Manslations (11 page)

Firstly, you're not Meryl Streep. He's not fooled. So all he gets from this is that you're behaving strangely. Secondly, if you somehow DO manage to fool him, uh, what's going to happen later when you're not BS-ing him anymore?

Let's say that you like a guy and you want to ask
him
out. Pretty crazy, huh? Huh? Next thing, you're going to be picketing in Washington and signing petitions for the right to smoke on the Sabbath.

I'll put it another way. You're fine asking him out. You're well within your rights as a human and an American. Or as a Canadian. In Europe you need a writ. And in all other lands, please check your local ordinances.

Do
(There's only one “do.” It's a pretty simple operation.)

Actually Ask Him Out:
And by that I mean that you should ask him to go somewhere—and not as a pal or a coworker or a fellow marmot enthusiast or whatever. Ask him out on a date. Scary? Yes. But the alternative is far scarier: you'll actually be out on the date, and you'll have no idea if he knows that it's a date. I just peed a little at the thought. Please be clear, as if you're speaking to a small child who needs everything laid out very clearly.

Don't

Worry That This Makes You Look Desperate:
It does not. This is the number one fear that women have about asking a man out. How do I know that? I hear this one all the time: “I don't want to look desperate.” You know what makes you look desperate? When you want to ask a man out, but instead you spend all your time trying to drop wilder and wilder hints that he should ask you out. Relax.


Pretend You're Not Nervous:
Why do that? So he thinks that he's in no way special and that you ask guys out every ten minutes? It's good to be nervous. It makes him feel good knowing that you like him enough to get a little freaked. It helps him feel like a badass. Which is nice because he might be exactly as nervous as you are.


Chicken Out:
Guys ask women out all the time. Yes, it's terrifying. That awful barfy sensation in your gut? Yeah, that's 100 percent normal. Don't let that deter you.

So you've got a date. Your mission? Before the date, figure out what you're going to do together. (I know it would be so much easier to figure it out afterward, since by then you'd already know what you did, but unfortunately there's that whole space–time continuum thing to contend with.)

When a man has to plan a date, he spends some time sweating this very thing just like you do. Where, when, what time? Here's how to get this thing moving in the right direction.

Do

Google Him:
Why not? Hey, the information is out there. Nothing wrong with doing a little recon. I'd stop short of hacking into his FBI file, but then again, what am I saying? If I had that kind of access or skill, I'd be all over it.


Plan to Go Wherever/Whenever You're Comfortable:
Some people go nuts about the place/time of the date. Should we do a coffee date? A movie? Dinner? Is that too weird? Should we go out at dusk? Do people even say dusk anymore? What about the location—is a tractor pull too butch? Relax. Breathe. All that stuff that you're worrying about? It's all about the “meaning” of it, which, as you now know, will likely slip his attention entirely. Just pick something that you like where you can both determine whether or not you're having fun.


Have Some Ideas:
Ideally, your pre-date conversation won't be too much “I don't know. What do you want to do? I don't know. What do
you
want to do?” Doesn't matter which one of you did the asking; it's everybody's job to figure this out. Be nice. If all you do is go along with whatever
he
wants you to do, either he'll get annoyed that he always has to think of everything, or he'll, like,
love
it. And you'll be with
that
guy.

Don't

Worry about Your Shoes:
Sadly, he will never notice that you are even wearing them. Unless you've just wrapped your feet in duct tape or raw cod or something, in which case, not great. In fact, an excellent indicator that you wore the right shoes is that he didn't notice them. Unless you're out with a foot fetishist. Or a gay man. Otherwise, yeah, your shoe choice might not matter to him.


Plan a Hell Date to “Test” Him:
Don't plan to take him into some weird situation where you'll be comfortable and he will not, just to see if he can “handle it.” That's called “being a jerk.” Be nice.

Look at you! You're here! You're out! You're on a date! Now, let's give you some pointers on how to
not
screw it all up and force everyone to go home wearing a mask and cape to hide their shame. (On the other hand, if you both want to go home wearing a mask and cape to… I don't know, play
Phantom of the Opera
? Hey, your business, not mine.)

Do

Eat Whatever You Feel Like:
There was an article in the
New York Times
that revealed that women got more responses if they wrote that they liked steak in their online dating profile. The wrong conclusion? Steak makes men want to date you. No. Men don't give a crap what you order or eat on a date. Again, that's more “meaning” stuff. He's just not looking for it. Unless you're ordering the All-You-Can-Gorge, Conan-the-Barbarian plate of wings that comes with a bib and no silverware, you'll be fine. You know what doesn't look good? If you order a salad because some magazine told you to. That's just sad. Plus you'll be so hungry that you might not be able to…


Have a Good Time:
Seems like an obvious one, but remember that you're trying to determine whether the two of you had fun together. (I mean… that is what you're doing, right? You're not dating him so that you can have a bad time, are you?)


Remember That He's Nervous, Too:
Throw him a bone, okay? Listen, talk. You know how to do this.

