Image via Complex Original
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A class currently offered at Boston College assigns students to go on dates in order to get them to interact with other humans that they have feelings for. As we all know, young people these days are completely incapable of this because of Tinder and the hookup culture and hip-hop and cell phones and Socrates, the corrupter of the youth. Setting aside the fact that people of all generations are prone to spending too much time on their phones (example: my extremely non-Millennial dad), I doubt this generation invented social awkwardness. In fact, I know it didn't. While researching a paper once, I found a book from 1816 featuring the sentence: "They consider him as belonging to the awkward squad."
But since every other product review on this site tries to get you to buy some jawn by invoking the possibility of maybe impressing a woman so she will maybe touch your pale, desolate nether regions, maybe some of my contemporaries do need help in the dating department. I haven't been on many dates, but I figure any seduction strategies that don't rely entirely on Peter Pan-collared Junya Watanabe jackets could be of some use.
Before you lose trust in me completely, here goes: The following are a few of my tips on how to go on a date with a woman. These alone will NOT suffice to turn you into a suave ladykiller overnight, but there will probably be at least one aspect of your next date that you won't screw up horribly.
Emily Lever is a French-American writer who wishes she led a life of adventure. You can follow her on Twitter here.
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Be honest: Part I
Have you ever invited a girl to do something with a group of people, but by some coincidence that you totally didn't instigate it turned out that nobody else could make it and—look at that, whaddya know—it's just the two of you having drinks at a candlelit wine bar? Yeah, don't do that.
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Be honest: Part II
Even if it's clear that your outing to the museum is going to be one-on-one, make sure your fellow art buff knows it's a date. This doesn't go without saying: I can think of several women (not all of them are me) who have mistakenly thought they were hanging out with a friend only to realize flirtation and/or a date was in progress. Never play it so cool that you're lying by omission, like, "I really want to see the new Jim Jarmusch movie, but all my other friends have already seen it. Qanna go?" She might make the mistake of thinking you just want to chill and appreciate neo-noir minimalist cinema. She'll let her guard down the way she would around a friend, but never would on a date. This may seem like a good thing if you think the end justifies the means, but trust earned under false pretenses, when broken, breaks almost irredeemably. When your true intentions appear, she will feel misled and betrayed and your underhanded ass can expect to regain her trust around the same time Dr. Dre drops Detox.
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Be honest: Part III
I'm assuming you aren't shameless enough to pretend that you art directed the Comme des Garçons S/S 16 lookbook that hasn't come out yet. But avoid the more commonplace deceptions too: Don't lie about your knowledge of a book, an article, and album, a movie, whatever. Just say, "I've been meaning to get around to watching that" or, "I've heard of it, but haven't read it." There are a lot of works of art out there and there's nothign embarrassing about not knowing every single one. What is embarrassing is if she says, "1Q84 was a great book. How about that scene with the ostrich?" and you respond with some cookie-cutter phrase about how you "love Murakami's idiosyncratic grasp of dialogue" and then she'll be like, "PSYCH! There was no such scene." Be careful and tread lightly.
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Be honest: Part IV
If you're just trying to bust a nut and get out, don't flirt with her for weeks before asking her out or ask her to see your comedy show or talk to her about wildly personal things. If you think your best bet to get a woman to sleep with you is to trick her into falling in love with your wonderful personality, then you do not have a wonderful personality.
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Don't Put Your Foot In Your Mouth
What if you trash-talked France in front of a French girl and thought you were in the clear because she didn't have a French accent and then she casually brought up her childhood in Bordeaux half an hour later, informing you that those were her people you insulted? Wouldn't that be awkward? You just never know how your rant that you think is really funny could completely backfire. Be honest, sure, but you can be politically correct—GASP!—for an hour or two. It's called being polite. If being offensive is the only way you know how to be funny and you think anyone who takes offense "just can't take a joke," punch yourself where it hurts the most!
In other words, just have a nice, normal conversation for once. I know what I'm talking about because although I've had very few dates, I've had many conversations.
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Don't Believe Everything You Read/Hear
With all due respect to our dearly departed Jake Woolf, these black and red slides are unlikely to help you slide into a girl's DMs or anything else of hers for that matter, even if they are Raf Simons. But beware of normal-seeming advice too. Like your best friend from seventh grade who told you it would be a good idea to just walk up to your crush and kiss them on the last day of school, men's and women's magazines alike can give terrible romantic advice. Esquire and Men's Health and their peers often tell you that being attractive is being a red-blooded man who drinks whiskey, straight up (I guess ice isn't manly? I don't even know) and knows how to take control and never dithers and washes his face with the sweat of thoroughbred stallions, not some sissy Clarins Pour Homme cleansing gel. If you're not that guy, which nobody actually is, you'll have a terrible time pretending to be. That's why everyone in the 50s was so full of sadness and pent-up rage.
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Buy Her A Kitten
You know that kitten in the neighboring building whose mews sound uncomfortably like a plaintive human child? The one that hangs out on the window ledge right next to your fire escape as if it's about to jump? Reach over and snatch that little bundle of fur and give it to the girl of your dreams and she will fall in love with you. Girls love kittens. True story. If you only remember one thing from this article, which you will because Twitter and ADHD and the short attention span generation and, wait, what was I saying again? I don't know, but just remember you can win any girl's heart by showing up on her doorstep in the middle of the night with a yelping kitten.