According to data I?ve amassed from an informal sample survey of my friends, the average age of a person?s first kiss is about 12 years old, the median age is 13, and that sample ranges from a low of 8 to a high of 18; and let me be clear here?I?m not talking about church tongue, I?m talking about the sweet and lo-down sloppy first French. The locations of these first forays into the extreme ping-pong game we call Love & Communication (thank you, Cat Power), or the lack thereof, vary: the school yard featured prominently in many stories, as did a neighbors house or Jewish summer camp (which I believe to be something we prudish Christians and atheists sorely missed out on), and there was also the odd ball locale (YMCA), specific event (Birthday Party, Valentine?s Day Dance), and reason (dare, round of Spin-the-Bottle).

[Sidenote: I?m hideously attracted to Spin-the-Bottle and alternately think we should reinstate this at parties or ban if forever. It could be considered retro, which is all the rage these days, and with the right proportion of attractive and clean people (meaning roughly 90% attractive?ugly people need love too, and 100% clean) it could be a fun time. Think it over and send me your thoughts, is all I?m saying, ladies.]

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Well Cobbled Heels

Anyways, what I?m getting at here is?well?we?ve been playing this game for a very long time, time which can seem excruciatingly long if you?ve been benched for multiple seasons but can also seem like the quickest flash of a disposable camera when love was good and the lost. It?s hard enough to get started as a teen, but to be caught, domesticated, and then released into the dating wild is often worse. Take, for instance, our good friend Alex who was introduced to you all at the very end of last week?s column. Alex is a traditional girl living in an esoterically avant-garde dating arena, and at one time she had been that lucky girl who fell for a boy who stayed by her side into adulthood as they created a life together in a non-descript little urban land, laying the foundations for their eternity. Yes, she had been that girl until the boy went away after a very long time, and she was no longer the enviable image of perfection and co-habitating bliss. The gory details of her wholesale chucking onto the singles meat-market is neither here nor there for now (not until we all get to know one another better), but suffice to say she was largely unprepared for the total void of decency and a complete lack of basic, very basic concerns for the human standing opposite you, or me, or him, or her, or them. But what does one do when faced with this disheartening discovery? Put one well-cobbled foot in front of the other, and date anything and everything that shows interest!!! Because when you?re with one perpetual man-child for such a long time, it?s hard to know exactly what you want in a man, so you better date the gamut from the perpetual enfant to the misguided older man in order to solidify your preferences. Luckily, Alex is doing the heavy lifting and you, my dear sweets, reap the benefits of her hard learned lessons.

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So, with that in mind, I believe I have unfinished business to shore up regarding last week?s little teaser. Our dear Alex, you see, is an artistic intellectual, by nature, or she at least aspires to and believes herself to be: perception and reality are a bitch. At any rate, she can paint a bit and turn a phrase with a relative sassy ease and acerbic wit, and as such always gravitates to musicians, writers, and other arbiters of culture. When the keyboardist of a marginally talented local band asked her to lunch under the auspices of a business meeting, she eagerly accepted. Lunch went well and they discovered a common interest in typography and art, and by the end of the meal he had asked her to drinks. And to drinks they went. He took her for Mexican in North Beach, San Francisco?s Italian District, and then showed her the best of the worst dive bars in Chinatown: a homerun for an eccentrically traditional lady like Alex. One thing led to another and they drunkenly ended up at her place, where he did everything and anything to get into her skinny jeans. After repeatedly being told NO, he finally gave up and rolled over where he proceeded to snore until the sun came up, much to her dismay. But she hadn?t been completely repulsed (after all, it had been a good date), and he apparently had not completely given up on trying to get into her pants, so they made plans to see each other after a concert she and her friends were attending at a venue in close proximity to his apartment.

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One Too Many of These Bad Boys

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Cue her getting smashed off relatively little amounts of Stella Artois and well drinks, and being unable to drive home, which left her at the mercy of the Keyboardist?s hospitality. Well, he cordially invited her to stay, offered her some whiskey (which she thankfully refused) and gave her a tour. There was a kitchen, there was a hallway, a grand piano and a cat. Most importantly there was a gigantic screen and projector in his room; how convenient. As he put on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (oh, how the man could set the mood) he pulled out all his best moves, which Alex was unable to deflect as deftly as she had earlier in the week and before she knew it she was down to her skivvies, not a condition a woman too drunk to enunciate ever wants to be when she has no intention of giving up the goods. So she did the only thing she could think of that would make this guy go soft: she proceeded to describe, in detail, the tragic little disasters of her previous long term relationship. And then she asked where their ?relationship? was going. And then?he gave up and went to bed. Again. But once that sun came up he tried for a quicky before work, because that?s EXACTLY how every woman wants her first time with a new Fella to be, right ladies? Wham, bam, thank you, ma?am. Man, men never cease to surprise. And that?s the snippet that ended the previous column. Needless to say, after Alex begrudgingly dropped the Keyboardist off at work, he gave her a kiss and told her he?d give her a call, a call which obviously never came.

And herein lies the problem. Not that she wanted to see this schmuck again, but the blatant disregard for her being, to misdirect her with such cojones speaks to a disturbing trend that infects the urban dating arena: the fuck you, I?m out if I don?t get what I immediately want mentality. It?s childish, it?s pedantic, it?s rude. Even an awkward Myspace email would have sufficed because, ultimately, we women have been conditioned to expect very little. And so I ask, what ever happened to not shagging on a first date, why has romance been eradicated? Don?t get me wrong, we?ve all experienced a time when you are so connected to the person standing inches away from you that your libido takes over and you?re merely along for the ride (pun intended), but how often does that happen to the average Jane? If we?re really being honest with ourselves and discount the times when we?ve justified a ?special connection? that wasn?t there in order to get laid? Rarely, at least if my friends and I are indicative of a national, urban average.

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And what if, ladies, you really do connect with someone and HE refuses to put out? Well, then the tides have turned and a whole new set of conundrums are brought to trial. But that?s reserved for next week; stay tuned??