Chapter 1: It suddenly occurs to me your hair is captivating.
Chapter 2: 14 hours a day together: A user’s guide.
Chapter 3: It suddenly occurs to me your butt is captivating in those jeans. Also always.
Chapter 4: 27 things I know about your boyfriend despite never having met him.
Chapter 5: The art of appearing nonchalant about a truth or dare kiss.
Chapter 6: A joke about us dating that’s funny and definitely not at all crushingly confusing.
Chapter 7: “Oh we’re holding hands? I am so casual about that I hadn’t even been paying attention or noticed at all. It was definitely you that intertwined our fingers though. I remember, even though as previously stated, I haven’t been paying attention”
Chapter 8: “Is this flirting?”: The most frustrating flowchart.
Chapter 9: Do I want to make out with you? That’s only the 14th time I’ve asked myself that today, so probably not.
Chapter 10: I don’t have feelings for you, I have feelings about you.
Chapter 11: I heard you kissed another girl. Sounds fun! On an unrelated note my allergies have been acting up so my eyes may be watering while we discuss it.
Chapter 12: An analytic rubric for your comments regarding the attractiveness of that female celebrity.
Chapter 13: It would not hold up in court that this amount of physical contact was accidental.
Chapter 14: Cuddling in beds with…friends(?)
Chapter 15: Everyone thinks we’re dating because we’re wearing each others shirts and having sleepovers. Crazy, right?
Chapter 16: Really difficult conversations held exclusively in front of waitstaff.
*
Epilogue: “Hey it’s been awhile let’s grab a drink” : Flashcards for successful small talk.
Tags: amy sweeny, childhood, erin ober, lgbt, relationships
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Wait, but can I see the flashcards for successful small talk?? Please??
Flashcards are located in Appendix A: Supplemental Materials, on pages pre-perforated for your convenience.
1A: harmless anecdote involving public transportation or grocery shopping: beware, this is the most dangerous bit, because your anecdote may reveal that you are racist/classist/ableist/generally mean. Confine yourself to the guy who, when confronted by the police, leaped onto the subway tracks and started running towards the next station, thus delaying many trains, or the small child who managed to create an outsized mess through a poor understanding of physics.
2: So what are you up to now? (If you already know from Facebook, you can be more specific: how is the Etsy shop/ college / child? Relationships: fraught. Wedding planning: usually safe, if you’ve been invited, if not, avoid.) Listen, nodding, ask clarifying questions. Dispense compliment: “You always had such an eye for design.” “You are so good at buckling down and getting things done.” “No one can procrastinate and then pull things off at the last minute like you.” If conversation partner is hypersensitive, avoid compliment. They might mention a thing you actually want to discuss. Pounce on it, ask them about it.
1B: Look out window, comment on weather. “Oh it’s been so bright./I can’t stand many more of these grey days/ Isn’t it lovely that we’re finally getting some rain?.” Smile. This is an excellent opportunity to exit the conversation. Attempts to bring up global warming can be rebuffed by lying face down on the floor until they change the subject. After six minutes of global warming ranting, it is acceptable to roll away – I was going to say ‘slowly roll away’ but really, top rolling speed is acceptably slow.
3: Oh no, the conversation is about you. They already know that you purchase food/commute, what more do they want? This is fine. If they ask about work, share an appropriate work anecdote. If they ask about hobbies, float a thing you want to talk about a lot, and see if they express interest. If they ask about your thesis, say “It is not going well.” and stare at them silently until they offer a new conversation topic.
1C: If you haven’t managed to find a common topic in parts 2 or 3 (or 1B, with weather aficionados. You never know.) it is acceptable to smile and pull out your book/phone or go get more appetizers.
1D: If you are at a dinner party, and thus cannot read or escape, ask about their pets. Then ask for pet management tips, and encourage pet anecdotes. That should last you until dessert.
