How to Meet Cute Boys
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Synopsis
Benjamina Franklin is a star journalist who chronicles her dating disasters for “Filly,” a women’s magazine. When she meets Max, she thinks she’s finally met the man of her dreams. And just in time—her little sister’s wedding is only a few months away. The only problem is that Max turns out to be younger. A lot younger. Soon he’s exhibiting classic signs of Benjamina’s worst nightmare: male commitment phobia. Will Max leave her to be single and broken-hearted? Or will Benjamina realize that her life is full without a pseudo boyfriend. Women everywhere will laugh and cry along with Benjamina as she navigates the highs and lows of the modern dating world.
Release date: February 28, 2009
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Print pages: 272
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How to Meet Cute Boys
Deanna Kizis
ACCLAIM FOR
HOW TO MEET CUTE BOYS
“Entertaining…Ben is a smart and funny heroine who wisecracks with the best of them. Particular highlights are the Filly magazine pieces written by Benjamina herself. A very enjoyable book that will give a boost to the intelligence quotient of
the entire genre. Recommended.”
—Library Journal
“Light and funny.…Kizis cleverly parodies the shallow magazine world.”
—Romantic Times Bookclub Magazine
“Elle recommends HOW TO MEET CUTE BOYS…a late-summer breeze of a novel.”
—Elle
“Sharpen your eyebrow pencil and take those funny quizzes.…Kizis deftly skewers L.A. celebrities and the publicity party scene,
throwing in some priceless one-liners about the perils of modern dating to boot.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A blast to read.…Kizis pulls it all off with great style. Think of this novel as the Lucky magazine of dating.”
—Dany Levy, founder/chairman of DailyCandy, Inc.
“Witty…engaging…an impressive debut from one of America’s top young writers.”
—Roberta Myers, editor in chief, Elle
“Hysterical…an excellent, funny novel.…The author definitely has a witty sense of humor.”
—BookReviewCafe.com
“Hilarious…thoroughly entertaining!…It’s perfect.”
—Bestsellersworld.com
“Wonderful…hilariously accurate.…Compulsively readable, Ben’s observations on life, friends, and lovers are honest and amusing.”
—TheRomanceReadersConnection.com
“Very entertaining and fast-paced.…Kizis does a great job at creating a realistic novel.”
—MostlyFiction.com
“Laugh-out-loud funny.…Kizis has her finger on the pulse of the world of fashion, magazines, and relationships of the heart.”
—BookReporter.com
“A delightfully realistic portrayal of twenty-something single women living in L.A.…Benjamina is witty, intelligent, and successful.
Pick up this delightful novel and see the world through Ben Franklin’s eyes!”
—Bookloons.com
“A fresh, honest, and witty look at the dating scene for a woman in her late twenties.…The format is very catchy…I had such
a hard time walking away from this book. Rush out and get a copy of HOW TO MEET CUTE BOYS.…I hope Kizis will pick up the novel
where it ended. I am dying to spend more time with Ben and her friends!”
—Roundtablereviews.com
“Oh no! You look so much cuter than me.”
Kiki had just let herself into my apartment and stormed into my tiny bathroom, where I was putting on my makeup. She scared
me half to death, as I was blasting the stereo and didn’t hear her knock. Good thing she hasn’t lost her key, I thought. Yet.
“I do not,” I said, doing a quick appraisal. Kiki looked like sex on toast, as usual. Her blond hair was down, jeans were
snug in all the right places, lips were berry red. Of course, she was wearing another black sweater, which toned her natural
vampiness down a bit. (Kiki thinks black sweaters camouflage her boobage.) And, okay, her eyes were slightly puffy, but I only noticed that because I already knew what was going on. Overall, I have to say, she looked hot. I looked
at myself in the mirror for comparison. Not exactly Kiki, I’m what people call “cute.” As in, even if I were wearing nipple
clamps, crotchless panties, and holding a whip, they’d say, “That’s so cute!”
I was going to need more mascara.
“Ben, you know you look amazing,” Kiki said, watching me apply another coat.
“I really don’t.”
“Oh my God, fuck you, you do.” She spun out of the bathroom and headed toward my bedroom in a huff.
