Clutching my pearls at Westminster Christmas parties - Diary 22/12/24

about old men and young women

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A free woman.

Self-employed life is banging; you should try it if your skillset allows it. I was delulu about mine not being suited for it. The LibFems are right. Women underestimate themselves.

Westminster's pre-Christmas party season is over, and I have made it out the other side illness-free. I am going home to Greece this weekend and look forward to not switching off for the next two weeks. Ha-ha, that’s right!! Now that I am self-employed, I get to work whenever I want!!!!1!1 What are you gonna do, fire me?!1!! I am also off the booze again, which feels amazing, and I look GREAT.

Most importantly, my BBC pitch was accepted, and the commissioner has given the go-ahead. I'm gearing up for a big campaigning year, and I will update you when it’s appropriate.

OK, enough about work, let’s talk about SEX.

I try not to be a prude too often because I know it is a hypocritical sentiment within me that only reflects my own neurosis and personal tastes. One such is my instinctive squeamishness at much older men sexually fraternising with much younger women. I am not referring to Michael Gove (57), who is dating a 32-year-old who seems to be from a similar social and economic milieu. That age gap is kosher, given that the woman is a Woman. Three decades are plenty for frontal lobe maturation. If anything, I envy the English bird. She is probably having a great time. Also, I loved the subtle response from the former Mrs Gove, who addressed the story head-on in her column and reminisced about all the men who flocked away with younger women only to end up alone in old age.

I am sure some men look at the likes of Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, both politicians in the autumn of their lives, who left behind long-term partners their age for women barely halfway through their fertile years, and think they can emulate that. As a 30-year-old with a realistic, and at times delightfully fun, age range on her Hinge settings (25-45), let me stomp all over your fantasies before your midlife crisis hits and you do anything silly.

I have only once met a man over 40 whom I found sufficiently attractive to act on it. He was 13 years older than me. He looked 38 tops. He was a former cabinet minister (not from here) and once a superstar young politician. I give him 10/10 for looks, brains and humour. Most men score in the 5-6 mark- heterosexuality is cruel like that.

Many men above age 38 are already looking too decrepit for me. If not in looks, then in demeanour and life outlook. I have repeated here that looks are not as important as men think, and I stand by it, but you need to make up for it with wit and intellect. Gove and Johnson, whatever you make of their political career, undoubtedly have both in the superlative.

I am not trying to make a moral case in this blog. These are purely observations of my personal taste and events that assault it. It is none of my business yacking other women’s yums. My body does not respond with desire to ageing flesh. I love young men. I think they are delightful. I love their energy and distractibility. I don’t always feel sexual attraction towards them exactly- my maternal instinct is known to misfire- I just smile a bit too widely when they are around me. And in older men, it is always their boyishness that appears when their adult mask drops that wins me over.

This is why I am not bewildered to observe older men’s reactions to younger women. People who have spent less time on earth have had less time to accumulate wrinkles, layers of fat, saggy skin, black circles, biases, worries, responsibilities, traumas, bad habits, emotional crutches, etc.

Many older men are the opposite of all of that. They are heavy and stiff, and the ugliness of their sex is compounded by the cruelty of father time. Perhaps because I grew up surrounded by reliable men who thought I was God’s gift, I never got the whole ‘daddy issues’ thing.

This is why, this holiday season, I found myself clutching my pearls at several politico Christmas parties. There was one man in particular that got my attention. He is in his 50s and looks like it. A prominent member of the party that must not be named- not that one, the other one, further to the right. He looks like a villain, a caricature of a vulgar old man who goes after young girls. And yet, I spotted him at two parties with two different girls, one in her mid-twenties, another still in university, looking positively like a teenager. I am not suggesting any malpractice based on what I saw. All looked legal and consensual. This is not a call-out. It’s instead a check-in with my soul.

Sometimes, I write things and am like, hmmm, am I sure this is an outside thought? But then, what the hell, it’s Christmas! My subs have been working overtime to upgrade their subscriptions to paid and founding. Let them have one more peek at how Great Women think.

At the first party, I thought the girl he was with was his girlfriend because of how liberally he was fumbling her in front of other politicians, journalists and the stern gaze of yours truly. I thought she was a student because she was dressed like she was going out at a freshers club night rather than an industry party where many of her colleagues and potential future clients would be. The author is no stranger to skimpy clothing; indeed, if I weren’t so sensitive to the cold GBNews would be losing that R rating, but I gasped at the amount of booby crack on display. I was surprised to hear her say she works for the other party which must not be named (the establishment one), and I soon found out she must be a bit mentally ill. She is black/mixed race, and, prompted by what I can’t remember, said ‘she wished she was white’. Girl, blink twice if you need help.

At the second party, a week later, he reappeared with a different girl, even younger, a university student, as I found out later, and closer to the Arian race I imagine he favours. Blonde, skinny, pale. It was almost midnight, and the crowd was thinning out. I couldn't ignore the girl, barefoot curling on the couch next to him like a cat, and his veiny hands blemishing her pristine thighs. It looked wrong, like mixing stripes with polka dots or an erection emerging from a Burberry trench coat.

