If you don’t like these, why are you still reading? The NBA basketball tournament’s under way, go talk about that. (Or possibly the NCAA. Or maybe the NHL. I don’t keep track of these things.)
Today’s story is about Aloysius. While still in high school, he wrote a piece of software that made him a millionaire; in college, he invented some widget that turned his millions to billions. Having no interest in running the companies his brilliance created, he’s pretty much retired at the age of 30. He tells his friends that’s because he wants to spend his time working on number theory, but while that’s partly true, there are two equally important reasons. (Not MORE important; EQUALLY important.) One is that he’s a carrier for Tay-Sachs and he saw what it did to his younger brother; not wishing to pass on the disease even in unexpressed form, he had a vasectomy years back. The other is that he simply doesn’t understand women. His female friends always find him too emotionally unsupportive, not to mention too apt to spend a week locked up in his study while trying to solve the Goldbach conjecture. Every relationship he’s ever had has crashed and burns three months, and it’s been years since he ever tried. He’s quite lonely.
Having both deep pockets and a social conscience, Aloysius gives a lot of money to charity–everything from homeless shelters to the symphony. The latter sort of donation gets him a lot of invitations to high-tone dinners. At a fundraiser for his alma mater, he meets a beautiful young woman, Michelle, who surprises him not simply by being able to discuss math with him, but by seeming interested in him on a sexual level. They meet around 1900, and before 2300 they’re having the best sex Aloysius has ever had. After their second go-round of the night, he asks when they can see one another again.
At that, Michelle smiles slightly. She has a confession to make, she says. Though she genuinely likes Aloysius and is genuinely interested in his field of math, he approached him tonight for mercenary reasons She recently graduated college, but she’s gotten caught in the hiring quagmire; she’d like to go on to grad school, but she’s quite broke. If Aloysius agrees to pay her a monthly allowance (she names a specific number which he finds trivial) she’ll agree to be his girlfriend for the next three years. They’ll have sex three or four times a week, she says–whenever he wants, as long as he respects her academic schedule–and she’ll be his date at any social occasion he wishes to attend with her. She’ll agree not to date anyone else during this time. Either of them will be able to break things off at any any time.
Do you think Aloysius should take Michelle up on this deal? If yes, do you have any conditions? If no, what are your reasons?
The lawyers definitely need to be involved, but yeah, why not? He gets laid a lot, he gets some experience with women on a level he hasn’t had yet, and the money is trivial. Sure, she’s a whore, but what’s intrinsically wrong with that? It’s her choice and she’s the one who came up with the idea.
Without commenting on the responses thus far: I intend that Michelle is NOT proposing cohabitation, nor that Aloysius directly pay her tuition directly. He’d be paying her a monthly stipend that is princely to her but trivial to him, out of which she’d be paying her tuition and living expenses; there’d be regular sex, but no payment for any specific act.
She just states the terms very directly. I say go for it too. It is a lot less risky than getting married and there are lots of them out there who would do the same thing to him and just not tell him what is really going on.
Would a contract agreeing to have sex 3-4 times a week (and dating) in return for money be legally enforceable? It sounds like prostitution.
How about they get married, with an iron-clad pre-nup? They can get divorced in three years if they want - no need to put that into the contract. That would include most or all of the clauses he wants - exclusivity, the expectation of regular sex, and financial support.
I don’t think silenus et al were proposing that sort of contract; I took them to mean that Aloysius needs to protect himself against later palimony or other forms of support claims. Michelle has already agreed that either of them can back at any any time for any or no reason, and since the sum she wants as a monthly allowance is trivial to Aloysius – and he’s reasonably sure that she won’t get pregnant–his most practical concern is to protect his fortune. d
Not his only concern, though. There’s some emotional danger for him in this too.
I don’t think there is a problem with the situation, but I do disagree with getting lawyers involved. Well, maybe that would be okay in a “let the lawyer explain to him that contractual prostitution is still prostitution.”
If he wants to do it, he could. I would not judge him.
“Should” implies a correct answer. I view it more of a “could.” Kind of like, I offer him coffee, “should he take it?” is non-sensical.
Of course, there is the possibility that the OP is playing games… how is marriage any different? Marriage is prostitution – gotcha.
I am not playing games. Marriage is fundamentally unlike prosititution. If my wife were injured tomorrow in a fashion that made it impossible for her to have sex, I would still love her and want to be with her.
In other news, and this is not specific to you – I hate it when people say “the OP” rather than troubling themselves to identify the thread starter by name.
This is a classic Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby arrangement. There are all sorts of variations of this out there and web sites dedicated to it.
