The Soho dandy Sebastian Horsely, who reputedly slept with over a thousand prostitutes, once said, 'the difference between sex for money and sex for free is sex for money usually ends up costing you a lot less.'
His sentiments were echoed this week by 'online dating expert' Dawson Stone, who according to his bio has been on 'well over 1,000 first dates' (probably not many second dates though). His article 'Cost Per Orgasm' broke down relationships into a financial formula (form an orderly queue, ladies) to see "what sex is really costing you".
The fact that anyone takes relationship advice from a man who prices up his potential girlfriends like a loft extension is beyond belief, but through his muggy cloud of poisonous misogyny does lie an issue that plays on the minds of a lot of blokes.
READ MORE: Cost-Per-Orgasm. How Not To Calculate The Value Of A Date
There are no set rules for who’s supposed to pay on a date - we're all different. But if a guy insists on buying you dinner it's not because we think you're too busy watching The Notebook and sewing sequins onto pictures of kittens to earn your own money, and we don't expect you to bend over in the carpark because you got an extra side of chips 'for the table' and didn't even bloody eat any. It's usually just because we like you, we want you to think of us as considerate, and it's good to do kind things for people you like.
Having said that....
A few years ago, I met a woman through work, and asked her for a drink. She obliged, so we went for cocktails in Soho. I'm not talking a jug of Woo Woo and two straws in the Montagu Pyke either, I'm talking drinks that cost more than a peak time 1-6 travelcard. I bought the first round. Then the second. Then the third. It didn't take long for me to cotton on that she was the traditional type and liked the boy to pay on the first date, which to be honest I didn't have a problem with. I didn't think of the drinks as 'hand job tokens', nor did I wink suggestively and nod to my groin as she sipped her liquid symbols of matriarchal power. I didn’t really think about it much.
The thought of asking my date to dust the cobwebs off her purse and at least offer a token gesture of payment was out of the question.
For the second date we went to lunch. She chose the venue, yet still managed to get lost and arrive half hour late. No problem, but as the bill came I became aware that my Nandos card would hold no sway in a place like this and it was going to cost me. The thought of asking my date to dust the cobwebs off her purse and at least offer a token gesture of payment was out of the question. I may have been feeling the pinch by now, but like many other young men, money was a tricky subject and I didn’t want to embarrass her or myself, so I just put up and shut up.
By the third date I was starting to think I was being filmed for an episode of The Real Hustle. I hope I've made clear that I in no way did I expect my paying for her food and drink would leave her somehow in my debt, but Jesus, I’m not P. bloody Diddy. I go to work and earn an ok wage, I don’t need to add ‘paying for people I sort-of know to have dinner’ to my already escalating costs of living in the capital. By this time even conversation felt like chewing on an old tyre. Needless to say I knocked it on the head before things got full-Hefner. She still blanks me in the street when I see her, which is awkwardly often.
There are people out there (men and women) who are only in it for what they can get - and actually, Dawson Stone is one of them.
I learnt then that despite the best efforts of reasonable men and women to embrace equality, there are people out there (men and women) who are only in it for what they can get - and actually, Dawson Stone is one of them. It's the same clinical attitude that leads to men like him keeping spreadsheets to make sure they’re getting their leg over enough to balance the books each month, and women like my date to treat men like aftershave wearing cash machines.
It’s these people that ruin it for the rest of us, but it's important that in our quest for fairness and equality we don't trample those delicate nuances that makes relationships ace, like buying your date dinner once in a while. It’s not just a question of gender, it’s about respect.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.