Make dating worth your while

Imagine getting paid to date. Just go out on a date, no sex involved. Well, you can, according to Emily Brady's article, "See Dick Pay Jane: Chaste Dating for Cash," in the May 26th Village Voice (http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-05-27/news/see-dick-pay-jane-chaste-dating-for-cash/). Several months ago, a few enterprising young women figured out that men would actually pay for the opportunity simply to have a date -- someone to go out to dinner with, or take to a ball game. They founded Austen's Janes Agency (http://austensjanes.com) to fill this void. As the article states, "For $60 an hour, the agency arranges for a smart young woman to accompany you, laugh at your jokes, and make you feel interesting and special. It may sound like just another escort service—with additional sex services available by negotiation—but it's not. The women who set up the agency are adamant about this, and they spell it out on their website: 'If there are any attempts at sexual activity, the girl has the right to end the date immediately.'"

I can relate to the reasoning behind the 26-year-old unemployed women who started the agency. As one of them put it, "I've been on so many bad dates, it was kind of a joke because it felt like work sometimes. You might as well get paid for it."

Why would men pay for this? One married guy just got a rush from pretending to have an affair -- paying a woman for her time and her dinner was as close to an affair as he actually wanted to get. Half the guys are foreign-born, and some of them haven't had any success yet on the on-line dating sites, so this fills the void for now. And other men apparently just enjoy the occasional platonic afternoon or evening with a pretty woman, no strings attached.

Getting paid to date -- now why didn't I think of that? I could've retired by now. ;)