Hold me, I’m scared

So much has happened since I last posted, I can't even. I'm just going to ignore it and pretend it didn't happen. My date with Natasha was cancelled (by me) due to unforeseen circumstances. It's back on now though. In fact, it's happening today. And i'm somewhat freaking out.


I think I may have made a huge mistake.  This was a bad idea. It is early (ish) in the morning. Earlier than I have been awake on a day i don't have to go to work in a very long time anyway, but I can’t sleep anymore. If I can’t sleep, I know there is something seriously wrong. I haven’t attempted breakfast yet, but if I have trouble eating, it means the apocalypse is approaching. Either way, I do not feel good. 


I’m scared. I am going on this date in less than eight hours and I’m scared. I feel like there are a lot of things could go wrong. What if we have nothing in common? What if we disagree on everything ever? What is she hates Lady Gaga? Or Harry Potter? What if she kicks kittens for fun? What if she thinks I’m just a weirdo? Whats if she's right about that?


You see, I may have a tendency to not make the best first impression. This may come as a surprise to you, because of the sparkling witty banter I've dispensed here so far, but on first meeting I do not always come across as the totally awesome superstar that I am. I’m an acquired taste, I guess, like coffee or fine wine. The people who know me the best, love me. But when I meet new people, I don’t know what happens. I often involuntarily lapse into varying levels of complete social ineptitude. I oscillate between talking to fast and not being able to think of anything at all to say, my hands wave around uncontrollably when I tell a story, I stumble over words, I make erratic eye contact and my face turns bright red really easily. Basically, it's not pretty.


I have tried at several points in my life to beat this thing. To play it cool, act aloof, to exude a calm confidence that is rooted in an unwavering belief in my own awesomeness.  The thing is though, confidence is sexy when it is real. When you’re pretending, you just seem like you’re pretending. Or at least I do. I inevitably seem to end up coming off as a pretentious b*tch. Which I’m really not. I have a lot of flaws but that isn’t one of them, I promise.


To me nothing is sexier than when someone just seems like themselves. Like they are not trying to be anything other than just them and they don’t mind what you think. So maybe I should try that. Just be my socially awkward self and hope that someone is going to find that charming.


I don’t know. Freaking out.


I really don’t know how to finish this post, because I don’t really have a point other than: I HAVE FEELINGS. I’m going to call Best Friend Nora and see if she has any advice.

[ETA: I got Best Friend Nora’s voicemail so she has not been able to offer advice and I’m still panicking. I did manage to force down some Special K Red Berries, so it looks like the day of reckoning is not imminent after all. Rest easy people.]

Target: LOCKED

I HAVE SECURED A DATE WITH A REAL LIVE LADY!


ZOMG, it’s starting. As I have talked about earlier, I have been chatting with a selection of usernames / avatars over the last two weeks.


But I have now managed to convince one of these internet personas to meet with me in a situation of real live human interaction. She has agreed to meet me on Sunday at a specified location and time to consume beverages and converse. We are going to sit together and talk face-to-face about important things. This is an exciting prospect. Would you like to know who it is? Which lucky lady will receive the honour of date number 1? You maybe don’t but I’m going to tell you anyway.


It’s NATASHA!

This is most likely not the Natasha I am dating. This is Natasha Lyonne.

She is in a funny film called ‘But I’m a cheerleader’. 

As far as I know she lives in LA.

I would like to tell you all about her but I have not met her yet, so I can’t. Instead, here are the Top 5 things I do know about Natasha.


Top 5: Natasha


1. We have already covered that her name is Natasha. 
2. She is four years older than I am. In case you are bad at maths, that means she is 30. This is fine, I do not discriminate by age. I HAVE FRIENDS WHO ARE 30.
3. Natasha, or Nat as I like to call her, used to work in a job that made her money. She decided she did not like it and decided to go back to Uni and study some more. She is just about to graduate with a degree in business. I STUDIED BUSINESS TOO. This is perhaps a good sign? Or perhaps not, there were a lot of w*nkers on my course at Uni and I don’t think I remember anything I learned there anyway. We’ll see.
4. She lives in the West End of Glasgow. I do not live there, but I like it a lot.
5. Natasha likes to be outdoors. I have not decided how I feel about this yet. I like to be outdoors too, but only for short periods of time. I will not climb a hill for fun. I will not sleep in a tent unless forced.


I will let you know how it goes. EXCITED.

Hi, my name is...

So it turns out, meeting people on the internet is weird. And it’s hard. I’m not sure if I’m doing it right. Is there a right way to do it?


So far I have exchanged words and sentences with three separate ladies. At least I am assuming they are ladies. There’s really no way to be sure as of yet but I’m working on an honour system for now. Anyway, I have been sending and receiving messages over the internet in some sort of attempt at conversation in the hopes this will lead to an actually face-to-face encounter. It’s weird though.


