Characters Girls Can Kiss Now Jill Gutowitz

Darcy in Girls Can Kiss Now: A Character Analysis

Overview

Darcy is a close friend from the Dinner Crew social group in Los Angeles and the central object of Jill Gutowitz’s intense lesbian yearning in Girls Can Kiss Now. A working actress best known for a Disney Channel show, Darcy first appears as the girlfriend of Jill’s friend Ian. She embodies the alluring but ultimately unavailable figure that drives the memoir’s exploration of queer longing. The relationship builds to a fever pitch of emotional intimacy and tension, then ends when Darcy ghosts Jill outright. Darcy is a character drawn mainly through Jill’s subjective experience, so her own interiority remains opaque, but her actions—the flirtatious boundary testing, the kiss, the final silence—reveal a person both drawn to Jill’s devotion and unable to return it fully.

Plot Role

Darcy’s function in the narrative is to serve as the catalyst for Jill’s first conscious queer desire. She enters the story after Jill moves to Los Angeles and starts attending Dinner Crew, a weekly Christian gathering for young actors. Jill returns to that uncomfortable environment solely because Darcy is there. The two become fast friends, texting constantly and building a life together: Jill cat‑sits for Darcy while she films a TV show in Vancouver, adopts her cat, and treats Darcy’s apartment as a shared home. This period of absence intensifies Jill’s yearning. After Darcy returns from Vancouver with a new boyfriend, the emotional asymmetry becomes painful. The plot peaks with a kiss at a gay cowboy bar and a late‑night Uber ride in West Hollywood where Darcy demands to hear “I love you.” Months later, Darcy ghosts Jill, ending the friendship without resolution. The chapter closes by noting that Jill began dating her first girlfriend and Darcy began dating a new guy—cut to black. Darcy’s ghosting is the final push Jill needs to confront her sexuality and begin the process of reclaiming herself from the “yearn cage”.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Explicit evidence about Darcy’s motivations is limited because the memoir is told from Jill’s perspective. However, her actions give us strong interpretive signals. Darcy is playful and provocative: she texts Jill a photo of her pubic hair “as a joke,” FaceTimes from the bathtub, and recounts stories about orgies at her high school. These gestures can be read as testing or encouraging Jill’s romantic interest, or simply as Darcy’s way of being casually intimate without committing to a label. She also shows clear jealousy and possessiveness—after she returns from Vancouver, she seems to resent Jill’s unspoken feelings. At Flaming Saddles, she uses Jill to deter a male admirer, grabbing her face and kissing her. Later, she refuses to let Jill close the Uber door until Jill says “I love you.” This shows a desire for affirmation and control, mixed with a willingness to manipulate the emotional dynamic. Her decision to ghost rather than talk through the tension suggests she avoids difficult confrontation. Ultimately, Darcy is someone who seeks admiration and excitement but is unwilling to meet Jill’s emotional needs on equal terms.

Chronological Arc

  1. First meeting. Jill meets Darcy at a Mediterranean restaurant where Ian introduces them. Jill already knows Darcy’s face from Disney Channel and is immediately struck by her coolness—big blue eyes, a New York accent, a constant cigarette.
  2. Dinner Crew bonding. Jill returns to Dinner Crew just to see Darcy. That second night, Darcy says, “Hey, I missed you,” and a spark ignites.
  3. Friendship deepens. They become inseparable. Jill meets Darcy’s family, Darcy meets Jill’s. They text from waking to sleeping. When Darcy and Ian break up, Jill moves into Darcy’s apartment for two months to cat‑sit while Darcy films in Vancouver. They FaceTime daily.
  4. Return from Vancouver. Darcy comes back and immediately tells Jill she met someone new. Jill gives her expensive Jenny Lewis concert tickets; Darcy seems almost pitying. The new guy arrives that night.
  5. Tensions mount. Jill grows jealous and possessive. At a gay cowboy bar, Jill storms out after Darcy sneaks off to kiss another person. Darcy catches her, orders an Uber, and on the street forces Jill to say “I love you” and kisses her.
  6. Ghosting. A couple months later, without a final argument, Darcy stops all contact. Jill starts dating her first girlfriend; Darcy dates a new man. They resent each other’s partners.
  7. Later reflection. In the letter to her twenty‑three‑year‑old self (Chapter 10), Jill recognizes that her feelings for Darcy were love, not obsession, and that Darcy was the person who helped her understand she was gay—though at the time she couldn’t admit it.

