Dating in the Nineties

The date---with its flammable mixture of male and female, cocktails and desire---has long held a special place in the male imagination. When we picture the ultimate date, we see James Bond in a white dinner jacket.

The woman has him in for a martini, tipping her head seductively as she slips on diamond earrings. At the four-star restaurant, there's Dom Pérignon with dinner, then perhaps some dancing, more champagne and a run at the baccarat table. A moonlit drive finds them back at her place. Her lips are wet with wine and desire, the promise of something more lingering in the air....

It may sound ideal, but the James Bond date is woefully out of date.

"No one's done that in centuries," says Serena, a 25-year-old make-up artist. "I don't know many people who 'date1 date. You just hang out and fuck and get up and go eat, or meet up with friends for a drink, or go for a walk. It's unnatural and weird to get all dressed up to go out on some kind of formal date."

"In real life, everything would go wrong," says Dan, a 29-year-old commercial artist. "You'd get a table by the kitchen door, your VISA card would be declined, you'd mispronounce the wine. It's better to go to a restaurant where you seat yourself and the menu's in English."

Dates have always made people nervous, but in the Nineties, dating anxiety may have reached new heights. People don't even like to use the word anymore. No one has dates these days---they "get together," "run into each other," "meet someplace," "go out with a gang of friends."

"'Date' is a loaded word," says Dan. "It means your evening is serious, like you expect it to lead to something. It's better to keep things loose-just get together for a movie or go eat Chinese with a bunch of friends. Low-key stuff. But going out on a date. . . ." His eyes widen in horror.

"I don't think I've ever been on a date, really," says Grant, a Bard College junior. "In college, you don't date. It's more like, 'Oh, you're going to a party? Great, I'll go, too.'"

What caused this dating phobia? It may be a reaction to the date's "comeback" in 1986, when a confluence of events---years of Reaganism, a decline in alcohol and drug use and a threatened epidemic of heterosexual AIDS--- sent America scurrying back to the rigid dating codes of the Fifties. Suddenly, national magazines ran stories with such tides as "The Return of the Date," "The New Monogamy" and "The 'Reputation' Returns," proclaiming the end of the sexual revolution. All the worst dating horrors of bygone times---blind dates, virginity, even meeting your girlfriend's parents--- were revisited on a stunned populace.

The date had been semiretired since the Sixties, when love-ins and LSD blew away all memory of the uptight Fifties. The Seventies offered even fewer dating rules---people just dropped Quaaludes and went to discos, going home with whoever brightened their mood rings. They spent the first half of the Eighties doing coke and screwing in night-club rest rooms---and then the "date" returned. For a while, people actually tried it. They went on blind dates. They joined herpes-free dating clubs. They discussed people's "reputations." But since they already drank less, drugged less and screwed less, there was little social novocaine to numb them to the terrors of formal dating.

So the "date" didn't take. The Reagan years ended, the straight AIDS epidemic never arrived and the sexes were left to muddle their way toward a new set of rules. The good news: Sex is in again. But so is anxiety about everything from the economy to the new world order to splitting the dinner check. Here, then, are the new rules of engagement, compiled through interviews with men and women across the country, people who are sure of only one thing: They want to meet, merge and mate without actually having to date---because dating in the Nineties is simply much too tense.

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Rule 1: Get introduced. Women today are leery of men who don't come with some kind of pedigree, whether it's a friend's introduction or a connection through work. An introduction provides a wedge against anxiety, a sense of security that's partly about AIDS, but also a way to avert that most dreaded catastrophe: the date from hell. If this undercuts a date's adventure, so be it. Women in the Nineties don't like surprises.

"There almost always has to be some kind of introduction," confirms Michael, a 27-year-old investment banker who met his current girlfriend through their health-club swim team.

"I'm not into the pickup scene in bars," says Jill, a 25-year-old television producer. "I do see it happen---it probably happens more now than it did five years ago. But I like to meet people through friends or through work."

If you want to meet that luscious, unknown vixen across a crowded club, any connection can improve your "perfect stranger" status---some dim association you may have with a friend of a friend of a friend of hers or even an approving word from the waitress.

