Being cheap is a way of life for me and my much younger paramour. Partly out of necessity but largely because we compete with each other to see who can be smarter about not spending money or who can get something for less. Our motto is: " The trouble with money is, you can only spend it once."
For example, Whole Foods Supermarket. Its a rip off - everyone knows that, especially in their prepared food section - where a hot plate meal can cost as much as dinner at the Four Seasons. And you still won't have enough to eat. So we figured out that if you stuff a lot of rice and curry in a large soup container it costs much less ( no weighing by the pound ) and you can have more than enough left overs for the next day. That's a good example of being cheap/boarder line psychotic that we're talking about.
We take buses everywhere - me buying the monthly unlimited senior pass for $20 of course. And we would sooner choke each other to death rather than NOT purchase the advertised Subway Sandwich of the day - its always at least 50 cents cheaper. We almost never eat out - unless its Norm's and we buy all our veggies at the 99 cent store - but never the frozen ones (they come from China). Our biggest thrill is use every last coupon we can clip, find on the street or at the supermarket. Of course we bicycle a lot (to save on gas) and sometime it gets kinda tiring going that extra 3 miles to the right supermarket to redeem those coupons.
Now this doesn't exactly fit the paradigm of big spender 'older man' with his oh so young, voluptuous girlfriend dressed in revealing lingerie and giving a Lolita lick on her lollipop. And that's because that is not exactly our situation. I ended up dating my biking buddy - for a number of reasons - the chief being she's a pretty women and I found her irresistible; the other one is that she's very cheap. Which means we always enjoy the same things together - like biking to the beach, walking along the sand and eating at little Formica topped joints in Koreatown where the menu only gives you half the story. (Ya gotta read Johnathan Gold in the free LA Weekly to find out the rest.)
Being cheap is not just a Sunday affair with us. It extends into our sex life together as well. Now while it is true that sex is free, contraception is not. Although condoms are sometimes free at health clinics, it always seems that they are never free when you really need them. So we resolved not spend that money by resorting to certain, uh..... 'deviate' practices; which I'm certain my readers are already very familiar with so I need not belabor that point.
We find that this a very satisfactory. if not satisfying, relationship that puts a much needed new spin on the 'older man' cliche that helps us escape the creepy dimensions of a May-December relationship. No one ever accuses my friend of being in it 'just for the money' and conversely, the 'dirty old man' baggage doesn't quite fit on a bicycle. We do attract quite a bit of attention when we she calls me 'Dad' and we have a lengthy colloquium on the joys on incest at parties or other public gatherings. ( That's one taboo that still manages to raise an eyebrow.) Mostly we just fun about things like why my girlfriend never needs to buy lottery tickets. My life insurance policy, that names her as the beneficiary, is a much surer bet.
