What is the gayest fucking thing you could ever imagine? Two rainbow-striped unicorns banging their glittery dicks together while shooting stars from their assholes? a ymca/it’s raining men mash-up playing on a continuous loop in the skinny jeans section of Forever 21? Eating a salad for dinner?! WRONG. This is the gayest of all the possible things: going to a Meshell Ndegeocello concert, with a goddamned lesbian, that is being held in a motherfucking FOLK MUSIC SCHOOL. Game set match, friends. And I’ve been in a bath house before. I know from gay.
I’m into love from wherever I can get it. And I have been known to wear a pair of work boots in the winter, and I also find women in neckties incredibly attractive. I also also like luxuriating in some comfortable-ass surroundings. I like to look around a hot lady’s nicely appointed digs, seething like a jealous child, admiring all of the hung tapestries and framed photographs and put-away clothes while mentally scolding myself for being such a lazy teenage boy. Why don’t I have any motherfucking art? How come everything in my freezer is useless and expired? Do I have a first aid kit? Are my threadcounts high enough? And, truth be told, I don’t know how to do any of that shit. Or where to buy it. Which is why I keep sexting your older sister so hard. Here is a list of the domesticated home things I am marginally good at:
1 .) Cooking. Bitches gotta eat, son. And this bitch right here can braise lamb shanks. and make a perfect quiche. I can roll my own dough. I will slow roast you a brisket. I own a goddamned Cuisinart. My souffles rise, my chickens cook beautifully, my cookies are crisp around the edges and soft in the middle. I worked in a bakery for three years, and I can make you a cheesecake in a water bath! I can make you petit fours dipped in fondant! Paper thin steak carpaccio! Salmon ceviche with oranges! Whatever you like, I got you.
2.) Disinfecting the bathroom. This is my most favorite of all of the chores, because you don’t have to be careful when splashing every hard surface liberally with bleach and standing back to watch all of the cholera and measels and whatever else you dragged in on the soles of your feet rinse clean down the drain. I can’t do any of that tedious cleaning, all that delicate dusting of knick knacks and shit? Never. That’s why my apartment is decorated like prison. NO FUCKING DUSTING.
3.) Killing those disgusting centipede things. Holy Jesus, those fucking things are gross. But I will kill them and not even squeal while their tiny smashed legs are still moving for a two seconds on my palm.
4.) Remembering which of the 8,719 DirecTV channels is which. 501 is HBO. 282 is Animal Planet. 242 is USA. 356 is MSNBC. 264 is BBC America. 331 is MTV. 202 is CNN. 237 is Bravo. 525 is Starz. 206 is ESPN. 231 is Food Network. 419 is CNN in Espanol. 253 is Lifetime Movie Network. 248 is FX. 559 is Independent Film Channel. 245 is TNT. 265 is A&E. I do not know which one is the Science Channel. Or the Oprah one. History, either. I also refuse to watch any channel under 100, because I don’t pay $120/month to watch free fucking TV.
But I am also somehow incapable of doing any of the other shit. I can’t change a flat tire. I don’t know how to fix grout. I‘m not sanding a vintage fucking dresser from the Salvation Army. I can’t hammer things! I don’t have a fucking screwdriver! I still have to ask my gay boyfriends to come over and put my IKEA furniture together while they also offer unsolicited advice about resuscitating that one dying ass plant I can’t bring myself to throw away and criticize my mismatched dishtowels. That kind of shit is ridiculous to me, purchasing power tools and masking tape with money that could be otherwise spent on a new lipstick I am always going to be too lazy to put on myself. Right now there is a lightbulb that needs changing but I am too chickenshit to stand on a chair and do it, so I’m just waiting for the day someone comes over and I can trick him into doing it. That’s right, HOW MANY DUMB ASSHOLES DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB.
So this whole sapphic thing started innocently enough. Emails + texting + hangouts = BFFs. There was some flirting, but everyone I know is a goddamned flirt. Also, when you write about your vagina on the internet, all the time people just drop the fucking pretense with you. Example: I was in the bathroom before the concert and this woman shouted, “Bitches Gotta Eat! I love the way you say pussyhole!” in a full intermission-packed ladies’ room. Also, we ran into our mutual lesbian friend Denise, who is amazing and great, outside the bathroom and there was so much fucking estrogen and so many ladies who fist other ladies in that building my ovaries tried to reproduce asexually. Hot damn. Anyway, people just say gross shit to me all the goddamned time. I try not to read too much into it. WAIT A MINUTE HOLD UP.
The most terrifying thing about being on a maybe-date with a woman: Okay. Sometimes when I’m on a date with a dude and he is boring or stupid I will excuse myself to the bathroom and call Caitlin and be like, “Grrrrrrrrrl, could you please describe to me what is happening on the episode of The Good Wife that I am missing right now?” and we’ll talk shit for a minute and laugh at that dumb asshole and I’ll pull my spanx back up to my nipples, then i go back to the table refreshed and suffer through another twenty-minute dissertation on the new Bond movie and it’s all good. When we got to the show I had the kind of diarrhea that makes you stop believing in God and I was like, “I’m just going to go to the bathroom (before I have to sit in a hard seat clenching my sphincter for an hour, omg) before we get our seats” and she said, “I have to pee, too” and I was like “peace out, sister” before i fucking remembered that SHE HAS THE SAME PRIVATE PARTS AND WE ARE GOING INTO THE SAME BATHROOM AHAHAHAHA I HAVE TO SHITSPLASH TOO AND SHE WILL HEAR THAT IT’S NOT JUST A REALLY LONG PEE THAT IS SO SEXY. I was like, “Um, okay” and we walked into the bathroom together and I tried to choose a far stall but every black lesbian in Chicago was at that concert and IN THAT BATHROOM and can an evening really get more mortifying than fiery liquid stools in public?