It’s not the internet part that’s weird. Best Friend Nora and I exchange emails several times a day in order to relieve the monotony of work and I have no problem holding a conversation through my keyboard. From taking some time out and travelling I now have friends and acquaintances in several other countries across the world with whom I manage to keep in touch on a somewhat regular basis. I have 109 friends on Facebook whom I have tagged, messaged, ‘liked’ and all that stuff. (Never poked though, I don’t understand this feature and refuse to use it). I have commented on countless articles on Autostraddle and even engaged in repartee with other readers constituting of more than: ‘THIS’, ‘WIN’, or ‘<3’.


Talking to someone over the internet is not the problem. I love the internet. I’m considerably better at communicating through written word than I am at actually opening my mouth and speaking to someone when stuff like nerves get in the way and I end up rambling incessantly about my favourite pizza topping or something. Emailing / texting / messaging usually gives my brain time to process and my capacity for delightful, witty banter increases by about 75%. So why is this online dating stuff so hard?


I think the problem is the complete lack of context. There’s no reason to believe I have anything in common with any of these people. Other than, you know, the GAY and I’m not sure that’s enough. What do we talk about? Questions like: ‘What do you do? Where are you from? Do you have brothers and sisters?’ seem strangely formal and exceptionally inane. Like a job interview. I almost expect to be asked: ‘So Luna, please can you give me an example of a time in your previous relationship when you have demonstrated innovation and flexibility?’ ‘Well, have you tried scissoring? It’s not easy!’ And I don’t really care about the answers anyway. Unless the answer is ‘sells drugs to kids’ or ‘gangster pimp’, what someone does for a living isn’t really going to have that much of an impact on whether or not I like them. ‘Professional billionaire’ may also provoke strong feelings of a different kind but I’m not getting my hopes up.


Meeting new people is often awkward (and if you are like me, it’s pretty much ALWAYS awkward) but at least in real life you have things to distract you. Things happen around you that you can observe and discuss. If there happens to be a lull in the conversation you can’t talk about how cute/ rude the waitress is, you can spy on the people at the table beside you and make up a story about them, you can say ‘oh I like this song playing now’ and talk about music, and most importantly of all you can DRINK. Alcohol can make almost any awkward situation seem better. At least until the next morning.


So what do I do? I’m going to strive on with this quest regardless of the uncomfortable messaging because I do really feel like it’s going to be worth it.

The RULES

I need some rules. 


It's been weeks since I last posted and part of that has to do with the fact that I've been inordinately busy over the last few weeks but part of it is also that I kind of had a freak out that this is a really bad idea. Dating scares me. This may be why I have not been successful at it so far in life. I’m thinking it probably doesn’t just scare me, though. Dating is scary, right? That’s been pretty well established in like a billion movies I have seen. Anyway, i started to panic.


I’m generally not a very organised person. I have a pretty relaxed attitude to life and I like to be surprised. However, when something scary comes along, I will organise the shit out of it. I want to know exactly what’s going to happen and when and how and why. I need to plan. So last night I made myself a cup of tea – because tea makes everything seem better – sat on my couch made a list. Of RULES! 


I’ve had a mixed relationship with RULES for most of my life. Most of the time, I find them comforting. They give life order. Nine out of ten times, I have no problems following them. I understand that rules are there for a reason and that without them the world as we know it could fall into anarchy. I think there are some great rules out there: Thou Shall Not Kill – that’s a great rule; Don’t Feed the Bears – I’m totally on board with that; Treat Others the Way You Want to Be Treated – yes. I agree.


But then, there’s always that tenth rule that comes along that just makes NO sense. I like to think I am a relatively bright individual and if I cannot under any circumstances fathom why a rule exists, I am just not going to follow it.


When I was in high school, there was a rule that tried to tell me I should wear the top button of my shirt fastened every day. I wore my school uniform for six years without complaint. Despite being infuriated by the fact that I was forced to wear a skirt every day, when the boys got to wear trousers, I still managed to keep my mouth shut. I ignored my early feminist principles and restrained myself from shouting about freedom of gender expression. But that top button. I just couldn’t do it. I needed to be comfortable and that involved not having my clothing choke the life out of me.


Anyway, back to my point. I have found the way to get around the problem of my love / hate relationship with rules is to simply make up my own. That way I can have total control over the situation. I started by thinking about what my goals were going to be (you know, other than: start dating a really hot girl) and what I knew I was going to struggle with. I wanted to be sure my rules covered all possibilities. It’s good to be prepared.


