The Boyfriend List (18 page)

It seems weird to me now that Cabbie is even on the Boyfriend List, although it’s true we went on an actual date and there was even physical contact of a strangely advanced nature.

I’ve already pretty much forgotten about him. I’m certainly not undecided about him anymore. Shep Cabot is out, finished, kaput—and the heading of this chapter should more accurately read: “Cabbie (but it was just a grope.)”

Cabbie is a junior. He plays rugby and he’s cute in a meaty sort of way. He’s not my type. Too big. Too manly manly. He caught up with me after a lacrosse game a couple of days after the Spring Fling and asked me to the movies. Out of the blue. Right before my first appointment
with Doctor Z. My guess is, he’d heard I was easy
¹
thanks to Mr. Wallace’s well-publicized antislut lecture in H&P, and he figured he could get some if he paid for my movie ticket.
²

I didn’t much care
why
he was asking me out.

I didn’t want to sit home on Friday night.

I wanted Jackson to see me with someone else—like he had with Angelo—and feel jealous, and want me back.

I wanted not to care if Jackson wanted me back or not, because I had a new guy who was bigger and more popular and played rugby.

And once I didn’t care and was off with the new guy, Jackson would suddenly love me—wouldn’t he?

And then I could care again and we’d live happily ever after.
³

I said yes, and Cabbie picked me up in a BMW around seven p.m. on Friday night. He came in, briefly, and shook my dad’s hand and called him sir. We drove to the University District, where there are a couple of movie theaters, and parked in an expensive lot. “Can’t leave this baby on the street,” said Cabbie, chuckling, as he locked the doors. We walked a couple of blocks in the chilly air, talking about lacrosse and rugby.

“We’re playing Sullivan on Tuesday,” said Cabbie. “You should come to the game.”

“That could be cool.”

“Coach is such a hard-ass. He’s making us run three miles before practice.”

“We run three for lacrosse, too.”

“Really, the girls?”

“Really.”

“I’m starting this season, which is cool.”

“Awesome.”

We went into the theater. He bought the tickets. I paid for popcorn and pop. It was some action special-effects movie, not my thing, but all right.

About a quarter into it, Cabbie put his arm around me, and seconds later, he dangled his right hand down over my shoulder and squeezed my boob! We hadn’t held hands, or kissed, or anything. We’d hardly even had a conversation before that night—but he went straight for the boob squeeze as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

I was in shock. I sat there, letting him squeeze it.

It felt kind of good.

He was watching the movie like it wasn’t even happening, but also moving his fingers around every now and then, stroking my boob absentmindedly.

Should I shift my body so his hand was more shoulder height? Or take his hand and hold it so it couldn’t go roaming around my chest? Or actively move his arm back to his lap? Or get up to go to the bathroom and hope the gropefest wouldn’t start up again when I got back? Or pitch a fit and get all indignant?

It really did feel kind of good. He seemed to know
what he was doing in the boob department. The longer I sat there and thought about it, the longer it seemed weird to start objecting.

He ended up feeling my boob for the whole movie! He ate popcorn with his left hand and got lucky with his right. It started to feel kind of lopsided, for the right one to get literally an hour and a half’s worth of attention and the left one to be all on its lonesome. I barely knew what the movie was about, because I was thinking about my boob the whole time. My boob, being stroked by a near-complete stranger, a big meaty rugby player.

When eight days before, it had been all Jackson’s.

Was I really a slut, like Kim said? This made four boys within one week I’d had some kind of physical contact with.
⁴

Or did I actually like Cabbie? Could this be the start of a new thing?

Maybe not.

And then again, maybe.

The movie ended. Cabbie stretched, took his hand off me and stood up. “Wanna get some pizza?”

“Sure.”

We went to a place up the street. We split a cheese pie. He told me he doesn’t eat vegetables, ever. He talked about his “buddies” from rugby and how he wants to go to Penn and be a lawyer, like his dad. He asked me about my family, and I did my usual riff. He said his mother likes to garden.

Cabbie had everything a girl is supposed to look for in a boy. He was sporty, cute, popular, friendly, rich. He might even have been smart, though I couldn’t tell for sure.

But I was bored. Just making conversation, not really talking.

I think I want a guy who eats vegetables.

And who isn’t so normal.

He was just a muffin, you know?

The check took forever to come, and when it finally did, I insisted on paying half, even though I was still broke from buying that silver dress.

He drove me home and I hopped out of the car like a jackrabbit. If he thought I was a slut, who knows what he was expecting in a dark BMW, late on a Friday night? Especially after all that boob squeezing. “That was fun,” I lied, slamming the car door. “You don’t have to walk me in.”

“Later,” he said, looking surprised.

Sunday evening I called him up. “Hey, Cabbie,” I said, when he got to the phone. “I want to tell you, um, I can’t go to that rugby game on Tuesday.”

“That’s cool. We play all the time. There’s another game on Friday.”

“Yeah, well. I mean, I’m kind of still getting over Jackson.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s cool.”

“All right. Well, sorry about that.”

“No big deal. See you around.”

“See you.”

We hung up. I felt relieved. Although if I could have had a purely boob-squeezing relationship with him, maybe I would have done that. You know, like sitting in movie theaters once or twice a week having my boobs groped, with no obligation to kiss his meaty face or have boring conversations with the guy.

But that was impossible, so we were better off apart.

The next day was the day Kim Xeroxed the Boyfriend List and put it in everyone’s mail cubbies. My life was sucking in all the ways I’ve already detailed, and on top of it all I heard Cabbie saying to Billy Alexander, “Yeah, I felt her up. But I don’t know, she’s kind of skanky. I’m not so interested. What about you?”

“Don’t look at me, man,” Billy said.

