Oh, goody! Now we get to discuss your columns! Who needs a message board now?

As for him, the lady he's so enamored with is probably wondering, just as I am, why alcohol seems to play such a big part in his life. Or maybe she's not wondering at all, and she's CERTAIN of the reason.

First time he meets her, he buys her and her friends drinks. Lacking in originality, but I will give him a B+ for including her friends. It serves to show that he's not threatened by the fact that she has a circle of friends and that he's not out to isolate her or possess her.

As a gay person, I can tell you that's important. I knew one guy who was interested in me who basically gave me the third degree every time I even mentioned a conversation with another man, especially if it was another gay man. We didn't last very long. But from the get-go, our hero, "Telephone Silence" is showing her that the fact that she has friends is hokey-dokey with him. Bravo!

Then without even knowing this girl apart from their evening of tippling and conversation... "That'sh jusht... SHHHHHHOOOO intereshting..." "Thanksh, honey!" he invites her out at the last minute via recorded message to a happy hour.

"Telephone Silence" just scored an F.

She's probably beginning to think that maybe alcohol is just a little too important to this man if his idea of a date is a two-for one special in a crowded bar. Bad move, dude. As you so eloquently put it in your column "Return to Bender" He "blew it. What's [she's] trying to tell you, if the phone don't ring, it's me style, is that [she] saw the future staggering toward [her], and chose to duck out of the way." No one worth anything is going to hook-up with the weekend lush, and while he may not be one, he certainly gave her cause to suspect that he was! No one wants to play second fiddle to the beer mug or shot glass.

I wonder if he was actually able to fix this, or perhaps she's wisely moved on. In her place, I would have run, not walked.

This dating story and your advice is a continuation of the perpetual battle of the sexes. The communications gap comes from an attitute difference which comes straight from biology and evolution selection pressure. It all starts with the biological facts that (1) humans, male and female have minds shaped strongly by selection pressure to maximize their numbers of decendents; and (2) a man has the biological potential of fathering many, but a woman can mother only a much smaller number of children. Consequently, a man's instincts are driven more toward the direction of desiring to have casual sex frequently, and a woman's instincts are driven more toward the direction of evaluating the commitment of a potential mate.

The comedy in this story comes from the realization that young men and women sometimes forget that women and men (of the other gender) do not have instinctive drives identical to their own. Thus, in this case, "Telephone Silence" cannot fathom why a woman would distain a future contact without courtship or romance. He may just assume that she might want to casually meet him, and maybe have a little sex, if it is not inconvient; and it may not be obvious to the ladies (you and her) why he cannot even understand that a lady seeks a few courtship rituals, tokens of appreciation, before even agreeing to see him again. From a woman's perspective "Telephone Silence" is a clod. From a man's perspective, he is not a clod, he is just inexperienced. He hasn't yet learned to take the instincts of the other gender into account. He may not even know that theirs are different from his.

Thanks, but I'm pretty well-versed in evolutionary psychology; I even presented at the Human Behavior And Evolution Society conference at Rutgers two years ago ("How To Build A Better Meme," drawing largely on Zahavi and Zahavi's "Handicap Principle").

What matters here is how the guy should act to get girls -- which is where the comedy comes from, not a long-winded treatise on how confused he is about what went on in the EEA (Environment Of Evolutionary Adaptedness), and how it affects him today. Moreover, he didn't assume she'd want to have sex with him, he was just a bit of a clod, socially.

As a semi-straight girl, I'd have to agree with Amy's analysis. If this woman had accepted his invitation, it could possibly have set the mold for the entire relationship. He needs her, she comes. She needs him, can she trust him to come? He seems to do things last-minute. Most women are planners. An impromptu meeting could have been welcomed, but only after relationship is formed and boundaries are laid down. I'm not saying that they could become an exclusive thing, but I don't think anyone wants to get involved with someone without having a little background on the guy unless they're specifically wanting a one-nighter.

However, there might not have been a desire from the woman to have a relationship of any kind at all. She was out with the girls, a hot guy bought her and her homies some alcahol, and it was totally flattering. She was a little tipsy, gave out her number to him, and then woke up the next morning hungover, and started wondering if what she did was the best thing. Now this guy calls her, and invites her out for more drinks. She's confused, and suddenly wondering if this guy is looking for a drinking buddy rather than a girlfriend, or a one-night stand. Not wanting to sound like a psycho-insecure hosehead, she decides not to call him back.

If I was in her place, I probably would have called him back over the weekend, apologized for not calling him back that night, made an excuse about being out with friends, and then suggested that we meet somewhere for dinner in the middle of the week. But, I'm not her.

Clarkified is right on. And once again -- guys should never leave phone messages for women they don't know very well, because it leaves them not a clue as to how the woman feels about them. A woman probably isn't going to tell a guy to get lost, in so many words, but a cold shoulder is pretty easy to read -- even over the phone...in turn, giving the guy the message, "lose this number."

Sorry for being long winded. I'll try being short winded. I'm not dissagreeing with you that the guy was a clod. All I'm trying to point out is that he may not have been looking for a way to control a prospective relationship. It may be that relationship issues didn't even occur to him. Aimy, I accept that you have impressive credentials, and that I am a puppy without papers. So let me offer you someone who is credentialed: Anthropologist Helen Fisher, who argues that women tend to be gifted relative to men in the development of social, and conversational skills. I'm not saying he wasn't a clod. I'm trying to say that because men tend not to be the equals of women in paying attention to interpersonal relationships, that there is a significant probability that he was a clod because of ignorance, instead of being a clod because of malice.

My point is this, You and Clarkified are saying "Telephone Silence" is handling a potential relationship badly. I'm not disagreeing, I'm just amending, that he might have been acting on physical attraction without even considering any relationship issues at all. I'm trying to argue that men are much more likely than women to think that way.

Fisher argues that men and women have different mental abilities and skills, and that we don't offen enough take these differences into account. It just so happens that relationship, and comunications skills are a women's gift (or so argues the anthropologist). If this is true, (and I think that it is), then instead of quickly giving up on a man who is socially clueless, and awaiting a man who is her equal in social astueteness, sometimes a women might consider, just accepting her superiority in social perceptiveness, and patiently clueing the clueless swain in.

Brck, I have a full library of Helen Fisher's writing, plus copies of the studies she based those remarks on, that that doesn't change a thing: the guy acted like a clod. What motivated him to act like a clod -- that it wasn't trying to lure her just for sex, whatever -- isn't important. Evolutionary psychology is a big underpinning of my work, but I see no reason to bend over and show my underpinnings at every turn -- especially when they aren't all that relevant to the specific answer to the specific question. Language is thought to have evolved from grooming behavior, which was a society-building activity. Men traffic in physical wars; women in wars of words to derogate competitors. Women needed language more than men, it's thought by the ev psychs, to build coalitions. Men just went with the guy who had the most luck and skill pulling down the big hunks of meat. This is just off the top of my head, but I think there's a good bit about this in both Gallin and McBurney's ev psych textbook and Palmer and Palmer's as well, plus it's regularly discussed in ev psych journals (under the rubric of continuing studes); for example, "Evolution And Human Behavior," to which I subscribe. It's the "US Weekly" of sociobiology geeks -- except it isn't, unfortunately, weekly, but quarterly.

How come you get carsick?

I'm just special, I guess. I get plane-sick, too. I guess that makes me...extra-special!