OC HIGH: STUDENT NEWS AND VIEWS : Dating Games : His first outing was awkward. To find out what went wrong, he brought other teens to the table to find some answers.

When it comes to dating, I have always felt like a child without any money, peering into a store window.

Dating seems to come so naturally to others, but my four years in high school have been spent dateless. Which is why, when a girl recently asked me if I wanted to see a play with her, I immediately said yes.

But the evening did not go at all as I had imagined it would. My awkwardness rendered me helpless at the most inopportune times. Why, I asked myself as I drove home that night shaking my head, had I been that inept?

I needed to talk about dating; to find out what I had done wrong. It was time to demystify this rite of passage. I decided to interview other teens--male and female--in hopes of understanding what they wanted out of the whole ritual.

They are not identified by their real names, but here is what the six people I interviewed told me about their experiences with dating:

*

Mark, a sophomore, had his first date when he was 14. We went to a taco place in one of the countless mini-malls that line the streets of Aliso Viejo to talk. I asked him how he felt on his first date. He thought for a minute, looked at his half-consumed enchilada, and laughed that laugh that said he remembered something embarrassing.

“When we got dinner, I tried to order something small; I usually get big, greasy dinners. I was afraid I was going to look like a pig because she was more in shape than I was,” he said. I could relate to him even before he had finished the sentence.

By the end of the meal we were talking about insecurities. One of his insecurities: “She’s going to want to do something that I’m not going to want to do,” he said, explaining that he believed in delaying sex until after marriage.

Another insecurity: “That I’m not tall and handsome and skinny.”

When asked why he thinks it’s hard for men and women to communicate, he said, “They try to predict what they’re going to say and they end up not saying it. But I think a lot of times they have to speak before they think, because otherwise they’re not going to give their true opinions.”

I asked Mark what kind of girl he was attracted to. His answer: girls who weren’t stuck on themselves.

*

I pulled into the parking lot of Ruby’s Autodiner in Laguna Beach, just in time to see Scott, a senior, getting out of his car and walking to the door. Scott and I had been friends in elementary school but had drifted apart in high school. He had gone on to become very social and I hadn’t, and I wanted to know why.

About halfway through my first cup of coffee we were talking about what turned him off certain girls. “Attitude has a lot to do with it,” he said, adding that he dislikes “uptight, moody girls where everything’s a crisis, everything’s trauma.” Where does he meet girls? In the summertime, at the beach. During the school year, at parties.

Could part of my problem be that I don’t make a point of going to the beach and parties and other places where people meet? Here we were, both seniors, both growing up in the same place, under similar circumstances, and yet he seemed light years away from where I was.

He told me about how he lost his virginity.

“It was like the next morning I realized that it wasn’t that big of a deal,” he said. It had been awkward, occurring in his living room when his mother had been out of town. He has slept with a few girls since then, but, he said, “I can’t say that I even now really know what I’m doing.”

He made me realize that awkwardness doesn’t just occur when things don’t happen, but also when they do. Scott said he feels more confident now as a senior. “I think a lot of it has to do with status. Even if I was the exact person as a junior, I think it would make a world of difference.”

I realized that making generalizations about the opposite sex was useless and several of my own stereotypes about my gender had died during my first two interviews. There weren’t going to be any absolute answers.

*

My next interview was with Kathy, a sophomore. We met in front of the football field.

As we drove to a restaurant in Dana Point, the conversation transcended small talk.

She loved the outdoors, she loved classical literature, she was completely at ease about who she was, and she was intelligent without being overbearing. When we pulled into the Harbor House Cafe, and I found that I had left my wallet at home, I felt like banging my head full force against a brick wall. I had just ruined one of the best ice-breaking periods I had ever known through my own thoughtlessness. Still, there were no unbearable silences while we went back for my wallet and returned to the restaurant.

The subject of first dates came up pretty quickly and talk about sex followed soon after.

“He asked for a lot on the first date and I didn’t want to give it,” Kathy said. Before the date “he told me he wanted to have sex with me.” Kathy told him she didn’t want to. “He said that that was fine with him and we went out on the date. We had a really good time that night, I thought, but after that he stopped talking to me.”

A little later she added: “You can say you’re completely ready (for sex). But I don’t think you really are until you’re in the position where you might be having it that night.”

I became very self-conscious during the meal as I ate and drank my way through a milkshake, a mushroom burger and onion rings while she ate a salad.

I’m just interviewing her, why should I feel self-conscious?

