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Q. What's the most romantic first date you've ever had?
A. That's a tough one, actually, because I don't "date" very much. I tend to get into relationships with people I meet through my social circle, and it's really difficult to make a distinction between a "date" and friends doing things together. Even dinner and movies is not reserved only for romantic interludes. Platonic friends can do those things too.
So I don't have very many first dates. I meet people through my social circles, we hit it off, and usually we make out and then decide if we want to be "in a relationship" or if it was a one-time thing, or an ongoing casual thing. After we decide to be in a relationship, we might do date-like things, but going on dates with a boyfriend who was a friend that you already know pretty well is very different from a classic "first date".
There is a tendency for guys who do the "ask a near stranger out on a first date" thing to be guys who aren't part of my sex-positive communities, so on the rare event I go on a more classic "first date", those events tend to be rather bland and uninspiring, usually following some kind of trope because they don't know any other way to start a relationship with someone, especially someone they don't know very well.
But a few "first dates" have stuck out in my memory as being noteworthy. My first night with my most recent ex is one that comes to mind. But when I think about this question, one of my most memorable "first dates" has to be with my high school sweetheart, because we didn't just have a romantic first date, we also had a good meet-cute.
I got myself invited to a Halloween party at this guy's house who, as I found out later, didn't even want me to be there because some douchebag I met at camp that summer spread some rumors about me. But my friends were going, so he let them bring me along.
He was big-time into vampires (still is). And I mean, not like he read Twilight (that hadn't even come out yet) and thought it sounded pretty cool. I mean he researched vampire lore from different cultures and throughout history. As did I, which is how I knew he wasn't full of shit or just one of the many goth wannabees who thought they looked badass with plastic fangs and black eyeliner. I didn't know this about him yet though.
At this same party, I met another guy who was blind. He said he liked listening to movies but it was better if someone described the scene for him. Lost Boys was on the TV, so I described it to him, which was really easy for me to do as it was one of my all-time favorite movies and I also had that whole vampire-lore background thing to fill things in and go off on tangents. That's about where my soon-to-be high school sweetheart took notice.
Then some things happened for another story. But eventually, he finally got around to asking me out on a real first date. He took me to Santa Cruz, after the Boardwalk closed. Those of you who are not from NorCal in the '80s, or not borderline obsessed with vampire flicks might not know that the Santa Cruz Boardwalk is where Lost Boys was filmed. I honestly don't remember what we did, if we did anything, earlier in the evening. It was a quarter century ago, after all. But I remember this ending.
We wandered around the closed Boardwalk like the dopey '90s teens that we were, finally finding ourselves strolling along a moonlight beach, the sound of waves crashing on the rocks as the soundtrack to our date. As we turned a corner around some rocky outcrop near the shoreline, with the cold moonlight hard overhead, we came face to face with an entire colony of sea lions hauling-out for the night. Letting out a roar of warning, the one closest to us, the one we startled, charged.
We took off running across the sand, back up the way we had come. This was not my first time being chased by a wild animal because I had encroached on its territory, and it would not be my last. But it was my most fun. Unwilling to end the evening, we moved from the scene of the teenage undead and the much scarier and meaner wild life, to his karate dojo where, as one of the assistant teachers, he had the keys. We spent the rest of the evening making out on the mats right there in the middle of the dojo, because my fetish for unusual places was well and firmly established by that point already.
So, I'd have to say one of my all-time favorite meet-cutes was bonding over a passion for Lost Boys and Bram Stoker's Dracula at a Halloween party, and one of, if not the most romantic first date I've ever had was traipsing around the filming location of Lost Boys, getting chased by a territorial sea lion, and making out in a karate dojo on the eve of Christmas Eve.
Now that I think about it, as much as I hate the plot of most rom-coms, if you were to do a cheesy '90s semi-gothy teen version of a rom-com, our story would probably make a good plot for one, complete with "started out disliking each other" followed by miscommunication and ensuing hijinks. There were even romantic rivals trying to split us up and nearly a "love triangle" plot with "which guy will get the girl?" tension.
