A social app arranges casual dinners for people who want to make new friends. You don’t know who will be there until you arrive, but it’s a good way to get outside of your usual social circles.

 

How Long Can You Just Go Shopping Every Day?

At my most recent dinner, there were three of us. It was the first time I was grouped with people who clearly lived outside of my socioeconomic bracket. One talked about running her home with a maid and a chauffeur. There was always a car waiting for her. She said this by way of explaining that her life is different now. She said, “My life was just shopping, going to lunch, meeting people for drinks. Every day just shopping. I mean how long can you do that?”

She looked at me when she asked this, as if I might say, “Gir-r-rl!” I appreciated that she seemed to think her experience was familiar to me, but of course it wasn’t. I kept a blank face.

She was trying to get an online business started, her son had just started college, and her husband traveled a lot. She called herself an empty nester, and said while she was married on paper, she and her husband didn’t see much of each other.

She was fascinating to me. Her life sparkled with true wealth. I had no idea what it was like to have the resources that would allow me to spend my days however I liked, in any style.

I actually considered how long I could live a life that contained only shopping, eating, drinking, raising a son and having an absent husband. I figured maybe a month. After a month the novelty would wear off and I’d feel lonely.

 

That Man Drives Up My Rent

My other dining companion seemed less wealthy, but was still in a class I’d rarely touched. She talked about working for and getting to know a local developer. I think that’s what you call someone who buys apartment buildings, rehabs them and rents them for considerably more than before. She said this man had made himself a millionaire by buying buildings and driving up rents. He owned dozens and dozens of buildings on the far north side, including in my neighborhood.

At this point, I revealed a bit about the life I live. I asked when he started doing this. She said about five years ago.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “That’s when it got expensive to live in Rogers Park. Suddenly all the rents started going way up.”

My companion confirmed this. I said, “Well, tell him to stop.”

She didn’t respond to that, but the empty nester said, “Why?”

That told me she knew as little about my world as I knew about hers. No one I know would wonder why I’d want a millionaire to stop driving up rents.

I said, “Because that’s my rent that’s going up.” Then they wanted to know what I paid. I told them that when I moved into my apartment in 2013 it was $895 a month. Now it’s $1,400 a month. Granted, there are 13 years between those rents, but a graph of the amounts I’ve paid would show a sharper rise in the past several years.

These numbers were very interesting to them. I guess we were all learning that night. The empty nester advised our companion about buying property to rent. She recommended it, but said not to buy in certain areas of Chicago because “you don’t want to rent to those people.”

 

Marriage Is Similar At All Income Levels

Because I don’t judge my life by how much I earn nor how many properties I own (the empty nester owned lots of properties), I paid more attention to their marriages. This is how I judge myself: my marriage ended 13 years ago and I’m still manless.

But there seemed to be little to envy there, too. The one had a husband who’s not around much and the other had a husband who needs know where she is at all times. As she texted him where she was going next, she said to me, “You know how Mexican men are.”

I said, “Um, no. The Mexican men in my family aren’t like that and neither are the ones I’ve dated.” I get tired of people who aren’t Mexican saying Mexican men are all macho and terrible. It’s possible that Mexican men in Mexico behave like that (I’ve never been there), but it hasn’t been my experience of Mexican American men nor of Mexican men who now live the United States.

She texted her Mexican husband that she was going to the South Loop for a drink at a bar she named. Her husband texted back that that bar isn’t in the South Loop. She told us this and laughed, saying she needed to find another bar.

 

Espresso Martinis

I sort of felt like a fly on the wall. These two women knew I wasn’t in their stratosphere, yet they relaxed and shared everything. The empty nester had mentioned when she first arrived that she wasn’t drinking that night. She said she’d been drinking so much lately that one of her friends asked, “Are you trying to kill yourself?” My other companion didn’t say anything about her drinking, but she had three martinis with dinner and a fourth one after the dishes were cleared, as we kept chatting.

 

And They Were Wonderful

But then the conversation turned and these women became extremely valuable to me in the moment. It was when they asked about my love life (I’d mentioned I was divorced). I didn’t care that their question was part of the exploitative practice of married people using single people’s lives as entertainment. I answered: my love life was dead in the water, with nothing going on.

This made no sense to them.

“Why?” they asked.

I explained how hard it had been on my self-esteem to have the only man I’d ever married dump me. I had already told them how hard my parents had been on my self-esteem when I was growing up (yes, I’d talked about everything, too). I said I don’t believe I’m attractive to men, especially as fat as I am (I’m 5’2” and 215 lbs.).

They dismissed all of this out of hand. They said of course I was attractive to men; I was beautiful; all I had to do was go out and men would want to talk to me; I had to get over my insecurity. They stated repeatedly that the belief that men weren’t attracted to me was all in my head. It was all in my head. That was all in my head.

I agreed completely. I said it is all in my head.* I said I was sure this belief was bullshit; they were absolutely right: there was no reason to think I wasn’t attractive to men. I admitted that many women way fatter than me had boyfriends and husbands. But knowing all this didn’t change how I felt about myself. I felt fat and ugly and I knew I couldn’t go an a date like this because I’d tried going on a date like this and all I could think was, “Why are you on date with me? How can you stand that other people can see that you’re on a date with me?”

They repeated that I had to get over this. They said it’s not just looks: they knew when they first saw me that I was a good person. I have great energy. I’m great to be around. Just change the color of my hair and use some eye makeup and I’d see how many men are attracted to me.

I appreciated this because they didn’t tell me to lose weight. Eye makeup I can do. I won’t, but I can do that much more easily than lose weight.

 

Better Than My Friends

I was very grateful to them for their words. They actually helped a little. I’ve mentioned to friends that I don’t feel attractive, but it’s only happened once that someone said, “But you are attractive.” I don’t expect a male friend to say that, but I’ve been disappointed in my women friends for just letting my statement lie there. When I tell them I feel unattractive, they don’t oppose that belief. Some have responded by suggesting ways to meet men. Worse, some haven’t said anything. When they do that, what I hear is, “No, you’re not attractive, Regina, but I’m not going to say it out loud.”

It felt really good to hear these slim, conventionally attractive women — one about 10 years younger than me and one about 30 years younger — tell me I actually am attractive, and men would like me if I’d just get out there. It was a relief. I trusted them to be telling the truth and it was a relief.

The two were making plans to end the evening somewhere else when I stood up to leave. I told them I’d enjoyed meeting them and maybe we’d see each other again. It was a fascinating evening. I got a glimpse of a completely different world, but also of myself. As awkward as many moments of the evening felt, I’m glad I went.

*One my favorite statements was written by Mark Vonnegut (Kurt’s son): “Maybe it was all in my head, but where else is there for anything to be?”

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