Of cougars and toy boys

By Melody Gwenyambira

“AGE is an issue of mind over matter.  If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.” 

These are the famous words of Mark Twain but a college pal lived them.

Why? One would ask. Well he was justifying the way he lived his life and the women he dated.

Our college pal Keith (name changed) was very generous, too generous for our liking.

During lunch time Keith would group us all (his class mates) and buy doughnuts and chips from the canteen. Hey, we would munch away the day.

The generosity came to a point where it was now being questioned, well by a small group of guys who were jealousy that Keith seemed to get all the attention.

Rumors started flying around that Keith had a sugar mummy!

 We could not exactly question or interrogate him because he was one of those friends that we would all rather not hurt with such questions but just live in deceit.

However the rumors seemed to confirm “themselves” right in my face.

You see Keith and I were from the same neighbourhood and we often walked to school together. I did not know him too well but I was more close to his girlfriend by virtue attending the same junior school with her.

The truth has a way of coming out.

Sometimes when we used to walk to school, an older woman (in her early forties) would pick us up with her Prado or convertible Mercedes Benz.

Keith had told me that the woman was her aunt.

With the rumors flying and all this evidence I was getting I put one and one together and voila, that was it.

Keith however told me the truth before I confronted him.

Well I thought he had told me a secret that I was supposed to take to the grave but I later learnt that his boys knew about the shenanigan because they benefited from it all.

“She is just a woman I don’t really love but she is in my life. She pays for my college fees because. We are in a sexual relationship and I am benefiting. She gives me money and takes me out and buys me clothes,” Keith said.

The boys also told me the same.

“Ndiri kuda kuti atondirongerawo changu one chimhamha,” a friend confided in me.

The woman as I later learnt was very rich, too rich.

Her husband was a managing director of an affluent company and she ran their businesses which were flourishing.

The two’s (Keith and the sugar mummy) agreement was that the husband was never to find out about the relationship (obviously)?!

Keith was the one who waited for the woman to call her.

This was a few years ago when the foreign currency came into use.

Keith was never broke and things worked well for him.

His mother was a teacher and his father a lecturer and at university.

They never really questioned him because he told them that he was doing “side jobs.”

Well Keith is not the only young man who was and is still a toy boy.

A toy boy is the younger male partner, be it a boyfriend or husband who is significantly younger than the woman.

Answers.com describes a Sugar Mommy as “a rich, usually older woman who offers money or gifts to a less rich, usually younger person in return for companionship or sexual favors.”
Now we hear of the “COUGAR.”

According to the UrbanDictionary.com a cougar is a female, usually between thirty and fifty years-old, who enjoys the sexual company of younger men." 

Well we have seen them and we live with them in our society.

These women can either be married or single and they have no emotional attachments to the men.

Sometimes it’s the scratch you back and I will scratch yours situation.

The surfacing of the relationships has changed the way we were oriented.

We grew up being told that in a relationship the woman had to be younger that the man but now kids these days are being told the man has to be younger than the woman.

Imagine a 17-year-old boy dating a 25-year-old woman?

The young man enjoys many benefits from the woman.

I spoke to one young man and he told me.

“To me age is nothing but a number. I love her and we are going to get married very soon. I don’t care about the age difference. To me age is nothing but a number,” he said.

Do you think so too?

A lot is happening around us.

The marriage institution is no longer respected and is at great threat. Divorce rates are high. Is it the cougar/ sugar mummy fever that has led to all this?