Great expectations

Another dark afternoon of the soul. The classic preliminary hook-up at Starbucks. That first-date meeting with somebody new to see if there's any hope there at all.

An hour spent over coffee starts to feel like Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Pinched, polite smiles. Uncomfortable pauses in conversation. Eyes roam elsewhere, anywhere. Quick glance at the watch. Clipped farewells.

Next, please.

Remember it's supposed to be fun. Too often, especially among the no-longer-young, first dates are anticipated with the enthusiasm reserved for a dental appointment. They're considered a necessary evil, not an opportunity for discovery, certainly not for joy.

Dating is something folks in their 30s and 40s have been doing for a long time, or it's something they're doing again after a breakup. In either case, bad attitudes abound. Dating is seen in utilitarian terms, as a way station, the means to an end rather than an experience to be savored for its own sake. "Finding someone" and "settling down," phrases they once dismissed as defeatist, become mantras for action.

Yes, wading through cappuccino yet again with Mr. or Ms. Next, Please can be a diminishing experience. But as with many things, how you think about the situation is as important as the objective circumstances. Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so – that's Shakespeare, not Deepak Chopra.

Older singles carry more baggage, toting around the memories of past disasters and assumptions about what not to do next time. The danger is that they've learned lessons too well. Suspicion and defensiveness can be as defeating as gullibility and impulsiveness.

Dr. Judith Sills, the author of a couple of commonsensical guides to meeting and mating, warns against ruling people out instead of in: "I could never go for a man who drives a Hyundai." "I could never go for a woman who snorts when she laughs." These are the banal prejudices of a screening process gone amok, habits of thought as difficult to shrug off as they are hard to defend.

She notes another pitfall: Don't get too attached to the outcome.

Goal-setting is all very fine, but matters of the heart – irrational, subliminal, multifarious – are immune to day-planner exactitude. People who got the grades, got the job, got the car, people who describe weekends as "down time," will crash on the shoals of expectation.

This is how the act of dating is redefined as agony. The first time two people sit down to coffee their minds race ahead, to bed, to the altar, how the kids will look. It's more load than 60 minutes at Starbucks can carry. A better way: Smell the coffee. Concentrate on what's happening, not what might. __________________________________

Sweet mystery of life ...

It's a jungle out there for over-30 daters, if Mr. Dallas' e-mail is any indication. Tales of insensitive men and inveigling women. Regret, recrimination, despair – all before the dessert course. For folks who are still playing the field – or are coming off the bench – the dating game can be very different from that bright arena portrayed in glossy ads.

After much reading, considerable prayerful consideration, some personal embarrassment and occasional late-night Cinemax viewing, Mr. Dallas has divined these simple rules for going out past the expiration date. As Oscar Wilde said, I always pass along good advice as I have no use for it.

1) Remember, it's supposed to be fun.
2) Don't get attached to the outcome.
3) The one who loves waits.
4) The simplest explanation is usually correct.
5) Don't apologize for what you want.
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At the bar, nice guys stand alone

Attention, fellows: Don't apologize for what you want.

People are primates, sex is primordial and the meek do not inherit the Earth. This becomes rocks-glass clear in the bars and clubs of Dallas, where the knuckle-dragging starts at happy hour and continues past closing.

Appalled by the spectacle before them, many men persist in believing that their decent instincts, discerning tastes and fair intelligence will get them somewhere. "I'm trying to do the right thing," they moan. Well, virtue is its own reward, but don't expect a date.

Paying attention to society's scolds – the tofu macro-neurotics, the hair-shirted naysayers, the sour-apple cranks – is a sucker's bet. Watch the scamps instead and learn. Think Stone Age, not New Age.

Studies of social interaction find that men who project confidence, even overbearing confidence – that is, arrogance – make a strong first impression. They're perceived as brighter, more vital, more successful.

Confidence denotes capableness – in business, in life, in sex – and capableness is prized. Even a negative first impression can turn positive. The guy who initially registers as "that jerk" ends up as Mr. Right with Greek-tragedy inevitability. Pastel people – the even-keeled and consoling – wash out in the hothouse environs of a bar.

Still, nice guys persist in their folly, which takes different forms. The sensitive New Age male looks perpetually pained about his historic-oppressor legacy. He's the one who "doesn't eat meat either" and uses the phrase "you seem really evolved" without choking. The self-flagellatory novelty fades quickly, though. Her eyes will glaze over as the mea culpas pile up.

