by Eurydice (c) 1999
Sex and Money
Is money conducive to romance? Most of us like to think not, that sex appeal can't be bought. So why do women praise a man for being 'a good catch', 'a meal ticket', a sugardad? Why do the most lovely women only date moneyed or famous men? Why would a sane girl get impressed by, say, having sex with some guy aboard his yacht on a bed littered with cash?literally rolling i
n dough? Why do rappers wear massive jewelry that signal to chicks they're rich? And why can you never tell a nice woman that "whether it's a prostitute or a debutante, guys have to pay for it, and how much we pay depends on what we want to get" without offending her romantic sensibilities? Because this is the land of opportunity, not a plutocracy, prostitution is illegal, and sex is free.
Except that most people who marry for love also take into account their practical attributes—social prestige, family background, earning potential. For centuries, girls were taught that unmarried sex robbed them of power and were trained to treat their physiques as a resource that should be rationed out stingily, in fear that if they gave away the milk, nobody would bother to buy the cow. When arranged marriages became obsolete, women entered the marriage negotiations for themselves. And forty years of feminism have not disproved this: Sex is always an exchange of power.
Women get aroused by power. Mammals, birds, and primates, are constantly scanning their environment and themselves for clues about their well-being and what needs to be done to advance it. Our arousal is basically an appraisal—a negotiation between personal agendas (our goals and needs) and the people we're interacting with (our environment). In capitalism as potent as ours, money is desire. When, along with sex, a man can provide the other things a girl wants in life, her desire for him is magnified because it includes all her other desires. She hasn't educated herself, learned to dress and make her face in order to attract an automobile salesman. The day a rational woman sees in her mind the arc of her future she wants to experience it worrying as little as possible about the indelicate affair of money—unless she's committed to building her own pot of gold and not being dependent on a man. And while in her first blush of youth she may pride herself on her indifference to the baser material instincts, a few years of living off her salary and going out with a happy-go-lucky bohemian of such integrity that he would never 'sell out', reorient her adult priorities: if she must have a stable mate, why not net a guy who has serious cash reserves? She can love a rich man just as much as a poor man. It's rarely cold-blooded calculation that draws women to powerful men; she gets turned on by the security and ease in the world a rich man can offer—she physically feels more open and ready to mate, more interested in giving to him in return, in thanking him. She feels this as love. What motivates her emotion is nature. Women are biologically programmed to be practical—they must safeguard the future of the species. It isn't that women are shallow or think of themselves as marketable sexual commodities, but that they know men think of them this way. Compare wealth to beauty—not inner beauty or eye-of-the-beholder beauty, but generic, DD-cupsized beauty that makes you buy a co-op in her building so that you may run into her in the elevator: Beauty has a death-defying quality like a higher life-form. That's why beauty is a player. Men look for beauty; women look for power.
I have slept with every genius I've met. When I was young, I collected famous lovers (pride prevents me from naming them as it prevented me then from exploiting our connection.) My motives were purely sexual. I was aroused by exclusivity—the sense of being special by association. I never ratcheted up name-brand conquests. It was a way of positing myself in company of those I wished to emulate. If I had had the choice to sleep with my plumber or my cab driver or the son of the Agha Khan, I would ineffably choose the latter, even if my plumber had a mellifluous voice and big clear blues and the anatomy of a Greek god, and my cabby had biting wit and street-smarts and courage and honor and was a blue-ribbon cook, whereas the future Agha was morose and inert, a chronic complainer and a long-lashed, sly, dusky womanizer. By birthright, he was unique, a divinity for many, and, democracy notwithstanding in matters of lust (lust is one big bias), I wanted him. I didn't want to be set up in style as his guarded concubine. I wanted intimacy with extraordinary power, because the stakes are higher, the adrenaline rush more acute, the senses keener. (By the same token, the proximity of poverty and hardship is a turn-off: no one wants to be dragged down by a mate.) And I could always bed cute plumbers and delightful cabbies, I thought.
What does money mean to romance? It means that when you want to be Prince Charming in her eyes, you can be. It means you can expect better, kinkier, less lazy sex from a woman. It means you can expect a better class of woman. It means you can get away with a lot of bullshit poorer guys can't?moodiness, slovenliness, sloth, absence, even infidelity (Fidelity lasts as long as your options: Mick Jagger beds babes because they let him.) Money talks. Take a hint from older guys who date women half their age. Write her a check right away for a year's worth of her rents (or tennis lessons or art courses); use some respectable excuse to convince her to take it?tell her it comes off the top of your taxes, tell her you'll use her place when she's out of town, tell her money means nothing to you, tell her anything but that you want to shag her in exchange?and you won't need to seduce her. Largesse, if done kindly and not ostentatiously, will get you laid anytime, guaranteed.
