Boys and Girls

Dave Lee

“…Flat 9’s and sharp 11’s are the shit, especially on bass.”

It’s painful hearing that, it truly is. It’s freshman year, I’m sitting in the Berklee caf eating alone, my girlfriend in Wisconsin and I have called it quits, and the bubbly and busty redhead at the other end of the table is talking about Harmony; the last thing I want to hear a hot girl talk about at this moment.

A girl certainly is a hot commodity at this school. My freshman year, there was something like a 55% to 45% male-female ratio, though it seemed more like 90% and 10% to us boys. Within maybe the first week, the girls picked up on this and egos as well as confidence levels grew on the female side, seemingly to no end. They had power over us, they knew it, and they sure didn’t make it easy on us. We were all ‘friends,’ and then ‘friends’ became just a pseudonym for abstinence.

Honestly, what else does a guy think about at that age? We boys were not interested in platonic relationships with the girls. It seemed as if sex, or the desire for it anyway, drove us all to do and say absurd, stupid things to the girls. For my part, I can’t even believe some of the girls I went after at that age. For their part, I’m surprised the majority of them even stayed at Berklee, although, many did leave.

One time I was working on a plastic jug of vodka in my dorm room with a few of my friends, all guys of course. Some girl from upstairs for some reason or another came a knocking at the door, I answered, she came in, and immediately it was awkward. I don’t remember why she came in, but I do remember my friends gawking at her, ridiculously, and that I had ushered her out of there sooner than I would have liked to because one of them, the one who was passed out on my bed before her arrival, had gotten up to try his hand at wooing. He could not stand straight or steady; he did not say anything coherent.

I feel bad for girls at Berklee. Maybe I’m a few years older or just a few hundred times less horny than I used to be, but I see it very clearly now. A lot of guys, musicians especially, really make fools out of themselves for girls, and I’m not, by any means, exempting myself from this either. What is it with us? Girls are human beings, not unicorns or something else that should rightly choke you up with their presence. Yet so many times even the most intelligent and articulate among us turn into unsure, babbling weirdos when we want to talk to a girl. It’s a hard thing to witness. It’s a harder thing to be a part of.

I used to see this girl Cathleen in the caf. She was a year or two older than me, gorgeous, and rumor had it she was feisty; all the things I like. One day I was looking for a seat in the caf, she was sitting alone, and I set my tray down across from her and took a seat facing her. I smack myself about it even today thinking back on the incident. Big brained me had only planned as far as sitting across from her. What I should’ve said, I’ve gone over in my head a thousand times since that meal. What I actually said, was pretty much nothing. After asking her the icebreaker questions like what semester she was, where she was from, what her major was, yada-yada, the ice was still there, and we might have sat for 5 whole, long minutes before she said goodbye and left me sitting alone. She must have been hungry at dinner that night, because she barely ate anything before she was gone. I flopped big time.

Now, a dear close friend of mine is in love with a girl. She doesn’t love him back. But he just thinks she won’t love him back, as if it’s a matter of choice. I don’t speak to this girl because my friend loves her, loves only her, and she’s a player and a user. I’ve told him this, that she’s the devil. Every other weekend I see her with another new hollow, pretty looking douche-bag boy all over her, buying her drinks, and I’ve texted him from the bar informing him of the true nature of this girl, from a firsthand witness point of view. He doesn’t want to hear it; he never wants to hear it. So we talk about business, other people, plans for the weekend, plans for the future, blowing things up; boy things. When we get on the topic of girls, he clams up because he knows I love to hate his girl (“his” girl). He’s done her final projects for Harmony 1, 2, 3, and I’ll bet he’s working on her Harmony 4 project right now. Sure, she’s attractive and she knows how to work her girl magic, but I have it my head that she’s got issues. I can’t put my finger on specific instances that explain what’s wrong with her, but she has no tenderness or compassion about her; consistently, she’s a cold, hard, mean, demon-bitch. But to him she’s the world.

I’ll say I don’t understand girls. I’ll say that few among us males do. I grew up watching Batman, Spiderman, and X-Men. Superhero cartoons on Fox Kids after school raised me to believe that men should be strong, extraordinary, moralistic, and brave, and that beautiful, good women flocked to these types of men. Catwoman was the bad guy. Nowadays we have ‘500 Days of Summer’ where the girl with no soul and no faith in love heartlessly derails the nice guy (who represents our generation’s young man so well) by breaking his heart, with no remorse. We have Lady Gaga, who seems to dominate the hit record charts by making men in her videos her subjects, like in the feudal/medieval sense. I don’t get the appeal there. I’m all for women’s rights and equality and all, but to me that doesn’t mean, “Ok Ladies, let’s now shit on the men.” That’s not playing fair, that’s just hypocrisy.

But maybe women don’t really understand men either. Maybe men and women are both bound to struggle at it; maybe that’s the way it works for us as Homo sapiens. There are a lot of dumb guys out there, myself included, but I guess there are definitely strange girls out there too. I recently went on a date with a girl who could be best characterized as, “closed book.” I tried and I tried and I tried, and I’ve gotten better since Cathleen mind you, but this girl would just not let me in past hello. She was sweet, she was nice, but she had nothing to say for herself and she was a piece of grass in the wind, ready to sway whichever way it blows. I asked her what kind of food she wanted to eat; she said, “Anything.” I asked her what type of music she listened to; she said “Everything.” I asked her what movies she liked and she said, “I like all movies.” I asked, “Oh yeah? Did you like ‘Twilight?’ It was a decent movie, right?” She said, “I loved ‘Twilight.’” I haven’t seen her since.

David Lee is a recent graduate of Berklee now serving in the Army Rangers.