A couple of days before, Kiki had broken up with her boyfriend, Edward. Actually, make that, she broke up with Edward, her
rental unit. Renting, as opposed to leasing (or, heaven forbid, actually owning), is a common affliction among us over twenty-fives today. You end up dating this guy for months and you’re not seeing anybody
else, and he’s not seeing anybody else (at least, you think he’s not seeing anybody else), but you don’t actually call him your boyfriend because he doesn’t actually call you his girlfriend.
Then you get in a fight over some dumb thing, like maybe he didn’t call all weekend until Sunday, and when you tell him you’re
upset, he says something like, “Since when is Sunday not the weekend?”
The next thing you know, you’re having the I-Think-We-Need-to-Talk Talk (always prefaced with those six crushingly familiar
words), and he’s broken up with you when you weren’t sure you were even going out in the first place. Which is how you end
up mourning something you never knew you had, asking yourself questions—Should I have done this differently? Not said that at all?—that you didn’t even know were serious at the time. The whole thing becomes a downward spiral of regret and second-guessing,
something Kiki and I are extremely familiar with. After all, I write the articles about how shitty men can be, she edits the
articles about how shitty men can be, Filly—the magazine where we both work—publishes the articles about how shitty men can be, and a million-plus women read our articles
about how shitty men can be. And yet, we’re all still surprised at how shitty men can be. It’s a clear-cut case of the blind
leading the blind.
Anyway, after six weeks of heavy dating, Kiki’s rental unit had initiated The Talk. They’d spent a weekend together doing
couple stuff (making seared ahi tuna for dinner, picking out sweaters at Barneys, et cetera). He said things were getting
too serious, and she hadn’t heard from him since.
I heard the closet door bang open, followed by rummaging. Hangers whisked about; shoes clunked onto the floor. I pictured
Kiki standing half naked in front of my full-length mirror, probably trying on one of my tops, possibly with two different
shoes crammed onto her size eight feet to see which looked better.
“I look fat,” she said over the music.
“Yeah, you’re a real cow,” I hollered back.
I headed into the kitchen to make her a drink. A strong drink. I grabbed the supersized bottle of Absolut Kiki had brought over after I finally broke up with Jack—there was a bit
left. (I’d been nursing it alone, I admit it.) I peered into the fridge for a decent mixer, but the only thing I had was diet
Coke. But that was okay, I decided, swirling the concoction around in a glass. The vodka would elevate Kiki’s mood, the caffeine
would keep her awake.
From the bedroom I heard, “I look like a complete loser!” A crash of plastic and glass hit the floor, which meant she was into the product samples from publicists that were piled
every which way on top of my vanity.
“You’re a bombshell, Kiki. Get over it.”
“I loathe what I’m wearing!”
I entered the bedroom, and she’d exchanged her black sweater for one of my black sweaters. She was stretching it out.
“Well, now you’re wearing my clothes, so go easy.”
I handed her the drink.
She sighed, “Look at you. I wish I was a brunette.”
“Well, brunette is the new blond.”
“I’m too tall.”
“Short is the new statuesque.” I pirouetted around my room, looking for the various things I’d need for the evening and cramming them into my purse.
“Seriously!” she wailed. “You’ve got that fantastic starving-refugee thing going on—I look like a goddamn giraffe.”
Only Kiki could make being five foot eight with 34Ds sound like such a nightmare. She’s almost managed to convince me being
short isn’t all bad—insists everything’s more appealing when it’s smaller, be it a cell phone, an evening bag, a snack food,
or Sarah Jessica Parker.
“Famine is the new fashion!” I declared. “We pronounce it, fa-meen.”
She still didn’t smile. So I said, “Okay, have it your way: You’ve got a little bit of a giraffe thing going on, but you’ve got bigger tits.”
Kiki finally laughed. Downed the drink in a couple of gulps. Chewed an ice cube. Made a face. Her green eyes took on the look
of someone determined. Someone who had a job to do, and was going to do it, damn it, even if it was the end of her.
We took her Jetta, because it was parked closer than my Jetta. Before I could sit, I had to clear away a pile of her old bank
statements, a ratty brassiere, several diet Coke cans, the calendar section of the LA Times, and a half-eaten bag of McDonald’s fries, now hard as plastic.
Kiki watched me trying to organize the mess. “Ben, give it a rest wouldja?” she said. “You know you can just throw that stuff
in the backseat.”
It’s the same every time.
