Money woes

Sheri likes to talk about how when we met I was sleeping on a futon pad and cooking off a hot plate, entertained by a radio because I didn’t own a TV: the unformed boy bachelor in need of refinement.

Also, I was poor.

Not Oliver Twist poor. I had cash flow and a job. But a year or so before I met Sheri, a live-in girlfriend had moved out and taken most of the furniture. I blew savings on a couple months of rent I couldn’t afford. A new roommate didn’t last, so I told the landlord I needed a cheaper space and asked for my thousand-dollar security deposit. Without an inspection, the mousse-haired BMW-driving SOB said no and blamed my 30-pound dog for shedding.

So yeah. I was 26, trying to furnish an apartment with no savings and a job that paid about two-thirds of what Sheri earned. I bought a rocking chair, a futon couch, and a halogen lamp. The apartment had neither oven nor fridge, but I could afford only one and chose the icebox. For romance, I bought two gigantic candles that were half price.

Then I met this older woman. She owned a condo in a trendy building. Drank Jameson instead of Miller Lite. Enjoyed weekend jaunts. Said I should go, too. A weekend in Michigan’s dunes and woods. A longer weekend in Amsterdam.

I swallowed hard. Paid the fare. Love. What can you do?

Refinement costs money. Money has always scared me; its power is too damn great. I’m no good at earning the stuff, but I fear its absence, so my default is to hold it tight and worry whenever I buy. But my older woman wanted me to spend. Anticipating a visit from my out-of-state parents, she insisted I replace the hodgepodge of tag sale plates and dishes I’d collected with a set of new kitchenware. When I told her I was going to wear a leather coat and a bolo tie to a relative’s wedding, she made me visit a men’s store to buy a sport coat and silk tie. I needed refinement, yes, but neither my head nor my bank account was ready to live in Sheri’s tax bracket. Every time she told me what I needed, I felt a bit like a kid being shamed into growing up.

She could have made it worse by condescending. She could have bought me dinners at expensive restaurants and cashmere sweaters at Nordstrom’s. Thank God she didn’t. Her money was hers; mine was mine.

When we moved in together and even a few years into marriage, we kept separate checking accounts. We paid for bills and groceries out of a third joint account. When Sheri suggested we pool our money, I knew we’d reached a different level of commitment.

Still, her contribution was usually the greater portion. When we bought a house we used money she’d inherited. For most of our lives together, she’s earned more in annual salary. When I was in grad school, she worked full time. She has never played the sugar mama, counting out my allowance. But she has helped pay for a life I couldn’t have had without her.

I suppose that’s a common story for the younger man involved with an older woman: she pays most of the freight while he struggles to keep up. From time to time, our tale shifts from that narrative. Twice Sheri quit jobs and left us dependent on savings and my salary. For a short time as a grad student, I actually earned more than she did. And at times of greatest financial strain, we avoided arguing about money by agreeing to let Visa pay the bill.

In the next phase, our regular roles will reverse. It’s years off, but Sheri will retire one day. Given the Great Recession, it's likely I’ll bring home more in salary than her savings will provide. I hope I’ll be as graceful a primary breadwinner as she has been and that I'll know when it's time for a new set of plates.

Our lives in Bollywood

Him+17 turned a year old this January. Thanks for all the cards and gifts! That package of string cheese and aged gouda? So clever … And the boxed DVD set of Season 1 of Cougartown? We’ll watch right after we get through our Netflix queue.

Speaking of movies …

We started this blog to get famous(!) or to get a book contract (!!) or to start thinking about material we could use in essays and eventually publish in literary journals in exchange for two contributor’s copies.

So far, we have not received two contributor’s copies of anything. Nor do we have a book contract. And if we are famous, it is only in India where, Vishnu willing, we are characters in a Bollywood film. Sheri is played by Raakhee. Michael, because no Bollywood actor wears glasses, will have to settle for the lightly-bearded Abhishek Bachchan.

It’s a leap to think of us that way, I know. But we have our reasons to suspect that somewhere in New Dehli, someone is working to put our life story on film …

Over the last year we’ve monitored our site using Google Analytics, which makes us feel a bit like Santa Claus or Dick Cheney because the app lets you spy on visitors to your Web site. We know, for example, that 1,500 visitors stopped by during our first year, and six of ten returned to look again. Most people who found us used a search string involving Stacey Anderson and Jimmy Heck, the cougar and her prey from the reality TV show that ran last year. We could even infer the timing of The Cougar’s concluding episodes in other countries because we saw international visitor spikes using those search words (we’re looking at you Cougar fans in South Africa and Sweden!).

The closest day we had to going viral was Oct. 16 when we had 129 visitors. Sheri had posted a link to our blog in a comment on a New York Times story about older women loving younger men. Lift off! And we also know that visitors from Canada read us longer than people from any other country. We love Canada.

