Mr. Cell Phone Addict

I met a new prospect at a café a couple of weeks ago (one of the dark and stormy nights leading up to the first snow of the year). He is one of those depressing people who will spend 5 or 10 minutes on the phone several times during a first date. The first call came less than 5 minutes after meeting him, before we'd even discussed if we'd stay there or go elsewhere, so I was left listening to a conversation between total strangers, wondering if I should order something. It's amazing how someone can be so completely oblivious of the effect on the person one would think he might be trying to impress. I completely lied and said I want to see him again. Or maybe I was able to think in that short instant that I could somehow possibly want to see him again. He did pay for dinner so I perhaps I felt I had to say something encouraging.

I'm feeling my way in the dark on this one as only this year did I decide that I'm through with paying my own way. Since age 18 I've always taken the feminist approach, paying at least half. And since I almost always made more than the men I chose to be with, that always seemed fair. Since I've finally come to terms with reality, which has nothing to do with the rosy world that feminists would like to portray, I've decided to hell with all that. My new paradigm: femirealism, based on a time-honored biological imperative; i.e., it's his job to convince me that I should have anything at all to do with him. More on this sometime in the future, but for now this attitude is quickly imprinting in my brain. After all, there are millions of years of evolutionary development behind it.