Money speaks to everyone differently. Yammering on like a spoiled child in a toy store, it's incessant to some but others stay so deaf to the sound they miss old friends paying on their behalf. Failing to tip may express dissatisfaction with your delayed refill but it also might say cheap. That coat of arms on the hood of her car screams of class and values and we are all listening whether or not we know. Because in Los Angeles Armani brushes shoulders with Salvation Army (typically at Starbucks), wealth doesn't always divide. We find ourselves fraternizing with people of various means and dating makes no exception.
Courtship has a history. Like most histories hers is dominated by a masculine agenda and for better or worse finds herself mired in social norms imbalancing the relationship from the beginning. Upon meeting a person who is strange in every sense of the term except by liquor blurred sight, how can one expect to shell out exorbitant bar fees to cover their tab? For this reason many find the simple request to "buy you a drink" pregnant with coital expectation. What then does it mean to make small monetary sacrifices early in a relationship and how does this reflect a person's own perceived prosperity as well as their concept of gender roles?
Brought together by Packer football despite local roots, I thought we'd have plenty to talk about. Blocks away from dinner and still slinging yes and no answers she refused my offer to dodge conversation over a game of darts. Somewhere Aziz watched me struggle understanding she never intended to split the bill in the first place and if I'd recommended sushi maybe I'd have found myself in another vacuous game of twenty questions. The outing cost me more than the price of her gnocchi or a marked up bottle of Trader Joes select. Where there's someone leveraging an indecent proposal there's another looking for a free meal and hopefully there will be some wine left when you find out because pride is a rough swallow.
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