Pass the Dutch(ie)

I held off on unleashing my scorn on Chimmy's recent posts about dating and how expensive women are to keep. Indeed, I decided, "Well, Chimmy can be a bitterpants sometimes, but he amuses me and perhaps other men feel the same way. I will insist on paying my half on my date this week and see what happens."

Because, true confession, I always offer to pay my half, especially on a first date. But I don't always mean it. Yes, I am that girl. Woman. Leech. Whatever. I could blame graduate school making me poor for so long, I could blame my upbringing, but it is what it is. I am very likely that girl.*

But I can be taught! Or at least I can try. The clever fellow from Bastille Day called me up and asked me to dinner this week. I never get picked up in bars, so I was flabbergasted. But he was a fun person to talk to and I said sure.

The date was last night. Pretty damn nice restaurant in the ATL. We got lots of sort of tapasy things (I know, JB, I was a little sad, too, but it is a good cuisine to make the meal casual. 'Cause you're reaching over people to grab the last honey fried goat cheese, for example) and a bottle of pinot grigio.

We chatted and talked and shared and rambled while happily slurping down chorizo and panzanella and peekytoe crab (heheheheehe peekytoe). Then I got a coffee since I had a drive ahead of me. And then came the check.

It sat there, as it tends to do for a while. I decided to wait until he reached for it and then use my ninja-like reflexes to throw my card in there. So we chatted a bit more and then he reached, I flipped my card in there over his protestations, and he said "dutch" in what sounded like a resigned tone.

ANALYSIS:
I think he read my offer to pay as a sign that he wasn't going to see me again. And I think he's right. When I've not fought to pay half, or when I've paid, one of us has always said something like, "I'll/you'll get next time?" or something. There's a promise of future meetings, which I never thought about until now. With The Dutch, I'm basically buying out my half of the contract, to use Chimmy's language. Or at least I was last night.

Along the same lines, I've gone out with men who found the woman paying distinctly unfeminine. These men are typically older, from abroad, or have spent a lot of time overseas, but there's that factor as well. (I have this cartoonish image of me bruisingly grabbing the bill out of this poor guy's hands and cramming my card in there with a grunt. Awesome.)

I don't believe this is always the case--other testimonies have suggested differently--but I was intrigued at how the shared payment altered the tone of the evening. Considerably.

Live from the ATL, this is Megarita reporting. Back to you in the studio.


*But I'm worth every penny. HA! I keed! Kinda.