grownups are fucking sexy.

There is a young woman who is a barista at my local Starbucks that I find incredibly alluring. I'm thinking about asking her out, but unsure whether or not she'd find me attractive. I am easily ten or fifteen years older than she is. She is quite giggly and flirtatious with me as she makes my venti latte every morning, but I'm still afraid she might balk at a dinner invitation. How big an age difference is acceptable when dating?

if you have to cut up her food for her, i'm going to go out on a limb and say this bitch might be a touch too young for you. this doesn't gross me out nearly as much as you might expect it to, mostly because i was super smart when i was super young and couldn't really relate to the goddamned idiots my own fucking age who were sagging their pants and quoting cypress hill in study hall. even now i'll be in a bar talking to some thirty-two year old asshole and halfway through the conversation i have to stop him and ask whether or not he graduated high school. i can't be talking to a dude who is incapable of properly conjugating his verbs and can't correctly structure his sentences. grammar and syntax are important to me, okay? I AM TOO OLD FOR THIS DUMB SHIT.

so if it's from the perspective of a bitch who was three points shy of a perfect score on the ACT that can't find a dude in her age bracket with whom she can carry on an intelligent discourse (burdened instead with these absolute fucking morons who refuse to see movies with subtitles or won't eat anything more adventurous than tubular pasta), i'm with this shit. ask this broad out. because i know i can't handle misspelled text messages and dudes who don't read, and i imagine she can also appreciate having a hot meal with a dude who reads the newspaper and CAN AFFORD TO BUY A GODDAMNED VENTI STARBUCKS EVERY DAY. who the fuck are you, rockefeller?! i like to waste buttloads of money and everything too, but the daily starbucks habit connotes, TO ME, that you have achieved motherfucking baller status. or that you sleep on a cardboard box in an abandoned warehouse and use milk crates as furniture to support those goddamned mochas. which is just fine so long as you have some left over to properly tip our waiter.

speaking of hot chocolate, can you be sure that she isn't just really fucking excited about her job? i might be the worst customer servant in history; i'm so surly and so bossy and so bored and such a raging malcontent that i am often surprised when these people are actually happy to walk in and see me bitching loudly into the phone at the front desk. this woman said to me yesterday, "sam, if you ever leave here i'll be sad," and i was like, "what? if i ever leave here you might get to deal with somebody fucking nice." so it's impossible for me to imagine that some dude is tearing his hair out wondering whether or not to ask if the shitting asshole who yelled at him to tighten the harness on his stupid fucking dog would mind scribbling her number on a box of frontline because he might like to take her to dinner sometime. but i bet starbucks has things like "standards." there ain't no suggestion box around here; if you don't like the way we do things we kindly tell you to GO FUCK YOURSELF. places where bitches wear name tags and matching hats probably have conduct manuals and training videos that advise employees to feign excitement at the prospect of making your half-caf bone dry extra hot pterodactyl milk latte with a bald eagle breakfast sandwich to go with it. i mean, does that girl have a manager? is he WATCHING HER? if so, maybe that's why she's so cheerful.

or maybe she really does want to see what the inside of a buick looks like. dudes usually get better with age, and if you're the kind that has a smartphone and doesn't say "the facebook" (unless you're all hip and ironical and shit) then you could probably talk that girl into stirring your metamucil and fetching your reading glasses from wherever you've left them. but more often than not these situations involve some grody old milkshake trying to forget he's 137 years young by roadtesting his viagra on some shit for brains 19 year old while his wife and her lawyer plot to take half his retirement.

a couple weeks ago i was hanging with some jerks at the W hotel (ooh, fancy) and i saw a billion couples who fit that exact profile. scrawny nubile bitches scantily clad in forever 21 draped with dudes wearing ill-fitting suits from joseph a. bank. BLARF. fuck whoever you want, WHO CARES?, but could you at least pretend that you have conversations and shit? that is when this kind of thing gets gross, when you can tell that these two people have NOTHING TO TALK ABOUT WITH ONE ANOTHER. i "dated" a man in his fifties when i was nineteen (escandolo!), but i was smart enough to understand that he didn't care about the nail polish i'd just bought or the new cast of the real world or whatever the fuck i cared about back then. i just let him buy me fancy dinners and drive my ass around in his lincoln towncar.

old dudes like everything i like: sleeping, laying around, sitting in comfortable chairs, eating soft foods, putting their feet up, napping, blankets, colace, drinking old granddad, complaining that their backs hurt, yelling at the tv, cardigans, snoozing, scowling at noisy children, complaining that their feet hurt, decorating their walkers, wearing sunglasses inside, turtlenecks, hard candy, falling asleep while sitting up, large-print crossword puzzles, relaxing, taking lots of pills, complaining about their arthritic hands, going to the pharmacy, taking more pills, scooter chairs, raised toilet seats, how absorbent the new depends are, dinner served at four in the afternoon, hating loud noises, petting small animals, talking about the "good old days," bitching about the cost of ordinary things that aren't even really that expensive, orthopedic footwear, room temperature broth, and being inside with the blinds closed on perfect sunny days. doesn't that sound gentle and nice? BONUS: you don't have to worry about acrobatic marathon sex with a dude who has heart problems and a bad back who can't stay awake past nine o'clock. pump pump over snore is about all i can handle these days. who has time for all of that extra shit? this way, you don't even have to take your goddamned shirt off.

i'm pretty well-adjusted and i don't mind asking a dude to lift his testicles from where they're banging against my goddamned ankles, but you might want to ask this girl what her relationship with her parents is like before you skinny dip in her fountain of youth. and you need to figure out some appropriate places to take her when you go out. the difference with the dude i worked out all of my daddy issues with and the lecherous assbags who prey on the barely legal was that we never went to places where young people go, which is the mistake most of you rickety dinosaurs make. fucking a young girl DOES NOT MAKE YOU YOUNG. you are still old and gross, and you make the rest of us want to VOMIT when you're crushing your wobbly bits into our ribcages as we're desperately flagging down the bartender at the scout. i don't want to watch your medic alert bracelet jingling around your wrist as you pay for your kaopectate on the rocks with your AARP card. barf. i wouldn't be so irritated if you wouldn't be so public. but that's 110% of the reason old dudes holler at their bridge club's grandchildren, so that they can parade that hairless prepubescent booty out at le passage. and i think all THOSE dudes should die.

everyone else? you know 25 years is too fucking many. just stop it already.