God Save the Sweet Potato Queens (7 page)
9
Dating for the Advanced or Advancing
S
o you’re dating again—or dating still—whatever the case. Let’s examine the possibilities and potential problems. For instance, what if he is like this really strict vegetarian—one of those vegetarians who look like they died a month or so ago and always smells funny. You can walk in any health-food store in America blindfolded and know immediately where you are by that smell. It’s not a bad smell, just distinctive. Anyway, he’s one of those who looks sick and makes a big-ass deal about what all he won’t eat, and he whines a lot to waiters in restaurants about what is and isn’t acceptable in his food. Can this relationship be saved? Well, that all depends. If you are
also
one of those vegetarians who looks half-dead, smells funny, and whines in restaurants, then yes, by all means. Not only can it be saved, it will live long and prosper. It was custom-made in heaven for you.
If, on the other hand, you are, say, me, the big mystery would be how you ever even had the first conversation with him, let alone developed a relationship. If I am going to have to sneak around to eat my favorite foods, chances are excellent that I’d rather be hanging out with the folks I’m sneaking around with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all want to eat healthy and live forever and all that, but gimme a break. I’m just saying there is something bad wrong with a guy who claims he never even
wants
a cheeseburger. He’s a liar—and a fool to boot—if he thinks anybody believes him. I, personally, am not destined to live my life with this man.
I heard, in this vein, from a delightful woman in Savannah who wrote to say that if she had known women like us years ago, her life would have been dramatically different (not to mention
better
). It seems she was married to a doctor for ten years (“The money was great”) who only wanted a “showpiece.” He required that she fulfill his definition of a “lady” at all times. The guy had such rules as “Ladies do not drink beer in public” and “They never, ever drink from the can or bottle!” It was, in her words, “a most stifling atmosphere.” Well, long story short, she did not give in to her nearly irresistible urges to run over him with her Lexus (which he paid for, thank you very much) but instead merely moved on to more entertaining pastures. And now, several happy, fun-filled years later, she is happy to report that her “current fiancé” says that “she could suck-start a Harley.” What a touching story, and we’ve got a million of ’em.
What if he is just a hideous dresser? He wears those nylon socks that won’t even stay up. He wears bow ties, even when he’s not dressed up in his clown costume. He parts his hair down the middle. He wears cheap shirts and, even worse, cheap shoes. One of the Queens, Tammy, has based make-or-break decisions on many relationships in her life solely (ha-ha) on the guy’s shoes. Tammy simply cannot tolerate bad shoes on a man. I would have to say that if there is enough there to attract you—in spite of this outfit—he bears exploring. If he’s suitable for taking out, we can deal with dressing him up. And do remember, if he’s spending too much time thinking about his own appearance, he’s not paying nearly enough attention to yours. I’d say buff him up a little and keep him if you like him.
What if he’s fat? If I like him, I don’t care—I’m a hell of a lot fatter than I used to be my ownself and therefore cannot cast a whole lot of stones. Besides, if you go out to dinner with a fat man, you know you’re going to be fed well.
What if he’s a tightwad? A cheapskate? A miser? A skinflint? Cheap is pretty deadly, but let me point out that so is Spendthrift. My feeling on the cheap guy would be this: If I have to pay for my own dinner, I’d rather be doing it with my girlfriends, where at least we could all talk about how cheap he is. And let me assure you, from personal experience, the Spendthrift will do all his spending on himself, with all his thrift being reserved for you. Money problems are too huge—don’t fool with either one of these guys.
What if he smokes and you don’t? We think this could be a plus, if he chain-smokes unfiltered cigarettes, and if he’s really old, really frail, really rich, and you are his sole beneficiary. I’d say buy him a fancy table lighter and fire it up for him whenever he seems inclined to puff another one. Zippity-do-o-o-o-dah!
The Queens agree that we just couldn’t survive a relationship with a humorless man. He could be guilty of several felonies that I could get over easier than this one. Life is too short and way too long to spend it laughless. I’d sooner date a gourd.
One of our funniest men friends is the Only Man We Ever Really Loved—the one from
SPQBOL
who put the butter pats on his head for us. We were recently at a party where he was also a guest. The invitation had instructed us to come attired in “casual chic.” He came in a snappy navy blue bathrobe, matching turban, and sunglasses (casual sheik, get it?). He was, of course, the cutest guy there, so we spent all our time hogging his attention away from everybody else. We were his harem and happy about it. When asked what kind of women he preferred in his harem, he said, without hesitation, “Women who lie. That is to say, women who lie down and then lie about it.” Perfect answer from the perfect man. No, we won’t tell you his name. It’s bad enough he always goes home with his wife. We’re not letting anybody else horn in.