Maybe I'll write out the whole story someday.
A. That's a tough one, actually, because I don't "date" very much. I tend to get into relationships with people I meet through my social circle, and it's really difficult to make a distinction between a "date" and friends doing things together. Even dinner and movies is not reserved only for romantic interludes. Platonic friends can do those things too.
So I don't have very many first dates. I meet people through my social circles, we hit it off, and usually we make out and then decide if we want to be "in a relationship" or if it was a one-time thing, or an ongoing casual thing. After we decide to be in a relationship, we might do date-like things, but going on dates with a boyfriend who was a friend that you already know pretty well is very different from a classic "first date".
There is a tendency for guys who do the "ask a near stranger out on a first date" thing to be guys who aren't part of my sex-positive communities, so on the rare event I go on a more classic "first date", those events tend to be rather bland and uninspiring, usually following some kind of trope because they don't know any other way to start a relationship with someone, especially someone they don't know very well.
But a few "first dates" have stuck out in my memory as being noteworthy. My first night with my most recent ex is one that comes to mind. But when I think about this question, one of my most memorable "first dates" has to be with my high school sweetheart, because we didn't just have a romantic first date, we also had a good meet-cute.
I got myself invited to a Halloween party at this guy's house who, as I found out later, didn't even want me to be there because some douchebag I met at camp that summer spread some rumors about me. But my friends were going, so he let them bring me along.
He was big-time into vampires (still is). And I mean, not like he read Twilight (that hadn't even come out yet) and thought it sounded pretty cool. I mean he researched vampire lore from different cultures and throughout history. As did I, which is how I knew he wasn't full of shit or just one of the many goth wannabees who thought they looked badass with plastic fangs and black eyeliner. I didn't know this about him yet though.
At this same party, I met another guy who was blind. He said he liked listening to movies but it was better if someone described the scene for him. Lost Boys was on the TV, so I described it to him, which was really easy for me to do as it was one of my all-time favorite movies and I also had that whole vampire-lore background thing to fill things in and go off on tangents. That's about where my soon-to-be high school sweetheart took notice.
Then some things happened for another story. But eventually, he finally got around to asking me out on a real first date. He took me to Santa Cruz, after the Boardwalk closed. Those of you who are not from NorCal in the '80s, or not borderline obsessed with vampire flicks might not know that the Santa Cruz Boardwalk is where Lost Boys was filmed. I honestly don't remember what we did, if we did anything, earlier in the evening. It was a quarter century ago, after all. But I remember this ending.
We wandered around the closed Boardwalk like the dopey '90s teens that we were, finally finding ourselves strolling along a moonlight beach, the sound of waves crashing on the rocks as the soundtrack to our date. As we turned a corner around some rocky outcrop near the shoreline, with the cold moonlight hard overhead, we came face to face with an entire colony of sea lions hauling-out for the night. Letting out a roar of warning, the one closest to us, the one we startled, charged.
We took off running across the sand, back up the way we had come. This was not my first time being chased by a wild animal because I had encroached on its territory, and it would not be my last. But it was my most fun. Unwilling to end the evening, we moved from the scene of the teenage undead and the much scarier and meaner wild life, to his karate dojo where, as one of the assistant teachers, he had the keys. We spent the rest of the evening making out on the mats right there in the middle of the dojo, because my fetish for unusual places was well and firmly established by that point already.
So, I'd have to say one of my all-time favorite meet-cutes was bonding over a passion for Lost Boys and Bram Stoker's Dracula at a Halloween party, and one of, if not the most romantic first date I've ever had was traipsing around the filming location of Lost Boys, getting chased by a territorial sea lion, and making out in a karate dojo on the eve of Christmas Eve.
Now that I think about it, as much as I hate the plot of most rom-coms, if you were to do a cheesy '90s semi-gothy teen version of a rom-com, our story would probably make a good plot for one, complete with "started out disliking each other" followed by miscommunication and ensuing hijinks. There were even romantic rivals trying to split us up and nearly a "love triangle" plot with "which guy will get the girl?" tension.
Maybe I'll write out the whole story someday.