Here is what I was wearing because I know you want to know: black jeggings, black low cut shirt, black draped cardigan (shut up, I borrowed it from your mom), and knee-high black boots. That’s right, jerks: I wore a pair of sex shoes. And yes, I put an insole in them because my back was hurting, so what? And yes yes, the last time I went out with a man I did wear medicated Crocs flip-flops. But I was really trying this time! Romantic or not, bitches be noticing every goddamned thing you ever fucking do. As a matter of fact, I’d had dinner with her on Wednesday with green nails, and the first thing she noticed was that on Friday those same nails were motherfucking purple.
The second most terrifying thing about possibly courting a lady: they notice everything. I mean, EVERYTHING. If a man notices your fresh manicure it means he is moist. If a woman notices that shit it means she has eyes. The minute she pointed it out I was like a deer in fucking headlights. Does she see that this zipper is messed up? And that my coat is a little snug because I spent the entirety of the last four months eating ham? Fuck my life, I am wearing that weird-fitting bra! Bitches will appraise your whole motherfucking life in the time it takes you to glance at the drink menu. We met for drinks before the show, and since I got there first I took a second to hyperventilate in a corner while shoving napkins in my armpits, and while I was adjusting the tummy-smoothing waistband of my pants it dawned on me that she totally knows that there is a thick layer of elasticized spandex under my clothes holding all my meat and cheese in. SHIT FUCK DAMN HELL.
When dating, I rely way too much on the inherent disinterest and thoughtlessness of the average male to provide an air of mystery and intrigue to my otherwise fat and sweaty life. Dudes don’t really know that you don’t get your period twenty days a month, do they? Because this one time I was dating this dimwit basketball player and didn’t feel like shaving or wearing anything other than meat pants for three weeks straight so I told him I had my period and he settled for, like, fourteen handjobs or something instead. Do they know that sweater dresses are basically sausage casings unless you wear support hose stretched from your toes to your chin? Do they understand what serious work my bra is doing? Do they realize these maternity pants are pulled up to my boobs? PROBABLY NOT. She knows about stretch marks! And there I was at Scofflaw, my favorite place on earth, with my right tit being stabbed by an exposed underwire waiting for a person who would likely notice that fact within thirty seconds of removing her coat.
Oh, right. do I help her take her coat off? If it rains later, should I put mine over a puddle? Who opens the door? Do I pull her chair out? Should I walk on the outside of the sidewalk? I’m supposed to order for her, yes? Is it bad that I didn’t ask her father’s permission after she invited me out? WHY AM I SO BAD AT LOVING PEOPLE THE RIGHT WAY?! Welp.
Sometimes it’s hard to know when you’re on a date with a dude, too. I mean, the progression of this ladydate blossomed so naturally that I almost didn’t have time to have a nervous breakdown about it. I was cool as a cucumber, girl. Um, except for the whole is-this-or-isn’t-this-why-have-we-only-discussed-the-parameters-of-this-in-a-joking-way-because-that-is-confusing part. Men are so shameless most of the time that’s it’s pretty easy to figure it out. If a dude says, “Sam bro, wanna get some beers and eat an entire bison while watching the NCAA championships?” I know it’s not a fucking date. And even when it’s “Hey Sam, let’s go to [enter name of moderately upscale restaurant] on [date night] while [pushing your tits up and wearing the one thing you own from Bloomingdale’s] and sit in the [dimly lit romantic atmosphere] and feed each other [expensive finger food that can be eaten sexily] while we also [coo at each other]” I can usually tell when he starts showing me his text messages from random women that even though he is paying this is not a motherfucking date, either.
But there are those rare occasions when homeboy scrubbed his balls and sprayed good cologne on his chest and he sits counting the stars in my eyes in the nicest restaurant a CTA bus driver can afford and in my head I’m all, “Wait a minute…should I not have worn rubber mom shoes to this?!” and if he hasn’t referenced his penis or made declarations on its behalf by the end of the meal, I know he’s just trying to meet one of my hot friends. But women are subtle. And most of us aren’t just going to serve up our vaginas with the soup course. (VAGINA SOUP, YUM.) So here’s what i was working with:
+ hot girl thinks I’m funny (DATE)
+ Meshell Ndegeocello (date)
+ her friend came to the pregame drinks part (not a date)
+ like an asshole I asked if it was a date and got a response that was like “meh” (not a date)
+ we spent an hour on the phone last week (date)
+ I texted her from the bathroom at the bar while I was shitting and it didn’t weird her out (not date-like, but that’s my fucking fault because I’m gross)
+ I didn’t get drunk (date, because if it ain’t I don’t care about not looking like an alcoholic)
+ she cried during the last song (date? also, if I am going to fuck women I have to buy way more kleenex)
I don’t know, man. Imma just roll with it. Make her a big macaroni Hostess cupcake pizza loaf and rinse her soccer cleats in the sink and see what happens. I’m so motherfucking tired. And I’m basically happy to be around anyone cool, whether I have to learn how to use a dental dam or not. Just so we’re clear, tho: this means we’re in a relationship now, right? Good, because I just broke my goddamned lease.
Sometimes Samantha Irby wants to have sex with dudes. Other times, Samantha Irby wants to have sex with ladies. She’s currently trying to catch up on the lady side of things. You can read more about her on Bitches Gotta Eat!
“How Do You Know If You’re On A Date…” was originally published on bitchesgottaeat.blogspot.com. Republished WITH PERMISSION MOTHERF*CKERS.
