THE 2ND WORST THING YOU CAN SAY TO A GUY ON A 2ND DATE

This wasn’t just my imagination running wild. She really did taste like whiskey. It was her New Year’s resolution. To acquire the taste. And she was doing just fine. She started out on bourbon, but I knew she would soon graduate to scotch. She was my kinda gal.

To be frank with you, most girls are my kinda gals. But I’m not most gals kinda guy. I don’t dance. I don’t buy drinks. I’m not into risk investment. Buy a girl a drink, the chances of getting her to sleep with you are still pretty slim. Drink enough of them yourself, and you can be sure of getting drunk. That’s the one thing you can always count on with alcohol. And me, I go for the sound investment.

But this one bought her own drinks. As I told you, she was my kinda gal. All I had to do was have a beer and wait for her to do all the work, and then I’d reap the reward. She was already halfway there when we met. By the time she finished her drink, she was moving over my way. Maybe it was the whiskey. I didn’t mind.

And I didn’t mind the taste when she put her tongue in my mouth. But I’ve already told you that. Where were we…ah? Just so you don’t get the wrong idea. I am not without morals. I do think it wrong to sleep with women more drunk than you are. So usually I try to catch up. But I was running out of time.

It wasn’t the first time we met. We’d met before, under similar circumstances. Done the deed. We were equals then. Alcohol is the great equalizer. The beautiful and the hideous, the old and the young, the ignorant and the wise, at the end of the night, no one can hold a conversation any better than they can hold their drink.

Which was why I liked bars. That great socialist Jesus must have been drunk when he said the last shall be first, the first shall be last. Its guys like me that always fall down last. This is where we get our revenge.

But I digress. So far, everything was going according to plan. The plan’s always the same, but women rarely play according to rules, much less plans. Even if most plans include them.

And I had plans for Miss Bourbon. And Miss Bourbon was playing along. The fiddler plays the tune and she was tapping her foot in time. It wasn’t as if I was doing anything wrong, I mean, she had already acquiesced once. Do you ever make the same mistake twice? Or is that just being careless?

I had another hit of equalizer and she lent over toward me. She whispered in my ear, softly. But what she said wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

The very worst thing a woman can say to a man on a second date is: “I’m going to have your baby.” A child is 18 to life. There’s no “I’m sorry babe, it won’t happen again.” Once the words are spoken, it’s too late for regrets, too late for see-you-laters. All you can do is harden yourself to a decade of hangovers in movie theatres watching afternoon cartoons with a kid that’ll grow up to be just like you.

But that wasn’t what she said. What she said was the second worst thing a woman can say on a second date. “I think I have Chlamydia,” she said. That was a downer on the general mood of where the night was going. I no longer felt like holding tight and drowning in her sinking eyes.

I made my excuses the way you do, but it wasn’t even morning yet. I had other plans for the morning. I had waiting rooms and doctors and piles of outdated magazines with pictures of people you’d like to sleep with, if only you weren’t going to see the doctor. That’s what I had in the morning. That, and a hangover. So much for the cartoons.