What was the name of this novel? Because it’s shameful not to credit the author. If whoever wrote it reads this, get in touch! Everybody else, just stay with me, because the scene is important. It’s archetypal, and obviously it’s memorable, which is why I’m going on about it here.

There’s a DEA agent down in Mexico who contemplates going over to the dark side. If I remember right, he’s disillusioned with the perfidy of his own government. He figures, as a token good faith, he will bring the drug cartel some very important information. But before he can act on this, he is kidnapped by the drug cartel, taken to a barn loft, stripped down, injected with a spinal anesthetic, and tied to a table. A doctor slits him open from collarbone to groin.

The agent doesn’t feel anything, but gets to see the whole process. The doctor asks for the very important information, with the implication that it’s not too late to sew him back up. The agent tells the information. The doctor talks about how it’s going to feel when the anesthetic wears off. The agent understands that he won’t be sewn back up. Lying there watching the dust and pieces of hay and spiders drift through a beam of sunlight and land in his body cavity, he says, “You didn’t have to do this.”

That’s what I felt like saying to a certain man. He cultivated my affections, not in conventional ways, but in ways that particularly meant a lot to me. Which is so much more meaningful. Except when it isn’t. He will tell you all day long that he’s innocent, but you know what? It’s just not possible to get somebody as hooked as he got me, without encouraging it. And especially, it’s not something a man can do unaware.

To say it the old-fashioned way, he led me on. For a long time. And then I found out something that he should have told me. It wouldn’t have made any difference. I would have still wanted to be as close as he would let me be, and would have still done the things I did for him, and so on. But learning about the false pretenses, that was rough. So that’s what I want to say to the person who hit me up with painkiller and then gutted me. “You didn’t have to do this.” I would have given anything you wanted anyway.

Loose Change is Sara Davidson’s autobiographical novel, or minimally fictionalized autobiography. She and her friends were students at Berkeley in the midst of the Free Speech Movement.

In 1963, Candy went to a gynecologist who “informed her about the difference between vaginal and clitoral orgasms and advised her to practice having the vaginal kind.”

Candy herself is quoted:

My mom told me it took years for her to have vaginal orgasms. This doctor said you could practice by putting a plastic shampoo bottle in you and pulling it out fast.

Wouldn’t that cause, like, a ruptured uterus or something? Plus, the opportunity for infection. I’m guessing there are several excellent reasons to not do this.

If you’re a male, you’ve probably asked yourself that question at one time or another. If you’re a female, you’ve probably wanted a man to ask himself that question.

It’s the wrong question.

Why is it the wrong question?

A guy who’s thinking, “How do I turn her on?” really means, “How do I arouse this woman enough so that she’ll let me get my rocks off?” Something is missing from that equation.

Another thing: Many women are easily arousable. Especially in the hormonal hyperdrive years. And at any age, a woman might be so highly arousable, she finds a delirious amount of pleasure from skin on skin. The skin is the largest organ, you know, and when it’s perceived it as a sex organ, there is a universe of sensual delight in lying close to another body. But this is the activity men tend to denigrate as “just cuddling.”

Why would he want to complain about that? I mean, supposedly, he wants to turn her on, right? And that turns her on. Where is the problem?

“Aha,” he says. “I’m aroused too. And I want to get off. That is the problem!”

Well, sure it is, and we’ll get back to that.

But here’s something to consider. You wouldn’t say, “How do I make this person hungry?” Sure, it’s possible to do. But people get hungry anyway. You don’t need to do anything to make that happen. It occurs naturally. And so does lust, which is just another word for “easily turned on.” There’s a good chance that a woman doesn’t need to “be turned on” like a household appliance. Most probably have a natural amount of lust.

The right question, gentlemen, is, “How do I make sure she’s satisfied?”

If it’s not clear to you why this is the right question, just go back four paragraphs and see if this sounds familiar:

“I’m aroused too. And I want to get off. That is the problem!”

by Robbie Campbell

There’s somebody in my life who never was in my life. It would be presumptuous to even call it a relationship of any kind. As a relationship, this one jumped the shark a long time ago. Private communication just doesn’t work out. And I miss him. I tried to get him on Facebook, but that didn’t work out either. I see it as a tool that can be used for a lot of different things – like, just about anything he’s ever said he wants to do. He’s not interested.

