Sugar Mommy?

Just after graduating college, I had met one of Bowie’s co-workers from the coffee shop he worked at downtown. She was cute. As Bowie and I left, I told him so. “Yeah, she thought you were cute, too.” “Wow. I wasn’t expecting that.” “She has a boyfriend…”

“Damn. Oh well.”

“She’s got two kids, too.”

“More info I didn’t need.”

“She, uh, she said that she wants to be locked in a room with you for five hours.”

“Okay, I’m ready to castrate myself. You’re not helping, Bowie.”

The next day, Bowie called me from work, and then put her on the phone. I had no idea how to react. Small talk, followed by awkward silence, and I finally asked her to put Bowie back on. She was disappointed, and so were her co-workers. Everyone else at the store was asking Bowie if I was gay.

Sorry, but I won’t take any part in an affair. It’s simply wrong. My dad cheated on my mom. My sister had trailed him; it’s probably the smartest thing she has ever done in her life, figuring it out. Dad moved out, for a year, and then moved back in. I’ll never understand why Mom took him back. I’ll never cheat. NEVER. If I’m not happy in a relationship, I’ll have the balls to say so, and work to make it better. If that’s not possible, then it’ll have to end. Simple as that. (I know, nothing is ever that simple. But in a world full of greys, I’m a pretty black & white kind of guy.)

After that wonderful experience, my assistant manager tried to hook me up with one of his “sistas.” She seemed very sweet on the phone, but there was something in her voice I didn’t like. She sounded like she was 14 (actually 19 at the time. I was 21). And during our second conversation, I found out that she, too, had kids.

I asked Avery (a 35-y-o gay man), “Did I somehow neglect to mention that I don’t like kids? After all the rants you’ve heard me spout on about what I like and what I don’t, did that little piece of very important info slip through the cracks?”

My next encounter with flirtation that summer was three weeks before I moved back to Bumblefuck. The coffee shop was giving away a trip to San Francisco. An attractive woman in her early 30s had walked in and, after ordering her coffee, asked me if I had ever been to SF. “No, this job really doesn’t give me the opportunity to travel much.” A barrista working for less than six months makes $6.25/hour. At 35 hours a week (considered full time at Timothy’s World Coffee), I could barely pay my bills. I never had much money for comics. Airfare and a hotel were out of the question.

“Well, if you’d like to go there sometime, let me know.”

‘Waitjustagoddamnminute,’ I thought. ‘Did she just offer to be my sugar mommy?’

And before I could think of anything else, she left the building.

A few other thoughts floated in my head. When did I become this sex object? In college, no woman would give me the time of day, and now there are a couple of them, with kids, that want to fuck my brains out. Why is it that the ones you do want don’t want you, and the ones you don’t want do want you? Am I really that hot of a commodity?

Nahhhh, that’s just crazy talk. In a few hours, while you’re sleeping on the floor of Lynne’s living room (their “couch” was a 1 & ½ person love seat, about four feet wide. No way in hell was I gonna sleep on that twice), you’ll forget all about the surge of actual self-esteem, and get on with your usual everyday misery.

There are some people who say, “It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.” And some of those people who have loved and then lost are so hurt by it; they say that it is better to have never loved in the first place. Speaking as someone who has never been in love, I hope they’re wrong. I’ve seen what happens to people when they are with the person they love. I’ve seen the peace and freedom that it brings. I want to feel that sense of profound intimacy you can only get by completely giving yourself to someone who is doing the same for you, intellectually, emotionally, and physically. I’m tired of feeling numb and broken inside. Twenty-six years of solitude can wear you down.