“Wow. I’m impressed by your knowledge of strip clubs.”
“Wow. This is the second time in the last month that I’ve been on a date and can say that I am genuinely impressed by your knowledge of strip clubs.”
#thingsihavesaidonfirstdates

Raise your hand if this has happened to you? Anyone? No? Okay, so it’s just me then. Can someone at least enlighten me to where the good guys are hiding? Are they off summering in the Hamptons or traveling somewhere fabulous? That’s the only feasible explanation I can come up with. I’ve only been on four dates this summer, and each and every one of them has left me thinking “what the what?” Perhaps, it’s the heat and humidity that is draining us New Yorkers of any and all sense of what’s up and what’s down. And maybe this heat exhaustion just makes guys feel the need to reveal their inner strip club connoisseur only halfway through their first beer. But whatever it is, it’s making me feel like I need a Gatorade and to run for the hills.

I hope you can understand my decision to take precautionary measures toward self-preservation. I’ve found that dating in the summer is a little slower paced than during the rest of the year. I believe the general rationale is that instead of focusing on starting something new in your life, you can just take a Summer Friday and escape it for a few days? It sounds good just thinking about it. So here’s my plan. If anyone interesting comes along, I won’t say no, but I’m not going to actively look for the next month or so. After all, it’s the summer. All I want to worry about is when I’m going to get my next tan, not that my next date will be at The Gentleman’s Club.

Summer unofficially begins tomorrow. Giving us plenty of time for back to school ads to pop up again by late July. God forbid, we observe life when it actually occurs.

What’s your memory of the perfect summer date? Mine goes back to the summer after my senior year in high school, when I picked up my girlfriend in my parents’ Pontiac, on which I’d added an aftermarket wolf whistle. My folks couldn’t have been thrilled. After I’d hinted on the phone that I thought eye makeup made her look sexy, she went overboard and opened her front door looking like a cheap painting. It was the thought that counted.

We tore off for the drive-in. For you kids out there, that was the place you’d park your car to watch coming attractions, like your date’s cleavage. Oh, and occasionally, the movie.

Hope your summer flings gets off to a rousing start. If it doesn’t happen this weekend, you can always wait until it’s actually… summer. Woo-hoo!

For most of the country, winter can be a long, dreadful, depressing time.  Especially here in New York where the weather seems to go from one extreme to the other.

One day it is 30 degrees and snowing, the next day it is summer and time to break out those shorts!  I can’t stress enough how frustrating it is that the two best weather seasons, fall and spring, are almost non-existent here!  But I digress…

With summer comes great summer dating ideas and today’s suggestion is to bring your date to a concert.  This works especially well if you are dealing with someone who is clearly passionate about music in his or her profile.

This is a great date for two reasons.

1.  It is a fun, exciting date.  The goal of being a master at planning dates is to plan dates that are a cut above the rest of the crowd without having to break that wallet wide open and looking desperate to impress.

2.  The high energy, inflated sense of having a good time, and good feelings, will be carried over once the date is over.  The date may have ended days ago, but those good feelings will be permantly interconnected with you, leaving your date desiring a second date.

So hit up those concerts and rock it out.  And don’t forget that good night kiss.

One of my best friends has been flirting with the idea of joining 100hookup for some time now. Ever since I first joined at the beginning of the summer whenever we hang out he asks me about it and expresses his interest, however, he has been unable to pull the trigger. His procrastination is probably due to the fact that he meets a lot of women, and goes out on dates pretty much every week, so a part of him is probably pretty content with his current dating life.

However, in spite of the volume of women he meets, and number of dates he goes on, I suspect that deep down he knows that 100hookup would be a great resource to him because it would give him the opportunity to meet different types of women that he otherwise would have probably never met. I think that part of the problem that people like my friend run into is that even though they have an active dating life and are meeting a bunch of people every week, they are meeting the same type of person.

For example, if you go to the same bars and hang out with the same people you are going to be limited to a general type of person who enjoys that particular bar and works or hangs out with the people you know. Therefore, while you may not necessarily be limited by the number of people you meet that are potentially datable, you are still keeping yourself from meeting people from other circles. It is a result of this limitation that I believe directly correlates to why my friend’s dates never seem to turn into relationships because ultimately he is just replicating the same dating situation over and over with the same type of girl.

This is why I believe that the online dating community would open up his dating world to women that he would have otherwise never met, since unlike his usual bars, 100hookup is populated by people of all different personalities, backgrounds and ideologies. You see, my friend has inadvertently put himself in a box, like so many of us have during our dating careers.  That’s fine for a time, but whether it be with the people you are meeting in bars, or those you are trying to start conversations with online, sometimes you have to go outside your box and shake things up a little bit, which in the example of my friend, would be joining the online community and having the chance to meet all different types of interesting women.

Recently, I have been bombarded by emails online.  Maybe it is the arrival of summer.  Great weather, less clothes, people are out and about and in good spirits wanting to do fun activities.  The potential suitors range in age, geography and now sexuality.

One of the emails I received from a gentleman asking me if I would ever consider “a real, long term relationship with a bi-curious guy.” For those who know me, let’s just say I can’t wait to meet my beshert.  I’m open and not judgmental as to who may be a good partner for me, and I try to not only date “my type” in this dating journey.  Yet, at the same time I’m pretty traditional, so my jaw opened and I laughed as I read the bi-curious proposal.  Is this what my dating life has come to??   I feel like the protagonist in the 2001 Indie film, Kissing Jessica Stein.  Granted this emailer was extremely handsome per his photo and a VP of a Media Corporation, but I think I’ll take a pass.

Then of course everyday there are those emails that come from San Diego and though I love California it is kind of hard to develop a relationship through email unless there is already a solid foundation.  GU “Geographically Undesireable” is a real challenge in cyberworld.   Unless it is a Bi-Cycle lover perhaps I’ll stay away from the Bi hyphenations for now.

Growing up in Miami, I am used to HEAT and I love it…especially the Miami Heat.  Summer is a close second to my favorite season, fall. It’s still warm with crisp evening air, leaves turn, football and Halloween…all good stuff.  I digress.  As I was running in Central Park this gorgeous summer morning, I felt so thankful (a season in advance of Thanksgiving) – sure I would love to have a family and I would love to put my single days behind me, absolutely, without question.  But there is a lot of joy that lies in the journey, the process and getting to know yourself that is best achieved during those morning jogs.

#45 Jogging in Central Park or any Park