FILLYQUIZ
BY BENJAMINA FRANKLIN
Ever heard the phrase “They don’t buy the cow if they can get the milk for free”? Let’s be honest: You give the milk away
on a regular basis. But the problem with an enlightened approach to sex is you’re probably sleeping with a guy and have no
idea if he’s your boyfriend. You can’t ask. He doesn’t say. Here, a Filly quiz to help you find out if you’re getting the
girlfriend vibe.
1.You’re at his house. The phone rings. He:
a. Answers it, explains that he’s busy with you right now, then hangs up and says, “Spike and Sofia say hi.”
b. Smugly lets it ring. He already signed up for voicemail so you won’t overhear messages from other girls.
c. Asks you to get it. He’s busy making you a mix tape of your favorite Belle & Sebastian songs.
2.You tell him you suspect one of your “friends” thinks you’re a slut. He says:
a. “How could she think you’re a slut? We’ve been together for two whole months.”
b. “Why doesn’t that smug ’ho just let you date and have fun?”
c. “Now that you mention it, I was wondering why, on our first date, you let me wear your panties as a hat.”
3.You’re at a party by the pool of your local scenester boutique hotel. When one of his friends approaches he:
a. Doesn’t introduce you, mumbling something about how he wants to go check out the modern furniture in the lobby. Alone.
b. Doesn’t say much because his friends see you so often they refer to you as “the permanent piece.”
c. Makes an introduction and you all make plans to go to punk-rock karaoke next Saturday night.
4.When you tell him you’d like to go for a weekend vacation together, his face most resembles:
5.The last time he saw you without makeup on was:
a. Last night. You were only renting movies anyway.
b. When you woke up the morning after your first date. If you’d known you were sleeping over, you would have brought your cosmetics
bag.
c. Yeah, right.
6.When you go to Blockbuster, you:
a. Get in a flirty, faux argument about which movie to rent.
b. Notice that the new-release section includes the movie you saw with him the last time you two actually left the house for
a real date.
c. Proceed directly to the porn.
→ THE FILLY ANSWER KEY
In which we refuse to call up so-called experts who write cheesy books for the self-help section but instead just tell you
what we think.
Give yourself points as indicated:
1. a=2 b=1 c=3
2. a=3 b=2 c=1
3. a=1 b=3 c=2
4. a=3 b=2 c=1
5. a=3 b=2 c=1
6. a=1 b=3 c=2
6 to 9: He couldn’t be your boyfriend less. Your relationship is purely surface, and you’re always trying to put your best foot (or,
since you’re always made up when you two hang out, your best face) forward. The good news: You’re in crush mode, the best
part of any relationship—you get dressed up, get taken out to dinner, have lots of sex. The bad news: You could be destined
to become FWF (friends who fornicate). Our (Possibly Bad) Advice: Keep dating. He probably is.
10 to 14: You’re in relationship limbo. He’ll spend a weekend with you out of town; maybe you’ve met a sibling or two. But will he
become your boyfriend? Or will you run into him at a rock show and find some indie chick sitting on his lap with her tongue
in his ear? Our (Possibly Bad) Advice: Initiate The Talk. But be aware: If you tell him you want a commitment, he could run screaming out the door, move to Botswana,
and you’ll never hear from him again.
15 to 18: Congratulations. You have a boyfriend. How do we know? Because it’s not so romantic anymore. Sometimes you can’t be bothered
to put on the good panties before he comes over; he rarely picks up the check. Then again, giving up the trappings of dating
is the small price you pay for intimacy. At least, that’s what your therapist would say. Our (Possibly Bad) Advice: You don’t need advice, you’re in love. It sucks, right?
Each fall, Filly—the fashion magazine of choice for women who prefer sociopathic men and maxed-out credit cards—has a huge bash to celebrate
the fashion issue. We hold the event as a thank-you to our advertisers. Of course, thanks to them, nobody actually reads the
fashion issue—it’s so full of ads you can’t find the articles and the magazine weighs about four hundred pounds. The party’s
usually held in New York. Last year Kiki and I got to fly out there for free, stay at the Mercer, and treat ourselves to expensed
dinners at Da Silvano. But this year the party was being held at the Farmer’s Daughter Motel on Fairfax. The choice of a campy
seventy-five-dollar-a-night dive was meant to be old school, but whatever. At least it was closer to home. Filly did this eight-page spread in the issue using Hollywood actresses as models. The actresses were supposed to come to the party,
which would then get party pictures in other magazines, which would then make Filly even more successful than it already was. Or something.