Today I really noticed, and for the first time formulated a thought about, a situation in the real world that’s connected somehow. My housemate and I pretty much ignore each other when nobody else is around. In fact, sometimes he’s barely civil. One-on-one conversations are not encouraged and are sometimes counterproductive. I don’t let it bother me. Nobody wants to be on their best behavior all the damn time. It’s exhausting.

When someone comes over, or two or three people, sometimes I join them and socialize. My housemate and I get along great, in a way that’s genuine while it’s happening. And when the visitors leave, we revert to cordially ignoring each other in separate rooms.

And that’s why I wish the man who’s not in my life, would join Facebook. I found a fantastic gang to hang out with. I’m sure he would quickly assemble an equally interesting circle. I wish we could be part of each other’s affinity groups, on neutral ground and good behavior, with other people present.

Dedicated to Senor el Tecolote Loco

I went back to my hometown for a few days. I had to sign some papers. It was almost New Year’s, 1978, and Nadine invited me to her shindig. Parties ebb and flow, of course, but maybe 15 people were there at the most, some I knew from the past, some I didn’t. In the main room, the furniture was pushed to the edges, for a place to dance. The stereo was at one end and the food and drinks table at the other. Downstairs, it was the alternate refreshment room, relatively quiet. Yeah, it’s the midwest, but they’ve heard of pot. Then, out in the back yard, they had a firepit.

I go out there, three guys are sitting on a bench, I don’t know any of them. One guy is playing the drum that he brought over. He gets up and hands me the drum. I’m not really into it, but it’s cool that the guy just offered it so readily, so I sit down with the drum between my knees and make a little rhythm for a couple of minutes.

Meanwhile, Nadine comes outside and joins us at the fire. I stand up, and the guy asks Nadine if she wants to try the drum. She says no, but he kind of coaxes her, then he says to me, “Go ahead, convince her. Talk her into it.” That makes me feel kind of bristly. It’s like he’s saying all women are together in a cabal, and he’s enlisting me to communicate with Nadine in our secret woman-speak, and talk sense into her, for her own good.

Of course, when you’re in a bit of an altered state, you take that into account. We see everything through our filters. A lot of what we see is stuff from the past, oozing up into the now. You make allowances for it, and try to catch it if you can.

I go, “This drum is getting heavy, so I hope you guys figure it out pretty soon.”

The drum man tells me, “Try hitting it a little harder,” but I shake my head, and he takes the drum off my hands, and sits back down.

Maybe I’ve been rude, so I try to explain. “When I’m into percussion, it’s for the intricacy and complexity, not the loudness factor.” I go in the house. It’s really not an atmosphere for conversation. The stereo is cranked up, and half the time I don’t know what people are saying. I don’t enjoy talking loud. So fuck it, I’ll just dance. Nobody else is, but so what?

Folks from here need a couple of drinks in them before they let the music take them. No, that’s not true. They keep time with various body parts. Anyway, most of the evening, it was an empty dance floor, except for me, and somebody or other would drift in, or dive in, for part of a number, then drift or dive back out again. And always two or three on the edge, moving in rhythm while holding onto their beer bottles. Later on, around midnight, and for a while after, there would be four or six or eight people dancing.

It’s not like anybody’s going to push a contract in my face and beg me to be on their TV show. Especially not here in Hometown, USA. It’s not like I’m trying to show off – and there’s that goop from the past, seeping in again – I just feel like dancing, dammit! Talking and hearing are stressing me out, and there’s really nothing else to do, in a place that isn’t mine. It’s not like I can sneak off to my desk and type up some paperwork for Cooley’s five-state tour. My desk is a couple of thousand miles away.

Nadine’s husband is changing the records, and he tells me, “I’m putting your Traffic on after this one.”

