Characters Girls Can Kiss Now Jill Gutowitz

Jill Gutowitz: The Author-Narrator's Journey in Girls Can Kiss Now

Overview

Jill Gutowitz is both the author and the central subject of Girls Can Kiss Now (2022). Across fourteen linked essays, she traces her life from childhood in suburban New Jersey through her young adulthood in Los Angeles, using pop culture as a lens to examine her evolving queer identity. Gutowitz portrays herself as a deeply self-aware yet often unreliable narrator, openly acknowledging gaps in her own memory and the cinematic narratives she imposes on real events. The book is less a straightforward autobiography than a fragmented memoir-in-essays in which Gutowitz reconstructs key moments — a 2018 FBI interrogation over a Game of Thrones meme, her first friendship with the magnetic Darcy, a toxic three‑month relationship with Kate, and a later partnership with her girlfriend Emma — to explore how shame, yearning, and pop culture shaped her path toward self‑acceptance.

Plot Role

Gutowitz functions as the memoirist‑protagonist who drives every chapter. She is not a passive observer but an active participant whose decisions — from pursuing social‑media fame to moving to Los Angeles, from staying with a coercive boyfriend to eventually coming out — create the narrative arc. Her job as a pop‑culture writer gives her a unique vantage point to critique celebrity culture while simultaneously confessing her own complicity in it. Each essay is built around a specific episode or cultural artifact (a Britney Spears song, a paparazzi photo, The Bachelor) that Gutowitz uses as a springboard for personal reflection. Her role is to embody the tension between wanting to be seen as special and ultimately realizing that genuine connection matters more than status.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Gutowitz’s primary motivation is a search for validation — first from men, then from gay culture, and finally from herself. Early actions reveal a need to be “the only funny girl” in male‑dominated spaces, as shown in her college essay about a male gatekeeper who praised her as the exception among women (chapter 6). She chases fame through acting and later through writing about celebrities, believing access to red‑carpet events will fill an inner void. Her traits include self‑deprecating humor, hyper‑analysis of her own feelings, and a tendency to romanticize suffering. She admits to being an “unreliable narrator” and to conflating obsession with love, as seen when she wonders if her feelings for Darcy were “American Psycho‑type” fixation rather than legitimate attraction (chapter 10). Over the course of the book, she becomes more honest: she stops pretending to be fine with Darcy’s mixed signals, ends the relationship with her boyfriend Brian after recognizing sexual coercion, and eventually tells Emma she no longer wants to be special — just to be with her.

Chronological Arc

The essays do not follow a strict linear timeline, but a rough arc can be drawn:

  • Childhood and adolescence (1990s–2000s): Gutowitz discovers the internet at age six (1997), experiences shame after being caught exploring sexuality online, and endures her family’s financial collapse during the 2007–2008 recession. She develops crushes on older women and a fantasy of becoming a famous Disney Channel actress, but realizes she only wanted fame, not the craft itself — later concluding “I wasn’t an actress; I was just gay” (chapter 2).

  • College and early twenties (c. 2011): She dates men she calls “Banana Peel Guys” — forgettable, interchangeable partners from a “Thirst Vacuum” of compulsory heterosexuality (chapter 5). She loses her virginity to Lena Dunham Guy out of a desire to finally “catch up” with peers, feeling relief rather than pleasure (chapter 10).

  • Los Angeles and first queer stirrings (2013 onward): Moving to L.A., she meets Darcy, an actress who becomes the object of intense yearning. A friendship with gay writer Sam introduces her to Hollywood parties. Her relationship with Brian turns abusive; after a Palm Springs trip with Darcy, she realizes through therapy that Brian raped her. She comes out as gay, breaks up with Brian, and begins dating women.

  • Present relationships (late 2010s–2020): She enters a serious relationship with Emma, a woman with vastly different tastes. She attends the Emma movie premiere and after‑party, feeling hollow despite the glamour. The COVID‑19 pandemic triggers a depression, yet also a breakthrough: listening to Taylor Swift’s folklore alone leads to an emotional reckoning where she metaphorically “flees into the woods” and emerges committed to love over fame.

Relationships

  • Darcy: The central figure of Gutowitz’s first queer love. Darcy is a wealthy, charismatic actress who belongs to a Christian‑cult‑like group called Dinner Crew. Their friendship is defined by tangled signals — a kiss, a confession, and eventually Darcy’s ghosting. Gutowitz cat‑sits for Darcy for two months and spends hundreds of dollars on concert tickets, only to be sidelined when Darcy picks up a man she met on vacation. Their dynamic becomes toxic and jealous, and Gutowitz finally admits that she loved Darcy, not merely as a friend.

  • Brian: Gutowitz’s college boyfriend who sexually coerces her. The text makes clear that she endured rape during a Palm Springs trip with Darcy, though she did not label it as such until years later in therapy. Leaving Brian is a pivotal decision that allows her to come out.

  • Emma: Gutowitz’s first true love and eventual girlfriend. Emma is portrayed as cool, anti‑establishment, and largely indifferent to pop culture. Their relationship challenges Gutowitz’s assumption that shared interests are necessary for connection; she learns that “star stuff” — an inexplicable magnetism — matters more. In the final chapter, Gutowitz tells Emma she no longer wants to be special, only to be with her.

