archivesex on a first date

1. If I arrive first it will make me look responsible and also like I care and that I'm… not flighty. It will not make me seem overly keen and boring, with nothing else to do tonight, or indeed ever. 2. Arriving late will make me seem mysterious and sexy, and he’ll be panting at my arrival, staring eagerly at the door. He'll be so pleased I haven’t stood him up that he’ll be overjoyed to see me and we will fall immediately in love. 3. Oh well, it’s better than...

I have never dressed sexily for the gym – I have never seen the point. Either I have been partnered during my stack of memberships or, more usually, I have had no interest in romance among the kettle bells. In the dank, municipal hellholes where I like to work out, I have somehow known instinctively that Mr Right was not lurking by the lockers. While my latest gym is clean and modern, it is most certainly not a place where I will ever feel lustful and attractive. It is so basic, so...

Football I remember a very miserable afternoon – a rainy Saturday – spent in a pub that smelled of cauliflower and dog, staring with great concentration at a TV up on the wall. I didn’t really dare look away in case I looked like I was bored and I couldn’t have given two bronze fucks about what was happening on the screen so I fixed my gaze on a spider at the corner of the TV. The spider span a web and then fell onto a table and crawled into...

You can’t get more upfront and visual than Grindr. It’s the frank, confrontational reality TV show contestant of the social media app world, assuring you if it has anything to say it will “say it your face” or telling you “what you see is what you get”. Of course the truth is something quite different. Grindr is merely a cloudy mirror, vaguely reflecting society but usually doing its own hair or photoshopping out its eye-bags. What it has done with its instant gratification storefront, however, is slowly strangle some of...

We’ve all been there. You wake up, slightly disoriented, amid bed linen which feels unfamiliar. Strange sounds emanate from a mass not too far from you. As you open each eye slowly, cursing them for the amount of time they’re taking to adjust to the light, you realise you’ve done it again – you’re back at theirs, for the first time. It’s the morning after the night before. You may have no regrets at all at the dawn after a night of passion, and the person lying next to you...

Getting a first date is fairly easy. Or so they tell me. But getting a first date and going on a first date are nowhere near as big a deal as the ultimate prize, the holy grail of dating, the BIG ONE: securing date number 2. So many of us miss out on the follow-up date. They say sequels can never live up to their predecessor (mine certainly don't), but lots of debuts fail to get a second chance to try. Is there something you can do to smooth the...

Because society is obsessed with promoting the idea that being in a couple is the optimum way to live your life, being a singleton can be tough at times. Luckily, people who are probably already in relationships have invented lots of ways to make sure life’s soloists are never short of an opportunity to form a duet. Online dating, awkward introductions to friends and getting drunk at Christmas parties are just three ways of launching into a love match. There are also reams and reams of über-helpful handy hints to...