The drum guy comes inside just in time to hear this, and he says, “Did you bring an album?” I tell him no, I just asked for this one because I wanted to hear “A Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys.” He gets all enthusiastic about what a great album it is, and how much he likes that song particularly. His name is Tom, and I tell him mine, and he asks if I’m from here.

I really don’t want to get into what I’m doing here, instead of taking care of the house on the canal and protecting the ducks from any reveler who might fancy a barbecued snack. Am I from here?

“Yes and no,” I tell him. When the music starts again, I slide away and get back to dancing. I overhear talk that sounds like Tom is in some aspect of the music business. Part of what I do for Cooley, is reach out to other people in the field. How bad can this Tom guy be?

After a while, I go to the bathroom, and when I come back, whatever’s on the stereo doesn’t really grab me, so I’m at the edge of the “dance floor” just kind of swaying. Tom approaches and takes my hand lightly, a minuet kind of move, and leads me a few steps out. So okay, fine, we’re both dancing. I just don’t dig this “dancing with” notion. In my universe, dancing is basically not a team sport. I don’t aspire to be one-half of Ginger and Fred. I’m not interested in learning dance as a science or a gymnastic feat. It’s just not something I want to do with a partner.

Slow dancing, that’s different. Yeah, “Blue Velvet,” the lights are low, you’re barely moving around on the dance floor, just rubbing and grinding where you stand, and groping each other – with the right person, that’s definitely a couple activity. And even so, there aren’t many people I want to be that close to. And none of them are here. And this isn’t a make-out party. It’s New Year’s Eve! It’s supposed to be lively. It’s a celebration, for chrissake.

Anyway, I’m a feeling impinged upon. I get the impression that this Tom character is making some kind of attempt to direct me. To tell you the truth, I’m trying to not even look at him. But I don’t want to close my eyes, because that seems affected. Also, I don’t want to bump into anything. So I’m aiming for a state of seeing but not seeing, where a part of my brain will monitor the environment, while most of it takes a vacation. But it can’t. Because it’s busy thinking about bullshit like not wanting to look like a total air-headed poser by dancing with my eyes closed.

And there’s this nagging feeling that he’s trying to get me to do something, to mirror him or synchronize myself with him. He’s seriously putting a dent in my high. It taps into some of that old stuff in my head. The connections that people make, the implications they draw. I can just imagine old Tom thinking, “If she can’t dance with me, she must be a lousy lay.” Which to my mind is a whole different thing. When I get naked with somebody, I know what to do. That’s the time and place where you feel your way into the other person, where you act in harmony. I can play a duet. But dancing? Dancing is all about me. And whatever Tom here thinks about it, who cares? I don’t want him speculating about how good I’d be in bed, because I’m pretty sure we won’t be finding ourselves there any time soon.

Saved by the doorbell. I love a cliché. Somebody rings, and since Nadine isn’t close by and neither is her husband, Tom goes to open the door.

But he turns up again later on, with the astonishing question, “What’s your story?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re from here, but you’re not from here. You’re dancing all alone…”

There go the bristles, up again. I’m hearing an implication that I should be dancing with somebody, that I’d be better off that way.… I don’t know, maybe I’m reading too much into this guy’s innocent tries at conversation.

Should I go into it? Should I tell him, where I’m really from, we dance in the sun by the ocean, to the beat of twenty drums, or to a three-piece band on the boardwalk, and sometimes we’re not even drunk? Should I tell him about the big room with the polished hardwood floor, the secret world above a store in Santa Monica, where we play all kinds of records and dance however we please – yes, even alone? Should I bother to try and explain that for me, dancing is not a thing you do with another person? Do I tell him that who you dance with is the music, and sometimes a whole bunch of other people, but it doesn’t have to be two-by-two like Noah’s fuckin’ Ark?

“Who are you?” the guy says.

That tears it. This is Mr. Clueless. I play it straight. I tell him, “Gayle.”

Pretty soon he gives up and sits at the sidelines, watching. This, I’m not too crazy about either. I feel like I should stifle myself, because I don’t want to look like I’m trying to attract him or, Goddess forbid, seduce him. All I want to do is dance, but I can imagine this Tom, after some unthinkable play-out, insisting to some third party, “She was coming on to me all evening.”

