Is Sex On the First Date Actually a Good Idea?

This guy I met the other week at a party had stopped replying to our conversation, even though I thought it had potential. 

“So, do you reckon you can get me a job at Vogue?” he asked, and I replied, “Yeah, deffo, I’ll put in a word on Monday.”

“Oh no, I was just joking to flirt with you.” 

“I know, I was joking too. I wanted you to think I’m funny.”

And after that, nothing. 

“At least you didn’t have sex with him,” my mom said, like she always does when something doesn’t work out with a guy. I guess because she thinks if I had, then I would feel more cheated because I’d given myself over to that person. That in leaving the party in a taxi before anything happened, I’d retained some power over the situation. Though I can’t say I felt that way. I just felt bored—numbed by the endless conveyor belt of these interactions to the extent that I barely laughed when a friend said I should get screenshots of these conversations printed on T-shirts. 

A week later, I was at another party when I bumped into this guy I’d first met a few months ago. I can’t say I liked him much, but my friends just said he was shy, that he was nerdy at school so probably wasn’t used to girls in mesh dresses running up to him and asking dumb questions like, “If you were a vegetable, what sort of vegetable would you be?” I just thought he was stuck-up and resolved to quietly hate him.

But at some point that evening, the dynamic shifted so dramatically that we ended up having sex. I’m still not quite sure how. I just know that we left the party at the same time, and as we walked to the bus stop together he stopped and looked back at me, a slight smirk flicking up his mouth at one side. Something fizzed in the air, and sensing this, I said, “Are you gonna kiss me or something?” And then all of a sudden my fingers were caught in his hair, his hands were on my ass, and we were stumbling backwards until we hit the brick wall of the nearby corner shop.