I was approaching sixty years of age, and I still felt like a young man. I was trim and fit, although one could tell that I was old from the carefulness of my gait and the worn quality of my face. The problem was that I was attracted to younger women, much younger. If truth be told, I thought that girls from twelve to fourteen were the most beautiful females. But, of course, such girls were out of the question. Besides, they were highly illegal.

The problem was, how could a guy my age attract a young woman of eighteen or a little older? Renting a prostitute was one possibility, but that was not what I wanted. I had tried it many times. A guy just cannot go down on a whore, or even kiss one.

I had come into a bit of money, much more than I could possibly spend, considering the way I lived, but certainly enough to support a woman. The problem of finding a young woman, however, perplexed me. A thought then came to me one morning in the shower as I washed my hair with my eyes closed. It was an idea that at first seemed absolutely ridiculous, but upon reflection it made perfect sense; I would advertise for a girl.

In the city where I lived there was one of those alternative newspapers that come out once a week, a paper that contained some muckraking news articles but which was mostly filled with stories and ads about jazz concerts, nightlife and restaurants. It was a publication that appealed to the younger crowd, and every week there were several pages of personal notices: men seeking men, women seeking women, men seeking women, and so on.

That same day I placed an ad of my own, which read: "Free college education (tuition and living expenses) for a girl who can please an old man." I really didn't expect any response, but within a couple of days nineteen females and three males answered my advertisement. I set a schedule for interviewing them, chortling at first in delight. I looked forward to marvelous fun.

On the first day I interviewed seven young women in turn, girls who seemed to have been out of high school for two or three years. In some ways they were a varied lot -- whiny, snotty, stupid, obese and ugly. But they were uniformly sloppy in their dress and their language, and none of them had the least sense of humor. One of them was a gaunt creature who appeared to be dissipated and diseased. I worried about her sitting on my furniture. I dismissed each of them quickly.

The next morning my first interviewee was a Miss Alice Farnsworth, who appeared on my porch at about ten. She was a pretty blond woman who tried to look younger by sporting a pony tail, although it was obvious to me that she was in her late twenties. She was tastefully attired in a skirt and jacket.

"Good morning, Mr. Berghoff," she said cheerfully with a large smile. "Isn't it a splendid Spring day?"

"Yes, indeed, Miss Farnsworth. It promises to be warm this afternoon. Please come in."

The woman entered my living room and looked about slowly, as if she were cataloguing my possessions. I was wary of this one, because she was too grown up, too self assured. She was clearly out of place in my silly game. Why would a woman like this respond to my advertisement, unless, of course, she were a cop? For safety's sake that is what I assumed, and so I intended to get rid of her gracefully but quickly.

"Please be seated, Miss Farnsworth," I offered, extending my arm toward a couch. She sat and so did I. A full cushion width separated us.

"Are you perhaps interested in graduate work?" I began pointedly.

"Oh, Mr. Berghoff! That's the most delightful little sculpture on your mantel," she enthused, getting up and going to inspect it.

She quickly returned and sat again on the couch, but very close to me. Our knees almost touched and I detected the slight aroma of lilac. She gazed at me seductively.

"Mr. Berghoff, the most intriguing and charming part of your notice in the paper was the expression 'to please an old man.' Could you elaborate on that?"

"Well, Miss Farnsworth," I replied, getting up from the couch, "I can be pleased in so many ways that it would take an age to list them."

"But surely you had something specific in mind," she insisted, cocking her head cutely and giving me a sweet smile.

"No, no Miss Farnsworth. It was just an expression. I'm a lonely old man, and what I need is for a young person to live with me, to do chores and cooking and be generally pleasant. That would make me happy."

"Surely, Mr. Berghoff, you are not so old." She rose and stood very close to me. "Perhaps you would encourage your house companion to be, shall we say, more friendly with the promise of additional gifts."

"Miss Farnsworth! I'm offended by your suggestion. I'm a deeply religious, Christian man, and I have remained faithful to my late wife. What you are intimating is obscene. I don't need you or anyone else as a prostitute. Please leave."

