When she was in her early teens, Daphne Plimace discovered make-up and how to make a mask with it, and she went to uncover more secrets as she continued to grow. She discovered hair dye, colored contacts, how certain cloths accentuate certain features and hide others. How some colors went together, how others didn't. Make-up of the body.
She discovered the manufactured odors of perfume and pit wax. She discovered face creams. She'd bleach her teeth. On a rigid schedule she'd go to a place downtown that had these huge human UV toasters and she'd hop in one for a measured amount of time like a bipedal Pop-Tart. She trimmed her eyebrows and lengthened her lashes and waxed her legs and vagina. She dieted ruthlessly. She exercised even more ruthlessly than she dieted when she betrayed her diet. When she was twenty, some friends of hers were getting breast reduction because their backs were in pain; she elected to get implants instead.
She was a magazine echo. She was a motherfucking centerfold.
When she was twenty, she met a man in a dance club one town over and he got her number. She punched it into his top-of-the-line cell phone for him with her fake colored fingernails. Three days later, he called her and asked her out to dinner. His name was Kenneth O'Conner.
After high school, Ken was out of sports, but he still went to the gym three days out of the week. He watched his diet and drank weight-gain. He put egg whites into a glass, put the glass to his mouth and threw his head back.
He worked on his hair every morning when fresh out of high school, using Gel and Moose and Hair-Spray, combs and brushes, hair-straighteners and hair-dryers, though he'd never admit it if you asked him. He tried so hard every morning to make his hair look good without making it look like he was trying so hard -- or hard at all, for that matter.
He brushed and gargled and flossed, sometimes he even bleached. He had strips to remove black-heads. He waxed his chest, trimmed his pubic hair. He shaved between his eyes to battle against the curse of the unibrow. He refused to leave the house, even for the mail, without a shower and change of cloths.
The job he had he hated, but he made damn good money and that provided him with a bachelor pad, a new car, a top-of-the-fucking-notch wardrobe and a wallet so fat it looked like he had a gargantuan goiter on his left ass-cheek. If he didn't remove it when he sat he always leaned to the right. He wore a wedding ring but wasn't married. He knew the right body language to use and knew what the body language he got in response really meant.
He puffed out his chest and made bold gestures, an alpha amidst betas with bleeding knees. He shot a gun at the range every Friday and everything for him was competition. Every win, every pat on the back, every promotion or look of admiration was to his ego like a hearty stroke was to his cock. He was rich, he was powerful and he was handsome. He could have anything he wanted save substance and his own system of values.
He picked her up at eight and they drove to the restaurant, the air in the car tainted with new-car dead-people smell, that leather scent and the distinct odor of trite, conventional conversation. They passed by fat people, poor people, ugly people, judging themselves against them. Feeling better about themselves. His growling car turned to a roar, passing by sputtering, coughing cars, hacking so loudly one half-expected them to soon shoot phlegm out their tailpipes.
Glancing to her left, she wondered if he was afraid of her, as he was tilted to the right. Taking a swift glance over to her after positioning the rear view, he wondered to himself whether those were real.
With reservations for two, they were brought to the table by the host and put those nifty napkins down below. They sat a great table at that expensive restaurant, sipping wine. Chit-chatting, as they say. He looked at the menu and then looked at her, mildly embarrassed about the rising monster beneath his lap-hanky. He had a face that looked as if it were chiseled out of granite, and his brown, yellowing reptile eyes swallowed her dark green doe-eyes. Her face, that mask, was smooth and screaming youthful.
He ordered duck. She got the salad and lit a cigarette. The empty conversation was flowing well, bubbling over with kind laughter on occasion, and then she dropped the bomb. "Why do you like me?" She said, breathing out a stream of smoke. "You do like me, don't you?"
"Absolutely," he said coolly. "I wouldn't have brought you here if I didn't."
"What does a date mean to you?" she asked. "I mean, what is it all about in your eyes?"
