Vol. 2, Post #59 Money, Honey

Conversations about cash. My ongoing sex tips for girls* (*girls who are holding on to mid-life by a thread). A dating odyssey for Young Olds, (people with readers).

I had a date last week with a very sweet man who I know from social media. While I’m not actively trying to date (and really enjoying not dating in this moment), we had been chatting a bit and it seemed like meeting up needed to happen because while I liked the initial connection, I don’t think the banal back-and-forth of “How’s your day?” with someone you barely know serves anyone well. In early dating days, this is PRECISELY the way you start a “fake” relationship with someone; too much chitchat early on and then you think, “Oh we have so much in common and they are so easy to talk to…” and then you meet and often get disappointed that, nope, we’re not a match. Best to avoid that, in my opinion. Besides — and I mean this NOT in a cunty way but in a real way — I barely have enough headspace to answer texts with people who are cemented to me and my life, so I don’t necessarily want or need updates about the ins and outs of your day before I know if I even want to kiss you. What’s for dinner? and how’s the weather? are the conversations that people have in relationships after they’re well acquainted, because, you know, “housekeeping” chat. I fully appreciate that some small talk keeps an initial connection going ahead of a real date, but once a date is on the books, I like the quiet anticipation more. Anyway, he’s a nice guy and will have no problem meeting women, I’m sure.

But in addition to the fact that I didn’t feel “that spark” that I need to feel on a first in-person date (it’s easy to yak away on social media), there was something else in the mix that made him a “no” for me, and it’s this: I think we have a different idea of how we want to spend our disposable income and I’m not sure that’s negotiable. At our age, I doubt it makes sense even to try. Let me explain.

I’ve long joked that when I die, my headstone (if we’re even burying people then, and if we are, I like this approach better) will read, “She died penniless but with a great art collection.”

I guess you could say I don’t have an entirely healthy respect for money, most likely because my parents were obsessed with it and based their worth around it, this idea of the upper middle-class dream. I grew up in a stone house on a beautiful tree-lined street in suburban Philadelphia, on the tony Main Line. Looking back, I realize that we were living so far beyond my parents’ means that it was scary. Everything was an illusion and nothing was done without the hope that people would think we were fancy, or rich, or both. We were the farthest thing from either. I’ve never thought money was important, or impressive, or both. Probably why a few of my choices in partners over the years have made some people scratch their heads.

My former husband and I met at ages 22 and 26, respectively, and in our sixteen years together, we made money, built our “empire” as it were, and had a life that well surpassed anything my parents had. We had a gorgeous loft in NYC, a country house in Woodstock, a nice car, the ability to take luxurious vacations and shop at will. Even so, we both HATED pretense and show-y shit. Our son went to public school for nearly his entire life because we deeply disliked private school mentality. We both worked until my job petered out (at that point, journalism that had morphed into event planning for magazines) just around 9/11, and then it was decided I’d stay home, so I turned my attention to volunteer work on some of my days when I had a babysitter. I volunteered at Planned Parenthood, God’s Love We Deliver, and The Board Of Education — it was at the BOE that I truly got a taste of the “haves” and “have nots” in that I was a parent coordinator for families who needed help getting special services for their kids. Because I said I’d work anywhere in the district, I sat in on meetings with families and educators in some of the poorest, roughest schools in NYC (a parent coordinator is asked to sit in and “listen” to make sure families understand their options for getting their kids different modalities of therapy, etc.) Schools that had metal detectors. Schools where teachers locked their classroom doors. Schools where I got asked, “Do you feel comfortable going alone?” if I needed to walk down the hall to a bathroom.

I loved this work and took it seriously, not because I’m some kind of do-gooder saint, but because I had a real appreciation of how fortunate I was and that I was contributing to the public school system, putting my money where my mouth was. These were heady years. My husband was making big strides in his career. My child was growing up with luxuries I never knew, but was lovely and unspoiled (still is). Our marriage was fairly perfect, until it wasn’t, and cracks and fissures started punctuating our wants and needs. I wanted more emotional connection with my husband. He was extremely busy at work and loved his rising star and our growing bank account and status, and showed his love through that. In the end, we went our separate ways.

Since EVERYBODY knows how much I adore my ex-husband, it’s important to note that our breakup happened in a vortex of mutual “fault,” and that I will always love him for the time we spent together, growing into the adults we are today, as well as respect him for how hard he worked to take care of me and us when we became a family. We used to joke that our first dance should’ve been “Life Is But A Dream.”

That said, the way our marriage ended (when I sensed that he cared more about spending dollars than sharing stories about our day) heavily influenced my next choice in a partner, who was H. I was with H. for about a decade and while we enjoyed an extremely deep passion for one another, we were not good together in many other ways. We dealt with money very differently, and this caused tension at times — she worried too much, and I worried too little.

Partnerships that followed H. had a bit of a pattern to them like that. With the exception of a boyfriend or three who were wealthy overachievers, who never even glanced at prices on a menu and bought theater or concert tickets for us at will and who insisted on footing all the bills unless I put my foot down, I tended to gravitate toward “artist” types — creative as hell, talented beyond belief in what they crafted (be it food or music — my two Great Loves have always been chefs and musicians, oy), moody and Mercurial, sexy and semi-hidden to anyone but themselves. Never with any real money, which, as I always said, didn’t bother me a bit. And it didn’t. What bothered me was — and still is — overly frugal spending habits, and, related, a poo-poo’ing of anything I wanted that they deemed “excessive,” be it a painting or Pinot Noir.

