The All-Important Second Date

I had my first Second Date in 1970. Okay, so I don’t remember it. Cut me some slack, I was 13. It almost certainly involved a lot of kissing after she put the kids to bed. (She was not a MILF so get your minds out of the gutter. She was babysitting. I was “helping” her.)

Fast forward to about 1981, when I had my second Second Date of any consequence. I skip past high school, a dating merry-go-round from which I emerged virginal; and college, in which there was no dating but lots of partying and sex and four memorable relationships to which I cannot attach Second Date memories unless breakfast in a dining hall, the morning after, counts as a date.

(Note to college students who are wondering what the old guy has to say about sex: It was pretty much the same in the 1970s as it is now, no matter what your parents say. We partied. We hooked up. We paired off. The differences? No AIDS and all the girls were on the Pill, so I never used a condom in college. Also, pot was incredibly inexpensive and beer was, for all practical purposes, free at university-sponsored events. Oh, yeah: We also thought oral sex counted as actual sex, except for Bill Clinton, whom we always knew was a little ahead of us. You’ve got us there.)

Anyway, like I said, it is now 1981 and I am out of college, with a new job in a new town where I don’t know anyone … and that was far more daunting then than it would be now because there was NO Internet. Fortunately, I drank, so there were the bars, and eventually I met a nice girl who was still in college and I asked her to dinner. And, get this—I was actually not thinking, I need to get laid. I specifically remember that I was just looking for company, as improbable as that sounds. So I really do not remember the first date. I may or may not have kissed her good night. She lived with her mom.

The next weekend, I asked her if she wanted to go to a movie, and she did. So this is a Second Date, except I still, unbelievably, had not thought about getting laid. And again, I may or may not have kissed her goodnight. But I still remember the last look on her face before she turned and walked to the door of her mom’s house. There was a … tightening of the eyes, a purse of the lips, a sort of puzzlement. The next day, she asked me if I wanted to come over that night and watch a movie. Sure, why not? (The VCR was a new invention, by the way.) Five minutes into whatever the movie was, her hands were under my shirt, playing with my nipples. Some seconds after that, I was returning the favor.

“Oh, good. I was afraid you might be gay,” she said. So we had a lot of sex that night after her mom had gone to bed, and then we fell asleep, which we had not planned on, and were awakened at 8 a.m. by mom knocking at the door … and then opening it.

I’m going to be killed, I thought.

“What would you two kids like for breakfast?” is what she said, and I remember that bagels were involved. A memorable third date, all in all.

But the lesson here … besides the obvious one that not all moms will kill you for sleeping with their daughters, even if they catch you naked and have a serrated knife in hand … the lesson I should have learned came from the Second Date. More often than not, a woman on a Second Date is deciding whether or not she wants to sleep with you, if she hadn’t already.

YOU are on a Second Date because you probably want to sleep with her, though by unspoken agreement, in the delicate dance that is a Second Date, you do not say so directly. SHE will let you know. Demanding, begging, sulking, whining … how have those been working for you?

I thought so. They never worked for me, either.

By definition, a Second Date is the second time you see the woman in person, face-to-face. Online back-and-forth does not count unless webcams and nudity are involved. Phone calls do not count, even if phone sex is involved. Stalking definitely does not count. This is NOT an advice column (I am wary of being sued) but if it were, I would tell you that the best Second Dates follow close on the heels of First Dates, which is why First Dates should always alwaysALWAYs be for coffee, in a bookstore, in the afternoon on a Saturday. This way, if you don’t hit it off, you can say you have other plans later (as can she.) And if you DO hit it off, and she goes to the bathroom and actually comes back, it does actually count and the Second Date has arguably commenced. “Let’s go look at books,” you say. Or I would.

(If she sits back down and hands you her underwear, you are in Third Date territory and on your own.) Yes, you CAN actually be on a Third Date on Day One—and Women Who Do Not Have Sex on a First Date know this, also.

My current favorite dating site is OKCupid, because they let you see how individual women answer many, many questions about sex, among other things, but it is the most fun, in the name of science and research, to check out the answers to the sex questions. And you will find that almost all women, when asked how many dates, ideally, they would go on with someone before having sex, will choose “3-5” (as opposed to “0, 1, 2” or “5-to-infinity-or-until-he-asks-me-to-marry-him-and-signs-in-blood.” And, at the same time, many women I have checked out on OKCupid also indicate, through answering various questions, that they think there is nothing really wrong with, umm, “other people” having sex on a first date. It’s just not necessarily ideal for them, by which they mean, “Yeah, right. Like I’m going to put on my OKCupid dating profile that I have sex on a first date.”

Because that’s what Craigslist is for, right? Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking that.