Fine. FINE. This jam.

Your friendly bookseller has writer's block. Here's a thing she wrote that isn't about bookselling.

Your friendly bookseller tries to keep this space book-themed and G-rated which means I haven’t successfully published on anything like the schedule I planned.

But this completely off-topic thing I thumb-typed on my lunch break last year keeps getting positive feedback and people are asking if they can share it, so FINE; here it is; feel free to share. I am writing from my own personal experience and not as a bookstore because retail stores, by and large, do not date. Or have religious convictions; LOOKING AT YOU, HOBBY LOBBY.

The prompt: A librarian friend of mine usually dates in queer/poly/creative spaces, but was asked out by a Total Stranger, a man who she met in a coffee shop. She was shocked.

She asked for advice. So I wrote this essay/guide to progressive intimacy; in my experience dating as a bisexual cisgender woman in both queer/poly spaces and in more normie straight spaces, people have wildly different expectations and different ideas about what is safety vs. what is a red flag.

Being neurodivergent definitely affects my own preferences for emotional intimacy and small talk, too; I’ve provided a list of suggested questions at the end, which can be answered either chitchatty small talk answers or with deeper vulnerability if your date feels safe sharing. Here you go: it’s not book-related; enjoy.

STRAIGHT DATING: A QUICK 1500-WORD SUMMARY I WROTE ON MY LUNCH BREAK

Here’s how I think progressive social and physical intimacy goes in non-crappy normie relationships:

1 ) private time in a public place (two people among strangers at a restaurant during the dinner hour)

2 ) private time in a less public place (two people walking in a park, where no one can overhear but strangers can see you most of the time)

3 ) private moments in a public setting (ducking into a private corner to gaze longingly into one another’s eyes and perhaps make out briefly) 

4 ) private time in a private setting (a home or hotel, generally)

5 ) intimate time in a private setting

6 ) typically somewhere around this point, appearing socially together as a couple in a public setting 

8 ) appearing socially as a couple with one person’s framily

7 ) then with the other person’s framily

8 ) then with both framilies together 

The pace is flexible but it goes along with progressive emotional intimacy; see below. Note that this is a near-reversal of the queer dating I’ve experienced. I have no firsthand experience of gay male dating, for obvious reasons, and can’t speak to that at all.

Emotional intimacy in normie relationships:

Round 1 ) Sharing unimportant tidbits of conversation (small talk) with very little emotional content. Weather, local geography, the food being served, recent sporting events. Everyone claims to hate this (which is itself fair game as a tidbit in round 2!) but it allows for setting baseline expectations for tone, volume, and body language, as a helpful basis for trust as the conversation moves to

Round 2 ) Lesser vulnerabilities: (I hate small talk! You’re much handsomer than I had hoped!) as a small, low-stakes exchange of trust; only if this is successfully honored do we move to

Round 3 ) more complex topics (politics, artistic issues, spirituality) that require sharing one’s current emotional state and personal history so that you can decide whether you have mutual respect and want to move to

Round 4 ) deeply vulnerable things like health, family, money, dreams, visions, future plans. 

At some point along this route, an exchange of medical information with regard to STIs etc. will generally happen if any Adult Activities are in the offing.

Many people would not share any deeply personal preferences or desires until around 3 or 4 but according to my therapist, it’s actually sensible to figure out bedroom compatibility before getting deeply emotionally involved with someone. She says you will not dump the love of your life when you find out, a year in, that they are bad in bed. But neither will you marry someone just for being good in bed. So go ahead and find out whether your magnets are the right ends for each other before you actually act on it. Personally, I put that stuff in my dating profile so folks can suss it out without discussing it openly in a public space, since many people find it threatening or off-putting to discuss physical intimacy with a virtual stranger at a brewpub.

THIS CONTRASTS TO LESBIAN AND QUEER DATING, IN WHICH:

We mostly go on dates with mutual acquaintances. We date within our social group, so that everyone knows everyone reasonably well. This social convention is what gives us the “reversed” lesbian courtship pattern, which is:

1 ) Time in public with both framilies, which are the same framily.  