Yes, for me, a sense of humor is just about the most important thing. He doesn’t necessarily have to be funny his ownself, although it’s a plus, but he should at the very least be able to tell that I am funny and laugh in all the right places. And he cannot have an overly goofy laugh. We were out of town once and we met this really handsome, charming man at a party and we were all quite taken with him and we were just about to knock ourselves out flirting with him. We excused ourselves for a moment—ostensibly to powder our noses but actually to have a catfight and decide who could actually have him. I don’t even remember who won, because as we started back across the crowded room to where we’d left him, waiting hopefully for our return, we heard this sound. When I say it froze us in our tracks, I am talking paralyzed us from the neck down—a thunderous emission that was sort of a cross between a hyuk-hyuk-hyuk and hoo-ee. It was stupefying. We stood there stupefied. Steeped in stupefaction. It was one of the top five worst laughs I have ever heard, and it was coming from the cute guy who, when we left the room, had five or six potential dates, but who, when we returned to that sound, suddenly had none. He was totally up for grabs again at that point.
Acting
goofy is tolerated more readily, and you have only to look at the cover of this book to see why. I once dated a guy—even brought him home to meet Mama. At one point she left the dinner table momentarily and was enthralled by the sight that greeted her return. There he sat at the table, calm as you please, acting as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on, and nothing much was—except that he had two enormous wads of chewed-up roast beef stuck behind the lenses of his glasses, completely covering his eyeballs. Don’t ask me what would possess a man to do such a thing, but I will tell you that we all absolutely adored him. He definitely picked the right house to do that in.
The Queens do enjoy group dating from time to time. This is not to be confused with group sex, which we are way too selfish for. Sharing the spotlight at a cocktail party is one thing; sharing candlelight is quite another—no, thank you very much. But it is big fun to have one guy take a bunch of us out—and is he ever the envy of every guy in the place. The Menopause Mafia wrote to say that they had a group date with a man who took them all to dinner. While he was in the men’s room, they told the maître d’ and the waiter that he was their daddy, and they were all half sisters who had just met for the first time when they arrived at the restaurant. This added a certain air to the evening for all of them.
A well-intentioned guy friend was trying to interest one of the Queens—Tammy, I believe it was—in going out with his former roommate from college. “I lived with this guy, Tammy, and I’m telling you he’s hung like Paw Paw’s bull!” was how he put it precisely. Coming from another guy, that’s pretty high praise, I reckon.
Meeting new people through mutual friends is one way of expanding your dating pool. Intra-office dating is another. If you are me or a close personal friend of mine, I am totally against it because when you’re doing it—not as in “doing it,” but as in dating within the office—you think you’re
invisible
and the whole thing is just your little secret. Ha! You couldn’t be more conspicuous if you set yourselves on fire. Not only does everybody else know—I’m talking the people who come in at night to rake out the place? They know, and not only do they know, but they’re talking to everybody in town. You ninnies! People passing you on the interstate know—we all know what you’re doing. And it is highly entertaining to watch you guys slip around, acting like you’re so sly.
See, igmos, what you look like is when a cartoon character falls in love—you know, with the big heart pumping out of your chest, hearts in your eyes and floating all around your head, and your feet flapping like wings so you’re hovering about a foot off the floor with this incredibly goofy look on your face. Drive by any junior high school and look at the couples—that’s exactly what you look like. And that’s on a good day, of course, when there are no bumps in the road of your big romance. The bad days are every bit as entertaining as the good ones—to all of us observing, anyway. And trust me, we all know when you’re, as my now twelve-year-old daughter says, “in a fight,” and we’re taking bets on the outcome. Not only that, we’re sneaking around trying to actually witness some of it firsthand to share with the others at break time.
Oh, I know, it seems so great to be able to see this person every waking minute when you’re in the blush of first infatuation with him, but try to think ahead for five minutes here and imagine how much you will like spending every waking minute with him if/when the passion cools. I suggest a more practical idea would be to host office mixers. Invite all the single people from different offices to get together for meeting and pairing-off opportunities. Bill it as an opportunity for the guys to meet some potential ex-wives.
Wisdom of the Aged
We are continually delighted by letters and e-mails we receive from readers who say that
SPQBOL
has become the handbook, the manual, the catechism for them and their friends and that they have taken to memorizing passages and quoting them, chapter and verse, when the occasion calls for an immediate dose of wisdom. This warms our hearts because we do feel that we are missionaries, and the zeal of the Baptists’ Lottie Moon is no match for our own in our quest to heal the lives and save the psyches of the lost, the downtrodden, and the bored.
