Right at this moment, 24-year-old straight woman Emily Herrell is taking your sexuality as a prompt to discuss her one gay experience.
“One time I made out with a girl in college,” says Herrell mere seconds after learning you’re not a straight woman. “This girl started flirting with me first and I was just like, ‘Whoa, a girl who acts like a boy. Cool!’ So we made out and, anyway, that’s my pretty much my entire story.”
Herrell felt prompted to tell her story not from a related question you asked, but rather from your sexuality – specifically, the moment she realized it wasn’t straight.
“Well, I forgot there’s actually more to the story,” Herrell continues. “We went back to her place and kept making out for a few hours. Just making out though. Then I kept laughing the whole time. I was like, “Ha, ha! This is happening!’ So anyway, that’s the whole story of how I hooked up with another girl. Pretty crazy, right?”
Despite not giving any cues for Herrell to tell this story, you listened to the whole thing patiently anyway, as your brain tried piecing together what prompted her to begin it at all.
“Oh, she thinks this is relating,” you realize midway through her tale. “Except the only thing that makes this story relatable is the twist at the end, if the twist is that she’s gay.”
However, the twist at the end of Herrell’s story is not that she’s gay. Now you’ve officially bonded over nothing since the conversation began.
“Vaginas are crazy,” says Herrell, concluding her five minute-long unprompted story. “It’s like looking at some Stranger Things, upside down version of your own vagina. Like, it’s technically a vagina, but it’s not your vagina. Well, it’s your vagina, but it’s actually someone else’s vagina. It’s a vagina! El-oh-el, right?”
Without “el-oh-eling” out loud, you nod and agree that yes, vaginas are cool.
At the conclusion of this experience, Herrell takes your nod as a sign that you respect her more than other straight women for at least trying, and now considers you closer friends than you probably are.
