On Picking Up Checks

Spent a lovely afternoon in Chelsea Books, browsing dear Maureen's new book. I was heartened to read, among her rather statistical musings on gender (never look at statistics, my dears, statistics lie. Humans are unique individuals, all of them; always remember that) that the younger women have evidently wised up. The chapter I perused was full of examples of young women who refuse to date men who fail to pick up the check at the conclusion of a dinner date. Ms. Dowd seemed to decry this phenomenon; Ms. Dowd is a foolish woman. The younger women are exercising the greatest common sense, and I applaud them.

Women, girls, self-described 'feminists' all: listen to the voice of experience. Check-paying has nothing to do with equality between the genders, good sex, or feminism. Check-paying is the simplest, most accurate method of ascertaining whether you are on a date with a man, or with a bizarre specimen of animated pond slime. Heed this warning at your extreme peril.

A man who does not pick up the check at dinner is a man who will cheat. He will not even call it cheating. He will sleep with your best friend; he will sleep with your best friend's best friend. When confronted and called a two-timing rat-bastard, he will declare, shamelessly, "so what?"

A man who does not pick up the check is a either a man with low self-esteem who will never amount to a hill of mouse droppings, or a man whose ego is so out of control that he believes he is God's gift to promiscuous women. He will borrow your housekeeping money and spend it on dominatrixes in Washington, D.C. He will forget his toothbrush on a weeklong vacation and decide to save money by not brushing his teeth. He will not take you out on your birthday; instead he will stay in, watching while you ransack the back cabinets to produce an inferior meal of creamed canned salmon over pasta past its sell-by date. He will not wash the dishes.

A man who does not pick up the check is a man who values his pocketbook more than he values your opinion. He is a man who shirks responsibility. He is a man who, when walking on a secluded beach with you in a foreign land, will cut and run when the local police force approach and suggest he leave you alone with them. He will abandon you at a keg party without a ride home. Should the unthinkable occur, he will not only expect you to get an abortion; he will also expect you to get a second job stocking groceries at Piggly-Wiggly to pay for the abortion. He will never pay alimony, child-support, or ask you to marry him in the first place. He will criticize your body, question your sexual preference, and insult your parentage.

A man who does not pick up the check is a man who uses false notions of liberalism in order to exploit women. He is the sort of man who would never have dreamed of using a condom before the advent of AIDS. He is narcissistic, squirrelly, improvident and fearful of intimacy. He is quite likely to become verbally or physically abusive under stress.

In short, any man who does not appreciate the privilege of being allowed to take you to dinner for the simple glory of your lustrous presence should be shunned like the mutant he is. Do not be manipulated into believing that he respects your equality; the only thing he respects is the dictates of his reptile brain.