Infrequently, I am approached by lesbians who have interests other than friendship in mind. I believe these incidences are opportunities for building friendships rather than potentially embarrassing inconveniences and lost opportunities.
On one such occasion, I was chatting in a Yahoo chat room when an androgynous sounding chatter approached me for chat. I chatted with this person. I had already added this person to my Yahoo messenger list because the chatter wanted to know what I looked like. Only then did I see the person had a female name. This does not usually happen because my online name is sexy and appeals to men. (Hey, Yahoo chat is a social app!)
Of course, this person did not have a pic of herself but a sports logo instead. I did not panic and hoped maybe I had found a real female friend and not a lesbian looking to hook up. However my attention was diverted briefly from the conversation and upon looking at the computer screen, I saw the person had commented on keeping in touch with me because I was “a looker,” or something like that.
I promptly informed the chatter that I was not a homosexual and not interested in homosexual experiences for myself. I figured she was new to chat and offered the suggestion that she search the gay chat room, if she was interested in pursuing such relationships. Of course this person told me she were not interested in a sexual tryst with me and only on line to chat. Well, because I was not born yesterday and recognize the same tactics are used by men, I decided to not continue the chat conversation because it did not advance further into friendly or like minded communications. Matter-of-fact, it degraded pretty quickly.
As my responses became shorter and more polite, the chatter became somewhat unraveled. I should not learn so much about a person during a 10-minute conversation. I assumed this person had underlying issues of an emotional nature so I just let it go.
Sometimes a person can be new to an experience and should be handled with kid gloves and since I felt emotionally healthy that day, I extended myself to facilitate a conversation disengagement that I would extend to any chatter in which I no longer wanted to talk, no matter the sexual orientation.
Remember, everything is not for everybody and we all will not always get along. Since the conversation had become distasteful, I deleted the person from my list and eventually had to block them. However, I was nice, civil and polite throughout the ordeal.
This whole experience got me to thinking how much more difficult it is to be gay and want to connect with likeminded individuals. There is inherently a lot of rejection in the relationship process, whether it is between gays or non-gays. Male/female relationships are filled with dread, fear and rejection so how much more for same-sex relationships? Why make relationship building harder for anyone?
Let us all make an effort when we can, to be long on polite words and to be short with unkind words and humiliations. Let us be helpful to each other and civil because no matter the sexual orientation, it is good to be nice sometimes.
