When we met in the Senate Gallery she said she was a reporter from California. She had the most perfect figure, couldn’t have weighed more than 105 lbs, and an endearing congenial disposition to match it. So I casually mentioned if she liked to come to a party with some of my friends and she said yes. When I gave her my card I had hoped she would call, but soon became so busy I forgot to keep hoping.

I was exhausted after 2 consecutive evenings of partying, having missed her previous messages and playing phone tag when we finally spoke live I figured I just had to see her cause she told me it was her last night in town, my exhaustion and 15 page national security paper be damned. After a tiring afternoon of class necessitated Micro Military analysis, (branch by branch) I left my friend’s House east of Annapolis and drove to Alexandria to pick up that beautiful nice lady from California. I had told her ahead of time I would not be drinking so as to preserve my liver from it’s Mickey Mantle collision course.  Of course I had to stop home first for a fresh layer of deodorant and cologne, wash the car and otherwise make myself presentable. When I picked her up at Van Dorn metro station I asked her if she would rather engage me in miniature golf or go for an adventurous hike. (There was an hour left of sunlight at best)  she chose the hike and before I knew it I had driven us 20 miles south to Prince William Forest State Park, and we were both lost together, hiking happily in the dark.

After leading us out of the Forest I suggest we get some theatre tickets at the cinema before dinner. She says she will go get them, and I wait with my car in handicapped spaces, hoping people do not arrive impatiently with handicapped faces. Suddenly she returns after less than 2 minutes and announces, “The line is too long.” To which I respond” So I guess you want me to go get the tickets then.” When she smiles in the affirmative my worst fears are confirmed. She is probably going to expect me to pay for dinner, and maybe afterwards we can get her a Swedish tissue massage and facial exfoliation while she’s still with me. After waiting in line for 10 minutes and spending $18.00 on 2 movie tickets I return to the car and drive us to The Macaroni Grill.

We continue having a great time together, and wouldn’t you know it, it seems that she likes me cause we are feeding each other and judging from the close contact it would appear the pretty lady from the land of Johnny Taliban is most at ease. Previous history tells me that it’s going to be a great night, when the interaction is this natural and spontaneous. Also we are laughing, touching, more feeding, I could not choreograph a more desirable social situation. THEN she tells me about some “jerk” in California who paid for 3 expensive dinner dates then tried to take her to Vegas for the weekend and she pridefulyl refused because “he thought I owed him sex.”  She was expecting me to say what a jerk this guy was and instead I observed, “Why did you keep letting him pick up the check and continue to sexually frustrate this poor unsuspecting sap?”

Then she tells me how equal she is and how she doesn’t owe a man anything and for a moment I thought she was rehearsing an “oppression narrative” from a lifetime movie premier. After she shared more of her hypocritically inconsistent thoughts of Egalitarian convictions, at this same moment the check arrives and she suddenly freezes worse than

Dan Quayle in a debate or spelling bee. Of course she is expecting me to PAY FOR EVERYTHING and normally I might be a sap and do it, but it occurs to me; I am on top of the world as far as my love life is concerned, taking a stand here will certainly blow it tonight but so what, I am exhausted anyways and someone should call this woman on her hypocritical BS! Also, I am very poor right now, just got the Mercedes out of the shop this morning and the repairs and regular bills are killing me, my job doesn’t pay shit, she is babbling on about equality yet expects me to pay for everything? What the???

At this point I turn to her with a mischievous grin and slowly say;” You were going on about Equality, and all of a sudden when the check came you froze up faster than a “Taliban Girl.” Why are you so hesitant to demonstrate your Egalitarian convictions?

When I say this she starts to drown in righteous indignation and I almost picked up the check, then I thought about it and put it back down in front of me, looked right at her and said  ”you act as if you are really offended. I hope you aren’t too traumatized by this turn of events.” At which point she said indignantly” FINE I’LL GET THE CHECK!”

As we are walking out she starts giving me a hard time and I say “look it you must make at least double my salary, I drove all over hell and creation to pick you up, then $18 on the movies and you basically only believe in equality when it is most personally convenient. She launches into some tirade about how “she always hears about her salary” and how she is “sick of talking about her salary” is was as if her salary was the Mt. St Helens of her insecure subconscious and I had unknowingly just shifted it from a dormant state to a full blown explosion. Of course being stubborn myself I told her “don’t blame me for your own insecurities, you were obviously quite insecure about this issue long before you ever met me, and will continue to be so long after this evening has concluded.”

So of course upon hearing this she goes into denial and spends the next 10 minutes in a hyper ridiculously irrationally argumentative state constantly insisting that she is not hung up on or insecure about her salary. But of course the longer she spends harping on the issue the more transparently self-evident Stevie Wonder could see how OBVIOUSLY insecure she was on this issue. So just as we are about to park and go into the movies she defiantly declares, “I don’t want to see the movie TAKE ME HOME!” Well I politely remind her that she had agreed to see the movie, and that’s why I bought us the tickets and would she please just see the movie and then I’ll take her straight to her hotel. When she defiantly declares again “no take me home” I oblige with a 360 that would make Bo and Luke Duke most proud. When she continues to argue the irrefutable, I point out “isn’t it just like a woman to change her mind on a whim, not keep her word, and act emotionally unstable cause the guy didn’t kiss her ass when she was acting like a jerk?” Of course I don’t have to illuminate for you her less than magnanimous reply but sufficed it to say this was shaping up to be one for the history books.

Finally after listening to her recount why I was wrong to not pay, and how wrong I was on everything she asks that we not argue about this anymore. After 30 seconds of silence she goes back to arguing her same irrational explanations and at this point I tell her” If you think I am going to sit here and listen to you keep verbally jabbing me when your

Cheap selfish ass expected another ATM machine you got another thing coming California! Furthermore if you don’t heed your own advice and stop verbally jabbing me by provoking this argument I will not hesitate to verbally turn into Ike Turner who will verbally knock you on your ass!!!

At this point she finally shuts up and I turn up some lascivious Van Halen with David Lee Roth about to approach the crescendo climax of a Bacchanalian vocal riff. At this point I join in spontaneously serenading her with Mr. Roth and she begins to smile for the first time in a long time. We sing Van Halen together driving fast on 95 north bound and I am thinking how much I can’t wait to drop this woman off, get rid of her and get home, where I can finally be alone with some wonderful Turner Classic movies.

Upon arriving at her very nice Hotel I get out and run around the front, open her door for her and for some reason when she goes to give me a goodbye hug I lift up her whole little body and sling it over my right shoulder, as if it were one of those 99 cents heads of lettuce at your grocery store. I spin her around at least a dozen times and when she laughingly protests I reverse direction and spin her around in a circle counterclockwise.

When I finally put her down I go to kiss her on the cheek and somehow our lips meet for a series of brief but recurring kisses. She smiles and says nothing, just looks at me with the most beautiful face and seemingly mischievous grin. Wanting to end things on a high note, I smiled back and said;” Call me next time your in town, and I’ll take you out to dinner!” She said would love to and I said; “ok but you’re getting the drinks and it WILL cost you more!” . As I drive back over the Potomac, back to the heart of where General Lee comprised his troops for the 29 infantry division of Northern Virginia, I called her voice mail and left a polite message thanking her for dinner.

If I possessed a cushy lobbying job like some of my friends perhaps I would have been her ATM machine tonight, in which case God only knows how dramatically different events may have turned out. But as it stands there is a certain contagious confidence in knowing that you might’ve had a great night, but threw it all away on a PRINCIPLE! A principle which if more men had the guts to act on, things might not be quite as “messed up” as our enlightened emasculating modern times would ascribe us!