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I think we’re long overdue for a story, so I thought I’d tell one of my favorites. Here’s the set-up:

There is this guy named Scott who works with some friends of mine. He’s equal parts brilliant, geeky, and crazy, which is exactly my type. I can spot a genius with a penchant for Star Trek who needs serious amounts of therapy anywhere, and Scott was it. I was having a run of Scott’s - my friends even bought me a roll of toilet tissue as a gag gift - so why not one more. I knew I couldn’t be serious about him, but I could tell we’d have a LOT of fun together, and I was right.

We hooked up and had a blast. We clicked really well in a lot of different ways. I let my guard down a bit and slept over. Definitely worth it, as the fun continued into the morning, and I got a ride home out of the deal. It was so good that a few months later, when I had the opportunity to go there again, I did. I normally don’t do encores, but I was having a good time. I assumed he would tell his friends, even our mutual friends, about the hook up, and so did I. We were both single, and both seemed to want the same thing out of the interaction, so I felt pretty good about everything.

A few weeks later I was out at a bar with one of my girlfriends, and we bumped into some of Scott’s co-workers. No one we knew well, just some guys we recognized. In the interest of being polite and of getting acquainted, we went over to chat with them. We were all pretty drunk, but that can’t explain what happened next. The guys said they knew I had hooked up with Scott. Okay, yes, I did. They then asked my friend and I back to their apartment for sex. I was left with the distinct impression that whatever Scott communicated to his co-workers implied that I, and therefore my cohorts, were available to whoever wanted us. This couldn’t be further from the truth. As my friend Dee used to say, the distinction between a whore and a lady is discretion. Just because I’ve slept with lots of guys doesn’t mean I’d sleep with anyone. How rude. I was angry with, and disappointed in, Scott for putting out such information about my putting out.

A few months went, and I didn’t see anyone from that crowd. Then I bumped into a group of friends that included Scott at the Gefilte Fish Gala. Immediately Scott made his way to me, and seemed to want to start where we left off. I told him I was mad. He was surprised - the sort of relationship we engaged in didn’t normally involve such emotions. I described my interaction with his co-workers. He said that he was upset that they had treated me that way, and that they had treated my friend, who had nothing to do with anything, that way. He also said that he only told them he hooked up with me, and that he didn’t think I’d mind that. He said “I’d never tell anyone you were cheap and easy.”

Here is where I pause for effect, as I’m about to deliver what I consider to be my greatest spontaneous comeback.

“I’m definitely easy. I’m just not cheap. That I resent.”

Once the laughter stopped he bought me a drink, and we made up. He said he was sorry his co-workers made me feel cheap, and I said I was sorry I blamed him. But, when Scott asked me to go home with him that night, I just wasn’t feeling it. The curtain had been pulled back too far, and I’d seen that he could make me have an emotional response. That’s where I drew the line. I haven’t seen him since.

Summer of 2002 I was contacted by a guy from the Speeddating website.  He was attractive in a Dungeons & Dragons player kind of way.  Slightly overweight, long hair in a ponytail, not well-dressed, but somehow geeky and not frumpy in his initial impression.  The geeky thing has always appealed to me, so I began to correspond with him.  When I found out he was getting a PhD in Physics at Johns Hopkins he became that much more attractive to me.  I reasoned, correctly I still think, that it was impossible to have that credential without a certain minimum in intellectual power.  IQ points are definitely hot.  He invited me out for dinner, and I was looking forward to the date.

I drove to his house, we both got in my car, and we went for Indian food.  We finished pretty early, so we decided to go out to a tea house afterwards.  We definitely weren’t ready to say “goodnight”.  He told me that when he saw my picture online he thought I was “cute” but that in person he had decided to upgrade me to “attractive”.  It was flattering, especially because I was really impressed with this guy’s mind.  I was finding him attractive too.  I’m such a sucker for a big brain.

We got back in my car and decided to drive to a nearby park for a walk.  Right.  We walked about 20 yards before jumping each other.  The making out got pretty intense, and it definitely got to the point where I was afraid of horrifying anyone out for a stroll.  I was also a little afraid of getting arrested.  I suggested that we go back to someone’s place so we could do what we wanted without hesitation.  He thought my place would be best as he had roommates, so we got his car, and he followed me for the half-hour drive back to my apartment.  We went straight to bed, and I thought it was a really great time with a smart and interesting guy.  Then, the pillow talk started.

“So, how many guys have you been with?”

“Enough.”

“What’s that mean?”

“More than 3, less than 100.”

“Why those parameters?”

