So here we are with the next installment of Sonny & Cher’s advice column in 16 Magazine. I’ve stapled them together randomly and this is the second in line. And it’s a doozy.
This was so arduous a question, Sonny & Cher took up the whole column to answer it.
Let’s try to hit this awkward topic head on, the way Sonny & Cher did (or their handlers) back in the mid-60s. And there’s so much to unpack here in this list, Cher Scholar is going to respond differently than she did in Part 1. We’ll take the responses point by point.
How Do You Know When He Cares?
Dear Cher,
[CS: Notice this is addressed to Cher only but Sonny will weigh in too (unasked) at the end with some emblematic Sonnysplaining; but Sonny’s advice is actually better so… In fact, Cher’s answers feel a bit off-track to me in that they assume a lot, like they assume our young lady is on friendly ground with this fellow already and that they’re already doing things together. This makes me wonder if these were actually aspects of Cher’s relationship with Sonny, things that had really happened between Cher and Sonny. They did move from friends to lovers so her antennas were probably set to these particular relationship markers. She’s only a teenager, after all, or barely into her twenties at this point in time. And immature at that. Still solidly more girl than woman here. So can she be expected to be giving expert relationship advice? Sonny, who is 11 years older and a likely player to boot, probably has some bankable dish for us!]
“I am 14 years old and there is a boy who lives near me whom I like very, very much. [What 14 year old uses the formal whom in a question about a boy?] I think he likes me too, but I’m not sure. I see him from time to time in the neighborhood, downtown, and at sports and social gatherings. I really think he likes me. Please let me know ho I can tell whether he likes me or not.” IN LOVE, Meridian, Miss.”
Cher’s Response:
Dear In Love, Both Sonny and I read your letter with great interest. I, as a girl, made up a list of the things that I feel are dead giveaways—showing when a boy really likes a girl. When you get through reading my list—read on cos Sonny will give you the very necessary “boy’s point of view”. Here’s my list. Best of luck!:
[Oy. The colon after the exclamation point!:!]
+ He smiles or speaks to you when he’s alone, but becomes bashful when he’s with his friends.
[CS: Bashful is such a great word; This describes what appears to be a literal Grease situation. This could be a positive indicator, in a fantastical movie maybe. It could also mean he’s just being a dick. Roxanne Gay has a harrowing rape story in Bad Feminist along these same girl-confusing lines. Behavior around friends could be a big red flag. Sorry to deflate everyone’s Danny Zucko fantasies. That nightmare aside, I can totally see there being a public and private, behind-closed-doors-with-Cher Sonny. I always say don’t be quick to judge couples, because behind closed doors people are very different. And although that’s true, it’s not a great place to judge early behavior around, especially with people you really don’t know that well. Here is a photo of Cher meeting all of Sonny’s friends:]
+ At parties (or local hangouts), you occasionally catch him staring at you.
[CS: One time in high school biology class this happened to me and the guy turned out to be gay. He was just trying to deconstruct my fashion sense or lack thereof. Not failsafe is all I’m saying. And in Sonny’s case, he was probably staring at every blonde that came by. And it’s worth noting that three of the four women he married were not blondes. Men staring, I don’t know about that as a reliable rubric.]
+ He sends a Valentine or a friendship card [what’s a friendship card?] anonymously – but you know it’s from him.
[CS: Ok, I know I’m being a negative-Nellie here but this is terrible advice. If something is anonymous, by definition…you do not know who it is. Very dangerous terrain and potentially embarrassing to make assumptions. You don’t know. End stop. I’ve seen this end badly for people. Intuition is not evidence.]
+ You compliment him regarding a shirt or a sweater that he wears, and you notice that he wears it more often.
[CS: Ok, this seems reasonable.]
+ He asks if you would like to go for a ride in his car, and when he comes to pick you up you can tell that he must have spent hours polishing it.
[CS: This is a good sign no doubt–effort–but like point one above you should be careful about rides in cars. Unfortunately, the whole “go for a ride in their car thing” has changed in the modern era of both First 48 and Snapped. I’ve had a few close calls where I had to think fast on my feet (or think fast in the passenger seat). And I’m sure I have fewer stories than most people. I’ve taken a few rides I should not have. One time I found myself with the son of someone I worked with at the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy. The father was very nice. It seemed the son would be nice too. The first red flag was the car. It was a mess and had pictures of his estranged kids taped to the dashboard. Bad sign. At the time, I was going to be moving down to NYC and when he asked me out I said I didn’t want to start dating anyone. So he proposed a friendly dinner. (I know.) It turned out to be a very romantically-skewed Italian dinner in the North End of Boston. Over gnocchi, he confessed apropos of nothing that he didn’t believe in hitting women. (Whaaaa?) After dinner he didn’t want to take me home (yikes!) and I found myself in a beautiful but unplanned stop at a penthouse bar in downtown Boston where, get this, he sucked on my fingers. And because this is a Cher blog, I can tell you this should have been very funny because Gregg Allman did this to Cher on their disastrous first date. But it was just too creepy to be usefully funny. It helped immensely to have been living at the time with a brother I could make sound crazier than the date-crazy experience I was on (total fiction). And that is what, I believe, got me home that night. If the car seems weird, no matter how polished the fenders, drive separately (a very reasonable suggestion for a friendly dinner; why didn’t I think of that?) Cher was a bit of a runaway at 16 and had already gotten into cars with Warren Beatty and God knows who else? But sometimes, girl, you gotta drive yourself to those first few.]
+ He gives in and sees the movie you want to see.
[CS: What movie disagreements were Sonny and Cher having? I am dying to know. This clue assumes they are to the movie stage.]
+ He’s polite to your parents, and family – even to your little brother.
