.The Anti Gold Digger

Who needs boyfriends when you can have sponsors? At one point, Eve had six of them.

Eve gets hit on a lot. At the gas station, at Home Depot, at
Starbucks — almost anywhere. It doesn’t matter if she’s feeling
totally frumpy or wearing pajamas. “I’m not, like, totally into myself;
I don’t think I’m super fine,” said the 32-year-old single mother, who
lives in Berkeley. In response to men’s pickup lines, she has developed
an entirely different system of dealing with the opposite sex. When a
man she deems worthy of her time hits on her, Eve tells him where she
has a job opening.

Where many women might evaluate men based on their potential as
boyfriends or husbands, Eve evaluates them based on their potential as
“sponsors” or “friends.” “I tell them ‘I have sponsors and I have a
friend. No applications for friend right now, ’cause I have [a] friend.
But I have sponsors,'” said Eve, not her real name.

“I tell them, ‘We’ll never have sex. I’ll never kiss you. I may give
you a hug, high-five, thumbs-up, something like that, but it’ll never
go any further. This is what we do, this is how we hang out.’ And it
kinda works. It’s almost like having a male best friend with knowing
that there’s no strings attached.” In fact, Eve has had a “gas
sponsor,” a “breakfast, lunch, and dinner sponsor,” a “movie sponsor,”
even a “cuddle sponsor.” At one point, she had as many as six separate
sponsors.

Seeking goods and services from a mate or partner is by no means
revolutionary. Browse through the Craigslist personals and you’ll find
plenty of women and men looking for sugar daddies or sugar mommas, as
well as those offering financial assistance in exchange for
companionship or sex. “In exchange for your fun, intimate
companionship, I will be glad to help you with some of your financial
expenses,” read one such ad. Here’s another: “I am looking to hookup
with a cute smooth str8/bi white guy. I know the economy is down and a
little extra cash would help. So i dont mind helping, as long as i get
what i need.” And, of course, there are dedicated sites for gold
diggers and their sponsors, such as SeekingArrangement.com and
SugarDaddie.com. But a gold
digger she is not, Eve insists.

“I despise gold diggers,” she said. “I think gold diggers are, like,
pathetic. I think women are pathetic when they use their assets —
the wrong assets — to obtain things. Because just your
personality should be able to get someone to want to spend time with
you or even want to buy lunch for you.” Eve says some of her friends
who are gold diggers haven’t been as successful as her because “they’re
super shallow.” Or, if they do get Gucci bags or paid vacations, Eve
believes sex is most definitely involved. “They have to be screwing
them,” she said. “Like, girl, your convo is not that good, because if
it was that good, you would’ve already married one.”

Although none of Eve’s sponsors would agree to be interviewed
— Eve says they don’t want to look like “suckas,” though she
stressed that they aren’t — she says her sponsor arrangements
have been successful. In fact, she says, all her former sponsors are
now genuine friends. The key to keeping everyone happy, she believes,
is honesty and respect. “I’m not a player, I’m just honest,” she said.
“A player has different schemes. And I don’t have all of those things.
The only thing I have is my honesty. So either you’re just gonna take
it or you’re just gonna go, and that’s okay because I’ll probably go to
the next gas station or to the next liquor store and someone else is
gonna try to get my phone number.”

Eve did not stumble upon this arrangement by accident. She got the
idea nine years ago from her ex-boyfriend’s sixty-year-old aunt, who
was then newly widowed. “She was going to the movies with this guy,”
Eve recalled. “And then this other guy, he liked to buy her Coach
purses. … And then she had this other guy she went to the symphony
with — that was her classical music friend. So I’m like, what’s
up with that? Then I knew she had a ‘special’ friend, so I kinda
confused all the guys as one, and she’s like, ‘No, my friend is my
friend.’ ‘Friend friend,’ that’s what she calls him.”

So Eve decided to try it out for herself, in part because her past
relationships had soured her on marriage. “I’m very skeptical about
marriage because it doesn’t have the same value system that it had,”
she said. “People aren’t like my parents and like your parents. It
doesn’t mean anything. Everyone’s into it for business or for the
come-up, so I don’t want to be someone’s ladder.”

In other words, it’s not so much out of economic necessity as it is
about practicality. She does not call her sponsors when her gas tank is
low or when she’s hungry, but if they’re spending time together, it is
understood that they have a specific activity they will do together
— and the guy will pay for it.

These days, Eve has toned down her sponsor relationships, she says,
mostly because she doesn’t have as much free time now that she has
kids. “Now that I’m a parent, I guess that kinda changed my outlook on
things,” she said. “So it’s like my needs have changed. I don’t really
need all of the little minor things anymore. … Like, the movie friend
is more valuable now than the breakfast, lunch, and dinner friend and
gas friend.”

Ironically, Eve believes that such relationships — while
admittedly set up to protect her from the very pitfalls she believes
relationships have become — ultimately may lead to stronger
bonds. “I’ve just matured to the point that I wish that other people
had, and the people that had are my sponsors and my friend,” she said.
“And it’s, like, not that I’m so exclusive, but I think if we all kind
of thought like that, we would revert back to more like what our
parents were in having long-lasting relationships that actually mean
something.”

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

East Bay Express E-edition East Bay Express E-edition
19,045FansLike
14,611FollowersFollow
61,790FollowersFollow
spot_img