Make Good Art.

-Neil Gaiman

Monday, June 25, 2012

Romance

Over the past year, I've written a few posts that have caused me no small amount of trepidation. There was one where I poured my heart out about moving to Duluth. Another where I talked about emotional and physical vulnerability. There was that post where I finally admitted that I was an agnostic. This post is much the same, but not because of any imagined emotional vulnerability, but because of intellectual and aesthetic vulnerability. As a feminist, as a life-long English major, and as a writer myself, this is a difficult admission to make. 

I love romance novels. 

I've spent years trying to come up with justifications to myself about loving romance novels as a feminist, fiction loving author whose shelves are filled with Kate Millet, Eve Ensler, and Betty Friedan. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, and Dostoyevsky. With literary giants and women at the forefront of sexual politics surrounding me on a daily basis, with a reading list full of acclaimed authors, why do I spend two days every month devouring trashy, escapist fiction?

I've tried on a couple different excuses, everything from "I'm planning on writing a romance novel to cover my student debt and this is research" to "I'm reading it to format a crushing feminist critique of the commodification of women's sexuality." 

The plain truth of the matter is that I love romance novels. 

***

I have a comfortable life. 

I have a job I enjoy and find meaningful, enough money to pay my bills, and a quiet, if a little solitary, life. During the week I go to work, grab a drink afterward, make dinner, chat with friends online, watch television, occasionally write a little. Friday-Saturdays I read, watch movies, visit friends in other parts of the state. I date. Sometimes I see the same guy twice. Sundays are always reserved for the New York Times in bed with a pot of coffee. It's a life that satisfies the independent streak that caused me to move to Minnesota when I was eighteen. It's a life that's uncomplicated and almost entirely drama-free. I spend my spare time pursuing my interests, whether those are a love for art museums, a desire to learn particle physics, or writing narrative non-fiction. I have friends whom I find challenging and enjoyable. I actually still believe that I'm going to change the world. 

***

I once had a friend tell me that one of the most charming aspects of my craziness is that I am fully aware of and occasionally apologetic for it. I recognize and own up to my social anxiety and obsessiveness about ingredients for recipes. I alert people to my personal space bubble and my OCD tendencies. I freely admit to being bombastic for the sake of making a story more entertaining. 

As if that wasn't enough charm, I'm a bit of a control freak. When I travel I have an itinerary. When the weekend rolls around, I have a To Do list that I have to get accomplished or I feel like the world is going to end. I don't do well at unplanned or uncoordinated social events. I can be pretty inflexible. 

As a result, I find the prospect of long-term relationships terrifying. I have a hard enough time relinquishing control of a shopping list to another person, why on Earth would I want to let someone else plan a second date to say nothing of having a say in where we should go on vacation or with which family we should spend Christmas. This is why I do my damnedest to avoid relationships. An amazing man to be the father of my eventual children and companion for the rest of my life? Yeah, that sounds pretty good. But spending Sundays in my pajamas until noon listening to Miles Davis's Kind of Blue and reading the New York Times Book Reviews? That sounds even better. 

***

It's a childish and erroneous way of looking at relationships, I know. But it's also one I can't seem to shake. This is why I love romance novels. Sure, there's the sex and saccharine romance and fantasies of broad-shouldered lumberjacks who secretly read Rumi and are looking for a feminist firecracker of a girl, that's all part of it. But more than any of those things, what gets to me is the fantasy that smart, educated, independent women find someone with whom they not only relinquish control but happily gives up her independence to her lumberjack, WWII soldier, or seemingly caddish but secretly honorable aristocrat. During the three hundred or so pages of the book, I can stop asking questions about agency, or whether or not the relationship is unhealthy or sexual politics, and fantasize about what it would be like to give up a little of my independence and solitude. I have three hundred pages where I can imagine what it would be like to give up the New York Times and Friday independent movie nights and always getting to decide what to have for dinner for having a companion who understands and loves me despite the social anxiety and particle physics. 

But in the end, romance novels are always escapism, aren't they? Because giving up major Civil War battles as dinner conversation doesn't always equate to a torrid vacation to Fiji or even the promise that your boyfriend will give up some equally irritating habit. Relationships aren't like romance novels, but they're not soul-crushing series of compromises I've made them out to be either. Somewhere there has to be room for both Kate Millet and Danielle Steele, the acknowledgement of mutuality and partnership as well as the desire to let everything go and trust in another person. 

At least, I hope it's true. Just like I hold out hope that somewhere there's a broad-shoulder physicist who chops wood in his spare time. Someone who keeps The Essential Rumi next to his collection of X-Men comics.