Then, I hear Cooley’s voice, I mean, really hear it, from all those miles away, over the music, and over all my imagining and analyzing. He says, “Dance as if nobody’s watching.” And nobody is. And every so often, I forget about the whole thing and get out of myself for a spell. And then the static in my head revs up again. I can’t be natural because I’m all hung up thinking about why I can’t be natural. It’s exhausting.

After a while, I’m in the kitchen talking with Nadine, and we’re really into whatever the topic is, it’s the first and only exchange I’ve had all night with any kind of value. I hear “A Low Spark of High Heeled Boys.” Nadine is telling me something, and Tom pops into the room and goes, “Hey, it’s your song.” I kind of nod at him, but I’m listening to Nadine. And then I’m saying something back to Nadine, and Tom goes, “Your song is playing.”

It’s almost overwhelming, the impulse to turn on him and spit out, “Idiot, you think I don’t know, from the very first note?”

But I don’t say a word. It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m a long way from home.

This “cougar” word is not my favorite contemporary expression, but we seem to be stuck with it. New word, old concept. There have always been older women-younger men pairings. At least one society has specialized in age-mixing, and I can’t even remember what part of the world these folks inhabit, but all the young girls go to old men, and the old women make it with the young boys, teaching them a thing or two. Later, when a youth has earned some status and fortune, he can get a wife closer to his own age. Candidates are abundant, because eventually the old men die off and free up the younger women – who have by then grown to the approximate age of the upcoming men who have acquired enough of what it takes to be entitled to wives.

As if “cougaring” weren’t bad enough, a young man who fools around with an older woman is said to be “tadpoling.” A tadpole is, of course, a developing amphibian, not even a frog yet. My thoughts return to a place they don’t often visit, a certain night in the late 1960s. Tadpoling. Who knew?

Magazine surveys are notoriously unreliable, good for starting conversations and not much else. But in 2003, an article stated that 34% of women between ages 40 and 69, were dating younger men. Of course there are a lot of questions you want to ask. Like, how much younger, on average? Are we talking about Americans only? Or Americans and Canadians? Europeans? What?

In 2004, Match.com reported on attitudes toward a large age gap between partners. Apparently they used a 15-year difference as the definition of “large.” Anyway, they supposedly found more men who were willing to date a woman 15 years older, than women willing to date a man 15 years younger.

Naturally, someone arbitrarily made up a formula to determine the acceptable societal norm – the “half-your-age-plus-seven rule.” In other words, for a 30-year-old woman, 15 plus 7 is 22 – so your male friend should not be any younger. For a 50-year-old woman, the lowest acceptable male age would be 25 plus 7, or 32.  Of course, if two age-disparate people stay together for a long time, that would mess up the math. It’s all nonsense anyway. The person who invented this standard – who died and made him God?

When Ben Franklin was 39, he wrote a letter to a friend, offering advice about choosing a mistress: find an older woman. Franklin listed 8 reasons, which are briefly paraphrased here:
Intelligence and better conversation.
They treat you good, because they don’t have beauty to offer.
They don’t get pregnant.
They keep their mouth shut about your liaison.
Since they age from the top down, there’s no difference below the waist.
It’s less sinful than deflowering a virgin.
A young girl can be made miserable by your attentions, but an older woman will be made happy.
He winds up with “8th and lastly. They are so grateful!!!”

More recently, Franklin’s advice has been streamlined into the smart-ass slogan, “They don’t yell, they don’t tell, they don’t swell, and they’re grateful as hell.” Accompanied by a snigger.

Actually, it’s nothing to snigger about. Gratitude is always appropriate, on both sides, and at any age, whenever two people meet to express affection and/or exchange bodily fluids. I’m quoting a man on this – Orson Bean, who wrote about his own journey of liberation. He says a healthy man “is filled with tenderness and caring and concern for his partner at the height of the sex act… and afterwards the feeling is one of love and tenderness and deep gratitude.”

