Rebecca Gilman Trivia

1. What did Patrick Chibas tell Sarah Daniels was his ethnic background?

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Spinning into Butter"

Answer: Nuyorican

Sarah needed to know so that she could help Patrick get a scholarship designated for minority students. However, when he told her he was Nuyorican, she asked if she could just tell the scholarship advisory board that he was Hispanic. Patrick objected to being called Hispanic and persistently refused to describe himself as such, eventually asking Sarah if she knew why he was objecting. She confirmed that she knew, saying, "correct me, please, if I'm wrong, it's because it really only applies to imperialists of European descent who colonized Puerto Rico." Patrick made it clear that he didn't want to be called Hispanic, so Sarah then asked about the term "Latino." When Patrick objected to that as well, Sarah asked about "just plain Puerto Rican," which Patrick also shot down. When Sarah pointed out that the scholarship was worth $12,000, Patrick conceded to being called "Puerto Rican."

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" I

Answer: beer

They'd agreed to meet for drinks and when Theresa arrived, Tony went to get her a beer. He returned with a Miller High Life, about which she made a joke. Tony missed the joke completely, though, in one of many awkward moments in the first meeting. However, Theresa did agree to meet Tony again on Saturday night for dinner.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Spinning into Butter"

Answer: Sarah

Meyers, the security guard, came to put the notes in a plastic bag and mentioned the police, which infuriated Kenney. She chastised Sarah for having called them, pointing out that calling the police would alert the local press, which would then get the story into the wire services and make the college's problem a national issue. Kenney wanted to handle the incident internally, but Sarah had felt that with a note as "violent" as the one left, calling the police was a natural move. Once Kenney and Strauss had left, Ross told Sarah that she "did the right thing," but she made it clear she didn't want his support.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" II

Answer: underwear

She hadn't gone home in a few days and didn't have a change of clothes. Though she turned down Harriet's invite to a free makeover at the Saks cosmetics counter, Theresa asked Harriet to pick up some cotton underwear for her.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Spinning into Butter"

Answer: Students for Tolerance

He came to Sarah's office to get space for a meeting and approval for postering on campus. Then he started asking about funding and the process for becoming a legitimate organization and confessed that he was putting together the organization to "add a line" to his law school resume. Sarah was clearly unimpressed by his questionable commitment, and Greg lost even more ground when he realized Sarah was responsible for making the campus fraternities convert to coed status.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" II

Answer: colon

He'd been pretty ill and the doctors finally removed the colon. Theresa went to visit him because she felt guilty, but as it turned out her article had helped Lee's career immensely and he was quite grateful toward her. He asked her to stay and assured her he wouldn't be offensive, that that was in fact an act he put on for the press as part of his professional persona. Theresa agreed and they watched "Jeopardy!" together.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" I

Answer: flowers

Her boss asked about them, so she had to tell him a bit about the date. Then Tony called to arrange their Saturday dinner and Theresa's boss chided her for not obliging Tony's desire to be "gallant."

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Spinning into Butter"

Answer: "minority students"

Patrick told her that the correct term to use was "students of color." They had an awkward exchange because Patrick had complained about how he and his friends had felt at the forum, and Sarah assumed he was talking about other minority students. Patrick challenged her, mocking the notion that all his friends were minorities and that "'Hispanic' people stick together." Sarah apologized, but was never quite able to redeem herself. Patrick went on to say that at the forum, the "students of color were being talked about like we weren't even there, like we couldn't even talk for ourselves. And the white kids were being talked about like they were all criminals." Sarah continued to apologize, but also urged Patrick to attend the second forum and voice his concerns.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Spinning into Butter"

Answer: NYU

He came into her office because she wanted to talk about the editorial he'd written, in which he accused her of offering him a minority scholarship before she "even knew his race or ethnicity, as if any minority would do." He was upset that there was always a price attached to him getting things, like the shame he'd had to endure twice in the process of obtaining the scholarship. Sarah explained that she wanted the price to be in the college's pocket, in that they were giving money to Patrick, but it was clear that she didn't understand his complaint and was doing little to appease him. He told her that he was applying to NYU for the spring semester and would be sending a copy of the editorial along with a letter explaining his feelings to the president of the college and board of advisers. Sarah kept trying to apologize and flatter him into rethinking his departure, which he eventually cut off, saying "I don't want to reconsider and I don't want any more compliments! I'm not some genius or something. I'm just whatever I am and I want to go someplace where I won't stand out."

