Minefields of Lesbian Dating - Round 1

By Judy Scott

I’m not sure all you tadpoles under 40 will identify will my dating experiences because I came out at 68 after 45 years of marriage, two kids and three grandkids. Then again, in talking to many sisters since then, we all have dating stories to tell and maybe some of you can empathize.

I’d left the marriage, moved to my own apartment – oh my God the freedom was exhilarating – but then thought, okay now how in the world am I going to connect with my new community? Luckily I had a good friend who’d been out since birth. I asked her for the lesbian manual, a reasonable request I thought. She choked on her Tim Horton’s coffee. “There isn’t one,” she said. No manual? No set of rules about meeting, flirting, making the first move, how to gauge the seriousness of a contact, etc. etc.

I’d absorbed all this stuff when I was a pseudo-straight teen and young woman and knew the ropes in that world. So how was I to proceed now? I was a stranger in a much stranger land.

Since I doubted my dream woman would suddenly knock on my apartment door, I decided to go looking online, choosing a well-known lesbian dating site. I subscribed for three months, put up a picture I took of myself with my digital camera, holding it in front of my face just close enough to capture a ‘deer in the headlights’ look, and filled in my profile. Then sat back and waited. It didn’t take long.

When my profile popped up, there was a red banner beside it saying New Member! Fresh meat drew prospects like flies to fertilizer. I had so many hits I thought I’d be engaged in a week. Winnowing them down my appropriate age, I responded to a few and ended up a few weeks later with my first date.

Nervous doesn’t begin to describe it. I met her outside a restaurant in Toronto for dinner. I liked her looks, she was tall like me and seemed pretty sophisticated, unlike me. What scared me, though, was that she was a writer of lesbian erotica. Remember, now, I’m a lesbian virgin at this point. I had read some erotica and while I found it titillating, it also highlighted my total inexperience.

When we sat down, I tried, without being too obvious, to check our her large purse in case it was full of whips and/or midgets, studded collars, matches, screwdrivers – I didn’t know what I might be in for. Turned out I was in for nothing but a pleasant conversation. She did ask how I was fixed financially, which I found odd but later realized was important. We parted at the end of the evening, emailed each other sporadically afterwards and then faded out of each other’s consciousness.

Round One.