Regardless of the overall quality, I had, with my reading policy, found plenty of things I’d liked. I’d found authors I would never have given a second glance, predisposed as I’d initially been toward pretty covers and Piers Anthony. Surely, I reasoned, it’d be the same with guys. If I just went out with all of them, there’d have to be some in there that I’d want to read again. See again. Either.
AND SO, I DECIDED that I would say yes to every man who asked me out on a date. I’d go out with all of them, at least once. I’d stop pretending to be deaf when my taxi drivers tried to tell me I was cute. I’d stop pretending to be crazy when strange guys walked too close to me on the street. I’d turn toward them, and smile. And if they wanted to go out with me, I’d say, “Sure.”
No more nos.
Well. A couple of exceptions. No one who was obviously violent, or too drunk or drugged out to walk. No one who introduced himself by grabbing me. And the dates could be flexible. “Date” was an almost obsolete term at that point, anyway. Mostly, you’d end up “hanging out,” possibly going to a bar, possibly going to dinner, possibly getting naked. Most of the women I knew yearned, at least a little bit, for the days before the sexual revolution, when men were forced to commit to the Official Date, arrive in a sport coat (yes, it was dweeby, but at least it signified a certain intention), and take the girl out for surf, turf, and Lovers’ Lane. Now, it was hard to know whether or not you were actually dating someone. He might call you up and blurt a string of frenetic phrases involving anything from Star Wars to Egon Schiele before he finally got to, “So…you wanna, like, hang out?”
You might “like, hang out” for six months, and still have completely different ideas of whether or not you were a couple. At least if I went out with guys who asked me out on the street, they’d be asking me out based on some kind of established attraction, as opposed to the guy who (for example) happened upon my number while making spitballs.
LOSER: I was, like, so intensely bored, and I called a couple of other people, but no answer, but then I saw your number, and wondered if you wanted to, you know, hang out.
MARIA (trying in vain to sleep): I’m busy.
LOSER: But, like, I wanted to, you know, get busy. (He emits a maniacal stoned giggle. A water bong burbles into the receiver.)
MARIA: Wait. Who are you? Do I know you?
LOSER: Devin’s roommate.
MARIA: I don’t know a Devin.
LOSER: Devin got your number from Kevin.
MARIA: Kevin?
LOSER: Kevin is, like, in your Modern Drama class.
MARIA: I didn’t give Kevin my number.
LOSER: Classroom directory. He made a list of cute girls. Wanna hang out or what?
MARIA: Not at all.
LOSER: Your loss, man. Whatever. Yeah, crossing you off the list. Finito.
(Maria throws the phone and addresses the audience.)
MARIA: You get the picture. At least guys I met on the street would be asking me out due to something other than boredom. No matter how pitiful this sounds, it was better than the current situation.
HOW TO PUT MY NEW POLICY into action? It wouldn’t be hard. I was in New York City, after all. There were around four million men in the five boroughs, and one thing that could be said of the men of the Big Apple was that they invariably had Big Balls. If you were female in New York, you’d been hit on by a stranger. It was built into the way the city functioned. Pedestrians. Subways. Contact with strangers, 24/7. In my travels around the city, about ten guys a day offered me everything from wedding rings to highly specific pornographic solicitations. Sometimes I got weirder offers, too. While I’d been dating Donatello, I’d agreed to be an extra in his student film. This had entailed a 4:30 a.m. walk to a bar on Avenue D, during which I’d heard, from behind me, a mysterious chirpy sound. It had turned out to be the inhabitant of an aluminum bagel cart, trying to get my attention in order to gift me with a cream cheese schmear. I’d crossed the street to evade him, but he’d chased me, waving a bag of bagels.
“Baby doll! Baby doll! My coffee is the best in New York! I wanna give you a present! You don’t need a present? I got bialys, you don’t like the bagels! I got danishes, sweetheart!”
“I’m not actually hungry,” I’d said, walking faster.
“Baby doll! You can’t turn down my pastry,” he’d yelled, his bagel cart teetering as it built up speed.
“Yeah, I can,” I’d said, and then sprinted to the bar, barely escaping him.
It seemed that I exuded some sort of pheromone that caused strangers to stop whatever they were doing and follow me home. As far as looks went, I was nothing compared to New York City’s Aphrodite-quality women, but I got hit on a lot. I attributed this to several factors.
(1) I was five foot three, which put me at the right height to enable all men, whether sitting or standing, to grab various unwilling parts of me.
(2) I had a big, uncontrollable smile, which I couldn’t keep from bestowing on strangers. No matter how hard I tried, I was unable to master the Look of Frigid Death that most New York City girls could turn on at will. My best attempt, judging from the feedback that was forever getting shouted at me, seemed to be the Look of Absolute Willingness.
(3) I was curvy, and the men of New York seemed, for the most part, to approve. In Idaho, my curves had been yet another indication of my inappropriateness. In second grade, I’d started imitating my mom’s sexy sashay. A snotnosed boy named Jimmy (who would, a few years later, knock up my best friend) had crept up behind me in the lunch line and hysterically shrilled:
“Why does your butt wiggle when you walk? Wiggly-butt! Wiggly-butt!”
The other second graders had been roused into a mob.
“Wiggly-butt! Wiggly-butt,” they’d chanted, the sloppy joes on their sectioned trays shifting precariously.
I’d grabbed Jimmy’s grubby hand and bitten it savagely, then spun on my heel and departed the cafeteria, my bottom emphatically twitching my disapproval all the way to the playground, where I’d crawled beneath the tire pyramid. Too bad for them if they couldn’t appreciate a spectacular walk when they saw one.
It’d been the beginning of a bad thing. As I’d gotten older, the walk I’d imitated had, by virtue of genetics, become my own. My butt did wiggle when I walked. I couldn’t help it. It was something about the width of my hip bones juxtaposed with the small size of my feet. And the butt in question had inarguably become curvaceous. It was always getting grabbed. My mom complained about the same thing, her most memorable story involving a youthful trip to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a long ascent up the twirling staircase, her appalled bottom cupped by the hands of an Italian stranger for the entire