Free Power & Beauty by David Ritz, Tip "t.i." Harris Page B

pain.”
    “Pain passes. Now ain’t that the fuckin’ truth?”
    “So what you’re saying, Slim, is that if I come back—”
    “You ain’t coming back. Not now. You got shit to learn and it seems to me you’re learning it. Now shut up, and stop whinin’ about all that good pussy you getting.”
    Slim broke out with another big laugh and then hung up. One thing about Slim—he was always smooth and knew how to calm me down. I watched some stupid reality show about knuckleheads living on the Jersey Shore and fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up, it was midnight and Irv Wasserman was sitting on a stool at the marble countertop in the kitchen area. He was sipping tea out of a huge glass mug.
    “I just bought the mug at Starbucks,” he said. “I didn’t know they still made mugs out of glass. Tea tastes better when you drink out of glass. I bought you six mugs. Use them in good health.”
    “Thank you. I didn’t hear you come in.”
    “Tea is better for you than coffee. Coffee winds you up and gets you thinking too fast. The thing about thinking is that you can overthink. Overthinking is no good. For years, kid, I was an overthinker. I can feel that you’re overthinking right now.”
    “I . . . I just woke up—”
    “You’re thinking, What the fuck is old man Irv doing here? ”
    “To tell you the truth, Mr. Wasserman, I was thinking that I just talked to Slim, who told me not to think.”
    Irv allowed himself one of those rare smiles.
    “That Slim’s a thinker, ain’t he?”
    “He’s been good to me.”
    “And I been good to my daughter. You know that, don’t you, Peter?”
    “Paul.”
    “Sorry, Peter used to be my broker. Peter didn’t see people, he saw numbers. But you’re Paul. They call you Powerhouse, right?”
    “Power.”
    “Right, you’re the power man. Power is good. Except what the fuck is it? We got the power to have kids by sticking our dick in a woman and squirting the seed. That’s a powerful thing. The kid is born, and we think that we’re God ’cause our seed caused all that. The kid is our seed. We watch the kid grow up. If it’s a boy, we hope he’ll get strong and plant his seed somewhere good so we can have grandkids. Grandkids are beautiful. I don’t have any. I had one daughter late in life. I waited because I cared. I waited because I wanted to find the right woman. It’s easy to find the wrong woman. My dick led me to many a dumb broad. I got in, I got out, and then I thought, This is getting me nowhere. This is no one I can talk to. This is no one who understands me. This is no one with a heart and head for Irv Wasserman. So I waited. Patience is my strong suit, kid. You’ll find that out. You’ll see. You’re looking at a patient man.
    “I was, what? Forty-seven, forty-eight years old when I met Ginny Calzolari. Many men that age look for girls in their early twenties. I can understand that. There are advantages. But I looked at the drawbacks. I didn’t want young. I wanted mature. I wanted Ginny because, even though we came from different backgrounds and had different faiths, I could see she was quality. I knew her father from business. He owned restaurants all over Chicago. Ginny was the hostess at his best restaurant, Le Beef. If I took you there tonight, you’d pay eighty dollars for a steak and you wouldn’t complain because the steak is that good. Ginny’s father is famous for how he ages beef. He’s a good man. I could see that his daughter, a real beauty, was a good woman. I could see by how she treated the customers. She had class. Class is important to me. Ginny Calzolari spoke very well. She had gone to college for a year. She had studied business. Her father told me he had plans to make her manager of the restaurant where she was hosting. That’s a big job, kid, because that particular restaurant has served the president of the United States of America. This is a top-grossing restaurant. I went there six, seven times, just observing