There’s what you call a ‘boy-boy’ and then there’s a ‘girl-boy,’” a close friend, Roshan, explains. “A boy-boy is someone who is all man: the alpha male type — super macho and totally clueless about the female mind. A girl-boy, meanwhile, is very much straight but he’s in touch with his feminine side, meaning he understands girl issues and that’s why he’s called a girl-boy.”
A concept loaded with irony, I thought to myself. But knowing the source — Roshan, herself a contradiction in terms — it does make sense. Only she could come up with something like that.
Roshan is the best pastry chef I know but her physique negates this very statement. She has the body of someone who has never been introduced to sugar and white flour; go figure. She has a small, delicate, heart-shaped face with large dreamy eyes fringed with the thickest and longest of lashes that bat every which way when she smiles — but she has the disposition of a drill sergeant when dealing with undesirable personalities and situations. Her charm is readily disarming but she plays no politics; she serves the truth straight up. She is always dressed impeccably, which makes people regard her with total seriousness; but her sense of humor is laugh-out-loud funny. She seems shy and demure but she doesn’t give two hoots about getting up in the lobby of The Peninsula to sing and dance to the pop song Nobody (Nobody But You). She claims to have grown up believing she was an ugly child, though not a single trace of this claim remains. At her core lies an abundance of grace to marry all of these ironies together.
And so when she says there is such a phenomenon as a “girl-boy,” one believes — immediately.
“It’s like this,” she says. “A girl-boy is a straight man but one whom you can tell girl secrets and he totally gets it. He is someone with great taste, someone who can shop for you. He can get you nice clothes and shoes in styles you really will love and wear. He is someone you can talk to, hang out and have fun with, and do girl things with, without him dying of boredom and without you being scared of him making a pass. He is sensitive; he understands women — but he’s straight ha! Very straight!”
Okay. So ever since the day she explained this, I have been on the lookout for these girl-boys, scrutinizing — maybe even overanalyzing — my male friends’ comments and actions in the hope of uncovering aspects of this phenomenon. My men friends are mostly of the garden-variety “macho” type if not the garden-variety “gay” type. I don’t really have any particular guy friend who fits the girl-boy classification. I mean, the distinction between macho and gay among my friends is hard, fast and definitive — there are no gray areas there. So the hunt has been challenging.
I started closest to home: I went out on a limb and asked my brother if he wanted to go purse-shopping with me at the Tumi store — at least I was careful in not picking a girly bag store; Tumi carries a unisex line. His reaction was far from encouraging. All he said to me on the phone after I had asked was, “Huh?” and then promptly hung up. That didn’t quite pan out, but inside I kind of knew that none of my male relatives would have that precious iota of “girl” inside them, except for one whom I love dearly. The rest of them live in Testosterone City.
I cannot imagine one of my closest guy friends, Mukesh, hanging out and doing girly things with me because when we do spend time together, he always finds one reason or another to call me jagu (Indian for foolish), because he says girls are really jagu and I’m the biggest one of all. He does have excellent taste in women’s clothes — he has given me the most gorgeous blouses — and we tell each other secrets but it has to be within a quick time frame and with no lengthy explanations or back stories. And that’s as far as it goes. He’s the first one to come running if I find myself in trouble but I can’t imagine him hanging out all day with me; it would be death by boredom or annoyance for him, I’m convinced.
I remember having embarked on a foolish crusade back in the day — two decades ago. An old boyfriend (über-male of the big and tall mold, then add a commanding personality and a lot of burping and farting aloud) had gifted me with a sleek cell phone in white and gleaming silver that looked so high-tech it seemed intimidating. It was awfully sweet, the way he went about the whole production — surprising me and all. He had called me just several minutes earlier on my crummy, old cell phone asking, “You wanted a really thin phone, right? Because I’ll get you one.” And so the proper lady that I knew I had to be said, “Oh, please don’t bother. The make and model that I want isn’t available here yet.” But he insisted, so after another try, I caved in: “Yes! Okay!” He then called back to say, “I’m so sorry, it’s not your lucky day. I’m here at this mall and they don’t have it in stock. I’ll go to that other mall now. Hopefully they’ll have it there and I’ll meet you after.”
There I was waiting for him at the appointed restaurant when my crummy phone rang again. It was he. “I’m so sorry. Not your day; they don’t have it here either.” So I said thanks for trying; I was, sincerely, not the least bit disappointed because I was reveling in all the thought and effort he had put in.
After a few minutes, he strode into the restaurant and deposited a package in my hands. It was the brand-new phone I had been lusting after.
Fishing for something profound to say in response, I asked him: “Why did you get me that phone?”
“Because your phone is falling apart,” he answered simply.
It wasn’t exactly what I had wanted to hear. So I asked again in a sugary voice, “No, really. Why did you get it for me?”
“Because your phone is crummy.”
After a third rephrasing and yet another similar response, I gave up and told him, “You’re supposed to say, ‘I got it because I love you.’”
We both stopped in our tracks, stared at each other, and burst out laughing, with him saying, “But that’s not how I am,” and me saying, “That’s so gay! Not! Wrong!”
He was no girl-boy, obviously.
It is a matter of degrees, I think, this whole girl-boy concept. It is a mixture of percentages that make up the whole persona. Some girl-boys may be 10 percent girl and 90 percent boy; others may be 30-70; and others, still, are 50-50. Some percentage of “girl” would be nice to encounter once in a while but if the fulcrum tips too far toward female attributes, then the man most likely qualifies as gay — really!
I wouldn’t want my man discussing the merits of platform shoes or wedges over stiletto heels with me, would you? I don’t want him arguing with me about why the color of café au lait is richer and warmer, visually, than mocha. I would barbeque him if he convinced me to go for liposuction or L-carnitine injections because he thinks I’m fat. And I would choke him to death if he took my favorite Roger Vivier pumps without permission, even if it were just to road test them.
Two days ago, I was watching a rerun of one of my favorite TV shows, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The Fab Five were doing a makeover on this dude (I didn’t catch his name) who was not the most manly of men: slight of build (5’6” at most, and skinny), although he did have an extensive tattoo along one arm — what they call a “sleeve” in tattoospeak; mod, longish hair; verbose in speech; baroque in body movements; and a curious interest in fashion.
The makeover was complete and the big reveal was staged at a party for 75 of his friends and family with his wife as guest of honor — of course. The camera showed him getting ready for the event and I saw stuff that lit up my gaydar.
He spent an inordinate amount of time doing his hair — putting a ton of product in it and finger-combing through it. S***! I thought, this dude takes longer than me! I mean, he was doing the 20-minute hair thing, and being oh-so-serious about it! And get this: he applied eye cream using his ring finger! Only women know about that, first of all, and only half of those who know it even do it. C’mon!
Anyway, fast-forward to the party, and there he was onstage, on the microphone and pledging undying love to his wife. I know all women — and I repeat, “all women” — whine about how they want their men to be more sensitive and how they wish they would channel Richard Gere as Edward Lewis in the movie Pretty Woman and profess profound love for them. But hell, as that dude waxed all syrupy over the microphone, the wince and cringe factor became incrementally perturbing.
Was it the delivery — the way he said it? The tone, the body language, the choice of words? Or was it the drama: the stage, the lighting, the captive audience? Was it because it was all so contrived? Or was it the singing to her in the end? (Yes, he actually did sing to her!)
Whatever, it was painful to watch. He was no girl-boy. That was a girl-girl moment, clearly. And I would take a burping, farting, cussing, beer-guzzling boy-boy over that any day. Fortunately, I have plenty of contacts in Testosterone City.
* * *
Thank you for your letters. You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.