Dinner with Joyce (Why not?)

I’ve told y’all about how I met Joyce in the store, and about how she asked for my number in the most awkward way I’ve ever been asked for it.  She called a few days later. And straight out asked me out to dinner.

I thought “why not?”, and said “I’d like to”.

We agreed to meet at the restaurant – some place I’d never heard of, but which looked pretty dang expensive when I handed my car off to the valet. Joyce pulled up just as soon as the valet had driven off with my Prius (if you want to call it a shitbox, get in line behind Keaton)…in a gleaming Tesla.

So I drive a shitbox because it’s economical and easy to park. I wish I owned a truck. I don’t wish I owned a Porsche, since I don’t need one to get girls.  A Lambo is a different story, but I’m never going to be able to afford a Lamborghini. But damn that car of Joyce’s looked cool.

I guess I was kinda hypnotized by it, since the first thing I remember Joyce saying was that she’d just gotten it.

We went into the restaurant, which looked a little fancy for my tastes. I know which fork to use and stuff like that, but I think I’ve already said that my favorite dinner comes from Wingstop. It was also expensive, and I wasn’t entirely sure that her asking me out meant she was going to pay. That must have been obvious on my face.

“This is on me,” she said.

I’m not going to say that it’s never happened that I have a woman pay for me on a date. I had a feminist girlfriend in college who insisted that we take turns paying for everything. But it hasn’t happened since then.

I have to admit I was on unfamiliar ground – that was the first time I’d been out with an older woman who wanted to buy me dinner. Really. But, I thought, why stop her? Monica regularly sucked my wallet dry, and maybe there was a woman in LA who wasn’t out to prove how much she could make her boyfriend spend on her.

Over dinner, I found out that Joyce could easily afford to take me out. Just like she could afford a new Tesla and all those clothes from the store. Don’t get that wrong: she wasn’t bragging about how much she made and how good her job was (although she’s got a better one than being a supervisor at the Gap.) She just came into a whole lot of money unexpectedly.

Joyce is what I guess you can call a Bitcoin Millionaire. Or, as Mom would want me to put it, millionairess.

Yeah. Bitcoin. That stuff you keep hearing about that kept going up and up over the winter but don’t understand because it sounds like the whole thing was invented by magical elves for gullible fools.

Joyce has done a pretty good of explaining Bitcoin to me. It took a while. If you want to get a handle on it, take a look at this dude’s blog. It’s the best and simplest explanation I’ve ever read of the stuff. I met the author at a Dodger game last summer.  Super nice guy.  Big Corey Seager fan.  And dang he knows how to write!

So Joyce was an engineer in college, and was always involved with tech stuff. She works for a tech company now. She’d been talked into buying some bitcoins back in 2011 (I think), when they were worth something like a dollar each. Really. So she put in a hundred bucks…to be nice to the friend who was telling her how wonderful bitcoin was and how it was the money of the future. She then forgot all about it, until it started going up like crazy last year. Then, last December, literally on the day when it hit its highest price of over $19,000, she decided to sell out. Result: she suddenly had two million dollars on her hands.

I’d buy a Tesla too if that much money fell into my lap. And park it next to my fully customized Silverado. My apartment came with two parking spots.

But it fell into Joyce’s lap instead of mine, and she decided to enjoy it. She’s not quitting her job or anything, but she is spending money on herself. I think that’s cool of her. It’d be cool of her even if she wasn’t spending some of it so we could go out to dinner a few times.

Yes, a few times. Know what really sold me on going out to dinner with Joyce? Wine. At that first fancyass restaurant, of course there was a stupidass wine list, and of course the wine waiter gave it to me.

“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I think the whole wine thing is bullshit. I don’t even like wine. I don’t know anything about it, and I always end up feeling like an iliterate redneck when I talk to the wine waiter.”

Remember the little act I put on to piss Monica off…

So Joyce smiled – she has a really nice smile…like she means it – and said she basically doesn’t drink and would just as soon have a Coke with dinner. Then the magic words: “so you can just order yourself a beer. It looks like there’s a good selection on the menu. Although I know as much about beer as you know about wine.”

See…here’s what I like about Joyce. I didn’t get the feeling that she said that because she thought that was what I wanted to hear. She said it because it was what she meant: she wanted a Coke so I didn’t have to order (and drink) a bottle of Chateau Fancypants. (Meemaw has a rule: don’t eat it if you can’t pronounce it.) It was even logical. How often do you get that from a woman?

So I got a semi-fancy pasta appetizer that was okay, a good steak that was big enough for a 25 year old shortstop, and…believe it or not…pistachio ice cream (okay, it was gelato) for dessert. Dessert! I wasn’t going to have to stop at the IHOP for a strawberry sundae on my way home. And two good craft beers to wash it all down with. (Yeah, I like trying out craft beers. But the stuff they give you at Dodger Stadium is good enough for me too. Only drinking craft beers is as close to gay as beer can get.)