A scene from a novel. The hero awakens in a date's apartment on a morning-after and finds her journal on her desk:

Meanwhile, the journal had fallen open to its very last page. On the inside of the back cover, writing--- in Katie's slightly loopy hand, in different-colored pens, at different times ---, a list. First names and initials.

Katie's List.

Sam glanced up nervously to make sure she was still sleeping. She was. So he counted. And counted. And counted.

It was longer than his by six.

And what was worse, after all that money spent, after all that charm expended, all that panic and anxiety, he hadn't even gained on her.

----Keith Gessen, "All The Sad Young Literary Men" (New York: Viking-Penguin, 2008)

I read that last night very, very late. And cried.

A second passage:

So in the second year of Mark's mourning [i.e., after beautiful Russian wife leaves him] he endured humiliations. He went to bars. He tried to talk to women. It was horrible. He was almost thirty years old! In a college town like Syracuse, they had a name for people like Mark, and it wasn't "graduate student in the department of history". It was Creep. He bought girls drinks, as if he could afford to buy drinks; he asked them to dance, as if he knew how to dance; and then, alone, he stumbled home, or stumbled to his car, in which case he and the car stumbled home together.

I'd have thrown up after that passage, if I could. I haven't eaten in a week. All the iced sake-and-lime I'd had late at night, and I couldn't. Call it a marker for sexual failure. I never should've read the novel, just as I never should've asked for Mornings-After Lists.

There's going to be a policy, from now on. It's simple enough.

If any girl at a party or a club or anywhere says to me "You're so smart..." ever again, she goes home with a shattered jaw.

I very coldly told a girl that once at a party in suburban Birmingham. Ms. Chang couldn't believe I'd said that to someone. I did, though. The girl fled the party. The girl who was the hostess tried to make all sorts of apologies, to get me to apologise, to blame it on too many tequila shots. I refused. I said it, and standing there in a yuppie condo in Hoover AL one summer in the late Nineties, I meant it. "You're so smart..." is a condescending way of saying "...but you're not fuckable." I'm glad the girl fled, and all these years I've hoped that she was terrified.

It's not a bad policy. It's at least clear and simple.

And I suppose I'll try a second clear policy as well. If ever a girl comes by my flat to go for drinks, I'm going to check her purse or backpack there in the doorway. I used to laugh and say I always did panty checks--- see if a girl was properly panty-free for a date with me ---and had no problem taking out a pocket knife or a Leatherman Micra and cutting them off---- occasionally in restaurant parking lots. But I will be checking purses in the doorway. If there's no toothbrush, no little vial of deodorant, no change of clothes...she doesn't get in the doorway. I will toss the purse or backpack off the upper walkway and slam the door in her face. No toothbrush, no Mornings-After Kit, and I don't want her around me.

Be clear--- I don't necessarily expect her to use the toothbrush or the change of clothes. I don't necessarily expect her to stay over. That isn't the point. Not at all. The point is that she'd have the toothbrush with her--- just in case. Whether or not she stayed over, I'd want her to have the kit with her. Just in case. If she didn't toss the toothbrush into her purse, it means that I'm not Valuable enough even for the possibility of a first-date morning-after. It means that she'd already decided that I wasn't fuckable. So I will check for a toothbrush and slam the door in her face if it isn't there.

Others are Valuable, and I'm not. Girls don't go on dates with me, or meet me for drinks. Girls don't pack a Mornings-After Kit for me, or have hotel sex with me. They do those things for Others. Others are fuckable; I'm not even worth bringing a toothbrush as hedge against possibilities.

There are clear rules: if girls do something for Others, I'll insist they do the same exact things for me, go to the same places, do the same things with me. I need to know that I'm worth that, worth what they're willing to do for Others. No Mornings-After Kit in the purse, and a girl can walk home alone--- after trying to find her purse. And if anyone ever says "You're so smart..." to me again, she goes home in an ambulance with her jaw wired together.