The greatest trick the huckster ever pulled was getting you to pay full price for a turd

I was at the coffeehouse yesterday evening, sipping some straight black arabica, scribbling poems in my notebook, and watching a hipster couple converse across the way when a thought struck me.

When I was in high school, I spent close to nothing on girls. The only thing I ever bought for the girl I lost my virginity to was a spinach quesadilla and a Coke.

In college, I still spent very little on the ladies. If you have a basic level of game and aren’t a total weirdo, you and a young sweetie-pie can bond over cups of Keystone Light piss water straight from the kegger. Just make sure you can find your way home without getting jumped or stopped by the cops.

But when you graduate and enter the real world, suddenly you’re expected to go on these things called “dates.” And half of the time, the chick expects you to pick up the tab! Even if you don’t have to pay for her, you still have to go to an “acceptable” venue, like a cafe or a classy sit-down restaurant, which generally cost more then the greasy Mexican take-out joint down the street or the five bones that the kegger-master charges for all you can chug.

Now, the median age at which people get married here in New York is 28.9 for men and 27.0 for women. (For the U.S. in general, it’s 26.7 for men and 25.1 for women.) When you propose in this country, you’re expected to spend an ungodly amount of money on a wedding ring for your betrothed. Then you have to spend thousands, maybe tens of thousands, for the actual wedding and honeymoon (even if you get outside help, expect to plunk down a pretty sum). Keep in mind that you’re statistically likely to be proposing to a woman in her mid-to-late twenties. Society at large still considers marriage to be an ultimate goal for men, deriding those who don’t want to take the plunge (hat tip: Talleyrand).

Now, we know that the peak of a girl’s sexual market value is in her late teens/early twenties. After 25, her value starts declining slowly, and after thirty, it plummets. Not to mention that unless she is a chaste angel, her number of partners is only going to go up. Idle vaginas are the slut’s workshop.

So basically, the conventional wisdom of the dating world mandates that a man has to spend INCREASING amounts of money on a woman as her sexual value DECREASES! The only time this relationship collapses is when the woman in question hits cougar years and her value has gone so low that not even the marriage-industrial complex’s nonstop fusillade of lies can obscure what can be seen with your own eyes.

What this means is if you’re a beta male (the majority of men), in order to gain access to that sacred portal of pleasure every woman has betwixt her thighs, you’re expected to shell out cash for dates. If you want to have an LTR, you’ve got to shell out a whole lot more. And when you finally pop the question, like the good little obedient serf you are, you’ve got to spend three months’ salary on a goddamn ring and four or five figures on the ceremony and related shit. All this so your blushing, mid-to-late twenties bride, who likely spent her salad years hoovering down the jizz of players, bad boys, pickup artists, and other alphas FOR FREE, can brag to her fellow yentas about how she’s snared her a nest slave husband.

Well, fuck dat noize. I’m no economist, but a commodity that gets more expensive as it becomes increasingly worthless sounds like one only a sucker would buy – and make no mistake, when you get married, you’re effectively “buying” a woman. Anonymous Craigslist truth-teller, regale us with your offensive wisdom:

Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity…in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you! By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation.

It’s thoughts like this that make you realize the true value of game. I’ve had more success with women then most guys I’ve known and I’ve paid much less then them to achieve it. What a thing to enjoy the succulent, tight flesh of a nineteen-year old co-ed, at the height of her beauty, for the price of a glass of Guinness! And if current trends continue, the chance of a guy willingly plunking down his freedom and his money to own my aged, sloppy seconds becomes less and less each year. Vat a vonderful vorld ve live in, vhere everybody vins!