jim to stare a bit but stopped fondling him while he did so. When he finally returned his gaze to the screen, Jim climaxed quickly, and for the first time in his life, he cried while he came.

“No need to cry over spilt milk,” the Old Lady said, giving his head a comforting pat while humming an old tin pan alley tune.

When he returned home that afternoon, Jim pulled out his long list of sexual exploits. He’d been thinking to add the Old Lady, to make her number four hundred, but it just didn’t seem right. Not because it was only a handjob—though it was so much more than that—but because of how it left him feeling. Raw. Tender. More awake to the world. Awake to the fact that his previous three hundred and ninety-nine sexual encounters meant nothing after what he’d just been through. And unlike the other women he’d been with, Jim wanted to see the Old Lady again.

After considering it awhile, Jim opened a fresh notebook with his clumsy left hand and scrawled the title “The Old Lady” listing number one under the header Hand-BJ.

With the small Workmans comp checks as his only source of income, Jim couldn’t afford to see the Old Lady as often as he liked. But, he figured, if he cut back on drinking he could at least go once a week. And so he did.

As Jim became a regular at Diamond Star, he tried the Old Lady’s other offerings—first vaj and then anal. Somehow she was able to replicate the exact velvetiness of a vagina and the precise sausage-casing-tightness of an anus with her talented palms, fingers, and thumbs. As with the hand-BJ, they were better than the real thing. But more than the simple sexual pleasure, it was the heart-opening experience of feeling seen and cared for by the Old Lady that moved Jim to return week after week.

After a month of visits, Jim asked the Old Lady to choose whichever type of digital manipulation she would employ during a given session, leaving him to enjoy the surprise of “dealer’s choice." Though she no longer allowed him to look at her during the jerk-offs, Jim found another way to feel close to her. Rather than watch the videos, he kept his eyes closed while she touched him, allowing himself to be at one with the tender care of her hands.

Week after week, Jim returned from the encounters feeling refreshed and alive. He marked each type of handjob down under its appropriate header in the new list: Hand-BJ, Hand-Vaj, Hand-Anus. But his catalog was missing a category and the lack had become bothersome to Jim. What would she do? What would I do?—he wondered—a little nervously, a little excitedly—once he’d decided to move on from dealer’s choice and tell the Old Lady he wanted to try pussy eating.

On his next cab ride to Diamond Star, Jim was so anxious he almost threw up in the car. He was so lost in his own excitement that he didn’t notice the frown on the receptionist’s face when he walked in the door.

“Ole Lady not here. Ole Lady sick today,” she said. The words stopped Jim in his tracks. He stood staring at the receptionist, trying to understand what her mouth was doing.

“Ole Lady . . . sick today . . . not here.” She repeated louder and slower.

When the receptionist added hand gestures to her words for emphasis, Jim began shaking his head side to side like he’d suddenly come down with a nervous tic.

“SICK?” He finally blurted out.

“You come next week,” the receptionist said, opening the door and ushering Jim out.

The next few days were tough ones for Jim. Worrying about the Old Lady and her sickness. Feeling lonely for lack of seeing her. Blowing his money on booze again. The only good news was that his cast was coming off that week.

When Jim went to the hospital on the morning of his appointment, he had the idea to snoop around various floors to see if the Old Lady might be there somewhere.

“May I help you?” A charge nurse in the intensive care unit asked.

“I’m looking for . . .” Jim stopped, realizing he didn’t know the Old Lady’s name or even how to describe her, other than by her kind gray-blue eyes and supple hands.

“. . . the place where they take off casts,” he said at last, waving his heavy right hand.

After waiting in the orthopedic center for some time, a pretty young nurse called for Jim to follow her down a corridor—first left and then all the way to the end—just like visiting the Old Lady at Diamond Star. He couldn’t help but get horny thinking about it. The nurse removed the cast swiftly with a small oscillating saw and scissors. She cleaned up Jim’s pale hand, had him flex his fingers, and gave him a tube of ointment to put on later.

Before leaving the hospital, Jim found a private bathroom, unzipped his pants, and opened the slippy salve just given him. He squirted some into the palm of his newly freed hand and stroked himself, imagining sex with the castcutting nurse. He tried and tried, but no matter which way he pictured her—sitting on the toilet giving a BJ, sitting on his lap for vaginal penetration, or bent over the sink for anal—he couldn’t keep an erection. It wasn’t until he imagined the N-95 mask-wearing Old Lady lifting her frilly baking apron and exposing her gray-haired pussy that Jim was able to complete masturbation for the first time in nearly two months. He yelled so loud after the climax that someone knocked on the door and asked if Jim was alright.

When he got home, Jim tried other right hand activities—eating, writing, TV remote clicking. Eventually, he even picked up a guitar and played a little. It was comforting to know he could do all the right-handed things again if he wanted to. But he didn’t care about those things. Not like he used to. More than anything, he wanted his healed hand to touch the Old Lady. He realized suddenly and happily that with the cast off he could drive himself over to Diamond Star and check on her. And so he did.

