Drawing The Line At Client Stroking... Or Trying To.

As I get older I realise some things are beyond trying. Take my old Sugar Daddy from way back. He was a selfish obstinate old bugger twenty years ago, and we had different opinions about such delicate subjects like racism, sexism, religion, all the important stuff. But when you are subject to being cut off from an allowance, it tends to make you keep inside things that you really want let out. I had to be tactful and demure and above all, ladylike.
To say I bit my tongue many times would be an understatement. Plus, come on, he was then a seventy year old man. Who feels good about arguing with a seventy year old man? I’d feel like a bully.

I had lunch with him just the other day. I had forgotten just how hard it was to spend time with him. He talks twaddle about how hard it is financially now. (He’s been saying that for twenty years) How expensive everything is (ditto) He asks questions, then ignores the response, saying “Yes, yes” as he nods his head, then looks around and doesn’t even pretend to be interested.
A least I pretend to be interested in his mundane stories.

He is ninety now. Oh sorry, Ninety-One as he kept telling me. “I don’t look it though because I dye my hair” he said proudly with a lowering of the head to reveal a well coiffured Bobby Charlton. I could still see his scalp through it though.

That enough was to make the couple at the next table snigger quietly. I don’t know what they were laughing at, they hadn’t heard his “Have you seen the size of the sex of an elephant? It’s huge!” statement plucked out of nowhere, and usually said when you are least expecting something like that to enter the conversation.

After hair compliments and general chit chat about everything and nothing, he suddenly announces how he heard about Stephen Gatelys death. How this old man even knew who Mr Gately was is beyond my ken.

“He was gay, you know” he says with a sad nod of the head.
Oh god, here we go I thought. And I wasn’t wrong.
“Tch, these gays, you know-”
“It wasn’t being gay that killed him!” I cut in, louder than intended.
I could see the lady at the next table nudge her partner with her eyes.
“Well, you know, they get into drugs, they are so promiscuous…” continued Mr SD.
“That’s a very outdated stereotypical image you have” I told him firmly. I wasn’t going to stand for this!
“Yes, yes, you are right my dear. It’s typical of them” he agreed.
This made the lady at the next table cough delicately and give me such a subtle wink that I thought I might have imagined it, had the corners of her mouth not been slightly curved upwards.

It was then I realised it was worthless to challenge him. Never mind the Sugar Daddy/Sugar Babe thing. Even for normal life, this should be left to lie. He is an obviously now quite deaf, ninety-one year old man who had been racist, sexist, and intolerant of those different from him his whole life. A conversation with me over scones in a Mayfair tea room wasn’t going to change his opinion; it was only going to Piss Me Off.

Our only hope is that when he leaves this Earth and he returns in another life, it’s as a person who has learnt something while he has been away.
This was confirmed by the lady on the next table shrugging her shoulders and lifting her eyebrows, as she quietly said “It’s not worth it”.
And the deaf old bugger didn’t even hear her. If he had, he probably would have thought she was complimenting his brand of shampoo.