It started out the same way it always starts out: Hinge.
I was ready to enter the world of lesbian dating again. I spent a few torturous hours belaboring over what word choice to use in my profile. I scoured my phone for pictures that didn’t make me want to die. I consulted with a few dykes I trust: Does this picture make me look complicated in a hot way—or in a psychiatric-hold way? Does the hat in this pic make me look sophisticated or like I’m in crisis? Does this pic make me look free-spirited or like a party girl on the brink of rehab? My trusty-worthy friends set me straight (no pun intended) and I uploaded the winning pictures. Exhausted from the mental warfare, I poured myself a very large glass of Sauvignon Blanc. I took a gulp. Fuck it. I published my profile and THWACK—I’d been tossed back into the wild west of online swiping.
Yes, it was a dating tale as old as time. Only this time there was one colossal difference. I wasn’t a single dyke thrown into the wild west that is my native New York. I was a single dyke—who due to unforeseen circumstances—had found herself lost in a dating terrain so antithetical to New York, it might as well be Mars. I was now swiping in the glittery hill-scape where the queers are as kooky as they are beautiful, the holy-land for the hot and the delusional, Los Angeles.
I’m not only a Manhattan native—I’m a decade-deep sex and relationships writer who’s authored two thousand plus articles detailing lesbian dating culture in New York. There’s a well-known principle that hypothesizes that it takes ten thousand hours of deliberate practice in any given area to reach mastery level. If you believe this theory—then I’m a card carrying excerpt in the field of dyke dating in New York Fucking City.
But being single and gay in LA? I was as clueless as my eighty-three year old father would be navigating TikTok.
And that’s when I learned my first humbling lesson in what would quickly become an excruciating education in the stark differences between dating in New York and dating in LA: New York Lesbians Bitch, LA Lesbians Pitch.
Ninety percent of dating profiles in LA lead not with wit or crass commentary—but career. Not your typical finance and manual labor careers either. Everyone makes it your business to inform you they’re in show business. Actors, models, musicians galore.
The first woman I stumbled on was a stand-up comedian. How did I know? Not only did she mention stand-up approximately sixteen times in her profile, every single picture was of her either on stage or carousing iconic Hollywood comedy clubs: The Comedy Store. The Improv. Laugh Factory.
In New York, somewhere around date three, I’ll rip the bandaid off and confess that I’m a writer. A deflated “cuuute,” is the reaction I’m usually met with, which we all know is code for, “so you don’t have a real job?”
I was prepared to be met with the same doubt when I answered the “what do you do?” question out West. Instead I was met with every iteration of: “Oh my God! How are you holding up during the writer’s strike?”
I called my brother who’s lived in LA for twenty years. “Is there a writer’s strike?” I yelped.
“A screenwriter’s strike,” Blake yawned, bored.
Screenwriting isn’t a word in your typical New Yorker’s vocabulary. If you were to play a word association game with LA and New York and give them each the word writer—LA would react with the word “movie” and New York would react with the word “book.”
These might seem like minor differences but they spotlight the *glaring* differences within each culture.
Screenwriting is collaborative; book writing is solitary. Screenwriting is visual; book writing is intellectual. Screenwriting depicts external struggle; book writing depicts the hell within. In short: Los Angeles is social, talkative, and captivating to look at—New York is lonely, smart and full of inner demons.
Plus, New York loves her expletives. California is as dysregulated by our crass vocabulary as we are by her shameless career talk.
“You’re kinda being an asshole,” I sweetly chirped to Maxine, a woman I’d been dating for several months, one night. We were dining at an Italian bistro in West Hollywood and she had the gall to suggest we didn’t need to order the burrata appetizer if we were both ordering mains.
Her eyes sagged downward, like a puppy denied a treat. “Asshole?” she wailed in disbelief. “You can’t talk to people like that.”
Oops. My bad. My New York friends and I use babe and asshole interchangeably.
Not only did me recklessly spewing profanities drive a date to wailing status, I was shocked to learn that the sensitivity of the California Girls extends into matters of the bedroom. By which I mean—with one exception—there were no first date kisses out West.
I had a fun, free-wheeling first date with a career coach in the first few weeks of my move. We went to Honey’s, a lively queer bar with cute cocktails and good music. We were buzzing like fruit flies by the time she escorted me into my Uber. I anticipated a hot, brief make-out session before climbing into the backseat. She awkwardly embraced me for about ten seconds and that was that.
I texted her right away: Why didn’t you kiss me?
She responded right back: Because I respect your boundaries.
Then there was the wildly romantic first date with a woman who love bombed me with words. “I can’t describe it,” she said over vegan tacos, “but I really think you’re my person.” She walked me to my door and cautiously hugged me like she was my male high school guidance counselor and peeled off into the night.
I texted her right away: You told me how much you like me. Why didn’t you kiss me?
She responded: It was the first date and I’m mindful of boundaries.
I quickly came to understand: the lesbians of LA are not just sensitive, but live in vehement fear of crossing boundaries.
Gah, no wonder us New Yorkers are such abrasive sluts. By California standards, our whole culture is toxic. Our bodies are pressed against each other packed into crowded subways, daily. Throaty “fuck yousss!” make up the symphony of the city. Kissing is a dance move.
Curious, I asked the only woman who kissed me on the first date if she found me offensive.
“I don’t think so—” she answered.
I smiled primly. I knew it. I’m demure! And this was coming from an LA native.
“But I think a lot of people here would.”
Nasty.
“You kissed me on the first date,” I reminded her, smugly.
But then I remembered that it wasn’t even a first date. We were blackout drunk at a gay bar and had just met. I picked a fight with her about the validity of a certain pop-icon-of-the-moment, not knowing she works in music. All very on brand.
“You were very, very direct in your flirting,” she reminded me back. Fuzzily, I *do* recall not-so-subtly eye-fucking her before slurring, “I think you’re really, really, really HOT.” To which she replied, “should we make out?” We’ve been dating ever since.
I guess, in typical New York fashion, I bluntly spoke my feelings. And in typical LA fashion, she asked for my consent in making out.
“Who’s better in bed?” I asked. “New York or LA?”
“You can’t quantify good sex by city.”
“Don’t you get it?” I smirked. “I’m trying to get you to say New York. Which means I’m the best in bed, because you’re sleeping with me.”
I could tell by the shimmery glint in her big topaz eyes she totally got it. But that didn’t mean she was going to let this New York brat have her way. LA doesn’t indulge the “enfant terrible” like Manhattan does. Bad behavior on a grown adult doesn’t look so sexy in the harsh light of the sun, I suppose.
And then I began to think about all the ways Los Angeles and New York are good for each other.
In LA, I don’t have to be embarrassed to be a writer, people think it’s cool and they’re generally supportive. LA gives us permission to dream big without shame. And the gift New York bestows on LA is we make it so they don’t have to politely wonder if we’re attracted to them—we will straight up tell you that we think you’re “hot as fuck.”
New York grounds the LA dykes by informing the sparkliest Sapphic star that we (insert Brooklyn accent) “don’t care who you are. Just don’t be late to dinnah.” Which reminds her that she’s so much more than her fame—which ultimately helps her cultivate a self-worth that goes beyond the surface.
As I swilled my martini, alone in my apartment, I couldn’t help but wonder: do New York lesbians need a little bit of LA? And do LA lesbians need a little bit of New York? And when we join forces and date—do we cultivate the perfectly balanced partnership?
And then I remembered that all lesbians, no matter where we’re from have one thing in common: we’re all fucking nuts.