  • Sam: A gay male friend who bonds with Gutowitz over shared pop‑culture obsessions. Together they attend premieres and after‑parties, pretending to be jaded while secretly loving the access. Sam represents a kind of queer kinship based on common anxieties and humor, and the friendship survives even after Gutowitz’s priorities shift.

  • Family: Her parents’ financial collapse during adolescence is a source of trauma. Her sister Maddie appears in the final chapter, calling to tell her about Taylor Swift’s folklore, triggering Gutowitz’s emotional breakdown. Her mother’s confession that she accidentally malnourished Jill as an infant is interpreted by Gutowitz as the origin of her lifelong craving for female attention.

Key Decisions and Consequences

  1. Choosing to become a pop‑culture writer rather than a traditional journalist or actress. This decision places her in the orbit of celebrities and allows her to participate in “Gaylor” speculation and other queer fan practices, but also leads to an FBI visit over a joke tweet. The consequence is heightened visibility and a platform to explore queerness publicly, alongside the trauma of federal scrutiny.

  2. Saying yes to Brian’s sexual coercion. The text implies this decision was made under pressure and without full consent. The consequence is delayed recognition of her own assault and a prolonged period of confusion about her sexuality — she initially misattributes her feelings for Darcy as obsession because she is not yet ready to see herself as a lesbian.

  3. Coming out to Darcy and later ending the friendship. After years of yearning and a toxic dynamic, Gutowitz eventually breaks free. The consequence is emotional pain but also liberation: she starts dating her first girlfriend and stops living in the “yearn cage.”

  4. Committing to Emma despite their differences. Gutowitz nearly sabotages their relationship by prioritizing Hollywood status (the Chateau Marmont party) over genuine intimacy. The consequence is a sobering realization that connection, not access, fulfills her.

  5. Rejecting the need to be special. In the final chapter, she tells Emma she no longer wants fame or achievement — she just wants love. This decision represents the culmination of her arc from seeking validation to finding contentment.

Theme/Symbol Connections

Gutowitz’s story embodies several recurring themes in the book:

  • Queer shame and reclamation: Her early sexual exploration online ends with her parents’ discovery and shame. Later she reclaims that shame by writing openly about desire and by codifying a “lesbian canon” of beloved objects and tropes.

  • Pop culture as a tool for identity formation: Disney Channel stars, The Bachelor, Britney Spears, paparazzi photos, and Orange Is the New Black all serve as mirrors or maps. Gutowitz uses them to understand her own feelings and to connect with other queer people.

  • The internet’s role in queer connection and trauma: From AOL chat rooms to the FBI interrogation over a Game of Thrones meme, the internet is both a site of early sexual discovery and a source of trauma. Gutowitz’s career as an “extremely online” writer emerges from this double‑edged relationship.

  • The tension between fame and genuine connection: She repeatedly chases red carpets and after‑parties, only to feel empty. The lesson is that fame cannot fill the gaps left by a lack of self‑acceptance.

  • Yearning and the “yearn cage”: Gutowitz coins this term to describe the self‑imposed prison of wanting but never acting — a conditioning she traces to heteronormative rom‑coms and lesbian film tropes. Her resolution to “bust out of the cage” is a central arc.

5 Questions and Answers

1. Why does Gutowitz call herself an “unreliable narrator”?

She admits in Chapter 8 that the romantic meet‑cute with Kate at the Forum did not happen exactly as she first told it; she actually saw Kate again afterward. Gutowitz uses this confession to critique her own desire for a cinematic ending, acknowledging that real life resists neat narratives. Interpretation: her unreliability is a literary device that mirrors the messiness of memory and the self‑mythologizing that queer people often do when there are few available scripts for happy endings.

2. What is the “Thirst Vacuum” and how does it relate to Gutowitz’s dating history?

The “Thirst Vacuum” describes a period in her early twenties when she dated men she felt she should love — athletes, future finance types, “Live Laugh Love” sign personalities — but felt nothing. The term captures compulsory heterosexuality: she believed that desire and romance were Hollywood constructs because she had never experienced authentic attraction. The vacuum ended when she met Darcy and started to yearn genuinely.

3. How does Gutowitz define the “yearn cage”?

The “yearn cage” is a self‑imposed prison of wanting without acting. She argues that queer people are taught by homophobic culture and tragic lesbian film endings to suffer in silence, romanticizing the desire itself rather than pursuing fulfillment. Gutowitz resolves to escape the cage by being honest with her feelings and allowing herself to have a happy ending.

4. Why does Gutowitz compare herself to Cher Horowitz in Clueless?

At the end of Chapter 13, after a hollow night at the Emma premiere after‑party, she reflects on Cher’s misplaced priorities — wealth, popularity, status — and how Cher nearly misses love because of them. Gutowitz sees her own obsession with Hollywood access as a similar distraction. The symbol underscores her realization that true fulfillment comes from connection, not from being on “the list.”

5. What does Gutowitz mean by “lesbian canon” and why does she include oat milk?

She defines lesbian canon as an ever‑growing, subjective list of implicitly queer people, objects, and concepts that queer people have collected to fill the gap of scarce representation. The fluidity of the list is itself queer. Oat milk appears as one item; the implication is that openly embracing such small, shared cultural touchstones is a way of reclaiming visibility and building community.