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Mr. Dinner on the Water

A lighthearted exchange about disappearing water supplies takes an unexpected turn into a lesson on compatibility, self-awareness, and modern dating. Through one unforgettable conversation, Camille uncovers how assumptions, performance, and misplaced confidence often reveal far more than people intend.

DATING STORIES

Honey Badger

7/20/20267 min read

He believes the world's water supply will be gone by 2030. He also wants to take me to dinner on it...

By Honey Badger

It started on a Saturday afternoon with a message so gentle it could've been embroidered on a pillow.

Him: “Hope all is well and your day is smoothly ..”

My day was in fact going smoothly. Smoothlier than his grammar, but I'm not here to be petty. I'm here to be accurate.

Me: “I'm relaxing. But I do need to finish an article, and to send some information to my web developers on both my sites. You?”

This is usually the moment a man decides who he's going to be. Some men hear “two websites” and quietly leave, because a woman with her own infrastructure makes them tired. This one gave me his whole Saturday.

Him: “Just got up here to my shop , to check on everybody and grab money for payroll this week ... plus drop off this google review thing they been wanting for clients in shop .. then back home to relax and watch ufc fight tonight”

A shop. Payroll. Employees. I was listening. So a couple hours later I asked the question I always ask, because I like to know what's living in a man's head before I decide if he gets to stay in my phone.

Me: “What are your favorite topics for discussion?”

Him: “Just getting back in Charlotte and home .. but my favorite topics for discussion is , just life ... how we getting ready to run out of clean water and getting to know you ...”

Read that list again. Life. The end of clean water. Me. One of those things is not like the others, and it wasn't me, so at 6:20 the next morning I followed up.

Me: “What you mean getting ready to run out of clean water?”

He took his time with this one. Eight hours. A man does not rush his testimony.

Him: “They say by 2030 the water will be unhealthy and dried up by AI systems around the world .. they take a lot water to run a AI system ..”

Him: “All the billionaires are buying water ..”

Here's the thing. A girlfriend had told me the same thing that very day, which either means it's trending or the group chat has a leak somewhere.

Me: “I just heard that from a girlfriend literally today.”

Me: “Now I've just read about it. Well... We're gonna die one way or another.”

Him: “Facts ...”

Facts. With the trailing dots, so you know he really meditated on our mortality. I wanted to see how deep this went.

Me: “How much of this stuff do you put weight on?”

Me: “There's always something in the news. Always something to distract us. By the way, we're supposed to be in an impact zone.”

Him: “I believe it's a water and food issue coming in the future ... but it will be about money and power as always .. I'm just going to keep trying to make my coins and stay out the way and stay in my peace mode ....”

So there's the survival plan. Not filtration, not bunkers, not civic engagement. Coins, out the way, peace mode. And then, in the same breath as the coming water and food wars:

Him: “In grind mode now , so I can go back out country for b.day in Dec ..”

Me: “Where you going? I want to explore the US.”

Him: “Haven't decided yet but kinda depends on what good deals my travel agent can cook up , once I give her my options .... but zanibar in Africa is on the list , Dubai, Turks , DR .....”

Him: “And what parts of the US do you want to explore”

This man is planning a birthday tour across four bodies of salt water while the fresh kind, by his own reporting, evaporates into a server farm. But he asked about me, so I answered.

Me: “My magazine is national. I want to go wherever it takes me. I'm also publishing a nonfiction book. So, I wouldn't mind traveling with it.”

Me: “Long as there isn't any practices of hanging strange fruit...”

Him: “Also going back to Vegas is always a option too...”

Him: “What kind of magazine u have”

Me: “Veteranexcellence.org”

Me: “Eventually I'll be able to accept advertisers to grow it.”

Him: “Feel ya .. advertisers sound like the power move .. you got this”

Now watch what happens. Because this is the part with actual science behind it.

Me: “My books drop in August, October, January, and April. I should be viral by then.”

Him: “Congrats and what kind of books”

I sent him a voice message, almost two minutes, telling him about my work. And this came back.

Him: “You got this and I definitely will say a strong prayer 🙏🏿 for them to sign you and put things in motions ... I will have to buy a book and get it signed before you blow up and forget about the little people lol .. but I'm excited for you .. I wanted to always people one life into a book or movie .. cause I went from heavy hustler to prison , then to barbering and now owning my own barbershop inside Walmart .. like a good self help book .. I like reading them and business books ..”