“Well, it’s enough guys that you don’t have to worry that my consent to sex implies anything other than sex, and it’s not so many guys that you should be afraid that I’m about to ask you for money.  It’s somewhere in the middle.”

“I bet I’ve been with more women than you have men.”

“Good for you.  Maybe you have.”

“I’ve been with over 50, if you count oral.”

“Who the fuck counts oral?  You definitely don’t want to know my numbers if I need to count oral.  As a matter of fact, I don’t think I know my numbers counting oral.”

“Right, if that were true, you’d want to tell me about it.”

“This isn’t a competition.  I’m not responding to this line of questioning anymore.”

We talked for another hour before he left, and despite the confrontation portion of the evening I thought it was a really good date.  We made plans for later that week.  He emailed several times, and then I never heard from him again.  Just like that.  I was disappointed at first, but as I thought about it I wondered if it was a viable relationship anyway.  I don’t think I could have wound up with someone who believes in strength in numbers, and who can’t let go of the need to win.

I met The Professor online, and he seemed like my type.  Intimidatingly bright and somewhat more serious than I was (or am), he immediately appealed to the intellectual side of me.  My socks weren’t knocked off, but I was interested.  I think I was flattered that he liked me.  He was a few years older than me, but light years more accomplished.  After Yale law he had practiced for a while, and then started teaching law.  It was clear to me that he was poised to get tenure at a reputable law school (and did shortly after we dated).  I was glad I could hold my own with him in conversations.  I knew he was smarter than me, but I never felt like I was getting behind.  That made me feel good about myself.

The Prof came across as a social person who was not born an extrovert.  He was more an introvert posing as an extrovert.  Someone who was quite bookish by nature, but who saw the value in good communication skills.  Before we met he became interested in improv comedy.  He took classes, and became part of a performance group.  I think he was more proud of his improv skills than his lawyer skills.  This makes sense to me.  The lawyer skills came to him pretty naturally, but he was proud of the comedy side of him because he had really worked for it.  Anyway, he was so proud of his abilities, that he took me to an improv comedy performance on our first date.  He participated so much that by the middle of the night the emcee cut him off, and said she wouldn’t take any more suggestions from him.  I didn’t participate.  I’m not an improv kind of girl.  I think the performance is funny, but that’s about it.  My humor is off-the-cuff and truly spontaneous.  Improv theater is a place people go to purposefully be spontaneous.  That’s not as funny to me.  But I had a good time, and agreed to subsequent dates.

The Prof was on the short side - about 5′7″.  I know this because we were eye-to-eye and I know how tall I am.  Despite all his education and reasoning skills, he has no idea how tall he is.  He stated more than once that he was 5′9″.  It said so on his online profile.  He brought it up on every date.  On one date we went to the Cosi on the north side of Dupont Circle for a bite after a movie.  He had resisted going there, but that was the only place I wanted to go and so he agreed.  When we got there, the waiter immediately recognized “us” from the night before.  The Prof’s nervous reaction told me that he had taken another woman there the night before - but I was seeing other people too so I made a joke about our twins dating each other.  That put The Professor in an insecure moment, and probably set up the following conversation about height:

“I must have a very large head.”

“What makes you say that?  It looks about the right size to me.”

“Well, you’d think that I’d wear a man’s regular length jacket, because I’m 5′9″ and the regulars fit men 5′8″ to 6′.  But I don’t, I wear a short.”

“Okay, so that just means you have a smaller torso.”

“Yeah, but then you’d think I’d have long legs.  But I don’t.  I have a 27″ inseam.  So if the height isn’t in my torso or my legs, I must have a really big head.”

silence

What I wanted to say was “you do, but only metaphorically.”  I still liked him though.  I saw the flaws, but he was smart and fun.  I wanted another date.

The next date proved to be the last.  Early that evening I told him that if we went downtown I wanted to stop by Crush.  At the time, Crush was a club in Adams Morgan, and I was good friends with the manager, Chip.  The Prof asked me how I knew Chip and I said that we had mutual friends, and had even dated for a while.  The Prof asked if Chip was a big guy, and I said yes, and that maybe we’d see him at some point.  Instead of going downtown, we went to see Barbershop.  As we left the movie I said “you know, if you’re curious what Chip looks like, he strongly resembles Ice Cube.  I watched The Prof’s face as he realized I had dated a black man.  He said nothing, so neither did I.

Later I went back to The Prof’s house.  We talked for a while.  About an hour had passed since the end of the movie.  Suddenly he says,

“Have you seen the research proving that black men’s penises are longer on average?  And it’s not just research.  When my high school football team used to play the mostly black team nearby and they changed together, the guys all told me it was true.”