Here are my rules. There are nine of them, because you know that tenth one would be a total B*stard:

Those are the rules that will lead me to success. I can feel it. Panic OVER.

100 words or less

Tonight, at approximately 7.12pm, I registered with a dating website. Go me. It might not sound that hard but it is an extremely important step which I have successfully completed. I feel good about this. Then around 7.23 and 7.37pm I registered with two more.  If I’m going to convince 20 people to go on a date with me over the next year then I’m going to need to keep my options as wide open as possible.

It’s a strange concept creating an online dating profile. It starts off easy enough, just answering a few simple questions about yourself. But then you get to the final question and you’re left staring at a large blank box, wondering how the hell you’re supposed to describe yourself in 100 words or less that will make random strangers decide they want to eat food with you and talk about Harry Potter.

At first, I went for the practical approach. I have a 97% positive rating as a seller on ebay, I can certainly sell my own dateability. I can make this happen!

26 year old Lesbian Virgo. Made in Glasgow. 55% water, 41% bones, skin, blood and stuff, 4% sheer determination. Good condition – slight scarring on left upper arm from riding a horse into a tree at age 12 but hardly noticeable. Height: 5’3”. Weight: Unknown – hasn’t been near a set of scales since 1999. Hair: hard to say – appears to have created an entirely new shade of hair colour through repeated home dyeing using low quality haircare product lines.

My next thought was to go with what I love: the theatre. I love reading programme bios. I make a point of selecting out my favourite cast member from who has the funniest bio and focussing on them for the entire show. I know how these things go.

Luna is delighted to be making her online dating debut here on match.com. Previous dating credits include: that girl from that club in Sydney, she think her name might have been Alice; Gemma the straight girl with the boyfriend she didn’t tell Luna about; the exchange student from Mexico who spoke a delightfully broken English; a drunken mistake or two with her friend Lisa, which they’ve agreed never to speak of again.

A Haiku, perhaps?

A girl called Luna
Frolicks in the summer rain
Cake, eats it and smiles

Maybe I should just be honest?

Hi, I’m Luna. I like Kung Po Chicken, musicals, books that are set somewhere I’ve never been, cold beer on a hot summers day, good spellers, girls, travelling, sleeping, laughing until it’s hard to breathe and the internet. I don’t like fish, pretending, people who try to get on the bus before I’ve had a chance to get out, creatures that have more than four legs, cooking, high heels and getting hit in the face. If any of this makes sense to you, let’s date.

Or cut right to the chase?

Hi. I’m Luna. I’m nice. Um, please date me?

I didn’t use any of these in the end. It took ideas from them all but went with something that hopefully made me sound like a normal human. As is quite obvious, I tend to ramble. I don’t think it’s my most attractive quality so I tried to keep it pretty short. Succinct and mysterious. Enough information that might convince someone they would like to meet me, but not so much that they realise I’m slightly strange. I hope it will work. I think it might.

Is Earthlings taken?

It took me a while to come up with the name. Best Friend Nora and I brainstormed for about two hours trying to come up with a snappy title, which we failed at entirely, but did end up with a few options. Best Friend Nora tried really hard to get me to call it The LUNAcy of Online Dating but I am 100% against puns that use my name. I heard enough of those when I was a kid, growing up on the mean streets of Glasgow (just kidding I grew up in the suburbs, the streets were not mean at all. They were mostly kind and very well lit). Other ideas we came up with included:

• The Misadventures of Online Lesbian Dating (but then we realised that would be MOLD for short, and that does not sound sexy at all. I am not going to call it that)
• Luna McKavanagh and the Online Dating Experience (like Harry Potter! If Harry were female, gay, single and looking to meet some ladies)
• Dating Online: A Gay Escapade (neither of us liked this one, I don’t even know where it came from. It’s a ridiculous name. We kept trying to blame each other for coming up with it.)
• Desperately Seeking Luna (I liked this one for a good hour until I realised it didn’t make any sense. I’m fairly sure no one is looking for me. That’s the problem. And desperation is never going to be a good thing in this situation. I really don’t know why I liked it in the first place).
• L for Luna. (Best Friend Nora: L, like as in the L Word. Don't all lesbians love the L Word? People might read it if the think it's related.)

So anyway, I eventually decided on The Misadventures of Luna McKavanagh. Because that’s really all it is. Me talking about stuff that’s happens in my life. Anything else seemed presumptuous. I hate it when people try to speak for me. Nothing irritates me more than someone starts a sentence with ‘As a woman / lesbian / brunette / Christian / person who doesn’t like mushrooms, I feel...’ Unless you have taken a poll and found that an overwhelming majority agree with you, you can’t be spokesperson whole subset people. You have feelings. That’s ok. You don’t need to justify them by claiming to represent everyone else. Just feel your feelings. They’re perfectly valid on their own.

