the frantic diary pace continues

entry number 10 for today. is that too many? heh heh. yes, the answer is a resounding yes. especially because it means that i spent an inordinate amount of time typing here and not, crucially, on my proposal. hmph.

anyway, the news of the evening is that martin wrote back (and there was much rejoicing). i think a pub crawl is on the agenda for saturday evening. now the question is whether to go back down to south street, or to venture into old city. really, this is not an earth-shaking question. either way, we will find plenty of beverages worth consuming.

the other news of the evening is that i'm still at work. partly because i still have loads to do on my proposal that i foolishly (flogged! i must be flogged!) told j.t. (my advisor) i'd give him on friday so he could read it on vacation next week (i'm sure there are benefits to him reading it while on vacation, though--a happy j.t. leads to a happy grade? perchance?). i'm also still at work because it's cooooooool here. that's right, folks, the big evil university didn't turn off the air conditioning here! yay! and there was even more rejoicing!

so the note from martin (in response to this note from me) said, among other things, this: "you don't have to buy me lunch or anything, we can go for a beer and have a laugh." this brought back to the surface some thoughts about societal sex roles and early dates.

in western society, men have been socialized to take the lead early in relationships: men are more likely to approach women and ask them out, men are more likely to pay for entertainment on early dates, men are more likely to initiate intimacy... there are consequences to these societal expectations. for example, because men are usually the ones to do the asking out (at least, at first), if a woman and a man are acquainted and available, and the man has not asked the woman out, the woman (i think) can be fairly certain that he is not interested, yes? that is, excepting some men who are shy/insecure, or other special situations (e.g. man didn't realize woman was available, woman gave out "uninterested" vibes, man misread signals).

since i've had a number of first dates lately, i've been faced repeatedly with the quandry of what to do when the check comes. on the one hand, i'm of the view "whoever asks, pays." thus, since the man usually does the first asking, he'll also do the first paying (but, women should feel just as comfortable doing the asking and paying). on the other hand, and perhaps this is because i'm poor (graduate student, you know--barely above poverty line), i don't like having other people pay for things that i consume. if the tables were reversed, i know it would be a hardship, at least a little, for *me* to pay for someone else's drinks/food/movie/whatever. however, i've been told, by men no less, that men (some men, at least) *enjoy* taking their date out (at least, early on in the relationship). some sort of manly thing, to prove ability to "provide" for their date (this is what an evolutionary psychologist would say, anyhow (on a side note, evolutionary psychology/evolutionary biology is very interesting. tries to explain why we behave the way we do, esp. with regard to mating and breeding. does a pretty damn good job of it, too, i might add)). so, to (finally!) get to the point, i'm never quite sure whether i should offer to pay, or at least make some sort of feeble gesture in that direction. i usually give the guy time after the check comes, to see if he makes a move for it. if he doesn't, then i'll start to get out my wallet. so far, he's always waved me away (and, because i'm poor, this is welcome). however, i still feel like i'm taking charity. well, partly taking charity and partly being objectified. i'm certainly getting the same enjoyment from his company that he's (presumably) getting from mine, so there's no reason why *he* should pay the whole bill. i try to get around this whole mess by letting the guy pay on the first date, then asking him out later, under the above-mentioned rule-of-thumb "whoever asks, pays." but the whole thing makes me uncomfortable, to be honest, and guys don't always easily *let* me do the asking. like martin; he says "you don't have to buy me lunch or anything," and that's right, i don't. but neither does he. he's confused me (and it's not just martin that has done this)--i don't know, now, whether he'll be offended if i try to pay. doesn't help that he's british--i don't know if there a cultural difference on top of everything else, here.

this was one of the great things about being with john. we were going to be married. we were committed. long-term. it didn't matter who paid when we went out (though he did mostly, since he made more than i did, and had fewer expenses), because we lived together. we were a household. he bought groceries, i cleaned the bathroom. he cleaned the guinea pig cage, i made furniture. he did the laundry, i did the dishes. we were past these silly dating games. too bad we're broken up.

this diary will absolutely NOT be updated this much tomorrow. i'm embarrassed at myself.