He sat back for that one, eyes darting to the side, showing all signs of chewing on that one for a moment. His eyes darted upward, he repositioned more comfortably in his chair, slouching down in it a bit, and then looked at her with a face that seemed to express a mix of curiosity and amusement.
"I'd say -- and this is strictly my whole take on it all -- that at least in the beginning, a date is about getting to know one another. It's about seeing if all the pieces fit. I don't mean to sound cold, but its kind of an experiment in a way, you know? Testing the theories of one another. You find someone you think you might be interested in, but its hard to go into anything on faith alone. Its not safe now, you know? The divorce rate speaks that blatantly. People can be fooled. So you go somewhere, preferably somewhere to talk, but public enough, too -- you know, surrounded by enough minimal activity to keep the pressure off, so it doesn't feel like you're on the spot. And then you get to know one another."
Her elbow now rested on the table, her chin resting in her palm, a thumb curled beside one cheek and the tips of her fingers playing with her lips as she watched him and seemed to absorb his words. "Great answer," she said.
He smiled, satisfied with what he said, satisfied with her response. "So what does it mean to you?"
"It's an unofficial payment for legal, potential prostitution," she said.
The duck arrived. And her salad. The server held out a bottle with two hands, one at the neck and one at the base, aiming the top of the bottle up and at an angle.
"More wine, madam?" He asked, and she moved her hand from her chin to the air, holding up just her thumb and forefinger, with just a few centimeters between them with a delightful, almost seductive narrowing of her eyes as she looked from between the thumb and finger and at the server. Eternally calm and collected, he filled her glass up just a pinch.
"Sir?" Said the server then to Kenneth, holding the bottle now in his vicinity.
"Yes, please," he said, and the server poured in just a pinch. "Oh no," he said, "please, fill the glass."
Hesitantly, it seemed -- and yet still calm and collected -- the server did just that, and then left.
Her hand returned to its original position, her eyes fixated on his again, but he was somehow different. Almost pale. As if some psychedelic drug in his system, formerly latent, had suddenly and unexpectedly kicked in with a vengeance and the whole of his reality had become surreal and he, far passed being merely full to the brim with suspicion, was now overflowing. He looked at the duck, half-expecting it to quack, then down at his lap, and scratched his temple quickly with a lone forefinger before looking back up at her.
"Now," he said, picking up the wine glass, and just before taking a hefty sip uttered in a failing voice, "you were saying... ?"
She seemed to start off in a place far different from where they stopped when she turned the tables on him with a question of her own, "What's prostitution?"
"Like, what do you mean, in my eyes?"
"No," she said, slowly moving her cigarette to her mouth, "it was a fairly straight and simple question. What is prostitution, in essence?"
"Paying a woman to have sex with you," he said.
"Or a man."
"Yes, or a man, in a woman's case," he said. "I don't know where you're going with this."
"That's because we're not there yet," she said, smiling slyly. "To me, dating just seems to be a guise for prostitution. Its not all that different, really, when you get down to it. I mean, on the streets, a guy sees a girl that he likes and approaches her, if the girl's comfortable with it she lets him pay her money so he can go home and, well, fuck the shit out of her."
"But I'm not paying you money," he said, "and my interest transcends that of sex."
"And I believe you're wrong on both accounts," she said, ashing. "You are paying me money. The difference is you're doing it through things. For instance, you brought me flowers, you're paying for dinner, I imagine. You're planning on taking me out on a night on the town and when its all said and done, you'll invite me over to your place, coming up with one reason or another. And then..." She let the last word hang with a high pitch, a drawn out `n' and a smooth, almost playful swaying of her head given a bit of wicked spice by her sly little smile.
"But not solely for reasons of, you know," he said.
"So," she said, lifting a trimmed brow, "you wouldn't want to fuck me? That's really what you're saying? You aren't entertaining the thought of bringing me home tonight?"