The woman's face turned beet red. She grabbed her purse from the coffee table and stormed out of the house without a further word. She was furious.

I almost skipped to the kitchen to pour myself a drink, despite the early hour. I had enjoyed such great fun that morning.

After lunch two guys showed up, one after the other. The first was a Latino, gigolo type with a thin mustache and bad teeth. The other one was a large, beefy brute in a Harley Davidson T-shirt with his hair in a pigtail and his arms festooned with tattoos. I did not let either of them into the house.

The next day I interviewed eight variously fat and homely young women and one scrawny tike who seemed to be high on something. Listening to their banal stories was the purest tedium, and I did not appreciate the leer of a grotesquely obese twenty year old. The entire experience had ceased to be fun, until the door bell rang in the early afternoon.

"Hi, I'm Jimmy," the pretty boy said shyly with a queerish lilt. He was clad in brief shorts and a garment around his chest that left his midriff bare. His body was stunning -- soft looking, hairless and shapely. For a moment I was fascinated by his exposed belly button.

"Are you old enough to be here?" I asked, because he appeared to be no more than fourteen.

"I'm eighteen, Mr. Berghoff. Do you find me pretty?"

I let him into the house and even gave him a Coke. The boy was very intriguing. He had girlish legs which he splayed in front of him as he sat on the couch. His blond, androgynous head was absolutely adorable.

"Jimmy," I said, ogling the lovely creature, "I advertised for a girl."

"I will be as sweet to you as any girl," he simpered. "And I have a very slender cock that can fit easily into tight places."

I had never had a guy, much less a beautiful boy, and I was for a moment tempted.

"No," I said to him reluctantly, briefly touching his hairless thigh high up. "No, I really want a girl."

"Why don't you try me out?" he replied with a sly look. "I can stay the night."

"Jimmy, I'm looking for a girl. I don't want you."

"Tommy," the boy purred, moving close to me on the couch. "You certainly want me, but you're too afraid to take me."

The boy then put his arms around my neck and kissed my lips as if he were a girl. It was electric, and I must admit that I palmed his crotch as I kissed him back.

"No, no, this is not what I had in mind," I stuttered, breaking the kiss.

"Please, Tommy, let me stay the night. I'll make you so happy."

"No!" I insisted and stood up. "Please go now."

The boy relented and got up from the couch. I followed him to the front door, unable to resist touching the alluring flesh of his bare shoulder.

"If you change your mind, you can reach me here," he said at the open door, handing me a card that he retrieved from somewhere. Then he was gone.

I leaned my back against the closed door, wondering whether I had rejected a unique, magic experience. I then looked at the business card. It was for an escort service.

It may seem improbable, but it happened in this way; the two girls who were at all appealing to me came to my front door last. Marion was a lovely young woman of about twenty who had raven hair and a little, pale face. She was small and slender, looking much like a waif in her tattered jeans and faded blouse. Jackpot! I thought.

"Yes, I'm Thomas Berghoff," I replied, when she introduced herself and inquired about me, her eyes open wide and her mouth agape. "Won't you come in?"

I held the screen door open for her, but she was reluctant to enter the house. "Could we talk out here on the porch?" she asked nervously, suddenly blushing.

"Yes, of course," I replied. "Would you care for something to drink? A Coke, perhaps."

"No thank you," she said as she shuffled her feet and avoided looking at me.

I waved her to a chair on my large, old-fashioned porch and sat down on another nearby.

"You appear to be rather uncertain about all of this," I remarked. "I know that the situation is unusual. Perhaps you have changed your mind."

"No, no," she stuttered. "We want to go ahead with this."

"We?"

"My boyfriend thinks that if I would agree, you know, to 'be' with you, that we could afford to buy a new car."

Her words deflated me and I felt rather shabby. In the opinion of this pretty young woman and her pimp of a boyfriend I was just a john. My quest had turned into a debacle, and I fervently regretted having undertaken it. I scolded myself for having been so stupid.

"Marion," I said as I rose from my chair, "I've already chosen a candidate for the position. I'm sorry to disappoint you and your boyfriend."