“You realize that the outlying examples influence the average.  That in fact most everyone everywhere is about the same.  Plus, are we talking flacid or hard?  Flacid there’s a bigger difference.  It has to do with body temp vs. ambient air temp.  It’s hot in Africa.  Not so much in Russia.  It’s very Darwin.”

“Yeah, but let’s face it.  The black men are just bigger than we are.”

“Maybe, but I’ve seen tons of small, medium and large guys who are caucasian, black, asian, latin — whatever.  In every race I’ve seen a big range.”

I think this is when he started doing math in his head.  He never called me again.

I’ve written a lot about sexual morality because it’s an issue that is important to me.  I’ve also written about it because I think it is so misunderstood.  There are such contradictory messages.  Like the woman in my book club who told me that there is a big gap between what Catholic Priests say and what “real” Catholics do, the societal ideal and the reality of our lives don’t always go together.  There are also realities, universal realities, that have existed since the dawn of human society yet go unrecognized.  It’s hard to remember to analyze the ordinary.

Prostitution is widely recognized as the “oldest profession”.  Hey, when a man has fresh meat and all I have is a cooch, and it’s the middle of winter when nothing’s growing on the trees, it’s a pretty obvious trade.  Thus is born the first woman to fend for herself and her children by shaking her booty.  Clear heels probably weren’t a part of it back then.

Notice that men don’t really become prostitutes.  Though at some point, and in some culture, women must have had something worth getting.  Weren’t we the gatherers?  And if men are both eager for sex and in need of making a living it seems a logical source of income.  Two birds with one stone and all that.  There are some men in the business, but most of them are gay or dressed as women (transvestite or transexual I’m not really sure, but dressed as women either way).  So the question looms.  Why?

Senior year of college I took a class called Social Deviance.  The point was to examine mainstream society’s reaction to deviance.  When prostitution came up, the professor pointed out the gender distinction described above and posed the same question - the same “why”.  Kira, a feminist cheerleader of the sort only Barnard College could produce, blurted out from the front row “because men give it up for free.”  And they do.  Men don’t typically need to be wooed.  You don’t buy a man a watch so he’ll have sex with you.  Pretty much you just ask for sex.  There’s a pretty good return rate on that technique.

When a man has sex he gains power.  It’s the world according to American Pie.  Men always add 2 to their “number”.  It’s kind of like wearing pelts to show how many animals you’ve killed and rearranging them so they look more plentiful.  Men are conquerers, and gain strength in numbers.

Women give up something when they have sex.  Duh, that’s why it’s called “giving it up”.  When was the last time you heard that expression applied to a man?  Well, short of Kira’s Sociology class bombshell.  The American Pie rule for women is that women always subtract 2 from their number.  There’s value attributed to “innocence”.  I’m putting innocence in quotes because low numbers for vaginal intercourse is only perceived innocence.  If you’ve never had vaginal intercourse but you’ve given blow jobs to 100 guys you may be a virgin, but innocence left the building about 90 hummers ago.  Anyway, presumably female prostitutes are working up some pretty high numbers.  Subtracting 2 from the total wouldn’t make a big enough percentage drop to bring them back into societally acceptable ranges.  They’re losing status, and fast.  They have to be compensated.  Meat now comes cheap under plastic at Giant.  What they need is cash.

So what’s the difference?  Why is it more important in every society I can think of for women to be more chaste than men?  It’s the babies.  Everyone knows who the mother is, but aint no telling who the daddy could be.  DNA testing has only become available within my lifetime.  For most of human history - human history minus 20 years - female chastity was the only way to ensure that the kid inheriting the old wrinkled lord of the manor’s estate was the son of the lord of the manor, and not the son of the cobbler with the cute ass in the next village over.

Available, safe, effective and affordable birth control was the first step towards a fix.  That’s only been around for about 30 years.  DNA testing is another big step towards fixing the disparity.  I wonder how many generations it will take to reverse the stigma, and the illegality, of the first job at which women out earned their male counterparts.

For most of my time as a single woman in DC I was a serious party girl.  Every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, at a minimum, I was at the clubs.  I went to dance and meet guys, but mostly I went to drink with my friends.  I loved my Jack and Diet Coke.  I loved Heaven & Hell 80’s dance party.  The Front Page was the inevitable start and finish to most of my nights.  Rarely did I go anywhere that either the bartender the door guy or both didn’t immediately know my face.

