A gold digger is born

Now all I ever hear is where's the dough at?
The Prada bag, the clothes at?

I am en route to becoming a high-maintenance bitch, a gold digger; of the: you cannot afford me pedigree. After much toil I have acquiesced to the pressure of the family dynasty.

My genes prognosticate divorce from a high school dropout with the tendencies of an alcoholic. Three generations of women live – or rest in peace – as evidence of the mutation existing somewhere between allele A and allele B (Human Genetics failed me). A subsequent, more practical marriage is in my personal forecast, as is financial security and an AWOL sex life.

However, the persisting two generations of ambitious women have seen fit to assure that I carom prediction number one and glide effortlessly into the latter. On my 21st birthday I announced over a plate of wild Salmon and grilled asparagus that I had successfully reached 21 years of age without getting knocked up. In my family this is no modest feat. My grandmother had two children and my mother had one by this age. Their hopes in my future soared (they were originally shallow) and the plan for diversion was hatched.

The message was clear: no dead-broke musicians, aspiring creative types, or the unemployed.

I failed to adhere to their policy, and I did not heed their admonition. A parade of tattooed, aspiring something-or-others marched through the family home, or at least through the phone line. [FYI: My father figure(s) cared not who was my boyfriend.]

To placate my roots I did occasionally accept dates with 2nd year law students, MBA graduates, and eventual doctors. They bored me to a drunken stupor with their traditional dreams and charity donations – all in the name of political enterprise. I am a charity junkie myself – when my dwindling funds allow for it – but they were so sugary straight laced I hate to suck the lime from my tequila for relief. The most the dates amounted to was second base and a one-time flaunting at a family barbecue. I snuck my way back into the inked arms of an ex.

Now I find myself single, gasping for air and brooding over clipped wings; I wait for the feathers to layer once more for flight.

My sexual appetite sends its pangs of hunger to the limited space in my pants and I bite my lip for the dead-broke musicians, aspiring creative types, and the unemployed. The proverbial bad-boy syndrome still plagues that little thing in between my legs. Late at night, after the coordinators of my future are tucked snug into their frigid sheets, I slip from the front door in my bare feet, the click of my boots silenced, and drive to the heated sheets of blacklisted men. In the morning the fragrance of lilies masks the scent of his skin lingering in the hair around my neck, the burn of antiseptic mouth wash dries his saliva from the inside of my lips.

The desire to appease the probing of my family reached maximum threshold post-graduation, pre-commencement (see me for the difference). I slept in the bed of an aerospace engineer student once a week, reporting details of our relationship to the surviving two women, all non-sexual accounts that is; his bedroom mannerisms contradicted those of all other rooms. But alas, his eternal frat boy attitude sent me scurrying back under the rug, where I coincidentally encountered another aspiring musician – an emcee, the worst on the list.

Last night while in attendance for a miniature person's (child not midget) birthday party, the inevitable collapse occurred. My back broke from the pressure exerted posterior to that fateful dinner of my infertile 21st birthday.

"You should marry a really rich guy who will fly the whole family out for a wedding in Hawaii." Said by what amounts to a great-aunt as I munched fast cooling pizza.

"And that pizza isn't going to help you." I licked the garlic butter from my lips and inflated my cheeks to chipmunk equivalency in response.

With the pizza fully digested and the beer settled around my hips, the time has come. And so begins my first day as a legitimate gold digger. I say farewell to the aspiring something-or-others, and so long to the unemployed. Adieu to those who commission spasms through my crotch area.

I'm marrying for money.