How do you make a DQ (tm) blizzard?

So I have a vanilla date tomorrow night. (This is from PerfectMatch.com, which I can definitively say isn't worth the money--$100 for 4 months and the only man worth e-mailing isn't listed as a 'perfect match' and lives 100 miles away, but he's willing to drive in, so we'll do coffee. There are 4 men listed as a 'perfect match' for me after 2 weeks, and 2 of them are over 50! And one looked like he sent his picture for American Gladiator--I'm not much into pictures generally, but pictures where men are nakes or look angry seem like major warning signs to me.)

And the question becomes--how the hell do you make a blizzard? I love Blizzards (although I don't allow myself to have them more than once a year). You start with vanilla icecream, and then you add snickers (it has to be snickers--all the chocolate and caramel and peanuts, and the caramel freezes and gets a little crunchy and sticks to your teeth--yummy!).

DQ's vanilla ice-cream is just bland. Boring! And it would be too sweet by itself. It needs something to set off all that vanilla sticky, sweetness, boring. But do you ask the vanilla if it is OK to add something in? Does the vanilla say "ooh--snickers, come join me?" What if the vanilla wants more, but gets scared to ask. Or looks at all that vanilla and assumes ice-cream only comes in vanilla?

And the snickers--what if the vanilla rejects it? It is scary to be in little pieces, with one part of your self over there and another part over here, and how can you feel whole when you keep cutting yourself into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces. You already feel like a freak, what with your wrapper off and all--you have to take your wrapper off before you have a chance to merge with the vanilla, but how do you find out if the vanilla is interested? The advantage of only hanging out with snickers if you can leave your wrapper on till you crawl into the the other snicker's wrapper. But with vanilla, you can do that! Can you just open the end of the wrapper, and pop out a bit? And what if the vanilla is busy looking at the TV and doesn't realize you've popped out of your wrapper for a bit? Or clueless? Or horrified? (My current eharmony profile, under "stuff only my best friends know" says "I'm kinda kinky." I say it with a little more poetry than that, but I changed it yesterday to say it flat out instead of with hints. Today I had more men 'close' communication with me than I'd typically have in a week! But if that freaks them out, clearly it would have been a waste of time!)

And then, if the vanilla says "oh, yes--I've always wanted snickers," or, more likely "hell--a pretty cute, smart, funny chick that's interested in sex, will do anything I want if I just take charge? Sure, why the hell not? She's got nice tits!" (I've worked fast food--you'd be shocked what the food says when it thinks no one is looking)--but what if the vanilla doesn't really know how to get the snickers out of the wrapper, does the snickers instruct the vanilla on how to take charge?

And another thing--how long should the snickers flirt with the vanilla until she starts to take off her wrapper? How many vanillas will look at her and say "oh, no way!--Skittles, maybe, or Starburst? Even Nerds, but no way in hell can I handle chocolate! And caramel! And Peanuts!!! NO!!!!" And how much time does the snickers want to waste on the vanilla if he's just going to hate the way the caramel freezes up and sticks to your teeth anyway? Especially if the vanilla lives 2 hours away?

So it is all very confusing.

And yet.... We as a country, maybe as a "Western Civilization," well we seem to suck at navigating gender issues. 150 years ago we all of a sudden said "women--you are no longer property. You now get to have some modicum of self." Jane Austen said "cool--how does this work?" And the Brontes said "this is how it might work." And Tolstoy said "this is how it isn't working." And Ibsen said "but this is what happened under the old way." And Strindberg said "this is why this is scary!" And DH Lawrence said "this is why it would be worth it to make it work."

And then something bizarre happened: we stopped talking about it! We said "poof--men and women are equals! Nothing more to talk about." And it is scary to talk about issues of gender (or race or religion) because people get touchy and get hurt or angry. So we just don't talk about it.

So, part of the reason I write this is because I think we need more honest dialogue. I don't have much hope to learn how to make a blizzard tomorrow. But maybe, just maybe, this process will teach me a little more about how to figure it out.