Okay, so it wasn’t last night, it was last week. (If you aren’t familiar with my previous post from September, 2013, about not knowing if I was on a date, please click HERE.) I’d met her a few weeks earlier at a fundraiser. She friended me on Facebook after the event and I soon realized from reading her posts that we had a lot in common: a love of reading, writing, nerdiness, and creativity.

When I first met her I got the idea she was likely bi. She was a smart woman at a political fundraiser for an out LGBT local politician; it doesn’t take a huge leap to assume she’s either a strong ally (in which case she wouldn’t take offense at a confused lesbian asking her out) or she’s bi at the least. I gave this not much further thought until I started receiving clear intuitive promptings that I should ask her out. So…one night I messaged her on Facebook to ask if she wanted to hang out, you know, so I could pick her brain about writing. Safe, true, keeping it neutral. Going in slowly, checking out the terrain…

She responded in the affirmative and what started out as coffee plans soon became sushi plans. From the time arrangements were made, the air felt a little tingly and I had that “Ooh, I have a date!” feeling. But then I thought, “Erin, you better check yourself. What if she’s not even into women? Don’t get too excited.” So I hopped on over to Facebook to check her “About” information—sometimes this is a great place to learn how someone identifies sexually—and my heart sunk when I saw the words “Interested in men.” Doh! So I immediately texted the couple of friends who knew about the “date” to let them know I’d misreported about having a date. Not a date. Definitely not a date.

So, night of the not-date, I pulled up outside her apartment building and texted her that I’d arrived. She shot back, “Okay, be down in just a few!” 30 MINUTES (and one “Where are you?” text) later she finally came down. While sitting in my freezing cold car waiting for her (learning my lines for The Vagina Monologues because what else is a girl to do?) I’d realized, “Maybe this is a date! If she’s being total girly right now and getting all dolled up and changing her outfit five times…maybe this isn’t just two strangers getting together to talk about writing.” And sure enough, when she got into my car I could see that she looked beautiful and I was mesmerized by the amazing scent that washed over me.

To top it off, somehow within two minutes of being in my car she slipped into the conversation that she’s interested in dating women. I wish I had a memory and could recall just how that happened. She then explained that her Facebook setting is “interested in men” because that’s all her family needs to know at this point. Aha! Mystery solved. Date on!

Dinner went swimmingly as we jabbered and jabbered and laughed and ate and outlasted a large party that arrived well after us. On the way back to her apartment she said in the cutest way imaginable, “So, ummm, my gaydar totally sucks, I just don’t really have it. How do you, umm, identify?” I thought, “Holy shit! Date foul! How did I not convey my position?! How did I not say one thing during dinner that would have put her at ease about the issue of MY sexuality?!” Sometimes my life too closely resembles episodes of Seinfeld!

The evening ended nicely at her place—can’t go wrong with red wine and talking and laughing. I reinstituted the Seinfeld shenanigans the next morning, however, when upon awakening I texted my friend Michelle to let her know that, in fact, it HAD been a date. I typed, “So…last night was definitely a date.” It was only as I pushed Send that I realized I’d just sent it TO MY DATE and not to Michelle. Always nice to be awakened by a flood of sheer panic! What can I do but find myself infinitely amusing?

If this continues to go well, in whatever capacity, we’ll undoubtedly soon be laughing about the time she didn’t know if I was and I didn’t know if she was. And, as compared to the 2013 instance in which I still didn’t know by the end of the date whether it was a date, I’m gonna’ call this progress.