By spring 2001 I was at a low point in my life.  I was unsuccessfully looking for a permanent job.  I had failed the bar exam in July 2000.  I looked like a blimp with floatation devices attached at my armpits.  The one good thing I was still doing was teaching Hebrew and Jewish Studies to 3rd graders every Sunday morning.  Don’t ask me how anyone thought that was a good idea.  If the parents had ANY concept what I did on the other six days of the week they would have chased me out of the building I’m sure.  But I loved those kids, and I loved teaching them, even when it was hard.  When getting abused by eight year olds is the high point of the week, you really do need a few drinks.

So one Saturday night I’m at Heaven & Hell with my girlfriends.  We’re all several drinks into the evening, so we’ve gotten very friendly with surrounding groups of random men.  One group of five guys has two single men among them.  They ask us to determine which of those two is the better looking one.  Between the two, I could see that there was an obvious choice, and then there was my choice.  The obvious choice was blond haired, blue eyed with a strong jaw and a good build.  Immediately Leslie points to the Ken doll and names him the winner.  So that would leave my choice - the rough around the edges guy with imperfect looks and a recently broken ego.  If ever there was a time to strike, this is it.

I start dancing with him, and use the guise of dancing to literally re-inflate his ego.  Necking ensues.  Against the wall grabbing under the clothes necking.  Suddenly it’s 2:30AM.  Last call.  The lights are about to come on, so this is my opening.  I ask him back to my place.  I had to teach Hebrew School at 9AM, but I figured I’d be done with him way before then.  He explains that while he wants to come over there is a technical complication.  His car is at his friend’s house in Gaithersburg, a good half hour drive from my apartment and almost an hour from where I teach, and he needs to get a ride to the car in the morning.  Immediately I’m thinking two things - even the liquor battered brain can do this analysis - 1) No way am I leaving my place at 7AM to drive this guy to his car and 2) Morning?  Is he kidding?  Unless his idea of morning is 3:30AM we’re not the least bit in synch.

So I said “no”.  He was shocked, and really so was I.  I expected him to change his tune and find a way to work it out, but he didn’t, so I was done.  I hung out with my friends a little longer, got oversized slices of sub-par pizza, and then hopped in a cab back to my place arriving around 3AM.  About five minutes later the phone rings.  Somewhere in all that groping cell phone numbers were exchanged.  It’s him asking if he can come over, right now.  He’s in the car with his four friends, and they can drop him off.  He’ll figure out how to get home later.

So, let me think.  What on earth could make this guy change his mind?  If he wanted me, he would have found a way to have me in the moment.  He would have brainstormed his way through and found something.  He would not have let me get away.  But…I did get away.  Oh right, peer pressure.  When he got in the car, his friends asked what happened.  Presumably he told them, and it became apparent that he was a man who had turned down free no-strings-attached sex because of transportation issues.  Calling me and trying to get his groove back on was the only way to, well, get his groove back on.

I’m a lot of things.  Those things include horny.  They do not include gullible.  Or prey.  He’d missed his chance.  I said “no thank you” and “goodbye” and felt sorry for the comments I knew his friends would make.  I cannot save those who miss their moment.

People get confused about what morals actually are.  Really, people get confused and think things are morals that I do not think are morals.  The example that has come up infinite numbers of times in my life is sex.  Sex, or lack thereof, is not a moral.  Virginity is not a moral.  There are things about sex and the decision whether to have sex that are morals.  For example, respect for yourself and others is a moral.  So is honesty.  Blowing some guy in the back corner of the VIP room is a decision.

Sometime in 2000 I first realized how much I disagreed with a lot of people on this issue.  I should probably have realized it before that, but I didn’t.  I knew a guy in law school who broke up with a girl because she had slept with “too many” guys.  Mind you, he had slept with more women than she had men, but he reasoned that she was younger and if she kept up the same pace she would exceed his numbers.  My first and only reaction was “so?”  What exactly would happen if a woman had more sexual partners than her man?  He said that a high number showed poor morals on her part.  Remember that at that moment his number was higher.  I remained confused.

In 2000 I first registered with JDate.  There was a chat room and I entered, not really knowing what I would find.  Generally I found a lot of people who wanted to talk about sex.  There were guys who would obsess about boobs and their penis size.  No one hesitated to ask the most intimate questions, especially because of the beautiful shield of anonymity.  One of the issues that came up was number of previous partners.  Several of the guys who said they had been with 20 or so women also said they wanted to marry a virgin.  Huh?  Why on earth would you demand what you can’t offer?  They said it would show how good her morals are.  Huh?  Sex isn’t a moral, it’s a decision.  I was still young enough to try to win my argument on this point with boneheads.  Eventually I gave up, but the reasoning goes something like this.  An adult woman can make her own decisions.

