Step-tug-tug-smooth

Just like when an Honors Geometry teachers gives partial credit to a student whose attempt at a tough proof - misguided and wrong as it may have been - exhibits intuitive, creative problem-solving skills, I too hold something back from my usually withering critiques when I see someone trying but ultimately failing to execute an intended "look."

Her dress was a black-eyelet cap-sleeved sheath with a scalloped boatneck and tiny leather waist-cinch that hit just below the knee.

Stunning, right?

Well, yes and no. The dress itself was flawless, and from the waist-cinch up, so was the drape. But while this thinkin'-she-looked-so-good brunette clearly had a puts-in-the-time-and-reaps-the-rewards size-4 figure, the extremely fitted bottom half (think pencil skirt skinny) was so painted over her hips-to-ass contour that with every step - literally, every step - she had to stop, tug at the left side of the hem, tug at the right side of the hem, smooth out the material and continue.

Graceful though her corrective movements were, between 17th and ConnAve on M St. alone, she must have gone through at least 15 step-tug-tug-smooth repetitions. Needless to say, she and her too-tight-edness did not go unnoticed.

Once she made it to the intersection, however, all judgmental looks dissipated -- standing still and at full, upright attention (she was about 5'11" with her 4-inch heels), this woman had discovered the absolute perfect wardrobe component to flatter her frame.

The seconds soon ticked down, the light turned red and the little white man ushered the cattle to cross. Almost immediately, even with that first push off the curb, there she went, each struggling strut distancing her further and further away from that statuesque static moment she'd just achieved opposite Burberry's god-awful Fall preview window displays.

And that was just the walk to work. Now I've got to take myself, my too-tight, purchased-in-an-impulse vintage dress ("it'll fit one day...") all the way to dinner with L and then another six blocks home.

I'm anticipating that translates to somewhere along the lines of 1,932 step-tug-tug-smooths.

Lessons for the day:
(1) Listen to your it-feels-kinda-tight instinct and return the dress to the hanger
(2) Follow my own GD advice

The *other* kind of girl-date

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post in which I put forth the following operational definition for the term "girl-date":

A girl-date is when two women who are relatively unfamiliar with one another decide they want to explore a more meaningful friendship outside of their current circumstances and do so by setting up a meeting whereby the potential for said meaningful friendship can be more deeply explored.

Eloquently crafted as it may be, I don't think this definition is as tightly written as I originally thought it was. What brought about this second-look analysis was the pop-up reminder I received this morning from my Outlook calendar that read, "girl-date: dinner at Nooshi with L."

The girl-date I have tonight, just like the one I had with E two Thursdays ago, is still a "date" in the sense we're meeting one-on-one, an alcoholic beverage or two will be imbibed, I took extra care to distribute the glimmer on my legs and wore a skirt to show off that fact and we'll no doubt engage in a back-and-forth discussion of how little sex - "little" being a generous description in my case - we're having these days. But unlike E, L doesn't fall into the "relatively unfamiliar" category, nor was this meeting set up to "more deeply explore" the "potential" for a "meaningful friendship." On the contrary, L has been a mainstay in my social calendar for years, and tonight's meeting, just like handfuls and handfuls of others we've shared since I arrived fresh from the oil fields of glorious Daqing three years ago, will be of the more comfortable, familiar sort. To put it in celebri-tard terms, if I'm Paris Hilton, E is my Kim Kardashian (gratuitous picture below) while L is my Nicole Richie. Minus that whole driving-the-wrong-way-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-highway "misunderstanding," of course.