Making love with a compatible partner is something to be grateful for, always, each and every time. It’s a wonderful, positive, perfectly gorgeous thing to do. Or should be. And why on earth would a person ever want to share such an experience with a partner who is anything less than grateful – and gratified?

Just like any other kind of pairing, the main thing to consider is this. To find someone you really vibe with is so rare, it’s stupid to create artificial barriers of any kind.

It’s not exactly what you’d call a May-December romance. We’re more like summer and fall. His family would rather see him with some sweet young thing. But there is an important difference between me and the sweet young things: I know how special he is.
Robbie Campbell

“You know, if you were forty years younger…”
Glorianna O’Toole curled her upper lip disdainfully. “Don’t flatter yourself too far,” she said. “If I were forty years younger I wouldn’t look at a kid like you twice!”
Norman Spinrad in Little Heroes

I have finally figured out the rudiments of how to love somebody, too late. There are no men my age, and if there are, they want twenty-two-year-olds to bear their children. Will I ever be able to practice this loving?
Cynthia Heimel

I think men get a HUGE pass on this kind of stuff (just one pass of many that we dames don’t get)…go to a shopping mall, and see some young chick with a guy 20 years her senior, nobody bats an eye, but the reverse? The trouble is, nobody calls a guy a “dirty old man” unless he’s maybe 40 years older than the woman…or girl…With us, 10 years qualifies us as being cougars.
Angelina Orduno

My hubby is 14 years younger than I am….I just happen to enjoy still putting toys on layaway at KMart.
Debbie Shearer Aures

Anybody who wants to screw a sixty-three-year-old woman I wouldn’t wanna screw anyway! Okay? Because they have big problems.
Grace Slick

Women may eroticize youth and vigor in younger men, but they rarely are turned on by displays of ignorance or uncertainty; high-brow Western literature and low-brow pornography are filled with countless examples of men being aroused by much younger women who either “play dumb” — or are the genuine article.
Hugo Schwyzer

“Actually, he’s my boyfriend. My son is slightly older.”
(ad for anti-aging moisturizer treatment)

Most men grow up believing in sex as a favor they have been granted — sex as strategy or currency or power. Therefore, the act itself is full of threat. The older woman typically is indifferent to being dominated or getting something in return. …She is interested not in power but in pleasure.
Paul Theroux

Cougaring with the Great and Famous

These brilliant men went for older women – and who would dare call them tadpoles?

Honore’ de Balzac was self-aware enough to understand that he preferred older women because he had never known a mother’s love. At age 23, the author embarked on his first affair (which lasted 15 years) with 45-year-old Laure de Berny (so they were together until she was 60).

Raymond Chandler – the love of his life, Cissy Pascal, was 18 years older

Salvadore Dali and Gala (Elena Ivanovna Diakonova), 10 or 11 years older. She ditched Paul Eluard, the surrealist poet, for him.

Benjamin Disraeli, who served as prime minister of England, married Anne Lewis, who was 12 years his senior, and they lasted 33 years until her death..

When he was 14, Gustave Flaubert, was swept off his feet by Elisa Schlésinger, 12 years older. Some of the characters in his novels were partly based on her.

Clark Gable married Josephine Dillon, 17 years older. His second wife was also older, and he once said, “I’ll take the older woman every time.” Well, maybe not every time. He did lead a long life of seduction.

Kahlil Gibran had a history of befriending older women who could be useful to
him.

Goethe had a ten-year relationship which was “probably platonic” with a married woman, Charlotte von Stein, who was 7 years olde, He wrote her at least 1500 letters.

Maxim Gorki was madly in love with a woman 10 years older, Olga Kaminskaya,
whom he married.

Ernest Hemingway as a young man preferred older women. His first wife, Hadley Richardson, was 8 years older.

Henrik Ibsen as a young man had affair with woman ten years older. They had a son when the playwright was only 18.

Samuel Johnson married a woman 20 years older than himself

John Lennon upset a whole lot of people by marrying Yoko Ono, 7 years older, though it wasn’t the age difference that cause the problem.

Sean Lennon, who was 22 at the time, was reported in 1998 to have a 37-year-old girlfriend.