The girl smiled for the first time, a radiant grin that brightened her face. She got up from the chair and backed away from me toward the stairs.

"That's all right, Mr. Berghoff," she chirped in a cheerful voice. "I don't mind."

She left the porch quickly and literally skipped down the sidewalk. I sat down again and slumped in the chair, realizing that I was a foolish old man.

"Hello?"

The soft voice startled me from my snooze on the front porch.

"Are you Mr. Thomas Berghoff?"

She was a fresh looking blonde girl, perhaps as tall as I, and certainly not skinny, although she had small breasts. She stood on the walk at the foot of the porch stairs looking up at me with an expression of anticipation.

"Yes, yes," I stammered, still groggy from sleep.

"I'm Beth, Beth Carpesi," the girl said with a pleasant smile. "I'm here about your ad in the Free Times."

I suppose one could say that she was good looking, although she had just an ordinary, plain face. But there was a brightness about her that is hard to describe -- a liveliness in her facial expression, a sparkle in her eyes.

"Oh, well, Miss Carpesi, that ad is no longer valid. I've changed my mind."

A sadness swept her face like a sudden storm. "I was really hoping for, for a chance." she said plaintively, her pretty blue eyes tearing. "I really want to go to college."

It was not a game with her as it had been for me, I suddenly realized. The girl was actually there for a scholarship interview.

"How old are you, Beth?" I asked, my interest in the silly project again revived.

"I'll be eighteen in three days," she responded shyly, although she looked straight at me.

She was a lovely girl, I thought, a very lovely girl. "Let's talk about college, Beth. Come up on the porch and take a seat."

"And they kept moving me about. I never spent more than two years with a family," the girl said with a hint of bitterness in her voice as she described her life in foster care since the age of six. It was amazing and delightful, the way she expressed herself when she was on to a topic. Her entire face became engaged, and her lips formed around each word in an almost exaggerated manner. She was adorable. We talked for almost an hour, on the porch and then inside the house, in the living room where we sat together on the couch. She sipped a Coke and I a vodka on ice.

Beth was so full of energy and enthusiasm as she talked about her hoped-for future. She was still a high school student who would graduate in six weeks. Whenever she mentioned going to college, she looked at me shyly. Had she read the entire ad, I wondered, or was she simply a total naif?

"Beth," I interrupted the girl as she went on about wanting to become a doctor. "Beth, I'll send you to college, to the State University downtown."

The girl stared at me, surprised by her victory, her mouth and eyes widely open. She sniffled but stopped short of sobbing in relief. "Thank you, Mr. Berghoff. Oh, thank you so much. I'll study hard and get good grades and I'm sure that I'll please you."

I almost burst out in laughter. The sweet kid was impossibly innocent.

Beth came to visit me almost every day after our initial meeting. We became friends. I attended her graduation ceremony and patiently endured the tedium of it. I was the only one there for her, because her current foster parents, whom she detested, could not be bothered. I shouted and made foolish sounds, when her name was announced and she stepped up to get her diploma, and no one thought ill of it, because everyone was making the same noise, when their own precious person came forth onto the stage. Afterwards I took the girl to a very fine restaurant.

"May I live with you for the Summer, Mr. Berghoff, until I start college?" Beth asked after the waiter left with our order.

She noticed my perplexity and added, " I really hate it with the Jacobsens, and they don't want me."

I could not imagine anyone not wanting that lovely girl. "Yes, of course," I replied with perhaps too much enthusiasm. "I have plenty of room."

"I'll clean and cook for you," she announced with a most magnificent smile, her voice full of excitement.

"You won't have to do that, Beth. I've been doing those jobs for years, since my wife died."

"I want to," she replied stubbornly, looking into my face intently. "In fact, I'd rather live with you than stay in the dorm during the school year."

"Why is that, Beth? Why would want to live with a stranger?"

"You're no longer a stranger to me, Mr. Berghoff, although I've known you for less than two months." She stared at her clasped hands and seemed to weep. "I don't have a family," she eventually said, looking at me with teary eyes, "and you're the only person who has ever been nice to me."