The Unexpected Cub Pounce
And downstairs is where she went, down to the old rec room, which was exactly what she used to do back when she was a teenager.
These kids, of course, weren’t teens. They were young adults. And the wreck room wasn’t some beat-up couch with an old Ping-Pong table. It was three thousand square feet with a Ping-Pong table, screening room, and wet bar. There was music and beer. Two other girls had arrived. Kitty knew their mothers. One of them got Kitty a beer.
Kitty took the beer and went over to talk to Mason and his friend. They were smoking something and Kitty asked what it was and it was a vaporizer. When they offered it to her, she thought about how she had to get upstairs and she pictured the scene: the safe middle-aged faces she’d known forever. She took the vape.
Mason’s friend kept talking to her. He touched her forearm a couple of times, but she was sure it must be a mistake and she had mistaken it. She reminded herself that she had to get back upstairs. “I’ve got to go,” she said vaguely, looking around for Mason. “I’ve got to say goodbye.”
And she would have, if Mason’s friend hadn’t talked her into a game of Ping-Pong and another puff on the vape.
And then, somehow, somewhere along the vast walk from Ping-Pong table to staircase, the guy tried to kiss her.
In fact, he did kiss her. His hands were suddenly on her face and his lips felt fat and young and he was actually making out with her and she was making out with him back!
But then she remembered where she was and what she was doing. If someone found out, there would be no explaining it to Alison. And there would be repercussions.
She pushed the guy away. He looked disappointed but let her go. She went quickly upstairs and into the bathroom, where she smoothed her hair and checked her watch. A half hour had passed! Surely someone would have noted her absence.
But as she slunk back into the living room, she soon discovered that no one had noticed at all. They were too intent on discussing the latest political transgression in Washington.
Meanwhile, Kitty kept going over the cub pounce in her head. The kiss had made her second-guess her desire for only older men.
What was happening to her?
Kitty got up to go, and when she did, the young people magically appeared from downstairs. It turned out they had to go, too.
Indeed, it turned out that what they really needed Kitty for was a ride. To a nightclub.
Like so many millennials, these kids had forgotten something. In this case, getting their driver’s license.
And here’s the problem with inexperienced cubbing: can you imagine what would have happened if Kitty had continued to make out with the cub and then it turned out he was only using her as someone to drive him around?
Alison would have been furious. And Kitty’s social life as she knew it would have definitely gone kaput.
We can all learn a few things from Kitty’s experience.
A woman is vulnerable to a UCP (unexpected cub pounce) if she: (a) is recently sectionorced or separated from her partner, (b) hasn’t had much male attention in the last few years, or (c) does something she normally doesn’t do or hasn’t done for a long time, i.e. vaping.
But unlike Kitty’s near-miss, not every cub pounce is unsuccessful. Indeed, for the uninitiated, a cub pounce can often lead to a full cub encounter, involving intercourse, or at least its possibility. And once again, in this new dating arena there are lessons to be learned. Just because a cub is young and willing, it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
Beware the Cub Romeo
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Witness what happened to Tilda Tia when she went to a party at a club in Southampton. There were a whole bunch of young people at this party and she met one of them and he was tall, fairly attractive, and possibly rich. When the cub pounced, she went with it. It should have been over quickly, but the cub turned out to be excessively emotional, in that way that only twentysomethings can be. He insisted that he was madly in love with her and began texting her fifteen times a day to see what she was up to and whom she was with. Then he tried to leave a suitcase full of clothes in her bedroom. Then he invited her to meet his parents.
Specifically at Sunday lunch. At an address Tilda Tia knew well having gone there many times for lunch before—twenty-five years ago when she’d been friends with his parents before the cub was born.
No. This was not going to happen. She was not going to date the son of her friends even if she hadn’t seen them for a while. She texted the cub: I’m breaking up with you right now.
Unfortunately, the cub was a Romeo type, so this go-away technique only made him fall in love further and he went over to Tilda Tia’s and demanded that she give him another chance. They had a big confrontation and finally the only way she could get rid of him was by locking the door and throwing his cell phone out her second-story window.
Meaning the cub nearly turned Tilda Tia into something she’d never been before: a character more crazy than anyone from The Real Housewives.
Never Ever Go Back to a Cub’s House at Night—You Don’t Know What You’ll Find.
This happened to Marilyn. She’d gotten used to her Netflix nights at home on Saturday evenings, absorbed in what app