During the war, C. S. Lewis and another soldier made a pact. If only one of them survived, he would take care of the other’s living parent. The other soldier was killed, and Lewis lived with his friend’s mother for more than 30 years. Nobody knows whether they were lovers, but some people are pretty sure of it.

H. P. Lovecraft‘s parents both died in the same insane asylum. He married Sonia Greene, who was 7 years older, but it only lasted a couple of years. She reported that he was an “adequately excellent lover.”

Friedrich Nietzsche claimed in his memoirs (which are not reliable according to historians) that at 15 he was seduced by a 30-year-old countess who was into S&M.

Rainer Maria Rilke had an affair with Lou Andreas-Salome’ who was 13 years older, and they may have had a child.

When Robert Louis Stevenson met Fanny Vandegrift, he published an essay in a popular magazine called “On falling in love.” She was 10 years older, and they eventually married.

Paul Theroux says even women of 60 can be “intensely sexual.” In 2003 he published a splendid piece called “And here’s to you, Mrs Robinson.” He admits to a longtime fondness for older women, even the “somewhat domineering” kind.

John Travolta married Diana Hyland, who was 18 years older. She died pretty soon afterward, so we don’t know how that might have worked out.

Thomas Wolfe on his 25th birthday began an affair with 44-year-old Aline Bernstein, who was married to someone else at the time. And Wolfe’s mother was anti-Semitic. And he was a compulsive womanizer. Still, the affair lasted 6 years. It is said that on his deathbed, Wolfe whispered, “Where’s Aline? I want Aline. I want my Jew.”

Sunset Boulevard
Torment
This Sporting Life
Nothing But The Best
Sweet Bird of Youth
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
A Cold Wind in August
The Last Picture Show
Room at the Top
Fear Eats the Soul
The Gypsy Moths
The Graduate
White Palace
Harold and Maude

Cougar Novels

Prodigal Summer
by Barbara Kingsolver
Three intertwined stories. In “Predators,” Deanna is a 47-year-old forest service worker who has been hiding out from people, including lovers, for a couple of years. The man she gets together with is 28. A 19 year age difference is a considerable gap by most people’s reckoning. In addition, she’s half a head taller. But they have a lovely idyll. “Moth Love” also has a cougar relationship. Lusa gets way too close to letting herself commit an indiscretion with her 17-year-old nephew-in-law. Their discussion of the possibility is beautiful. It’s the kind of talk that’s sexier than a lot of what passes for sex. There’s a third love story too, “Old Chestnuts,” but the man and woman in that one are both elderly, so it’s interesting in a different kind of way.

Palazzo d’oro by Paul Theroux – a really bizarre tale about a young man and a woman he doesn’t realize is so much older.

Babes in the Wood by Ruth Rendall – a violent, predatory, pedophilic cougar woman. Yikes!

Jennifer Anniston‘s current boyfriend is 9 years younger, plus she’s making a movie about a woman who pursues younger men.

Sarah Bernhardt was 37 when she got together with Aristidis Damala, who was 12 years younger. Morphine-addicted, probably bisexual, and with a bad case of himself, Damala was a challenge. His bad habits killed him at 42, and Bernhardt mourned him for a long time. When she was 66, The Divine Sarah started an affair with Lou Tellegen who was 27 – that’s, like almost 40 years difference. She was literally old enough to be his grandmother. It lasted four years and was one of the leading scandals of the era.

Halle Berry is 10 years older than her child’s father

At age 43, Catherine II, empress of Russia, had an affair with Grigori Potemkin, who was 35. For the next quarter of a century, Catherine’s numerous lovers were first road-tested by her ladies in waiting. At 60, she got together with 22-year-old Platon Zubov, in a relationship that lasted seven years.

Cher has, or had, a boyfriend she is, or was, 23 years older than.
Cher’s mom – several years ago one of the popular celebrity magazines printed a great photo of Cher’s mother, rollerskating on the Venice boardwalk with her much younger, and very foxy, boyfriend.

Colette

Joan Collins married a 36-year-old man when she was 68.