"I don't entertain the thought of you just being another notch in my belt, if that's what you're implying," he replied almost impulsively, and now with more aggression that he'd ever allow to slip to her before. "Do I think your physically attractive? Without a doubt. Would I mind a roll in the hay with you? Absolutely, to be honest. Is it my plan to have a one-night stand or a secure piece of ass? No. That's a gross misrepresentation. I see potential for a relationship."
He took a breath, looked down and shrugged. "I mean, we might be able to date for a few months, a year, maybe get married, have kids -- I don't know. That's what this is about. That's what dating is about, ascertaining whether two people are compatible. Its not prostitution. Prostitution is about sex and money. About whores advertising their goods on street corners and scumbags wanting to slice cock between their thighs."
She waved her hand at him. "That suit isn't advertising?"
She waved her hand at herself. "This dress isn't advertising? These fake breasts, this heavy make-up, this cut-and-dyed hair?"
She stuck out her thumb behind her without looking; it pointed out at the window, through which one could see the parking lot. "That fucking car of yours isn't advertisement? Your job, your morbidly obese wallet? That sculpted hair, that shaven face, that aftershave, deodorant, cologne? Your body language, mine -- that isn't advertisement?"
Her wicked smile broadened as she went on: "If it doesn't serve as advertisement, what drew you to me? What drew me to you? If I was four-hundred pounds with bags around my eyes and rags around my body and I reeked of my own shit and piss, you'd still want to take me out, right? To date me?" She let out a waterfall of laughter and shook her head in the negative, and slowly.
"You're a cute container," she said, "as sexy as they come, but I think your full to the brim with shit and you're lying if you tell me you can't smell it yourself."
"You are attractive and I noticed it; that's what inspired me to look deeper," he said. "Maybe it was shallow of me to be attracted to you by sight, but at some level we are animals, after all. We have instinctual desires. But it doesn't stop there, it goes deeper, because we're more than animals, too."
She laughs in a way that, in a normal context, you might have called sweetly, but he refused to give up.
"Its in the eyes, you know," he said. "Its in the body language of a girl. The tone of voice and something vaguely psychic, maybe. It reflects or indicates what might be below the surface, and that's what attracted me to you. It may be advertising, maybe I was wrong before, but its not just the body your advertising, but what's beneath. The deeper, truer you as reflected through your choice of cloths, your choice of the way you look."
"Even if ninety percent of me is store-bought?"
He gritted his teeth and pounded his fists on the table, making an inhale that sounded more like the hiss of a snake.
"You know, what your more than subtlety implying here is getting to me," he said. "As a matter of fact, its always gotten to me. People don't realize that, yeah, how a person looks is due to make-up or cloths and so on to a large degree, especially nowadays. True, fucking true. But its the style of cloths, how the girl applies the make-up, what she chooses to create herself as that implies who she is."
She was unmoved, and he hesitated.
"Okay," he said. "All right, its true to a certain degree. A lot of the time it turns out to be false advertisement, yeah. People might choose to wear cloths, wear make-up a certain way, try to make themselves more heavier or thinner or muscular or leaner or whatever to fit into a certain group, to emulate a particular stereotype, but in many cases how a person chooses to look is sincerely a reflection of who they are. A more adequate reflection than would be available if we were free of cloths, make-up and so on and left to look just as we would without technology. Cloths and so on, it helps us express outwardly who we are in the interior. `Shopping' for the right mate, then, is about seeing if its false advertising. You get me?"
"Yeah, I get you," she said. "But I still think dating is legal prostitution. And I know you don't accept that, but if it weren't for the desire for sex, would you seek commitment with and from a female?"
"Yes," he said. "I believe in love."
Her smile depleted to a half smile, and as her head tilted her brows stretched to the sides of her eyes.
"And how couldn't you?" She said it sympathetically, or at least in a convincing play of sympathy. "How couldn't you believe in love, really?"
He couldn't read her, so he just stared blankly and listened.
"Raised up on faerie tales where boy and girl live happily ever after, where the woman changes the beast or frog into a man, where the knight rescues the woman in distress or awakens the maiden from her slumber with a soft kiss. With couples being abusive to one another, with married people bored and lifeless, with the divorce rate so high, with all the infidelity, with the break-ups and new significant others without so much as a pause between."