“Come on, you can tell me.”

“I’m serious man, I didn’t touch her.”

“Nice tits, though, am I right?”
⁵

“Sure.”

“Was it Billy
Krespin,
then, do you think?” asked Cabbie.

“Could be. Why don’t you ask him?”

And that was that. You know the rest.

The good thing about the whole Cabbie episode was that I realized I might actually like having my body touched by somebody other than Jackson. I mean, being
felt up
⁶
is pretty intimate, and before going out with Cabbie I thought I’d never want to do anything like that with anyone ever again.

It did feel good, I can’t lie about that.

Maybe I won’t be heartbroken forever.

Doctor Z and I are done with the list. Now we just have conversations. She gave me another homework assignment, which was to make a drawing of my family, and I ended up making this little diorama of our houseboat, using an old shoe box. It came out pretty cool. I had this little cutout of my mom waving her arms, and one of my dad hugging a peony bush, and one of me, wearing fishnets.

I’ve started wearing the fishnets again.

Doctor Z thinks it’s a healthy expression of my sexuality.

I just think they look good.

Other than that, I tell her about my life. I haven’t had any more panic attacks, although sometimes my heart races and I do a little deep breathing. “Do I get a clean bill of health now?” I asked her.

“What do you think?” Ag. She really does make me insane with that kind of question.

“Um. I don’t know.”

“Would you
like
a clean bill of health?”

I sighed. “I don’t want to be a mental patient forever.”

“Are you saying you’d like to stop therapy, Ruby?”

“Um.”

“You don’t have to stop until you want to. We can do this as long as you like.”

“Don’t you get bored, listening to my problems?”

“No.”

“You probably have a bunch of anorexics and sex addicts who are a lot more interesting.”

“It’s not your job to entertain me, Ruby.”

True enough. That’s why therapists are different from friends. You don’t have to make them like you.

So I kept going.

I guess I like it.

School is over now. Jackson and Kim are still together. He doesn’t seem to have realized he loves me. In fact, he seems to have forgotten everything that happened. Neither of them spoke to me the rest of the year except for Jackson saying hello when absolutely necessary—and I still had the Beth-Ann-Courtney-Heidi-Kim radar all through the very last day of finals, stupid as that is. People still whispered about me in the hall, but no one wrote anything more on the bathroom wall. I kept my head down. I hung out with Noel in Painting Elective and ate lunch with Meghan. Once, after a game, I went for ice cream with a crowd of girls from the lacrosse team. I haven’t been back to the B&O.

You might think that Heidi started going with Finn the stud-muffin, since he took her to the Spring Fling as a Kim replacement. But it didn’t work out that way. Heidi’s
now dating Tommy Parrish, who used to go out with Cricket.

Ariel and Shiv are still together, but I heard her in the locker room saying she thought Steve Buchannon (Bick’s friend) was completely hot. Cricket and Pete split up. Pete started going out with Katarina—until Katarina made out with the Whipper at yet another party I wasn’t invited to, and Pete got mad and broke up with her. So now she’s going out with Cabbie. And Pete is going out with Courtney. And Finn is going out with Beth. Cricket started dating Billy Alexander, which I’m sure she’s cranked about since she’s lusted for him ever since that one time he drove her home from that basketball game. But he also just graduated, and I don’t know the whole story, because we don’t talk.

It’s still the Tate universe.

I ran into Nora in the University District right after school ended. I had been shopping for a bathing suit, and I had just left the store when she called my name from across the street. I showed her what I’d bought. She liked it.

We talked about tan lines, and how the bathing suits that make nice tan lines aren’t the ones you look good in, somehow. She said her boobs get squashed flat or pushed up, and why wasn’t there a bathing suit that made boobs just look normal? You would think scientists and fashion designers could have figured that out by now.

It was good to see her. She wasn’t up to much, she said. Watching TV. Hanging out with Gideon a little. Her mom had bought her a new camera, a real one where you have to adjust everything.

I felt like guilting her for cutting me out all spring, but I thought about something Doctor Z said, which was that sometimes it’s a good idea to think about what you
want
from a situation, and try to get it, rather than just blurt out the first thing that comes into your head. And I realized I was glad Nora was talking to me, finally—and I didn’t want to mess it up. So I said, “Hey, I love your brother again.”

“He’s got a girlfriend,” she said. “Diana. She’s a poet.”

“I know,” I answered, although I didn’t really. “But he just does it for me, anyhow.”

She laughed. “There’s no accounting for taste.”

“I’m through with boys for the moment, anyway,” I said. “Too dangerous.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, it can get ugly out there.”

“Uh-huh. I think it’s better as a spectator sport.”

“What, dating?”

“Uh-huh.” Nora scratched her neck. “It’s just so messy, you know, all that stuff with you and Kim and Heidi and—”

“I got you.”

“I just feel like, I’d rather shoot baskets, or something,” she went on. “Even read a book. I mean, not that there’s anyone I’m into, anyway.”

“The problem is,” I joked, “our school is too damn small. Remember how we wrote that in
The Boy Book?
Any decent boy was used up ages ago.”

“I don’t know,” she muttered. “Sometimes I feel like a leper.”

That surprised me almost as much as Shiv Neel,
golden boy, thinking we were all laughing at him because he was Indian.

Like even the people at the center of the Tate universe feel like they’re on the outside.

Nora said she was late, hoisted her bag over her shoulder and waved goodbye. I watched her go down the street and get into her car.

Maybe I’ll give her a call later in the summer, when the whole debacle is a bit more behind us.

Maybe.

I slept over at Meghan’s house a couple of nights in June. She has a huge bathroom all to herself and two twin beds and a collection of like forty different perfumes. I found out she’s still a virgin, though she lets Bick go down on her.
⁷