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" I

Answer: intimacy

After Theresa very clearly told him she didn't like him and didn't want to be friends, Tony concluded that she was afraid of intimacy and was one of those "women who really throw themselves into their work [because] they're afraid of their own sexual desires or sexual powers." Theresa assured him that was not the case, but Tony wouldn't let it go. After he'd finally left, Theresa made sure her assistant knew to never let anyone up to see her without her explicit permission.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Spinning into Butter"

Answer: respect him

Sarah recounted the way Ross had described the man and likened it to romanticizing poverty. She said he was idealizing him, and "that means that you didn't respect him." She continued, "To idealize is to fundamentally mark as different; it is not to respect. It is to fundamentally mark as different and, therefore, not equal. So that man on the train could never be your equal." She kept insisting that because Ross saw the man as fundamentally different from himself, he would never respect him or see him as an equal. She eventually confessed that she was taking the subject so seriously because she felt she'd done the same thing with Patrick; she had seen him as fundamentally different from herself and had consequently failed to respect him.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" II

Answer: cats

They'd gone to her apartment to pick some stuff up for her, but found the place completely ransacked. Tony had clearly gotten in and torn everything up. They did find a cat calendar, but determined she didn't have a cat. When they realized that she used the calendar to mark off her menstrual cycle, they were both embarrassed. Then Mercer confessed that when he'd started working at the magazine he once had a fantasy about having sex with Theresa. When Howard asked Mercer how Tony's latest actions fit into his theory of "The guy watches the girl, the guy gets the girl," Mercer rejoined, "The guy hurts the girl."

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" I

Answer: women's bodies

He told Theresa in their interview that he made movies based around women with "gigantic breasts." Theresa questioned the merits of a career making "movies [that] encourage men to objectify women" but Les countered that his movies "celebrate" women.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Spinning into Butter"

Answer: a rock

He was out when it was thrown through the window and wasn't hurt. Meyers brought it to Sarah's office and told her to take it to the police because he was tired of being yelled at by them for having so many fingerprints contaminating every piece of evidence. Sarah contended that she was tired of being yelled at as well. Meyers also told her that Simon had requested she not tell his parents about the rock, as they'd make him come home, and she resigned herself to going to talk with him about it.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" II

Answer: medicine cabinet

He'd left a note there which the police figured he'd hoped Theresa would find and read when she was alone. It said he wanted to pull a wire around her neck and squeeze until it decapitated her. Apparently, there were other details about his desires but Theresa opted not to hear them.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" I

Answer: at work

She was already disturbed that he'd gotten her unlisted home phone number, but then he called as soon as she turned the light on in her apartment and seemed to know she was lying about where she'd been. Theresa suspected Tony was following her, and he persisted in sending her flowers even though she'd expressly asked her not to! If her alarm bells hadn't been going off before, they definitely were now.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Spinning into Butter"

Answer: plantation mentality

Sarah said that when she got to graduate school, she met people who were smarter and more abrasive than she, and they pointed out that her "desire to help minority students [didn't] have anything to do with a sense of justice or fair play." Rather, it came from her "plantation mentality." They told her she wanted to "help the noble savage." She told Ross that she agreed, though subconsciously, and tried to enlighten herself by taking seminars on African American literature and theory. She immersed herself in black culture to try to "hear the African American voice and the African American viewpoint" but ended up just feeling responsible for their hardship. However, when she went to work at Lancaster in Chicago, where the student population was entirely minority, her perspective got worse. As she told Ross, "before I started there, I was just paternalistic. Now I'm fully aware that black people have agency and are responsible and can help themselves, but I think they don't do it because they're lazy and stupid."

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" II

Answer: Denver

She was friendly with the editor of the "Denver Free Press" and he'd made her a job offer the previous year. When Theresa's article on the Yankees came out it caught his attention and he called to make the offer again. Theresa took it, but told him that she'd have to write under a different name. He agreed to hire what would seem to be an untried female voice for the sports column in order to get Theresa's skills.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" I

Answer: cook her dinner

She ignored the first message but when he called right back to ask if she was sleeping with someone else she lost control and picked up the phone, yelling at him to stop calling her. Then she pulled the phone cord out of the wall and, when he cell started to ring, turned that off as well. She turned off all her lights, blocked the door with a chair and armed herself with a kitchen knife before resuming her work. Theresa obviously felt concern for her safety since Tony so clearly didn't understand her disinterest and what should have been the social boundaries between them.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Spinning into Butter"

