Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Notes from the Breadline,” a column by a laid-off lawyer in New York. Prior columns are collected here. You can reach Roxana St. Thomas by email (at roxanastthomas@gmail.com), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.
On a drizzly Thursday morning, my friend Giovanna calls to invite me to lunch. “I have a window between a meeting and a conference call,” she says, referring to concepts that are increasingly foreign to me. “Come and meet me.”
“I don’t know,” I say guiltily, tallying the lunches, dinners, and coffees to which she has treated me in the past few months, “you just bought me dinner.’
“Don’t be silly,” she says cheerfully. “Consider it a public service, since you’ll have to shower.”
“Whoa!” I tell her, “let’s not be rash.”
“Take a shower,” she says sternly. “I’ll meet you downstairs at one.”
A few hours later, we are sitting at a restaurant. Giovanna is dressed beautifully for work, her hair and makeup perfect. Although I have showered, I realize that I could easily be mistaken for her maid. We talk about her new colleagues, her most recent deposition, and my job search, before the conversation turns to what women invariably talk about when they talk to other women: men.
Sitting at the table — hands wrapped around our coffee cups, voices lowered conspiratorially — I am reminded of television commercials in which women confide sheepishly about unseemly problems, like occasional irregularity or embarrassing ring-around-the-collar. But, before a chipper paid spokesperson can appear, offering us laxative yogurt or assistance with our laundry woes, we identify the issue at hand: DWUI.
No, puzzled readers — not that DWUI. Without diminishing, in any way, the seriousness of operating a motor vehicle after tossing back too many suds or hitting the pipe, let’s be clear: we are talking about something entirely different. We’re talking about the insidious problem of Dating While on Unemployment Insurance.
Read about the perils of DWUI, after the jump.

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