“Women, they just, they suck!”

I stare at the speaker, a tanned, well-built banker in his early thirties, attractive as much as there’s nothing physically wrong with him, his blue eyes void of self-reflection.

“Umm, not sure how I’m supposed to respond to that.” I try to keep my tone friendly; he’s an acquaintance, the kind where my first instinct when I spotted him across the crowded bar was to duck behind the nearest tall couple and stay hidden. But his words are heart-wrenching in their immaturity, and his wailing attracts my sympathies.

“I mean, I can’t ever do anything right! They’re all fucking evil!”

“It sounds like there’s a story behind all this,” I prompt, knowing I’m toying with the floodgates.

Sure enough, they open wide. “Take this girl I met a couple weeks ago,” he rants, his manic movements and dilated pupils suggesting a substance other than liquor fueling this outburst. “I liked her, took her out, and asked her if she wanted to come to my house in the Hamptons for the weekend.”

“That was generous of you. And you expected nothing in return, I’m sure.” I know he won’t detect the edge in my voice, so I let fly.

“So to show her I’m not some asshole, I tell her she can bring a friend,” he goes on as if I hadn’t spoken. “So she shows up on Friday night with four fucking friends,” he holds up four fingers for emphasis, “and I pick them up at the train station. I let them all stay in my house for free, I take them out on Friday night, drive them all to the beach on Saturday, chauffeur them around, then we all go to dinner and I, the big sucker, pick up the tab.” He looks at me for validation.

“Uh, that actually is very generous of you,” I say, meaning it this time.

“So then I take them all to a bar, we’re gonna get drinks before going to a club where of course I’ve put us all on the list. I’m not drinking because, you know, I’m driving their asses around all night. So she and her friends go and order a round of drinks, and the bill is $80. I figure I’m just drinking water, so I don’t pick up this tab. This girl I’m with, she looks at me as if I’ve just raped her sister in the bathroom or something, she’s so pissed. She and her friends pull out their wallets like I’ve just held them up at gunpoint. She doesn’t talk to me the rest of the time we’re at the bar. Then later when we’re walking to the car, she corners me and starts screaming, telling me she’s never been so humiliated, that she’s never not been taken care of like that, that I’m a slimeball for not picking up the tab. I was like ‘What the fuck are you talking about!’ Then they were all cold to me the rest of the night.”

“What happened next?” I’m dying to know whether she still slept with him, but I don’t want to ask.

“We went on to the club, I paid for everything out of guilt, then I took them all home and they left the next morning.”

I’m visibly cringing, embarrassed for my gender. “I’m sorry, that really does suck.”

“It’s like, you try to be a good guy, you know? And you think you’re doing all these nice things. Then you fuck up once and boom, you’re an asshole.”

I’m hit with sudden dejection; how pathetic he looks, with his wide, sad eyes, lamenting about his failed connection with women who never expected anything but mutual exploitation, completely unable to see that he built his own trap, then tumbled into it.

“R, I think maybe there’s a reason all this happened, and that things like this keep happening to you,” I say carefully.

“Huh?” His attention is already gone, the dilated pupils fixed on a slinky brunette passing by.

“R, seriously, listen. I think maybe if you looked at your behavior a little more closely, maybe met girls in different places, where you both weren’t trashed, and got to know them a little better, then it might…” I close my mouth, saving my breath, accepting futility. His head is turned 180 degrees, his eyes fixed on the newest prey. Walking up behind her, he slides an arm around her waist and leans in until his lips almost touch her ear.

“Hi there. What’s your name?”