2 ) Intimate group conversation in a public setting, so that you all know each other’s inner lives reasonably well

3 ) Intimate private conversation in a public setting, so that everyone wonders if your unspoken passion will actually ignite the hummus this time or not.

3 ) Secret declarations of desire TO OTHERS, to get the framily’s blessing. Your ex agrees she’s not mad and her ex agrees SHE’s not mad, and fourth and fifth parties start hassling you both to SPEAK UP ALREADY.

4 ) One single private date as a couple, to verify that in addition to a long-standing affectional bond, similar social and cultural values, and compatible interests, you ALSO do in fact want to share your tax return and Netflix password.

5 ) It’s U-Haul time!  

For weird counterculture folks, arts people and ren faire people and some socialist groups and the occasional maker collective: these spaces tend to be driven by queer social norms. People are less weirded out by things like direct explicit questions about their inner lives. They expect to be asked to verbalize their convictions and to practice friendly conversational styles based on mutual education as a group. 

Straight/normie spaces, which have been male-dominated for so long, depend on actions and behaviors to indicate what one’s core beliefs are. I find it very weird that straight neurotypical men are startled by questions about, for example: Do you think it’s okay to pierce a baby’s ears or to declaw a cat, and why or why not?

But their defensiveness seems to be based partly on the assumption that they will demonstrate their convictions through their behavior; they’re both unprepared for this direct and intimate style of conversation and slightly offended that I don’t plan to simply extrapolate their ethics by watching their actions. This has had unpleasant results.

I think a lot of women might have dropped the So, Do You Think Hitler Is In Heaven???? icebreaker by now but I’m not planning to. This jam is very clearly labeled and if you do not like the flavor you should put down your spoon.

Similarly, when I have invited queer women into the straight dating process (Hi, Person I Don’t Know, want to get dinner? Everybody’s gotta eat!) they have been shocked or horrified that I would suggest Step 4, which is basically Being Engaged to Be Engaged, to a virtual stranger. Hilarity ensued.

I PROMISED YOU SMALL TALK:

I extracted this from my former work life, running a community-building project in Chicago. I’m leaving it in basically the form I used for that project, instead of rewriting it entirely, because I think it’s helpful to think about it in these terms.

These questions can be answered with Round 1-type content or they can be answered with Round 3 or 4 if the person you’re talking to is up for that.
 

What’s your favorite part of the city? (Everyone in Chicago is a booster and has secret faves; if you’re comfortable being vulnerable you might say oh, here is where I proposed to my partner because of X and Y and Z personal details; if you want a neutral non-vulnerable answer you might say “I really like the First Fridays art walks in Pilsen” and let it go as these are a very commonly known event.)

What’s your favorite brunch spot? (Easy enough to answer with small talk but allows for an invitation if the two people are really hitting it off)

How do you spend your time, most days? (We chose this one in 2009 when almost everyone had lost their job; the small talk answer is “work” or “filling out job applications” or “childcare” but more intimate answers include hobbies, relationships, spiritual habits)

What brought you joy this week? (Small talk answer: my Birchbox arrived. Intimate answer: a creative success, with details about how and why)

Are you local? (This allows people to tell you their life story if they want to, but also allows them to skip dealing with the racist assumptions involved in “where are you REALLY from”-type questions)

THINGS I TOLD MY CREW TO NEVER EVER ASK A STRANGER:

What is your job? (Mass unemployment made this uncomfortable for this project but it’s usually okay on a date.)

Where are you from? (See above re: racist nonsense)

Are you partnered/do you have children? (People show up at community gatherings during times of crisis and may not want to discuss their looming divorce on a first meeting; this is also okay for most dates)

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Final note: I have done a quick edit to remove the Grown-Up Words and anonymize the details. I’ll try to write something book-related sometime I guess, but no promises.