Any woman deciding whether to have sex with a potential partner is presented with several philosophies - those of her faith, her family and her culture - and her own impulses which may or may not be contradictory.  She can integrate all of those ideas and make a decision.  A choice (and for this piece we shall only deal with situations in which there is a choice).  She can look at a potential partner and say “I want to have sex with him tonight, and do not care if I never speak with him again.”  Or she can say “I do not want to have sex with that man.  I would like to wait for marriage, and as I am still unmarried I shall refrain.”  This is analytical.  There’s a decision tree.  Fuckable guy - yes or no?  Am I horny - yes or no?  Is he married or committed to someone else?  Am I?  Do I have access to convenient birth control?   Is the decision to have intercourse consistent with my self-image?  Will I be happy about this tomorrow?  And I’m sorry, but being drunk does not negate an active decision.  If you chose to get so drunk that you lost all sense of reason, that counts as a decision.  By the way, so does “letting” a man convince you to be intimate when you had already told yourself that’s not what you wanted.  As a matter of fact, that would be both you and the guy violating morals - the morals of self-respect and respect for others - respectively.

Anyone who wants to judge me can go right ahead.  I’m comfortable with who I am and with my choices.  I’m in a committed marriage with a loving husband.  The sex I had before I met Josh is a part of who I am and what brought me to him.  The sex I have now is my reward for having good morals, knowing myself, and respecting my partners.  One day before my 34th birthday I can say that the last 33 years were well spent.

After meeting The Wanderer in October of 2003 our relationship was so uncertain.  He assured me that we would see each other soon, but where?  And when?  He was driving around the country for the next few months and had no home-base.  I offered that if he got to a place where he might want to stop and visit for a few days I would fly in.  He decided on New Orleans.  I’d never been but always wanted to go, so I said “yes”.  TW suggested that if I paid for the flight he would pay for everything else.  I found a cheap flight for the week before Thanksgiving, and considered it a done deal.

TW always made a point of his financial stability.  He had already taken me to several pricey restaurants and bought me an expensive gift.  He talked, okay bragged, about his wine collection, his trips to Hawaii and his meals at French Laundry.  At that time I was struggling to get by and despite my education and travels, I was a little awed by him.  I was also very excited that he offered to provide a vacation that I otherwise would not have been able to afford.

I confirmed my plane tickets, and he said he would book a place for us to stay.  He asked if I wanted to stay at a campsite, a motel, a fancy hotel or a small bed and breakfast.  I told him that I didn’t care as long as we were together, and that was true, but in my head all I could think is “what is this a freakin’ JAP screening test?”  If we were making plans to go camping I wouldn’t have flinched, but I thought I had been invited on a romantic vacation.  The next day when TW called to tell me he had booked a B&B I should have been annoyed, but instead I was relieved.  I figured I had passed the test.

TW met me at the airport in New Orleans and we drove to the B&B.  We started to look for street parking, and immediately it was obvious that the entire area was parked in.  We were, after-all, on Bourbon Street just outside of the French Quarter.  He parked on a corner where there was a car’s length of space between the very edge of the block and the last parked car.  I said “you know, by law in most places you have to leave at least a car’s length of space at the corner”.  He argued with me that there wasn’t a sign.  I agreed, no sign, but insisted that it was not a legal spot.  The car remained in place and we went into the B&B for the night.

The next morning we had breakfast (fabulous by the way - I still remember that it was chocolate pumpkin bread and blueberry muffins) and then TW had arranged, as a surprise for me, for a masseuse to come and give me a full body massage.  I relaxed and enjoyed.  Then we went out to take a walk around Fauberge Marigny and the French Quarter.  When we set out walking we passed by the car, which had a parking ticket on the windshield.  I said, “See, I told you it wasn’t a space” and expected that I’d hear a groan, and something like “ugh, how annoying” and then it would never come up again.  I was very wrong.

The first complaint I heard was “This ticket isn’t from last night.  It’s from this morning during your massage.”  Was that supposed to make me feel guilty?  Would we have moved the car if not for the massage?  Did I somehow owe him money as my massage had cost him an extra $25 because of the ticket?  I didn’t get it, so I said “well, you knew it was an illegal spot, so that’s the cost of parking there”.  And that’s how I think about it.  I’ve gotten and paid parking tickets, all of them annoying, and all entirely because I parked somewhere I shouldn’t have.  Sometimes I purposefully parked there because there weren’t a lot of choices, and sometimes I didn’t know it was illegal, but either way I just paid my fine and forgot about it.  To say that TW had a different reaction is an understatement.  Not only did he stop talking to me for most of that morning (which I never really understood - was it because I was right, because I pointed out that I was right, or just because?) but months later when I started to tell this story as an amusing anecdote to some friends he cut me off and said that if I wanted to tell that story he was leaving and I could tell it without him around.  He put off paying the ticket, and even asked if I would pay it for him (which he later retracted, but still).  We were staying in a $150 a night room, and going to dinners that cost up to $200.  He allowed a $25 fine to add conflict to our relationship.  Really, I allowed it too, because I never spoke up and never said how it all made me feel.

