And so it was a date after all!

We agreed that I would meet her at her place and then we would drive together to the event (not very far from her home).

I arrived and found her waiting on the sidewalk for me. Why? I'm not sure if I was late (I was well within the 30 minutes she gave me to arrive) or if she was just trying to be helpful so I wouldn't miss her place or ... something devious....

Regardless - she looked better in person than in her pictures but I can't say that I was attracted to her. In fact, my immediate thought was, "Oh good... I can still be single for a while!" And I didn't have to worry about those "making out" teases that she'd sent in e-mail form.

We entered her car and I found myself immediately able to talk to her. Usually, if somebody intimidates me in the slightest I clam up, my voice changes a slight octave... and I'm just generally not that interesting. But my voice was fine... the conversation kept coming.. and she kept giggling. I couldn't determine if she was a natural giggler or if it was some sort of nervous giggling.

We got to our event, parked, got our food and waited for doors to open. It was clear to me that this chick would make a great friend and I decided to play the evening as 'potential great friends' but every once in a while she would throw in something about my pretty eyes or "well I'm glad you didn't get that job out of state because then we wouldn't have met." I tried to continue to play it as 'potential great friends' but those little one liners would weird me out. I wonder if it was clear that I wasn't returning those lines.

During the show I started to get a stomach ache and thought to myself, "This is a great excuse for me to use if I need to." I didn't want the excuse to come up suddenly and seem like a fictional excuse so I occasionally put my hand on my stomach and made a face and hoped she'd notice.

We watched our show. We left the parking lot and continued our conversation.

I told her about my relationships (the 3 girls) and she did seem a bit shocked that I'd only been physically away from my now-ex for about 3 weeks. (Note to self: Good excuse for excusing myself from future interactions. The "It's just too soon!" excuse.) I asked her to tell me about her relationship history. This was a mistake, in retrospect, because it probably sounded like I was interested in her romantic history for my own romantic reasons... but I'm just nosey.

She told me that she'd never actually had a relationship with anyone - just dates and sex. I didn't really know how to respond to this... so there was some awkward silence. When we later got to her parking lot she said, "Do you think I'm a tramp?" I assured her that no, I didn't think she was a tramp. Had she asked me if I thought she was sad and lonely.... I'm not sure how I would have responded.

At the arrival to her parking lot she said something that additionally made my heart leap... she said, "I'll walk you to your car." Which meant THANK GOODNESS... NO AWKWARD MOMENTS ALONE WITH HER IN HER APARTMENT!!

She did walk me to my car. And then we gave each other a good-bye hug. And then before I knew what the hell was going on- she kissed me. And that was when I finally knew, 100%, that we'd been on a date.

Now, dear reader, you might remember that in my past history - I ONLY kiss someone when I'm in love with them. In fact, one of the 3 girls I dated never got to kissing stage. In this way I'm like a Julia Roberts prostitute, "Do anything you want - just no kissing on the lips!"

So... I was weirded out. Tried to play it off. Said something stupid (!!) - "Let's do this again. We click!" Went home, now slightly nauseous (from stomach ache and weirded-outedness), and brushed my lips.

Now the question is... how can I go out with this chick again (remember, we got along great, I could talk to her, we were "potential great friends") and also say "but I'm not interested in you romantically so can we just subtract that from the equation?"

I suppose I could just say that .... but I'm too nice in real life!! Damnit!

Beyond my interest in potential men to play with... there were 4 Women Seeking Women posts that I responded TO.

Response 1: Found a girl who's profile I'd seen on MySpace before. She's somewhat attractive. Not butch. And continued to write me after seeing my profile.

Response 2: Interesting post regarding a 28 year old woman, only a year in L.A., who's bi-sexual and interested in meeting friends and maybe more if it leads there. I respond - give her the internet link for profile and pix. She thinks I'm cute and that my profile is great. I see her picture. She's not "my type" but she is the "type that I date." We begin to correspond.

Response 3: Vampire Girl seeks Goth girl. I'm not goth (but interested in the concept). I respond with picture/profile. She responds with picture/profile. She appears to be way too dark/scary/SOCIAL for me. I don't respond.

Response 4: Great post on CL. I respond with profile/pic. She responds with profile/pic. I don't find her the slightest bit attractive.... but damn..... she's written good conversational material in her response. I haven't responded yet but I still need to. But I don't want to lead her on....


Now back to Response 2 - we're corresponding now several times a day, beginning to e-mail flirt and she asks me to go see a cultural event with her. Now I'm totally freaked out because (read the little headline for the blog) - I'm antisocial! I really should have thought of this before!!
Additionally... I'm not clear on whether this is a date or just an outing with a new friend. What do I do? I've never been on a date before. The girls I've dated (the 3 girls) were all girls I knew from seeing every day at school and knew them each for 3 years before dating them. So we never went out on dates, really, we just started dating.

Meanwhile... the guys continue to e-mail me and I continue to be distracted by potential romance with Response Girl 2 and don't write back.

Now the other thing I worry about (this is all easy to think about and do while now-ex is out of the country for 2 weeks) is "What if I do like this girl and fall in love? I've only been friggin' 'physically' single and somewhat independent for about 3 weeks. What a waste of "single."

My second post to Craigslist was due to being particularly "in the mood" and curious and feeling a bit independent and free. (I spent two weeks housesitting, alone, in Duarte.)