I’m a fit, financially comfortable single dude who lives alone in a relatively nice house. I am world’s away from your protagonist financially, in my late 40s, don’t have a problem finding regular dates and even I have had a few similar offers. The most recent one was a woman in her mid 20’s who wanted a free place to live and her own room in my house. She’d keep her job for spending money and do light cleaning around the house and we’d have regular sex. As compelling as it seemed, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was leaning against it when I mentioned the anecdote to a female friend of mine who had been in an only barely similar situation. She seriously took me to task about how it was one of the biggest mistakes of her life and that I need to steer very clear of this.
Other offers that I have had are more along the lines of a monthly stipend and a few vacations or nice events a year in exchange for a couple of liaisons a week. I have never gotten interested enough to get into detailed specifics with any of them with the exception of the woman described above.
I don’t want to make this (more) about me so I’ll just say that I don’t have any problem with Aloysius if he and Michelle decide to go through with it. I have no doubt that there are many, many successful arrangements of this type. Chances are that it’s a bad idea for both of them.
I don’t see why not. I didn’t pick the lawyer option but probably should have in retrospect, just in case Michelle has any designs on blackmailing Aloysius about the prostitution thing later. But given that I don’t think that sort of thing is wrong even if it is prostitution (both sides are old enough to consent, of sound mind, neither side is being coerced) I think it sounds like a mutually beneficial relationship for both of them. Heck, if they hit it off, they could even end up getting married down the road.
You are certainly welcome to hate whatever you care to dislike. However, I find statements of a neutral or potentially provocative nature are better approached with the generic “OP” so as to focus on the situation at hand and not on the identity of the poster. Comments of praise receive more formal address.
My answer would to some extent depend upon whether this arrangement would be considered prostitution, or otherwise illegal, where Aloysius lives.
The local vice squad probably has bigger problems to deal with than a high priced escort (if that’s what Michelle would be considered), but since it sounds like Aloysius is a public figure – he’s a billionaire philanthropist who attends a lot of fundraisers – I’d say there’s a non-zero chance that someone out there would feel they had something to gain by making an issue of this either though blackmail or by turning it into a scandal. Could be a sleazy journalist, a gung-ho detective, a personal enemy of Aloysius’s, a jealous ex of Michelle’s, her shocked parents…I can think of lots of possibilities. These may not be terribly *likely *possibilities, but Aloysius has a lot of money and I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who’d be happy to either take a cut of it or see a rich guy brought down. So my first piece of advice to Aloysius would be to find out whether this arrangement is even legal.
My second piece of advice would be to think about how he’ll feel when the three years are up. There are of course plenty of relationships that don’t last more than three years, and it’s possible Michelle would grow so attached to Aloysius that she’d want to continue dating him even after their agreement expired, but right now she’s telling him that in three years she’s out. Will he feel worse then than if he’d never gotten involved with her in the first place? How about if Michelle exercises her right to end things before the three years are up? Again, any relationship can end unexpectedly, but Aloysius already lacks confidence with women. How would he feel if a woman who made it clear up front that she was only dating him for the money wound up essentially telling him that he couldn’t even pay her to put up with him anymore?
I am a person, not a random poster. If you have a problem with something I write, I’d rather you say, “Skald, this is why you’re wrong to write this.” Referring to posters as “the OP” seems faintly dehumanizing, so I generally try not to do it. Moreover, since you implicitly accused me of doing a “gotcha” in this thread, I’d rather you addressed me directly and commented on my response to your accusation.
My first thought is that Aloysius is probably immune to what you describe because he’s financially independent–basically retired, not involved in the management of the companies made possible by his inventions, etc. But as I think on it you might be right; it would depend on how much he cares about public opinion. He may not give a fuck, as he probably as the legal resources to avoid any prosecution and the worst thing that public disapproval can cost him is fewer charities wanting his money. But then, he may care quite a bit. You’ve a good point.
I can’t see this being a police issue. The story is that he’s supporting his girlfriend while she finishes her degree and that they prefer to live in separate houses. A prostitute, even a very high class one, would have multiple “boyfriends” and be paid per relatively short visit.
Hell, that’s not even a “story” in the sense of being a cover story; it’s explictly what they’re doing, except that she’s promising not to withhold sex and he’s promising to respect her academic schedule.
I’m not sure how he’s any worse off than he would be after another three years of celibacy. And he could even add to the agreement that Michelle, who is apparently talented in the groinal arena, must tutor him into becoming a better lover during this time. That might interfere with his solving Goldenbach, though.
I have no idea what a contract designed to avoid palimony suits would say. I suppose it would be like a pre-nup. Maybe it would work to make it a limited term contract, and leave out all mention of sex - just be sure that it does not create any expectation by Michelle that she is entitled to money after she graduates from school.
The exclusivity part is going to be hard to phrase as well.
Would that do it? IANAL.
That way, if Michelle decides not to have sex, Aloysius can cancel the contract.
And except that they didn’t meet, date for a while and fall in love first. This is not at all what they’re doing but it’s indistinguishable from that to the outside world so he is covered legally, I think. This is also not to say that they couldn’t actually fall in love at the end of the three years and make it permanent.