VILLAGE
VOICE -- Apr 15 -- Since moving to New York from England, I have
ascertained that not everyone shags on the first date. In God's Blessed
Land, "dating" has been established for the express pursuit of
filtering for one's life partner before tumbling haphazardly into bed
with them. I am more used to the English way of doing things. Get blind
drunk, snog, repeat the next week, repeat the next week, bang! relationship.
By the time alcohol has dissolved that messy barrier between social
convention and drunken desire, the English couple has progressed past
the need to ever "know" each other, apart from in the carnal sense.
Having sailed through the last few years shagging married
men---unknowingly, for the most part---I don't think I'd know what to doif I ever got past the "hanging out" stage. The New York answer is
probably to take all the money I would have spent on happy-hour
margaritas and invest it in an excellent therapist. A friend of mine,
Amy, who has been online dating for a year or so, regaled me with
horrors of how 99% of participants regularly "fake" their photos. "You
have to be careful when meeting them. Don't take any risks."
The challenge in successful online dating, then, is managing to avoid a
potential psychopath. I would rather go out, buy two bottles of wine,
and glug my way into inebriation. It works in England. FULL ARTICLE @ YAHOO

Mark Brooks: Those Barbarian Brits!