This HaBO is from April, who wants to find a short story from a magazine:
Well, ok, this is not really a book, but a short story I once read in some magazine, likely either Seventeen or Woman’s World, maybe MS, a long, long time ago, close to two decades ago.
It has been bugging me for years now, but I can’t for the life of me remember the title or the author, but I really, really want to find out so I can read it again and maybe find what else the author might have written.
The story is a romance in the point of view of the guy, in high school, and it begins with him asking his friend for some advice because he had just managed to ask the popular girl (I want to say the homecoming queen) out for a date, and she actually said yes.
The trouble is, this girl goes out on a lot of dates, a different guy every time — all innocent, of course, but still, she’s in demand — and the main character wants to stand out; he needs good date ideas so he isn’t like all the other guys taking her to see a movie or something.
His friend is the perfect wingman and brilliant on top of that, and he gives some very cool date ideas that to this day still resonate with me.
Some of the dates go like this:
1. He takes her driving, but dollar bills are taped all over his car, so the joy of the date is in watching the dollar bills flap around and fly off as they drive.
2. They give blood at a blood drive.
3. They go to an animal shelter and feed the animals some cheese.
After the guy has taken the girl out on half a dozen dates, the friend has run out of ideas, and the guy is on his own; the best he can come up with after all that is to take her to the movies.
By this time, however, the girl has enjoyed herself immensely with this guy and has started looking forward to going on dates with him — all the other guys had been boring, and up until she started dating the main character she was kind of going through the motions; now she’s excited.
So they sit in the movie theater, and he’s feeling a little down; she asks him what’s wrong, and he admits that he’s a little bummed that he was taking her on a boring movie date.
That’s when she smiles genuinely at him and tells him it’s OK — they’re together, and that’s all that matters.
The story ends there, the moral being that by standing out in his dates with her he captured her attention and interest above all the other guys, and the assumption is that from there they start to date exclusively.
I’ve tried Googling for this story, but I haven’t had much luck; if you or your readers can identify the title or the author, I’d love to know — I’d love to read this story again.
This one might be tough because it’s from a magazine, but I believe in you, Bitchery!
Holy smokes, I do not know the title or author, but I have totally read this! And I did have a subscription to Seventeen back in the day.
I am pretty sure I’ve read this, and that it was also in Seventeen. But that’s all I remember….
If it was in Seventeen (they did publish a lot of short fiction), it’s very likely pre-web, and you might need to find a library with this database and go through issues: http://www.proquest.com/products-services/Womens-Magazine-Archive.html
I’m going to take the argument that it definitely was not MS.
Sounds like Seventeen, Glamour, or possibly even Sassy…
If you are way younger than me (and it seems EVERYONE is any more), you might also be remembering something from Young Miss magazine. They had lots of stories like that. Left me totally unprepared for the real world….
This reminds me of early Lois Duncan short stories, some of which were published in Seventeen.
I worked at Sassy, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Sassy. (Then again, I’m old, and my antediluvian brain isn’t what it used to be.)
Is old bitches may not remember relevant data, but we sure are funny, exiting with a delighted cackle!
I read the summary and my mind immediately wandered in a fanfic direction, with the guy realizing that he’s really been in love with his best friend all along.
Imagine your OTP …
Do Seventeen & other teen magazines still publish short fiction? I remember that being one of my favorite parts of the magazine when I was in their demographic.
YM published short fiction back in the day. I always looked forward to reading it.
This sounds like something I read in YM back in the. Back then, all I would read was Sassy and YM. It reads like YM.
@Carol S – If you see this, would you mind telling me where you’re from? The “positive anymore” you just dropped is reminding me of my friend who grew up in Indiana.
I used to read Seventeen but I don’t remember this short story. There was one that sticks with me that was called “Island of Boyfriends” though. LOL
My money is Seventeen–I remember a short story I read over and over about a girl going to camp and having her first kiss during my sophomore year of high school–would have been around 1999. I’m not sure where you’d find back issues, but if you have access to a library, librarians are wizards at finding that stuff. Even if you can’t get the full magazine, I bet you’d be able to find somewhere that would copy or scan the relevant pages and send them.That’s my best suggestion.
I definitely remember this story. The advice-giving friend would take naps in the bathroom with the tub running. As a pre-teen in Southern California, it struck me as an awful waste of water. I also remember thinking the friend was so creative with his dating ideas, I’d want to date him instead of the narrator. I believe it was in Teen Magazine or YM when YM’s physical publishing format was like what US Weekly or Life and Style is today. I remember thinking it was one of the better fiction entries for that magazine.