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Dear Breakup Girl,

Here's my problem. Imagine that all your life you've grown up in Amish country, riding horse-drawn buggies. Then one day, you're left in LA, given a set of car keys (and a car) and told to just figure it out.

Let me make this a bit more concerete. I grew up in a very sheltered environment. No dating allowed. And then I got to college. So here I am, half way through school, and I've never even been kissed yet. I'm still waiting at the on-ramp to the highway of Looove.

I've tried to get to know women around campus. I chat with girls in my classes, dorm, at meals etc. I've made female friends ... but nothing more. I'm not just a scone-baker [see "Scone Boy" -- BG] and loft-builder [see "Brad" and previous links -- BG] (although the Amish are good at baking and carpentry) I try to ask girls out -- but when we go to see a movie, we watch the movie, when we have a study date we study.

This is complicated by the fact that the women I "ask out" are also shy, so it's very possible that they're waiting for me to make the first move, but I'm so color-blind I just see red lights where there are green ones. So I asked a few close friends how I'll know if a girl wants me to make a move, and what I should do if she does. One told me that kisses just spontaneously happen, another said you find out by trying and getting slapped if you're wrong. The only thing I can tell is that most of the stories I've heard involved hooking up when drunk ... and given my sheltered upbringing, I'm not so into that. Somehow, for me, drinking and driving don't mix.

And its not as if I'm trying to go from 0-60 in 5 seconds. Sex sounds as if it will be fun, but I'm sure as heck not ready to parallel park yet. It's just that each week I read about massive collisions and 4 car pile-ups in your column, and I'm jealous. I'd love to go out for a long, slow, leisurely drive, but I keep stalling before I can get into first.

Can you help me get this show on the road, or am I to resign myself to a lifetime of delivering baked goods and furniture, by horse-cart ?

-- Amish Boy

Dear Jedediah,

Did you read in the news/the New Yorker/where else? about how part of an Amish upbringing/coming of age (for boys, anyway) is a period of being free to live in the "real world" -- ? (Kind of like being barmitzvahed in the movie "American Graffitti.") What this means in your world is that you can embrace your "Footloose" upbringing and be a little more footloose, without living a contradiction in terms.

But it also doesn't mean you have to go to or expect such extremes. Let's go back and find some middle ground somewhere between Lancaster and Gomorrah (alternative: Los Angeles).

1. First of all, you're not as hopelessly clueless as you think. Or to put it another way, everyone is clueless. Why, look at the divergent answers you're getting from only two friends.

2. Kissing does not "just happen" (then who's doing it?); "No" can be polite and verbal. See for yourself.

3. "Hooking up" does not happen only after drinking up. You know that.

See, Jeptha, I believe that you are legitimately ingenu. But working the "sheltered" thing gives you the nice, though slightly drafty, shelter of a "reason" as to why these gals haven't worked out. You do have a "different" background," but you are not that different; what's actually happening in your love life now sounds like: dating. College. Striking out here and there until you click with someone. Life.

So put away the toolbelt; I don't think there's much here to fix. Other than this: (without doing anything you're not comfortable with, of course) quit raising barns, and go raise the roof.

Love,
Breakup Girl

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