Like Nicole to Paris, L has known me as someone's long-term girlfriend; she's known me pre-puppy-whipped when I would actually refer to dogs by the gender-neutral "it" and say things like, "I would never let something that licked its own junk sleep in my bed"; she's known me before I fell in love with New York and everything in it; she's known me long before this blog took over my life and increased what I had thought at the time was an already high threshold for undignified, irreverent humor; and yes, L has even been around long enough to earn the distinct privilege of being on the receiving end of my mother's monthly at-least-25-pounds care packages, which, depending on what was on sale at Meijer, could include a swag-bag filled with anything from triple-berry muffin mix to Magic Erasers to an Eclipse gum Big-E-Pak dispenser to blocks and blocks of pepper-jack cheese. Yes, cheese. Surprising even myself, on one occasion, I decided to give L one of my prized family-size boxes of antibacterial lotion-infused Puffs Plus. It may not seem like much, but I cry on average something like four times a day, so the sacrifice went well-beyond the $4 sticker price.

And of course, because she's L, she understood that.

So tonight might not carry with it the nervous stomach-flutters, the am-I-looking-her-in-the-eye-too-often? inner-dialogue, or the obligatory "who's the one you'll never get over?" conversation-starter, but sometimes that's just as well. Sometimes, all that first-date drama is too much to bear on a 90-degree hump-day when your bits are still tender from last week's Brazilian and the ulcer you're sure is forming as a result of the can't-get-it-off-your-mind dress-indecision for Monday night's dinner in Manhattan with your ultra-stylish college BFF only compounds the discomfort you feel with every crossing and re-crossing of the legs.

Sometimes there's nothing more motivating to get you through the work day than the knowledge that come 5:30 you'll be in the presence of a cold Tsingtao and someone with whom first impressions are a done-deal. Just an hour and a half of being around a friend who has already accepted - and even enjoys - the fact you send her bi-daily e-mails with attached pictures of clothes and shoes you can't afford, celebrities with whom you wish you could change places just so you could have access to their clothes and shoes, and more often than not, the little man in your life who, despite his junk-licking tendencies, is the most welcome of any beast in your Indonesian-teak queen-size -- sometimes, that's the kind of girl-date a girl needs most.

When Georgetown's good, it's *really* good.

Most days of the week, most weekends in the month, most holidays during the year (graduation season, included), you couldn't tempt me with a Cusp giftcard to put up with Georgetown. It's a mix of the crowd, the style, the stores, the tourists and their hold-everyone-up pace, and most notably, the ubiquitous sense of entitlement with which I inevitably come into contact that never fails to ruin my day.

Some days, though, WiscAve from Sequoia to Urban Chic and M St. from Hu's Shoes to Waterworks - Georgetown's shopping district - is good. Really good.

And sometimes, when the weather, the company, and your mood is just right, even the walk from Logan Circle to Lily-Pulitzer-central can turn a brokenhearted girl into a hopeful one.

If she stops at Betsy Fisher, that is, and drinks a Pinot spritzer while trying on a couple of beautiful dresses she might one day be able to afford.

Readers, enjoy below today's low-pixelage shopping diary:

Python-trimmed grey plisse racerback dress by June

($400, in-store only at the Betsy Fisher boutique)

I tried to look surprised instead of "I know, right?" when

Betsy told me this dress made my chest look amazing.Eyelet housewife dress by Vivienne Tam

($445, in-store only at the Betsy Fisher boutique)

I imagine myself wearing this dress commando with pearl studs
handing the man I love a packed-with-care sack lunch while

whispering in his ear how I'm going to ______ his ______ off

when he gets home from work.

High-waisted black-scribble-print pencil skirt
($149, in-store only at Club Monaco)

L insisted you get an ass shot. Thank her, not me.
Metallic Ankle-Strap Sandal by Maison Martin Margiela
($645, in-store only at Hu's Shoes) In the end, pricey duds are nice, but all a girl really needs on a

sunny May day is to find an identical twin (in black) to her

under-$100 red Zara baby and a thick-strawed Thai bubble

milk-tea with extra tapioca bubbles ($4.25 at Snap)

Okay, that's complete bullshit.

The truth is, I offered the extremely gracious salesman at Hu's his choice of any and all of my vital organs - even those I only have one of - for those unbelievably sexy, unbelievably so very me, last-pair-in-my-size gold-bangle-ankle-strap stilettos but he wouldn't budge. Sugar Daddies, please take note -- I wear a 38.

