Of Mice and Men

platonic, romantic, and everything in between

This is the Barstool Sports edition of my newsletter. Here are stories about how men can be awesome.

My 7th grade science teacher lost his pet snake one morning and told us not to tell the principal because he was “already on thin ice.” One time he locked a kid in a closet because he was misbehaving, and another time I brought in a cake for my friend’s birthday and when I asked to go get a plastic knife from the cafeteria to cut it, he pulled out a 10 inch butcher’s knife from his drawer. He was the best teacher of my life. He was engaging, unpredictable, and one day made fried calamari with the squids we dissected in the lab. He then handed out our quizzes with his hands still covered in squid ink so we all put fishy, black stained, wrinkled papers in our lockers to ripen. I will never forget about the endoplasmic reticulum, and I will never forget when he told us to pee on pH strips in the bathroom to see if we had the gene for diabetes. Public school is awesome. He eventually found his snake, she was hiding under the counter in the classroom the whole time. Sort of a metaphor for how you always find your missing boa constrictor in the last place you look.

The summer of 2017 I was living in Manhattan and on my way to bed one night I encountered a mouse. It was 2am and I called my mom who, upon being jolted awake thought that I was dying and, after hearing I was calling about a mouse told me I’m a real New Yorker now. I was living in student housing so there was a security guard at the front desk who came up to tell me that the mouse probably left. This man introduced me to a technique I now call- ignoring my problems and hoping they go away.

A year ago I went on a date to a New York Fashion Week fashion show. I was brought on this date by a man who would later take me to Yom Kippur services in Park Slope and wrap his tallis around me during the prayer for our women, but I digress. The fashion show was amazing. I got to feel short and ordinary while trying to impress a man. He introduced me to some of his cool friends and we watched in awe as fashion happened before our eyes. I don’t know how else to describe a fashion show. When the show ended, we walked outside and I looked up to see two white beams of light shooting up into the sky. I asked him if that was for a movie premier and he said it was coming from the 9/11 memorial. The date of this fashion show was September 11th, 2019. Our relationship was doomed from the start.

One time a boy told me he liked my ears. Or as I now call them, the boobs of the side of my head.

The other day I was walking home and a man called out to me, “Hey beautiful, have a lovely night!” I instinctively turned and said thank you. Then, he said to his friend, “See? If I didn’t tell her to have a lovely night she wouldn’t have turned around.” This is true. Tell me I’m pretty, and I’ll be bored. But tell me I’m pretty and tell me what to do? I am hooked. Cat-calling is all about the semantics. Me and this man are now married.

A few months ago I was helping my friend move into her apartment in the East Village. Hollywood just called and they’re making a screenplay about this as we speak. If you are a woman, you are undeniably aware of the phenomenon of random men on the street stopping to help you parallel park. It’s sort of a call to action. A heroic tribute. This particular morning, I was feeling competent, and I backed into the space in one smooth motion. A Russian man in a thick accent came up to the car after and said “You park very good, for woman.” Chivalry isn’t dead, and me this man are also now married.

My old roommate’s boyfriend once carried my dresser down 4 flights of stairs. He was big and strong and I appreciated the help. As a woman, I find it important to let men lift things in an ever constant desire to one day find one who can do the dirty dancing lift with me.

Senior year of college I took a class about aesthetics. I’m not referring to your influencer friend’s Insta grid layout, I’m talking about Art. The point of this anecdote is that my professor lost my midterm. In a class of 13, my packet was the one that slipped out of his rust colored messenger bag, onto the floor of his Subaru forester, and out into the wind, never to be seen again. Luckily, he felt so badly that he just gave me an A on the exam. This is what scientists are calling a “girlboss slay.” My classmates were mad because I fucked up the average they so desperately needed to have that Harvard Law Edge. I’m allowed to be mean to philosophy majors because I was one, and I met people who should just not be allowed to speak. The devil has so many advocates, and they are all studying ethics.