“Ole Lady still sick. Maybe . . . don’t come back,” the receptionist said cagily when Jim came in.

“What do you mean?” Jim asked.

“Have nice young lady. New one,” the receptionist offered with a smile.

Jim asked for the Old Lady’s whereabouts repeatedly but could get no answer. As his frustration mounted, so did the volume of his voice. The noise caused a leather-jacket-wearing goon to come out from behind a beaded curtain and flex his shoulders menacingly. When Jim’s hollering grew even louder, the big man moved in sluggishly to do his duty. Almost imperceptibly, Jim shifted his feet and drew his newly available right fist behind him. The unexpected face punch landed hard on the bouncer’s nose and mouth. He hit the floor with a resounding whump followed by a horrible wheeze from the wind getting knocked out of him.

“Ole Lady at Peaceful Garden!” The panicked receptionist hollered.

As he drove away, Jim realized his right hand was hurt badly from the one-hit KO. He’d have to go back to the hospital, and he knew it, but not before driving himself to Peaceful Gardens, Inc.—an old folk’s home off Route 27 whose sign he’d passed many times on the way to and from Diamond Star.

Jim searched Peaceful Garden’s dayroom, moving quickly past residents and staff as he did so. Not spotting her, he took his first right and followed the hall to the end as he’d always done at Diamond Star. When he didn’t find her there, Jim combed every corridor of the facility until, on the fourth floor, he finally came upon the Old Lady’s fuzzy welcome mat.

After knocking, Jim walked through the unlocked door and found an old lady in a recliner watching The Price is Right. But he wasn’t sure it was his old lady.

“Oh . . . you,” the old lady said.

Jim sat on a kitchen chair across from her and studied her unmasked face. It was hard to say if she was pretty or not. She looked serious. The oxygen tubes running up her nostrils made her appear frail. Her thin lips, bulbous nose, and weathered sagging cheeks took attention away from her kind eyes. He almost asked her to put a mask on. Unable to look directly at the Old Lady, Jim started reading labels on the dozen or so pill bottles that sat atop her kitchen table. Jim noted that they were mostly heart medications, many of the same ones his mother had taken before her untimely death when he was six.

“Don’t you have your own people to worry about?” the Old Lady asked.

Jim thought about it a minute. When his mother died, James Sr. sent him to live with his grandparents. For eight years Jim enjoyed the attention and care of the older relatives, but when his grandfather was moved into hospice and his grandmother became too feeble to take care of him anymore, teenage Jim was sent back to his dad.

“Some. But none of ‘em ever touched my pecker,” Jim answered, defensively.

“Aw crap. You’re a kinker,” the Old Lady sighed. “Madame Pearl, my first boss, always said ‘Kinkers’ll come after ya’.’ Tell you what, I give you a quick wank, you get outta here and don’t come back. Ok?”

Jim rubbed his swollen right paw with his left, unsure what to do.

“What the hell did you do?” The Old Lady asked, taking Jim’s hurt hand into her soft ones.

Jim lost himself in the Old Lady’s eyes as tears fell from his own.

“You got one wish kid. Make it a good one, then let me be,” she said.

“I want . . .” Jim sniffled, “I want to go down on you.”

Jim’s request caused the Old Lady to let out a belly-laugh-turned-coughing-fit that lasted through two TV commercials—one for term life insurance, the other for dentures. As The Price is Right came back on, she turned the TV volume up, put the La-Z Boy footer down, and lifted her skirt to expose a pair of large beige undies covering a diaper.

“Get those off and it’s all yours, kid,” she said.

The diaper and smell of stale urine didn’t phase Jim. He took the outer coverings off carefully and lowered his face upon her privates. The Old Lady stroked his head gently, humming the same old tin pan alley tune she always did during their encounters.

Jim was down there a long time, licking and nibbling, sucking and dribbling, waiting for the tell-tale vaginal pulsing—excited to share in the Old Lady’s post-coital bliss. But no pulsing came. After a while, he realized there was no more head stroking or humming either. In fact, there was no pulse at all. Jim jumped up, hoping she had simply fallen asleep. He shook her and shook her but she wouldn’t budge.

No one seemed to notice when Jim left the Old Lady’s room, or when he walked hurriedly through the lobby, or when he peeled out of the parking lot. Nonetheless, he looked over his shoulder incessantly as he knee-drove away from Peaceful Gardens, narrowly avoiding accidents.

Jim parked away from the hospital entrance and stared into the rearview, worriedly replaying the scene. He considered turning himself in but that seemed ridiculous—he hadn’t forced his way in or forced himself upon her. He considered calling Peaceful Gardens anonymously to tell them the Old Lady was dead but figured somebody was bound to check on her when she didn’t show for a meal or a bridge game or something. Then he told himself that, after all, it wasn’t such a bad way to go. And anyway, she would’ve died soon enough judging by the pills she was taking.

As his thoughts ping-ponged, Jim finagled a grey pube from between his lower front teeth with his unwieldy left hand, barely noticing his throbbing, melon-sized right. The Old Lady’s voice came back to him then, saying “kinker”—first in an accusatory tone, then in a friendly familiar one as if calling a pet by its special nickname.

