Raising the stakes on dating
l ArtisHENDERSON sandydays@florida-weekly.com

Once, coming out of a metro stop in the seedier part of Paris, I noticed a hooker giving me the eye. It was after midnight and I was coming home from the disco in high-heeled black leather boots and a mini-skirt so short it was hidden under my coat. She looked Eastern European, with dark hair and pale skin, sullen, and obviously irritated that I was on her turf.

Just out of college and naive in the way of urban street smarts, it took me a while to realize why I had earned the death-stare. Once I figured out the reason behind the glare, though, there was no denying her thought process. We had on the same black boots, the same short skirt, the same heavy make-up. She thought I was competition.

This wasn't the only time someone in France mistook me for a prostitute (another night, late, after a party, "Bonsoir, bébé. You need a ride?"), but it was definitely the most memorable.

Now, when I'm out late in Southwest Florida, I see young girls embracing the same bad fashion choices, but in a more focused, deliberate way. It seems - from my mature standpoint, anyway - like a game of promiscuous poker, where the stakes are increasingly high and the only one to come out a winner is the john.

Nowhere was this point more obvious then during a recent night out in downtown Fort Myers. Before the dance floor was really crowded, when just a few brave souls moved under the strobe lights, a young girl (hard to imagine she was even old enough to drink), led a nattily dressed thirty-something guy onto the checkered dance floor. She moved to the bass of the hip-hop song, emphasizing each beat with a shake of her rear.

I looked away, chatting with friends, scanning the crowd, and when I looked back, he had her bent over - dancing? I'm not really sure - in the closest approximation of sex I've seen in public.

What was startling, and sad for single women everywhere, was not that she let him, that she encouraged it, even, but

the fact that he was checking out other

girls while he was doing it.

The dating stakes have been raised so high, the standards of appropriate sexual behavior been so lowered, that mock sex on the dance floor is not only acceptable, it's hardly enough to hold some people's attention.

My beautiful, single girlfriends have often been a mystery to me, a puzzle I couldn't figure out. How could they be single when they have so much to offer? Now, I think I have the answer.

Why would any man choose just one? When explicit bump and grind is considered appropriate public behavior and near-nudity is typical going-out wear, why would he settle for a girlfriend when all these erotic, accessible women come for free?

To the young women out there who look like Parisian street walkers, let me encourage you to end this game before we all get hurt. By taking sex out of the bedroom - and, incidentally, out of relationships, you are demoralizing not only yourself but the sacred act of courtship.

Dating isn't Texas Hold 'Em, and going all in will only leave you worse off than when you started. Take a lesson from the infamous Kenny Rogers, and put this game to bed: "Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run."

Contact Artis

>>Send your dating tips, questions, and disasters to sandydays@florida-weekly.com