While I often garner many admiring stares as I walk around campus, this past Monday I was apparently the object of much envy – I literally turned heads at every corner. From Main Hall to New Science people “oohed” and “ahhed” as I strode past. Colleagues of mine in the newsroom immediately wrote the phenomenon off as simply the result of being a wildly popular journalist – a collegiate newsman with the intellect of Walter Cronkite and the body of Stone Phillips, as one particularly admiring secretary termed it. Yet that night as I lay in bed, clutching tightly to a picture of myself as a diapered youngster, my confidant Ms. Nelson spoke to me words I never wanted to hear: “Boulder” she said, calling me by my self-appointed pet name, “It’s wasn’t you… it was the outfit.”
Gone. Poof. The billowing mushroom cloud which had been my ego but seconds before shrank to the size of my [edited] right after a cold shower. “Noooo!” I screamed, but her words still echoed in my ears. I raced to the closet. There it was. The outfit. My jodhpurs, riding boots, tweed blazer and my “26-inch twisted-willow-and-leather-imported-from-England-riding-crop-handmade-by-Prince-Harry.” Was she right? I cried myself to sleep that night.
The moral of this story is this: It’s never too early to prepare for the Preakness Stakes, no matter what way you choose to celebrate. This Saturday people from all across the globe flocked to Maryland, where they enjoyed the timeless art of betting, losing, and wearing really big floral hats.
Yet beyond the simple facade of betting and ostentatious cranial wear, there was something even more sinister taking place at the race tracks that those watching from reclining chairs rarely get the chance to see. Forget the internet dating sites as the premier venue for creepy romances; the horse track has taken its place and in doing so illustrated a point I made in third grade anatomy class – it all comes back to Freud.
Even more peculiar are the couples spawned from this fertile meeting ground. Men from far and wide, penniless, and with nothing more than the shirts on their backs, wander to the track looking for that perfect mate who also happens to be sitting on (not literally) a hefty sum of cash. Amazingly they often seem to find it. Take the case of John Hendrickson, former New York high-school tennis champ and recent Old Country Buffet connoisseur. The portly ex-athlete, by luck, somehow made his way to Saratoga Springs where, by luck, he somehow began to woo Mary Lou Whitney, the famous inheritor of her husband’s sixty million dollar estate and notorious fluffy hat wearer. Despite a fifty-three year age difference John Hendrickson wasted no time proclaiming to the world (after two weeks) that he’d found “true love” and even took his newly discovered “true love” out in a Porsche 911 convertible which was a kind gift bestowed upon him at the promptings of cupids little arrow finding a place in Ms. Whitney’s bosom.
Yet I believe it was Newton who said “everything has an equal and kinda opposite reaction.” While it may seem that the men are the sole predators of the track, so too do young women frequent the vicinity in search of some fossil willing to shell out a couple of grand for pair of DD’s and a ‘vett in payment for a little lovin’ post-time.
So, the next time you open your purse or wallet and see only a few Washingtons or are feeling a little lonely on a cold winters night, maybe you should think of heading to the nearest track in search of your sugar daddy. At the very worst you at least know you’d be a more attractive couple than Liza Minelli and David Geffen.
The E-Spot
