I don't really get dating.

Some male first cousin of mine bought me dinner once. I guess that was supposed to be a date.

That's probably technically my first real date.

I don't remember how old I was.

At fourteen, I got involved with a guy in college met through my sister in college. We didn't date.

He didn't buy me dinner to hint he wanted me. We spent time together and one day while alone, he made it clear making out was on his mind.

Whether I was younger or older than fourteen, I never dated Alex. I'm pretty sure I wasn't yet sixteen or seventeen, which is when the handful of official dates happened that I wrote about in a school journal and dragged as polite prostitution.

So this first cousin who has eaten dinner with me probably a couple hundred times as part of a large family routinely sharing meals wants to buy me dinner. At a restaurant. 

So in a public place eating food at the same table like that's a unique experience, I'm... supposed to throw myself at him because he paid for the meal?

I don't know what the thinking was. 

We're on opposite sides of the table where kissing isn't convenient. I'm uncomfortable and don't know what the hell this is supposed to be about and he looks embarrassed.

I guess I'm not "on a date" what he was imagining I would be. 

Or maybe like me he was kind of going "We're in public. In a town where a lot of people KNOW we are cousins. Eating dinner under date-like circumstances. What if someone walks in and recognizes us? What even is this shit?"

Like, you know, if he wanted to get me alone and tell me I was pretty and ask about kissing me, "Hey, Doreen, let's go for a walk." is FREE and probably vastly less awkward.

It was awkward as all HELL. It's probably the most awkward I have felt in my ENTIRE life and I don't seem to have impressed him because he never again paid for my dinner at a restaurant just the two of us in addition to endless routine family meals with extended family.

I don't understand so-called dating. I don't seem to have ever understood it.

I guess I'm undateable, whatever that means. And I'm fine with it.

Footnote 

Just in case it NEEDS to be said, no, I never kissed him. Ever. Not once in our lives, much less at a restaurant in public.