“Here kinker. Feeding time . . .”

Jim bolted from the car and ran into the hospital. The doctor who patched him up the first time happened to be on duty when he dragged his giant fist into the examination room. After looking at X-rays, the doctor frowned at Jim and his disfigured duke and said,

“Somehow you managed to double the size of your fracture. All we can do is put another cast on, my friend. I’m sorry to say, your right wrist will likely not function as it used to.”

Jim’s thoughts and feelings, like his hand and wrist, were once again stuck in a hard place. There was not one thing, including alcohol, that could take away the pain in his throbbing limb or the ever-present memories of the Old Lady—particularly her haunting humming song which played on repeat in his heavy head.

Workmans compensation wouldn’t cover the re-injury. As a result, Jim sold off his guitars one by one to stay afloat. With the money from his first sale, he ordered a recliner and had it delivered to his living room so he could at least sit comfortably while staring at the half-broken TV day and night. In the late mornings, when The Price is Right came on, he got hornier than hell but was unable to do anything about it. At least, he thought, the hard-on was proof he was still alive—even if he sometimes wished he wasn’t.

A couple months later, when the second cast came off, Jim’s right wrist was so stiff he was unable to turn it in any direction. It looked as if it were glued to his arm. He could use the hand, more or less, to drive, to feed himself, and to wipe his ass, but masturbation was definitely out of the question. More than anything, though, it was his inability to play guitar that weighed heavy on him. Without that Jim knew there was no chance for any more free booze or pussy.

A former bandmate named Pat stopped by one day to dig through the last of Jim’s music gear. He noticed that though Jim’s wrist was inflexible, his fingers still moved freely. Pat asked if Jim had considered playing keyboard, suggesting that it required less wrist dexterity than guitar. He also mentioned that he had one he’d be willing to trade. Though Jim balked at first, knowing that piano proficiency requires a great deal of left hand ability, he eventually agreed to a trade, handing over a decent Les Paul knockoff in exchange for a well-worn eighty-eight-key electric piano.

The keyboard sat in a corner collecting dust for a couple weeks before, out of sheer boredom, Jim began plunking on it. It was easy enough to tinkle out simple melodies with his right fingers, but it took Jim some time to add in the left. Oddly, when he began using both hands, it was as if his left had been waiting—like a neglected child craving attention, routine, and discipline—to be brought into the fold. From chopsticks, to simple boogie-woogies, to more complicated arrangements, Jim’s left hand came ever more to life.

When he was finally able to play through entire songs with both hands, Jim began searching for the tin pan alley tune that ran incessantly through his mind. After several days scouring libraries and record stores, whistling the melody to anyone who’d listen, he found it: “All Alone” by Irving Berlin.

Jim rehearsed “All Alone” day and night. He tried it in various keys and tempos and infused with different emotions and levels of intensity. As he worked through it, a sense of ease came over him. It seemed to Jim that as he mastered the Old Lady’s song, he transcended the haunting of her humming. She was no longer in his head, but in his fingers—just as he had once been in hers.

As he grew more proficient at the piano, new qualities developed in Jim—or at least in his left hand. From the playfulness of his pinky to the thoughtfulness of his thumb, the left struck major, minor, and diminished chords in the most heartfelt and joyful ways. Similarly, when Jim patted a friend’s back or shook their hand, genuine care and appreciation came through his loving left. Beyond that, his left had begun opening doors for the elderly, offering change to panhandlers, and flashing the peace sign at aggressive drivers. Where his right hand had always been on the take, grasping at the world for his own selfish needs, Jim’s left developed in the exact opposite direction. It became his giving hand.

The more Jim played the keys, the more his left dominated everything he did. It was his guide to music and his guide to the world. When he searched for new songs to learn on piano, his left led the way, pointing him to composers like Gershwin, Ellington, and Strayhorn. He dug into the Jazz standards with a childlike fervor and soon realized he was heading toward a new career path.

It was clear that Jazz piano wouldn’t get him work with his former bands, but Jim figured there were other audiences for the old-timey music—namely, old people. It wasn’t long before he picked up gigs in piano bars and hotel lobbies. From those experiences, Jim realized he liked performing alone—following his own rhythm, choosing songs that best fit his mood—but it wasn’t until he started playing in the “nursing home circuit” that he landed a steady, stable income to support his solo endeavor.

With his left hand leading the way, Jim landed weekly spots playing happy hours, ice cream socials, and other “mixers” at the best assisted living centers in the tri-state area—including three locations of the Peaceful Gardens, Inc. franchise.

Though Jim knew piano would never earn him fortune or fame, it paid far better than the dive bars and clubs he’d previously played in the Rock scene. Booze didn’t flow freely in Jim’s new work environment, but that was no problem—he’d lost his taste for the stuff anyway. One thing there was plenty of, and Jim certainly got his fill, was pussy. In that, he still had one of the highest-wage jobs around.