MAKING "LOVE" OUT OF NOTHING AT ALL

Back in January, I wrote about finally being able to like rom-coms again. I was also reading romance novels and liking a few. In the late ’80s and throughout the ’90s, rom-com movies were my thing. I couldn’t get enough of Meg Ryan’s cutesy on-screen image or Nora Ephron’s sharp writing. 

 

Then a bad relationship soured me. He’d seemed perfect until I discovered he was anything but. I should have walked away after nine months…two years, tops. Unfortunately, I’d been raised in a bubble where no one got divorced and the words “for better or for worse” meant everything. 

 

“Worse” should never include abuse. I finally escaped that horrid relationship after seven years, emotionally beaten down and battered.

 

Love was a bunch of hogwash. 

 

I saw through rom-coms and their happy endings. Sometimes I felt especially disheartened, sensing that the couple was not meant to be together. Why would I cheer when they made up after a breakup? Why in hell would I want them meeting at the altar?

 

I credited my new boyfriend for making me a believer again. I was in love, I’d learned from my past and I felt secure in thinking we would go the distance. Let’s watch rom-coms! Bring on the romance novels! Happily ever after yet again! Why would I want it any other way?

 

Two months later, my two-year forever love went kaput. I hadn’t seen it coming. I still can’t explain where or why things went wrong.

 

I should be repulsed by rom-coms and romances again…for a while at least. I mean, I’d flown from Vancouver to Denver for a two-week visit and he dumped me ten minutes into the ride from the train station where he picked me up. It also happened to be Valentine’s Day.

 

F%#k love, right?! 

 

Happily ever after, my ass. Utter bullshit. Enough with the Hollywood endings. Life—mine, at least—looks nothing like that.

 

At the time, I was muddling through the middle of writing a gay romance novel. The logical thing would have been to set it aside or kill off one of the two main characters. So long romance; hello, murder mystery. 

 

Let the survivor go on, living triumphantly on his own. Let him realize love is but a distraction from greatness. Or it’s fleeting, at most.

 

But I wrote on while trying to recover from a severe case of What Just Happened? as The Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go?” played on repeat in my mind.

 

My fictional characters, Jeremy and Shaw, had problems and broke up, too. Conflict is a fundamental element in fiction while something I avoid at all costs IRL. Still, I set aside jadedness and cynicism. I shrugged off the dumping as best I could and told myself it would not impact Jeremy and Shaw. 

 

I couldn’t control my relationship and its demise, but I had full authorial command over my world of make believe, playing out in an expanding manuscript. Not once did I think they were forever doomed. Never did I wish my woes on them. I rooted for them, even when they were apart. They needed to grow, together and separately. They needed to realize how much love they had between them and take action to not just restore but strengthen it. 

 

I am pleased to report I finished the first draft today. SPOILER ALERT: happy ending. It’s not actually a spoiler at all. Romance novels are required to end with Happily Ever After or, at a minimum, Happy For Now. If I could, I’d escape real life and jump into a rom-com or romance novel. With my luck, I’d be nothing more than a supporting character, the Rosie O’Donnell to Meg Ryan or the Rupert Everett to Julia Roberts. 

 

But, no. Jumping into a rom-com is not possible. In life, I’m solidly single. I’m fortunate that my novel lets me play around and imagine what might have been. I’m truly happy for Jeremy and Shaw. 

 

As I do with all my novel first drafts, I’m setting this manuscript aside for the next six months. It creates some distance between the characters, the plot, the word choices, the tone and me. When I open up the document again in April, I hope I will still see a spark in the work. I hope I’ll still like both Jeremy and Shaw as individuals and love them as a couple. I hope I will see enough in them and the work to dive into the challenging process of revision with the intention of making the story even stronger.

 

Right now, Jeremy and Shaw can just sit back and relax. For the next half year, they have no more conflicts or challenges. They are firmly in love. Let them savor that. Let me step away from their love while I focus on a new project. Something involving a sad-sack character. Something I can authentically write.  

 

 

IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S ME…REALLY

It’s the copout line for dumping someone. There’s a reason—maybe a list of reasons—to reject the guy, but honesty can hurt or prolong things with denial and an argument. The easy way out is to say, It’s me.

I’m at a bad place in my 
              life right now.

I’m not a good enough person.

I’ve got to spend all my spare time   

cleaning the closet in the den.

(Something may have died there.)

In my last blog post, I turned down a guy after a second date that was no better than the first. Initially, I’d found his opinions too harsh. In his profile and on both dates, he’d acknowledged this as a common perception but dismissed the criticism with a Fuck that. Everyone is too intent on being politically correct. Maybe, maybe not. All I know is political correctness keeps my blood pressure on an even keel.

