{"id":12357,"date":"2008-12-04T08:30:35","date_gmt":"2008-12-04T08:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wordswarm.net\/dictionary\/swain.html"},"modified":"2008-12-04T08:30:35","modified_gmt":"2008-12-04T08:30:35","slug":"swain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2008\/12\/04\/swain.html","title":{"rendered":"Swain"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man who is the lover of a girl or young woman.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Age — my age — is a number that makes a stop in my mind several times throughout a day. <\/p>\n

This number is sometimes followed by a dull sense of failure, a feeling of density from the weight of past gluttonies. <\/p>\n

Other times this number is golden, and its place along the continuum seen as a beginning. <\/p>\n

My mortality instincts tell me that this life is not the only one, and that this inferior vessel of my body is merely a transient residence. <\/p>\n

I do believe, though, that the memory of this life dies with this body, and that that which moves on when this body dies retains no influence from earthy  experiences.<\/p>\n

People’s attitudes toward age differences are a strange cultural relic, even a litmus test. As a freshman in high school I was attracted to a girl who was a junior, and she was attracted to me as well until she learned I was only a freshman. This led to an odd but entertaining dynamic between us. We talked like friends and (by my estimation) felt more free to do so than we would have with a lingering possibility of romance.
 
It was my first exposure to the adolescent conundrum whereby girlfriends and boyfriends are rarely "friends." The relationship turns quasi-adversarial when sex intrudes.<\/p>\n

By conventional wisdom, though, our age difference fell within the so-called "socially acceptable age difference." That formula says it is OK to date someone who is half your age plus 7. <\/p>\n

At the time was 17 and I was 15. 17 ÷ 2 = 8½, 8½ + 7 = 15½. <\/p>\n

Now that I think of it I was actually about 15¼ at the time, so maybe she was right, since at that age even a few months maturity can make a difference.<\/p>\n

I did not know about that formula at the time (in fact I only learned of it quite recently) but whatever some arbitrary cultural norms might suggest I think I simply did not like this girl enough to make a fool of myself for her, but I did enjoy talking to her.<\/p>\n

My first girlfriend in New York often remarked that she was quite a bit older than me, but when I plug our ages into the magical formula it turns out we fell right in the approved range. She was 31, I was 22, going on 23. 31 – 15½ + 7 = 22½.
 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man who is the lover of a girl or young woman.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whats-the-word","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saumAn-swain","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}