Don’t Take Her For Granted
While reading a lengthy and personal essay on the business of being a high-end escort, I found this fascinating little vignette:
Last Valentine’s Day, I was in a McDonald’s near my apartment. Valentine’s and Christmas and Easter are never big days in my business, at least with the guys who have money. I came there to drink some Coca-Cola and because the internet worked faster than in my apartment. I had bought myself flowers, daisies and violets. There was a couple sitting next to me and the girl said, “OMG, how cute are your flowers?” I was in a pretty good mood and I said to the guy, “Maybe it’s time to buy your girlfriend flowers,” and he said, “She’s okay without them.”
I’m not sure why, but that made me so mad. “Fuck you!” I said to the guy, and I left.
Fuck him, indeed.
(Yes, this is from one of the two sex-worker business articles that Violet Blue was recommending the other day.)
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Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=13144
My wife will NEVER get flowers from me, if only because of the environmental impact of the flower industry. I told her that at the beginning of our relationship and she’s fine with that.
Now a good fair trade high-cocoa chocolate, that’s a gift that just about everyone can enjoy.
If I bought my wife flowers, she would yell at me. She is in charge of the budget and it is an uphill battle to get her to spend anything on herself. I do go shopping with her for the garden and help her plant the bulbs, etc. This is not something I would explain to a stranger in a McDs. I might have said the same thing. Sometimes best not to make snap judgments.
I understand your point about not taking your partner for granted. It’s really good advice. However, the old cliche’ about not judging a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins is also a valid point here. Where I live, predatory men (and women), bearing a basket-full of flowers, troll through bars, nightclubs and restaurants, preying on men with their dates or wives by saddling up to their table and asking them if they’d like to buy their lady-friend a flower. These are very expensive single roses, and I consider it an act of extortion. The woman waits with baited breath for your answer, daring you in her mind to answer “No, as a matter of fact, I would not at all be interested in buying this female a romantic gift of such a nature.” Meanwhile the vendor stands behind your date grinning as you squirm, because he knows he’s got you. I love these shysters as much as the bum who (unsolicited) washes your windshield at the stoplight with a filthy rag expecting a handout after he has smeared your window. They also like to prey on drivers carrying what would appear to be an innocent-looking young lady-friend with a bleeding heart. We even have flower peddlers who approach your car at stoplights if you have a female passenger.
Perhaps the gent in the posting above was jobless and penniless, and being treated to the meal by the girl, and was a bit sore from such a recent unpleasant encounter with one of these flower “pushers”.
Just saying….
That said, I’d recommend buying the occasional bouquet from a more reputable florist, so they can’t intimidate you in front of your woman. That is, if you can afford it…
Whiplash, I confess I had never heard of that particular flavor of brigandage. I wouldn’t reward it and The Nymph wouldn’t want me to.
To clarify, I’m not a big fan of traditional flower gifts my own self. When The Nymph gets flowers from me — not often — they’re likely to be feral irises or daffodils from the back of the property.
What resonated with me in the anecdote was the expressed interest in flowers that “the girl” demonstrated to our narrator, contrasted so sharply with the dismissive male reaction to that same expressed interest.
The words in the quote are perhaps ambiguous, they could imply that he thinks she doesn’t need/deserve them, or that he knows she would rather he spend his money on other things, and that she is in fact okay without them.
Wild flowers can actually get a warmer reception that store-bought ones, actual physical effort is just about always appreciated.
Justin, we’re slicing and dicing perhaps 100 words recounting a not-very-well-known narrator’s snap judgment of the relationship interactions of a couple that were strangers to her and are strangers to us. There’s no right or wrong here. My reaction is what it is, and so is yours. But I am not seeing it as very ambiguous. Her enthusiasm for the narrator’s flowers is in evidence, and the dude is being (at best) a wet blanket on the subject.
re: “What resonated…was the…contrast”
I hope you weren’t reiterating because you thought I was trying to be argumentative and oppositional. What resonated with you, also resonated with me (hence my opening and closing statements). By taking on my sometimes “devils advocate” role, my intent was merely to try to understand how this dude could come across as such a shocking cad. I’m perfectly comfortable with your assessment that he actually IS a cad. I’m really on your side on this one. I understood and appreciated the point you were making, and still do…