"We were fifteen minutes into drinks, when she said..."

In celebration of meeting new people and the whole kaleidoscope of human experience that can come out of that, we're instituting a new column where Hooksexup readers can share the details of their latest date. It's like a post-date conversation with a friend. If you're interested in sharing your date with us, we'd love to hear about it.

ACT 1: "You don't want your first date to be kayaking down the Amazon or whatever…"

So how'd you end up on this date?
This girl wrote to me on a dating site — very blunt, to the point, "we should hang out sometime." But funny.

Tell us what you knew (or thought you knew) about her before you met up. Did you Google her? (Admit it.)
I didn't know much, because her profile was about as chatty as her messages (ie, not very). But she was funny. She talked about being a film student and animating a web series, both of which were attractive/interesting to me. She said that she'd just finished her first screenplay and then had a funny disclaimer about how ominous it sounds when people say that — pretty charming.

What did you plan to do? Whose bright idea was it?
Nothing too fancy — we just figured we'd get a drink and go from there. You never know how well you're going to connect to someone, so you don't want your first date to be kayaking down the Amazon or whatever.

Beauty is only skin deep, but how'd your date look? Were you immediately attracted or turned off by her in some way? 
She was cute — tall, kind of willowy, with interesting features. Not gorgeous, but striking. Definitely had the look of a one-time teenage stoner, which I cherish in a woman.

ACT 2: "Do you want to come back to my place and eat chocolate on a baguette and play Portal 2?"

So, what exactly did you end up doing? Take us through the sequence of events.
Well, here's where it got funny. We were just chatting at the bar, I was asking her about her day job (tutoring) and her screenplay (time travel!), and we were maybe fifteen minutes into drinks, when she said, "Hey, I'm really tired, and I'm really hungry. Do you want to come back to my place and eat chocolate on a baguette and play Portal 2?" Obviously, my answer to that one was yes. So we paid up, grabbed food at a bodega, headed back to her apartment, and played Portal 2 on her giant projector. 

What surprised you most about your date?
It surprised me that she invited me over fifteen minutes after she met me, I'll tell you that.

Did anything really funny happen? (And were you laughing together?) How about anything awkward?
Besides the funniness of the fact that we were playing it at all, Portal 2 turned out to be pretty hilarious and fun. 

Be frank: did your date get more or less attractive as the night went on?
She was odd and funny from the beginning, but I only liked her more while we were sitting there in the dark playing video games. Portal 2 is about as science/math-nerdy as you can get, and she was a definite science/math nerd, which I found really attractive. 

Conversation-wise, did you hold anything back? What might you have blurted out if you'd had one more drink? Unless you did have one more drink. 
Well, I wasn't really holding back conversation-wise — I was just having a good time joking around with her. But I was holding back making-out-wise, because, you know, I'd just met her.

ACT 3: "Read between the lines!"

How'd it end? Polite hug? Taxi sex? Fistfight? 
Unfortunately, that's kind of the downer ending. After about forty-five minutes of playing video games on a couch in the dark with this girl, I was about ready to make a move, when she was like, "Okay, I'm going to bed!" and showed me to the door. We kissed goodnight, but that was it. 

Would you go out again? And if so, what might you want to do? 
Well, I was kind of bemused by the whole thing, but I'd enjoyed it, so the next day I texted her and was like, "Hey, that was fun. We should play video games again sometime," and she never responded! Which I wasn't too upset about — but I did think it was remarkable to invite someone into your apartment after fifteen minutes of conversation if you're apparently not that psyched about them anyway.

If you went out again, what would you do differently? Or did you ace it, you sly devil? 
If we went out again, I probably would've made a move once we were in the dark together. But really, I just got caught off-guard. 

Time for a little objectivity: how close do you think your date's version of this story would be to yours? And what might they differ on? 
That's a little hard to figure. Two scenarios: one, "That guy wasn't very good at conversation/video games," or two, "I invited this numbskull into my apartment in a transparent offer of casual sex, and he unbelievably failed to take the hint. Come on, 'Portal 2?' Read between the lines! Now stop asking me questions — you're distracting me from my time-travel screenplay!" Now that I think about it, probably the latter.

Thanks for your time. Anything you'd like to add? 
The cake is a lie.

Have a great dating story you want to share with us? Tell us all about it.