Let me be fair first. Heavy hustler to prison to barbering to owning his own shop inside a Walmart is a real comeback, and a man who rebuilt his life from nothing and now signs other people's paychecks is not a man I'll ever mock for the hustle. The comeback is real. It's the mirror I want you to look at.

The second I mentioned books, this man discovered reading. Self help books. Business books. Loves them, apparently. His own life is “like a good self help book.” He's praying strong prayers for my agents. He's buying a signed copy before I forget the little people. My magazine mentions advertisers, and advertisers are suddenly “the power move.” I say I'll be viral, congrats. Everything I put on the table came sliding right back to me with my own fingerprints still on it.

Psychologists call it the chameleon effect, from a 1999 study by Chartrand and Bargh, and it's our natural habit of subtly mimicking whoever we're talking to. When two people fall into it without noticing, that's real rapport forming. The problem is the other version, the one researchers flag as strategic, where somebody adopts your interests on the spot and agrees with everything you say, because manufactured similarity increases attraction. Healthy mirroring is responsive. This was performance. The reflection came back too fast and too complete, from a man who had not mentioned a single book until he found out I write them. One voice memo, and suddenly he's a patron of the literary arts.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a worn copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad behind the register at the Walmart barbershop. But those prayer hands felt less like intercession and more like a sales funnel.

Then, at 10:45 on Sunday night, the prayers wrapped up and he sent me two letters.

Him: “Gn”

Not good night. Not sleep well. Gn.

Me: “Good night”

Every vowel present and accounted for, because somebody in that conversation needed to model full words. And I thought that was that. But at 11:08, twenty-three minutes after logging off for the evening, he was back with the real agenda.

Him: “Hope to take u to dinner and drinks soon on the water .. I stay out in lake Norman area”

On the water.

The water that's drying up. The water the billionaires are hoarding. The water AI is drinking like a frat boy at a kegger. This man looked at the one resource he believes is leaving planet Earth by 2030 and decided the romantic move is cocktails next to it. Sir, by your own math, that lake is a limited time offer. That's not a date, that's a farewell tour.

I told him the truth, since that's my whole brand.

Me: “That's a romantic date, and I wouldn't want to do that with a stranger. Thank you, but I'm good.”

He needed eighty-eight minutes with that one. At 12:36 AM the reply landed.

Him: “Ok”

Two letters again. This man prays strong prayers for your publishing career at 8:26 PM, but after ten o'clock you're getting consonants only.

I thought that was the end of it. It was not.

The next afternoon, right on schedule, “Good afternoon” landed at 12:24. Polite. Fine. I was living my actual life, the one with a magazine and a book launch in it, so my phone sat untouched for a while.

He gave it fifty-nine minutes, then decided he already knew how the story ended.

Him: “Guess me going to prison when I was young scared ya ... I will fall back”

Read that again. I turned down a first date at a lake with a man I'd never met in person, for reasons involving my own safety, and somehow the story that got written in his head was about his record. Not the lake. Not the stranger part. Not the sentence I actually typed. His past, reframed as the whole reason, cast and produced without my input.

I want to give him some credit here, because I meant what I said about the comeback being real. But there's a difference between a man who knows his story might scare someone off and names it with humility, and a man who reaches for that story the second a woman says no, because it's a softer thing to be rejected for than “I don't know you and I'm not driving to a lake with you.” One is self-awareness. The other is an exit ramp with a sympathetic paint job.

So I corrected the record. Twice, since he'd need it in two parts to actually read it.

Me: “No. You inviting me to dinner and drinks on a lake bubblef*** yonder away from my safety was it for me. You take care.”

Me: “And, you said that when I just logged on. So, to expect me to have already responded when I didn't even see your good afternoon message... Yo. Lol, be easy. Take care.”

He built himself a story where I rejected the ex-con instead of the plan, then built a second story where I was already ignoring him before I'd even seen his message. Neither story required me to be in the room. He wrote himself the whole arc, prison to redemption to rejection, timeline included, and never once checked it against anything I actually said.

Stay hydrated, everybody. And maybe stay a little more attached to what people actually type.

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