The Boy Book (15 page)

Clever Comebacks to Catcalls

Situation: You are walking down the hall, and someone tells you he’s so ready for that jelly. Or you are strolling down the street and some construction worker on his lunch break says, “Come on, baby, lemme see you smile.” What can you answer?

1. Join the twenty-first century.

2. Try to imagine how little I care.

3. Have you had your brain checked? I think the warranty has run out.

4. I can’t get angry at you today. It’s Be Kind to Animals Week.

5. Didn’t I dissect you in Biology class?

6. Did you take your medication today?

7. I’ll try smiling—if you try being smarter.

8. I’m curious, did your mother raise all of her children to be sexists, or did she single you out?

And some extras, for specific situations:

If he says, “If I could see you naked, I’d die happy,” then you say, “If I could see you naked, I’d die laughing.”

And if he says, “Hey, baby, what’s your sign?” answer, “Do not enter.”

And if he calls down the street as you ignore him, “Hey, baby, don’t be rude!” reply, “I’m not being rude. You’re just insignificant.”

And if he says, “Can I see you sometime?” say, “How about never? Is never good for you?”

—written by me and Nora, after some serious Internet research.
¹
Approximate date: October of junior year.

i
t felt great to be friends with Nora again, even if there were subjects we couldn’t discuss. Like I wanted to ask her if Kim and Jackson had maybe broken up, and how she felt that Cricket was spending most of her time with Katarina and Heidi and those guys. I wanted to tell her I saw Jackson at the zoo, and that he’d called to invite me to Kyle’s party.

But it was safer not to.

The next week at school, though most of the boob comments had died down, Nora used comeback numbers four and five on Darcy Andrews and one of his cohorts, with excellent and pleasing results. And on Wednesday we went to the B&O with Meghan after sports practice and talked to Finn Murphy, who was waiting tables. We ate cake and drank espresso milk shakes, and I brought
The Boy Book
and we showed it to Meghan.

“Maybe I need to have a fling,” mused Meghan, after reading the part about scamming. She sighed and rolled her eyeballs toward Finn, who was wiping down some tables on the other side of the café.

“What’s going on with Bick?” I asked, since she had sort of brought it up.

“Aren’t you two really serious?” put in Nora, wide-eyed.

“We’re taking things one day at a time.”

“Finn is cute,” said Nora, checking out his backside as he bent over a dirty table.

“I don’t know,” mused Meghan. “Maybe if Bick and I did it, everything would go back to normal between us. He’s coming home for Thanksgiving.”

“You’re not doing it?” Nora asked.

“They’re just up to the nether regions,” I informed her. “Or down to them. Whatever.”

“You should
not
be doing it with someone who’s on one-day-at-a-time status,” said Nora decisively. “That’s a recipe for disaster.”

“I know, I know.” Meghan looked thoughtful. “It’s just that I want things to be how they were. You know, like last year. When life was easy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s like Bick’s a different person now. Like Harvard is changing him.”

I took a big bite of cake. “Last year,” I told her, “you didn’t have
us.
”

Six major things happened in October.

ONE. I went with my mom for the appointment with the new, health-insurance-accepting shrink. It was in a clinic affiliated with a hospital, and the waiting room was filled with people who looked really shattered. One woman in her fifties was rocking back and forth, muttering about some chip the aliens had put in her brain. A guy with no neck was asleep and snoring, and a nervous lady in a dirty coat was touching a potted plant and staring at it like it might speak to her.

I had an appointment for four o’clock, and we got there early and filled out some forms. Then we sat.

The only magazine was about health care. There was a plastic coffee table, and a television was blaring at top volume up in a corner. The news was on: two abducted children and a hotel fire. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could be expected to maintain any semblance of decent mental health if they had to watch that stuff before every therapy appointment.

Mom and I waited.

And waited.

I read my Chemistry textbook and highlighted key concepts while she watched TV. Now and then a doctor or therapist would call out someone’s name.

Half the time, the person wasn’t there.

A fatally thin woman came in and folded herself into a corner seat. The sleeping man woke up and wandered out of the room even though no one had called his name.

“Maybe we should just go,” I whispered at 4:25. “I don’t like it here.”

“Not happening, Ruby.”

“Please, Mom. I’ve been okay for a long time.”

“You’re judging this place on appearances,” my mother snapped. “Besides, I already paid my copayment.”

“But—”

“You never have an open mind. Is it too much for me to ask you to keep an open mind?”

I slumped back down in my seat.

We waited.

And waited.

And waited.

At 5:10, my mother stood up. “Come on, Roo. We’re going.”

“What?”

“This is disgusting,” she announced, in a typical Elaine Oliver reversal-of-policy-when-it-suits-her. “The treatment here is disrespectful and we’re wasting our time.”

I grabbed my backpack.

TWO. A week later, went to see the shrink my dad’s friend Greg uses.

Doctor Acorn, or Steven, as I was supposed to call him, was thin and dry. After talking to me and my mother for forty-five minutes, and listening to her tell him that I was antisocial and didn’t seem to have friends anymore and never went anywhere and had panic attacks, he recommended that I start on Prozac and Ativan.
²

“But I haven’t had a panic thing in months,” I said.

“That’s how we want to keep it,” he said. “Am I sensing some resistance here?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a good idea to get the baseline chemistry taken care of, then follow that up with the talk therapy.”

“But I’m not antisocial,” I said, turning to Mom. “I slept over at Meghan’s house three nights ago.”

“Compared to what she was before, she’s antisocial,” my mom said to Doctor Acorn. “Plus, there may be some sexual issues she wants to discuss with you. Right, Roo?”

“Mom!”

“Roo, you can be open with Steven. He’s heard it all before.”

There was no way I was going to tell Doctor Acorn about my scamming with Angelo—or anything else that was going on in my life. He was like a dried-up slice of apple, without any juice left inside, and he didn’t seem like he was listening to me so much as telling me what he thought was wrong with me.

I laid it out for my mother as soon as we left. No Doctor Acorn. No way.

“What are we going to do?” she moaned, with her head in her hands, sitting at the dinner table later that night.

“Stop making me see a shrink,” I yelled from my place on the couch.

“But it’s good for you,” my mother said.

“Mom. Vegetables are good for me. Sports activities. My job at the zoo is even good for me. But waiting for more than an hour with a bunch of madmen is not, and neither is taking drugs for problems I’m not even having.”

“Wasn’t Doctor Z good for you?” my father asked.

I didn’t answer him.

THREE. Meghan called Bick on his cell and a girl answered.

“Um, this is Meghan, is Bick around?”

And the girl said, “Oh, yeah, Meghan! I’ve heard all about you. I’m Bick’s friend Cecily.”

“Oh. Hi.”

“Hiya. Didn’t he tell you about me?”

“No.”

“The one from Maine, the one with the convertible?”