Outside the 3,300 visits we’ve received from the United States, the country that has sent most visitors is India. This is no surprise given that India has the world’s second largest population (China is No. 1, but government authorities must have censored us – we’ve only received two visits from the PRC).

Now we explain the Bollywood connection.

Of our 102 visits from India, 82 came via search terms involving some version of “hollywood movies with affair between older woman and younger man” or “older woman younger boy movies.”

In our fantasy, these Googlers are aspiring Bollywood screen writers looking for a story. Maybe they want to adapt a film we’ve mentioned (The Reader, Harold and Maude, Cheri), but we’d prefer to think they see in our story something new. They peruse our posts, scribble notes or just copy and paste. “Brilliant writing!” one says.

“Yes, an ice skating scene …”

“Ah, the struggles of the woman meeting the future mother-in-law!”

“Dream messages from the dead boyfriend. How poignant.”

“Oh, ho! What if the boy toy meets the ex-boyfriend!” (That’s where the gunplay comes in).

Our imaginary Bollywood writer decides on a tale of a May-December office romance that must be kept hidden even though co-workers are experts in rooting out secrets – they’re all newspaper reporters. Even as our heroes struggle to keep their older-woman/younger-man love affair alive, the writer gets to work in the tension of a dying profession. The younger man becomes a, a, a blogger! And the older woman is an award-winning investigative reporter! Ooops! That’s already a Russell Crowe flick.

We’re serious. Next time you’re in Mumbai, check the marquee.

A Dream

Michael asked me today what it was like to tell other people about our relationship way back in the early days — when we looked as we do in these photos. Were you ashamed? Proud? Did you strut it? How did you tell your mom? Your sister?

The truth is that I was embarrassed at first and didn’t want to tell anyone. That was partly because I thought it couldn’t last, partly because my inner voices mocked me for not being able to snag someone my own age. After an active dating life as a divorcée in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, my options had dwindled. When Newsweek reported in 1986 that a 40-year-old single woman was "more likely to be killed by a terrorist" than to marry, I scoffed but also noted that I would turn 40 the next year with few prospects in sight.

All of that might have driven me away from him and under the covers of my empty bed except for a dream I had early one January morning. Michael and I were barely into the talking stage; we had met on a committee at work, watched each other play volleyball, sent a few electronic messages that were friendly but cagey. And then I had a dream about him.

In the dream, we were in a familiar place, and we kissed. Still in the mists of half-sleep, I said his name to myself. But the person who appeared in my mind was not Michael. Instead, it was a boyfriend from my college days. We’ll call him Thom.

Thom had haunted me for years: the good man whose marriage proposal I had rejected in favor of the exciting man. By the time the exciting man and I divorced, it was too late. I never saw Thom again, and later heard that he had died in a car accident.

Now, here he was in my dream in place of Michael. The message could not have been clearer: Michael was my do-over, another shot at the right choice, an opening to make good on that one large regret in my life.

After that I still had trouble telling people. I blushed and stammered and got tongue-tied. But now I carried with me the certainty of that dream — the absolute knowing that I should go forward, the gratitude for a second chance.

Unripe grapes and Old Crow

They sat in silence for a while, then he put his hand on hers. Their table was in the farthest corner of the garden. At the opposite end, some kids from the college program were having beers. She thought there was probably some obvious course of action she was supposed to take here, some profoundly adult way of defusing the situation.

“I’ve had a big crush on you since I was five.”

“That’s ridiculous. You know that, right?”

“I used to look through my mom’s photo albums with her. I thought you were what a Beatles song would look like if it could walk around.”

“And that doesn’t even make sense.”

He stroked her arm and she closed her eyes.

The “she” in this case, is a 40-year-old on vacation with her best friend in Greece, recreating a visit they’d taken decades ago. But this time, Laura is full of "a sense of squandered time" because she’s just learned that her longtime boyfriend still loves his ex-wife. The “he” is her best friend’s son who is old enough to have great pecs though not yet in college. They live in a short story called “Santorini” from a book called Black Elvis, written by a friend and colleague, Geoffrey Becker. It’s a moving story in a funny-sad book, which was published this fall after winning the Flannery O’Connor Award.

Most characters in Black Elvis are living in between. In between jobs, love affairs, permanent addresses. Two of the twelve stories feature affairs between younger men and older women. “Black Days” involves a 30-year-old blues-guitar playing adjunct college professor and a singer named Desire. She’s in her fifties.

Becker ramps up the drama inherent in a younger man/older woman affair. Laura’s friend, Flo, has no idea what’s transpiring between her best friend and son. In “Black Days,” the couple’s bickering is less about age than education: he’s got a Phd., she makes up words. “You think I’m stupid,” she accuses.

