At some point in history, all of the men and boys must have been gathered in one room and been informed, “Hey, you don’t have to court women and take them on dates in order to get laid. They wanna hump just as badly as we do.”

  A Receipt for Courtship Two or three dears, and two or three sweets
Two or three balls, and two or three treats
Two or three serenades, given as a lure
Two or three oaths how much they endure
Two or three messages sent in a day
Two or three times led out from the play
Two or three soft speeches made by the way
Two or three tickets for two or three times
Two or three love letters writ all in rhymes
Two or three months keeping strict to these rules
Can never fail making a couple of fools.  

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a being called a “gentleman” tried to get to know a woman before attempting to put his penis inside of her. In fact, frequently a man and a woman would go months before even kissing — and their bodies didn’t even touch, as an actual embrace came after an even longer period of time.

Yes it’s true: Back in the day, men underwent months of big, angry, throbbing blue balls just to earn a peck on the cheek and something to store in his spank bank. Men had to meet a woman’s parents, talk to her on the phone for hours, write letters, and bring offerings such as candy, produce and probably even goats in some cultures. Yet as the years progressed, men realized that, while candy is just dandy, liquor is much quicker.

Fast forward. The year? 2010. The place? The Real World — and, no, not the reality show where twenty-something Americans get hammered and rub up on each other for the entire world to see. When we were little girls, the phrase "happy ending" meant someday my prince will come. As adult women, we now know that the term "happy ending" means someday my prince will cum. Nowadays people meet through mutual friends, at various events, and on social networking and dating sites. Yet it still seems that the concept of “dating” has become outdated.

Let’s review the many ways men and women come to get it on today:

“Dating.” Oft times when I meet a man, the goal is to get me liquored up and take me either A.) back to my place, or B.) back to his place. Another attempt is to ask me to “come over and watch a movie.” While this may seem innocent enough, when a man asks me to come over and watch a movie — and, after years of such invitations — I basically hear, “Wanna come over, put on a movie, and dry hump while I try to slip it in there, and you try not to let me?”

To this request, my answer is typically, “Yes, but not until you buy me dinner first.” I mean, I’m a respectable lady, after all. And while I don’t sell myself for money; it aint free, either. It’s not that I expect a man to buy things for me before I put out, but I can’t help but wonder… what happened to getting to know one another (or at least pretending you care to do so)? A little effort would be nice.

Booty calls. Ah the booty call — the most passive of attempts to bump uglies. These calls, or more often, text messages, typically come between the hours of one and four in the morning — you know, after the guy (or girl) hasn’t found someone at the bar with which to knock boots. Once it has become clear to a man that no one in the room is going to blow him, a little voice in his heads says, “Maybe so-and-so would…” and out goes a text (or mass text, for those who are more determined) that says those three little words every woman wants to hear: “You still up?”

Depending on how talented that man has proved to be in the sack, and whether someone else is currently in the woman’s bed, the woman either responds with an invitation, or ignores the call. She may even call him out on this the next day, as I often enjoy doing (although I’ll admit now that I usually sleep through the call and end up kicking myself the next morning). On those occasions when I wake the next morning and decide to call a guy out, I usually wait until he’s slept it off a bit and has forgotten he sent a text reading, “I’ve got to give you some soon.” Then, at about 3 pm, I forward his text back to him so he can see the words and be ever-so-slightly embarrassed that, while he was drunk, his dick must have texted me at 5 am.

Meeting in reverse. Sometimes… well, ofttimes, singletons go to bars, get inebriated and immediately implement the “you’ll do” factor in an effort to get off. In fact, some of us meet a man or woman in reverse — meaning you wake up next to someone you faintly remember banging it out with, and ask, “What’s your name again?”

The Walk of Shame, once being known as looking haggard while walking home in last night’s ensemble, is now akin to waking up, seeing an individual you don’t know in your bed, turning the shutter sound off your phone, taking a photo, and seeing whether you remember meeting this person at all.

What comes next (the wake-him-up/throw-him-out) is always the best part. Once, after having woken up next to the Geico Caveman — and upon seeing his pleather jacket and generic cross-trainers laying on my floor — I told the mouth-breather that I had to leave for work and he had to leave immediately, if not sooner. I then gave him a number dangerously close to my own and slammed the door. A perfectly applied wake-him-up/throw-him-out… that is, until I saw him downtown nearly a year later and could tell he recognized me. Of course I saw the hairy Neanderthal and his huge wooden club right away, and ran for the hills.

So there you have it, courtship 2010 at its finest. Just think: One day, if men have their way, they may fuck women before even introducing themselves. If the “Virgin” Mary can get knocked up via miraculous conception, why can’t I?