goals. I knew I found them interesting, I knew I liked their faces, and I knew if we met (like if they maybe moved to Maine to escape the pressures of stardom) I’d want them to like me. Beyond that I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen. And once I found out, I was so nauseated that my daydreams would only reach the point where I kissed the object of my affection (a.k.a. the middle brother from 3 Ninjas ) before the dream cut out like a busted VHS and started again from the beginning.
I went through two phases of trying to win the affection of boys. While we were still young enough that sexual contact was off the table, I waged a full-out assault on the seemingly impenetrable interests of the male. I was short, I was loud, I wore the same thing to school for days at a time—where was I going wrong?
During that blissful period before I had to think about sex, I liked to present myself as “boy crazy.” I did like boys, both boys that I knew and the appropriately feminine boys in Teen Beat , but I played up being “boy crazy” because it seemed like the trait of a pretty, popular girl. In third grade, I took a quiz in Seventeen magazine and brought it to school.
“I’m totally boy crazy according to this. It’s so embarrassing. Look!”
I’d looked at the answer key prior to marking each questionbut thought my classmates would be duly impressed. My teacher took a look at the magazine and cautioned me to curb this quality as I got older. What is she talking about? The whole point of this is to seem like a cool, older girl! It took me years to realize she was warning me not to become a slut.
For as much as I thought about boys, which wasn’t as much as I pretended but was still a lot, they did not seem interested in holding up their end of the bargain. They were supposed to stride up to me in the cafeteria, push Libby Perrino and her shiny black hair to the side, and ask me to the school dance. But we didn’t have dances in elementary school, and none of the boys I knew wanted to talk to me anyway.
Wait, that’s it! By fifth grade, I cracked a major development in strategy. I needed to get boys to talk to me. I wasn’t pretty, but I could make them like me through the magic of conversation, or at least trick them into revealing some actionable knowledge and go from there. My current crush was Matty Boothe. He had dirty-blond hair and seemed dangerous in that way that only a fifth-grade boy from Maine can. The only thing I knew about him was that he liked gory movies, so I spent a few weeks letting my older brother pick the movie rentals for a change. We’d tell our parents we got FernGully again and wait until they went to bed to sneak downstairs and watch his selection. I forced myself to sit through horror films and action films and Pulp Fiction . I knew I was unprepared to see some of them ( Pulp fucking Fiction !) but I was going to turn myself into Matty Boothe’s dream girl, dammit.
One day he stayed after class because he hadn’t done hishomework (mah boy was such a rebel!), and I lingered and pretended to clean up my desk. I ever so casually struck up a conversation.
“Oh, Matty, you know the other day”—three weeks ago—“when you were talking about the grossest movies you’d ever seen?”
Cue Matty looking up at me, cautiously intrigued.
“Well, I’ve got a really gross one for you. Have you ever seen Outbreak ?”
“ Outbreak isn’t gross. It’s not even scary.”
“Yeah, totally.”
Okay, so talking to boys had not been a success. But I didn’t blame myself for not watching movies that were gross enough or scary enough for this boy’s taste. If anything, I walked away thinking, Wow, talking to boys is not that fun. Or at least, talking to a boy with whom I have nothing in common, and who has no interest in me, is not that fun. New development! I just won’t bother with boys who don’t like me or any of the things that I like! I’ve learned my lesson and I’ll
I went through two phases of trying to win the affection of boys. While we were still young enough that sexual contact was off the table, I waged a full-out assault on the seemingly impenetrable interests of the male. I was short, I was loud, I wore the same thing to school for days at a time—where was I going wrong?
During that blissful period before I had to think about sex, I liked to present myself as “boy crazy.” I did like boys, both boys that I knew and the appropriately feminine boys in Teen Beat , but I played up being “boy crazy” because it seemed like the trait of a pretty, popular girl. In third grade, I took a quiz in Seventeen magazine and brought it to school.
“I’m totally boy crazy according to this. It’s so embarrassing. Look!”
I’d looked at the answer key prior to marking each questionbut thought my classmates would be duly impressed. My teacher took a look at the magazine and cautioned me to curb this quality as I got older. What is she talking about? The whole point of this is to seem like a cool, older girl! It took me years to realize she was warning me not to become a slut.
For as much as I thought about boys, which wasn’t as much as I pretended but was still a lot, they did not seem interested in holding up their end of the bargain. They were supposed to stride up to me in the cafeteria, push Libby Perrino and her shiny black hair to the side, and ask me to the school dance. But we didn’t have dances in elementary school, and none of the boys I knew wanted to talk to me anyway.
Wait, that’s it! By fifth grade, I cracked a major development in strategy. I needed to get boys to talk to me. I wasn’t pretty, but I could make them like me through the magic of conversation, or at least trick them into revealing some actionable knowledge and go from there. My current crush was Matty Boothe. He had dirty-blond hair and seemed dangerous in that way that only a fifth-grade boy from Maine can. The only thing I knew about him was that he liked gory movies, so I spent a few weeks letting my older brother pick the movie rentals for a change. We’d tell our parents we got FernGully again and wait until they went to bed to sneak downstairs and watch his selection. I forced myself to sit through horror films and action films and Pulp Fiction . I knew I was unprepared to see some of them ( Pulp fucking Fiction !) but I was going to turn myself into Matty Boothe’s dream girl, dammit.
One day he stayed after class because he hadn’t done hishomework (mah boy was such a rebel!), and I lingered and pretended to clean up my desk. I ever so casually struck up a conversation.
“Oh, Matty, you know the other day”—three weeks ago—“when you were talking about the grossest movies you’d ever seen?”
Cue Matty looking up at me, cautiously intrigued.
“Well, I’ve got a really gross one for you. Have you ever seen Outbreak ?”
“ Outbreak isn’t gross. It’s not even scary.”
“Yeah, totally.”
Okay, so talking to boys had not been a success. But I didn’t blame myself for not watching movies that were gross enough or scary enough for this boy’s taste. If anything, I walked away thinking, Wow, talking to boys is not that fun. Or at least, talking to a boy with whom I have nothing in common, and who has no interest in me, is not that fun. New development! I just won’t bother with boys who don’t like me or any of the things that I like! I’ve learned my lesson and I’ll
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