I'd only been living in this city for a few months when I met the woman who is now my girlfriend at a party. I was working 70 or more hours a week at a very stressful job, living in a half-furnished flat, and my previous girlfriend had dumped me completely out of the blue the week before.
It was not the best of times.
So there I was, sitting on a couch at a party consisting of lesbians and bisexual women, chatting away to a colleague/friend, when I noticed a cute dykey sort across the room. Towards the end of the party, I got a chance to talk to her. I'll call her M on the blog. M and I spoke for a few minutes; it was the day before Valentine's Day, and we said something about the crassness and commercialisation of the holiday. I was giving a public lecture a few days later and I invited her to come along.
Later, she tweeted that she thought I was lovely but frighteningly intelligent. And that started off a months-long volley of flirtatious comments via Twitter. I wonder how much modern technology influences relationships today.
So she came to my talk, and to the pub after, and then we stood chatting in the car park. She didn't say all that much, so it's more correct if I say that we stood there, on that cold February evening, and I chatted while she listened. When we said good-bye and I was driving home, I thought, "M must think I talk too much. I don't like she liked me at all." A small part of me thought, "But did you see how she looked at you?" I dismissed that thought, and I told myself that I had better not dare to get interested, because I was just newly single again, and it didn't seem likely that this woman would go for me anyhow.
A week and a half later, I had some furniture delivered. Not being much of a DIY dyke, I struggled for a very long time trying to put a coffee table together, and I finally gave up. In my defense, I should point out that at least I figured out how to put the pillows correctly onto the sofa.
I mentioned all this to M, who then told me how good she was with tools, and she offered to come over and help. We met up at the local grocery store, because my place is a bit difficult to find and also, I figured we could shop together and I could cook her something for dinner to thank her for her help. In the store, I thought she was annoyed with me, because she wouldn't tell me what she wanted to eat. It turned out, however, that she doesn't really enjoy the process of thinking about food and cooking as much as I do, but I didn't know that then.
Back at my flat, M got out her tools, and I got out mine. She went to work on the coffee table and I started to make dinner. The coffee table was put together in less than five minutes. Dinner took a bit longer and it was not my greatest dish (pasta with broccoli and tomato sauce). That's because I was distracted. M looked so cute, so focused, while she was screwing the legs to the top of the table. And the whole situation made me smile, too, because it felt very butch/femme. I was the femme, cooking dinner while the butch was doing DIY. At least I wasn't wearing a dress, apron, and heels.
Later, I "helped" put the sofa bed together, but that was very difficult for me because she was bending over and I could see down her shirt. It was a nice view. A tempting view.
When everything was done, we lay down on the sofa bed together. It was quite comfortable, but I felt strange. I was exhausted from the stress of the past weeks and months and my heart was racing at the same time.
M left soon after, in something of a rush, and I still wondered, "Does she even like me as a friend?"
So I first cooked for her about two weeks after we met. The evening was memorable, even if the meal itself wasn't.
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