I went out with Dave the Pharmaceutical Salesman last Friday as planned. He was nice, and the date wasn’t terrible.

“No really. It was okay,” I said to my sister on the phone later that evening.

“‘Okay’ in the dating world is just as bad as awful. Either way you've wasted your time.”

“I didn’t waste my time,” I interrupted, “It was good practice, and the conversation wasn’t awkward or anything. The restaurant was fantastic.”

“Where’d you guys go again?”

“Republic. It’s that new sushi place downtown that’s owned by those people that own Rise and Shine.”

“So what was bad about it. Was he ugly?”

“Be nice, Edith Ann.”

“I hate it when you call me that.”

“That’s your name.”

“I go by Edie. So then. He was ugly?”

“Not at all. He had really nice blue eyes. And I liked the way he was built. He was imposing in a way that made you feel kind of safe, but not in the over the top body builder sort of way. Do you know what I mean?”

“No,” she responded dismissively, “So what was wrong?”

I mulled this over for several seconds.

“He kind of seemed…”

“Seemed, what?”

“I guess he seemed kind of self-centered.”

“In what way?”

“Well. We ordered a bottle of champagne at the beginning of dinner because that’s what the waiter suggested. Then halfway through the meal, Dan suddenly decided we should order a bottle of sake.”

I paused to take a sip of the mint tea I’d just poured into a coffee mug and burned the roof of my mouth.

“Okay,” Edie said encouragingly.

“So I told him that I’d only really tried sake once, and I hadn’t liked it at the time.”

“I was there. You thought it tasted like vodka mixed with cigarette ashes.”

“It was nasty,” I agreed, “But I said that I’d be willing to try it again. So the waiter gave us a few suggestions that were of the lighter/fruitier variety of sake’s because he thought I would like those better than the stronger flavored ones.”

“Okay.”

“Well. Dan insisted that we get a bottle of the stronger flavored one.”

“That’s kind of rude.”

“I thought so too. Then when the check came. I picked it up and offered to pay for dinner…and he let me.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“It’s not that I have a problem with buying dinner,” I interrupted, “I mean I know that the guy always paying for the first date is an outdated tradition, and that I probably make just as much money as he does, but after the whole sake thing. It just kind of seemed...rude. And he didn’t even argue for a second. He just let me pay. And, again, I didn’t mind paying, but I kind of did. Do you know what I mean?”

“Who picked the restaurant?”

“He did.”

“He should've paid. My rule is – if you pick the restaurant, you pay for dinner.”

“I don’t know,” I rambled, “is there some sort of dating etiquette guide out there that I could refer to? Maybe if he’d just argued a little.”

“I think he should have insisted on paying for the dinner.”

We chatted idly about family stuff for a few minutes longer before getting off the phone. That Saturday, I felt really tired so I didn’t go out. In fact, I lazed around and watched Saturday Night Live for the first time in like six years.

***
This weekend I went out to dinner with these two women that live next door. They’re both single, and we went to a dive Mexican restaurant down the street. We stayed for a long time after we were finished eating and drank from what seemed like a bottomless pitcher of margarita. Then our waitress insisted we all do shots of tequila. It was a lot of fun, and we all kept asking each other why we hadn’t hung out before.

Maybe I should take a break from dating.