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WHEN SHE SAYS YES TO LUNCH AND THEN TELLS YOU SHE HAS A BOYFRIEND : OPINION BY MISSY

Hello Readers!

One of my platonic male friends who seems to have no trouble attracting women willing to go out to lunch with him, tells me that too often the woman who accepted the lunch date uses the time to tell him she already has a boyfriend or is already dating someone.  Then the woman suggests they can be friends.  What's going on, he wants to know. 

Here is what's going on.

LUNCH DATES ARE MORE CASUAL and SHOULD BE LESS EXPENSIVE THAN A DINNER DATE and imply less obligation.  Maybe she had nothing else to do or felt hungry.  No big deal.

Lunch is a better idea when you want to start any kind of relationship, because it's usually less expensive (and should be!) for a first time one on one encounter with another person.  As the person who has asked the other person to meet up with them, you are obligated to pay the tab, including the tip, so you should do a little research and be sure you can afford to do so.  No announcing that the other person is paying for the meal or what they order. Since more people are willing to go see what another person is about for lunch, you have a better chance of them being willing to meet up with you if you suggest it.  Even better is a Sunday brunch - a meal eaten mid morning, as it leaves the rest of the day free earlier.  Plan to spend no more than 3 hours including commute time.  Men, ask your friends about places they recommend and why, check out places to meet up for lunch when you're out.  Find the perfect place.  Not too noisy.  You want to hear each other when you talk.  No overly hovering waiters trying to snatch your coffee cups the moment you stop sipping.

IF YOUR REAL INTENTION IS TO DATE THE PERSON RATHER THAN BE FRIENDS WITH THEM, then consider yourself lucky that they are telling you they are not interested in you in that way.  When a person tells you they already have a girlfriend or boyfriend, well, they knew that when they accepted your invitation for lunch.  The reason is that they have used the term girlfriend or boyfriend to say they have someone special.  You might think that this means you should probe them for more details such as "are you committed to each other?" but don't bother.  Whatever the other person thinks of the relationship doesn't matter, just what the person telling you they have someone special in their life already thinks of it.

However, there's more room to ask some questions if they say they are "already dating" someone else.  Does this mean that they are a one at a time kind of person? You might ask, boldly, "do you ever date more than one person at a time?"  These days the term dating can mean anything from meeting up with someone to having a full on affair with them.  Sadly, some people seem to use other people as "insurance," a raw term I first heard a few years ago.  They never want to be without a date so they audition other people as possible if the one they are with right now dumps them!  Such people usually don't enjoy their own company or can't be alone and can't be without someone to date.

Sometimes a man comes on too strong at lunch and a woman says these things though they are not true or barely true because she realizes he seems to want too much out of her to soon.  She means to be polite, the way men mean to be polite when they end a conversation or date with a woman by claiming they are going to call - and then don't.  Polite as in little white lies.  A woman is sitting there and she's feeling his intensity, thinks maybe he's the type to be obsessed, stalkerish, or maybe too jealous or controlling  maybe; her perception may or may not be right on.  However if the woman tells you she already has a boyfriend or is dating someone else already, and suggests friendship, but what you really hoped was to start dating her, it's ok to say you will give her a call - and not.  Provide her your phone number.  Let her give you a call to suggest some friendly get together such as an invitation to a party (where it is OK to bring someone else as a date.)  Women, if you tell a man who just paid for your lunch because he invited you, you just want to be friends and then call him to meet you for lunch, it's your turn to pay.

Who pays and how much?  It depends on what the relationship is, who earns more or has more income to spend on dates, the details of which you are not privileged to have until you are far more involved with them than this meeting up for lunch.

I'd rather be disappointed at lunch than dinner.


Missy

MIKE TODD and GYPSY ROSE LEE - BEFORE ELIZABETH TAYLOR?

Gypsy Rose Lee starred on Broadway and rumors were that she and Michael Todd, who would marry actress Elizabeth Taylor, had a thing, and that Gypsy was crazy about him.