If they don’t have pets, return to 1A. If they do have pets and don’t want to talk about them, they are a powerful witch, try to solicit the methods of brewing potions from them. Maybe start with their gravy/cocktail recipes, and then try to nudge the conversation towards magic.
Try to nudge the conversation towards magic, got it.
(/emails entire list to self)
Ouch.
Well, yup, that’s about how it goes.
Oh my god. This is completely correct in every way.
College Edition:
Appendix A: Our apartment has two bedrooms but we only sleep in one. The other makes a great closet, right?
Appendix B: Yes of course you can stay with me in my study-abroad room every weekend even though it means sharing a twin bed.
We Are Extra Old Edition:
Epilogue Part 2: Brunch to meet your fiance and future stepchildren? That sounds GREAT.
Oh god, I’m not queer, but one of my besties is (now happily married to a lovely butch mechanic and living in the country) and I remember when her and her roommate only slept in one of their two beds, in one of their two bedrooms, and were like HAHA it’s so funny and convenient and no big deal!, and I was like :/ this will end poorly, and of course, it did, very very poorly.
Oh good I’m glad I’m not the only one who fell for that. (Though actually I think it ended poorly for my roommate, who ended up dating me for a year until I fled across the country. We’re both totally fine and over it now – she came to my wedding, I’m meeting her stepchild, etc.)
A thing that happened to me in college: one time I slept over in my friends’ room, because my roommate’s boyfriend was visiting and it is best to avoid those situations. They were those friends who shared one bed and used the other as a couch. For reasons I cannot now reconstruct (maybe one of them was up late in the other room?), we all slept in the bed-bed. Naturally that was the night (morning, really) on which they decided to begin making out in earnest.
I don’t think it ended too badly it ended for them, but I am a very awkward person relationship-wise and have still not figured out how to navigate several situations on the above list, yet this is definitely one of my best awkward relationship stories.
Hahahaha are we friends? I don’t THINK this actually happened in my life at any point, but it very easily could have. So, so easily.
Everyone’s A Little Bit Gay, Right?: 10 Leading Questions to Convince Your Friendcrush To Make Out With You
Nope, this did not work one bit. Not only was she straight as a board, she’d made out with other girls and hated it.
*Tina Belcher moan*
Epilogue: Ok, I will accept your Facebook friend request, sure, why not. I wonder why you thought to look me up? Oh, maybe you came across some of my writing and thought you should be keeping tabs in case I write about you. Hey, that’s a good idea, I should write about you.
Epilogue 1.5- “Hey it’s been awhile let’s grab a drink AND THIS TIME CERTAINLY NOT CANCEL”
Sure, she’s invited me out thirty time and then canceled at the last minute, but this time we’ll get together! It’ll be different! Let’s get those hopes up! Woo!
This is brutally accurate.
Also, can we add Chapter 17: You’re telling me that you think we need time apart because you think I might like you “like that” and then you start getting counseling from a priest? Cool.
Or: “Oh, you decided to never respond to my letters and run away to a small Northern town and get engaged to Some Dude only to call me up a few months later and want to pick things up where we left off?”
too real. toooooo real.
What is the picture from? Is this some teen queer girl movie I need to see?
It’s called Lost & Delirious and yes, you NEED to see it, if only for adorable baby butch Piper Perabo.
Plus because it’s the absolute craziest most lugubrious lesbian movie imaginable.
WILL WATCH.
turned into an excellent movie called Pariah which everyone should see.
OMG. So many feelings.
Chapter 17: So what’s up with you and my brother? Oh, you’re dating – that’s great. No, really, I don’t mind. You guys are *great* together.
Chapter 18: Awkward post coming out conversations – more information than I wanted to know about your female crushes.
And I just want to say that I’ve gone to two high school reunions, and every time, I encounter another secret crush – crushes on girls that I didn’t even realize were crushes at the time. At my 10th reunion, I was so excited to see this woman who obviously barely remembered me. Later I remembered that we’d only had one art class together in the 7th grade, and I’d spent large parts of that semester secretly obsessed with how her butt looked in her tight jeans. I even spent several days trying to come up with the perfect one word description of her butt – squish (I was 12, that’s all I can say in my defense).
