Based on the bonfire reminiscing of a group of my Brother's middle-age musician friends. First off, this is not a recommendation, how-to, or endorsement of aiming for women of dubious legality. These are firsthand anecdotes and stories with no pretense of highbrow analysis, that demonstrate edge cases of early sexual initiative and hypergamy in a pool of Rock Band groupies and girlfriends.

The first involves the leader and lead guitarist of a band my Brother first gigged with in the late 80s and later joined for over a decade. He was around 35 at this time, and it was a rough 35; to the point where he could probably get the Senior Breakfast at Denny's on the way home from some of the more taxing shows. Notwithstanding this, everyone in my Brother's band noticed after just a few times when his band first played at the same venue as his, that he always seemed to have a different, and quite young girlfriend hanging on him, and usually one or more right against the stage making moon-eyes at him as he played.

By the time my Brother joined a fresh incarnation of his band that became quite successful and still plays today, he had "settled down" with one steady girlfriend. She was a fairly cute blonde, easily half his age and this was not math that anyone wanted to concentrate too hard upon; the story paused at this point with murmurs of agreement that it was a totally different world back then and this would not fly so readily in today's environment. She was around at all of their gigs, and it was recognized that she was together with him, and they seemed to make a decently happy couple.

A year or so later, my Brother was living for a time with two other musicians in a part of Venice Beach selected not for the ambience, but the cheapness for a trio of not-rich musicians. It was such a bad neighborhood that my Brother rented a storage unit right off the freeway where he could leave his gear, otherwise it would get stolen like today in that neighborhood. One night after 2am, he finished dropping off his gear and noticed a very familiar VW van parked further down the aisle of the otherwise empty storage place. He parked by it and sure enough, all the same stereotypical Dead stickers and his band name. The door to the unit behind it was open a few inches, and a dim blue-ish light flickered out. "[Name]?," he called out tentatively under it. Suddenly the door rolled up with a loud metallic clatter, and inside was that chick watching a little TV plugged into an outlet+bulb adaptor bootlegged into the lone ceiling socket. "Oh, hey {brother]," he said with delight. "Yeah, I'm between places for a bit so I'm staying here for right now." The girl seemed happy as a clam, sitting on a cheap folding chair and watching the shitty TV whose light danced over a mattress on the floor and piles of clothes and guitar gear.

A few weeks/months later, he was hanging out at his Venice crash pad with the other guys there when an unexpected knock came on the door. It was that young chick... known to all as [Guitarist's] GF! She'd driven way out to and found parking in this really bad neighborhood. It soon became clear that she wasn't there for small talk, she practically led one of the guys to his bedroom where the door shut behind them decisively.

The two in the living room were going WTF over the situation while they were in there hooking up for less than an hour. Apparently he didn't simp for her after the fact, and long story short, emerged from Guy 1's room and immediately glommed onto Guy 2 and shortly led him to his bedroom, less out of obvious desire for guy 2 and more out of obvious desire to piss off guy 1. After he finished, she didn't hang around long. At the next gig and moving forward, she was still with [Lead Guitarist] and acted like that never happened!

There was another barely-18 gal who was not a girlfriend but the vocalist for his original incarnation of the band. She hung on for a while and was really good at and into her role when my Brother and the later lineup were established, but one day quit and was suddenly down on the whole band and scene, and quit hanging out. She comes up again later.

The years go on and another band my Brother was in and the two performed together regularly, had a big weekend gig at a ski resort playing in the bar. They had two adjoining "band rooms" in the resort's rental bungalows, and my GF and I, well known to and regularly working on a cause alongside both bands, were given carte blanche to enter and use these rooms the entire weekend. We were tripping balls (it was that kind of scene), and after an extended set break and smoke sesh with members and fans of both bands, they went back on for their next set and we went to their room to dress for a few runs of night skiing. (I don't recommend you start taking psychedelics, but if you already do, I recommend night skiing on them. Amazing experience!)

We go into the room, and there are two girlfriends of the second band's members who had arrived a few minutes before. Conversation was super awkward (we all knew and partied with each other at countless gigs by then) and as everyone was tripping hard, it took a while for it to become clear that we had walked into a spontaneous Lesbianism experiment between them! It then took us all even longer to figure out how to wind down the encounter and GTFO of that room. Really-super awkward; we went ahead with our skiing but 50/50 they aborted the plans we interrupted.

After several more band-related stories, it came around to, "The guitarist and his GF are still together; they're like 70 and 50 now. Also, the vocalist who loved then hated the scene? Her youngest kid graduated high school this year, and she's "a devout Mormon, complete with the funny dresses and special underwear." She reached out to [Band leader dude] expressing that she's really looking forward to getting back into singing for them now, in their decidedly NOT Church Elder sanctioned band and its scene.

Conclusions I took away from this bonfire conversation: The girls of 3-4 decades ago don't necessarily deserve to get idealized over those entering the SMP today. What looks like a sweet innocent young Unicorn might be out there initiating sexual escapades that would make her upper middle class parents' toes curl, and your own dick shrink to a self-protective tic-tac. Some women can go from immersed in a pretty hardcore party scene, to a pious religious wife and mother role, then back again after decades, like it is nothing. And sometimes, and I mean only sometimes, the most unlikely of pairings turn out to become the ones who stay together "forever", by all accounts happy despite long odds and tawdry secrets.