Image replaced June 2021

DON'T WAIT FOR HIM TO FIGURE OUT IF HE LOVES YOU : OPINION BY MISSY

There was a great response to my last post on CHOOSING A GENTLEPERSON.  So I thought I'd go on a bit on the same topic - MEN!  If you are a man you can take some hints!

Here I go!

Things are very confusing these days.  We see so many images of people making like they are happy, having the time of their life.  Besides the media, people keep texting to let their friends know they are FUN.  Even people taking medication for cancer are depicted in ads as having worry free adventures.  Everyone seems to be assuring every one else they are worry free.  And partnered. If you are not dating you may suffer from that new cause of all problems - "low self esteem"!

What's real?

Dating shows, for instance, put such an emphasis on men being romantic - bringing flowers to a first date for instance which is something I think is way too much - but the show gives them a budget so there's no excuse - right?  It becomes a show of spending money.  All those presents! A first date isn't a marriage proposal! It's something that isn't coming from the heart.

I also think overspending to impress and making a first date too long and complicated is too intense. Mostly because most people just cannot keep up that momentum or afford it.  Men used to show off spending to show a potential partner that he could afford to marry.  But now it's too show off that he's sexy. (Hold off on showing yourself off to be a spender when you're first dating.)

Sadly, some men think that if they treat a woman well on the first three dates, the woman should start having sex with them, even though they really don't know each other - not really - and then the woman is the one who is wondering if she's actually in a RELATIONSHIP.  (She's usually not.)

If he does not treat you well, with respect, on all dates let him go. Seriously, one indication that he's got an anger management problem even if it's not (yet) aimed at you - let him go.  Why are so many women so desperate to be dating that they put up with snarly men?

What happens in the three dates to sex scenario? She's nervously wondering from date/sex to date/sex if he's going to call again.   Can that nervousness and insecurity indicate she feels loved?  Probably not.  This WILL lower your self esteem.

So many people are out there unable to evaluate relationships.  How did this happen? 

As you know, I think there are very many ways to love and be loved. Some take patience.  Some relationships will never become legal marriage.  You don't have to be married to love or be loved.  But if you are someone who wants and needs to be married... then be sure he is AVAILABLE!  But then marriage might not be what you're interested in - at least not at this time in your life.

I want to focus on those of you who are "lovelorn" and do not know it.  You're the ones who (and I was once like this too) hang in there because you feel you love someone and because you hope he loves you too.  You put time in and realize that time.  You don't want to feel the time you put in was a waste. You don't want to ASK him if he loves you, so you start doing things like writing in your diary or keeping a calendar of your dates just to make sure he's actually in your life.  You talk to your friends, analyzing the details, looking for hope.

Maybe you ask your mom or dad - or someone else older and wiser - how to tell.

The advice mothers gave to their daughters about boys and men was ridiculous back in the day but we were too young to know it was ridiculous. The advice father's gave to daughters, non existent. Yet, when I ask older women "How did you meet your husband/ companion?  How did you know he was it?"  These women didn't find it so complicated. You get the feeling people were more honest and sincere with each other. The man declared himself. She did too. They met and from that point on were rarely apart. It was mostly natural and easy.  Not torture.  Not anxious.  Not left guessing.  Sure there were crisis and uncertainties ; a lot of women have waited out wars, for instance. But bumps in the road isn't the same as constant upheaval.

The advice mothers were giving daughters back in the day went from dire warnings designed to prevent a daughter from premarital pregnancy to saying things like "Le him win at miniature golf." Young women were warned that men had this fragile thing called an ego that needed all sorts of assurances. (Why? Does being in a male body mean low self esteem?) It's hard to connect this fragile ego with the macho things men actually do. Young women apparently were not supposed to be themselves. To be desirable, she had to be less than and not honest. It seems to me the emphasis has long been on the woman being flexible, adaptable, and pleasing, and doing most everything his way. This left many of us feeling powerlessness was femininity.  Do you really need to defeat yourself to be desirable? in 2018? This blog is full of women who had to strive to have choice in their own lives when sexism was so much worse.