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Rule 2: Keep it low-key. Nobody wants to call a date a "date" and they don't want it to seem like one, either. So take the old formality---calling way in advance, the flowers, the box of chocolates, the corner table in the swank French restaurant---and chuck it out the window. Your first date should be casual, unromantic. Lunch on Tuesday makes an excellent choice. You're dressed for work, pressed for time and almost nothing can go wrong. Or try a ball game. Anything is better than an intimate dinner for two.

"I want a guy to know who I am," says Jill. "When I'm having a pizza, I'm more apt to say revealing things, like that I love basketball, than when I'm in a dress sitting down in some really nice restaurant. It would make me very tense if a guy took me to some romantic dinner on a first date. On a formal date, you're under pressure to perform, you have all these expectations, like it has to lead to something."

"If you start thinking of it in terms of 'We're going on a date,' it puts a lot of pressure on you," agrees Steve, 22, a senior at Indiana University, "whether you're trying to impress someone or to show them who you really are, for fear you won't get another chance. So you try to take the pressure off by making it less formal."

Grant probably has the most basic approach to dating, one he says is common on American college campuses. "You get drunk, screw each other brainless, then you get up and if you still like each other, you go do stuff."

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Rule 3: Saturdays are serious. If your Tuesday lunch went smoothly, it's time for a second date. How about Friday night, you say? What do you think this is---1960? Friday is potent date-night juju. You have to build up to that slowly. The days of the week reflect a hierarchy of dating seriousness; if you go straight to Saturday, for instance, you might as well go ahead and marry her. For now, play it safe. Let your second date be a weeknight.

"A weekend is real intimate," Dan says. "You're bringing things out of the day-to-day, away from work. It's valuable personal time and that just gives a date more gravity."

"On a weeknight," says Hillary, 23, "you're less likely to have that tension of, Do I go home by myself or with him, or does he come home with me? Because you have to work the next day. So you can relax."

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Rule 4: There's safety in numbers. First dates used to mean a table for two; only when couples were well established did they meet each other's friends. But people today are so nervous about dating, so uncomfortable and worried that things will go wrong, they prefer to drown out the classic getting-to-know-you date in the noisy hubbub of a table for ten. A double date won't do---it's simply too datelike. So, sometimes for the first several dates, couples never meet alone. They call each other and say, "Some people are getting together . . ." and the group date begins.

"You know those little lulls on a date, when for a minute or thirty seconds or even ten seconds there's nothing to talk about and there's just this silence?" says Jill. "I can't stand that. It's kind of nice to have other people around to fill in the blanks. And you can get to know a guy better if you see what he's like around his friends."

Caroline, a 25-year-old graphics designer, says group dates are fine once in a while and ideal as an alternative to blind dates ("You can meet a guy and it's not pushed on you at all"). But when the group date is the only date you do, problems arise: A raucous table can dilute and confuse a date's intimacy and romance.

"It makes the boundaries of your relationship ill-defined from the beginning," says Caroline. "In the old days, a guy would call a girl and ask her out, and they'd go out, have a good conversation and kiss good night. Then he'd call her and ask her out again. That meant he liked her, he wanted to pursue her. It was real obvious. But when you start by going out to dinner with ten people, and half of you go have drinks afterward, and then you just go home, you walk around saying, Are we just friends?' Then you sort of sleep together by accident, and the next time (continued on page 147)Dating(continued from page 128) you go out you're with ten people again. You just don't know what to think about each other."

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Rule 5: Don't expect sex on the first date. Sex is the whispered possibility, the tantalizing raison d'être behind every date. Back in the Seventies, it was almost automatic. As one 36-year-old woman put it, "If you agreed to go on a date back then, you pretty much agreed to have sex, too. There was no reason not to---everyone was on the pill, the moral climate was liberal, there was no AIDS or V.D. scares. My first husband told me that if we hadn't had sex on our first date, he probably wouldn't have asked me out again. Having sex was a sign you liked a guy and wanted to date him. It was just expected of you."

Woman today are more conservative sexually---even if that just means delaying sex until the second or third date.

