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I just had a most disgusting conversation with my next door neighbor, who has three Clinton-Gore stickers on her car, owns a very expensive home in this "ladeda" Dilworth neighborhood in Charlotte, and who has been receiving alimony from her husband for the last 28 years. That's right, 25 years - her kids are my age, and I'm 43.

She told me the story how she finagled that. She got the best lawyer in town, a fellow named Bill D. - you Charlotteans will recognize the name - when she divorced at age 40. She was quite a looker in her day, and her Ex was quite wealthy. Well, Bill D. came up to her husband at the courtroom when they were negotiating the settlement and said "Look. Why don't you agree to alimony until she gets married again. Look at that women. Don't you think she's going to be snapped up real soon? If you're a gambling man...that's a good bet." So he did, and she used that arrangement to be set for life as the busybody nose-in-everybody's-business old maid.

Today I called her to ask that she not walk her dog in my backyard to take his dumps, something she would raise holy hell about - when it came to anybody else's dogs in HER yard. I asked her very politely, and then asked if everything else was alright. She sighed, trying for maximum guilt effect, and said her ex-husband just died. I told her I was very sorry to hear that. And she said "Yeah, you and me both! I was getting a big, whopping check every month!"

Words fail to express my disgust.

,,, for women like her, it's a business. Nothing more. This is why men are looking at the proposition, weighing it up and staying out of it.

Unfortunately, theres a ton of 'em out there just like her.