First Date
Six single male friends went on a date last weekend and swapped notes on their first dates. Between them they’ve clocked up several and have a wealth of knowledge to impart. In this matter of utmost significance, it’s not mate against mate but a little helping hand from those with similar experiences.
It’s one thing you get quite good at when you’ve been single a while, the first date. Delaying marriage, as our generation is wont to do, extends the dating years, a good decade or so longer than our folks, and think how many first dates you can squeeze into that. 48 a year estimates one friend, about 350 so far, and she’s not even trying. Double that for blokes, who tend to do the asking.
Single people curse first dates, married people envy them but they deserve neither because they’re simply a necessary precursor to what hopefully comes next. The intention of every first date is to make it your last. To find someone you like enough so you’ll never have to date again.
To that end, much rides on a first date. Men fuss over where to take her and what to talk about when they get there. Women spend hours, days even, on outfit consultation and what to talk about when they get there.
The biggest mistake you can make, according to the gang of six, is to cloak a date in friendship. That’s the work of a weakling too scared to lay his feelings on the line preserving his fragile ego should he be rejected.
The insinuation is in the locale. A café suggests mateship. A bar intimates a one night stand. A noisy, high turnover restaurant will have it wrapped up swiftly with no room for intimacy. The best chance you’ve got, so say the fellas, is low lighting, a soft atmospheric buzz, and side by side seating. Good food is like an aphrodisiac setting the mood for stimulation of the senses. Back streets or beachfront make it easier to steal a kiss. Adventure dates – like leaping out of planes – are for try hards.
Don’t they know it’s all superfluous if you’re into someone, which you can tell within minutes. There are obvious warning signs: bail if he/she talks about exes, money or themselves, or treats it like a job interview. Abscond if they make you pay or attempt to sleep with you; That suggests it’s de rigueur. Little things can make a difference – like my first ever date at 15 walking on the gutter side of the road – but if we like you, we’ll forgive just about anything.
Like a recent first date – a picnic in the Blue Mountains where his car blew up and the only way home was to jump on a tour coach of octogenarians telling smutty jokes on a microphone. Despite the mishap, so inspired was I, I bought a new diary so I could dedicate it to he of the date, to note his beautiful words and text messages (I can’t work out how to save them on computer should I lose the phone), and log his kind gestures like washing my car – inside and out. But then the quandary of buying the 350 page A4 edition or perhaps a smaller pocket notebook, just in case.
Beware the dataholic – those addicted to first date excitement who don’t dare follow through lest the game be up. They are recognisable for their predictability and clichéd date routine.
Married friends and mothers will advise otherwise. Take the scatter gun approach. Date every man unless he has two heads because, ‘you just never know’. He might have nice friends. ‘It’s about keeping in dating form’, say my male friends. But what’s the point? Best to date only those you suspect might be a keeper. It may only be one date a year, but it may also be your last.