Answer: Little Black Sambo

The FBI results had revealed that the handwriting was Simon's, and when Sarah went to talk to him, he confessed to having done all of it to himself, but couldn't explain why. Later, in a meeting, Strauss tried to compare it to the story of Little Black Sambo; that he'd been wearing beautiful new clothes in the jungle and one by one tigers had come and taken all his clothes away. Then the tigers argued about which was grandest and took the clothes off to chase one another. As they were busy chasing, Little Black Sambo went and retrieved his clothes. The tigers chased each other faster and faster around a tree "until they were just a yellow blur, and they spun so fast, they spun themselves into butter." Little Black Sambo then went to get a spoon and spread the butter on his pancakes to eat. Strauss argued that Simon had turned the college into the tigers and had gotten them "in a whirl over nothing." Sarah protested, but Kinney and Strauss had both seen her racist rants on the legal pad and were disinclined to listen to much of anything from her.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" II

Answer: Les Kennkat

Theresa had told him on the phone about her situation and that she was moving. He'd made an odd noise and hung up. She was hurt until he called back and told her that he'd contacted a movie producer friend of his and arranged for a private jet to fly her to Colorado. He also "intimated that he has ties to the Mafia" so if Theresa "wanted Tony's knees broken, all [she] had to do was say the word."

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" I

Answer: she should call the police

When he couldn't get through on her home or cell phones, Tony called Theresa's work number and left 20 messages that escalated in anger. He was upset that she'd been home screening his calls and professed a desire to hurt her and make her suffer as he had. Theresa asked Mercer if he thought she should be scared and he told her she should call the police.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Spinning into Butter"

Answer: Sarah

Strauss had wanted to do it because he wanted to "meet him." Sarah insisted on doing it herself, saying that she didn't want Strauss near him. Kenney allowed Sarah to go because she knew Sarah had never done anything overtly racist and Strauss would "say something stupid without even knowing it and open [the college] up to a lawsuit." The next day, after Meyers had reported back to Sarah about getting Simon home and Sarah had finished her appointment with Greg Sullivan, she called Simon to see how he was doing. Kenney had apparently failed to notify his parents, so he'd had to explain to them, but Sarah tried to impart some hopefulness to him about the future, reassuring him that it was "okay."

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" II

Answer: her letters

Tony had ripped up most of her journals and books. The books he'd left intact he had written little notes in the margins. The only thing that seemed untouched was a box of letters Theresa kept under her bed. Among the collection were some letters Theresa's mother had sent her when she was at camp one summer. Mercer and Howard were at Theresa's apartment to help her pack, but there wasn't much to do since most of her belongings were ruined or, at the very least, tainted with bad memories. While they were packing, Tony showed up and rang the buzzer. Theresa called the cops and Mercer ran out to chase him, but Tony ran because he saw Howard through the window. There was a tragic moment of hope for Theresa because if the cops had shown up in time to catch Tony violating his restraining order, he'd be arrested and she wouldn't have had to relocate. Alas, he was gone by the time the police arrived and she had to resign herself to the life awaiting her in Colorado under the new name she'd chosen for herself, Claire Howells.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" I

Answer: take self-defense course

Theresa was understandably displeased with the idea of having to restructure her life because of Tony's harassment. She particularly didn't want to change her name because she was a writer and her name had professional recognition. She also pointed out that she'd had an unlisted phone number but Tony had gotten it anyway. Beck wasn't very reassuring about how much help the justice system was going to be, though, pointing out that all they could do was take out a restraining order. When Theresa asked what was the worst that could happen, Beck tried to avoid answering. Theresa persisted, asking if she'd seen people killed, and Detective Beck confirmed, "I've seen that." Theresa correctly deduced, though, that murder was not the "worst thing" Detective Beck had seen result from stalking situations, which was understandably unsettling!

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" I

Answer: he slept around

Les told Theresa that Kathy had warned him that she'd leave him if he didn't stop, but he didn't believe her. The fact that she had "stuck to her guns" apparently earned his eternal respect. Theresa was annoyed, though, and saw Les as just another man who didn't "take women seriously" and complained to him that, "when a woman talks, a man just sees her mouth moving."

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" I

Answer: her name

Her name was Deena Delite, which Les proclaimed "cheap." He said he didn't have a new name in mind, but that he usually thought of them while mid-coitus with the lucky woman. Theresa cut the interview short when Les started to riff on what exactly he found inspirational about that particular situation.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" I

Answer: The Yankees

Howard could see from Theresa's article on Les Kennkat that she didn't like writing about stuff she didn't respect. Howard said they'd "sit down and decide on a new direction" and Theresa said she wanted to write about the Yankees because they were "the only good thing in [her] life" at that point.

From Quiz Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" I

Answer: letter

Theresa got a letter from Tony in which he threatened to rape and sodomize her. Mercer called Detective Beck and offered to let Theresa sleep at his home (while assuring her he was married). Theresa was terrified and took out some of her anger on Mercer for thinking to write an article about her predicament, telling him, "You don't get to make something theoretical out of my life. [...] I'm not theoretical. I'm real."

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