We were in L.A., Tammy and I, on what turned out to be a Mission Trip. Actually we were in Santa Monica at the Pritikin Longevity Institute—we go there once a year now. The first time we went, Tammy’s daddy semi-made us go. We were looking for a spa vacation, and he indicated that he would make a substantial financial contribution to the deal if we would go to Pritikin. Our perception of Pritikin was that we would go and learn to eat grass and dirt clods and be utterly wretched for a week, but we were persuaded to do it by two things: (1) We thought it would be a good place to meet the kind of men we really want (old, rich, bad hearts, thick cataracts) and (2) Tammy’s daddy was buying. Well, we just fell in love with the place. The food is absolutely fabulous and—even better—they insist that you eat practically all day every day, which, of course, perfectly coincides with our personal preference. They have everything a spa has, but everybody on staff is an M.D. or a Ph.D., and so not only will you not be exposed to any idiotic crackpot exercise/diet fads, but you will actually come away with a pretty decent education in how to save your own life. Plus, it’s in the Loew’s Hotel—gorgeous—smack on Santa Monica Beach, and you can walk or bike or Rollerblade down to Venice every day to goon the weirdos and the bodybuilders. So we love the place and now we go every year at Labor Day.
This particular trip turned out—as so many of our excursions do—to be a Mission Trip. We made two new friends for life—Katie Dezember, a mere child from Bakersfield, and Charlie McGreevy from NYC. Although he didn’t appear to have cataracts, he did meet our other criteria, which we shared with him. He was so happy with himself. It never occurred to him before he came to Pritikin that being slightly older and having a somewhat weakened heart would be such a boon to his social life. He was well aware that being rich was a definite asset. Having perked up Charlie considerably just by picking him as our boyfriend for the week, the three of us, Tammy, Charlie, and I, undertook the education of young Katie. Tammy and I explained to her the many reasons why she should be looking for a man just like Charlie, although we advised her that we had spoken for Charlie himself, and she dare not cross that line. We saw right off what a quick study she was going to be by how fast she grasped that concept. Charlie was deliriously happy to find himself the center of attention and the sole object of desire for not one, not two, but three young and luscious women—although one was admittedly much younger, their luscious quotients were fairly equal.
He was most eager to contribute to young Katie’s education, particularly on the topic of the desirability of older men, and he spoke most earnestly to her about it. “Well, it even says so in the Bible!” he assured her. Since he couldn’t quote the chapter and verse, I consulted our utmost authority on all matters, especially spiritual and sexual, Professor Larry L. King. (One of the best things that has happened to me as a result of the publication of
SPQBOL
is that I have gotten to meet some other writers—real writers, I like to call them. Larry L. King, who wrote
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
and a whole bunch of other equally fine stuff, has become a regular mentor to me. Of course, I know he only pays attention to me because I bandy the Promise about so freely, but hey, that’s what it’s for, after all. And his cute wife, the lawyer Blaine, does her best to keep us in separate states.) And Larry L., of course, knew right off the top of his head the precise passage that Charlie was referring to: “And Ashael sayeth to a maiden of tender years, Seekest thou a Man of Age; and though his eyes may weep plumgum and his hoary head be of white, fear not when he is yet full of moisture, seed, and heart. Take him to lie with, for surely he will comfort thee beyond all others and make thee exceedingly glad.” Hezekiah 14:9. (This is found only in the newly revised Bible for Lechers and Other Fun-Loving Folks, most of which was personally written by ’Fessor King his ownself.)
The age factor continues to be a major point of discussion in the dating dilemma. Some folks are adamantly opposed to dating persons younger than themselves, while others don’t care if their dates only recently grew their complete set of molars. I would have to say that there are more women who prefer older men than there are men holding out for older women, but it does happen. Happens to us all the time, of course, because men of all ages are clamoring for the Queens.
I, personally, had two stellar age-related events last year. The first one occurred at a swimming pool where I often take BoPeep and her buddies to loll about in the sun. Besides being the Boss of all the Sweet Potato Queens, I also happen to be the once and future queen of the cannonball, which is what I was doing when this event occurred—I was conducting, and winning, a cannonball contest with all the kids and the only other adult who will play with us, T. P. Walker. I also had my friend Bill’s son and his buddies with me that day, so I was in the midst of a veritable covey of children. Bill came by to check on us and we were having the cannonball contest. I guess we had made a fair amount of racket because some of the older residents around the pool came out to see what was cooking. T.P. swam over to me in hysterics. He said that one of the women (now, she’s probably a hundred and has cataracts like Coke bottles, but I don’t care and neither would you) asked him who all the kids were and he said, “That’s my friend Jill, and that’s her daughter and her friends,” and so on. That wasn’t enough for her—she pointed out each child and wanted to know who he/she was and T.P. dutifully named them all. Finally she said, “But who’s the one in the black swimsuit?” and he said that’s the mama—that’s Jill—to which she replied, “Why, she can’t be anybody’s mama! She can’t be more than thirteen!” Let me just tell you, there are few things in life better than being forty-six and having somebody—anybody—guess that you are thirteen. As a matter of fact, I don’t think there is anything better than that. I called Bill over immediately and made T.P. tell it all again. Oh, it was the high point of my life, all right; I figure it had to be all downhill from that point. Or so I thought.