Needless to say, this demystification was only mystifying me more. I asked her if she had an ideal man in her head, and she said she thought that “if you do that, you read things into people that aren’t there and that’s not fair to them.”

When we talked about her insecurities she admitted that “sometimes I don’t know what to expect from a guy and that throws me off a lot. I don’t know how I should act, I don’t know if I should try to hold his hand or kiss him or if I should let him do it.”

That night when I dropped her off, I shook her hand and watched her go to the door. For one moment, I believed I had found someone I would have liked to spend time with. Kathy had changed how I viewed women.

*

Andy, a junior, was the most reserved of the people I interviewed. I met him at Tortilla Flats on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna and I found myself again staring at a plate of tacos. When I asked him about his sex life, he answered simply and strongly: “I don’t think that’s anyone’s business but my own.”

When I asked him what he thought attracted girls, he replied, “I’m sure all women are different.” But he thought it generally wise “not to come on too strong at first. A lot of (men) try to impress them and I don’t think a lot of girls care for that.”

His insecurities? “I think I’m a perfectionist. I want to make sure everything is right. I’m insecure when I don’t know if she is happy.”

He gave me a ride back to my house that night because I had ridden my bicycle and I was late for a job. I felt a respect for this guy who honored privacy and didn’t feel the need or the want to open up his experiences for anyone and everyone to see.

*

Sue, a junior, met me at a cafe in downtown Laguna for our interview. I had had a crush of sorts on Sue as a sophomore, but I had convinced myself that I didn’t have a chance with her. Every other guy I knew at my school liked Sue to some degree, and I believed my chances with her were pretty null.

Of course, it never occurred to me that the worst that could happen would be a simple no. But then again, I never could think that way.

Sue, it turned out, wasn’t as sexually experienced as I had expected. She said she was not ready for a sexual relationship and had consciously made the choice not to get involved sexually during high school.

Still, she had dated and had some observations.

“I think there are some guys who are just as relieved as I am, if they find out that I’m not that way (expecting sex) and they’re not that way. I just want to have fun. I don’t think a date has to lead to anything other than a date. Some people think if you accept a date, it’s like a claim of your undying love for them.”

What Sue proved to me is that many teens have thought these things through, further than people give them credit for.

“Girls think that guys have all this confidence,” Sue said. “But I think sometimes they’re just as scared as we are.”

I can vouch for that.

*

My final interview was with Linda, who has finished high school and attends community college. We met at the Penguin Cafe but ended up talking on the steps behind the restaurant because of the noise inside.

I asked Linda if she felt like she needed to act any certain way on a date. “I always felt like I had to act more girlish because I’m not very girlish. I act like your typical male half the time. You know, the guy who gets up after sex and leaves.”

Linda’s views of men and sex were jaded. She reminded me of a carpenter’s hand, calloused and scarred from splinters. She talked about what guys were attracted to in her.

“One guy I dated wanted to go out with me because he thought I looked like Nora from “Pump Up the Volume” (the Christian Slater movie) and I didn’t know this when we first went out.”

Linda had developed defense mechanisms against being hurt and had learned that there can be a lot of growth from pain.

Her biggest lesson was not to give 100% in a relationship. “I learned that if I didn’t give so much, then there would be less in the pot and (the men) would have to contribute some too.”

With Linda, I felt a definite finality to my interviews.

I had begun this trek with someone who had just entered into the world of dating and I ended with someone who had been there long enough to want to get out.

After we had finished the interview, I watched as Linda drove off. I leaned against my bike, waiting for a revelation to wash over me. I waited for enlightenment. I waited for the realization that I had solved the secret of the sexes, but it never came. So I unlocked my bike and headed home.

*

Did I learn anything? I learned that I knew nothing and I learned that you have to take everyone on a person-to-person basis.

I learned that awkwardness is universal and I learned, finally, that I had gone about things all wrong. I realized this when Linda told me that “the whole concept of having expectations” was wrong.

“You’ll overlook things that you didn’t think about and you won’t notice them in a person if you set standards,” she said.

I had missed so much because of my preconceptions about what dating had to be. I didn’t let the current of the river take me downstream. I realized that we’re not meant to know everything about the opposite sex or to be able to relate to them perfectly. Our differences force us to listen, to observe, to remember, and to experiment.

Every now and then, the alchemy works, and the thing that has tortured and delighted our existences for centuries happens. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know where to find it, and I don’t know how to make it happen. But I hope it happens to me.