The second biggest question women face on a date—after ‘Will I like him?’—is ‘Should I go to his place or bring him to mine?’
Which is safer? And more importantly, cleaner. What doesn’t threaten you can give you a UTI.
I don’t think there’s a case for ‘meet cutes’ in bedrooms. So, it’s a question to consider after a movie or a dinner date outside. You don’t want to end up in a rusty fridge of a 1BHK in Karol Bagh. If the peak is a joy ride, the pit is extreme horrors.
Finding joy is my right, so what if sometimes it’s jazzed up with fear. After all, not everyone gets as lucky as Emma Stone did with Ryan Gosling and swanky place in Crazy Stupid Love (2011). Singer Kesha has been shouting at me to party all night, but she’s probably doing that at someone else’s house too. The old arranged marriages of my parents’ generation usually began in the bedroom, and some probably even worked.
The most important thing here is I should be able to trust my survivor instincts if things go awry.
You don’t call him to your place the first time. He could be a stalker who now has your address. Or worse. He overstays his welcome, clogs your toilet, picks his nails, and snores.
So, safety first, always. Go to his place. But even the safe guys can have hidden red flags. Based on whisper networks gained in the company of other comrades my age and older, horrors may lurk in his home. You don’t want to smell dirty pillows, go to an uncleaned toilet, die of thirst, wipe your face with damp towels, or be introduced to his deadbeat flatmates.
That’s how much of an extreme sport it is being attracted to straight men.
Also read: Modern dating is an emotional kabaddi – swipe, disappear, meditate, detach, play goddess
Marching on
Miraculously, I am standing tall in Delhi and so is my friend in Bengaluru, who also thinks twice before making after-party plans with strangers.
Who knew a first date at the Museum of Art and Photography could teach her so much? After giving up trying to make the guy say something worth listening to, she decided to cancel plans to visit his place later. During their dull walk in UB City mall, she even told him she had a headache and a sick cat at home.
“But I cleaned my 3BHK for you. What would my flatmates think?” said the guy who wanted to be rewarded for basic housekeeping. She politely made him see the bright side of keeping clean and briskly walked to an auto. He caught up and forcefully planted a kiss on her. The Namma Yatri driver silently watched and then dropped her home. Forget all those ads that claim their drivers care about women’s safety.
Then there are those who don’t tidy up for dates. The furniture designer she met at a stationary shop in Koramangala is a simple man who uses only a tiny bottle of Clean & Clear face wash for his entire body. His slimy-floored washroom is a Jaquar-fitted public toilet and there’s only one cabinet in his dusty modular kitchen that’s been touched—it has a container of Whey protein and a bottle of Old Monk. Not a single glass in sight. If all the contents of his bedroom are on his bed, who could dare to sit on it? Not my brave soldier. She asked him to clean the mess before calling her over next time. And the self-aware man confessed that he is hopeless.
Like my friend, I was also not raised by my mother to smell other people’s grimy apartments. But we do make that compromise at times, don’t we? We check on our comrades by tracking our cab locations and initiate rescue operations by faking illness on phone calls. But this one time, when a guy showed me a picture of how he grows tomatoes in his balcony garden, we crossed our fingers, hoping he would call me over. Pray I don’t end up as fertiliser.
Views are personal.
This article is part of a series of columns on modern dating in India—the good, the bad and the cuddly.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)