Cantankerously Yours
Looking for a Sugar Mommy
By Wendell Abern
Dear Womanizers,
From the time I was seven until I was twelve years old, I read four to five books a week. Histories. Biographies. Mythology. Sports. Mysteries. Anything. Everything.
At the age of twelve, I discovered girls.
Over the next five years, I read two books. And then only because they were required.
Girls mystified me, excited me, confused me, and most of all, terrified me.
I have never recovered.
By the time I was in high school, I had fallen in love with at least a dozen girls, most of whom didn’t even know I existed. However, the only one that counted was Jackie Margolin. In sixth grade, I had decided I would marry Jackie.
By the time we were sophomores, everyone wanted to date Jackie, who was smarter than most of us, bubbly, gorgeous and buxom. When she walked down the hall, you could almost hear the male hormones, always perched in avalanche mode, crashing to the ground.
She was the first girl I ever telephoned. I fortified myself with a two-page list of topics to discuss, and trembling, called to ask her to a dance the following month.
“Hello?” It was her voice! Not her mom! Now what?
“Um, hi, Jackie. It’s Dendy.” My nickname. No one called me Wendell.
“Hi, Dendy, how are you?”
I glanced at my list.
“Fine. Do you think the White Sox will win the pennant this year?”
It was all downhill from there. And future possibilities disappeared when she told me she had just been pinned to Bob. I knew which Bob she was talking about. A terrible second baseman.
I never did go out with Jackie. But eventually, I did marry and stayed married for 54 years. I have now been a widower for more than two years,
I have two kids, both genders, and two grandchildren, ditto.
This month, I will be 79 years old and yet, to this day, women befuddle me. And the more attractive the woman, the more buffoonish
I behave. To wit:
About six months ago, I went to my bank to cash a check, pulling behind two other cars queued up at the drive-through (I rarely actually go into the bank). For the next five minutes, not a car moved. This happens too often, I thought, and backed up, turned and drove to a parking space outside the bank.
Storming in, I shouted angrily, “Hello! Does anyone work here, or is this a bank holiday no one knows about?”
A pleasant voice asked, “Can I help you?”
I turned and looked at a beautiful young woman wearing a badge that read, “Jamilla.” Perfectly cut bangs. Dark eyes, would wither a priest.
“Sir, can I help you?” she repeated.
Dimples, yet.
“Sir?”
“Um … do, um, do you think the White Sox will win the pennant this year?”
“I really don’t know,” she said, keeping a straight face.
“I, uh, I … just want to cash a check.”
Reduced to a humiliating stammer, I cringed over to a teller’s cage, vowing to conduct all further transactions at the ATM machine.
That resolve disappeared a few months ago. Same bank. Longer queue. Seething, I backed out of line and drove to a parking space.
Yanking open the door as fiercely as I could, I marched in, determined to humiliate everyone, and shouted as loud as I could, “Hello! They got a whole new thing, it’s called a bank teller! Anyone ever hear of it?”
Another pleasant voice. “Can I help you, sir?”
I turned and looked. Another one. Her badge read, “Priscilla.”
Chestnut eyes. A smile that’s a sunrise.
“Sir?”
They were ganging up on me. Convinced that my bank only hired female employees straight out of a beauty school, and that their name had to rhyme with vanilla, I began another stammering routine.
Priscilla patiently tolerated me. I cashed a check and slinked out of the bank as unobtrusively as I could.
Later that day I thought to myself … I’m still twelve years old! I see a pretty woman and I stammer! I stutter! I blurt!
However, there’s hope.
A recent article in the Sun-Sentinel (written by the Miami Herald’s Michael Vasquez) announced a new website called SeekingArrangement.com. This brainchild of CEO Brandon Wade brings together young women, AKA “Sugar Babies,” looking for older, wealthy men, AKA “Sugar Daddies.” And vice versa.
While many protest this is nothing more than thinly-veiled prostitution, Wade claims college students make up 40 percent of the Sugar Babies, and that his site carefully screens out prostitutes and professional escorts.
After reading this, I thought, “If young girls can look for a sugar daddy, why can’t I look for a sugar mommy?” I could do my own screening, and find some willing young woman to squire me everywhere. More importantly, turning a relationship into a business arrangement might eradicate my puerility at the mere sight of a woman.
I put together some personal information, called my kids in Chicago and told them to get together that night for a conference call so I could read my profile to them.
I first explained the new website, reading to them from Vasquez’s column. When I finished, I told them I wanted to seek out a Sugar Mommy. Amy said, “DA-a-ad!” Joel said, “Amy, I think it’s time we put him in a home.”
“Listen to my profile!” I interrupted. “How’s this? ‘Active, 79-year old man is seeking young woman interested in a meaningless relationship. Woman must be no older than 30 –‘“
“DA-a-ad!”
“DA-a-ad!”
“Okay, 35. ‘No older than 35, gorgeous, a superb bridge player and obscenely wealthy. Think Croesus. Older man agrees to tell all of the woman’s family and acquaintances that he has just bought out Warren Buffet, and is re-creating Buckingham Palace on the west coast of Florida.”
Resounding silence.
“Well? Kids?”
Over my loud and expletive-laced objections, my children booked a flight to Florida as soon as our conversation ended, and are on their way here as I wrap this up. If my column doesn’t appear next month, you know who to blame.
Cantankerously Yours,
Wendell Abern
Wendell Abern can be reached at [email protected].