Date: The honest cheater

Venue: Stonewall, Oxford Street

Spark: 7/10

Intellectual connection: 4/10

Physical appeal: 6/10

Date rating: 6/10

I headed into town with some old friends on a Thursday night. Stonewall was their venue of choice for the evening. My friends, two gay couples, were deeply engrossed in their respective partners pretty much leaving me standing at the bar by myself.

I looked over to find a boy winking rather obviously at me from the other end of the bar. I smiled and ordered myself another drink. He wasn't unattractive, I just wasn't really in the mood to have yet another superficial connection with someone who would probably be hideously inappropriate anyway. After getting my drink, he handed the barman $10 and said, "now that I've bought your drink, do I get to talk to you?"

"A drink and I'm all yours, I guess," he didn't pick up on my slight sarcasm. It was possibly the corniest line ever, but pickings were slim and being bought a drink in the midst of a mild recession is always flattering.

We chatted for some time about the same pointless things you talk about when you first meet people. He turned out to be a South American university student studying a masters in business. He was bright and sparky and had that somewhat charming over-confidence typical of South Americans. After about an hour, I had warmed to him slightly. He was genuine, straightforward and, I'm not going to lie, sexy to boot.

I was tired, and wanted an early night. He gave me a quick kiss and I wrote down my Facebook address as requested.

The next day, Andreas added me to Facebook and, only moments later, I received an extremely long-winded message. The first three quarters of the message went on about how nice it was to meet me the night before. The last part of the message, however, read something like this, "by the way, I've been seeing someone for a couple of years but it's not serious. I hope I can still see you again." The nicer (and more straightforward) way of telling me this would have been, "I have a long-term boyfriend, but can still fuck sometime?"

I instantly replied saying that it was refreshing that he was so honest with me but I thought a purely plutonic friendship would be best. On one hand, I felt pleased with how I had responded: I really don't want to get involved with someone who is already in a relationship. But on the other hand, what will he learn from my response? My guess is he will just lie to the next boy he wants to sleep with out of fear of rejection. It was a Catch 22 and one I couldn't really win.

RULE #27: Stay away from boys in relationships. If you're straight forward and available, they should be too.