Yours or Mine?

You know what I’ve always wondered - “Who pays for a gay date?”

Ever since man began dating, it’s been standard practice for the guy to pick up the check on a date. A Stone Age man taking a Stone Age woman out for a romantic campfire-lit dinner would, invariably, raise his club in the air after a scrumptious meal of burnt saber-toothed tiger ribs, and signal for the check. He’d then offer the rather hairy waiter his Mastodon Card (because back in those days, there were some things money couldn’t buy, but for everything else there was Mastodon!). Or if he wasn’t quite so well-off, he’d pay using seashells. But the bottom line is, it would always be the guy doing the paying.

This ancient practice carried on through the ages, and still exists today. And it works great. It ensures the absence of any post-meal, check-grabbing awkwardness, that is often the scourge of most restaurant dinners. And it does so by ensuring a simple, effective protocol for everyone to follow - the guy pays!

All this works perfectly so long as there’s only one man on the date. But what happens when you remove the woman, and throw in another guy? Who signals for the check now? Who picks it up when it arrives? John or Joe?

Both will probably reach for it, grab it at the same time and confusion will reign for a few seconds before they decide that it’s in everyone’s better interest for them to go Dutch. (I wonder who pays for dates in Holland?)

At least in the case of two men, they are faced with the problem of plenty; things get even more interesting when you consider a lesbian date! Whatever are they going to do now? Both women are filled with millennia of “woman”-ness in them, urging them to resist picking up the check. How the check even got there in the first place is a matter worth considering, for I am yet to meet a woman capable of performing that funny little wiggle in the air, that serves as the universal signal for “Get me the check, please.” Perhaps, the waiter having had enough of watching them touch up their makeup, decided to hand them the check and get it over with.

But the puzzling question that I posed at the top of this post still remains. Anyone who wishes to hazard a guess (or speak from experience, maybe) is welcome to leave their say in the comments!