I posted in the Casual Encounters section saying essentially, "I'm a curious lesbian who fantasizes about being eaten out by a guy." I received at least 100 IMMEDIATE replies.

My third post to Craigslist was posted in the "Women Seeking Men" section. I wrote out a well-written request seeking plain ol' "guy friends." I received another 50 replies.

My mistake was sending both anonymous e-mails to the same address and, if the subject didn't specify, not knowing which guy was responding to which ad.

Sorting through these posts became a full time job. I finally deleted a number of the Casual Encounter replies and responded to maybe 20 guys telling them they'd made it to Round 2. Around this time I started to realize that the guys I was moving on were the guys that were somewhat sweet and caring and interesting with their responses. Don't get me wrong, I got plenty of hard-core "Let me suck it tonight" e-mails but those got deleted. The guys offering time to get to know them and lots of options to back out were the guys that moved forward. They were also the guys that I found friendly.

Meanwhile the ones that responded to the "Guy Friends" ad were interesting but I wasn't starting off with the straight-forward admission that I was open to being a little more ... intimate.

So I created Craigslist post 4 - which was "lesbian seeks non-threatening guy friends for potential cuddling and intimacy." This time I had the responses sent directly to an pseudonym e-mail address. I received another 100 semi-IMMEDIATE responses and spent another few days sorting through that.

At the end of this - there are about 5 guys that I would like to meet. (And one or two that I would like to keep on hold for any future particular interest in some sort of "no strings attached" encounter.)

Yes - I am a lesbian. But I'm 26 and I've never seen a penis close-up... never had some of that heterosexual intercourse and I'm CURIOUS. So sue me.

My first post with Craigslist was a simple and honest request for a "seeks same" girl in the Women seeking Women section. I received two responses. Girl 1 said all the right things, responded to my post's request line by line and added her own information. It was clear we were perfect matches with the exception that she stated she was a "dancer." I figured this meant she was fit and leanly muscled... something that doesn't really draw my eye. But what the hell, her e-mail was wonderful - I responded and sent her the link to my MySpace profile where she could view my pictures and more about me.

She never wrote back.

Girl 2 also responded to my post with a lot of interesting information. However.... it was clear to me that I was not interested. But not knowing how to respond I wrote back, politely, and again sent the link to my MySpace profile. She responded and sent me her picture. A) She was FAR too butch for me. B) She was hispanic and I really am not attracted to anyone outside of my race. Sounds like crap but it's true. SO I continued to politely e-mail but didn't play up any potential romantic interest.

Girl 2 has somehow found my mobile phone on a MSN messenger list and has been sending me IMs on my phone. This is slightly scary. Mostly I'm wondering how the hell to tell her to stop doing that without being rude.

Last Week

Last week was our "last week." We spent it in anger and sadness as we packed up our life together and put most of it in storage. We did, early on in the week, submit to our equal fertile moods and had our last sexual encounter.

We talked about it first, discussed whether it should be private masturbation, mutual masturbation or a 2 partner participation, chose to proceed and agreed that we could each handle it as a "means nothing" event and then we made out.

I feel/felt nothing when I kissed her. It used to be a rule of mine (way back in the beginning of my dating career with her... back in high school) that I would not kiss someone unless I was in love with them. I wished I could pull out this rule again but that would have killed the mood. I really got nothing out of it and it made me uncomfortable.

In the end she wouldn't let me "enter" which angered me considering we'd discussed it and ruled out masturbation. And I made the constant mistake that I always made by letting her complete before me. (This is a mistake because she gets goofy after orgasm and kills the mood.)

Then the week continued with lots of aforementioned sadness and anger and continued cuddling.

Sunday was our last full day together and our "divorce" finally hit me when she drove away that night and I realized that I had no idea when I'd see her again.

I was sad. And I was sad on Monday. And then on Monday night I posted a personal ad on Craigslist and received a few responses already.

Suddenly I'm not sure if I'm still sad or really into this feeling of independence.

Meanwhile... I have no place to live yet (other than a bed at my parents' house) and that's a little scary.

Stupid

Now-ex had been flirting with a boy at work. An engaged boy. A boy whom she assumed was "safe" and fun to fake-flirt with because A) he was an engaged boy and B) he knew she was/has been dating a woman (and she never shared with him the suggestion that she might date a guy).

She enjoyed his company. They started hanging out more. Her boss warned her that he might be taking it differently than her. I warned her that her play-flirting is not often understood as play-flirting.

Nevertheless, she assumed she was in control of the situation and two weeks ago she attended his birthday drinking fest. The other co-workers at the gathering left as Now-Ex arrived - she was to be drunk co-worker boy's ride home. Well... apparently he took advantage of his inebriated situation and told her he loved her and then kissed her repeatedly every time she got close enough. (She claims it was a loud bar and he kept gesturing like he was going to say something so she'd lean in to hear and he'd kiss her instead... though she kept turning and he kept getting hair or cheek or chin.)

Well she came home feeling "unsafe" and "betrayed" and wouldn't talk about it with anyone for days. He harassed her the entire next day by calling twice an hour (supposedly to apologize). I, of course, was NOT allowed to know at all which was a killer because I wanted to be supportive but knew that I'd go into some sort of jealous rage if I found out. Eventually (obviously) I did but it had died down and she's now attempting to be friends with him again. (Though she still feels that he killed the friendship they had and now everything is touchy.)