It’s weird when you meet someone whose behavior is so out there they seem almost like a caricature. I met a young woman yesterday who is a real-life gold digger — or at least who was stretching her wings and trying it out.

Her name was Dallas and she was my first passenger of the day when I got summoned to Superstition mall. Thought it might be a dude because I’ve met several males with that name. The pickup pin on my GPS was near a mall entrance, kind of between the Cheesecake Factory and TJ Max. There were lots of people milling about but no one was stepping forward for a ride — I hate that kind of pick up where it’s just in a general area. So after a minute of fruitlessly scanning the area, I called the passenger. No answer, so I started to leave a message and partway through I got a call. It was the young woman I was supposed to pick up. She said she was at the Cheesecake Factory entrance, so I told her I was about thirty yards past it, but I’d swing back and pick her up. When I pulled up, I didn’t see her waiting there, so I waited. And waited. And waited. No sign of her. WTF?

To cancel or not to cancel?

I tried calling her. No response. The Uber app was telling me it was cool to cancel on her at that point as it had been over four minutes since I first arrived, and I would get a cancellation fee. I don’t like doing it, but this was getting ridiculous, so I waited a bit longer then canceled and drove off.

As I was exiting the mall, I got another ride request and I accepted it expecting a new passenger. The name popped up — it was Dallas. Fuck. I should have just canceled again and shut the app off until I got far enough away, but I didn’t want to take the hit for canceling because Uber gets a bit annoyed if you cancel without a valid reason. I wondered if I just turned the app off and then back on if it would dump the ride? So I tried that. Nope, still there. So, I sighed and headed back to the Cheesecake Factory.

The second time is the charm

When she called me this time, I was expecting her to be pissed that I’d canceled and driven off, but she told me it was all good. I explained I’d be in a white Mazda 3 hatchback and she said she’d be wearing a black and white dress. Anway, I parked in front of the restaurant, but no woman in a black and white dress was there. Come on, man! Could she be at another Cheesecake Factory and picked the wrong one for her pick up?

Then sitting up on the patio on a bench, I spied an attractive young woman in a curve-hugging black and white striped dress chatting with a well-dressed older guy. They were talking and showed no inclination of getting up at first, and I thought it wasn’t her, but they finally got up. They were both holding a boatload of shopping bags as they walked down to my car and then stood there casually chatting making no effort to get in.

Okay, wtf, wrap it up people, I thought because I was reaching a new level of frustration because I was burning gas at just under $3 a gallon. Finally, he opened the door for her, put some shopping bags in and gave her a peck on the lips. She climbed in with the rest of the bags that she piled up on the back seat, but he didn’t get in.

We finally head off

The first thing she says to me with a giggle is “I think I may have found myself a new sugar daddy!”

Great. Kind of a weird way to start a conversation, but okay. She started telling me how this guy had just bought her all kinds of stuff — six pairs of shoes, clothes, lingerie, etc. So much stuff she could barely carry all of it by herself.

I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s odd when people start divulging their stories within one minute of meeting me. Usually, it’s okay, though sometimes it’s weird and sometimes it’s creepy.

She began diving into her new relationship and telling me all about it. Apparently, she spends a lot of time at the Cheesecake Factory and likes to go over there for a drink after therapy. She said she saw the older guy looking at her rack the other day while she was drinking at the bar.

“I”m a 32DD — a little girl with big boobs and I was wearing a plunging neckline. Anway, it was obvious that he was staring at my boobs, so I said to him ‘Do you like to take pretty girls shopping?’ and he said ‘That’s my favorite thing to do!'”

So they set up a date.

She seemed amazed that she’d stumbled upon a man who liked to indulge in her favorite hobby. I wanted to tell her I think he had another hobby in mind. I honestly couldn’t’ assess her personality. One moment she came across as a babe in the woods and the next moment as a ruthless and ravenous wolf.