Another variety is the well-meaning weekend-jock oaf, the sweet but clueless sort who can't match his own socks and eats cereal out of the box. He may elicit a maternal twinge, but again the odds are poor. She'll decide his self-depreciation is warranted.

Consider instead what works, obvious and dreadful though it may seem. For an example, rent Stanley Kubrick's last movie, Eyes Wide Shut. In an early party scene, the bored doctor's wife played by Nicole Kidman gets the full-court press from a Hungarian lothario twice her age. His manner is easy, assured. She almost succumbs.

He slides next to her and with a flourish picks up the glass of champagne she's just placed on the bar.

"I think that's my champagne," she bristles.

"Oh, I'm absolutely certain of it," he replies and drains the glass.

Her chin rises defensively, but her eyes brighten. He has her attention.

Don't take this as an endorsement of indiscriminate wine hijacking. But value the element of challenge, of straightforward, undisguised interest, the sense of swords crossed. Contrast that with "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to touch your glass ... smell your hair ... watch you walk past – pity me, the big, dumb male.''

The culture chronicler who goes by the pen name Eurydice, author of Satyricon USA: A Journey Across the New Sexual Frontier, sums up a perverse but winning strategy for frustrated nice guys. Put an edge on, play the predator, be a mystery. By the time she realizes you're a sweetheart, she'll be hooked, Eurydice writes in Gear magazine. "Then she'll use her imagination."
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The truth about lying

Honesty is the basis of any healthy relationship. Everybody says so. Everybody is lying, of course. Omission, dissembling and deceit are stubborn little tubers in the garden of good intentions.

People often salute the brass certitude that honesty is the best policy from a safe distance. Anyone who's been asked, "Honey, does this make my thighs look fat?" knows that a rigorous cellulite assessment is not the proper response. The fact that Bill Clinton is still president underscores the tacit understanding that prevarication pervades matters of what we'll call the heart.

This aural voyeur of longstanding can attest that Burger King is not selling the most whoppers in town. The bar at Voltaire would be as quiet as a crypt, and just as inviting, if its residents were reduced to speaking the unvarnished, literal truth. On the nightlife scene, lines and lies are as important a social lubricant as alcohol. Put aside those noxious opening gambits – "Your father must've been a thief because he stole the stars and put them in your eyes" – that are more often mocked than utilized. Consider instead the things people really say that they don't mean.

He says: I'll call you.
He means: So long.
Real men-Mars-women-Venus stuff this is, highly radioactive fallout from the battle of the sexes. Even if she's been burned before, she hears it as a promise, a tender offer for future merger talks. For him it's a rhetorical hiccup, an out – conscience' payment for departure. He may call, he may not, he may not know himself.

She says: It's not you, it's me.
She means: It's you.
This is the distaff version of "I'll call you." The idea is to spare the miserable wretch from knowing that he holds for her all the sizzle of cold Spam. Her out is to medicalize the situation: There's something wrong with me. That something may be left irritatingly opaque – Is she married? Does she have cholera? – or it may be as painstakingly detailed as a Henry James novel. The guy knows he's getting the brush but grudgingly appreciates her pretending to take the hit. Anyway, there's the slim reed of hope that she actually does have cholera.

She says: I'm not ready to get involved with anyone right now.
She means: In your dreams, bub.
This is a variation on the above, but with its own rich tradition. She projects an image of being surrounded by a time-locked force field that she is powerless to affect. Or perhaps she's a fairy-tale princess confined to a tower of her own gnarled – though, naturally, tantalizing – emotional unavailability. The unspoken continuation of the analogy if that if she's the princess, then you're the frog – and frog you shall stay. If a guy does strike her fancy, she'll be rappelling out of that tower like an Army Ranger in a recruitment commercial.

He says: I don't have to work.
He means: I can't keep a job.
Implying that you're rich – or heck, just up and saying it – is an evergreen of a gimmick, but it weighs more credibly in boom times such as ours. Dot-com millionaires are springing up like crab grass; $50,000-a-year millionaires, riding on gold-card sufferance, are multiplying even faster, so Dallas bars are a raging wind tunnel of quantification. Figure that the blowhards are either liars or pigs. And enjoy.
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The gold standard

Mom was never a big font of dating advice. She's more concerned about her second son's physical safety, which is in jeopardy from tornadoes, spider bites, ice storms, burglars, slick linoleum floors, undercooked chicken, beef, pork and seafood, car-jackers, sinus infections, parking deck prowlers, nail-biting and the big one, always expressed in thesewords: "Don't leave your drink alone at the bar. Somebody will put LSD in it."