We hit it. Hit it off, that is.

With its antique wooden window frames cranked open for the season and its mix of young professionals sipping martinis, journalists and sources talking more than imbibing, lawyers not-so-subtley looking for wife number two and super-tanned, in-for-just-the-day Miami businessmen, Spezie on a mid-May day is about as lovely a happy hour setting as you'll find in Northwest DC.

And the perfect backdrop for a promising first date.

From the second I walked in the wine bar's familiar set of double-doors and was greeted on my left side - my good side - by the large bevelled mirror that not once in all the times I've had lunch, drinks and dinner there has been spoiled by a single fingerprint or failed to elicit from me a tilt-of-the-head and a wistfully sighed, "I so wish I had that in my bedroom," I knew my decision to spend the evening out on the town instead of in on the couch would be well worth the wrath I'd incur from my used-to-having-Mommy-home-all-night-every-night 13lb dollop of wonderful.

Before I'd even finished my quick eyeliner touch up in another large mirror - this one through a second set of doors by the hostess' podium - I was approached rather aggressively by a very nervous, very sweaty man in his mid-30s.

"Are you Christine? Excuse me, miss, are you Christine?"

"Wha...what? Am I Christine?" I asked the man, startled at the urgency in his voice.

"You're Christine? Oh god, good. Hi, I'm..."

"No, I'm not Christine," I said, finally grasping the situation, "I'm Johanna, but it's nice to..."

"Shit."

After he plodded off, I stood stunned for a minute until the devilishly handsome, looks-like-he-should-be-a-bit-character-on-The-Sopranos owner approached me, nodded as hosts do when they recognize a regular customer, and said, "Your companion, he is on his way, no?" in a way that implied he knew the answer before he'd even asked the question.

"No, actually he's not...we're not...I have different company tonight."

"Oh. Well, you such a pretty girl, no wonder you have different company. Keep it spicy, yes?"

Not wanting to enter into a conversation that would require more than the length of the walk from where I was to where I needed to be, I offered him my best it-was-his-decision-not-mine smile, a dull attempt at coyness with, "Well, spicy is better than bland, isn't it?" and began to navigate my way through the dining room to where I now saw E sitting perched on a stool at the bar.

E: hair down, Riesling, black shirtdress, black stiletto slingbacks, fabulous pearl cocktail ring.

J: hair pulled tightly back, Bellini, red and black wrapdress, black stiletto peeptoes, fabulous Indonesian spinel cocktail ring.

Before we even started in on the get-to-know-yous, it was clear our subtle differences aroused curiosity while our similarities put us both at ease. In short, we were a perfect girl-girl complement.

"Did that guy ask you if you were Christine?" E asked as I looped my daybag's double-shoulder-straps around the jut of the barstool.

"He did, why, did he ask you, too?"

"Mmmhmm, I think it's an Internet date. An Internet date that's not starting off so well."

"That's so sad."

"I know."

And in perfect Olsen-twin unison, the two of us turned and tilted our heads toward the gentleman's table and conjured up our most sympathetic "it happens to all of us" look, not thinking ahead of time how the extra attention might exacerbate his already apparent hyper-anxiety.

"So..." I started off, "tell me what it is you do over there at that consulting firm of yours."

And thus the girl-date began, just like a regular date, with back-and-forth questions about that day's happenings, recent bad dates (she'd had a dinner date with a guy who decided to eat before he picked her up; I'd had a date with a guy who ordered apple martinis with Diet Coke chasers), siblings, parents, did-she-know-this-person-at-her-college?, did-I-know-that-person-at-my-university? and so on and so on.

About three sips into our second round, we had our first pause, and it was clear that subject was no longer avoidable.

So we dove in, head-first, each reciprocating after the other had her turn, not in an obligatory you-went-now-it's-my-turn kind of way but in a completely genuine, completely equal, give-and-take fashion.

