Auntie SparkNotes: Turnabout Surprise

Dear Auntie Sparknotes,

Winter formal is just around the corner at my school, and this year it is going to be a Sadie Hawkins dance. You know what that means- all us crazy females get a chance to put our gurrrrl power on and go ask out a hunky man-friend to the ball, for once. Only there's one, little, tiny, minuscule problem- I don't want to ask out a him... I want to ask out a.... (dramatic pause for emphasis) HER!

DUN DUN DUN!!!

She's a wonderful lady, who I am dubbing "Classy McAwesomepants." Classy and I have known each other for a while and become pretty close friends. I didn't really realize that I had the warm-and-fuzzies for her until the beginning of this year, which led to paranoia over what would happen if Classy found out I had a biiiiig lesbian crush on her. Eventually one of my other friends convinced me that the best thing to do was to just flat-out tell Classy McAwesomepants that I liked her so that I could finally stop driving myself insane. And so I did, over the phone, in tears and everything. The conversation sorta went like the ending of "The Empire Strikes Back" when (SPOILERS!) Han is slowly descending into carbonite and Princess Leia realizes she needs to confess her true feelings to Han.

Leia : I love you!
Han: I know.

Only instead of cool-space princess who changes outfits every scene, you had me, and instead of a hunky space pirate going to his doom, you had a mildly confused Asian girl. It turns out I have absolutely no powers of subtlety, and Classy had basically known the whole time that I liked her and just went along with pretending like she didn't suspect anything for my sake. But now the truth was out, and she didn't abandon me or run away screaming or anything! But she also didn't confess her secret love for me, either. On the bright side, our friendship is a lot better now.

So that brings us back to the dance. I really, really, REALLY LIKE OMG want to ask her to the dance. Only there's two kinda obvious problems here:
1. She might want to ask somebody with an actual penis to go with her, and
2. She might not say yes if I ask her.

Now I know everyone always goes on and on about how you can't turn anyone gay or straight, but I just can't seem to wrap my head around that idea since I'm bi and can't imagine not being able to like somebody just because they were born with the wrong set of junk. So I suppose the whole point of this rather long-winded letter was this: Do you think I should ask Classy McAwesomepants to the dance? Should I give up and realize my lack of manly-parts means that she will never love me? And what the heck do you do for a Sadie Hawkins dance if a girl wants to ask a girl?

Well, let's start with your last question first: considering that the concept of Sadie Hawkins and/or turnabout dances stems from a time when it was super-weird and unheard of for a girl to take any sort of dating initiative—let alone have a (gasp!) big gay romance right out in the (bigger gasp!) open air—I don't think there's any specific Sadie Hawkins etiquette in place for girl-on-girl asking. And since the whole point is just that you, the lady, are the one to make the move, all that matters that you take the reins... and if the horse you take the reins on is a filly instead of a stallion, well, who cares.

And so concludes our barnyard metaphor.

That said, I think you can safely assume that your friend isn't likely to accept your offer—which I say only because her reaction to your crush has been the reaction that most people have when they find themselves on the receiving end of unrequited affection, which is to a) ignore it, or b) if they can't ignore it, to acknowledge but not encourage it. And while she hasn't explicitly rejected you, that's probably only because she thinks that she doesn't need to; if she's straight, then her orientation speaks for itself. And no, hard as it may be to understand, you really can't change another person's sexual construction. Some people's barn doors only swing in one direction, and that's all there is to it.

And so concludes our second barnyard metaphor!

But hey, you know what?
Ask her anyway.

Really. If only for the simple reason that you want to. And while you can (and should) go in fully prepared that this ship won't sail, the only thing you have to lose is a pile of false hope—which is one thing we're all better off without.

Got some support for our Sparkler? Leave it in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.