OK, so Slate is only trying to keep you from getting laid if you’re trying to bed your child’s babysitter, but still.
I was somehow elected by DadWagon to take on this topic, I think out of some confusion: I said earlier that a previous babysitter had a crush on my son, not me crushing on the babysitter. And, really, I don’t know what the babysitter scene is like outside of New York, but we don’t really have barely-legal teen babysitter/cheerleader types in Gotham, so the whole American Beauty thing just doesn’t apply.
What does apply here and everywhere is that widowers raising children, like the dad who wrote to Dear Prudence’s column, are heroes. And heroes deserve to get laid (that’s why this woman slept with 300 NY Firefighters).
Here’s what the widower has to say about the babysitter, 24:
She just told me she has a serious crush on me and is restless in her relationship. She has also made feints into discussions about sex with me, which I’ve brushed away. She is very attractive, and I have been completely alone since my wife passed, so this is pretty awesome on about 100 levels.
Can you tell how happy the guy is? You can practically hear him smiling through his words. Not even a columnist with Prude in her name could rain on that parade, right? Wrong. Her answer, in part:
I’m afraid pursuing this young woman, awesome though it may sound, is a bad idea on about 100 levels… Hooray that your sap is running again. So use the motivation she’s provided you to start looking for someone more suitable to date.
Now, readers of DadWagon know that I have name-checked sex advice columnist Dan Savage before (though truth be told I doubt he knows/remembers me from our brief overlapping time at the Stranger). Savage sometimes gets a bad rap for advising people to break up too much. I don’t believe that, and I applaud him for doling out the best Valentine’s Day advice of the year this time around: dinner/wine/chocolate AFTER sex, not before. So simple! So smart! He deserves all the joy this unrelated but awesome news will give him this week.
Savage would, I think, have answered this differently. And I think maybe Prudie deserves a bit of a bad rap for keeping widowers from having sex. Yes, she’s usually somewhat measured and non-hysterical (although it’s easy to come off as sex-positive when your readers are concerned about mental adultery). But I disagree with her here: there’s no reason why sex couldn’t be good for both the dad and the sitter. Yes, it would complicate things. But sex and relationships are always complicated, and in this case there are no workplace harassment laws he’d have to deal with. She’s more than legal age, he’s more than deserving. Let them work out the sex/childcare conundrum in whatever manner they choose. Like adults.
Of course, in a week where Matt and the rest of us have been called cocksitters more than once, maybe I’m just unclear on what duties being a babysitter actually entails.
i used to live in seattle. when did you write for the stranger?
not with you on this one, brother. getting laid is all well and good, but to be the man this widower needs to be in order to lead his child/children (not to mention himself) through a motherless maze, getting laid has to take a back seat to making good decisions. and banging a young, confused hottie who is “restless” in her current relationship? that’s got bad call written all over it. the over-under on finding a boiling bunny on your stove is exactly 6 days. and i’m on the under.
does that mean that i would abstain in this particular situation?
NO. it’s overwhelmingly likely that i’d be rocking “room with a view,” “seattle slew,” or (my personal favorite) “fiddlers cove,” before this little vixen had a chance to utter the word “restless.”
but that doesn’t make prudence’s advice is wrong. i think it’s right. it’s just not the advice i’d wanna hear.
I was writing freelance for them from 1998-2001 or so. All a little foggy for me. It’s a fun paper, and about Seattle in general: I’m not immune to bouts of nostalgia for the place. It’s a great town. That must be why I love your Seattle-themed euphemisms for sex.
And you may be right; Prudence could have a point, even if it’s not what you would want to hear. After all, she rarely thinks with her dick.
your last line may be the funniest thing i’ve read all week.
So this chick is saying that your first relationship post losing your spouse is supposed to be appropriate?
Okay, let me give all men reading this my $0.01 advice: Women today are not our grandmother’s women. They are predators. They are smart. They are wiley as the South Florida grouper. They will tear you apart, especially the vulnerable widower or divorcee that is coming out of a bad marriage. Protect yourself, throw up an emotional wall, but have fun. Get laid. Experience life. Don’t listen to some old crow in an advice column that despises you for packing gear.
If bedding a self-aware, fully-equipped, attractive 24 year old babysitter is not appropriate, then call me Mr. Inappropriate. I spent a better part of 25 years trying to live up to the standards of a medieval knight mixed with Forrest Gump. What I became was bait on a hook. No more!
Dude, rock this chick. Rock her often. Rock her hard. It may not last, but who cares?
@Mickey Spoken like a free man. I only trust that the women in your life, while wily like grouper, hopefully do not look much like grouper. Because even for fish, groupers are incredibly ugly.
@JohnCaveOsborne I try. Thanks again for sticking around even after the Internet masses have moved on to threaten other bloggers with death.