It has always been my experience that if someone develops an affection for me, someone to whom I am not in the least attracted, I can spot that pretty quickly. Most of us can with a little practice - usually it comes quite quickly and naturally. Let me tell you, I can now spot that first tentative, little puppy dog tail-wag a mile off.

...and that, my friend was the good news.

The bad news is that if you are attracted to someone, it can be very difficult to separate your feelings, and your ideas of what you would like to see from them, from what you are, in fact, seeing. Words can be misleading, as we are only too prone to read in what we want to hear, or, depending on our mood, what we don't want to hear.

Usually, your best course, short of actually asking them, is to observe their actions...and, really, who would want to take all the fun out of things by just plain old asking. I mean, really, who would do that, I ask you? Oops...never mind.

Even actions, though are open to interpretation. Case in point... I was once wildly attracted to young man, an actor, who was later to become my room-mate.

I volunteered to crew on a show in which he was appearing, and was assigned as a dresser, to help out with the show's many quick costume changes. Thrust into very close contact with the young man, I found him very easy to talk to. He was gentle, funny, and courteous. He also didn't display any of the often irritating "me man, you woman" attitudes so prevalent then. Should have been my first clue...

I said nothing of my growing attraction to him, but one night during one of the changes, I was tying his cravat with only slightly unsteady hands, and I looked up into his dazzling blue eyes. He grinned down at me and lightly brushed his lips against my cheek. I swear the temperature in the room rose twenty degrees in two seconds.

By the time I had unglued my tongue from the roof of my mouth, he was back on stage. I cravenly fled the dressing room and stayed away for the rest of the show, busying myself with returning costumes to their hangers and rolling up tights for laundering.

The next day, dreaming of new love's sweet bloom, I was relating my experience to another male friend (who happened to be gay). He listened good-naturedly until I got to my interpretation of the kiss, and to my astonishment (and chagrin) began to hoot with uncontrollable laughter.

"Don't you know he's gay?" my friend finally gasped. "I've been after his bod for a year now, and he won't give me the time of day."

"But..." I stammered.

"He's an actor, dear," my friend reminded me. "What was his character supposed to do when he went back on stage?"

"He was returning from the wars," I replied a tad tartly. "He was supposed to rush to his fiance, take her in his arms and chastely but sweetly kiss her on the ...ohhh." My voice tailed off as I recalled the director's instructions to my inamorato.

My friend smiled comfortingly. "He's a very good actor," was all he said. We never spoke of the incident again until the actor and I were room-mates (platonic room-mates)...and then the stinker tried to get me to arrange a date for him with the actor.

Maybe we should flout convention and just ask...ya think?