"Can't We Just Be Friends?"

The question I was recently asked by a female friend was, "So what does dating entail?" The reason this mattered was a recent "no-dating-other-people" clause had been inserted into a relationship. The problem being that if you don't know what constitutes a date, that agreement is tough to enforce. So you can see why I need to address this issue. It's really a public service.

For men, it's really quite simple as to what is involved in a date. It really all boils down to the expectation of sex. If I am going out to a movie with my friend's wife, that is not a date. I am not going to sleep with her, I am not even going to attempt it, I am just going to a movie. If, on the hand, I am going to a movie with a little hottie whom I have been chatting up for several months, that is a date. Because I am going to do my level best to take our relationship "to the next level."

Now for the tough calls. Let's say I am going to the movies with a woman who I have slept with in the past, but has since become my "friend." Is this a date? Well now that is a little tricky. You need more information to make that call. Is she in a relationship? Does she complain to me about the men in her life? Has she put on a whole lot of weight since we last dated? These are all important questions. The most important and deciding question? When she opens the door do I immediately think, "Oh yeah, I'd do that." Or is my thought, "God, I hope Jessica Alba is in this movie." If it is the former, we are on a date, the latter, we are just two old friends out to catch a flick.

You will notice that I haven't mentioned money at any time in this piece. There is a very good reason for that. It is irrelevant who pays for what nowadays. In fact all of those silly "date qualifications" that you see on sitcoms are meaningless. You know the ones, "If the man pays it's a date," or "If you pick her up at her house it's a date, but if you meet in public it isn't." Nonsense, the only thing that determines whether you are on a date or not is does the man have reasonable expectation of sex? Since I can already hear you scratching your thick skulls, we will talk about "reasonable expectation of sex."

In our discussion, we use the phrase "reasonable expectation of sex." So what is reasonable you ask? To which I reply, "haven't you been listening at all you pathetic moron?" I have covered this ground before folks, if I have to go back and explain everything to you in every column then we are going to have problem. I only have thousand words to work with before your MTV-trained attention spans start to waver on me. If I have to explain everything, it is going to eat into that total and you will never achieve enlightenment, or in most of your cases mediocrity. So work with me folks, go back into the archives and read the old stuff, it makes for a more enjoyable experience for us all.

At any rate, a "reasonable expectation of sex", means that you, the female, have given me, the male, no reason to believe we can't have sex. Now all of you women are thinking to yourselves, "but I have, I have told you time and time again that we are just friends. I'm safe." Don't make me laugh, do you honestly believe I was listening when you said that? Hell no, I was wondering how you would look covered in whipped cream and cheezits. Short of physical violence and possibly court orders, there is no way to keep a man from thinking that you want to have sex with him. As an old friend once told me, "They all want me, some of them just don't realize it yet."

So let's review. What is a date? A date occurs when a man is in close proximity to woman that he has a reasonable expectation of sex with. They don't need to be alone, he doesn't have to pay, they don't have to wear certain colors or move their heads in a certain way, they just have to be in the same room together. Now as you can see from our above discussion, in a man's mind, anytime he is within ten feet of any woman he has ever spoken more than four words to, he is on a date. He may realize that it's a longshot, he may even despair of ever succeeding. But that won't stop that silly, magnificent bastard from trying and that is a beautiful thing.

It is that sort of can-do spirit that makes this country great. It is that sort of blind obedience to our privates that allows men to be so easily controlled. It is that sort of belief in our own self worth that has allowed us to invent electricity, the wheel and porn on DVD. In short, if we were any brighter, we wouldn't be nearly so lovable. Besides, you'll never have to pay for a movie or dinner again.