One lucky Friday night, I chatted up a dreadlocks goddess in the queue for the toilets. But of course, I
ended up making a fool of myself by sending her a very misunderstanding message
due to my natural ability to mix up names of newly introduced attractive girls
(read the previous post). This is how the story followed:
I ended up grabbing a friendly drink that week with a young photography girl,
the unintended receiver of a suggestive text meant for dreadlocks-girl. We mainly exchanged stories of
common high school teachers and compared the time gap and different struggles
of growing up in the same small (and slightly conservative) community as lesbians.
“There weren’t any
openly gay people back home when I was a teenager,” I said from my born in the
80´s generational perspective.
I was from the last cohort
of students that went through high school without any social media. The only
Internet-based social interactions at the time were done through Microsoft Messenger and, emojis were only being
discovered as a new form of communication. However, photography-girl belonged
to the iPod and Facebook generation that already grew up with openly gay
Hollywood celebrities.
“In my year of graduation in that high school, there was a lesbian couple, a few openly gay guys and a transgender
girl… I never really had to come out” She firmly said narrating
her experience.
I was amazed at how
much society had changed in a very short period of time. I, on the
contrary, had to fight tooth and nail my way out of the closet. I had some
internalized homophobia that I carried with me for a while due to the less gay-friendly society that I happened to be landed on. Nevertheless, she told me it was not all “rainbows and fairy lights” for her either, as she mentioned
that she experienced some underlying stigma and subtle discrimination from some of
her peers. However, at least there were people to look up to that were
standing out for themselves as members of the LGBT community… and that was already
a step forward from my own teenage experience.
Photography-girl and I
became friends that day. I even acted briefly as her career mentor before I
finally moved away from the marketing world. Looking back, I am glad
that my message mixed up led me to gain a younger ally in the community.
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| BORN AND BRED Street Graffiti in Brighton. Picture taken in August 2016. |
But coming back to dreadlocks-girl and the other side of the story… Well, she never replied back to my
apologetic message… But, somehow, I knew that in the small pool of lesbians, we
were going to bump into each other sooner or later… And so we did…
On Thursday night, I
was having my first awkward date in a gay-friendly bar with a not very “good
match” from the online world, when I saw a dreadlocks-girl entering through the
door. She was also with a female companion and, judging from the way they were
interacting, I would have guessed that they were on a first online date as
well.
I got excited when I
saw her entering the bar. I wanted to run towards her, apologize for the
“message screwed up” and explained that I was a long way from being a Casanova
(I would say that I am more of a nerdy-socially-award lesbian with zero games).
The image that she formed of me was completely mistaken and I desperately
wanted to amend that. But I thought that she probably had already forgotten about me
and so, I contained my impulse of jumping into her to win back her favour… However, I
could not contain myself from checking on her discretely over the shoulder of
my boring date every now and then during the course of the night.
She was looking stunning
all dressed in white and, moved and interacted with such great confidence. I
was feeling quite jealous of her date… “That
could have been me if I would have paid more attention before pressing sent...”
I kept on thinking.
At some point, as I was sighing on my chair looking at her while my date was in the ladies,
our gaze crossed… And of course, I panicked!
Is it possible that she might remember me? What
do I do now?
I innocently waved and
waited for her to reply. She waved back. Her date had gone to the bar and so we
were both sitting alone looking at each other across the room.
I move my head and
raised my eyebrows in a clumsy attempt to say “Hey! How do you do?” from a distance. She smiled and repeated my gesture reciprocating my greetings but she moved
her head to the direction of the bar pointing at her date as a way of communicating
that she wasn’t alone. I made a resignation gesture and pointed at the empty
chair in front of me with my date’s jacket to inform her that I also had
company.
I wanted to ask her if they were “a thing” or not, so I pointed at the girl in the bar and then to her a few times back and forth. I’m not sure if my incomprehensible battery of gestures
attempting to ask her about their “relationship status” was understood. But she
shocked her head with determination. Then, she mimicked my air signs pointing
at the empty chair in front of me and then at me several times.
Does she really want to know if I’m available?
I’m I dreaming right now…?
I frenetically shocked
my head trying to make it as clear as possible that my tame date and I were not
“a thing”.
At that moment, I saw
her date coming back to her table, so I made a quick sign of a phone with my
hand followed by a thumb up.
“Is it OK if I call
you?” I meant to say.
She made a “later” sign while nodding and smiling before shifting her attention back to
her date.
WHAT?!? Did gorgeous dreadlocks-girl just give
me permission to contact her again…???!!!!???
I kept looking at her
table with a stupid smile on my face until my date came back. I was already utterly
not interested in my online date before dreadlocks-girl walked into the bar, but
now, I was even more eager to wrap up with my uncomfortable unmatched date and go home.
On the night bus,
I contacted dreadlocks-girl and this time I checked a few times the message before pressing sent... A few minutes later she replied back and we kept on texting for a while.
After that night, we chatted every now and then, but we never arranged a formal date until one night…
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| Graffiti of a girl found in Brighton (signed by Maleska). Picture taken August 2016. |
To be continued…
