Out of the hundreds of men I’ve expressed an interest in on 3 different dating sites, one date. Out of the dozens of men I’ve chatted with, one date. Y’all know what happened with the Fire Captain, and it’s still better than I’ve managed to do so far meeting men in person. Good gracious.
While it’s not always evident, I am what my Boston friends call “wicked smaht” (or “smart” for the rest of the English speaking world). I used to have an IQ in the low 130’s, but that was a lot of wine ago. I’m still pretty smart and I have a hard time finding good men my age, with whom I have mutual interest, who are as smart as me. I’m not bragging, I wish I were genius or a fool. In between kinda sucks, but I digress.
Then one day I see a profile for a cutie patootie man, Ivy League educated, close to my age. Sounds too good to be true, and usually when it sounds too good to be it usually is. After a few chats I realized he is he who he said he is. It’s usually quickly obvious when a man is genuine. We decide to meet. A nice Mexican restaurant at a place called St. Phillips Plaza, a collection of higher end shops and restaurants in the foothills. He arrives, we’re seated, we have a quick introductory conversation and then he shows me a picture on his phone of these shoes he wants to buy. He wants my opinion. Really colorful and interesting $80 shoes. Odd, but okay. Maybe he’s trying to show he has money, or it was on his mind and wanted my opinion. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t really matter. I concurred that those were indeed very cool shoes and the conversation turned to other things.
Turns out he really is super smart, smarter than I in some areas. He knows 8 languages. He fluently speaks English (which should be implicit, but…), German and French. The other 5 he knows are ancient languages. I made a joke about ancient Sanskrit, and that is actually one of the languages he knows! I learned a lot more than I wanted to know about Sanskrit, it’s sentence structure and how it compares to modern languages. We had a light dinner during which I learned he has a 5 year old son. He and his ex-wife are good friends (I am good friends with my 2nd ex-husband so I understand). They are raising their son to be non gender identified, letting him decide when he’s ready. Okay, cool. It’s not really my business at this point how they raise their child.
One of the things I’m looking for is a man to go out with once in a while. Weekends mostly. It doesn’t have to be every weekend, but at least a possibility. Ivy Leaguer has his son every weekend. Every. Single. Weekend. This is looking less like a dating prospect and more of a friend. It was, at least, nice to have an intelligent conversation.
What happened next really threw me. When the bill arrived, I offered as I usually do to pay the tip. He said
“that’s really sweet, but lets split the bill.” WTH? You can ask any of my friends or dates and they will tell you I am not one of those women who expect a man to pay for everything. I have a hard time letting my friends pay for drinks or dinner, etc., and I almost always offer to pay my share or at least the tip. In this case, he initiated the date and he picked the place. It wasn’t a cheap place either. I thought it was reasonable to expect him to pay the bill and I would get the tip. Nope. Luckily I had enough cash to pay my half. The date ended with a hug. He was going out of town for a few weeks, maybe we could get together when he gets back. Okay, sure. I’ll get right on that.