Oh god I just remembered my ridiculous tendency to date the brothers of my female crushes. I did it three times! Once pretty seriously! What idiocy.
OMG – I had no idea that this happened to anyone else. I’ve been so focused on the weirdness of having such similar taste in woman as my brother that it never occurred to me to wonder why *she* went for him.
Given our overlapping taste in women, and my brother’s tendency to fall for bi girls who weren’t out yet, it’s kind of amazing that he only dated one of my high school crushes.
Oh wow, I think I just realized I was a baby queer. 30 years late.
Oh, God, I feel so bad because between the ages of 16-20 I was the straight friend MULTIPLE times, and I was completely unaware that still-closeted queer pals were hitting on me.
Literally, my late high school/early college years were basically like, You want to do a photo shoot where I pose in my bikini? OK, SOUNDS SUPER FUN AND PLATONIC! You love Tegan & Sara? NO WAY ME TOO, LET’S GO TO A CONCERT. Thankfully, none of the situations ended poorly, and I’m still friends with my (now out) queer ladies. But Lord, my obliviousness to people hitting on me is LEGEND and I was an unknowing queer-tease monster in my youth.
Um…most of this also applies to “Dating after an eight-year relationship.”
*weeps bitterly*
This is unbelievable truth. I have lived every embarrassing chapter. If I had a time machine and could go back to younger me and show her this post along with a strong shake of the shoulder while loudly yelling, “WHAT. ARE. YOU. THINKING.” I would. Younger me, however, likely wouldn’t listen.
*sigh* Yep.
This is weird because I’m the straight(er) friend in the relationship depicted above and I’m fairly sure my (thankfully out) gay cuddle buddy did not have these feelings for me and yet this piece described my emotions this past summer 100% accurately. Hm.
I’ve figured it out. We are both the gay friend and we will never date. Tears.
Ouch.
This kind of happened to me. I had a massive secret crush on a female friend when I was 15 and 16. We went to different colleges but kept in touch. When we both, independently, came out as bi, I was so sure we’d get together. And we almost did, but we sort of talked it to death, and idk, it just never happened.
20 years later, I think we both dodged a bullet. We would have been a train wreck together. We reconnected a couple years ago and I’m so glad to have her back in my life, and equally glad we ended up with different life partners.
I’m ace, and I used to go around holding hands with my straight (I think) second best friend until 14. But then we stopped being best friends 🙁 because I went through a more introvert phase that time and also didn’t really want to hold hands or link arms. And now in college it’s a struggle for me to get the small talk ball rolling.
Hello fellow ace friend! Being ace sure put a nice extra layer on top of all of this, huh? Ugh.
Hello, Ace friend! Let’s make that layer a warm duvet for comfort instead. 🙂
YES YES YES YES ONE THOUSAND YESSES HI ACE BUDDY
trwexler, if your handle is a Westing Game reference, I now have a crush on you.
Guilty as charged, and I can totally live with the crush of an internet stranger! Thanks for catching it!
Hello, Ace petal! Glad to see I’m not alone. 🙂
Oof, ow.
I leave, for your consideration, the most heartbreaking song about this topic: http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Gotta+Get+Over+Greta/…
“I left that wild side long ago
my husband holds me close but he will never knoooooow
as for me I live in fear of
running into her down the line”
So goooooooooood.
Chapter 19: Yeah, I definitely will have a threesome with you and your boyfriend, that seems like a good idea.
Chapter 19: Yeah, I definitely will have a threesome with you and your boyfriend, that seems like a good idea.
Hello, Ace petal! Glad to see I'm not alone. 🙂
Hello, Ace friend! Let's make that layer a warm duvet for comfort instead. 🙂
WILL WATCH.