[CS: Whoa. We’re really jumping way ahead here. Meeting the parents already? I feel like Cher’s experience is very unique to Cher here. Our damsel in distress is still in the barely-a-stranger stage. It’s worth noting here that Sonny won over Cher’s mother, who was more than ready to call the cops on this adult man dating her underage daughter. In the documentary Sonny & Me, Cher also indicates she was so infatuated, her mother was worried a separation would just make the problem worse. Georgia did try it. And it did make it worse.]
+ He wears the hippie beads you gave him, though you know his buddies tease him about them.
[CS: Actually, a good clue. And Sonny did more than wear silly hippie beads. He wore fur fests.]
+ He’s there when you need him – not just when there are parties and fun.
[CS: Also a very good indicator for more serious relationship material, but premature at this point for our 16-Magazine-letter-writing heroine.]
Sonny’s Response:
It’s me—Sonny. Cher has just given you the clues a girl picks up on when she begins to realize that the guy she digs—digs her! But being a guy, I know a few things Cher doesn’t know, so I’ll pass these “secrets” on to you. Stay alert!:
[CS: Alright! The secrets to the castle. Here we go!]
+ He often drives his bike or car by your house. (He may not speak to you, but it’s his way of making sure that you notice him.)
[CS: Ok this is another borderline situation, like the ride in the car above. Times have changed. This could flip over into stalker-strategy maneuvers. Firefighting Academy Son did drive-bys. And stop and ring-the-door-bys.]
+ He starts combing his hair more often and dressing neater.
[CS: Ok this seems reasonable but boys are better dressers these days in general so…not always the giveaway it sounds like it should be. Alexander, for example, was interested enough in fashion to be at Paris Fashion Week where he met Cher.]
+ He names something after you—like his dog, motorbike, etc.
[CS: Do boys do this??]
+ He takes on an afternoon job to have more money to take you out.
[CS: Again, this sounds reasonable but who but his friends would even know? Our girl only sporadically sees this guy out and about. In Sonny’s case, the extra job he took on was the nightclub circuit after promising Cher he’d get them back on top within three years after losing all their money while making a bad independent movie. This is Sonny’s extra job moment, but he made Cher work on it too. I guess it’s the thought that counts.]
+ He calls you earlier or sooner than he said he would—
[CS: Interesting idea, but if we could be much looser with this measurement: he’s not really, really late.]
+ and when he speaks to you on the phone, his voice is softer and deeper than usual.
[CS: Sonny! Good tip there! Now we’re getting somewhere….assuming she even gets to the phone stage. Here’s another example from Grease. Pretty much every item in this column we could tie back to Grease.]
+ He remembers your birthday and other special occasions.
[Yes, usually a sign.]
+ He somehow manages to offer to let you wear his class ring.
[CS: Ok, totally dated…even for Sonny. What other proto-hippies even had class rings? See hippy-beads above. Oh wait, this is 16 Magazine…but still…yeah, no. Now if he gets a ring with your name on it and gives you a ring with his name on it…]
+ He begins to spend more time with you than with his best friends.
{CS: Definitely good news, this clue, and also, sadly a sign the relationships is on the decline when it goes the other direction.]
Cher Scholar Adds:
So there were some good things up there. Not all bad, dated suggestions. But what can we add that isn’t on this list above? We’ve had 50 more years to reflect on this issue. In the early 1980s, teens would circle each other at the mall like groups of panthers in baggy neon. It was weird, too. Or alternatively, we had a new version of 1950s cruising, but only around shopping malls.
In college and the later workplace, the deal was finding excuses to work together on projects or figuring out how to set up meetings with each other. Alcohol also seemed to assist in getting those clues out in the open.
Our modern-day Internet has given us some interesting additional avenues:
- They “like” or respond to a larger amount of your social media posts (that’s how we convinced a friend of ours she had a gentlemen suitor a few years ago when we pointed out he would like every single thing she ever posted.)
- They find excuses to send you friendly emails or texts.
It’s been my experience that even the bashful have their own tricks, like they’re always hanging around or they’ll try to Cyrano-de-Bergerac-it with the help of a friend.
I had a friend of my friend’s brother once try the whole hang-out-with-us and then argue with everything I said strategy. It’s a strategy I guess. I mean people don’t have to agree about everything, but spread the debates out over a whole relationship, guy. No need to cover all the issues before the first date. Because I had to wonder if he thought everything about me was a hot mess (and I would never argue that point), then why are you hanging around? (The answer which I didn’t know at the time was: it’s complicated.)
This is probably the best sign or the second best sign (aside from telling someone straight out to their face, which is Neil Diamond’s recommend): their willingness to exist in discomforting conversations. A willingness to be candidly vulnerable. Even if they do not “dig” you as girlfriend or boyfriend material, this shows they appreciate you as a deep connection.
You will notice nobody (including me) said to just ask the other person. That’s because we’re all the too fucking afraid to do that. Nobody even suggests it. Isn’t that incredible?
This advice above is also missing its other shoe, so to speak: what should this lovely girl do if over a reasonable amount of time nothing on this list has materialized. We need to let our young inquisitive lover know what to do in case the answer is negatory. As I said to Hotpants last week, don’t escalate the pressure if the other person doesn’t “dig” you. People like who they like and it often defies reason or explanation. As it should.
Love should be more powerful than culture itself, bigger than the riff-raff of advice columns.
It’s also important to note that people often find themselves the object of unwanted attention. One of my brothers was a crush-magnet growing up so I witnessed a good example of this. I also have a local relative who is exceedingly handsome but also painfully shy and actually grew the Oakridge-Boy-beard like the formerly handsome Oakridge Boy did for allegedly similar reasons.
This is all to say sometimes it’s a act of love to back off and leave them alone. It’s messy out there in Loveland and sometimes you have to take one for the team. Talk to Hotpants from last week and he’ll tell you.