At another party, I met an older woman who rumour has it had been sleeping with an underlink decades her junior. The guy she sleeps with is my type: skinny, nerdy, eloquent English boy who doesn’t know when to stop working (so needs me, who knows how to make him stop working). Of course, she looked and behaved like an older version of me. I noticed her as soon as I arrived at the party because alpha bitches know other alpha bitches when they see them. I won’t mention what she was wearing in case any of you sleuths try to start guessing, but it was something I would totally wear too. And like all hot, fun, smart women, I could tell she rejoiced at the sight of other such women, too. She exclaimed loudly at my outfit; she loved the red colour and the open back- don’t we all?

Something for everyone: the men, the women, the old, the young.

That’s when it hit me. If I fail to marry a Good Man to domesticate me and marry a Bad Westminster Man instead who tortures me in the mundane ways men have always tortured women, there is a 99% chance in my autumn years, I will be greedily plucking green berries off bushes before their spring. God keeps his most undignified battles for his horniest soldiers.

Earlier in the week, one of my older faves, another former cabinet minister, took me and some other ladies for dinner at the Garrick Club. The notorious, formerly male-only, private members club where the who’s who of Government, Civil Service, the Judiciary, the Arts and whatever other sector carries social clout in London, rub shoulders with their equals. After dinner, we headed out to a jazz club in Soho, stopping now and then when passers-by would ask for photos with our sole senior cavalier.

First they let in the women and you said nothing, now, they are letting in the COMMUNISTS and it’s all too late.

At the jazz club, the man who once was written about in every paper spent no more than ten minutes at the table before making his way to the dance floor. There he stayed till I left, way past midnight, and presumably till the bar closed at 3:00 am. He swung and danced the ladies he had wined and dined without once moving his hand on the wrong half of their waist and never keeping eye contact for a moment longer than needed to evaluate willingness to be swirled.

I looked endearingly at the young man nesting in him. If he aged at all, he did so gracefully. I thought, there is a man who loves women. Their looks, sure, but most importantly, their company and essence. Any old fool can stare at a young woman; it takes a special one to really see us.

You can tell when a man really loves women, and I think it is that distinction that makes me squeamish at one man’s beastiality with female human puppies and comfortable in another’s adoration of the fair gender. An older man of any political heft (and admittedly, that former one has zero) who manhandles a young woman in front of unforgiving Westminster vultures does not love women. He hates them. He might as well unzip his trousers and piss all over her; the symbolism is the same. He is willing to damage her reputation to satisfy his basest urges. There is no love in having your ass cupped by a man your dad’s age in front of people who may one day be responding to your pitches and poring over your resume. And yes, he, and not the 20-year-old, should know better.

Camille Paglia would interject that true liberty demands acceptance of its inherent risks. Women’s equal freedom means their exposure to men.

I agree, as I said, I am not suggesting any foul play, but I also return to my favourite movie about man’s nature.

In American Beauty, Kevin Spacey's character, Lester Burnham, runs headfirst into a middle-life crisis like a Greek single woman in her 30s runs into the wall. He quits his job, starts working at a fast-food restaurant, starts working out and smoking weed and buys a 1970 Pontiac Firebird, a classic muscle car. Like some older men I encounter, just because he feels like a teenager, he thinks he can act like one, too. He starts fantasising about his teenage daughter’s friend, the angelic Angela.

not all roses are meant to be picked

Throughout the movie, Angela boasts about her sexual encounters with older men, projecting the kind of confident, agentic vixen older men need to believe young girls are to soothe their guilty conscience for wanting to fuck a child.

In the movie’s climax, Lester is about to get what popular culture tells us all older men want. His daughter’s friend offers herself up for sex. She looks like a rosebud, spread on the couch like a pillow princess. Lester unbuttons her shirt; she breathes heavily like prey. She blurts out the obvious: she is a virgin. The mirage evaporates in her tiny whimpers. Lester realises what he is doing. His paternal instinct kicks in. He wraps her in a blanket, makes her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and asks her about what should have been in his mind all along: how is his daughter doing? Is she happy? Is she miserable? He is told his daughter is in love. That’s when he realises he is grateful.

In another scene, his daughter’s love interest, the weird kid on the block who is always filming everyone, shows her a video of a plastic bag being danced around by the wind.

And then this teenage weirdo, this unfuckable hate nerd, transcends his human meatsuit and discovers the beauty of the universe:

“It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing, and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was just, dancing with me, like a little kid beggin’ me to play with it – for fifteen minutes. And that’s the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember – I need to remember. Sometimes, there’s so much beauty in the world – I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart is just going to cave in.”

You can live a full life. You can have romance and sex and excitement and beauty. For all we know for sure, we each have one life and I would never dream to stop anyone, man or woman from living it. I know I live mine like nobody’s watching, or reading. But learn the difference not between love and lust. But love and hate.

Those of us who love blooming flowers don’t aspire to vases full of dead bouquets.