There but for the grace of God go I

I’m a rescuer of broken things. Young dumb me would have hopelessly fallen for this girl thinking I could somehow save her from shallow men and reform her through selfless devotion and true love. (I think at this point on this blog we’ve established my penchant for foolish behavior and bad decisions). Older dumb me was thinking, man, get this crazy bloodsucker out of my car before I end up on a shopping trip with her in the mall.

Actually, the natural protector in me still found a way to fucking wiggle his way out.  I told her to be careful because he most likely had certain expectations. I asked her what she thought his intentions were since he’d spent many hundreds of dollars on her. She said he was in it to be her friend and take her shopping. Yep, she said it without a hint of sarcasm.

In her mind, she thought it was just a friendly date and was soooo surprised when he bought her all that stuff. Yeah, honey, most guys aren’t spending a boatload of money on you just because they find you adorable and want your friendship. They usually want something that involves her juggling more saggy balls than she was counting on. Maybe some guys won’t press the issue and will continue with the largesse and hope to become romantically involved. However, this guy, according to her, managed the marketing for a bunch of dealerships in the Valley, so I doubt he is a shrinking violet. She said he wasn’t married, but she gave me the impression this was more of an assumption than it was a researched fact.

Where is P.T. Barnum when you need him?

Truth be told, I probably needed to be warning the guy to be careful of her because she’d already gotten her hooks into his wallet after one “date.”

“You know, I’m kind of wondering if I’m playing him,” she laughed. When I asked her what she would do if he did, in fact, pursue a relationship, she didn’t know. She laughed again and said she wasn’t even sure she was going to text him back.

But who knows what his game is? My guess is he’s trying to buy his way into her bed. But maybe he’s one of those lonely guys who want chaste companionship or someone to love and he got his head turned by a pretty young thing who started talking to him unexpectedly. He could be on the hunt or a hopeless romantic who is deluding himself. No one likes to think of himself as a sucker, but P.T. Barnum knew it — we’re out there in droves. Either way, this “relationship” was a future train wreck in motion.

Curious, I asked her if she had had any sugar daddies before. She was only twenty-two and said there was one when she was seventeen. But now she said she wasn’t interested in a relationship. Newsflash, I told her he might be. She said he just wanted someone to indulge. He had even suggested going on a cruise or a trip to Europe. She told me he hadn’t earned the right to a vacation with her yet. I would love to see how this all shakes out if they ever go on a trip.

Anyway, I asked her how old he was. I pegged him to be in his late forties or early fifties, but she thought he was in his mid-thirties. No way, I thought unless he’d been doing hard drugs for ten years or working in the sun since childhood.

What’s her story?

I wondered to myself what she did, if anything, for a living. She was twenty-two and had free time to go on a date in the middle of the afternoon. And she liked to go drinking after therapy. She also said she was attracted to older men. Man, she had checked off all the boxes of one type of a stereotypical stripper. Plus, Dallas seemed like a potential stripper’s nom de guerre, though it was also a highly popular name for a baby girl in 1996 (I Googled it), which would have been when she was born.

She was friendly enough to me, but even though I was in her target age range, I am poor. Plus I could tell there was something a little off and plastic about her personality. She mentioned that she had just summarily fired the maid she paid to clean house for her mom. Apparently, the woman didn’t speak English well and hadn’t folded some of Dallas’ clothes. The maid tried to ask Dallas why she was dismissing her from service. She told her harshly she didn’t owe her an explanation and just to get out and not come back.

“I’m not very nice about things sometimes.”

Yeah, no kidding.

I kept thinking she would thrive on a reality show as a diva with poor interpersonal skills and whose judgment was running on empty. I could most definitely see her as one of the Real Housewives on Bravo someday.

We pulled up to her house and she just wanted to go in and smoke weed and relax. So, I dropped her and her giant collection of shopping bags off. She thanked me and tipped me, so we were cool on that account. Then she disappeared with her “gifts” into the house.

In the end, who was exploiting whom? No idea, maybe a little bit of both.  But I’ll never know. That’s the one frustrating thing about this job — it’s like jumping into a soap opera right in the middle of a storyline and then not being able to watch again for three months. You never know how the other storyline turned out and then you get caught up in a new episode.

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