He shook his head angrily as she went on.
"With women seeking out their Prince Charming and men seeking out their Playboy Centerfold, with women looking for their negligent or absent fathers in men and men looking for their control-hungry mothers in women, isn't it obvious? Love is everlasting. Love is grand and love is true."
Picking up his napkin from his lap and throwing it on his plate in frustration, he shook his head and said as calmly as he could, shaking his head back and fourth, "I don't think this is going to work out."
"Love is as transient as anything else," she said. "Its a drug without a rehabilitation program."
Angrily, face glowing red, he didn't ask for the check from the passing server, he demanded it. He had his wallet out, his card out, and he was ready.
"What you want is an image, a feeling, not a person," she said. "If you would be honest with yourself and me and just say you wanted to fuck me and at best possess me like an object, in the very least I could respect your honesty."
"I am being honest," he said. "I've explained it all."
"Evolutionary psychology has explained it all," she said. "Men want sex and beauty in a woman. Women want protection and resources from a man. Both want what they want for instinctive purposes; to propagate the species. To do their biological duty. Our sexual instincts are merely tools our genes use in order to reduce us to a road to their immortality. Love is an illusary byproduct of carnal desire. It is an epiphenomenon of the sex drive. A mask for the hungry, thirsty animal beneath, which would otherwise be unable to survive our self-delusion -- our belief that we are distinct from nature, enemies with nature, higher and opposed to the animal."
He just glared at her, then rolled his eyes. The server dropped the check -- calmly, of course -- bowed, and left.
"Its all about death and sex," she said. "Sex and money. Money and power. But in the end each one of us dies, never really an end in ourselves, merely a means for our genes to get as close to the infinite as they can. Temporary vehicles on their race to the end of time."
"It was nice meeting you," he sneered, "but I'll have to revise my theory."
And his eyes widened, his jaw dropped and his arms dove straight down in a V-shape as a shot suddenly rang out from beneath the table. She took the check, smiled seductively, took out her own credit card and said, "This one's on me."
She discovered the manufactured odors of perfume and pit wax. She discovered face creams. She'd bleach her teeth. On a rigid schedule she'd go to a place downtown that had these huge human UV toasters and she'd hop in one for a measured amount of time like a bipedal Pop-Tart. She trimmed her eyebrows and lengthened her lashes and waxed her legs and vagina. She dieted ruthlessly. She exercised even more ruthlessly than she dieted when she betrayed her diet. When she was twenty, some friends of hers were getting breast reduction because their backs were in pain; she elected to get implants instead.
She was a magazine echo. She was a motherfucking centerfold.
When she was twenty, she met a man in a dance club one town over and he got her number. She punched it into his top-of-the-line cell phone for him with her fake colored fingernails. Three days later, he called her and asked her out to dinner. His name was Kenneth O'Conner.
After high school, Ken was out of sports, but he still went to the gym three days out of the week. He watched his diet and drank weight-gain. He put egg whites into a glass, put the glass to his mouth and threw his head back.
He worked on his hair every morning when fresh out of high school, using Gel and Moose and Hair-Spray, combs and brushes, hair-straighteners and hair-dryers, though he'd never admit it if you asked him. He tried so hard every morning to make his hair look good without making it look like he was trying so hard -- or hard at all, for that matter.
He brushed and gargled and flossed, sometimes he even bleached. He had strips to remove black-heads. He waxed his chest, trimmed his pubic hair. He shaved between his eyes to battle against the curse of the unibrow. He refused to leave the house, even for the mail, without a shower and change of cloths.
The job he had he hated, but he made damn good money and that provided him with a bachelor pad, a new car, a top-of-the-fucking-notch wardrobe and a wallet so fat it looked like he had a gargantuan goiter on his left ass-cheek. If he didn't remove it when he sat he always leaned to the right. He wore a wedding ring but wasn't married. He knew the right body language to use and knew what the body language he got in response really meant.
