What? Have you met this guy in person before or not?

Yes, you've covered the safety stuff. Let your friends know where you are, do safe calls throughout the night, I don't think you're much more at risk than if you'd met him once or twice first. Although I do believe that you get a tremendous amount of information from just being with someone in person, for coffee or whatever.

Here's what I'm worried about, if you haven't met him in person before. Let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that you show up to his house, or dinner or whatever, and he just doesn't float your boat. Not scary, not dangerous, just not to your taste. Then what? I personally, and I'm not speaking for other women or other subs, but I personally find it hard to disappoint someone, especially if they didn't do anything "wrong." That's one reason that I always had short vanilla dates for the first meeting. Then I could leave quickly and easily, and hopefully avoid having to answer that, when can I see you again question if I didn't want to. And even then it was hard. I would try to sidestep that question, but I will admit that on occasion I did make it sound like another date was forthcoming because it was very hard to look someone in the eye and say, I don't think so. (I'd always send an email when I got home, though. Cowardly, yes, but I never stood someone up.)

I can only imagine how much harder that would have been if I'd actually made a previous commitment to GO HOME WITH HIM. What are you planning to do? Can you look him in the eye and say, you're a nice guy but this just won't work for me? Are you planning to "go to the ladies room" and not come back? That's not very nice. But you need a plan for if this happens, not a safety plan but an emotional one, because otherwise you could well talk yourself into a truly horrid night just because you "don't want to be rude." Imagine how tough it is to spend a vanilla night with someone who doesn't turn you on. Now imagine that guy with a whip in his hand. Yuck.