These days, few of us go looking for a spouse in the bars, despite all those scenes in the movies.
But they’re still great places to meet friends. And to watch people! Especially men or women who’ve gone there looking for a casual partner. Their behaviour’s highly predictable, and great fun to watch.
Both men and women start by establishing a territory. Finding somewhere to sit or lean where they feel good, and can be seen.
Then they start attracting attention to themselves. Men shrug and roll their shoulders, stretch and make exaggerated gestures.
They pat their hair, adjust their clothes, touch their chins and make lots of other self-holding and grooming movements. And they swagger as they move around.
Primatologists call it “bird-dogging”, and it’s something males of many species do whenever there’s an interesting female around.
Women start out by drawing attention to themselves in much the same way as men: gazing, smiling, swaying, preening, stretching and moving around their territory.
But there are also loads of entirely feminine things a girl on the make will do. Like twisting her hair, tilting her head, looking up coyly, giggling, raising her eyebrows, flicking her tongue, licking her lips, blushing and hiding her face.
She’ll probably catwalk. Arching her back, thrusting out her chest, swinging her hips and strutting. And wear high-heels!
That’s got very little to do with her height. High heels were invented thousands of years ago, and women have always loved them because of the way they arch their back, tighten the buttocks and lift the breasts in that classic female come-hither pose.
As potential lovers become comfortable with one another, they start to synchronise their movements. They face each other and align their shoulders.
And — briefly at first — they start to copy each other’s gestures. He crosses his legs, she crosses hers. He leans, she leans.
She smoothes her hair, he smoothes his. All over the world, couples get into this rhythm when they start feeling romantic.
Just as throughout the animal kingdom, stylised movements and synchronisation rituals signal amorous intentions.
But lovers must go slowly! Get too close too soon, touch too soon or say too much, and they’ll probably be rejected.
Courtship is a ritual, and at every step each partner must get the timing right, or it all falls apart.
And probably no ritual’s more important than the “dinner date”. In fact, offering food in the run-up towards romance must be the most widespread courtship ritual there is.
Everywhere men give women presents of food prior to lovemaking. A fish, a piece of meat, sweets, beer, dinner, whatever. It signals that she’s being wooed, and it’s always the man who provides.
The custom’s called courtship feeding, and it probably goes back to before Noah was a lad!
So, we may live in liberated times, but at the start of a romance, any guy who’s serious should pay for his girlfriend’s dinner!
