I can't remember the last time an age appropriate man hit on me. This is not to say that I don't still elicit, at age 59, some affirming male attention. It's just that as I get older, most of it is from men who are, well, younger and younger. So much younger, sometimes, that my standard line whenever one of them makes a pass is "Sweetheart, I could be your mama."
The first time I made that observation I was 46, and a tall, lanky cutie of 23 who lived down the hall in my apartment building had asked me out. "Listen," I told him, feeling more horrified than flattered, "I'm not only old enough to be your mother, I'm older than your mother" (with whom he still lived, by the way). Undaunted, he laid out the evening he had planned: First we'd go to a party that he'd been hired to deejay, and I'd watch him spin records. Then we'd go get something to eat. Finally, we'd come back to my place for a little sumptin' sumptin'. Uh, I don't think so. Go home to your real mama.
Now, unlike many of my over-forty girlfriends who think being pursued by younger men means you've still got it, I've always been somewhat embarrassed by such advances. I think of cradle robbing less as the act of a vixen than a move by someone pathetic. (After a store clerk one day mistook my own stepson, now 23, for a boyfriend, I asked him to walk 10 paces behind me.) I grew up believing that the man in the relationship is supposed to be older than the woman: My father was 10 years older than my mother; the man I married, and divorced, is eight years older than me.
Plus, since males tend to develop their emotional IQ more slowly than females, I've always harbored the notion that mating with a younger man meant I'd be with a guy who might never quite grow up -- or would, at the very least, forever lag behind me in the maturity stakes. A divorced friend of mine in her 40s just married a 30-year-old. And while he is cute and sweet, all I can think is how stressed she was making all the final plans the week before the wedding as he flew off to Miami for an extended bachelor party.
Now, truth be told, I'm not immune to the charms of younger guys. As a residential real estate broker in a vibrant city neighborhood, I meet plenty. And I've gotten a kick out of bantering with them, even if their seduction lines don't slay me. I gave one 28-year-old the "I could be your mama" rap, and when I saw him a few months later, he ran up to me, grinning. "I had a birthday!" he said with glee. "So did I," I replied.
Another time, a wannabe thug-type hollered a ridiculous come-on from across the street. "I could be your mama!" I yelled back.
"What'd you say about my mama?" he suddenly growled.
"I said I'm old enough to be your mother, sweetheart."
"I'm 35!" he shouted, triumphant.
"Like I said -- I could be your mama."
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