Two Three Seven: Reminiscence

I read a week or so ago about the Nineties electronica musician Moby--- a long string of mocking and hostile pieces about his just-released memoirs. I hadn't thought of Moby in years and years. I recall liking a song he did called "South Side". I liked the video, too--- Gwen Stefani made a great appearance in it. But I hadn't heard anything he'd done in...well...easily a dozen years. Likely more. But his memoirs have just appeared, and he was attacked all across social media.

It seems that Moby had some sort of relationship with the young Natalie Portman when she was eighteen and he was twenty years older. He described it as "dating". She responded that they hadn't "dated", that he was just some creepy older man who'd hung around her.

It also seems that he dated the young Lana Del Rey a few times, and she spent time mocking him as just another middle-aged white man who was too moneyed, too creepy, and too old. At some point she laughed at him and told him that when the revolution came, he'd be amongst the guillotined. I had to laugh at that, of course. The young Lana Del Rey telling me she'd have me guillotined? That's an unexpectedly hot image. LDR threatening me with the guillotine? I'd count that as a successful dating moment.

What bothers me is the sheer rage out there about age differentials. So many women on social media were savagely angry at Moby for daring to feel desire for someone younger. Any attention from anyone older, they insisted, was by definition creepy and disgusting.

My own tastes run to Young Companions. That's been true since ever I was in my later twenties. It's true now and it'll be true when I'm eighty. That won't change.

Now I have been lucky. I've known a fair number of lovely girls who've found my age to be either irrelevant or a plus. I've been fortunate about that. I have no idea how many girls out there are members of what a friend at McGill in Montreal used to call the Secret Tribe. I'm all too aware that it's a niche thing.  Nonetheless, I've had young companions in my life, and I hadn't been exposed to any of the anger and disdain showered on Moby. Girls have said yes or no, gone out with me or not, slept with me or not. But none of them ever looked at me with anything like the hostility and contempt in the tweets and blog entries about Moby and Ms. Portman.

I did phone a couple of the girls I knew when they were beginning undergraduates.  Both were a bit exasperated. Both told me that if I'd been repulsive or creepy when they first met me, I'd have been made very, very aware of it. One made it very clear that I'd been her choice exactly because of my age, that she expected me to do certain things--- teach her things, bring her places, make her feel daring and wicked ---and that it was my age that enabled me to do them with her. Both reminded me that they'd known me since the early Noughts and that they were still speaking to me, which should be a clear sign that I had some value then and now.

That should've made me feel better, but somehow it didn't. It wasn't that I didn't believe them. They're both fiercely bright and straightforward and  self-aware, and I should've been proud that they thought of me even now as a good memory. I'm somehow not, though.

It's probably some complicated cocktail of vanity, self-loathing, and fear for the future. I've had lovers who were amused and intrigued by my age and the things that went with it. That's luck--- it really is.  And right now I'm terrified that my luck will run out, that the niche girls I've met and loved all these years will vanish. I'm terrified that any time I speak to a lovely girl at the next table or the next barstool she'll recoil in disgust. I'm terrified that from now on, my touch will be regarded with derision and contempt.

I can't imagine life with the ability to flirt and play, the chance to move through the rituals of romance and seduction. But in some access of sexual hypochondria, I can't imagine that my presence and touch aren't as appalling as the women attacking Moby believe. I don't know what to do about that except give up any belief that I might have value to niche girls, any belief that I might be a valued lover.