Just a few short months after that I was helping a sick friend (who shall remain nameless, but for the sake of discussion, let’s just call him something, say, John Doe or even Michael Rubenstein) to check into the hospital with a really brutal stomach bug, and the woman filling out his admission papers looked past him to where I was sitting and said, “And is this your daughter?” Now, I can tell you, sick as he was, he didn’t look that bad, and I sure as hell didn’t look that good, but hey, “gift horse,” I say. I might have pushed it over the top when I spoke up and said, “Yes, ma’am, and I’m the baby—I have lots of older sisters at home.” If that didn’t kill him, he’s bulletproof.
My friend Skip, or Skippy when he’s being darlin’, which is most all the time, has a pesky habit of going out with women younger than himself. Women of all ages love Skippy because, as I said, he’s darlin’, but the Queens don’t like him paying attention to anybody other than us and especially not to anybody younger than we are. In an attempt to rid him of this predilection for pre-forties women, I explained it to him. I got right in his face and asked him what he could see, to which he replied, “Not a damn thing.” Of course, I knew that because I couldn’t see him, either. After forty you just can’t see stuff that’s real close up. This is a good thing. It’s nature’s way of compensating for what’s happening to our faces and bodies. If we can’t see it, it’s not really happening—like closing your eyes and thinking you’re invisible.
This explains a lot when you think about it. Like when you see a woman our age still wearing her hair real long and dressing like a teenager: It’s because she can’t see well enough to tell how ridiculous she looks, and she still thinks she’s cute. And if she sticks to guys her age and older, they’ll fall for it, too, because they can’t see either. However, I told Skippy, still in his face—she can see
you!
This close, and she can still see everything! He gasped in horror. Then I walked about thirty feet away and said, What do you see now? He said that wasn’t real clear either, and again I assured him, she can still see you. For two mutually old people, up close, everything gets soft and blurry around the edges, kind of like being photographed through a cheesecloth filter—it’s actually very flattering. Distance achieves the same effect. The only place we can see well without our glasses is an arm’s length away, and if you light a few candles that looks pretty good, too. So the only way we would consider dating someone significantly younger than ourselves would be if he is legally blind—because we still
feel
terrific.
Everyone is tempted by the allure of youth from time to time, I suppose. A very good friend of ours found herself employing the very cutest little young thing. She guessed he was about thirty-four, which would have been young enough to disqualify him, but it turned out he was only twenty-five. I could see where she was headed from a long way off, and I tried mightily to verbally slap some sense into her before she ended up in court. She would just look me straight in the eye with a face of cherubic innocence and deny, deny, deny. My better instincts, however, told me she was just trying to get me to shut up and quit spoiling her mood, which was nearly euphoric. Then it came to pass that the two of them were off in a foreign land on business, and I could feel the sexual tension building from five thousand miles away. I was firing off e-mails on an hourly basis, desperately trying to save her and her career from certain doom. And then it came to me—sweet inspiration. I received an on-screen instant message from her. The two of them were sitting in the spring sunshine at an outdoor café in Paris, checking their e-mail on their respective laptops. So I sent her a little instant message right back: “So, how is Opie?” She read it, glanced over her screen at her very young companion, and fired back: “YOU BITCH!” And thus was she saved from her own lasciviousness, and just in the nick, too. Since then, the dense hormonal fog has lifted, and she has thanked me often and profusely for giving her the old slap-in-the-face-with-a-wet-squirrel that was necessary to jerk her back from the precipice.
Alas, even I am not immune to the charms of boyhood. Not long ago, as I came racing belatedly to my place on a plane, I discovered that I was seated next to a man who caused me to wonder to myself, “Hmm—just who is this sack of diamonds?” Trenton, age thirty-three and my own personal Opie—he’s just the kind of guy for whom exceptions to the rules should be made. As soon as he gets all his molars, I think it will be okay to start breaking rules with him, unless, of course, he goes blind before then.