Laurie Penny: My first NYC date was going well. Until ...

Romance in New York City is a blood sport. In most bookshops, there are entire shelves of fiction, memoir and poetry dedicated to the mating rituals of the young and preposterous in the five boroughs. The problems are well-rehearsed: the dearth of eligible men, the irresistibility of ineligible ones, the fact that brilliant women eventually leave with your heart, your job, or both.

I wanted nothing to do with it. But after a little too much Scotch one night in Brooklyn, I accepted a friend's challenge: for once in my life, I was to forego picking up strangers at squat parties and go on what she called a "real date".

I whined at first. "Dating", to my mind, is something invented by Hollywood. It's not the proper, British way of doing things, which is to get drunk at a party, fall into bed with someone you fancy, and decide in the morning whether you actually have anything in common.

Nonetheless, with some trepidation, I resurrected an old internet profile, selected a likely stranger, and sent a nice note.

For all their pioneer bravado, Americans are fond of rules and rituals. Taking someone for a posh face-to-face dinner and worrying about the socio-economic implications of splitting the bill while being grilled about your family, fertility and career prospects sounds to me like the least erotic thing possible, save going to have a colonoscopy together, which at least would get some of the formalities out the way. But in the spirit of trying everything once, I did my hair, went to the appointed café and ordered a macchiato.

This "date" started badly before it had even begun, because there was only coffee. I am a British girl: I need at least two gins inside me before I'll share any other fluids, even with a boy who arrives with a shy smile and a truly excellent jumper.

His first unfortunate decision was to eat an egg mayonnaise sandwich, an activity that I find unsettling even when people don't have the misfortune to get bits of cress in their teeth. I told him that I was going to read my novel and that he was to inform me when he had finished his sandwich so that the "date" could start again from the top.

After that, to my surprise, the boy in the jumper and I spent the next three hours discussing the gender politics of Doctor Who and quoting bits of Firefly at one another. When the café closed, we planned to meet again. This time, though, we'll do it the British way.