But when she does opine on the matter of women, she is spot-on. Her take on first dates: Don't spend a lot because the woman will expect to be spoiled ever after or figure you're trying to put on airs.

In Dallas, of course, the airs go on before the shoes. The gold (card) standard reigns. The trick is to reconcile Mom's sensible prescription with your desire to get over, to steer between extremes: dinner at Abacus, Theater Center tickets, a late-night round at the Library bar versus quick bite at the Goldrush Cafe, happy-hour movie and bottle of white zin on a Tietze Park bench.

The central question of economics applies to the first date: How much is enough?

Karl Marx, whom nobody has much use for these days outside of Havana and the faculty lounge at NYU, perceived a cash nexus to human interaction. K.'s idea was that in a capitalist society people are forced to relate to each other primarily on the basis of money. The result, he railed, is inequality, injustice, strife and alienation – a regular Saturday night at Sipango.

The cash nexus of first dates is more nuanced, but nothing Old Red couldn't wag his finger at. The calculations have a NASDAQ quality to them. Go high or go low, risks and rewards.

Skimp too much and these impressions form:

1. You're poor – the unforgivable sin. See above, Dallas. See above, Karl Marx. See above, cash nexus.

2. You're cheap – problematic. You may be bright, you may be cute, you may be honorable, but if Luby's is your idea of a splurge, your stock is slipping.

3. You're just not too interested. Dead in the water. No pop whatever.

Spend too much and face different assessments.

1. You're rich – a quagmire of misapprehension. You can't sustain the pretense. The bills come due. Resentment and recrimination follow.

2. You're profligate – once again, problematic. The devil-may-care attitude may charm short-term, but the way you sweat away dinero promises a future of "Honey, can I borrow a 20?" pleas, creditor phone calls at dinnertime and repossessions.

3. You're a mark, all downsides. If she's nice, you're merely pitiable. If she's a predator, you're fish food.
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An approach to approaching

Everybody knows everything before anybody says anything. A blanket statement for sure, but as blanket statements go, not a bad one.

It has been estimated that two-thirds of communication is nonverbal. That's especially true in the mating rituals enacted out on the town every night, which are as primal and predictable as anything one egret ever did to woo another.

Through the din, haze and confusion of bars, restaurants and dance clubs, humans seek each other out. They're not doing so with Noel Coward witticisms. A Noel Coward witticism launched from one bar stool at Sipango to the next could no more survive the landing than a snowflake hitting Travis Street in July. Not that folks at Sipango couldn't pop a bon mot that would make Calvin Trillin titter. It's just that first impressions are expressed in body language.

What you see is what you know. The trick is seeing and knowing and doing something about it. The reason some men can meet women at bars is that, consciously or unconsciously, they read who is approachable and who isn't. They don't cozy up to rejection slips. The idea is to be aware without becoming debilitatingly self-conscious. That's a neat trick that takes a truckload of Zen. Try not thinking about a pink elephant.

The signals – stop-go, yes-no-maybe – are universal and right there to behold.

Green lights:
• The come-hither head toss or its variation – she lets the hair fall over her face and peers out through the locks.
• Neck basking – she pulls the hair away with an indolent swipe to expose her neck.
• She fondles the stem of her wineglass.
• While she talks to somebody else, her body is pointing in your direction.

Red lights:
• Conversely, her body points resolutely away while you're talking to her.
• Short, sharp gestures – the quick nod, the shrug, a tight, frosty smile.
• Her hand goes to her throat – a Nell-meets-Snidely Whiplash gesture of alarm.

All this can be going on no matter what words are exchanged. Body language speaks volumes – in fact it never shuts up. Social scientists say that two people, within moments of meeting, will begin relating to each other either as potential mates or not, regardless of their circumstances, availability or whether they'll see each other again.

The courtship process that leads to marriage, diapers, Suburban and 401K starts as an unfathomable stew of pheromonal outreach, evolutionary imprinting ("He has my cheekbones, we will breed and my cheekbones will go on forever") and dumb luck.

"Oh, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you ..."

Still confused?

