FEATURE

THE PRICE OF MATURITY
Look how young I am, and picture me picking on a sugar-mummy. Hell no!

You've probably heard this line so many times you don't even bother reading further whenever anybody tries to reason around the statement made years ago by the late United States R&B singer Aaliyah that, "age ain't nothing but a number". Of course it should bore you to death, especially when you already know the kind of arguments that usually get thrown around. Lame arguments like, younger men are more sexually active than their older types, they are stallions and can still go extra laps while the old bones are already yawning and pitching for their second dream.

Today I'm going to dispute all you know. It's not true that the 16 valve studs who go out with sugar mummies really do so because they can hit the high note. And the sugar mummies, who are called grootsusters (big sisters) also do not go for the younger version of daddy dearest because he is any good. The younger you are the more excited you are and the more excited you are the most likely that you will be a two-minute-brother.

One of my colleagues at Polokwane (Limpopo) once commented about men in general. She said, "you know sometimes you find this man with this juicy looking tool and you are all excited thinking he knows the bends and the bumps and the next thing he slides it in there and comes before the referee can blow the whistle for the game to start. He is celebrating before you even finish lacing your boots". I protested and reasoned that early ejaculation is not a problem, the problem is when you can't sustain an erection after that, which can really be messy. She said, "there are some guys who will not even bump me once or twice before he comes". Then I wanted to know how old are those buggers. Now, my colleague is 27 years old and she swore that she is referring to people of her age and older.

I remembered a story I heard from one guy; "I once had a girlfriend who was six years my senior with a 13-year-old son. I remembered how ten minutes was still considered a curtain raiser game whenever her and me got intimate. I was young and immature but we complemented each other so much that even today, many years later we still manage to steal a minute or two to revisit the magic we used to make back in the days. To put it mildly, in a room where it's only the two of us, one minute equals a lifetime. What fascinated me was that my sugar mummy never even once tried to behave my age or younger. I can't say she behaved old either. The thing with younger women is that whenever they are doing somebody their own age they can't let themselves fall hopelessly to the point where they can scream your name. Expressing emotion is equated to weakness, while the sugar mummies have been down that road before and can scream while being extremely extroverted. Maybe they are taking it back to when they first lost their virginity, who knows. Her beauty drew me to her", he told Kasiekulture.

However one of the guys I used to play soccer with is 25 years old is doing it for all the wrong reasons. Say that I'm lying when I say he is going out (actually staying) with a woman who is 20 years his senior and who has a daughter who is 27 years old. Now this boy has been a taxi driver for a long while and heard his friends tell him about how women working in the public sector are so desperate to have men to the point that they would even buy kombis for them just to keep them. True, most taxi drivers go out with nurses, teachers and policewomen and do they flash the cash? Hell yeah.

I asked some guys who knew him too well about what is it that he might be taking into the deal and I was shocked when they said his main tool is the size of a golf ball when in full swing. "But I just do her so that she can buy me a (Toyota) Venture. It's not about the sex since I have my girlfriend," he once told me. Then one day I asked his girlfriend how big was the guy and she said he was real big.

In January this year his sugar mummy, who is a nurse at Mapulaneng Hospital finally bought him a panel van which they converted into a taxi. Now he is a pseudo-taxi-owner who had to pawn his own body to get it. The woman went out with him for sex, he went out with her for entrepreneurial reasons.

He is not alone. Do you still remember the late Brenda Fassie and her toyboy Nhlanhla Mbambo? The poor guy was so broke he only acted the role of a rich stud until he was arrested by police for a robbery and Brenda was allegedly accusing him of stealing from her. Brenda was following in the footsteps of her role models like Liz Taylor, who went out with Larry Fortensky, more than twenty years her juniour. Madonna and Guy Ritchie as well. Just last year the Premier of Free State Beatrice Marshoff was scolded for marrying a journalist young enough to be her son. Janet Jackson allegedly shagged Justin Timberlake.

Psychologists are quick to analyze the problem of men who go out with young girls but seem unwilling to do the same with women. They say that men will at some stage in their lives miss the things they did at twenty-two and eighteen and will look for a missus who will remind them of their long lost naughtiness.

However, with women as well it is safe to assume that that might also be the motivation. They miss the cuddling, the kissing of the nipples (most often the nipples are tired), the whispering in the ear and the cunnilingus. The reason being that once they find themselves a younger catch most of them will start behaving like young chicks, more make-up, pap smear, mini skirts, fishnet stockings, sporties and push-up bras.

Take a poet friend I met some time ago during a workshop. She was older than my mother, who was born in 1955. We spoke for some minutes over three days while sleeping on the same hotel floor without visiting each other. One day two other women and me were talking dirty. I was the one giving all the information about why us men are reluctant to say, "I love you" post-orgasmic and would rather sleep than act stupid. Little did I know that when I got home she would inundate me with calls, on-line poetry readings, e-mails and invitations to come to Johannesburg for a cup of coffee. Spend R200 for a R7, 50 caffeine session? Hell no!

One of my friends, with whom we talk dirty kept saying to me, "mfo' you just have to close your eyes and plunge down there. You might end up having access to her legion of younger friends". I kept saying, "but you don't understand, I can't get an erection for that woman". He pressed on, "if you really want an erection you will get an erection". I mean I have read Terry McMilian's How Stella Got Her Groove Back but I was not going to be giving a 60-years old woman her groove back. At the end of the day she realised that what she wanted from me was not going to happen and decided to apologise since, "this flurry of contact is because I've had a crush on you. Huge and consuming. Of course, I now realise its (sic) been a bit much and has put you in a very awkward position. So, I'm sorry for all the intensity and pushing. The attraction I felt was so unfamiliar and yet so strong I didn't quite know how to act, what to do. So…inappropriate behaviour! I've been giddy and silly, a teenage schoolgirl and not necessarily fair to you. Sorry."

This is the long and the short of it. She missed being young, felt young and wanted me to affirm it, not for a taxi nor for extra zeros in my bank account. What did I say after such a heartfelt apology, "don't feel bad, it's not about you but me. I have that effect on women". Maybe I was wrong, all men have that effect on older women, it's just that some of them choose to act on it, and that's when they get the sugar mummies acting like young girls, making fools of themselves.