The measure of a man (date)

When my roommate and I went out to dinner a few weekends ago, neither of us was under the impression we were on a date. The purpose of our excursion was to settle a bet. A few weeks earlier, Parker and I had both filled out NCAA basketball tournament brackets and decided that whichever one of us picked more games correctly would take the other to dinner.

The host seated us at a table for two in a side room of the restaurant. It was a cool night and my seat was by a window. I shivered when I caught a draft. "I'd be happy to switch places with you since I have my jacket," Parker said. It wasn't as though he'd offered to lay his blazer over a puddle, but it was nonetheless a gentlemanly gesture — the first of many. Over dinner, we talked about girls, classes and our plans for the summer. Every so often, I plucked bits of beef off Parker's plate, and he forked a few noodles from mine.

For our post-dinner entertainment, we decided to see the new movie "Sin City." Not wanting the night's fiscal imbalance to grow, I paid for both our tickets. We claimed a pair of seats near the front of the theatre. Throughout the movie, we were diplomatic about sharing the armrest and our candy. Afterwards, we walked back to our dorm room. I suppose you could say we walked each other home.

Shortly after waking up the next morning, I began to browse The New York Times online. One article in particular caught my attention: "The Man Date" by Jennifer 8. Lee. "A man date is two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports," Lee said in the article. "It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman."

The more I read, the more my outing with Parker appeared to have been a man date. "Dining together across a table without the aid of a television is a man date," the article continued. "Eating at a bar is not. Taking a walk in the park together is a man date; going for a jog is not. Attending the movie 'Friday Night Lights' is a man date, but going to see the Jets play is definitely not."

I emailed the article to Parker, and after he'd read it, asked him if he thought we had been on a man date. "I lost a bet to you," he said. "I had to buy you dinner."

Playing devil's advocate, I asked, "How about when you offered to switch places with me because I was cold?"

"I only offered because I knew you wouldn't accept," Parker said.

"What about eating off each other's plates and sharing our candy during the movie?"

"It's not as though I was dangling Swedish fish over your mouth and feeding them to you," Parker said. Then he added: "When you squeezed my leg during the scary parts, I'll admit that was a little bit uncomfortable."

I decided to seek out the one woman who could definitively answer the question of whether I had, in fact, been on a man date: Jennifer 8. Lee. Her piece had been the Times' most emailed article for several days. I was not optimistic she would have the time or the inclination to correspond with a random college sophomore about his personal life. Parker found her email address on the Internet, and I emailed her on the off chance she would respond. She called me the next day, and I relayed to her the events of the previous Saturday night.

"Your situation is on the borderline, though I'm kind of leaning toward no," she said. "There's this masculine affirmation since the dinner was originally based on a sports bet." So Parker was right. He and I had not been on a man date. I was actually a little bit disappointed. Before I hung up the phone with Lee, she told me, "You have to be pretty secure to go on a man date." That's when it struck me: In an ironic twist, I had been trying to use my imagined man date as proof of my masculinity. Deciding instead to bolster my manhood through more traditional means, I stretched out on my bed, picked up the remote and flipped on some sports. P.G. Sittenfeld is a sophomore from Cincinnati, Ohio. He can be reached at pg@princeton.edu.