Keeping, and not bees

The New York Times has an article by Ruth Padawer about keeping and being kept:

At first glance, the website SeekingArrangement.com seems like any other dating site. Most of the men are looking for fit, sexy women, and most of the women want nice guys who can make them smile and laugh. But if eHarmony or Match.com is a chatty social mixer, Seeking Arrangement is a down-and-dirty marketplace where older moneyed men and cute young women engage in brutally frank transactions. They’re not searching for longtime soul mates; they want no-strings-attached “arrangements” that trade in society’s most valued currencies: wealth, youth and beauty. In the cheesy lexicon of the site, they are “sugar daddies” and “sugar babies.”
There’s the eighteen-year-old from France asking for $5,000 to $10,000 a month from “a mentor who can provide me with the finer things in life and keep me happy!” And the 49-year-old investor from upstate New York willing to pay $5,000 a month for a “daytime playmate” for “intense connection without commitment”. Critics say the site is at best a convenience store for adulterers and at worst a virtual brothel, but Brandon Wade, Seeking Arrangement’s 38-year-old founder and chief executive, is unperturbed by the criticism. “We stress relationships that are mutually beneficial,” he says. “We ask people to really think about what they want in a relationship and what they have to offer. That kind of upfront honesty is a good basis for any relationship.”
The site now claims more than 300,000 registered members, far fewer than mainstream dating sites like Match.com, which has 1.5 million paying subscribers, but still a remarkable number. Sugar babies outnumber daddies ten to one, Wade says, providing what one sugar daddy called “the best fishing hole I ever fished in".
This abundance of possibility is part of what the site is selling, along with fantasy. Some of these men — especially those shopping for women half their age— are digging deep into their pockets to pay for an illusion: that despite their receding hairlines and wattled skin, they’re still enchanting enough to charm pretty young women. One image on the site features a dazed, graying man doted on by two barely clad attendants— a caricature of an already caricatured relationship. But this marketing spin doesn’t capture the nuances of the relationships that often develop between the “daddies” and the “babies” who meet on the site— relationships that can turn out to be more complicated than even the members themselves expect. Men may use money as a way to buy themselves out of the normal obligations of romance, like accommodating a woman’s emotional needs as much as their own. But despite the power and security that the money buys, it can also undercut the very ego it’s intended to boost.

Rico says it's a long article; go there to read the rest. There's also their 'sister' site, SeekingMillionaire.com, "a dating & elite matchmaking personals site for rich, wealthy, classy, affluent, gorgeous, attractive, & beautiful singles", for those who want the big bucks... (Rico says he has a friend from the old days at Claris who engaged in just this sort of arrangement, and he was quite satisfied with the outcome.)