That’s what I was sensing in my conversations with the guy I met for a drink last week. Not that he’d be a poo-poo’er per se, but that he’d second guess some of the things that I don’t want to negotiate. That the hotels we’d pick for a vacation (if we traveled together) meant different things to each of us. For him, maybe it was a place to sleep. For me, the place where I sleep needs have a really comfy bed with great pillows and ideally, a beautiful locale in which to sip a cup of coffee in the a.m. It seemed like he might not care about creature comforts the way I did, and listen, that’s fine, but it’s not a great way to start, feeling that your preferences might be deemed frivolous. I don’t need The Four Seasons by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like it the way I like it and guess what? That’s my prerogative as a Young Old. Everyone at our age should have it the way they like it.

At our age, no one should be fitting into someone else’s mold when it comes to lifestyle choices. Which is precisely why it’s fine that the guy I went out the other night has a different sense of where and how he likes to spend his cash. Related/unrelated to hotel habits, he mentioned that a jazz club near him had what he thought of as a hefty ticket price and a two-drink minimum, neither of which struck me as excessive. So we just want different things.

When I’ve been with partners in the past who have yucked my financial “splurge” yums, it’s made for VERY resentful bed partners. My partner S. almost fainted when I told him I bought a down coat in all three colors offered and brought it up to me constantly, even though I reiterated to him, finally, that it really wasn’t any of his fucking business since he wasn’t paying for the coats and further, I keep clothing for years, if not decades (case in point, I still have all three coats and they are in perfect condition, seven years later, so the “per season wear” cost of these coats is nothing). S. also lost his mind when he was moving in with me and I was renovating our new house. Notice I wrote that “I” was renovating our new house? I was footing the bill, happily. He had two kids at home, therefore, was paying child support for private schools and dance lessons and tutors and all of it, and I alone had bought the house, so the renovations fell to me. When we initially started picking out stuff for the renovation, I was asking his opinion constantly, but he always said, “Whatever you want.” However, at least a few times, he was AGOG at how much something cost, be it a medicine cabinet or a lighting fixture.

This began to piss me off. “Listen, if I was asking you to contribute to the bills on this, I’d understand that we’d have to make a different choice, but I’m not, so what’s the issue?”

“You could get a light fixture for over the dining room table at Home Depot.”

“But I don’t WANT a light fixture from Home Depot. I want this one. And I can afford it.”

“It’s so wasteful.”

And on and on…

Money does not buy happiness, and we all know that. Some of the best and most magical experiences I’ve had with former partners literally cost nothing. S. once made me a different lunch-to-go for a solid week when I had a ton of work outside of my home office, sometimes a sandwich, sometimes chili, sometimes a frittata. I loved that. The day that my ex. B took me to Corona, Queens to eat and shop at the outdoor markets and food stalls that offered every kind of South and Central American cuisine under the sun, we prob. spent $25 between us, and we walked back to our place in Astoria, holding hands, eating skewers of marinated chicken, drinking horchata, happy as clams. It’s something I think about often when I look back at our time together.

Right now, I feel fairly “unbothered” in my own skin and brain, comparatively speaking — I mean, no one is unbothered who has a pulse in the world we live in today, but as it pertains to my own little universe, I am happy spending some time on my own, in my beautiful house that gives me more pleasure than I can say. Time was, I’d spend my last $1000 on a painting instead of saving it for retirement. Do I wish I had more money saved? Absolutely. Can’t unscramble eggs. On the flipside, I am surrounded by things that inspire me, make me feel serene, give me joy when I wake up in the middle of the night with heart-pounding insomnia about what the fuck is happening in our country.

Dating someone(s) needs to add to that joy, not make me feel like I have to explain myself when I open my wallet, know what I mean?

Meanwhile, I’m sort of crushing on an artist I met and think I might like to take him out for drink. Thank you, Jesus, Buddha, Adonai, and Dolly Parton that I am out of wall space.

Above: Just to be cheeky, I REALLY wanted that clip from “Goodfellas” when Karen says she wants to go shopping. Henry asks, “how much?” and she indicates with her thumb and forefinger “this much,” as he counts off bills and she drops to her knees to blow him, but I can’t find it (you’ll to settle for the money bag at the wedding scene). Related/unrelated at the top of this post, Ace and Ginger in ”Casino” when he takes her to their new home and gives her a chinchilla coat and gobs of gold jewelry as part of wooing her. My mob wife fantasies have always been more about the power trips than the loot, but still…

Money is so weird and an excess of it has never been involved in my love decisions when it comes to tipping me towards a mate, but, conversely, as I consider who might be my best Young Old mate, I’m going to be as honest as possible with myself and remember that I AM a big tipper, not a penny pincher. Done and dusted.

Before we go, last week, I cross-posted my piece that ran in Jenny Magazine on why I can never date a red voter or someone who voted for #notmypresidentever. And then this guy started trolling me, which is awwwwwwwwwesssssoooooome, because, well, he proved my point beautifully.

Next week, I’m sharing something that I read in an online dating forum that was mainly populated by Black and BIPOC women — a theory that was new to me, about what a man needs in order to truly want to commit to a woman. It gave me a ton of food for thought, so I’m going to run it by all of you and see if you agree.