We had some amazing times in New Orleans, and some other fights as well.  Mostly it was romantic and fun.  I came back elated and in love.  Being back in New Orleans last week reminded me of my first trip there.  I thought of all the things I wanted to do again, like Commander’s Palace, and all the things I didn’t.  I found myself thinking that I was glad I didn’t have a car.  Maybe I should have thought that even if I did have a car I still wouldn’t have had any conflict.  This time I brought a better driver.

I met Seth on Jdate and immediately should have known that we were not a match.  He was smart and good looking for sure, but he was very impressed with his own success.  He made a point of having a BMW.  He mentioned his house not to say something about it, but in a way that focused a lot on the fact that he was terribly young to own his own house.  Still, a man with intelligence and looks who has a car and a house sounds good in theory, so I thought that perhaps the ego was a function of first date anticipation.  That’s what I hoped anyway.

We went to Spices, a pan-Asian restaurant, on our first date.  We had a nice conversation, and found commonalities such as that he used to rent an apartment owned by my then employer.  I could tell he wasn’t attracted to me.  Actually, I could tell he liked my boobs but thought I was fat.  He didn’t say anything or even imply anything, but I’ve been dating long enough to know.  I watched his eyes dart across my body, judging me, and deciding what he could tolerate.  By the end of dinner I thought “That was nice, but I’ll never hear from him again.”  When we got back from dinner I found out that W had started a war, and so my mind was elsewhere.

The next week Seth sent me an email.  I didn’t save it, but it said something like “I don’t see us as having any relationship potential, but I had fun with you, and would like to see you again.”  Okay I thought, the boy wants sex.  That doesn’t sound bad.  Let’s review - I had fun with him, and he’s cute and smart.  As long as we have our cards on the table, and we certainly seem to, then why not.  Notice I was having some amnesia about knowing that this guy wasn’t terribly attracted to me.  Hey, I’m not perfect.  I have needs.  It happens.

So, we went to Cactus Cantina for dinner.  We got entrees and margaritas.  I have no tolerance whatsoever, so giving me tequila is really asking for drunk Janet to show up.  I know that, and yet there I sat sucking back the swirly margarita.  Entrees almost finished, and slushy un-straw-suckable remains of margarita at the bottom of the glass I went to the ladies room.  When I came back, I knew that if I wanted to say something to set the record straight, this was my moment.  If I had done so too soon, without the tequila, I would be branded a slut by the sort of people who walk around with such brands.  If I waited longer and there was physical contact I’d have missed the opportunity entirely.

 When I sat back down I said “so, talk to me about that email.”  He said he was glad I asked, and that he didn’t see me as someone he wanted to commit to, but that he thought we enjoyed each other’s company and that he’d like to “hang out” with me.  I paused, and pretended to think.  Really I was just creating dramatic timing.  Then I said “The way I see it we have two choices.  One is that we can leave here and you can drive me home…” (Here I paused again to make him think that was perhaps the desirable option) “And the other is going to require a lot more drinks.”

After several more margaritas we went back to my apartment.  He told me he didn’t want to have sex with me, only oral.  I was tipsy and in the mood to hook up, so I didn’t think about it much and just went with the flow.  We fooled around for a while, and then he left.  A few days later he stopped by after work to fool around again - no drinks, no dinner, just coming over for a blow-job.  It felt awkward.  I couldn’t tell why either one of us was there.  I felt like his choice to refrain from sex wasn’t about some sexual purity standard but about something else.  A way to reconcile his holier-than-thou standard with wanting to have someone else in the room during his orgasms?  It doesn’t matter.  The awkward feeling was the problem and I didn’t care why.  We talked about future plans, but it was half-hearted.

The next week he sent me an email that contained a lie.  He said that he wouldn’t be able to get together because his parents had been in town and he was feeling sick.  I told him to get better soon, and then be in touch if he liked.  This felt like the most polite way for us to say “thanks, but no thanks.”  No hard feelings, and if we bumped into each other no need for embarrassment.

About six months later I moved into a building owned by my employer in order to take advantage of a housing discount.  One week into living there I got mail addressed to Seth - I had his old address.