Relationships

Darcy’s central relationship is with Jill, but it is triangulated with others. She dates Ian, a stand‑up comedian, before they break up. Ian remains in Jill’s life but eventually fades away, sensing the intensity between Darcy and Jill. After Vancouver, Darcy takes up with a new guy from the set, whom Jill bitterly resents. Darcy also has a transactional relationship with the Dinner Crew cult: she dislikes the religiosity but attends because it provides a community of young actors. The most revealing relationship is the one Darcy does not sustain—the friendship with Jill. Ghosting is a choice that speaks to how Darcy handles emotional complexity: by exit rather than resolution. Later, in Jill’s relationship with Emma, we see a healthy contrast: Emma is different from Darcy in being anti‑establishment, not a celebrity, and genuinely present. That relationship helps Jill see that her earlier yearning for Darcy was a symptom of being unable to claim her own desire.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Darcy’s critical decision is to ghost Jill rather than talk through the toxicity. The consequence for Jill is a brutal crash that forces her to confront what she has been avoiding—her sexuality and her need for authentic connection. Ghosting is a form of silence that leaves Jill no room to pretend; she must move on. For Darcy, the choice likely preserved her own comfort but ended a friendship that had become a source of drama. The memoir implies Darcy continued her career and life, but we don’t hear from her again. A separate decision by Jill—to hide her feelings and say “I love you” only under duress—also has consequences. It prolongs the yearn cage, making the eventual loss even more painful. In hindsight, Jill sees that both of them were on entirely different pages: she wanted a relationship while Darcy wanted a game.

Theme and Symbol Connections

Darcy is the human embodiment of the yearn cage—the self‑imposed prison of wanting but never acting. She symbolises the unattainable girl that queer women are taught to desire but not have. Her status as a Disney Channel actress links to the theme of pop culture as a tool for identity formation: Jill first knew Darcy through a screen, and that mediated fame makes the real person feel both more glamorous and more out of reach. The relationship also touches on toxic relationships and the search for authentic love. Darcy and Jill’s bond becomes jealous and obsessive, exactly the kind of intensity that masquerades as love but is really a way of avoiding self‑knowledge. Finally, the ghosting itself connects to the internet’s role in queer connection and trauma: the same phone that brought them together through constant texts could be used to cut off contact entirely. Darcy, in the end, is a symbol of a dead‑end desire that must be relinquished so that real intimacy—the kind Jill later finds with Emma—can begin.

Five Book‑Specific Questions and Answers

  1. Why does Jill continue attending Dinner Crew even though she is uncomfortable?
    Darcy is the sole reason. As Jill writes, “homosexuality is the sole reason I got into Christianity.” She returns specifically to be near Darcy, hoping for more interactions even after she has already exhausted her ability to small‑talk with the other members.

  2. What is the “yearn cage” and how does Darcy help create it?
    The yearn cage is a concept Jill coins to describe the self‑imposed prison of wanting someone without ever acting on the desire. Darcy maintains the cage by alternating intimacy and distance: she sends provocative messages, FaceTimes from the bath, and kisses Jill, but she never commits to a relationship and ultimately ghosts her.

  3. What happens the night Darcy demands Jill say “I love you”?
    After Jill storms out of a gay cowboy bar, Darcy orders an Uber and stops Jill from closing the door. She insists Jill say “I love you” to take the car. Jill mutters it, and Darcy then asks her to say it more than she loves her mom. Jill agrees, gets one last kiss, and the Uber door shuts. It is the climax of their toxic dynamic.

  4. How does Jill reinterpret her feelings for Darcy in hindsight?
    In the letter to her twenty‑three‑year‑old self (Chapter 10), Jill realises that her intense feelings were not obsession but first love. She had been afraid she was “creepy” or “American Psycho–type,” but therapy helped her see she was simply a lesbian in love with her best friend.

  5. Does Darcy ever re‑enter Jill’s life after ghosting her?
    No. After ghosting, Jill starts dating her first girlfriend, Darcy dates a new guy, and they resent each other’s partners. There is no reunion. Darcy remains a closed chapter, a necessary loss that pushes Jill toward genuine self‑acceptance and later, a healthy relationship with Emma.