It happened. That moment when your gay life crystallizes dismally in front of your eyes.

That moment is often followed by another moment when you petrify your friends by threatening to go straight.

It happened to me on the Friday night of Pride weekend. A couple of friends and I attended the Seattle Storm game, per usual. Then everything got unusual. We left Key Arena and decided to stop in at a Pride kick-off party happening inches away.

Inside the enormous room, music pulsed and bodies gyrated, but it was still early and most people stood away from the dance floor, chatting and drinking bad beer.

I realized that standing near us was a woman I’d had the beginnings of a thang with last fall. The thang halted when she declared, wisely and accurately, that she hadn’t been out long enough to get serious, and I, wisely and morosely, didn’t argue. I hadn’t seen her since, but there she stood. Accompanied by a woman with whom she may or may not be serious.

I also spotted a friend of mine across the room. I debated whether to walk over and say hi because standing next to her was my ex. The ex and I don’t have much contact, in flagrant violation of lesbian law. But I knew I could exchange a few words with her and her partner without the aid of Condoleezza Rice, so I marched over to greet all of them.

Didn’t make it. I veered off when I saw my friend was talking to a gal I went out with once. I never grasped what kind of misunderstanding she and I had, but I got the impression she believed my sanity bucket had a leak, so she’s not a person I’m ever pleased to see.

I whirled on the two friends in my wake and demanded, “Can this night get any worse?

I was not into the humor of the situation. At that moment it felt like I’d walked into a coven of my failures. God, I thought, Seattle is a city, so how can they all be here in the same place, at the same time? What a lousy start to Pride. I wanna go home to bed, and who sucked all the air out of this room?

This snapshot of my recent lesbian life was no keeper. I felt each successive sighting as weight on my shoulders. By the third sighting I felt as though I was knee-deep in floor.

I knew a real desire to flee. Not flee the room, flee Seattle. I’d reached that claustrophobic point where going out could mean running smack into a passel of exes and errors.

Six years ago, one reason I left New Hampshire and moved here was a hankering for a bigger gay community. Guess what? It’s never big enough to avoid scenes like this one!

What would a therapist see in me, besides dollar signs? I’m not asking why I have so many flubbed relationships – all the therapists in Seattle couldn’t untangle that mess of a question. I suspect an expert would advise me to rename and reframe “failure.” I’m quick to view any romance that didn’t result in “I do” as a flop. After all, in the case of specimen number one that night, she and I didn’t fail, we just had bad timing.

So I shouldn’t be such a drama queen. I should take the view that these relationships weren’t failures but life experiences, and I’m better for them. And after I’ve mastered that, I’ll learn how to take out my own appendix.

Leslie Robinson lives in Seattle. For now.

E-mail her at editor@uptownpub.com.