Ashton Kutcher is into them. And now I am too.
The tabloids tell us that since Kutcher, 27, and Demi Moore, 42, have gotten married, older women are the hottest new thing. Dating site maydecember.net is even capitalizing on the phenomenon by bringing together those “seeking age-gap relationships.”
To find out more about this realm of the dating world, I recently put on a fedora and emceed “Frank Sinatra Night” for a singles group called the Over 50s Dinner Club. As a Frank look-alike opened the show, I scoped out the scene.
Although the women were mostly in their 70s – too mature even for Ashton – the ratio was great: Only one man and a few dozen women.
“All the guys our age are dead – the good ones at least,” Gloria told me.
And even the ones who are alive often aren’t “walkable,” the women said. Others only want younger women.
In high school, the love scales tip in favor of the women. The hottest freshman girls date the senior guys (you know who you are, Rachel Costello).
But a man who makes it through seven decades has the pick of the litter.
With this in mind, I watched the only man in the room with awe. He entered with an exaggerated swagger, huge smile and martini balanced between his fingers. Some women sneered; they seemed turned off by his playa style.
Then he made his move. He asked a woman to dance, and she said yes. With all eyes on the couple, he grabbed her hand and swirled her around. This guy had game.
Soon after, he asked a second woman to dance to “Summer Wind.” She said yes. And then a third. The old man was on fire! But the sixth woman he asked turned him down, so he returned to his seat. Moments later, he got up. And without saying a word to anyone, he slipped out the door.
I ran outside and caught up with him at his car. For 10 minutes in the parking lot of the steakhouse where the event was held – with the rain beating down on the hood and Dean Martin’s “Find Somebody to Love” playing on the radio – I got a lesson in women and love from Harry Hancock, 75.
“All it takes to make a woman is attitude,” he said, sucking on the end of an unfiltered Chesterfield.
“You can be an ugly S.O.B. and you put on an attitude and they think you got something,” he said. “If you think you are, they think you are.” It sounded like good advice, and it seemed to work for Harry. He had guts enviable for any single man that night, let alone a 75-year-old one.
Then he told me more: A life of quick dances doesn’t guarantee happiness.
Harry’s wife of 50 years died three years earlier. The reason he went out to Frank Sinatra Night? “Only loneliness.”
I saw a lump move through the wrinkled skin of his throat. “She looked beautiful. She acted beautiful. She was beautiful,” he said. “I know I can’t replace her. I’m just looking for someone to replace some of the misery.”
Then he finished his Chesterfield, wished me adieu and gave me a final piece of advice: “If you find a woman whom you love and who loves you, the hell with the rest of the damn world,” he said. “It’s so beautiful.”
I put on my fedora and got out of the car. The allure of the Demi Moore – an older, more experienced woman – is nice, I thought.
But to have a woman my age to live alongside for 50 years, to have someone to grow old with, is, as Sinatra would say, the “right kind of love.”
