How to Meet Cute Boys (2 page)

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.

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
Titanic
.)

“Oh fuck,” Collin added, “there’s Winona Ryder.”

Kiki and I didn’t look.

“Damn, she’s hot,” he said. “Damn, damn, damn. Hey—do you think there’s a chance?”

“Didn’t she date Beck?” I composed my face in a way that would imply that if she weren’t into rock stars, she might be interested.

“So,” he said. “I met Beck once and he was a really great guy.”

“Oh yeah?”

“He was eating with a friend of mine at Ammo. We talked for, like, ten minutes.”

Collin always gets annoyed if you question his celebrity bragging rights. It’s fun. So I said, “And he was nice, huh?”

“Hey Ben?
Go die
. There are lots of people here I want to meet, and I already know you two, so—later!” Collin dived back into the throng.

Kiki was primed for another drink, so we fought our way to the bar. Souza was sponsoring the party, which meant unfortunately
there were only free tequila martinis on hand. Everything else we’d have to pay for, which was out of the question since we
hadn’t brought any cash. (Nobody in this city ever carries more than just a few singles, which, naturally, are for the valet.)