Jody Gehrman

“Went home briefly to get my halter dress for Hero's party, and Mom was waiting for me at the kitchen table. Either she's psychic, or she totally reads my journal, because I haven't said a word about Ben, but somehow she knows something is up.She was siting with a tray of peanut butter crackers, milk, and about twenty pamphlets on STDs she got from her friend Connie, a nurse at Kaiser. When she started showing me pictures of genital warts, I put my cracker down and said, 'Mom, is this really necessary?' She said, 'Honey, I just want you to understand the risks.''Yeah, thanks. Now I'm so traumatized I won't have sex until I'm a senior citizen.'She smiled. 'Great. I guess I've done my job then. Do you want a sandwich.”

“The right song can change everything.”

“I hope the people I hurt can see past the prank to the very real respect and affection I feel for them. If not, I may have to take my own advice, buy myself some cute shoes and march on. I hope that's not how it ends, though. I hope this boy-meets-girl-pretending-to-be-boy story has a happy ending, one with less bitter and more sweet.”

“He's an intricate, mesmerizing puzzle; I only succeeded at putting the pieces together because for once in my life I observed. I stopped talking long enough to listen - really listen - not just to what's said, but also to everything that goes unspoken.”

“This party is turning out to be the turd-encrusted cherry on the top of my shit-shake of a day.”

“All of us have our wires crossed and crisscrossed so many times it's impossible to untangle the mess. It really does seem like the entire human race might as well be conversing with hand gestures and grunts, for all the success we're having.”

“If he’s just not into you anymore, then buy yourself a cute pair of shoes and strut your fabulousness elsewhere.”

“Maybe illusion and artifice—lies, even—are a necessary part of romance.”

“These guys may not talk too much about relationships, but they sure do blush at telling moments, don’t they? Maybe that’s the key to understanding the opposite sex; I could invent a science, call it blushology.”

“She has ESB,” I say.Chloe rolls her eyes. “ESP you mean?”“No, ESB. Extrasensory Bitchyness.”

“POKSI (Physically Okay but Socially Inept)”

“Supposedly, guys think about sex every eight seconds. If that's true, how can they talk to their grandmothers?”

“Art boy is obviously intimidated. You're like the sun and he's squinting up at you, barely able to see because of your blinking radiance”

“I sometimes suspect they don't take Dr. Aphrodite very seriously. Which is sad, really. Because what's more serious than love?”

“Guys do have a language, and it does express emotion with startling clarity and nuance. The idea that they don’t express their feelings isas absurd as traveling to a foreign country and claiming the natives can’t speak simply because you don’t understand what they’re saying.”

“The point is, feelings can change - and often do - abruptly. It's one of the riskiest aspects of falling for someone, especially during these tumultuous years when we're young and restless.”

“I guess sometimes it takes a while for the heart to get the memo from the brain.”

“Suddenly, the gods have stopped saying yes and have started making really obnoxious farting noises. In my face. With their armpits.”

“Are you mad?" I ask."I was." He glances at the ceiling then back at me. "Or confused, anyway. The whole thing threw me through for a loop. I thought I'd finally met a guy at Underwood I could relate to, and it turns out he wasn't a guy at all."I swallow. "I can see how that would be weird." "In a way though, I was relieved.""Relieved?" I echo. "Why?"He looks around embarrased. "Let's just say you had me questioning my sexual orientation.”

“La-di-dah, just out for a little spin, don't mind me.”

“Here I've been telling him things in my head for weeks, writing long, frenzied missives to him I know I'll never send, and now that I have him less than two feet away, I'm struck dumb.Fantastic.”

“I have to say it's the most sizzling, delicious, sublime kiss ever. In the history of human beings. Possibly back to and including dinosaurs.”

“I think that everyone should have at least a part of them that's self-invented; in fact, the world would be much more interesting if we all created our own identities afresh whenever we felt like it. Otherwise you're just walking around regurgitating what's expected, which is like, why bother?”

“I despise the rituals of fake friendship. I wish we could just claw each other's eyes out and call it a day; instead we put on huge radiant smiles and spout compliments until our teeth hurt from the saccharine sweetness of it all.”

“I tried all kinds of approaches: sexy, friendly, intimidating—nothing worked. I’m starting to think there’s an invisible force field that prevents honest communication between X and Y chromosomes.”

“I actually plan to mess up my life and start over every seven years. That way, I’ll never get in a rut. I read somewhere that most of your cells only live about seven years anyway, so in theory you literally are a new person; I figure that’s the best time to start over.”

“Sure, okay, I'll pick up some cat litter. Anything else?""Watch your back, G." Then she hung up.Hero paused in her sobbing to look at me quizzically. "Why does your mom want cat litter? You guys don't even have a cat.""She uses it for..." I searched my brain madly, but all I could come up with was "teaching.""She uses cat litter to teach English?"I nodded. "She's kind of unconventional in her methods."Hero frowned. "But how does she use it?"The girl was relentless when she fixated on something. "Um, when their papers are really bad, she gives them a little bag of cat litter. It's her way of telling them their writing is crap." I laughed. "She's kooky.”

“Sometimes, a girl just has to dive under the duvet and regroup.”

“Think of it as a life experience," I mumbled. "Isn't your dad always saying we need more of that?""I don't think prancing around PJ Jamieson's pool in our underwear is exactly what he had in mind.”

“July 4th, (ie, time to celebrate our freedoms as Americans by eating hormone-laden farm animals and blowing shit up)-Geena (Triple Shot Betty)”

“From what I've seen, a girl's got to behave like a mental midget before she'll get any action in this town. If resisting that makes me a freak, so be it. I may die with my hymen intact, but at least I'll have my dignity" ~ Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty”