Dating Disasters and How to Avoid Them

Dorothy Parker once said, "Hollywood is one place where you can die of encouragement." Well, no one ever encouraged me. For me, it was all failure. Failed actor, failed writer, failed waiter. Studio executives would call to reject scripts of mine that they hadn't even read. Their assistants called to reject scripts I didn't even write. The biggest Hollywood producers would call me over to their tables to reject the wrong appetizers I had brought them and to demand a different waiter.

Things were bad for me in Tinseltown. There were plenty of mornings I couldn't even get out of bed. I call that period in my life the Nineties.

But at least women loved me. They really dug my broke-and-angry routine. I can't tell you how many times over the past few years I've found myself in a trendy Hollywood nightclub with a beautiful starlet clinging to my arm, screaming over the music to her equally hot. girlfriend: "He's a writer. He has no career and no money and he can't do anything to help me. He can't even help himself. Now keep your hands off him! He's mine."

Actually, there was one woman who liked me, but then she quickly divorced me. Apparently my lack of success in Hollywood was as much an aphrodisiac for the Missus as it was for me. Yet even a failed, miserable bastard like me is entitled to one great idea in his life. My one idea happened to be so brilliant that most of my friends were convinced I had stolen it from somebody. I hadn't. I simply combined my two biggest failures--my personal life and my professional life.

I decided to go out on 20 dates to find a girlfriend. The other part of my idea was even better--I hired a small camera crew to film those dates. Some of the women knew I was filming them. Some didn't. We'll get to the lawsuits later.

The important thing is that I went out on the 20 dates. I finished the movie; a major motion picture studio bought it and is going to release it around Valentine's Day. My movie is called 20 Dates.

But wait. It gets even better. It seems that after going out on 20 dates, I actually learned how to date. As a matter of fact, I learned the only secret about dating that any man will ever need to know.

Before I made this movie, the only part of dating I seemed to have any expertise in was getting over yet another woman who'd dumped my pitiful ass: three days alone, one case of tequila and Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks played 37 times in a row.

Maybe if I had remembered how bad I was at dating, and with women in general, I wouldn't have rushed into this project. But I had a secret fantasy of becoming successful in Hollywood and then rubbing it in the faces of my ex-wife and every other she-demon who had ever pulled my heart out of my chest and bit into it, laughing as my blood dripped out of the sides of her mouth while I lay on the floor in front of her screaming in agony. It was a simple fantasy, but inspiring nonetheless.

I pretty much rushed into this project without (continued on page 149)Dating Disasters(continued from page 86) thinking, and it wasn't until I faced the reality of 20 dates' looming in front of me that I began to panic. I suddenly realized it was more than coincidence that: (a) my friends refused to set me up with anyone, (b) women would tell me I was the worst date they had ever had and (c) mothers would grab their children, cars would stop running and angels would stop singing whenever I walked down the street holding a bouquet of roses and a scrap of paper with my date's address on it. I didn't think about these things, largely because I assumed every single person in the entire world had just been fucking with me.

I was about to make a movie about dating, when, unfortunately, I knew nothing about dating. I always had intended to make this movie a comedy, but I didn't want it to be all at my expense. I needed help with this whole dating thing. I needed expert advice. And sure enough, the self-help aisles of the bookstores were crammed with titles that promised to teach me everything I needed to know about dating.

There were books such as Smart Dating, Some Day My Prince Will Come, You Can Hurry Love and, of course, the cottage industry: The Rules and The Rules II. And you could bone up on romance with Dating for Dummies. You wouldn't believe the sage advice these experts were shoveling out for an average of $11.95:

"Be positive."

"Don't ask her out for Saturday night if it's past noon on Wednesday."

"Go someplace where you can talk without getting thrown out."

"Avoid arm wrestling. It's rude and she might beat you."

"If you break wind, open the car window and apologize."

And that's only the useful stuff. How about:

"Listen to her." No. You think? Aren't you supposed to talk the entire time? Or better yet, how about making an evening of that delightful game we enjoyed as children and repeating everything she says, exactly the way she says it. For even better results, don't let up until both of you have said, "Stop it, I'm serious. Take me home," for 15 minutes straight.

"Practice being a good listener. If you don't know if you are a good listener, ask your friends." If they can't finish their sentences when you ask them, that means you are constantly interrupting them, and thus, are not a good listener.

"End every phone call first." "End the date first." As she opens her apartment door when you pick her up yell, "Bye!" and run away.

"Learn to dance." No comment.

For those readers who are inept not only at dating but also at life itself, it is probably helpful to learn that you might be losing your date if she "keeps nodding her head and yawning." But what does it mean if her eyes roll up into her head, her skin turns blue and the sickly stench of death floats through the restaurant?

The supposed experts had nothing for me. I didn't know what the hell to do. As a result, I failed miserably on the first bunch of dates. The first hour of my movie isn't just a comedy, it's a public service announcement. Any guy who ever messed up on a date or is too scared to date or is reading this article while he is on a date can go see my movie and walk out of the theater feeling pretty good about himself.

At the risk of sounding like one of those dating experts, I'll rattle off some of the stuff I learned on my first ten dates:

Don't accuse her of lying, at least not before your second date.

Don't tell her she's eating too much.

Don't secretly film an intimate evening without retaining an aggressive lawyer who lacks any moral backbone.

Yes, I was lousy at dating. For those of you too cheap to pay for a ticket to my movie, I will summarize the emotional atmosphere that surrounded my first ten dates. Imagine Hillary's reaction when the president told her that Monica was more than just an intern. Now, take away all the love that was in that room. The only reason I didn't stop dating was that I couldn't raise the money to make a movie called I'm Stopping After Only Ten Dates.

So I forced myself to keep knocking out those dates, one after another--boom, boom, boom. And that's when, completely by accident, I discovered the one secret to dating, the only dating secret that every guy has to know:

It's quantity, not quality.

That's the secret. You have to go out on lots of dates to get really good at it. Don't confuse this secret with the old "ask 100 women to sleep with you and maybe you'll get lucky" theory. I'm much deeper than that. This is the tao of dating.

It's volume, volume, volume.

I realized that dating is an art. And, like any artist, you have to practice your craft before you become good at it. Da Vinci didn't just come up with the Mona, Lisa. He had to fail with lots of women before he could wipe that smirk on his canvas.

Dating is a bloody contact sport, and just like an athlete, you have to warm up your muscles. You have to get your routine down before you become comfortable enough with yourself and not go crazy second-guessing and overthinking when the pressure is on.

Consider the hundreds of decisions you make for just one date. Which cologne is safe on you? Which makes you smell like a woman? Shave? No shave? How long before a date do you shower so you don't show up with wet hair? Do you dress like the sissy dancers in Gap ads or are you going to be comfortable in an Italian suit like the sissy models in the Zanetti posters?

What music should you have playing in your car? Do you listen to your all-knowing single female co-worker and take your date for sushi? Or do you follow your heart, listen to the moron in sales and try to get her drunk? Do you quote Shakespeare to her, or repeat a line you heard the night before on a Seinfeld rerun, confident that your delivery is actually better than Jerry's?

Do you read the daily editorials in The New York Times so you have something to say on your dates, or do you skip the homework and let her spout crap and then summarily disagree with her? No expert can tell you the right answer. Only you can know what's right for you, and you'll know it only if you practice.

You might be really bad at dating at first. God knows I was. Maybe, at the beginning, you might even date in another city. Yes, she'll think you're married, but what do you care? The first ten or 15 dates are batting practice anyway.

Just have faith that no matter how bad you are on any date, there is still one guy who is even more socially inept than you ever were, who has said more stupid things to waiters in five minutes than you've said in an entire evening, who has consistently worn worse clothes than you will ever hang in your closet and who still managed to get it right on at least one date. He's called your father. And all you need to do is get it right on just one date also.

I promise you that if you keep practicing, one day or one Saturday night you are going to find yourself in a restaurant with a woman who is so far above you that in ancient India you would have been stoned for defying the caste system. But you're not going to blow this date, because you're going to be ready. You are not going to be nervous. You are going to be your charming, witty, confident self.

You want to know how I know this? It's not because I've memorized Oh, the Places You'll Go. It's because that's exactly what happened to me. I actually met my dream woman on one of those 20 dates. And now she's my girlfriend. Maybe now you'll think about shelling out eight bucks for a ticket.

This woman is smart, and yet she tells me I'm brilliant. She's witty, and yet she's polite enough to laugh at all my jokes. She pushes me out the door to go watch football with my friends on Sunday mornings. Everyone who meets her loves her. Animals love her. Every little girl wants to grow up to be like her. Even some little boys wouldn't mind growing up to be like her.

Oh, and by the way, she looks like a model. Talk about a Doug Flutie hailmary pass in the game of life! Some of you may believe that such a woman actually exists. But none of you would believe a woman like her would ever go out with a guy like me.

I had been through so many dates that by the time I got to "The Lovely," I wasn't nervous anymore. I had made all my mistakes already. I didn't pretend I was something I wasn't, I didn't play games, I didn't blow it. I was brilliant.

Let me put this in some perspective. I am now a member of that select group of seemingly common men who have landed unbelievable women. Roger Rabbit may be a dork, but Jessica Rabbit is all over him. King Kong behaves like a goddamn animal, but he still has a gorgeous blonde eating out of the palm of his hand. (True, he's a giant, hairy ape. But in Hollywood, that's not necessarily a bad thing.) All three of us--Kong, the cartoon and me--are overachievers because we practiced.

I know what I'm talking about. Follow my example and go out on lots of dates. Do that and I'll bet you one day you will be walking down the street with your arm around your girlfriend and some guy is going to look at the two of you together and say, "Someone must have hurt her very badly."

Trust me. You will interpret that comment as the ultimate compliment that asshole unintentionally meant it to be. Even if you don't, I guarantee you'll at least get used to comments like that. I did. But it took a lot of practice.