Author: Mark Bittlestone
Mark Bittlestone is a stand-up comedian. He is also very gay man. Just a very gay man, doing a lot of straight-up gay stuff.
Alright so dating is just hard tbh, there’s no two ways about it.
Can you really be arsed to give up time that you could spend jerking off, watching TV, or seeing friends just to have an overpriced cocktail with someone you might well hate? I also can’t really talk because I essentially never go on dates, but I reserve the right to educate the gays for no reason at all.
Here are my top five tips…
1) Get hammered.
I’m aware that this is unhealthy and we should all be trying to drink less but, honestly, sometimes this is the best way through. I once got really drunk on a date and started making out with the guy in the middle of a crowded restaurant. Was pretty #iconic tbf. The upside of getting drunk on the first date is that you can have quite a lot of fun, the downside is you emerge with little understanding of what they might be like sober. They could be – like me – incredibly dull without a drink in ‘em.
2) Daytime date.
Total 180° from above tbf but I have comedy gigs most evenings and I’m basically never free during the day, soooo when I do date lunchtimes can be a decent option. Good news is you can actually meet and chat to them sober so get a feel for what they’re like. Bad news is that if you’re both feeling it and wanna have sexy time (see option 5) it’s a bit weird at 2pm to be like soooooooo wanna go back to mine??? Weird, but not impossible 
3) Chat first.
A decent way to weed out people you get on with is to try and have a good amount of chat with them first. The problem is that obviously you both have busy lives and can’t be arsed to whatsapp people all day. I also consider myself to be incredibly funny and so if people don’t get my sense of humour immediately I essentially write them off. Also, sometimes this really backfires. Like once I chatted to a guy loads for three months then we went on a date and he ghosted me after. Three months down the foooooookin drain.
4) Skip the chat.
Another #180° from above, but if you wanna avoid the miserable chitchat then just be like ‘shall we get a drink’ as your opening gambit. I’m actually a fan of this it’s quite ballsy and can save a lot of drama. Again, runs the risk that they might be arseholes, but tbf you might talk to them for three months and still not figure that out, so just go for it?
5) Sex on the first date?
There’s a lot of frigidity around this and it really annoys me. Idk why we still have this like Victorian morality around ‘sex on the first date’, like it’s in any way weird for two consenting adults to have sex with each other just because they’ve recently met? I get that you might want to ‘save a bit of mystery’ or whatever, but yeah it’s all a bit weird for me. To be fair, at least I’m a sex after the first date, not literally on it. Although…
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