Women in my generation can’t complain that they weren’t given opportunities simply because they were women.  Every once in a while you still encounter some yahoo with an opinion, but the negative vibe has changed over the last 30 years.  When I was younger I can remember people saying that women might not be fit for certain career choices.  That because of some physical or psychological component, there were professions that should be reserved for men.  When I was a teenager, a board-game was released called “Careers for Girls”.  In this game, you could be a fashion designer, school teacher, or “supermom” – anything a little girl could ever want to be!  The board-game was pulled from the shelf after a few weeks, and I’m inclined to hunt down and collect copies the way some African-Americans collect lawn jockeys, but the fact that this game made it through R&D and test marketing in 1990 never fails to amaze me.

The negativity now is more of the should/shouldn’t variety.  It comes out in lovely expressions such as “HR is a good career for a woman.”  Or “women shouldn’t be lawyers because men don’t like women with so much educating.”  Both of those are in quotes because they are actual things that people have said to me.  The shouldn’ts are worse than the couldn’ts.  If you can’t do something, then the option isn’t on the table.  For example, I cannot be a successful runway model.  I don’t fit the sample sizes, and even if I did, I fall down in heels.  I can’t be a professional singer.  I have great pitch, but the quality of my voice just isn’t there.  If someone tells me that I can’t be a singer, I’m not going to go home and cry about it because it was never possible in the first place (and by the way, the American Idol hopefuls should consider that before losing their shit at Simon).  But when someone tells me what I should or should not do, I have a big bone to pick.  The bone gets way bigger if the reasoning is based strictly on the fact that I’m a woman.  Or that I may someday be a mother.  Because motherhood and career success seem to go well together.  I would think people would want to set that type of example for their children.  But the shouldn’t people are out there, and they want to convince you with math.

Here’s my favorite argument for why women with small children shouldn’t be in the workforce.  They, and in this case “they” are usually mothers who stay home and men with small penises, point out that sometimes the cost of daycare is greater than salary earned.  Women in their twenties and thirties still drink the Kool Aid on this one all the time.  The thing is that it’s just not possible to lose money by working.  These people either went to an economics class taught by Rush Limbaugh, or by the same people who are convinced that you can lose money by going up a tax bracket (and it’s possible Rush is selling that snake oil as well).  So, for those who are curious, here’s the breakdown of the numbers.

Let’s say the average woman in Montgomery County, Maryland is 35 years old making $50,000 annually before taxes, and getting a 5% raise every year.  She has two small children in full-time daycare at $350 per child per week, and pays for the family health insurance out of her paycheck.  She also contributes the maximum to her 401(k) and receives a company match.  This woman is married, and as her husband makes enough to support the household she does not “have” to work, but enjoys work and wants to continue.  Then, someone points out that for what she pays in daycare costs and taxes out of her paycheck, she is losing money by working and she should quit.  Should she?

The daycare costs for this family are $36,400 annually.  That’s probably about equal to this woman’s annual net income.  There’s a tax benefit to contributing  to the 401(k), paying healthcare premiums, and paying for dependent care, so at least she will not be taxed on the total amount.  But still, she’s definitely spending more than she’s making.

Look at the bigger picture.  Each year this woman is putting the maximum into her 401(k).  For 2007 that is $15,500.  There is an employer match.  Let’s say it’s 100% of the first 3% of salary.  That would be a extra $1,500 of benefit, for a total contribution of $17,000.  As our woman is 35, this will grow tax free for up to 35 more years.  In that time, $17,000 will be worth well over $200,000 assuming an 8% annual return.  Additionally, this woman gets an average of a 5% raise every year.  At that rate, in the (approximately) eight years it takes to raise two kids, spaced two to three years apart from birth to kindergarten, this woman will now earn $73,800.  And each of those years can easily be worth another $200,000 in her retirement account if she continues to contribute the maximum.  So, daycare for two children for eight years  costs $291,200.  Leaving the workforce costs $1,600,000 in retirement income plus the $23,800 difference in annual income assuming that this woman could return to the workforce at the same rate of pay she once had, and the compounding salary growth every year to come.  And, as someone who does hiring, I can tell you that there’s very little chance that this woman will be able to get $50,000 a year in eight years, even with cost of living adjustments taken into consideration.  The technology will have changed, the laws that influence her industry will have changed, and she will be out of practice at dealing with the every day demands of office work, which, although not harder than motherhood are just different.  If you want to stay home because that’s what you want, then stay home.  Just don’t try to convince me you’re making more money by not having a job.