He puffed out his chest and made bold gestures, an alpha amidst betas with bleeding knees. He shot a gun at the range every Friday and everything for him was competition. Every win, every pat on the back, every promotion or look of admiration was to his ego like a hearty stroke was to his cock. He was rich, he was powerful and he was handsome. He could have anything he wanted save substance and his own system of values.
He picked her up at eight and they drove to the restaurant, the air in the car tainted with new-car dead-people smell, that leather scent and the distinct odor of trite, conventional conversation. They passed by fat people, poor people, ugly people, judging themselves against them. Feeling better about themselves. His growling car turned to a roar, passing by sputtering, coughing cars, hacking so loudly one half-expected them to soon shoot phlegm out their tailpipes.
Glancing to her left, she wondered if he was afraid of her, as he was tilted to the right. Taking a swift glance over to her after positioning the rear view, he wondered to himself whether those were real.
With reservations for two, they were brought to the table by the host and put those nifty napkins down below. They sat a great table at that expensive restaurant, sipping wine. Chit-chatting, as they say. He looked at the menu and then looked at her, mildly embarrassed about the rising monster beneath his lap-hanky. He had a face that looked as if it were chiseled out of granite, and his brown, yellowing reptile eyes swallowed her dark green doe-eyes. Her face, that mask, was smooth and screaming youthful.
He ordered duck. She got the salad and lit a cigarette. The empty conversation was flowing well, bubbling over with kind laughter on occasion, and then she dropped the bomb. "Why do you like me?" She said, breathing out a stream of smoke. "You do like me, don't you?"
"Absolutely," he said coolly. "I wouldn't have brought you here if I didn't."
"What does a date mean to you?" she asked. "I mean, what is it all about in your eyes?"
He sat back for that one, eyes darting to the side, showing all signs of chewing on that one for a moment. His eyes darted upward, he repositioned more comfortably in his chair, slouching down in it a bit, and then looked at her with a face that seemed to express a mix of curiosity and amusement.
"I'd say -- and this is strictly my whole take on it all -- that at least in the beginning, a date is about getting to know one another. It's about seeing if all the pieces fit. I don't mean to sound cold, but its kind of an experiment in a way, you know? Testing the theories of one another. You find someone you think you might be interested in, but its hard to go into anything on faith alone. Its not safe now, you know? The divorce rate speaks that blatantly. People can be fooled. So you go somewhere, preferably somewhere to talk, but public enough, too -- you know, surrounded by enough minimal activity to keep the pressure off, so it doesn't feel like you're on the spot. And then you get to know one another."
Her elbow now rested on the table, her chin resting in her palm, a thumb curled beside one cheek and the tips of her fingers playing with her lips as she watched him and seemed to absorb his words. "Great answer," she said.
He smiled, satisfied with what he said, satisfied with her response. "So what does it mean to you?"
"It's an unofficial payment for legal, potential prostitution," she said.
The duck arrived. And her salad. The server held out a bottle with two hands, one at the neck and one at the base, aiming the top of the bottle up and at an angle.
"More wine, madam?" He asked, and she moved her hand from her chin to the air, holding up just her thumb and forefinger, with just a few centimeters between them with a delightful, almost seductive narrowing of her eyes as she looked from between the thumb and finger and at the server. Eternally calm and collected, he filled her glass up just a pinch.
"Sir?" Said the server then to Kenneth, holding the bottle now in his vicinity.
"Yes, please," he said, and the server poured in just a pinch. "Oh no," he said, "please, fill the glass."
Hesitantly, it seemed -- and yet still calm and collected -- the server did just that, and then left.
Her hand returned to its original position, her eyes fixated on his again, but he was somehow different. Almost pale. As if some psychedelic drug in his system, formerly latent, had suddenly and unexpectedly kicked in with a vengeance and the whole of his reality had become surreal and he, far passed being merely full to the brim with suspicion, was now overflowing. He looked at the duck, half-expecting it to quack, then down at his lap, and scratched his temple quickly with a lone forefinger before looking back up at her.
