Bruiser

Brontë expresses her frustration over Tennyson interrupting her first date with Brewster. She gets annoyed at the way that Tennyson has to try to control everything in his life, especially her.

Although she has little experience with dating—just one prior boyfriend, Max—she looks to her other friends for guidance on what to do and what not to do when choosing a boyfriend. 

The first time Brontë met Brewster, she was working as an assistant in the library. She spotted Brewster in the poetry section and assumed he was either doing an assignment or trying to impress a girl. Instead, she is shocked to discover that he reads Allen Ginsberg for pleasure. It is his “stray dog” personality which first attracts her to him.

As Brontë tries to joke with him and ask about his interest in Ginsberg, Brewster is defensive and short. However, as they begin to talk about poetry—noting that Brontë and her brother Tennyson are both named after British writers of the 19th century—Brewster lightens up. When she learns who he is, she thinks of how little she knows about him—how he “was always just there […] lingering in the background” (59).