In the first hour of a typical first date, you find out about siblings, jobs and roommates.

 
On a recent first date, I was left clueless about all of that. But I did find out my date's Venus was on my ascendant. And that was before we even had our first cocktail.

Ashton Kutcher is doing it and he's on MTV. So it must be cool, right? 

 
Kutcher, 25, is dating 41-year-old actress Demi Moore. When the news broke, the media declared the phenomenon of older women dating younger men the latest craze.

Who am I not to jump on the bandwagon?

The last time I did this, my hands were clammy, but I grabbed my girlfriend's hand anyway.

To avoid the palpable discomfort, I started skipping. Then I started singing: "We're going to get our AIDS test results! We're going to get our AIDS test results!'

She sang along with me and some of our discomfort eased. Of course, this was serious. We were, in fact, going to get results for HIV/AIDS.

Dan and I considered warming up for the cuddle party. We looked at the bed in his apartment. We looked at each other.

And then we changed our minds.

No need to get cuddled out before the big party.

Gentlemen, I found the answer.

It'll cost you. You'll have to go to New York City to get it. And it's not guaranteed to work the first time (it didn't for me).

But, believe it or not, it's legal. And it far surpasses the other gimmicks -- online dating and speed dating, cars and cash, smiles andcharm, hair gel and deodorant -- you've tried to meet women.

The answer, gentlemen, is the Wingwoman.

I'm about to break up with my girlfriend.

It has been two months. And, frankly, I knew from the beginning this wasn't going to last. After all, I only paid her for two months.

Yeah, that's right. I paid for a girlfriend. Not a real girlfriend, but an imaginary girlfriend. Not illegal prostitution, but legal intellectual prostitution.

When you buy a woman off the Internet, you don't really expect the two of you will live happily ever after.

That's why I was shocked to find myself talking on the phone for nearly an hour to a woman on a Pacific island whom I had purchased for $40 just three months earlier.

Could I be friends with a woman I sort of wanted to see naked?

That was the question I found myself revisiting six years after I officially swore off attractive female friends.

Harry: You realize, of course, that we can never be friends.

Sally: Why not?

Harry: What I'm saying is-and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form-is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.

Sally: That's not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.

Harry: No, you don't.

There are some tacit agreements men and women have made with each other.

We’ve agreed to make the move in approaching you; you’ve agreed to be civil to us if you think we’re cute.

We’ve agreed to ask for your phone number; you’ve agreed to call us back if you like us.

We’ve agreed to pay for the first date; you’ve agreed to contact us afterward via phone, e-mail or smoke signal to say, simply, “Thank you."

I watched a man putting on his shirt outside the bar, and my eyes were magnetically drawn to his belly.

I was here for a singles event sponsored by the Delaware Valley chapter of BBW and Admirers -- that's Big Beautiful Women and their admirers -- and I was trying to find out who was part of the group and
who was here just hanging out at the bar.

And that's why I was checking out bellies. I didn't want to approach
someone and say, "Hey, are you here for the BBW event?" It would be
offensive to insinuate that someone is heavy and looking for other
similarly heavy partners, right?

Being a single guy without a date at a wedding can be excruciating.

First, unlike your buddy who is getting married, you're faced with the realization that another week has gone by and you aren't cementing a lifelong partnership with anybody, let alone the love of your life.

Not only that, but you don't even have a date to sit next to as the whole thing goes down. Even if you wanted to pretend to direct emotional energy toward someone during this moment, you can't.

Fortunately, I've been single at a number of good friends' weddings recently. Through it all, I've come up with a survival guide.

I was nervous. I was so nervous that I was making my hands sweaty because I was nervous that my hands were getting sweaty.

After all, this was no ordinary date. This was Blaire Allison. The Blaire Allison.

It wasn't a date, but I wish it had been.

The first indication that it wasn't a date was the fact that I didn't even ask her out directly-I had to go through a publicist. The second clue was that although I asked the publicist for dinner, I was downgraded to coffee.

But it didn't matter. I can do the coffee date.

This is the story of a pop trying to pimp out his daughter.

It was a few weeks after I had gone on a date with Blaire Allison, a 27-year-old who started a Web site last year to find a fiance by New Year's Eve.

Blaire didn't pick me as her husband-my soul wasn't heavy enough,she said-but she did advertise my availability on the "Not My Husband" page of her site.

This prompted e-mails from women wondering if, maybe, I could be their husband, instead.

You're not the unknown job hunter blindly sending out your resume. Not this time, baby. You have an in. You know a guy who knows a guy.

You've been vouched for.

In the beginning, I literally had trouble using the word in a sentence.

"I have a guh-guh . . ."

"A what?"

"A guh-guh-guhrl . . ."

"A girlfriend?"

"Yeah, that."

Dinner is great. A movie? Fine. Flowers? Whatever.

But sometimes, this doesn't cut it. Sometimes, you have to blow your date out of the water. Sometimes, you have to leave her jaw on the ground at the end of the night.

It's called shock value. It worked for Janet Jackson's career after Justin Timberlake exposed her at the Super Bowl. It had to work for me.

It totally has gotten out of hand. There are now -- are you ready for this? -- dating sites for people who classify themselves as "asexual."

When I was in middle school, if two guys were leaning on a locker talking to each other there's a 90-percent chance they were listing the reasons why Michael Jordan could single-handedly crush any team in the NBA.

Some people literally tried to talk me out of it.

"Oh," they said. "You don't want to go to THAT gym."

There's nothing illegal or shady about THAT gym. In fact, it's one of the nicest in the area.

Instead, "that" referred to its reputation as a "gay gym."

There comes a point in every single person's life when you question whether this whole monogamy thing really makes any sense.

Now when I say "you," I mean "me." And when I say "comes a point," I mean "right now."

A year later, I thought I was over it. I thought I had learned from the mistakes I made with her. I thought I would never have to think about it again.

And then the e-mail came from 1800FLOWERS.com. Like a ghost from my past, the subject line read: "A Reminder for Sara's Birthday."

Ahh, the flowers. The fateful flowers I ordered from 1800FLOWERS.com exactly one year ago.

James Dean must be turning in his grave.

Apparently, if you're a modern man looking to attract women, that
tough guy white T-shirt has to stay in the drawer.

Pink is now the way to go.

How hard is it, really, to meet women?

I set out with my friend, Dan, to find out. This Experiment, as we called it, had nothing to do with the fact we wanted an excuse to meet as many women as possible in a night.

No. Not at all. This was about science.

Apparently, some of you didn't like The Experiment.

Last week, I wrote about an experiment my friend, Dan, and I conducted to meet as many women as possible in one night.

First, please understand that Dan and I did not want to do this. Why would we want to go out to a bunch of bars for a whole night and talk to beautiful women?

Obviously, we did it for the sake of science and not for ourselves.