"Now," he said, picking up the wine glass, and just before taking a hefty sip uttered in a failing voice, "you were saying... ?"
She seemed to start off in a place far different from where they stopped when she turned the tables on him with a question of her own, "What's prostitution?"
"Like, what do you mean, in my eyes?"
"No," she said, slowly moving her cigarette to her mouth, "it was a fairly straight and simple question. What is prostitution, in essence?"
"Paying a woman to have sex with you," he said.
"Or a man."
"Yes, or a man, in a woman's case," he said. "I don't know where you're going with this."
"That's because we're not there yet," she said, smiling slyly. "To me, dating just seems to be a guise for prostitution. Its not all that different, really, when you get down to it. I mean, on the streets, a guy sees a girl that he likes and approaches her, if the girl's comfortable with it she lets him pay her money so he can go home and, well, fuck the shit out of her."
"But I'm not paying you money," he said, "and my interest transcends that of sex."
"And I believe you're wrong on both accounts," she said, ashing. "You are paying me money. The difference is you're doing it through things. For instance, you brought me flowers, you're paying for dinner, I imagine. You're planning on taking me out on a night on the town and when its all said and done, you'll invite me over to your place, coming up with one reason or another. And then..." She let the last word hang with a high pitch, a drawn out `n' and a smooth, almost playful swaying of her head given a bit of wicked spice by her sly little smile.
"But not solely for reasons of, you know," he said.
"So," she said, lifting a trimmed brow, "you wouldn't want to fuck me? That's really what you're saying? You aren't entertaining the thought of bringing me home tonight?"
"I don't entertain the thought of you just being another notch in my belt, if that's what you're implying," he replied almost impulsively, and now with more aggression that he'd ever allow to slip to her before. "Do I think your physically attractive? Without a doubt. Would I mind a roll in the hay with you? Absolutely, to be honest. Is it my plan to have a one-night stand or a secure piece of ass? No. That's a gross misrepresentation. I see potential for a relationship."
He took a breath, looked down and shrugged. "I mean, we might be able to date for a few months, a year, maybe get married, have kids -- I don't know. That's what this is about. That's what dating is about, ascertaining whether two people are compatible. Its not prostitution. Prostitution is about sex and money. About whores advertising their goods on street corners and scumbags wanting to slice cock between their thighs."
She waved her hand at him. "That suit isn't advertising?"
She waved her hand at herself. "This dress isn't advertising? These fake breasts, this heavy make-up, this cut-and-dyed hair?"
She stuck out her thumb behind her without looking; it pointed out at the window, through which one could see the parking lot. "That fucking car of yours isn't advertisement? Your job, your morbidly obese wallet? That sculpted hair, that shaven face, that aftershave, deodorant, cologne? Your body language, mine -- that isn't advertisement?"
Her wicked smile broadened as she went on: "If it doesn't serve as advertisement, what drew you to me? What drew me to you? If I was four-hundred pounds with bags around my eyes and rags around my body and I reeked of my own shit and piss, you'd still want to take me out, right? To date me?" She let out a waterfall of laughter and shook her head in the negative, and slowly.
"You're a cute container," she said, "as sexy as they come, but I think your full to the brim with shit and you're lying if you tell me you can't smell it yourself."
"You are attractive and I noticed it; that's what inspired me to look deeper," he said. "Maybe it was shallow of me to be attracted to you by sight, but at some level we are animals, after all. We have instinctual desires. But it doesn't stop there, it goes deeper, because we're more than animals, too."
She laughs in a way that, in a normal context, you might have called sweetly, but he refused to give up.
"Its in the eyes, you know," he said. "Its in the body language of a girl. The tone of voice and something vaguely psychic, maybe. It reflects or indicates what might be below the surface, and that's what attracted me to you. It may be advertising, maybe I was wrong before, but its not just the body your advertising, but what's beneath. The deeper, truer you as reflected through your choice of cloths, your choice of the way you look."