Simone de Beauvoir had an affair with Claude Lanzmann, a journalist 17 years younger.

Isadora Duncan was over 40 when she married the Russian poet Sergei Esenin, who was 17 years younger.

George Eliot, the woman writer with a male pseudonym, was 60 when she married a man 20 years younger. During their honeymoon in Venice he jumped out the window of the hotel into Grand Canal. Gossips back in England said he did it to escape his wife’s insatiable sexual drive.

Mata Hari, the famous dancer and courtesan, forgot her professional demeanor and fell in love with Vadim Masloff, a Russian military man who was 19 years younger. They wanted to get married, but he was badly wounded and she wanted to get out of the life, but they had not money. So she took employment as a spy, which she was lousy at, and was thrown in prison. The authorities confiscated Vadim’s letters, so she thought he had abandoned her. For some reason, probably government coercion, he wrote a letter to her trial judge, denouncing her and she was executed.

Chrissie Hynde married Jim Kerr, 8 years younger.

Grace Jones at age 43 married a 21-year-old guy.

Historian Catherine Macaulay, at 47, married a man of 21.

Madonna isn’t bothered by the 28 year age difference between her boyfriend and herself.

Anna Magnani had an affair with a 19-year-old whose mother raised hell and demanded to know ad an affair with – his mother demanded to know what he was doing with that old lady. The youth protested, “But, Mamma, that’s no old lady, that’s Anna Magnani!”

Edna St. Vincent Millay was involved with a poet named George Dillon, fourteen years younger, who was said to be the only man who broke her heart.

Demi Moore married a guy 15 years younger.

Mary Tyler Moore‘s husband is 17 years younger, and they’ve been married since 1983.

Anais Nin, at 42, had an affair with an 18-year-old (that’s a 24 year age gap), and encouraged him to quit college. His father found out and threatened Nin with deportation. Also, he said he squeal to her husband’s bosses. The husband was a bank executive, so this would have meant job loss and serious income deprivation. Nin was 16 years older than her second (bigamous) husband Rupert Pole, and concealed her true age from him for many years. (She had work done, and looked a lot younger than her years.)

When Adelina Patti was 55, she married a man 27 years younger, or half her age.

Edith Piaf

Ayn Rand, who was married at the time, got a wild hair in her 40s and started up with a guy 25 years younger, Nathaniel Branden. It was a stormy fourteen-year relationship Branden described as “full of sexual dominance and surrender and the uncontrollable passion of two noble souls.” He finally broke loose and paired up with a young model.

Actress Rachel Roberts spent years with fashion stylist Darren Ramirez, who was nearly twenty years younger, and bisexual. Biographer Alexander Walker says the young man had a pliant nature, and was able to “calm her first, reason with her afterwards, hold it together with affection.”

George Sand‘s lover Jules Sandeau was 7 years younger. Frederic Chopin was 6 years younger. At 45 she embarked on an affair with a man 13 years younger, which lasted 15 years. At 60 she acquired a lover who was 21 years her junior. In addition to liking young men, she also liked to dress as a young man.

Susan Sarandon is 12 years older than husband Timothy Robbins.

Acclaimed dancer Ruth St. Denis married a man 14 years younger. As she aged, she shared her favors with more men than ever before. Her husband said about one of her teenage lovers, “If he were any younger he’d be a fetus!”

Okay, technically this isn’t a love affair. But Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson (26 years younger) deserve a few words, paraphrased from Paul Theroux. Jackson offered Taylor a bunch of tickets for one of his shows, but Taylor didn’t like the VIP box so far away from the stage. She and all of her guests turned around and left. Jackson called her up the next day, crying. He apologized for the lousy accomodations, and they ended up talking for a couple of hours. They spent time on the phone pretty much every day for three months, and that was the start of their very close friendship.

Emma Thompson‘s husband is 7 years younger.

Tina Turner has been with a guy for more than 20 years, and he’s 16 years younger than she is.

Alma Mahler Werfel was married to the composer Mahler, then to architect Walter Gropius, then to author Franz Werfel, who was 12 years younger than she.