Outside was a disaster. Photographers were clamoring to get shots of Jennifer Aniston and Kate Hudson. Entertainment Tonight was pulling celebrities out of the crowd for the usual “What a great night!” chatting. And then there were all the people
who weren’t actually invited but were trying to get in anyway. Kiki and I fought our way through the throng, because we certainly
didn’t want to be confused with what a publicist friend of mine from New York called ham-and-eggers, as in party crashers
who wanted more than what they were entitled to (the ham and the eggs).
“Name?” asked the bouncer when we got to the front.
“Benjamina Franklin.”
As the story goes, my parents came up with it while smoking dope. No wonder they ended up divorced—family life wasn’t exactly
their thing.
“I don’t have time for this,” the bouncer said.
“Yeah, but … my name is Ben Franklin.”
He looked at the list, said I wasn’t on it, and turned his face away so he could listen to an urgent call coming through his
headset. (“We’re running out of chicken satay in section three! Again, chicken satay needed in section three!”)
I looked at Kiki, flustered.
“Did you tell him who you are?” she asked.
“You’re the West Coast editor, you tell him who you are.”
“Can’t.” She shook her head from side to side. “Can’t take rejection now of any kind.”
I tried to get the bouncer’s attention by grabbing a complimentary issue of the magazine and waving it in his face. He couldn’t
have been ignoring me more.
“What do you mean I’m not on it?” I said. “See this?” I opened Filly and pointed to my last article, “How to Meet Cute Boys.” “I wrote that.”
His eyes arrested briefly on the magazine, then moved back into the void over my head. I felt a door-anxiety panic attack
coming on. Am I seriously not going to get into my own party? I wondered. Am I a loser? Unsuitable for admittance? Does he hate me? And then, as a kind of coup de grâce, the bouncer said, “If you’re not on the list you can’t come in,” and gently but firmly
pushed me aside.
Mother. Fucker.
Fortunately, at this moment Hilary Swank arrived wearing a see-through dress and the paparazzi went nuts. (“Didn’t she already
work that shit at the Oscars?” Kiki muttered in my ear.) Everyone took this opportunity to rush the door, and we were swept
up into a wave of unstoppable, fabulously dressed humanity, shoving past the now screaming guards. And just as quickly as
we were out … we were in.
Kiki and I walked through the courtyard toward the bar, and my eyes turned skyward to hundreds of people making their way
up and down the motel’s outdoor walkways. It was an “Around the World” party—each room in the motel had a theme. At a glance,
I could see a massage parlor, a keg party, and a tiki lounge, all going on at once. I squinted at faces to see if I actually
knew anyone, but found myself staring at the same familiar-looking strangers I always see at events like this. We had our
well-heeled Westsiders wearing wrap dresses, the hipsters in thrift-shop corduroy, a coterie of agents who’d dashed straight
from work and still had on suits and ties. The publicists were in the house, talking on their cell phones and giving dirty
looks to everyone who wasn’t a potential client, along with Filly writers like myself, all of whom were getting bombed. There were the actors, of course, who came hoping to be noticed yet,
the minute you noticed them, pretended they didn’t want the extra attention. And then there was … everybody else. Whoever
they were.
I imagine we all had that same desperate look in our eyes. The one that says, Entertain me. Show me. Seduce me. Shock me. Do something, anything that will make tonight more than just another excuse to
leave the house. But I predicted that everyone, including me, would be let down. There are so many premieres, so many art shows, so many
boutique openings, restaurant openings, record-release parties … you could go out every night of the week but know deep down
inside that you weren’t actually doing anything. It was depressing when I stopped and thought about it, which I tried not to do. Maybe Jack was right. All these
people come to L.A. because they just want to get famous. Or get next to the famous. They want to get on the list. But inside
the list there’s another list, an A-list. And inside the party there’s another party, the VIP room. So then people try to get on that list, in that room. And what they find is the same sorry, bored-out-of-their-minds fuckers as the ones they were so desperate to elevate
themselves above in the first place.
And yet. Well, there is that moment. You go to a premiere, you walk down the red carpet, you see all the people standing on
the other side of the velvet rope clutching their autograph books, and you think to yourself, I may be just another hanger-on, a plus-one, a ham-and-egger, but I’m here. And here is always better than there.