I’m not trying to represent the any faction of the world’s population right now. I’m not trying to tell “our stories”. Chaiken can keep that one. I don’t understand the ‘our’ being referred to here. These stories had almost nothing to do with me. Except for the pretty ladies. That part was relevant to my interests.

I’m not really sure what it is I’m trying to do anything right now. I’m just typing and hoping words will be formed. If I’m telling anyone’s story it’s only my own and it doesn’t matter if anyone is listening or not. I’m just going to have some fun telling it.

The Misadventure

Hi.

I’m Luna.

Most people call me Lu. Or sometimes Lulu, but I don’t really like it when they do that.

This is me. Luna. I got my hair cut for this picture. Do you like it?



This is my blog. I’m very excited about it. Even though I’m 95% sure no-one will ever read it other than my Best Friend Nora, I’m still excited. I think it’s going to be fun.  Plus there’s still that 5% of me that thinks that someone might accidently stumble across it while looking for Luna Lovegood fanfiction or something.  And maybe they’ll stick around a while to read it and like it and that’ll be nice.

It doesn’t really matter if anyone else reads it or not though. I’m doing this thing because I needed a project and after a bottle and a half of Pinot Grigio doing this felt like a really good idea. It didn’t feel like as much of a good idea the next morning but I have decided to do it anyway because I haven’t thought of anything else.

I needed to do something. I’ve reached that dreaded stage of life where everything stays is the same. And it stays the same. Nothing changes anymore. I got through being a kid, school, uni, part-time jobs, travelling, temping. All these phases where there is a goal in sight. An end date. Now I’m working full-time in a job that is fine but not is not going to make me a millionaire / super famous / creatively satisfied anytime soon. And that’s all there is to it. I don’t know what comes next. I need something to change.  I should clarify now that this isn’t about to turn into an emo blog, nobody understands me I hate my life blah blah blah. That’s not what this is. I do have a pretty good life. I have a family who love and support me. I have a small number of close friends including the aforementioned Best Friend Nora who would punch someone in the face just because I asked her to. I have just enough money to buy food, pay rent and read a lot of books. I have a lot of good things going for me. Just so you know.

The thing is... I don’t have a girlfriend (I don’t have a boyfriend either, but I’m not so interested in getting one of those). I’ve never really had a girlfriend. Not a real one. And by that I don’t mean I’ve had imaginary ones – I’m not insane – I mean I’ve never had a proper, grown up, shit just got real relationship with another human. I’ve always evaded commitment and instead of a girlfriend tended to end up with ‘cute girl I’m kind of seeing’, ‘special friend I like to sleep with’ or ‘pretty barista in Beanscene I sometimes can’t help but stare at’.  

I’ve never looked someone in the eye and told them I was in love with them. I’ve never walked down the street holding somebody’s hand just because I couldn’t make myself let go. I’ve never called someone by an embarrassing nickname like cupcake or panda. I genuinely don’t mind being single at all. I actually kind of like it most of the time but lately I’ve been thinking I’d like to try all of these things. I hear they are nice.

So I’m thinking of giving the ‘girlfriend’ thing a go. Just to see what happens.  The ‘what’ isn’t the problem though. It’s the ‘how’ that’s tricky. How exactly does one find a girlfriend? Or even a potential girlfriend? I’ve never been very good at meeting people, particularly not in bars or clubs. Whenever I go out to I just want to drink wine and then dance around like a complete idiot.  Even if I try not to, the evening will inevitably end up with Best Friend Nora and I attempting to Riverdance to Beyoncé. While this is a technique that does tend to attract attention, it’s rarely the good kind. The lady-wanting-to-kiss-me kind. It’s usually more the ‘WTF is wrong with you?’ kind.
 
So anyway, I figured I needed another way to meet people.  I know meeting people online is hardly a revolution, but I’ve always avoided the idea of online dating. It seemed like such a weird concept to me. Now it just seems to make more sense though. The internet has always been there for me in the past. When My So-Called Life was inexplicably cancelled after one year, it was the internet that assured me everything would be ok. When I decided to move to the other side of the world for a year, it was the internet that stopped me from being homesick. And when the world was telling me it was wrong to be gay, it was the internet that helped me realised it was actually pretty f*cking awesome. The internet is where I get my news, shoes, books and banking. Why can’t it be where I also get a date? The people of the internets are weird, crazy, wonderful bunch and I want to meet them. Or some of them at least.

So that’s my point. I got here eventually. I’m going to do some internet dating and I’m going to write about it. Just because. Why should you care? You probably shouldn’t. But if you are for some reason reading this, stick around. Just in case you start caring. You never know.