Monday, July 07, 2008

How Not To Impress Your Date

Gentlemen, it is time that Pretty Lady administered a bit of Brutal Reality to your fond imaginations. The word on the street is that you are getting cocky.

Indeed, it has long seemed to Pretty Lady that as long as there are Rules, would-be clever boys will try to find a way around them. Worse, they address these Rules from a lawyer-like persepective, adhering to the letter but not the spirit of the law. Their goal is always to obtain double helpings of cake without having to pay for it. Sadly, boys, the ladies are seeing through you.

Thus it falls to Pretty Lady to inform you that when, on a date, you attempt to score double points by stating, "It is not my habit to pick up checks, but I will do so for you, just this once," you are not scoring any points at all. Obviously, in your mind, you believe that you are getting credit for both Enlightened Egalitarianism ('it is not my habit...') and Situational Generosity ('but I'll do so for you.')

Instead, you are coming off as a stingy, fatuous ass.

For what lady wishes to pursue further acquaintance with a gentleman whose notion of extravagant generosity is spotting her a couple of drinks, on spec? Visions immediately flood through her imagination--of working extra shifts at the co-op to pay for her half of the engagement ring, of phoning the office from the maternity ward to make certain her half of the rent is covered, labor pains or no.

She then thinks, "If this is as good as it gets, I am so out of here." Sometimes she thinks this even before the actual date.

So gentlemen: shut your traps, and pick up the check without calling attention to your action. The lady will notice. She's not an idiot.




9 comments:

Anonymous said...

lol

so true

x,

o

Anonymous said...

What a thundering way to announce your stinginess. I love the qualifier "just this once". Don't get too comfortable, there, GOLDDIGGER.

I'll see you Stinge #1 and I'll raise you "Oh, I wasn't going to pay for dinner. If you were a starving artist, maybe, but you have a condo. You can buy your own dinner."

Wollf Howlsatmoon said...

Ladies do not pay.

Unless, of course, they insist for some reason unbeknownst to Male Intuition.

In which case...have at it...we're grownups, after all.....

Anonymous said...

I think it would be a great boon to mankind and womakind if the established rules were that everyone pays for themselves. Money was invented as a practical artifact for the removal of value from one place another. Someone realized that it was easier to move an article that represented 1000 chickens, than to move a 1000 chickens themselves.
Inherent in our psyche is that money is a vehicle of transaction and someone paying for someelse is a transaction. PERIOD. Now the cock and the chicken (so to speak) become victims of the "transaction dance" pay up or find away to get out of paying for the female victim of the dance, make em pay or feel like an idiot for the male victim of the said dance.
Totally ridiculous and unnecessary and maybe one of the single strongest affectors of an uncomfortable evening for both parties.
Incidentally, the same dance has been used in contracts....using intermediaries called lawyers..... and treaties where both parties signs and one party then proceeds to interpret the understanding in a way that screws the other party.
Is there (has there ever been) any difference.
Be responsible...male or female...and pay your way. Attitude is less than empty wind.
Diatribe by Danonymous.

Pretty Lady said...

Danny, I am shocked. Surely you are no stranger to the joys of generosity, and alert to the poverty of spirit fostered when acts of generosity are systemically Frowned Upon?

Moreover, if your proposed scenario were the rule, some of the happiest times of Pretty Lady's life would never have occurred. When a lady is a starving artist, scraping by on $20K a year, she MAY NOT date a lonely French computer programmer who makes $120K a year, and loves excellent cuisine, unless she generously allows him to pay her way.

There MUST be systems in our society which allow for those of different earning brackets to interact, otherwise we are well on our way to an economic and ultimately spiritual caste system, along the lines of India's.

Anonymous said...

Update:
The cad did not even realize his caddishness and has now written to ask when we will see each other. I thought I was taking the high road by simply not replying to his generous offer of breaking with custom to buy me a drink. But he clearly didn't get the message, so now I'm considering just how to deliver it anew. Or I'll just ignore him and eventually he'll get THAT message.

Maybe I'll send him a link to your post...

Pretty Lady said...

Maybe I'll send him a link to your post...

Sadly, it is Pretty Lady's experience that a true fatuous ass does not recognize the egregious nature of his own behavior, even when one posts it on the Internet, complete with his full name spelled correctly, so that every time a friend of his types it into Google, they get the entire story of how he invited a lady to meet him at Cafe Raphaelo in Manhattan and acted like an insane person for over an hour, before finally taking off the wig, the glasses and the bad 80's suit and admitting that he was just trying to be funny.

No, the fatuous ass is so convinced that his perspective is the true and universal one that he never apologizes, even when you explain to him that as a newcomer to New York, without friends or job, it was a bit stressful to have a potential new friend treat you like that. He is concerned about 'being humiliated in public,' of course, but will never go so far as to admit that his behavior warranted such humiliation, or that perhaps it was merely an instance of 'what goes around, comes around.'

So link away, but do not expect to communicate anything of significance by doing so.

Anonymous said...

Pretty Lady, Pretty Lady, there is plenty of room for generosity. My barb was aimed solely at situations where there is an underlying, unstated sense of barter and deal making.....this for that, and then the struggle to collect or not pay up which is a far cry from generosity.....where one person, male or female, wishes to pay for the other....just because with no strings attached other than the one that say I care.
I actually have been the recipient of these favors from a few female friends and have been bowled over by the sense of love aqnd caring for me that went with the treating.
Long live giving from the heart and generosity. Down with the deal-making.
Danny

Wollf Howlsatmoon said...

^"imprisioned^?

You enlisted, you served...good on you, but "imprisioned"?

Go paint something, and be proud that you were part of something that did some good.....

No matter what your perception of the whys are.......