Speaking of which, I spotted Collin, a wannabe celebrity stylist friend who wears a lot of ironic eighties fashions and thinks
The Strokes were the Second Coming of Christ.
“Ladies, how’s your lifestyle?” he said.
“Excellent,” I said.
“Crappy,” Kiki said.
“Pretty good party.” He nodded, eyes darting this way and that. “Strictly A-list.”
(Total bullshit—there were more people at this party than there were on the T. . .
HOW TO MEET CUTE BOYS
“Entertaining…Ben is a smart and funny heroine who wisecracks with the best of them. Particular highlights are the Filly magazine pieces written by Benjamina herself. A very enjoyable book that will give a boost to the intelligence quotient of
the entire genre. Recommended.”
—Library Journal
“Light and funny.…Kizis cleverly parodies the shallow magazine world.”
—Romantic Times Bookclub Magazine
“Elle recommends HOW TO MEET CUTE BOYS…a late-summer breeze of a novel.”
—Elle
“Sharpen your eyebrow pencil and take those funny quizzes.…Kizis deftly skewers L.A. celebrities and the publicity party scene,
throwing in some priceless one-liners about the perils of modern dating to boot.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A blast to read.…Kizis pulls it all off with great style. Think of this novel as the Lucky magazine of dating.”
—Dany Levy, founder/chairman of DailyCandy, Inc.
“Witty…engaging…an impressive debut from one of America’s top young writers.”
—Roberta Myers, editor in chief, Elle
“Hysterical…an excellent, funny novel.…The author definitely has a witty sense of humor.”
—BookReviewCafe.com
“Hilarious…thoroughly entertaining!…It’s perfect.”
—Bestsellersworld.com
“Wonderful…hilariously accurate.…Compulsively readable, Ben’s observations on life, friends, and lovers are honest and amusing.”
—TheRomanceReadersConnection.com
“Very entertaining and fast-paced.…Kizis does a great job at creating a realistic novel.”
—MostlyFiction.com
“Laugh-out-loud funny.…Kizis has her finger on the pulse of the world of fashion, magazines, and relationships of the heart.”
—BookReporter.com
“A delightfully realistic portrayal of twenty-something single women living in L.A.…Benjamina is witty, intelligent, and successful.
Pick up this delightful novel and see the world through Ben Franklin’s eyes!”
—Bookloons.com
“A fresh, honest, and witty look at the dating scene for a woman in her late twenties.…The format is very catchy…I had such
a hard time walking away from this book. Rush out and get a copy of HOW TO MEET CUTE BOYS.…I hope Kizis will pick up the novel
where it ended. I am dying to spend more time with Ben and her friends!”
—Roundtablereviews.com
“Oh no! You look so much cuter than me.”
Kiki had just let herself into my apartment and stormed into my tiny bathroom, where I was putting on my makeup. She scared
me half to death, as I was blasting the stereo and didn’t hear her knock. Good thing she hasn’t lost her key, I thought. Yet.
“I do not,” I said, doing a quick appraisal. Kiki looked like sex on toast, as usual. Her blond hair was down, jeans were
snug in all the right places, lips were berry red. Of course, she was wearing another black sweater, which toned her natural
vampiness down a bit. (Kiki thinks black sweaters camouflage her boobage.) And, okay, her eyes were slightly puffy, but I only noticed that because I already knew what was going on. Overall, I have to say, she looked hot. I looked
at myself in the mirror for comparison. Not exactly Kiki, I’m what people call “cute.” As in, even if I were wearing nipple
clamps, crotchless panties, and holding a whip, they’d say, “That’s so cute!”
I was going to need more mascara.
“Ben, you know you look amazing,” Kiki said, watching me apply another coat.
“I really don’t.”
“Oh my God, fuck you, you do.” She spun out of the bathroom and headed toward my bedroom in a huff.
A couple of days before, Kiki had broken up with her boyfriend, Edward. Actually, make that, she broke up with Edward, her
rental unit. Renting, as opposed to leasing (or, heaven forbid, actually owning), is a common affliction among us over twenty-fives today. You end up dating this guy for months and you’re not seeing anybody
else, and he’s not seeing anybody else (at least, you think he’s not seeing anybody else), but you don’t actually call him your boyfriend because he doesn’t actually call you his girlfriend.
Then you get in a fight over some dumb thing, like maybe he didn’t call all weekend until Sunday, and when you tell him you’re
upset, he says something like, “Since when is Sunday not the weekend?”
