It was twenty years ago today. It was raining in the city by the bay. That evening, Rafael and I went on our first date: dinner at La Mediterranee in the Castro, followed by a somewhat eclectic assortment of bands a block away at the below-ground Cafe du Nord.
This might sound like a lot for a first date on a rainy January night, but it wasn’t our first in-person encounter. That had happened a couple weeks earlier, at a party called Date My Friend, which for a short time in the early 2000s was the latest thing in San Francisco. The idea was that you could attend only if someone you knew sent you the Evite, so everyone there would be a pre-screened, vouched-for, bona fide single person. The reality was that even non-single people went to DMF parties to hook up, though I didn’t know that at the time. Still, I wasn’t expecting anything from it, but when you’re looking to meet people you try all kinds of things to increase the odds. You never know.
The party was not fun. It was held in a warehouse-like club South of Market, so packed and noisy that you literally bumped into people at every turn and had to shout at the top of your lungs to have any hope of being heard. No one seemed to be enjoying themselves.
It wasn’t till I was getting ready to head out that I met Rafael, on the sidewalk outside the club, where he was saddling up to ride away on his motorcycle. I didn’t expect much from that brief encounter, any more than I’d expected much from the party. But it did lead to a first date.
Though that first date wasn’t bad, it was still a first date. I hear stories now and then about amazing first dates, but my own experience has been that they’re tolerable at best. It takes a leap of faith to get from the first date to the second one. More often than not, that faith is not rewarded.
First dates can feel like a chore. Besides being nerve-wracking, they come with the requisite telling of your life story, which can get old if you’re dating a lot. Then there’s the question of how much you reveal: Do you lay it all out to ensure the other person likes you as you are, or do you put your best foot forward to lure them in? Do you set expectations and reveal your hopes for the future, or carefully hold your cards close to your chest?
As it turned out, the first few dates with Rafael were unusually good for that stage of dating. The best thing about the first date, though, was that it led to subsequent, better dates.
First dates are so notorious for being bad that movies and TV shows are full of funny first-date montage sequences. I recently re-watched Kissing Jessica Stein, a film that came out in 2002. Jessica’s horrible first dates were all the funnier to me at the time because I too was dating then. That also made the experiences of “the girls” on Sex and the City all the more relatable and entertaining, though I never had my friends rescue me from an excruciating first date with a phone call claiming that “something bad happened”:
Friends also provided some helpful and humorous dating tips:
Before my mid-thirties, when I got divorced, I hadn’t dated at all. I’d gotten together with guys more organically, sometimes starting out by being friends. The world of dating was an eye-opener for me. I’d had no idea how easy it was to meet men — or how hard it was to meet men who were both interesting and interested in a relationship.
While I still continued meeting guys in more natural ways — going dancing, at cafes, through friends — it was time to explore other methods, too. Dating apps didn’t exist yet, but I tried out Match.com for a while in its early days. That was a lot of work. It was challenging keeping track of everyone, and my tendency to try to give people a chance, just in case, led to some wasted time — though, thankfully, nothing worse.
I remember one guy who could have been featured in the Big Book of British Smiles, despite having a good tech job that doubtless provided a dental plan. When I declined a second date (for more reasons than just the teeth) he asked, “What went wrong?” and reproached me for not giving a chance to a romance that had never existed. Another one couldn’t understand why I it bothered me that he’d voted for Bush (W., at that), though his family would no longer speak to him as a result. Another asked me to be his girlfriend after one date, despite the fact that we clearly had nothing in common.
Most of my other first dates are thankfully lost forever in the vault of my bad memory, but I still recall some good ones from friends. There was the woman who’d been drinking a fair amount and ended up staying at the guy’s apartment overnight, only to realize for the first time the following morning that he had only one hand. She hadn’t noticed that the entire evening, even while in bed with him.
There was the friend who had such a great time talking to a guy on the phone that he said, “Shall we call a priest or a rabbi?” — but when she finally met him in person, she couldn’t stand him at first sight.
My favorite one remains the woman who went out with a man who wouldn’t stop talking about himself. At the end of the evening, he suddenly seemed to realize what he’d done and attempted an apology. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “I’ve been talking all evening.… Do you have any questions?” There was no second date.
Still, first dates can be far, far worse than any of these. Just do a quick Google search and you’ll find accounts of first dates that make any of mine, or my friends’, seem like a walk in the park.
My last first date was 20 years ago today. Though not earth-shattering, it was good enough to lead to more. The truth is that most first dates are neither horrible nor spectacular. Unless there are serious red flags, they don’t necessarily indicate how things will unfold. Amazing first dates can lead to nothing just as easily as so-so first dates — and early doubts — can be the start of the happiest relationships. The best thing about a first date with any given person is that there can be only one.
What first dates stand out to you — for being either really good or really bad? I’d love to hear about them in the comments!
Funny, I have almost always enjoyed first dates. I think because I'm an eternal optimist and there's always the excitement of the possibility of something good. That's not to say I haven't had bad first dates. In the days of Match.com I used to make the first date brief (usually just a drink somewhere, because you never knew....) but I was talking to a guy once (our first phone call) and he suggested we have brunch that day. It must have been a Saturday morning. Against my better judgement I said yes. We went to the Ramp. When he showed up to pick me up in a cute little convertible I knew we were off to a good start. We had such a great time that we ended up spending the entire weekend together. We ended up dating for a few months till he suddenly dumped me but that's another story. :)
And then there was my first date with Creg. He ended up picking a restaurant that was notoriously hard to get into, but we got seated right away. It was the start of our good luck together.
Hi Rosana, I don't think I ever heard that story of how you met Rafael. I had a first date when I first moved to San Francisco, it ended the moment she found out I had taken the bus to her house! Thanks for sharing.