[James282]

When I was in college, I was in a similar situation and feeling really gay because I normally have no problem at all asking a girl out etc..but she was a girl I knew from work and it was a similar thing, there was no way for us to NOT see eachother for the semester if things were weird. So I just made a joke out of asking her for her screen name. One funny thing is that pretty much everyone is embarassed to say their screen name. Casually make a joke about this sometime in a decent context.

"Ever notice how even the most confident people mutter their screen names when you ask them? Hey, what's your screen name? 'Uh..SkiTheSlopesFast112...' 'peanutbuttergirl, it's a long story...' Everyone is at least LITTLE embarassed about their screen name."

This was a really long time ago, so that's not exactly what I said, but it worked like a charm and we both laughed about how stupid our screen names were. She IM'd me later that week to ask what was going on that following weekend.
-James