Tips for a successful dinner date with me:
1. Do not show up at my door wearing a shirt with flames on it. If you show up wearing a shirt with flames on it, I may go out with you but I will never, EVer sleep with you. I may need to get laid, but I also own a vibrator. Start watching "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." It'll do both our sex lives a lot of good.
2. Don't diss the waiter. If you haven't gotten it by now, take a note: we girls figure that if you treat a waiter like shit, eventually you will treat us like shit, too. To the dickwad who told our waiter that if he didn't like the meal he ordered, "he could always throw it in her face," may your defective bloodline be eradicated from this good earth.
3. Use some table manners. I had a date with a guy who picked up his steak with his hands. I had a date with a guy who chewed with his mouth open. I've dated multiple men who've used their fingers as "pushers". Do you think these men made it into my bed? Well some of them did. OK, I was horny and let my judgment slip. But in every case, guess what? The guy was a lousy lay. Take another note: Men who do not know how to eat at the table do NOT know how to eat at the Y. All my girlfriends agree: no table manners means no nooky. So men: get some manners and employ them on every date. We'll all get laid a LOT more often.
4. Ask me some questions about myself. If you talk about what you do, who your friends are, how many cars you have, how many places you've traveled to, what your political views are, what your environmental views are, and on and on and on until my eyes are crossing from exhaustion and I'm trying to remember if the women's room has a window I can crawl out of, you're probably not going to be getting lucky with me anytime soon.
5. This isn't quiz time. A lot of guys think that because they've asked a woman out on a date they can play Are You The Woman For Me, the exciting game show in which the woman with the right answers gets the prize, which is continued dating until marriage. Quiz categories include Drug Use for 10 points, Family Background for 50 points, Is She Smart for 150 points, Does She Get Me for 250 points, and the Daily Double: Is Her Clock Ticking for 500 points, My advice? Stop it. That's not nice. It makes a date into an ordeal with a self-obsessed jerk.
6. Do not hide the dessert menu from me. Because the exact instant you even hint that you think I could drop a few pounds is the instant you can count on never getting even a goodnight kiss from me, never mind the incredible head I am quite capable of giving.
7. Don't tip 10 percent, you cheap bastard. I can't count the number of dates I've been on after which the guy (who invariably makes double my annual salary) tips the waiter 10 percent. What, are you too stupid to figure the math that gets you that extra 5 percent over the bill? Do you think wait staff live simply to serve? Do you think your date will be impressed with your thriftiness that she will immediately take you home, tie you to the bed post and give you the lap dance of your life? Um, think again.
8. Do not let me pay; do not ask me to pay. I've had it with men who think all I want out of them is a free dinner. News bulletin: I can buy my own dinner. In fact, I usually do buy my own dinner. But buying my own dinner, when I'm out with friends, out by myself, or out traveling for business, is very different from buying my own dinner when I'm out on a date with you, a date that you asked me out on so that you could get to know me better. A date that I did not build into my budget.
Did you go get a hair cut before this date? Yeah? How much did it cost you? $20? Mine cost me $45. Plus a 15 percent tip. I got off cheap because I didn't have it highlighted this month. How 'bout that shirt you had dry cleaned? Bet that cost you all of $7. Mine cost me $12. 'Cuz I'm a girl. Would you date me again if I showed up without having waxed that pesky mustache off, without having carefully applied enough makeup to make me look dewy and "natural," and without having filed and painted my raggedy-ass fingernails? Doubt it. Do you have to wax/buy makeup/get your nails done just so the opposite sex will look twice at you? No. How 'bout having to pay more for auto repair because the mechanic knows he can get away with charging you more? How 'bout every month for freakin' 20+ years having to buy pads and tampons and birth control pills AND condoms? How 'bout every month looking at your paycheck and realizing that the guy in the cube next to you, who does exactly the same work you do, is right that minute looking at a bigger paycheck, which he gets just because his plumbing is on the outside?