Not one to bring specific personal woes into the public fold, I shant divulge much of what was discussed during our intense, nearly two-hour, why-does-that-Rachael-Yamagata-lyric-resonate-so-strongly-with-you? conversation, but I will say that like our jobs, our shoe preferences and our seats in our colleges' Varsity eights, E and I are that rare match where we're vastly different in some ways but extraordinarily similar in the more important ones, a fact I knew right away when I discovered we both, at 27, still send our parents Valentines.

A second date? For sure. And this one might even involve that riding crop I didn't get to use tonight.

Not with her, anyway.

Wishlist addition.

En route to finding L the wardrobe staple no other DC woman is more qualified to sniff out - a for-work black pencil skirt - I happened to fall straight into the soft cotton arms of this absolutely stunning plunge-neck Catherine Malandrino eyelet dress with floral-appliquéd bust and embroidered, cutout hem.

Even though on a good day it's still $150 out of my price range, even though it would cost me another $30 to have Alecia let out the bustline a half-inch, and even though it would require me to find an occasion worthy of its debut, I am seriously considering offering this let's-take-the-train-to-Penn-Station-on-a-summer-whim confection a place not on my wishlist wishlist but on the much more exclusive it-might-actually-happen wishlist.

What is it about this dress that makes me seriously consider cutting out groceries, not buying a much-needed new pair of running shoes and swearing off any iTunes downloads until 2008?

To start, it's the personification of summer. As soon as I slipped it on and L zipped me up as best she could - the "ladies" wouldn't allow a perfect fit - I felt a series of simultaneous transformations take place.

I felt like a woman who had nothing better to do than find the perfect summer sandals to go with her perfect summer dress.

I felt like a spoiled rich princess who, in celebration of finishing her Ivy League education and thus activating her windfall of a trust-fund, decided she would fly her three best girlfriends, her dog and herself to the Amalfi Coast for a long weekend of "earned" vacation.

I felt like I should be walking down a warm, breezy sidewalk opposite the Park on the Upper West Side, soaking up the be-freckling sunshine and counting the hours until my lov-ah would leave his office and meet me for pre-dinner antipasti and pints of Stella at Fiorello's.

Basically, I felt like this but tanner and with a much better dress:

What if we all wore this to the range?

Would that convince Mayor Fenty not to challenge the Court's decision to allow firearms in the District?

Even the most strident anti-gun politician - male politician (and Hillary, of course) - has to admit these Brigitte-Nielsen-circa-Rocky-IV-esque photos from last September's issue of Vogue Italia are smokin' hot.

And a legitimate reason to think twice before denying all the pretty girls with strong legs, kohled eyes and a penchant for spiked heels their desire to rapid fire a few boxes off in a licensed shooting-range.

(scanned photos courtesy of L's boy R)

Eva Mendes has great...eye makeup

To get this eye done just right would take hours of practice, a Chanel-or-better liquid eyeliner, and an intensely steady hand.

It'll surely invite the Republicans, scare away the Democrats, and incur bitchy stares from any woman who's remotely proper. It'll take years off your educational background, insinuate a proclivity for unethical behavior, and even though it's entirely District-inappropriate, if I'm still feeling Eva's take on the Edie-Sedgwick-eye this Saturday, I'm SO having L draw me up some of this sexiness.

Because the exaggerated cat-eye is the equivalent of gratuitious cleavage on the affecting-men-down-there scale, one would need to wear a fitted but not revealing ensemble to offset its severity. Perhaps my new black frilly-front halter with black skinny jeans and red suede almond-toeds? Perhaps an understated, pouf-sleeved minidress with platform heels?

Once the outfit is locked down, there's still the little problem of venue. Where in DC could a woman wear such meeeoww makeup, lounge about with a Bellini and not be completely - and simultaneously, according to persuasion - mauled and ostracized? Black Cat? 9:30 Club? Round Robin?

