Long story short, go out with a friend and wind up hanging out with her friend and walking her home. From Lower Haight to the Tenderloin I might add. So I step it up and ask her out (quoth me "so, do you want to go out sometime?’). She says yes and actually seems like she meant it. I’m a tad excited- she’s cute, spunky, can drink like a fish, and is way funny. We e-mail. She says she’s busy and that I should try again later in the month. When it’s around the time she says she’ll be free, I e-mail her again to try and set a date. I don’t hear back from her.

A week goes by and still no word. Feeling slightly sympathetic to her earlier pleas of busy-ness, I still think it a tad rude, so I decide to get a bit ballic and send kind of a bitchy, you blew it babe e-mail (in a nice but kind of nice way, of course). A couple of hours later, I hear back from her.

In a voluminous e-mail she apologizes and details all the things that made her unable to respond. She’s been doing this, doing that, working here, working there. That was the short version. Then she tells me the long version. Seems she just broke up with someone who she lived with and is still dealing with it. And that they might get back together and she’s dealing with it all right now. And it was their anniversary a few days ago and she’s dealing with that too. Oh, the ex? Another girl.

Needless to say, I’m a little gobsmacked. Reading the entire e-mail left me pretty much speechless. Not exactly what I was expecting to happen.

Now, there’s pretty much two ways of looking at the whole situation. The first one, of course, is that I’m an idiot. The second one is the "Chasing Amy" Scenario. But either way you look at it, it’s all just one of those things that makes dating in this city so gosh darn interesting.

Now let’s start with the I’m an idiot option. She did mention that night that she writes lesbian porn. She also did say that part of the reason she was so busy is because she was seeing all these movies at the Gay/Lesbian Film Festival. It was also mentioned at some point that night that she used to live with another woman and not just as a roommate.

Okay, yes, those are all pretty good signs. But on the other hand, who doesn’t write lesbian porn? And in this city, everyone goes to one or two screenings of the Gay/Lesbian film festival. For some, it’s like wearing a Che Guerera t-shirt or saying you’re a member of the Green Party.

And as for the living with another woman? Lesbian phase. Hell, half the women in this city went through that phase at some point of their San Francisco experience. It’s totally so five minutes ago. In fact, it’s such a cliché now that in the very first episode of the "Real World Austin" the ho’ish castmember with daddy issues and the ho’ish castmember with self-esteem issues made out in the hot tub and the only reaction it elicited was nothing but a roll of the eye and a yawn. I know plenty of people whose plus one went through the phase and now they’re one big happy Breeder couple. I thought she was probably bi. Again, not that out of the ordinary. And if she was bi, that could only mean three things- that she really swings both ways, that she’s a total mess and has had a couple of bad relationships with guys so swings the other way, or she’s just acting out daddy issues and wants to show how wild and crazy she can be. Either way, two out of three are fine by me and the third (crazy) is workable.

Plus, it’s not like she said something like "I dig chicks and chicks only." You’d figure that after a night of conversation, there’d be some mention of it, or at least more than a passing reference in between stories of hooking up with guys. And just as women who are in a relationship should, as a courtesy at least, somehow slip a mention of their attachedness into a conversation, shouldn’t the same be true of lesbians around single guys? I’m not saying they should say it loud and proud (although if they want to, go nuts), but maybe just be all subtle like. Or more subtle than my idiot-self picked up on. When I even told my friend I asked her out on a date, my friend didn’t say anything to the affect that I was barking up the wrong tree. Turns out she thought she was bi too. And while my gaydar has been a bit off lately and it’s harder at times with gay women than gay men, I just didn’t pick anything up. She didn’t look lesbian or act lesbian but just kind of looked and acted, well, like any number of women in this city.

Oh, and one more thing. I found her Friendster profile online, or at least I think it’s her. In it she says she’s looking for a relationship-- with men. Ironically I didn’t ask out someone I met at a party last weekend because her Friendster profile mentioned she was living with her domestic partner (speaking of women who didn’t mention SO’s or orientation in the midst of a long conversation). And if you can’t believe what you read on the internet, what can you believe?

But what if I’m not an idiot? What if we’re in the Chasing Amy scenario? She did say yes when I asked her if she wanted to go out, although I’ll leave the Talmudic discussion of whether "go out" means "date" or "go out" means "hang out and talk about writing lesbian porn." And not only did she apologize for lack of e-mail, but she kind of asked for another chance and invited me out with her tomorrow night.

And will I? Let’s see, she just got out of a heavy relationship, a relationship with somebody who she met four years ago the Pride March. Someone who put her on the back of their motorcycle to ride with Dykes on Bikes. I’m a nice Jewish boy from the Main Line. Most of my friends are married with houses and with 2.5 kids. This is all way over my head. In terms of dating, it’s expert level. It’s like being an intermediate skier at best trying to ski a double black-diamond. With a cold. And a bad ankle. In a snow storm. And I’m not even going to get into the fact that in her like two-page response I found out way too much about her relationship, post-relationship sex life, her attempts at trying to get back together with the ex and well, way, WAY too much information. On the other hand, she was kind of cute.

Okay, now here comes the standard "not that there’s anything wrong with it" disclaimer. The crazy thing about all of this isn’t the lesbianism, or the bisexuality or dykes on bikes. It’s about asking some girl out, thinking you’ll maybe get a nice date out of it, only to be caught in the middle of some huge lesbian drama. It’s about thinking dinner and drinks and getting in response a story about being distraught because it was the four year anniversary of their meeting and not being able to ride with Dykes on Bikes made her cry all weekend. Between this and a few other similarly related events that have happened lately, it’s just basically been the cap of a crap month. To paraphrase Larry David, sometimes it’s better not to leave the house. Which is pretty much what I’m going to do for the next few months or so. It’s dangerous out there.

All I can say is thank God for TiVo.