Money will not in itself make you happy. It's no coincidence that the rich invented every fetish. The Roman emperor Caligula became excited by wallowing in piles of gold. Some women become excited when they wear a fur. Some men can roll up a wad of bills, stick them deep into an orifice they just pulled out of, and come. In the Philippines, near the Clark Air Force Base, some women can pick up stacks of coins three inches high with their vaginas and then release the coins one by one. Money-related fetishes include: timophilia, being aroused by wealth or status; chrematistophilia, being aroused by being charged for sex (payment gives some men a feeling of power because the woman is now obligated to do their bidding; it gives some women a feeling of power because their favors are worth paying for, or a freedom from guilt); harpaxophilia, being aroused by being robbed (in fantasy play, the sleeping man is awakened by his lover, scantily clad in a cat burglar suit, crawling in and looking for valuables, until the man struggles with her, pins her down, and rapes her, or until the burglar ties up and interrogates the man about his wallet and sexually molests him).
The best thing about having money is that you can have women with looks and brains. Brainless beauty may be your first target because she's easy, soft, giggly, but she's also a natural schemer because she's waiting for the day when you remind her how boring she is, which she knows. Ditzier, idler-minded women will find ways to extricate convertible gifts or stocks or property from you against the rainy day of losing you. Try to invest more than money in a woman.
It has always been hard for a rich man to know what goes on inside his lover's head (the math or the stars?) In the new economy, where more and more guys are millionaires?albeit only on paper, or only for a few months?the romantic dangers that once loomed over men who could afford to pay for their errors in judgment now threaten men who need one bad divorce to be poor again. If you're not superrich, if your money gives you the cushion to live well and sleep well and downturns in the NASDAQ don't leave you breathless, then you're worth enough to learn how to negotiate the sexscape of women who moisten at the sight of your Porsche or the sound of your address.
Wear money casually. A man who brags about his worth either doesn't have much or just got it and may lose it or is at heart a cheapskate. Walk the fine line between making a woman desire you and overwhelming her senses entirely. Make her feel that with you she's stepping up in the world but can handle it. If she's uncomfortable, she'll demand a settlement to make up for it. Stick as close as you can to people who are your financial equals and don't involve yourself with anyone who has psychological 'issues'—those women believe that money will save them. Also avoid the beauty-queen-type who'll sleep with any money (drugs, Mafia, guns). If she's only after the money, she will leave you when she meets a guy who exudes more wealth or she won't ever leave you, or she'll drain your wallet long before she'll drain your nuts, or ruin you, through alimony, palimony, matrimony. For the rich, the woman of their dreams is also their potential worst nightmare.
So how can a barely-making-ends-meet Joe use the power of money to get laid better? You can win women by your confidence, the force of your personality, your talent and ability; to keep them, you'll have to pretend to some 'wealth'. (Don't lie: if you own a Honda, don't go renting a Lamborghini for the night, unless you want strictly an one-niter.) Money signifies that you're competent, worldly, a capable protector. It's the same as being the best member in the class, on the team, in the firm, in the bar, the best dancer or singer or joker or weekend-bowler. If there's something you excel at, or if you have a job of responsibility as a supervisor, you'll appeal to women of your circle even if your salary is penurious and you lack the fancy signposts (car, stereo, watch).
Spend what you have as if it were unlimited. Simply be generous to a fault. Insist on paying. It doesn't matter how much you make. What matters is your willingness to pick up the tab in one swift FredAstairish swoop with no questions asked and no eyeblink, no fumbling finger and mumbling lip, enthusiastically. Paying is prowess. Never let her see your financial weakness. It's OK if she discovers your lack of means, your debts, so long as she believes you have a future. If she should lose respect for you, she will no longer view your private idiosyncrasies with a charmed eye; she'll regret times when she put up with your selfishness, anger, or bad breath, because she thought you'd take care of her; she will look for another man who is less of a failure than you; she will leave you. So work harder, get promotions, make the world go round, and she'll shower you with affection.
Two thirds of the women you meet will not be mercenary at heart but they will be in mind. Don't fret about it. Assume that she adores you, and the money just makes it more fun to be adored.