Reader suggestions are warmly welcomed on this front.

And just because it's fun to look at hot women, here's another photo of Eva's impressive eye makeup from the new issue of DT Magazine.

The girlfriend birthday present.

I want to say up front that even though this post may seem self-serving, it sincerely isn't. For some cruel reason, what should be four straight weeks of celebrating all things me - a 31-day Johanna jamboree, if you will - is actually a without-a-break month of present buying for the disproportionate number of Pisces in my circle of friends.

I'm sure it sounds wholly insensitive, but I have created tiers of present-worthiness among my friends. A girl on a budget has no choice but to do so.

In my hierarchy, there are several groups: the $10-and-under just-met-you-but-think-you-have-potential friends, the $20-and-under happy-hour-and-brunch-only friends, the $50-and-under I-like-you-enough-to-tell-you-about-my-personal-life friends, and the $100-and-under inner sanctum of family members and I'm-willing-to-Tivo-your-shows-even-though-I-don't-watch-them friends.

I've also had the displeasure of recently discovering a new group: the you're-on-your-way-out friends. These special girls can expect nothing more than a one-liner in a $.99 card.

I should also mention that the price points I've set are nothing more than ceilings; if I find my preggers sister-in-law - and fellow March 6th celebrant - the perfect gift for $26.75 at a vintage boutique, I don't need to continue looking to spend $73.25. The goal, after all, when purchasing a girlfriend birthday present is not to demonstrate how much cash you were willing to drop on her, but rather, how successful you were in procuring the most so-her item.

Below, I've put together some ideas for every level of girlfriend.

Happy purchasing!

$10 and under:

- A jumbo bag of her favorite candy and a 20 oz. of her favorite soda

- Her favorite '80s movie on DVD (usually in a bin by the register)

- An OPI nail polish in her preferred color palette

- A bag of good coffee beans/tea leaves

- A high-quality card from a specialty shop

- Kiehl's Lip Balm SPF 15

- Her own travel-size bottle of the lotion she's always borrowing from you

- Baking her favorite cupcakes/scones/muffins

- Gourmet treats or a toy for her pet (believe me)

- A bar of soap from Lush

$20 and under:

- A sheet of stamps personalized with a meaningful picture*

- A vintage scarf

- A manicure at her favorite salon

- A tissue-soft Charlotte tee from Urban Outfitters

- A high-quality lipstick/gloss in her preferred color palette

- An Anthropologie headband

- An autographed copy of her favorite author's book**

- A pair of sexy underwear (when in doubt, buy them too small)

- Her favorite luxe hair product you know she's almost out of

$50 and under:

- Two tickets to a 9:30 Club show

- A vintage clutch or cocktail ring

- An on-sale Ella Moss tee from shopbutante.com

- A pedicure or bikini wax at her favorite salon

- Flowers at work (this makes every woman's day)

- A cute pair of on-sale flats

- A good bronzer brush

- A Rachel Weissman/France Luxe headband

- A one-year subscription to her favorite magazine

- A bottle of Moet & Chandon, Veuve, or her favorite wine

$100 and under:

- A blouse she'd love but never buy herself

- A haircut or manicure/pedicure at her favorite salon

- A contribution toward the new pair of premium jeans she wants

- A cute pair of regular-priced flats

- Her favorite perfume you know she's almost out of

- A clutch to complement her new favorite shoes

- The DVD box set of her favorite TV show

- A vintage dress

- A great cuff

- $50 in singles and four drinks on you at Camelot

* credit for this idea goes to the ever-thoughtful L

** the trick is to keep your eyes open year-round for this gift

The second best-dressed couple

Gratuitous, I know, but how adorable are we?

Don't worry, I let him take the tux off as soon as the photo shoot ended and gave him a puppy-safe treat from Mommy's ridiculously lavish Oscar buffet as compensation for his cooperation.

(photo credit goes to L, my steadfast snarky celebrity-watching partner)