"Even if ninety percent of me is store-bought?"
He gritted his teeth and pounded his fists on the table, making an inhale that sounded more like the hiss of a snake.
"You know, what your more than subtlety implying here is getting to me," he said. "As a matter of fact, its always gotten to me. People don't realize that, yeah, how a person looks is due to make-up or cloths and so on to a large degree, especially nowadays. True, fucking true. But its the style of cloths, how the girl applies the make-up, what she chooses to create herself as that implies who she is."
She was unmoved, and he hesitated.
"Okay," he said. "All right, its true to a certain degree. A lot of the time it turns out to be false advertisement, yeah. People might choose to wear cloths, wear make-up a certain way, try to make themselves more heavier or thinner or muscular or leaner or whatever to fit into a certain group, to emulate a particular stereotype, but in many cases how a person chooses to look is sincerely a reflection of who they are. A more adequate reflection than would be available if we were free of cloths, make-up and so on and left to look just as we would without technology. Cloths and so on, it helps us express outwardly who we are in the interior. `Shopping' for the right mate, then, is about seeing if its false advertising. You get me?"
"Yeah, I get you," she said. "But I still think dating is legal prostitution. And I know you don't accept that, but if it weren't for the desire for sex, would you seek commitment with and from a female?"
"Yes," he said. "I believe in love."
Her smile depleted to a half smile, and as her head tilted her brows stretched to the sides of her eyes.
"And how couldn't you?" She said it sympathetically, or at least in a convincing play of sympathy. "How couldn't you believe in love, really?"
He couldn't read her, so he just stared blankly and listened.
"Raised up on faerie tales where boy and girl live happily ever after, where the woman changes the beast or frog into a man, where the knight rescues the woman in distress or awakens the maiden from her slumber with a soft kiss. With couples being abusive to one another, with married people bored and lifeless, with the divorce rate so high, with all the infidelity, with the break-ups and new significant others without so much as a pause between."
He shook his head angrily as she went on.
"With women seeking out their Prince Charming and men seeking out their Playboy Centerfold, with women looking for their negligent or absent fathers in men and men looking for their control-hungry mothers in women, isn't it obvious? Love is everlasting. Love is grand and love is true."
Picking up his napkin from his lap and throwing it on his plate in frustration, he shook his head and said as calmly as he could, shaking his head back and fourth, "I don't think this is going to work out."
"Love is as transient as anything else," she said. "Its a drug without a rehabilitation program."
Angrily, face glowing red, he didn't ask for the check from the passing server, he demanded it. He had his wallet out, his card out, and he was ready.
"What you want is an image, a feeling, not a person," she said. "If you would be honest with yourself and me and just say you wanted to fuck me and at best possess me like an object, in the very least I could respect your honesty."
"I am being honest," he said. "I've explained it all."
"Evolutionary psychology has explained it all," she said. "Men want sex and beauty in a woman. Women want protection and resources from a man. Both want what they want for instinctive purposes; to propagate the species. To do their biological duty. Our sexual instincts are merely tools our genes use in order to reduce us to a road to their immortality. Love is an illusary byproduct of carnal desire. It is an epiphenomenon of the sex drive. A mask for the hungry, thirsty animal beneath, which would otherwise be unable to survive our self-delusion -- our belief that we are distinct from nature, enemies with nature, higher and opposed to the animal."
He just glared at her, then rolled his eyes. The server dropped the check -- calmly, of course -- bowed, and left.
"Its all about death and sex," she said. "Sex and money. Money and power. But in the end each one of us dies, never really an end in ourselves, merely a means for our genes to get as close to the infinite as they can. Temporary vehicles on their race to the end of time."
"It was nice meeting you," he sneered, "but I'll have to revise my theory."
And his eyes widened, his jaw dropped and his arms dove straight down in a V-shape as a shot suddenly rang out from beneath the table. She took the check, smiled seductively, took out her own credit card and said, "This one's on me."
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