Like a sturdy jug, you are impressed by the amount of liquor I hold. We are seated at a table, a corner table, a table for lovers, at this overpriced quasi-French restaurant, with its opened bottle of overpriced quasi-French champagne that you are happily pouring into me: your sturdy jug. Perhaps this would go better were I not quite so sturdy; your quick assessment of my height and weight did not factor in my age, which is older than you've given me credit for, and with age comes, as the cliché goes, experience. Of which I have quite a lot by now. Like a collection, like a hobby.
Despite this, I am out with you now, this silver fox, seated at this expensive corner table, because you make me feel young. Young and desirable. You make it easy for me to forget the laugh lines, forget the sprouting gray hairs, ignore the wanton cellulite already enveloping my body. In your eyes, which need reading glasses to see the fine print of the menu, I am smooth and pristine, blemishless, holy. I glow with youthfulness, a halo of light forming around me like images of saints. I glow with a beauty that you feel you no longer possess, and so here you are with me, hoping for glory through osmosis.
There are the other reasons too: I no longer make decisions. They are all made for me, in advance, by you. Dinner reservations, getaways to exotic locales, even my shopping excursions are taken care of by you. I am pampered, like a small pet who is cherished simply for its existence, its silent companionship, its furry warmth. Nothing is expected of me other than to purr when necessary, to show my gratitude. My gratitude is traded for your pride. This is our relationship. It is a formula and I follow it with precision.
I know what this makes me to others, of course. I was never stupid, nor am I blind to the judgments of others, the middle-aged women who hate my mere existence, blame the likes of me for their own failing marriages. I know what this union makes me to men my own age: an untouchable. I am taken off the market, pulled off the pedestal, seen as used goods, a gold digger; a worst nightmare. I exist to prove their worst suspicion true: that women care only for money. And while the money is certainly a nice touch, this is not my reason. I do this because its easier, its less work, less pain, less heartache.
I do this because, unlike other relationships with their wavering roles, their unclear guidelines, foggy and gelatinous, this has simple rules to abide by. The roles for what is happening between us are clearly constructed; I fit a formula that existed long before me, an archetype I no longer feel the need to strain from. In this moment between us, I become clearly, simply defined: Young, beautiful woman. Turner of heads, spinner of webs. Capable of being desired, cherished, bought.
THE SILVER FOX.
