The big 'first date' rule

A first date is like your first game of poker. You’re either blessed with beginner's luck or you throw your cards on the table and swear to live a hermit’s life. I’m a bit rusty with the dating business. I don’t quite like it. For starters, you’re watching your conduct because you know you’re being watched by someone else. Then there’s always the fear that your date will be a twat, obnoxious, homicidal, call you babe or something even more nauseating such as honey, is rude to the waiters, and the worst, is a vegan.

But you can never tell, can you, until you’re there, on the other side of the table, midway through a drink or meal, the mind-numbing talk of office floor plans making you want to leap out of your chair, Archimedes-like, and rifle through the pantry’s cutlery for that butcher knife to stick into somebody’s jugular. Why you didn’t make that pact with your friend where she calls you faking an emergency the instant she receives a get-me-the-fuck-out-of-here text from you, you don’t know. Why you didn’t hibernate that evening, you don’t know.  

After much deliberation and butcher knife wielding lessons, I had an epiphany, the belling of that hateful cat, the dating ritual in other words. My dear dear Singletons, there is one rule, the biggest rule, and it requires just the nifty skill of brining glass to mouth and a hearty liver, and that would be to go on that first date drunk. Or partially drunk, if ever there was such a thing. My reasons are few but so well researched they’d put McKinsey to shame. Oh wait, someone’s already covered that. Here are the variations of that rule.

1)      Go a few drinks down: because your eyes will be unfocussed from the start. So if the conversation veers towards hedge funds, the politics of Proust or anything else that would bore the pants off you, the person on the other side of the table won’t have a clue that behind those glassy eyes there's you wondering if the clams still taste just the way they did when you were last at that restaurant in Goa. Or that that guy at the far end of the bar is pretty damn hot.

2)      Go drunk: for suddenly hedge funds and the politics of Proust can take on a life of their own. You never knew, till now, that these two subjects had the potential for happiness.

3)      Go drunker: because zoning in and out of a conversation can turn out to be exceptionally entertaining. Scenario one. You’ll catch snatches of the conversation or perhaps confuse words. So that the word ‘day’ may sound like ‘gay’ to you. This will lead you to think that the poor chap is using you, the stranger, the comfort blanket, to come out of the closet…finally. Suddenly it will all make sense; the effeminate hand gestures, the clipped tone, the…wait a minute…is that a rose embroidered on his shirt? Never mind the fact that it is actually a spot of red wine that you accidently spilled on him while frantically waving at someone you thought was your friend, but wasn’t. A rose it is. 

Your heart will wring at the thought of the fellow’s plight and with renewed vigour you’ll begin to make him feel confident about his choice of sexuality by addressing him as ‘darling’ and cooing about Diane von Furstenberg’s spring-summer collection. Tres tres chic. After all, how wrong can you go with the fashion and gay men stereotype?

This, in turn, will leave him confused about his own sexuality and with strange messages such as ‘dude, wtf, you’re gay?!’ which he will receive from friends a week later (you may have drunk texted your friends that night telling them about his gayness).

In a nutshell, it will be fun or, if I'm feeling old fashioned, a rather gay affair.

4)      Go pissed: You’ll wake up the next morning and never remember the disaster of the night before. The world will be bleary, single perhaps, but peaches once again. 

Cheers