"Women my age, who used to sleep with guys right away back in high school and college, are only now discovering how sexy it is to make men wait," says 27-year-old Lissa, a publicist. "For me, they have to wait till, like, the third date. It has nothing to do with being a prude. It's almost fun, it's like drawn-out foreplay." She pointed out the elaborate mating rituals in the animal kingdom, the naturalness of building up to sex. "Orangutans do this thing where they go around in circles for hours. So the game itself can be pleasurable and fun."

"Men both want to sleep with you and hope you'll make them wait," says Karen, a 30-year-old copy writer. "I think they don't appreciate things they get too easily. So I prefer the 'bake' method of dating. You know how things come out better in the oven than in the microwave? I think a relationship isn't as good if you rush sex. With the bake method, you preheat it for two dates, and by the third date, you're ready for him to enter your oven."

But what's changed by then, what's the difference between sex on the third date or the first?

"Well, by the third date, he's spent three hundred dollars on you," Karen jokes. "Really, it's like dangling the carrot on the stick, or some other phallic thing. You'll be closer, you'll know each other better. There may even be some filtering out. By the second date, you may decide you don't like him."

Sometimes even men put the brakes on first-date sex. "I don't like to rush things," says Dan. "I come from a family where my father, my grandfather and my brother each met a woman and said, 'This is the woman I'm going to marry.' They did, too, and frankly, I think all three of them have shitty relationships. I used to get that same feeling about women, but I realize it's just a hormone surge. I don't want to make the same mistake. It's better if you know each other first, at least a little."

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Rule 6: Sometimes girls just want to have fun. If you think all women just say no, holding out for sex until they're in a long-term relationship aimed at marriage and babies, you're taking rule five too far. Having to wait a few dates for actual penetration doesn't make this a new Victorian age. Besides, rules are made to be broken. If the moment is right, sparks are flying and the gods are with you, women can be just as eager for no-strings, first-date sex as the next guy.

"I don't have to see a man for two weeks to know if I want him," says Serena. "I know that immediately. I guess you could draw out the intrigue if he's fabulous. But being really attracted to someone is so rare and I'm too selfish to wait."

"I don't think casual sex ended in the Eighties, not at all," says Hillary. "The whole thing about the AIDS scare didn't slow people down. I have a friend who dates five or six guys at a time and has sex with all of them, and it doesn't faze her at all."

Men are mistaken, Hillary says, if they assume women are always serious about sex. "I have another friend who is a model. She's absolutely gorgeous and as sweet as can be. She was doing this nude shoot with a photographer---one thing led to another and they ended up screwing. Then he told her, 'Now, I don't want you falling in love with me.' She was appalled. She just wanted to have sex and she probably would have done it with him again. But now she'll never touch him again because he was such a dork."

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Rule 7: Don't plan ahead. Another classic dating rule reversed. In the past, if you wanted a Saturday-night date, you had to ask a woman by Wednesday at the latest---and that was pushing it. Calling her up Saturday was practically a mortal sin. But in the low-key Nineties, last-minute dates aren't only acceptable, they're preferable. People don't want to obsess about dates any longer than they have to. It's as if there's something frightening, too permanent and formal, about lingering for a week in someone's Filofax.

"There's nothing more boring than a man who sets a date for next week," says Lissa. "I mean, it's fun if you have to wait and think about it for two or three days, but any longer than that and the guy just seems anal. There's a lot to be said for spontaneity."

Grant takes a practical look at last-second dating. In a high-speed world, people just don't have time to plan anymore.

"I called a girl yesterday at five P.M. and asked her if she wanted to go to a show at eight, and she said, 'Sure, why not?'" says Grant. "Who knows what they're going to be doing a week in advance, anyway?"

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Rule 8: Plan an escape. People used to look forward to dates, fantasizing about romance, sex, excitement. Today, they look down the bleak perspective of the date ahead and see only disaster. To avert that, men and women plan escape hatches where dates can be abandoned like junked cars. The trick is making your exit plausible.

