First date, trying to apply some theory.

First date with a girl met online today. She was the one to message me in the first place, which is usually a great sign of interest, or of being overweight, or both. She was a 7, I could tell she was on the chubbier side, but there was something cute to her which made up for it, and I figured it'd be good practice anyway.

We meet pretty late at a popular bar in her area, about 20 mins drive from where I live. I arrive early, chat it up with both the greeter and the waitress with whom I exchange names we proceed to joke around. She seems to be really into me, but I'm sure it's part of her job, so I don't interpret it in any other way.

Anyway, the date arrives, we sit next to each other at a table and order drinks. We discuss my choice of wine and the choice location. The challenge for me was to find the right time to kino it up after the initial hug, she was right next to me, but I couldn't figure out WHEN to do it in such a way that it would feel natural to both of us. I touched her on the arm/shoulder a couple of times, and once the timing was off and it felt quite awkward. She on the other hand was naturally touching my leg with her hand under the table to get my attention, which felt more like her doing kino on me, pretty awesome.

Anyway, the place gets really loud, and we decide to move to the next bar since we can't hear each other. Unfortunately at the new place we have to sit quite far apart in front of each other (job interview date, bleah), which made kino basically impossible without both people really leaning in. The conversation was running dry, and so there was even less of a chance of getting closer. Something I learned here was to have a plan B in case things get boring, so I said we should go check out some improv that was being performed a short drive away, but she responded very negatively to it and so I moved on like nothing happened, pretending it was no big deal, although it did make things pretty much pointless from then on. My wry and absurd sense of humor didn't seem to work too well on her, which made things awkward, and she had no humor whatever herself, which certainly didn't help. At the end I told her that I had to be up early the next day and we left. I walked her back to her car (tons of really drunk people in the area) and ended it with a fairly unfelt hug, and said something retarded like "Oh let me know if you're up to anything interesting" (I know, I know.. Jesus)

To be honest the last part of the date felt very forced and the conversation was uninteresting. It felt like she had nothing of interest to say, no experiences she wanted to share, no interests to tell me about. I feel that the fault was mostly mine for not helping her tell me more, for not being fun enough for her to expose herself. I don't think I should be blaming the girl, no matter how boring she can appear at first. It could have definitely been a fun f-close, and that's ultimately what I was shooting for, but since I didn't even feel like going in for the kiss (there was mabye a 30% chance of that happening) nothing else was going to happen.

Did well:

• talked to the service people in both places, established social value by being known by the waitress even before the date walked in (Wygant's suggestion)
• teased the girl a little bit
• was quite easygoing
• managed to use a disqualifier saying, jokingly, something like "Oh well then it will definitely never work out between us" which she surprisingly shrugged off with no comment.

Did not well:

• kino is still akward
• conversation got very stale (probably the fault of the location, but when you "blind date" you pretty much have to meet somewhere boring like a bar, especially if she doesn't want to change location)
• choice of locale was sub-par and not very helpful for a date/kino
• talked way too much, why won't I shut the fucking yapper?
• I was relaxed, but I felt my body language and posture were out of control most of the time. Need to get less boozed next time?
• Not even close to being able to kiss on the first date. Again, could have gone for it, but the prerequisites didn't feel there. As the kino video says, it should feel like a natural small step rather than a huge leap forward.