I Love You, You Pay My Rent
Me in a sauna ten years ago. Possibly
Deleting my Internet profiles this week, I came across a few I completely forgotten I had – why, for example, did I ever sign up to gaygolddiggers.uk.com? It’s a shabby little site where young, occasionally handsome liars (catchphrase “I’m not shallow enough to care about looks!”) seek to pair up with dumpy moneybags, many of whom seemed to mainly want a boyfriend that matched their three-piece suite. I suppose I probably logged on for research purposes. After all, I’ve never been rich enough to offer lovers more than a free takeaway, and would look like mutton dressed as chicken if I paraded my wares for budding sugar daddies. Mind you, pumping guys for cash was never my forte. Even back when I was a skinny slip of a thing, I rarely got any daddying more sugary than a lover offering to pay my bus fare home – “but not you cab fare”.
There was, however, one exception. Years ago, I once got chatting to a Syrian American businessman I met on a bench at that gay sauna in Covent Garden. He turned out to be both droll and interesting, and his anecdotes of epic migration and New York social climbing were gripping. At 45, he seemed positively geriatric back then, but he had a mix of self-confidence and wry disaffection that made him charismatic, and even quite sexy. Like most 20-somethings, I was hard-up, so I accepted his offer of dinner a few days later.
I think the restaurant he picked out was supposed to impress me, but I just felt self-conscious about my shabby trousers. Still, we got on great, and when I subsided into bitching about my life, he invited me to come back to New York with him, joking that he’d “turn my tears into diamonds”. Attached to very little back then, I loved the idea of dropping everything and running away – and almost said yes. But even then I knew that the power of his mighty wallet would sour things eventually. Sure, it would spirit me away into a faraway, shiny world – but it would also mean we’d both wonder whether filthy lucre lurked behind any affection we gave each other.
We wouldn’t have made each other happy, of course, but I still think about him sometimes. He was quite something, and I really hope he ended up with better than winning someone’s love with money.
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This article, got me thinking about the time I dated someone, who had money. Looking back on it, I regret the power I allowed this guy to have on me. We both had roles that now would seem pathetic. He allowed me to go where ever we wanted and go where I wanted to go, thinking that I had the power in this relationship, I was one wearing the trousers, when in reality I was just being a Diva.
I did the same thing as you, signed up to a dating site, which caters for young men and wealthy older men. I was trying to convince myself that I would fall in love with one of these guys, when in really it’s just the lifestyle that I wanted and I would have bedded someone totally gross, if they were in the right economic bracket.
Thankfully older and wiser and thought of searching someone for financial gain is off the cards, although, someone with a job is always a plus.
I know what you mean. I never quite had the figure or the balls to pull off grabbing the rich guy, even though some of my friends at the time (in hindsight) were a couple of evil, money grabbing queens, who used their “accessory” as a cashpoint until they got bored and moved onto their next victim (needless to say I don’t have anything to do with them anymore)
My nearest experience was some guy who I met about 10 years ago. He and I met up , he laid on the charm, but after the reasonably posh dinner and the obligatory shag, I politely declined his offer of a more permanant ‘arrangement’ and walked away with my head held high (I think at the time I might have broken into chorus of “independant woman” by Destiny’s Child as I did so)
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