A woman was never supposed to be better at anything that her man did. That would be competitive and not feminine. This advice for some young women went as far as advising them that if they were making more money than the man they intended to marry or did marry, then they should quit their job and take a lesser one so that he would be the one making the dependable income - the head of the household!

Some mothers advised their daughters to have a "Prom Queen" attitude, that there were all sorts of men ready to fall at their feet - except they weren't! (Some women took this attitude to an extreme not realizing they were thought of as unattainable and cold.)

Along with all this was the advice that a friend repeated to me, "Never tell him you love him first.  Let him say it first."  And then if he said it, it was assumed he meant it. It was assumed he actually thought about it. But maybe he just thought he ought to. Or maybe he was just testing you. (This same friend let his saying "I love you," first into a miserable, tense, long term, time-wasting relationship.)

How do you figure out if a man loves you, especially if you think he is the Silent Type, a man of few words?  You may also think such a person must be Sincere when he speaks.  Maybe you think he is Deep, when maybe he's just reviewing in his mind the moves made at the football game. You start saying to him, "Talk to me" or "What are you thinking?"  You are on edge. You are waiting for him to come around.

So let's skip all this COMPROMISE, this WAITING and WONDERING.

A man who LOVES YOU cannot bear the thought of not having you in his life. 

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS
.
He thinks he is LUCKY to have met you! 

He doesn't use the excuse that he hasn't called because things have been busy at work; he may not be in town to go out or see you, but he can easily call to say he's thinking of you.

Gone on vacation?  Unless he's gone to the deepest forests to visit a primitive tribe where modern technology doesn't exist, he's going to phone, fax, e-mail, or send a postcard.  He doesn't want you to think he forgot about you.  He doesn't like the idea that while he's gone, some other man might discover you and begin to pursue you. There may be another man who wants you who is just waiting for such a departure.  A man who loves you will not disappear on you to "think about it."  HE KNOWS.

When you are wondering if you are in a relationship or not THINK CONTINUITY!  Not hit and miss.  He will do what he says he's going to do, starting small.  And if you let him get away with not following through on the small things, he will think you do not mind being not considered. So speak up.

Sure he may need a time out to think about it, but he's probably thinking about another woman, trying to decide which one of two or several he wants to focus on. So he goes into his cave. But does he really have to think about it for months and years?  No. Men, if you really cannot decide which of many you wish to focus your pursuit on, decide none of the above. Be courageous and be alone. And men, don't keep a woman you are not going to be good to in your life as "insurance."  That's selfish, disrespectful and using her till someone "better" comes along.  Women - same thing!

A man in love with you thinks everyone else would love you too.  He wants you to meet his smallest circle of close friends.  He's proud to introduce you to them.  And if one of them really doesn't like you, he makes you the priority, and he'll dump the friend before he'll dump you.  (Don't insist.  Let the doubter come around.  Some men have a circle of detractors just like some women do.  These men don't want their friend to have love because they themselves do not.  So they pick apart even the finest women as not good enough.)

If he hesitates to say, "I love you," first consider that's because he knows saying it is taking an important step in your relationship.  But once he says it, it's time to talk, not about how he loves you or if he love you, but what does this indicate about where your relationship is.  Are you mutually committed? Never figure that because you are having sex it's exclusive, meaningful, or heading towards marriage. Decide if you are one who really needs to be married.  Maybe he doesn't want to be married NOW.  Maybe he doesn't want to marry YOU.  Whatever, it does not matter.  What matters is that you don't keep a relationship going that's going nowhere. 

Don't be afraid at this point to talk about what you want and need too.  Don't come off as the woman who has no needs, who is so independent she can take him or leave him. (She's that same woman with the PROM QUEEN attitude.) We humans really are interdependent creatures.

Missy

MOTHER FINDS A BODY

My library doesn't have copies of Gypsy Rose Lee's murder fiction, but I checked and this was the second in the series that began with the G-String Murders.