The next thing you know, you’re having the I-Think-We-Need-to-Talk Talk (always prefaced with those six crushingly familiar
words), and he’s broken up with you when you weren’t sure you were even going out in the first place. Which is how you end
up mourning something you never knew you had, asking yourself questions—Should I have done this differently? Not said that at all?—that you didn’t even know were serious at the time. The whole thing becomes a downward spiral of regret and second-guessing,
something Kiki and I are extremely familiar with. After all, I write the articles about how shitty men can be, she edits the
articles about how shitty men can be, Filly—the magazine where we both work—publishes the articles about how shitty men can be, and a million-plus women read our articles
about how shitty men can be. And yet, we’re all still surprised at how shitty men can be. It’s a clear-cut case of the blind
leading the blind.
Anyway, after six weeks of heavy dating, Kiki’s rental unit had initiated The Talk. They’d spent a weekend together doing
couple stuff (making seared ahi tuna for dinner, picking out sweaters at Barneys, et cetera). He said things were getting
too serious, and she hadn’t heard from him since.
I heard the closet door bang open, followed by rummaging. Hangers whisked about; shoes clunked onto the floor. I pictured
Kiki standing half naked in front of my full-length mirror, probably trying on one of my tops, possibly with two different
shoes crammed onto her size eight feet to see which looked better.
“I look fat,” she said over the music.
“Yeah, you’re a real cow,” I hollered back.
I headed into the kitchen to make her a drink. A strong drink. I grabbed the supersized bottle of Absolut Kiki had brought over after I finally broke up with Jack—there was a bit
left. (I’d been nursing it alone, I admit it.) I peered into the fridge for a decent mixer, but the only thing I had was diet
Coke. But that was okay, I decided, swirling the concoction around in a glass. The vodka would elevate Kiki’s mood, the caffeine
would keep her awake.
From the bedroom I heard, “I look like a complete loser!” A crash of plastic and glass hit the floor, which meant she was into the product samples from publicists that were piled
every which way on top of my vanity.
“You’re a bombshell, Kiki. Get over it.”
“I loathe what I’m wearing!”
I entered the bedroom, and she’d exchanged her black sweater for one of my black sweaters. She was stretching it out.
“Well, now you’re wearing my clothes, so go easy.”
I handed her the drink.
She sighed, “Look at you. I wish I was a brunette.”
“Well, brunette is the new blond.”
“I’m too tall.”
“Short is the new statuesque.” I pirouetted around my room, looking for the various things I’d need for the evening and cramming them into my purse.
“Seriously!” she wailed. “You’ve got that fantastic starving-refugee thing going on—I look like a goddamn giraffe.”
Only Kiki could make being five foot eight with 34Ds sound like such a nightmare. She’s almost managed to convince me being
short isn’t all bad—insists everything’s more appealing when it’s smaller, be it a cell phone, an evening bag, a snack food,
or Sarah Jessica Parker.
“Famine is the new fashion!” I declared. “We pronounce it, fa-meen.”
She still didn’t smile. So I said, “Okay, have it your way: You’ve got a little bit of a giraffe thing going on, but you’ve got bigger tits.”
Kiki finally laughed. Downed the drink in a couple of gulps. Chewed an ice cube. Made a face. Her green eyes took on the look
of someone determined. Someone who had a job to do, and was going to do it, damn it, even if it was the end of her.
We took her Jetta, because it was parked closer than my Jetta. Before I could sit, I had to clear away a pile of her old bank
statements, a ratty brassiere, several diet Coke cans, the calendar section of the LA Times, and a half-eaten bag of McDonald’s fries, now hard as plastic.
Kiki watched me trying to organize the mess. “Ben, give it a rest wouldja?” she said. “You know you can just throw that stuff
in the backseat.”
It’s the same every time.
FILLYQUIZ
BY BENJAMINA FRANKLIN
Ever heard the phrase “They don’t buy the cow if they can get the milk for free”? Let’s be honest: You give the milk away
on a regular basis. But the problem with an enlightened approach to sex is you’re probably sleeping with a guy and have no
idea if he’s your boyfriend. You can’t ask. He doesn’t say. Here, a Filly quiz to help you find out if you’re getting the
girlfriend vibe.
