detroit dating advice, 1970 (part two)

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Due to popular demand, and due to Valentine's Day being this week, let's carry on with some advice on how to snag a date, 1970 Motor City style. For part one, click here.

In a small town, only a "loose" girl would meet a man in a bar, but in a city the older boy-meets-girl techniques often break down; and alternative methodsm must be created. To collectively designate special bars on special nights with special procedures as morally acceptable is one way this is accomplished.

Go with a couple of friends and find a bar where the people appear to be similar to yourselves...once you've found a place you feel comfortable, exert yourself further by not hiding in a corner. Mingle and move as much as possible-to the john, the juke box, the cigarette machine. On a packed Friday night conversation will come spontaneously, without forcing your male counterpart into the unnerving ordeal of approaching you.

For men: Your problem, admit it or not, is that you're basically chicken, all show and no go. You'll leer, dream, and get your eyeballs all steamed up; but you won't get up and give it the old college-try. Rather, you'll slug down a couple of drinks and then leave claiming:
-Those are the ugliest women since Medusa.
-Hmmm, this singles thing is certainly an interesting sociological phenomenon.
-They were all so damn busy talking to each other that they didn't want to be interrupted
-I'm ugly, unloveable, unwanted.

...what you need, you think, is a good opening line.
-"Aren't you the chick who played Sandro Catatonio's pill-pushing mistress in Murder in the Mercado-the one who betrays Sandro by filling his Vitalis bottle with napalm?"
-"You're a Cancer! I just know you're a Cancer...I can tell by your grey eyes and.."
-"Hey, what are you doing with that martini? Har har har. After we got you sobered up a bit after that party you swore up and down that you would never touch another drop to drink."
-Or, looking around sadly as you tragically move in to light her cigarette: "Look at them all. (gesturing) Kind of sad in a way, really. Now me, I'm just an old people watcher from way back and...

Keep working on it until you're happy with it, or drunk enough to approach the girl. (43-44)

I'm speechless. - JB

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