Not shy about using her reputation as a stripper to be an author of noir, I suspect the woman who started out life as Rose Louise Hovick could give contemporary women some strong business advice.  I'm especially interested to know if Mother Rose, the stage mother from hell, was used to base the character of the Mother who finds a body.  Oh, and by the way, one source says that there is a possibility that Mother Rose murdered her room mate at one point.  Or was it a suicide?

GYPSY's SON ERIC FATHERED By FILM DIRECTOR OTTO PREMINGER

NEW YORK TIMES - 1971 GYPSY's SON ERIK to be ADOPTED by OTTO PREMINGER

EXCERPT:

The story came to light when Mr. Preminger told The Daily Mirror in London of his love affair with Miss Lee, a noted strip tease dancer, actress and author. According to the British paper, Mr. Preminger, who is married and the father of two children, disclosed that his affair with Miss Lee took place in California. On Dec. 11, 1944, he heard that she was in a New York hospital and flew here to be with her. He learned then that she was expecting a baby.

Mr. Preminger said that he offered to help her but she re fused and did not want the child ever to learn who his true father was.

NOTE: Erik also wrote a book, a memoir of life with his mother. Another source tells me that he was about 9 years old before he found out about his birth father.

FEATHER FAN

THE ART OF SHOWING OFF A LITTLE - NOT A LOT

In some photos I've seen of Gypsy, she looks rather thin, especially considering that very thin wasn't quite in until Twiggy, the early 1960's London fashion model who looked pubescent and work a boyish "Pixie Cut" hair style.

CAN THIS COLLEGE PROFESSOR QUALIFY TO HAVE A MISTRESS? : OPINION BY MISSY

QUESTION FOR MISSY:

Hi Missy,

I'm 52 years old and I've hardly ever dated.  I have no children. I'm sending you a picture so you can see what I look like.  I'm your typical college professor, I guess. I'm tenured and make a good income.  I fall in love with students.  But I can't go there.  I was at a conference when I met a grad student who attends another university a couple years into a PhD.  She's 27 years old and she seems interested in me.  I got back from the conference and all I think about is her. It would require a commute. I had lunch with her and then dinner, what a lively conversation! I know she's struggling to afford her education. How does a man qualify to have a Mistress?  That seems to be the perfect solution for me.

Victor


Location Withheld by Missy

To my readers.  Victor's picture reveals him to appear to be a typical college professor.  He's wearing jeans, a nice shirt, no tie, appears to be in good shape for his age, wears a pair of those classic intellectual eyeglasses, has his hair, and a trimmed beard.  He's posed there in front of a tree and has something like a backpack full of books.  I checked the location he gave and there are a number of universities in the area.  I'm withholding his expertise, let's just say this is a very smart man.

ANSWER FROM MISSY:

Victor, first I want you to know that when there is a big age difference you're about to encounter negative voices, but does that stop the Rock God Jimmy Page from partnering with a woman who is old enough to be his grand-daughter, the poet Scarlet?  No it does not. So love is love.

Since you are never married (and I assume the student you are interested in isn't married either) I take it that you are not inclined to marry and that is why you are thinking Mistress instead of a "Girlfriend" to whom you'll be generous.  I figure you are willing to commute to see her and would expect her to see you on breaks.

Tell her the truth.  Tell her you want to have a somewhat long distance relationship with her and will financially provide for her so that she can focus on her education and make it through without also having to work. 

If she accepts, then you have qualified to have a Mistress, even though neither of you may ever apply that term to your relationship.

Do you expect her to be faithful to you on that other campus and in that other town?

Do you yourself expect to only be with her?

This may sound strange, but do you even want to have sex with her?


Figure it out.

Call her and ask her to meet you for dinner. You go there.  Find the kind of place where you can sit and talk for a couple hours without a waiter hovering or expectations that another party will soon occupy the table, possibly with some low volume relaxing music, low lighting.  A comfortable and unpretentious place.  Off campus. Talk about your own education, how you made it through.  Tell her you find her interesting and attractive and wonder if she could ever fall for you.  Tell her you would like to have a relationship that probably won't lead to marriage and then talk about what it's costing her to get through that PhD.  (Another 3 years?) and make your offer.  Maybe I should say first offer.