My gut had been to decline the second date. I’d had enough…heard enough. But occasionally—and, indeed, after the last post—a blog reader has the guts to raise an uncomfortable I Wonder.

I wonder if you’re being too picky.

Oh, how I brace at the comment. (It’s probably why only readers posit this while face-to-face friends and acquaintances keep mum.)

I’m not too picky. I’m not too picky. I’m not too picky.

As if repeating it makes it true. A three-year-old’s approach.

And then I hear Harry’s voice. Harry, aka Billy Crystal, talking to Sally, aka Meg Ryan in my favorite move, giftedly penned by the late great Nora Ephron:

                        HARRY:          There are two kinds of 

                                                 women: high maintenance

                                                 and low maintenance.

                        SALLY:            And Ingrid Bergman [in 

                                                 Casablanca] is low

                                                 maintenance?

                        HARRY:          …Definitely.

                        SALLY:            Which am I?

                        HARRY:          You’re the worst kind. 
                                                 You’re high maintenance,

                                                 but you think you’re low maintenance.

I would contend that I’m a low maintenance date. I have no list. All I ask is that a guy show up on time, dress in something slightly more fashion-forward than a favorite sports team jersey, put away his phone and engage in a genuine back-and-forth conversation. Okay, there’s a physical attraction piece, too, but that’s mostly out of our control. I’d say I’ve been passed over on looks just as many times as I’ve passed. Few of us are objectively, universally hot and by “us” I definitely, conclusively do not include myself.

It’s the conversation piece where things froth or fizzle. And based on all I’ve sat through, eighty percent of fizzled chats come from too much talking, not enough listening. A first date may feel like an interview but it’s not. You’re not trying to cram everything great about you—every trip, every detail of your last dinner party and every itty-bitty dimension of your job—into a roughly forty-minute sit-down.

Don’t forget there’s another guy who showed up, hoping to share an anecdote or a factoid about himself. If you don’t have Barbara Walters’ interviewing skills—for the record, I’d be an arbutus tree—then pause every two or three minutes and simply say, “And what about you?” Order a scone with your coffee so you have to stop and chew once in a while. (You don’t talk with your mouthful, do you? Maybe that’s another of my conditions.)

I should wrap up this post.

If I keep writing, I fear that more conditions will surface.

Too picky.

Am I more Sally than Ilsa? Does my blog leave a trail of damning evidence concerning my unrealistic expectations? Am I too quick to dismiss?

                        SALLY:            I don’t see that.

  

What if there are grounds for a class-action lawsuit against me, brought by the masses of single gay men in Vancouver who have been disparaged and dismissed in this blog without any counterpoint? Am I guilty of a pattern and practice of dating defamation?

Too picky? Me?! I have no reason to be, no right to be. But then I hear a certain movie character again.

SALLY:            Well, I just want it the way I want it.

And, as much as I could pick that apart, it sounds about right.

NO GAYS AT THE GALLERY

Damn you, Nora Ephron. You and all the other romantic comedy writers have led me to believe you can stumble upon the love of your life in a bookstore, in a sleepy airport bar or at a busy intersection on a rainy day when you forgot the umbrella in the car. As maddening and improbable as the scenarios are, I keep renting the movies or catching them on TV. Most recently, I got to see Julia Roberts meet Javier Bardem when she rode her bike and he ran her off the road. No helmet protecting her beautiful mane. In the movies, the damsel lands in a soft bed of grass, her leg wounded, but the face unscathed.

Yesterday, I was headed to the Vancouver Art Gallery to activate some thinking for a new writing project. As I took the ferry in, I had enough time to think about maybe. Maybe my Ryan Reynolds would chat me up as we quizzically stared at old newspaper ads taped to a wall. Maybe my Ryan Gosling would look as embarrassed as I while attempting to be ponderous over the black-and-white nude female fondling her finger on a small-screen TV. Maybe my Seth Rogen and I would share a laugh, trying to get the docent/guard in the corner to crack a smile or even make eye contact. (Yeah, Seth Rogen. Even a fantasy should be tinged with a little reality.)

It turned out to be a slow day at the gallery. I don’t know how it is even possible, but I did not spot a single gay man. There was a German couple, a few moms with remarkably restrained children who didn’t try to change the TV channel (they probably don’t know how without the remote) and a hopeless middle-aged man looking to jump into a rom-com. Yeah, me.

No romance. No comedy.

I did get my work done. A lack of distractions can prove conducive to something at least.

So Mr. Right, next time I’m in the city, I’m sure the rain will be back. Look for me at that street corner. I never have an umbrella.