It’s fun to unravel the stories, to notice how Becker makes every detail work. When Laura and the boy are getting tipsy in the garden on Santorini, they’re surrounded by “unripe grapes.” The bourbon he pours for her is “Old Crow.” Days later, after Laura orders drinks for Flo and Harrison, Flo complains, “You’re going to corrupt him … Imagine if either of our parents had come along with us last time.” Answers Laura: “Let’s not.”

Notes from Him-plus Land

This blog has been ignoring the news that Susan Sarandon (63) and Tim Robbins (51) have split after 23 years together. That’s probably because I hadn’t gotten myself to believe it, despite the obvious evidence.

When I first met Michael, I had on my apartment wall a poster from “Bull Durham” with Kevin Costner’s “I Believe In…” speech. Of course I had rooted for Susan Sarandon’s Annie Savoy to fall for Costner’s Crash Davis, and not the goofy kid Nuke LaLoosh, played by Robbins.

But in real life she did fall for Robbins. And the two of them, with their 12-year age difference, were a sort of guiding star for Michael and me. And now, well… dang it. My first thought when I heard the news? Age difference! He wants a younger woman. But the recent rumor mill busts that stereotype, suggesting it’s Sarandon who’s taking up with a younger mate. What to make of this?

Just when I’m trying to get my head around that, along comes this story about true love in today’s Washington Post. She: 65, a dance instructor. He: 32, one of her students. They met when he was 23; they married a year ago, on New Year’s Eve. “It’s almost like she’s oxygen to me,” he says.

Here’s what I take away from all of this: That love can start and love can end in surprising ways. That a 33-year age difference makes our 17-year gap seem paltry. That I should live every day believing that Michael and I will outlast Annie and Nuke.

HimPlus How Many?

When I first read Sigourney Weaver’s comment about being married to a man seven years younger, I thought: pikers. From my perspective, a seven-year-difference smacks of training wheels or a potty chair. We who are separated by seventeen years will applaud your single-digit effort, but we know it’s not the real thing.

But when I posted her comments on this blog, I didn’t make any such remark, because “condescending twit” is not an image I like to project. And in keeping silent, I made space in my head for other thoughts, to wonder for a moment about life from Ms. Weaver’s HimPlus7 perspective and therefore ask: At what age does the age-gap matter? When is an older woman older, and a younger man younger?

In the classroom of my mind, hands of eager students shoot up.

“Double digits!”

“Old enough to be your mother!”

“Old enough to be your babysitter!”

“A generation gap!”

“When you qualify for a reality TV show!”

Hey! Hey! Because of the smart-ass in the back row, it’s now quiet time. Every one! Faces down on your desks!

Then I asked a friend who is five years her fiancé’s senior.

"That's a good question,” she said. “I don't think four years would be an issue at all, but there's something about 5+.”

Four years, I note, puts you in high school together for at least a year. Your younger man could be your younger brother. You both made smart-ass comments in Englishclass with Mrs. Schrube, who put her own head face down on her desk.

But even as my friend answered five-plus years, she kept thinking and then contradicted herself. “Halfway through our first date,” she said, “I asked ‘so how old are you?’ and was stunned to hear 25. For a while we joked about it a lot -- a song would come on the radio, and he'd ask how old I was when it came out, etc. Now, though, we really don't feel it or think about it much.”

Which is to say, he used to be younger, but now he’s not. He may be so again some day; my friend says she thinks the age difference might matter when they try to time the arrival of their first child.

The fullness of my friend’s answer suggests that a younger man is only younger when his presence – what he says, how he dresses, his energy level, the pop songs he recognizes ­– makes the woman feel out of sync, removed from her own time and plopped into another one. He is younger when his presence makes her look back at a version of herself that no longer exists. There is no specific number of years that causes that. As a corollary, she is only older when her presence gives her younger man a glimpse of his future. I remember Sheri once telling me how mighty she felt in her fifth decade: gifted with a perfect alchemy of vigor and wisdom and smarts. And I looked forward to that, and felt young in the presence of age’s best self.

But even the out-of-time experience is inconstant. We are not the first to note how time is a slipstream that sometimes pulls you along, which you step into and out of.

The other night we ice-skated together for the first time, under a bright half moon, a few hundred yards from the Washington Monument. Somehow, as we turned circles, I felt myself stepping in and out of so many ages they ran together. I was a boy trying to keep my ankles straight, a husband worried about his older wife cracking her skull on the ice, a young lover holding hands with the woman who makes him happy, an old man caught up in sweet, shared nostalgia, and envying those younger couples who looked as if they could skate forever. An hour in, and neither of us had fallen. “Twice more around,” I said to Sheri, “and then let’s rest.”

Some like 'em REALLY young

Doonesbury strip takes note of Madonna's preference for younger men.