She may be shocked.

Tell her to think about it.

Proceed to enjoy your meal.

This is open negotiations not close the deal.

Missy

THE G-STRING MURDERS by GYPSY ROSE LEE was A BEST SELLER

Noir in a book, Gypsy Rose Lee always did have literary aspirations.

Pose behind a typewriter for publicity photos, this book was a best

seller, based on her notoriety first.  It launched her career as a writer.

LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU

According to the poster of this YouTube video, this is a very tame version of Gypsy Rose Lee's strip routine. Her high brown attitude and voice is interesting to me. At heart she was a literary person. She has a book in her.

GYPSY ROSE LEE - STRIPPER MISTRESS OF WAXY GORDON in the SPEAKEASY ERA

Update : Here's an interesting article from Daily Mail UK about Gypsy's son Erik Preminger's new film about his mother!
DAILY MAIL : STRIPTEASE ARTIST GYPSY - DOCUMENTARY

Rose Louise Hovick - Gypsy Rose Lee

1911-1970

To prepare to write this Mistress of the Month post, besides reading author Karen Abbott's book cover to cover, I watched a few YouTube videos including excerpts from the film in which actress Natalie Wood played Gypsy.  I found a joking and fully clothed Gypsy Rose Lee on an old television show called "What's My Line," which is in black and white and seems extremely dated.

Gypsy projected humor and a certain optimistic joy of living.  It is that attitude that she brought into her burlesque theatre routines.  Her smile was dazzling, but her first set of caps that made her teeth thick, even, and white, was a first perk when early on she was the mistress of a New York mobster named Waxy Gordon, original name Irving Wexler.

Years ago I attended a musical play about Gypsy Rose Lee at a local college theater department.  The play as well as most every mention of Gypsy (and her sister, who became the actress June Hovic) seems to include their mother, Rose, who was the back stage mother from hell, something that perhaps actress Wood had in common with them. 

Why was Rose hell?  Well, I imagine that she was not just driven but a Narcissist and not just a Narcissist but a Malignant Narcissist.  Both of her daughters learned to keep her out of their business eventually. With all the pushy single mothers back in the day getting their pretty and talented daughters to support them, well, maybe this was what it took to survive starvation.  It was the early 1900's when Rose as a single mother of two daughters with no other talent than her pushiness - which likely repelled their fathers - decided her girls were destined for show business.

Petite and blond June, the looker when they were kids, was the one Mama Rose promoted first.  No doubt these two sisters were highly incompatible by their natures and no doubt mom set up a competition between the two but for a while Rose Louise, the darker haired daughter who would become a world renown stripper, was outdistanced by her sister. The one thing both of them had in common was Rose, who as an irrepressible mom had to be dealt with, had to be kept out of their lives as much as possible.

If June went the way of the "good girl," Gypsy, went the way of the "bad girl," at least by reputation. Mom taught her that men should get just the opposite of what other girls, and other strippers, gave, which even then, in acts that generally were tame compared to what strippers do at your local venue, was too much.

Was virginity really expected?

During the Great Depression, according to the author, seven out of ten single men and women were active sexually.  That was risky taking. It was illegal to advertise birth control.  Lovers had to mail order "marriage hygiene" products, tried the rhythm method, or invested in a 14 caret gold button IUD!

The woman who appeared on "What's My Line," has in common with actress Marilyn Monroe, the forgiveness of popular culture, the understanding that sometimes when you are a nobody with nothing coming out of nowhere, you do things which are maybe immoral or wrong. A certain aspect of our popular culture figures any kind of work is better than a handout.