"I generally have a safety valve by planning things on a weeknight or for Sunday brunch," says Michael. "If it's brunch, I can say, 'Well, I have to do the laundry.' On weeknights, by the time you have dinner, it's nine-thirty or ten and you can say, 'I've got a big day tomorrow. I gotta go.'"

"A movie is good because it's two solid hours where you don't have to talk," says Dan. "And if you're really horrified by the time you get to the theater, you can switch your plans and see some four-hour Russian film."

The danger with escape hatches, Dan says, may be bailing out too soon. "You might escape from someone who really would turn out to be good. You might miss some qualities just because she's nervous, and you'd never get to go out with her again."

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Rule 9: Women must pay. Back when people went on formal dates, James Bond dates, women never went near their wallets. Try to picture 007 splitting a Dom Pérignon tab or going halvsies at baccarat. Paying for dates was a man's duty.

But that's not the Nineties way. Women have come a long way and they're proving it when the dinner check comes. True, some women still expect men to pay for everything, just as some men feel threatened by a woman who pays her own way. But they're behind the times. The only reason for someone to pay more on a date is if he or she earns a much higher salary.

Under the still-evolving rules, men usually pay for the first date, when there's enough to worry about without splitting checks. But by the second or third date, it's strictly dutch or taking turns. Women may look like the losers in this deal, but many see it differently.

"Twenty years ago, women didn't have as much respect from men," Jill says, "and back then, men paid for everything. I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but when a man pays for you and pampers you all the time, it kind of makes you feel frail, like you can't stand on your own. Women have spent years trying to get stability and have it recognized by men."

But beyond economics and equality, some women have a nagging belief that going dutch---like many of these new dating rules---takes the romance out of dating.

"Fumbling for the check is always a bit of a downer," says Caroline. "You have this great conversation, have fun drinking wine or whatever, and then the check comes. Figuring out the check is very banal anyway, even with your friends. It does take a little romance out of it."

Caroline gets a wistful look. "To me, one of the sexiest things in the world is when a man protects you. The whole idea of trying to take care of you and pay for you and jump in front of a cab for you, that to me is so sexy. It may be very bad and old-fashioned, but that's the way it is." Still, she insists on chipping in---especially since she often makes more money than the men she dates.

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Rule 10: Use her answering machine. The trend in dating is away from head-on contact and toward side-swiping intimacy and connection. So what better way to talk to each other than through answering machines? Men who fear rejection or women who want to ask a serious question can simply leave their words on the incoming message tape---and hang up if their date actually answers. By calling a woman's answering machine, you can ask her out, make the obligatory "next day" call and tell her you're going away for the weekend, all without making any scary human contact.

"It's creative phoning," says Dan. "You can make it look as if you really tried to reach her by leaving messages on her voice mail at work or calling her office at lunchtime."

People in the Nineties can have entire relationships---meet, seduce, argue and call it quits---by leaving messages on machines. You never have to meet each other, which is as low-key as dating gets.

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Rule 11: Don't fax her off. Sometimes a man and a woman are just Stealth bombers passing in the night. If so, don't let all this technological distancing keep you from ending things the right way. For example, if you're going to break up with a woman, you should not do it over her fax machine.

"He should just call and say things aren't working out," says Jill. "It just wastes time to beat around the bush and say, 'I've got a sick grandma in Alabama and I have to move there.' I'd much rather be hurt by the truth than by some guy who can't figure out what to do."

If you end a relationship gracefully, you can hasten the next step: starting the whole routine over again with someone else, on a Tuesday afternoon.

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No one can predict how long these new rules of engagement will last. For now, though, people seem to be comfortable with sex but nervous about nearly everything else. It may reflect the emotional vacuity of our times, a free-floating anxiety about the future or simply a fear of connecting. If we're so willing to abdicate control of our relationships, if we're so skittish about intimacy that we plan escape hatches before a date begins, what does it say about our willingness to make a commitment when it counts?

Then again, we may just be hanging ten on the dating zeitgeist, riding the tide, going with the flow. Who knows? This decade may even see the return of the James Bond date. By 1996, you may be wearing white dinner jackets, winning at baccarat and snipping the spaghetti straps off Plenty O'Toole. Hey---worse things could happen.