The Way Girls Feel About Boys

Mad About You

He’s sitting next to me on the couch. He’s got his Santa Claus Santa Claus suspenders on. This means he’s got suspenders which have Santa Claus on them, but they also happen to be the suspenders he’ll wear when playing Santa Claus. Though I doubt this will happen, because, while he is jolly (mostly a sarcastic jolly, though) he’s not fat. And never will be.

Thomas’ new roommate is sitting on a couch across the way. Earlier tonight she was mad because he made a comment about the way she looked and she didn’t appreciate it. (Yes. The guy in the Santa Claus suspenders attached to madras shorts made a snide comment about how someone else looked…) But then she tried to explain her anger and started making excuses for it, almost apologizing.  ‘No. It’s not like I have a self esteem issue, I just don’t appreciate it when people tell me what to do.” Then she went on to explain how mom’s do this to daughters a lot. Differed guilt. I completely understood what she was talking about.

But he didn’t understand. He kept clawing at the issue until it had no option but to bleed. In her attempt to explain her frustration, she became even more frustrated. It resulted in her getting up off the couch and going into the kitchen for a while.

They study this. I think they call it linguistics. There’s a word for it. Syntax, maybe.

They made up ten minutes later. She gave him a hug and said she couldn’t stay mad at him for long, not with those suspenders on.

What I Want

Four a.m. End of the party. There’s already one person passed out on the couch. I’ve already got a friend coming home with me to pass out on mine.

But there’s this boy left over. He’s the remainder of this long division night.

“Please let me come home with you,” he begs.

“You’re either going to sleep on the floor here or on the floor at my apartment, so…”

“Please,” he pleads again.

“Whatever.” But then, rethinking things, I stick my finger in his face and say in a very stern tone “but you’re not getting into my bed, ok?”

“Yeah. Totally,” he agrees.

And the three of us fumble down the street, creating wave frequencies on the sidewalk with our drunken staggers.

Arriving home, he immediately tries to sit on the sofa, but my friend immediately kicks him off, and stretches out, claiming her territory. While I wash my face, he stiffly places himself in an angular, upright chair and drapes a measeley afghan over his legs, making every attempt to look as pathetic as possible.

I emerge from the bathroom and he looks at me with whimpering eyes outlined in dark bags. “Can I please sleep in your bed?”

I huff.

“Please? I promise I won’t try anything.”

“Whatever.” And for the second time tonight, I give in.

But strange things happen when, if my bed were a cauldron, you begin to mix whiskey, four a.m., not being able to sleep anyway, a boy who has a very decent beard, decent conversation, conversation about sex, a hot summer, a boy who was so hot he needed to take his shirt off, a boy who has a very decent chest of manly hair, and me, who hasn’t had a boy in my bed for a while.

“Let me kiss you,” he says rather than asks.

“Seriously? What did I tell you earlier?!”

He brushes aside the pillow I’d cleverly placed between our bodies. He pulls me in so that where we were once the outline of the bed, we’re now the content.

“Why are you denying yourself something you want?” he asks.

And this is where the record screeches to a halt. This is when all the feminists in the room throw up their hands and shake their heads. This is the part of the story where you decide he’s an asshole. This is the part of the story where you determine what kind of character I am- either strong and assertive or naïve and guillable.

So what. Maybe I am naïve and guillable. But he was right.