To plumb the mysteries of mating further, try these reads: "A Fine Romance" by Judith Sills (Ballantine), "Guerrilla Dating Tactics" by Sharyn Wolf (Plume) and "Sex Appeal" by Kate and Douglas Botting (St. Martin's Press). Or watch the Discovery Channel.
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Destination dates

Korea, a tie in football, the destination date – incidents of inconclusion. In war, sports or love, stalemate is frustrating.

Even when your social life, meaning the moon-June-spoon stuff, is at ebb, grounded on shoals of indifference or inattention, your social life goes on.

This is especially the case in a city as swollen with divertissements as Dallas. Here is no place to cloister. Sitting at home listening to the foundation shift in black-dirt prairie will not do.

Nor is Ms. Right going to stride up to your door like Avon calling. (Well, she could, but legal and clerical authorities frown on such.)

The destination date is the answer.

You have things to do, you need someone to do with. Somebody who, in that great old down-home phrase, "cleans up good." Somebody who's not going to be too foolish, too drunk or too dull to pull through an evening – the river of a soul you might never drown in but won't dry up before midnight.

This is not the "just friends" phenomenon – a.k.a. the one who cares, waits. That is death by a thousand cuts. By contrast, the destination date is bloodless. It's the 7-Eleven for social obligation, a quick cure for the yawning maw of moment – the reception, the dinner, the concert, the wedding that must be attended.

The appeal of the destination date – convenience, comfort and expedience – is the downside as well.

For whatever reason – diverging circumstances, age difference, AWOL pheromones – neither person has a stake. No prospects. The destination date's convenience and comfort describe a headache remedy, not the font of poetry and passion that an evening out could be.

"It's not addition – one plus one," sneered one now-coupled former drifter on the highway of love. "It's just one and one."

He's right, of course. Even after the most shimmering night of laughing, dancing and champagne-- bright conversation will follow the letdown – a lingering, sawdust-in-the-mouth unease, the Peggy Lee "Is That All There Is?" dip at 3 a.m.

A touch of doubt will flit by. Maybe you should have stayed home with the settling foundation. Note to self: Call Ram Jack tomorrow.
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The question that answers itself

The homunculus squats at the bar. A straw fedora conceals the spreading bald spot. The spreading waistline swamps relaxed-fit jeans. A rawhide tan bears witness to 50-plus years of indulgence, like Dorian Gray's portrait. The overall look rests somewhere between Parrot-head and Jaba the Hutt.

His companion is lovely, uncommonly so. Tall and sleek, raven-haired and bright-faced – piercing eyes, impertinent nose. She leans toward him, rapt. They're oblivious to the noise and haste around them, alone in a bubble of mutual attention.

The question that forms in the mind of the casual observer has been asked a million times before in a million different settings, the perplexing, vexing question: "What's she doing with him?"

Well, you say to yourself, maybe she's his daughter. But you know better. And anyway, you think, love prevails: May and September – both nice months – why not? But you know better. The question answers itself.

Witness the brutal dynamic of evolutionary psychology. Despite all our titanic striving for gender equality, a discomfiting norm seems stubbornly stuck in the culture's craw: Men are more attracted to youth and beauty; women are drawn more to prosperousness and stability.

Before you start hyperventilating, Mr. Dallas grants that this observation is a gross oversimplification, a glib benediction for atavistic behavior, a revanchist sop to entrenched elites based on selective data reading. And of course, turnabout is fair play, and everybody knows somebody who knows a no-longer-young woman who has a 20- year-old boyfriend. Given all that – you should've seen this guy.

Mr. Dallas didn't invent biological imperatives, he just knavishly genuflects around them. Kate and Douglas Botting crunch some numbers in their lively 1995 study, "Sex Appeal." They note that male sperm replenish at the rate of 12 million an hour. Woman are born with a finite number of eggs and will use about 400. For men the sex act requires only the briefest investment of time – sometimes awkwardly brief, but that's a different talk show. Women face nine months of pregnancy plus Oshkosh costs.

With physical disparities like that and the lingering wealth-power gap between the sexes, it's little wonder that from Melanesia to Midlothian, in Timbuktu and Tyler, too, geezers are picking daisies. This is bitter medicine for the past-bloom woman of substance, but it's no picnic for the middle-aged man of limited means either.

Sugar daddy central

You'll grin in amazement or grimace in disgust at the decidedly un-Disney Beauty and the Beast played out regularly at these night spots: Sullivan's Steakhouse, Sambuca Addison, Nana Bar, Palomino and Capital Grille.

Mr. Dallas is exclusive to GuideLive. © 2003 The Dallas Morning News