How to kiss a lesbian

On Thursday I had a date. I spent the day oscillating between feeling excited, having dramatic thoughts like “This is the first day of the rest of my life,” and feeling terribly worried. I feared she had accepted my invitation because she’s a nice person and too polite to say no. That I would walk up to greet her and she would look around and say “Oh, where is everyone else?”. 

In the afternoon I saw my therapist who gave the advice “Don’t overthink”. When I got home I sat in our kitchen nook with a bowl of popcorn and opened TikTok. I searched “lesbian making the first move”, “lesbian dating tips” and “how to kiss lesbian” and they all carried the same advice: make lots of eye contact, touch her arm a lot, and be yourself. 

While I got ready I listened to a podcast by Tinx, titled Listen to this while you get ready for your first date. She encouraged me to listen to my favourite music, to have one drink and to be myself. I opened a hard seltzer and put on ‘Pretty Girl Rock’ by Kerri Hilson.

The combination of feeling very nervous and the seltzer tasting somewhat medicinal made me drink it in one big gulp like you would a Corenza C. Tinx had also said I should feel excited rather than nervous, which was good to know. I spent my Uber ride the way I always do when I’m on my way to something stressful: trying to make my heart slow down by breathing slowly, and whispering “I am loved, loving and lovable” in a tone low enough for the driver not to hear me but loud enough for my higher self to really buy it.

It started raining as I pulled up outside the gallery and I worried because it’s hard to relax and be yourself when your hair is frizzy. I walked down St George’s Mall wondering why it’s called a mall when it’s a road, and not even one you can drive down when a man waved to me as if to say “This is where you should be,”, and he was right.

She was standing against the wall and playing on her phone. I realised then that I had been subconsciously wondering what she was going to do with her hair, what she was going to wear, and how much make-up she was going to wear (loose, black jeans, natural). We rode the lift up to the exhibition and I felt dumb for thinking it would be small and intimate and not incredibly loud and full of people we know. I also hoped she hadn’t noticed how much I was shaking when I pressed the button for the lift. 

We walked from room to room and I fought the urge to put my hand on the small of her back. She told me she had spent the Uber ride Googling who Lukhanyo was, and I made a mark in the ‘date’ column of my mind knowing she hadn’t driven here.

When she reached out to touch one of Lukhanyo’s pieces I think I saw her hand shake too. I floundered through conversation, making a mental note to be more empathetic towards socially anxious people in the future.

Her face lit up when I said our next stop was The Piano Bar: “I’ve always wanted to go there!”. We drank three glasses of wine while someone played the saxophone in the background. The waiter said he would move us from the bar when another table became free but he never did, and we didn’t notice. I tried to both apply the advice my therapist had given me earlier (“Just be present”) and to over-analyse her movements to figure out if this was a date or not. Bad signs: she hadn’t touched my arm yet. Good signs: she hadn’t left.

Another good sign: She wanted to go somewhere else for another drink. Oprah always warns against going to another location, so this indicated to me that a) she was willing to risk being killed by me and no one knowing where and b) she wanted to hang out some more. 

We went to Cafe Manhattan and on the way, I said “Did you know this is Cape Town’s gay district, Natalie?” One of the suggested searches on TikTok was ‘lesbian flagging’. I didn’t click on it as it seemed less pressing than ‘lesbian how to tell if it is a date” but I guessed that it was about indicating to someone that you’re interested in women, and hoped this comment could be considered ‘flagging’. 

She bought us margaritas and made more eye contact with me. She told me she listens to episodes of my podcast more than once, that she’s in her growing phase of life, and every time we got off topic she would steer us back: “I want to hear what you wanted to say”. We shared our first impressions of each other, and I held back on the first time I knew I had a crush on her thinking that it would make a cute story for another date. 

The bar started to close up, and we stood outside, wondering out loud what our next move should be. I think she said that she didn’t feel like going home just yet and then I think I put my hand on her waist, and then we kissed. It felt like we were in a tunnel, or like someone had put a big cloth over both of us. We kissed in the Uber too. I was so disorientated when we got out I joked that the driver had had enough of us and dropped us in the middle of nowhere: “Get the fuck out”. But we weren’t in the middle of nowhere, we were outside my house, and then we were in my room.

We joked about how this had taken us the whole night. She said she had arrived half an hour early to the gallery, that she thought I’d asked her on a date out of pity, a ‘Make-A-Wish’. “Thank you for messaging me ‘cos I never would have,”. We made plans for karaoke and a hike; “I know you love adventure”. 

Before we fell asleep she said she was having anxious thoughts and I hoped that they were along the lines of “I’m only anxious because I feel obsessed with this girl already” and not “I’m anxious because I am emotionally unavailable”. 

We slept wrapped up, every readjustment reassured with a kiss. Her lips are soft, her face is so full and her hair is thick and constantly needing to be held out of the way. My sleep app said our sleep quality was 40%.

In the morning I gave her my pink socks with hearts on them to wear and we got coffee. I drove her home and kissed her at the red lights. When I got back I listened to the snippets my phone had labelled as ‘Sleep Talking’: her saying ‘sorry’, us laughing, and I think the sound of her kissing my shoulder.