1.You’re at his house. The phone rings. He:
a. Answers it, explains that he’s busy with you right now, then hangs up and says, “Spike and Sofia say hi.”
b. Smugly lets it ring. He already signed up for voicemail so you won’t overhear messages from other girls.
c. Asks you to get it. He’s busy making you a mix tape of your favorite Belle & Sebastian songs.
2.You tell him you suspect one of your “friends” thinks you’re a slut. He says:
a. “How could she think you’re a slut? We’ve been together for two whole months.”
b. “Why doesn’t that smug ’ho just let you date and have fun?”
c. “Now that you mention it, I was wondering why, on our first date, you let me wear your panties as a hat.”
3.You’re at a party by the pool of your local scenester boutique hotel. When one of his friends approaches he:
a. Doesn’t introduce you, mumbling something about how he wants to go check out the modern furniture in the lobby. Alone.
b. Doesn’t say much because his friends see you so often they refer to you as “the permanent piece.”
c. Makes an introduction and you all make plans to go to punk-rock karaoke next Saturday night.
4.When you tell him you’d like to go for a weekend vacation together, his face most resembles:
5.The last time he saw you without makeup on was:
a. Last night. You were only renting movies anyway.
b. When you woke up the morning after your first date. If you’d known you were sleeping over, you would have brought your cosmetics
bag.
c. Yeah, right.
6.When you go to Blockbuster, you:
a. Get in a flirty, faux argument about which movie to rent.
b. Notice that the new-release section includes the movie you saw with him the last time you two actually left the house for
a real date.
c. Proceed directly to the porn.
→ THE FILLY ANSWER KEY
In which we refuse to call up so-called experts who write cheesy books for the self-help section but instead just tell you
what we think.
Give yourself points as indicated:
1. a=2 b=1 c=3
2. a=3 b=2 c=1
3. a=1 b=3 c=2
4. a=3 b=2 c=1
5. a=3 b=2 c=1
6. a=1 b=3 c=2
6 to 9: He couldn’t be your boyfriend less. Your relationship is purely surface, and you’re always trying to put your best foot (or,
since you’re always made up when you two hang out, your best face) forward. The good news: You’re in crush mode, the best
part of any relationship—you get dressed up, get taken out to dinner, have lots of sex. The bad news: You could be destined
to become FWF (friends who fornicate). Our (Possibly Bad) Advice: Keep dating. He probably is.
10 to 14: You’re in relationship limbo. He’ll spend a weekend with you out of town; maybe you’ve met a sibling or two. But will he
become your boyfriend? Or will you run into him at a rock show and find some indie chick sitting on his lap with her tongue
in his ear? Our (Possibly Bad) Advice: Initiate The Talk. But be aware: If you tell him you want a commitment, he could run screaming out the door, move to Botswana,
and you’ll never hear from him again.
15 to 18: Congratulations. You have a boyfriend. How do we know? Because it’s not so romantic anymore. Sometimes you can’t be bothered
to put on the good panties before he comes over; he rarely picks up the check. Then again, giving up the trappings of dating
is the small price you pay for intimacy. At least, that’s what your therapist would say. Our (Possibly Bad) Advice: You don’t need advice, you’re in love. It sucks, right?
Each fall, Filly—the fashion magazine of choice for women who prefer sociopathic men and maxed-out credit cards—has a huge bash to celebrate
the fashion issue. We hold the event as a thank-you to our advertisers. Of course, thanks to them, nobody actually reads the
fashion issue—it’s so full of ads you can’t find the articles and the magazine weighs about four hundred pounds. The party’s
usually held in New York. Last year Kiki and I got to fly out there for free, stay at the Mercer, and treat ourselves to expensed
dinners at Da Silvano. But this year the party was being held at the Farmer’s Daughter Motel on Fairfax. The choice of a campy
seventy-five-dollar-a-night dive was meant to be old school, but whatever. At least it was closer to home. Filly did this eight-page spread in the issue using Hollywood actresses as models. The actresses were supposed to come to the party,
which would then get party pictures in other magazines, which would then make Filly even more successful than it already was. Or something.
Outside was a disaster. Photographers were clamoring to get shots of Jennifer Aniston and Kate Hudson. Entertainment Tonight was pulling celebrities out of the crowd for the usual “What a great night!” chatting. And then there were all the people
who weren’t actually invited but were trying to get in anyway. Kiki and I fought our way through the throng, because we certainly
didn’t want to be confused with what a publicist friend of mine from New York called ham-and-eggers, as in party crashers
who wanted more than what they were entitled to (the ham and the eggs).