Don't

Put Too Much Pressure on the Situation:
Ninety-nine percent of dates do not result in a lifelong commitment, okay? And that's exactly as it should be. Think of how few people you meet on a day-to-day basis with whom you'd gladly share a six-month road trip. Not too many, right? There is no shame if this date is not working out. And there's no upside in trying to force it to. You're just there to see what's what. And if you two don't have fun together, well, isn't that the kind of thing you want to know as early as possible?


Discuss How Many Children You Want to Have by Next Week:
Let him believe that you are there to meet someone and have fun (and are not just looking for a sperm donor). I know I said that men weren't afraid of commitment, but some of them might be afraid of being captured and used for their fluids alone. (It's not very badass if a woman wanted to date you because her clock was ticking and hey, you were nearby.)


Clam Up:
The first date is all about learning. Let him learn. You want him to know who you are so that if he happens to be the guy who loves that, he can find out about it.

Wow. Now I'm impressed. You've run the table. You've survived the entire experience. And now it's time to end the evening. How to do that is up to you. And when I say that, I mean that literally it is up to
you.
As in, it isn't up to him. Choose wisely.

First, a note on when it's okay to have sex.

I've gotten this question quite a bit on the website. How long must a woman wait to have sex with a man so that he doesn't think that she's a bad person?

The answer? Whenever you want. Seriously.

I'm sure that there was a time when a woman who put out was considered just this side of a hooker, and gentlemen wore hats, etc. But at this point, tell me if you can imagine this ever happening:

“Well, I wanted to sleep with her. But then she let me! Ugh!”

Lacks the ring of truth, doesn't it?

Not unlike the situation in which women worry about what to eat in front of a man, we're not going to be turned off if you do what you want to do. And if he is turned off by the fact that you had sex when you wanted to, uh, how is
that
a good guy to be with? (You
can
take this too far. For example, I'd have to recommend waiting to have sex at least until sometime after you've said hello. After that, though, it's all up to you.)

The most common mistake seems to be that a woman shouldn't have sex too soon or it will destroy the “chase” that men supposedly need. So you hold off and let him “chase” you, for fear of losing his interest. Please don't bother with this.

Here's the thing about “the chase.” The guy who sticks around
only
because there's a chase involved is one who thinks of you as “prey”—yep, a player. Any of those times a guy bailed on you because the “chase” was over, that's because he was only ever in it for the chase to begin with.

So, some end-of-the-date dos and don'ts:

Do

Whatever You Want:
Again, if you want to kiss him, great. If you want to sleep with him, don't worry about it. If you want to do nothing, don't worry about it. Once again, men are not going to be delving too far into what the timing of the sex means. Not our bag. We're focusing on what sex does (i.e., “make our day”).


Say You Had Fun If You Did:
If he had a good time, he's going to be trying to figure out if you did. Let him in on the secret, ladies. I know the temptation is to withhold that kind of information until you know if he had a good time. But this thing's got to start somewhere.

Don't

Assume He Knows:
The things that women have told me were “hints” (i.e., “leaning slightly toward him, hoping he'd kiss me” or, swear to God, “wearing tactile fabrics,” which, since I'm not even sure what that is, I think we can rule it out as a “hint”)… sigh. Look, if you want him to kiss you good night, don't send him that message by refusing to make eye contact, clamming up, and talking about insurance. No, I don't care if, in your little heart, you were thinking with all your might, “Kiss me, you fool.”


Bank on Anything He Says About Calling:
We'll get into this in the next chapter.


Push to Make Plans for the Next Date:
Hey, maybe he didn't have as good a time as you did. Relax. All will be revealed. (Next chapter, next chapter.)

What if all I wanted from the date was sex?

If all you are looking for is to throw a guy down and do him, boy, have I got some good news for you. In fact, you likely didn't need to bother with the “date” at all. There's probably a line forming outside your door right now.

Don't believe me? Read on for a cautionary tale…

I knew a woman who once confessed that she had come up with a “trick” to get men to go to bed with her.

Okay. Let's say that again. A woman, okay? Spent time—time that she will never get back—devising a trick to bamboozle all the unsuspecting and uncooperative men out there into surrendering their delicate flower unto her.

Look, there are a lot of things that I don't know anything about. I admit that freely. But how can someone capable of a thought like this have a normally functioning brain?

My first guess was that her trick was to “be alive.” And that one does work. It's a great trick. Men have not yet developed any counter to that one. In fact, that one works so well, it's almost not even fair that you ladies have it in your arsenal.

Oh, and for those of you out there who may be wondering what her “trick” is and how you might use it for your own benefit—please, you've got to stop. And you should probably not be operating heavy machinery either. Seriously, you need to put on a helmet and sit down in a pillow-filled room, or you are going to get someone killed.

And I hear you out there:

But Jeff, we want men to go to bed with us!

I know. I know that you do. And so let me clear up any misconceptions you might have about that. I don't know exactly what kind of resistance this woman imagined that she might be smashing up against, but—just in case she doesn't (or, God save us all,
you
don't) understand this—the male defense system against getting laid? Very flimsy. It really is. And it only fully comes into its own in jail, at which point it can become very strong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was her trick?