To tell the truth, Gypsy got out of stripping not just because she was aging but because the up and coming strippers were going well beyond anything she ever did, making her stripping seem like a comedy act by the 1950's.  Still, she was active as an entertainer from 1928-1969.
Believing that the tease was what her audiences wanted, rather than blatant nudity that shows all, it wasn't until her last strip that she was briefly seen entirely in the nude and then for a fast second before she went behind the curtains.  She kept that ongoing joke of a tease going for years and years.

Gypsy married, divorced, married and had one son, Eric, who, according to some sources, was supposedly the son of film director Otto Preminger, rather than her husband at the time, and divorced.  She married a third time and divorced again.
But for our purposes here, we enter into the reasons beyond a strip act that came to be thought of as tame, for the "bad girl" reputation that Gypsy Rose Lee had back in her early days.

According to author, in the 1930's in New York, there were "animal parties" which were basically sex parties, and gypsy went to them though at heart she was asexual.  It is not said if she simply watched, held her men at arms length, or if she was actually participatory, but her attitudes about sex were very pragmatic. Rose knew it and was indignant that Gypsy had gone this low.


Rose might have objected to her daughter being sexual but Waxy Gordon was not Gypsy's first lover nor did she aim to be married to Mr. Right.  She had lost her virginity to "Ed" a wealthy man connected to Broadway and literary circles that she aspired to.  Then she had a fling with Red who taught her how to Kiss.  Then a Crooked cop.  As she worked her way down to Waxy, who was a short, plump and dangerous man with a diamond bracelet on his own wrist, a man who made his money in speakeasies during Prohibition, she got to know that he knew everyone in the mob from Lucky Luchiano to Arnold Rothstien.  Waxy ran 32,000 speakeasies, illegal nightclubs that served illegal liquor and varied from beautiful locations with the finest of liquors to what amounted to holes in the wall with stuff that could kill off your liver laced with dangerous chemicals.  He brought in 80% of the liquor from Canada and the Bahamas and worked with Irish gangs.  It was rumored that his tactics included murder and even a 6000 foot beer pipeline underground.  Waxy Gordon lived in splendor with a wife and three children, not that he was known to be faithful.  When the average person was earning less than $2000 a year, he was paying about $6000 in personal rent, the children were in expensive private schools and rode horseback.  Waxy is said to have worn underwear bought for $10 a piece under his slick custom suits.  In 1930 he had money to spare from an estimated income of 1.5 million in income, for which he paid $10.76 in taxes.  As a side, the television series Boardwalk Empire has Waxy as a character.

After he set eyes on Gypsy, he sent over four bottles of champagne in a typical act of generosity to those he was interested in and soon they had an implicit agreement that he would open doors for her.  He called her the day ater they met and said she had to go to his dentist to have her teeth straightened.  Mama objected so they didn't go.  But then came the next message from a friend who said Waxy was very hurt and that she had better go.  It was a warning.  The doctor owed Waxy and soon she had new caps that looked like real teeth.  When he asked her to perform at a prison benefit she went.  Rose had bought them a house for $8000 in Queens but it had no furniture.  Waxy started having furniture delivered.  Soon, according to her blond actress sister June, Gypsy became the Pet of the Underworld.  She too was concerned about what was happening to her sister who said "I will never be Louise again.  Call me Gypsy."   Gypsy said, "Nobody is going to be a roadblock for Gypsy Rose Lee."

Gypsy started to think that all men were married and wanted a mere ornament of a woman who would help them live a fantasy life. 

As for Waxy, Gypsy called him "Mr. Gordon and he called her "kid."

Rose decided to like him.  She said, "Give me a true blue gangster anytime."

Nobody was kidding anybody.

While June proved to have no talent or instinct for stripping as an art form and felt ashamed when she tried it,  Rose with the help of Waxy was soon working for the Minsky Brothers, entertainment pioneers if you include stripping.  But now she had to step into Waxy's world which including the shocking parties in which there was smoking and conversation, but mostly sex.  June went to one and soon fled.  How could Rose have allowed it? June was convinced it was because her mother never loved her.

Maybe Rose only loved herself?


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