“Name?” asked the bouncer when we got to the front.
“Benjamina Franklin.”
As the story goes, my parents came up with it while smoking dope. No wonder they ended up divorced—family life wasn’t exactly
their thing.
“I don’t have time for this,” the bouncer said.
“Yeah, but … my name is Ben Franklin.”
He looked at the list, said I wasn’t on it, and turned his face away so he could listen to an urgent call coming through his
headset. (“We’re running out of chicken satay in section three! Again, chicken satay needed in section three!”)
I looked at Kiki, flustered.
“Did you tell him who you are?” she asked.
“You’re the West Coast editor, you tell him who you are.”
“Can’t.” She shook her head from side to side. “Can’t take rejection now of any kind.”
I tried to get the bouncer’s attention by grabbing a complimentary issue of the magazine and waving it in his face. He couldn’t
have been ignoring me more.
“What do you mean I’m not on it?” I said. “See this?” I opened Filly and pointed to my last article, “How to Meet Cute Boys.” “I wrote that.”
His eyes arrested briefly on the magazine, then moved back into the void over my head. I felt a door-anxiety panic attack
coming on. Am I seriously not going to get into my own party? I wondered. Am I a loser? Unsuitable for admittance? Does he hate me? And then, as a kind of coup de grâce, the bouncer said, “If you’re not on the list you can’t come in,” and gently but firmly
pushed me aside.
Mother. Fucker.
Fortunately, at this moment Hilary Swank arrived wearing a see-through dress and the paparazzi went nuts. (“Didn’t she already
work that shit at the Oscars?” Kiki muttered in my ear.) Everyone took this opportunity to rush the door, and we were swept
up into a wave of unstoppable, fabulously dressed humanity, shoving past the now screaming guards. And just as quickly as
we were out … we were in.
Kiki and I walked through the courtyard toward the bar, and my eyes turned skyward to hundreds of people making their way
up and down the motel’s outdoor walkways. It was an “Around the World” party—each room in the motel had a theme. At a glance,
I could see a massage parlor, a keg party, and a tiki lounge, all going on at once. I squinted at faces to see if I actually
knew anyone, but found myself staring at the same familiar-looking strangers I always see at events like this. We had our
well-heeled Westsiders wearing wrap dresses, the hipsters in thrift-shop corduroy, a coterie of agents who’d dashed straight
from work and still had on suits and ties. The publicists were in the house, talking on their cell phones and giving dirty
looks to everyone who wasn’t a potential client, along with Filly writers like myself, all of whom were getting bombed. There were the actors, of course, who came hoping to be noticed yet,
the minute you noticed them, pretended they didn’t want the extra attention. And then there was … everybody else. Whoever
they were.
I imagine we all had that same desperate look in our eyes. The one that says, Entertain me. Show me. Seduce me. Shock me. Do something, anything that will make tonight more than just another excuse to
leave the house. But I predicted that everyone, including me, would be let down. There are so many premieres, so many art shows, so many
boutique openings, restaurant openings, record-release parties … you could go out every night of the week but know deep down
inside that you weren’t actually doing anything. It was depressing when I stopped and thought about it, which I tried not to do. Maybe Jack was right. All these
people come to L.A. because they just want to get famous. Or get next to the famous. They want to get on the list. But inside
the list there’s another list, an A-list. And inside the party there’s another party, the VIP room. So then people try to get on that list, in that room. And what they find is the same sorry, bored-out-of-their-minds fuckers as the ones they were so desperate to elevate
themselves above in the first place.
And yet. Well, there is that moment. You go to a premiere, you walk down the red carpet, you see all the people standing on
the other side of the velvet rope clutching their autograph books, and you think to yourself, I may be just another hanger-on, a plus-one, a ham-and-egger, but I’m here. And here is always better than there.
Speaking of which, I spotted Collin, a wannabe celebrity stylist friend who wears a lot of ironic eighties fashions and thinks
The Strokes were the Second Coming of Christ.
“Ladies, how’s your lifestyle?” he said.
“Excellent,” I said.
“Crappy,” Kiki said.
“Pretty good party.” He nodded, eyes darting this way and that. “Strictly A-list.”
(Total bullshit—there were more people at this party than there were on the T. . .
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How to Meet Cute Boys
Deanna Kizis
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