She’s Not Giving You A New Hope

I’m an asexual woman, but back when I was in college, “asexual” wasn’t really “a thing.” I just ended up telling all my friends, “I don’t date,” as a personal rule.

One of the boys who was in theater with me had a very strong crush on me. The two of us practically built the theater department, so we were always hanging out together and were pretty good friends, but he was always trying to convince me to go out with him. He would buy me gifts even though I had told him I didn’t date and didn’t have the money to reciprocate the presents.

One day he told me his brother was trying to sell a rare draft script for the first Star Wars movie ever made. Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge Star Wars nerd, and I would have flipped to have that script or even just a photocopy of it. I even said as much to him. Unfortunately I didn’t have the money his brother was asking for, and the script sold online.

Fast-forward a year. I could tell our friendship was cooling because he was getting frustrated that I still wouldn’t go out with him. The last time it came up, he handed me a birthday gift: a pair of gold and ruby earrings. I don’t wear jewelry, so I had no idea what they were worth, but all I thought was that he had to have spent far more than what his brother asked for that Star Wars script! I stared at the jewels and then looked at him, finally saying, “Um, my ears aren’t pierced.”

He took the earrings back and we never really hung out again. He did finally move on, get a girlfriend, and get married. I have never broken my rule about “not dating.”

The moral of the story is: If you’re trying to get someone to go out with you especially by giving them presents, maybe take a cursory review of the three years you’ve been friends to notice that she doesn’t wear jewelry or have pierced ears, but is fanatically obsessed with Star Wars and would have felt obligated to go on a date if you had just given her that incredibly rare artifact you somehow had access to!