I won’t go the whole way down the road towards the other problem with the quitting work model.  Even though I think it’s the biggest problem, it’s harder to show mathematically.  It is that without any economic power in a marriage you lose not only some of your power in the push and pull of everyday compromise, but ALL of your ability to know why you stay in your marriage.  If you are not economically viable as a single person, then your ability to leave, or even to insist on counseling, if the marriage goes into the crapper is zero.  So even if I could find a way to lose money by working, I’d still work every day of my life for the comfort of waking up knowing that I’m married because I want to be, and that I can change my mind at any time, even if I never do.  That peace of mind is worth millions.

There was a guy I met on JDate who seemed interesting.  It was fall of 2002.  I had just taken off a lot of weight, and was looking forward to having a broader section of the male population physically attracted to me.  I chatted online with Foreign Service guy for a while, and then we talked on the phone.  He asked me out to dinner, to Lebanese Taverna, after telling me he had worked in the Arab world with the State Department.  I wondered if he wanted to go to a Lebanese place so that he’d feel confident ordering, or so that he could show off his knowledge, but I figured that either way on a first date I could tolerate a little male insecurity, and Lebanese Taverna has good food, so it wasn’t an all bad outcome.

I took metro to the restaurant, and when I got there he was already at the bar.  His face was okay cute, but he was hippy.  (Note, when I told this story to my friend Leslie she said “Well, I dated that hippie a few years ago, and that was fun.”  So, for clarity, he was “hippy” not “a hippie”.  The man had woman hips.)  I decided to look past the hips, and focus on the nice smile, warm demeanor, and intelligent conversation.

We waited at the bar for a table, and then sat down.  By the time we ordered I felt really comfortable, and so I violated one of my “rules” and ordered a drink on a first date.  Just a glass of wine, but as I have no tolerance wine always goes to my head.  I figured it would allow me to relax and enjoy the fun a little.

After dinner we got in his car, and drove to a bar about a mile from my apartment.  We had another drink there.  I was really enjoying myself.  This guy was truly charming, and easy to be with.  We had similar opinions on politics, and got each others sense of humor.  So, when he leaned in to kiss me, I was excited.  Kissing on a romantic first date is pretty high up there in the range of possible outcomes when you email a guy on JDate.  Excellent result.  Then he leans in and says “come on, let’s get out of here.”

Now, anyone who knows me also knows that I was grateful DC is a transient city so that every two years or so the men I’ve already slept with rotate out, and a whole new crop rotate in.  But, you know, I really wanted to date this guy.  I “liked him” liked him.  I held, and still do hold, the belief that sex on the first date interferes with objective “getting to know you” time.  I wasn’t planning on waiting long, but figured any guy who “liked me” liked me back would want to get to know me before taking that jump too, and was probably capable of holding out til the third date as much as I was.  Being 28 years old, I knew what “get out of here” meant, but figured I’d make him spell it out.

I told him that if he meant “get out of here” as in go back to my place and have sex, then I wasn’t interested, and I would get a cab home.  But if he meant “get out of here” as in he wanted to give me a ride, then that would be fine.  He said that he had meant the latter, had not meant to imply anything, only wanted to be polite because it was getting late.  I knew this was a lie, but I let him get away with it figuring that he knew he had overstepped my boundary and was now backing away.  I could live with that.

Then we got in his car.  A few moments later he made a hand motion meant to mimic putting his hand into a woman’s vulva.  I asked what he thought he was doing, and he said that he could do that for me if I wanted.  I said I thought I had been perfectly clear, and to please just take me home.  That was when I knew that this was a disaster.  Would I had just gotten out of the car and walked home from there, but apparently I was a glutton for punishment.

When we pulled up to my building, he kissed me goodnight.  I kissed him back.  Then he suggests that if I’m enjoying the kissing, he can come upstairs and we can lie in bed together and just kiss.  It doesn’t have to go any further than kissing, and I must be okay with kissing as I’m doing that already.  Huh, is he kidding?  “This is not a negotiation.  And I am not a sixteen year old cheerleader.  If I invite a man to my bed, it is with the intention of having sex.  If I don’t want to have sex with you, then you’re not invited to my bed.  That simple.”

“But come on, you’ve got me all turned on with all that kissing.  How can you not invite me up now?”  Let me see…because you work for the state department yet stink at negotiation?  Because you’re trying to guilt me into sex, and that doesn’t work because, once again, I am not a sixteen year old cheerleader.  Because I’m an adult, and I’ve told you what I want.  Because by saying that I turned you on and then left you with nothing else you’re admitting that you lied when you said all you wanted to do is kiss.  If you want something different, then thanks for dinner and goodbye.

Funny that he never called me again.