Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
What’s in a word?
It’s Smart Bitches Day today. For your SBD, I’d like you to consider the English language’s second-most mercurial word (next to fuck), love.
you are going
to Reseda
to make love
to a model
from Ohio
whose real name
you don’t
knowSoul Coughing, “Screenwriter’s Blues”
Back in the days when PDA meant public display of affection, I fell in love for the first time, fell hard, mindless, desperate. I became (to use an acronym I learned from Kate) a PIL, person in love. I had to be with her. When I wasn’t with her, I had to be on the phone with her. And when I wasn’t with her or on the phone with her, I was inscribing her name onto my pee-chees and papers in endless variations of block letters, crappily done calligraphy, and Roger Dean-style flowing, snaky lines. It was bliss to be with her, agony to separate. Best of all, she seemed to feel the same way about me.
Imagine: lying next to one another on the beach, looking into one another’s eyes, and wanting nothing more from life than that.
A couple months after I first got up the nerve to say the words to her, something happened. It was Saturday. I would be seeing her later that evening, taking her out in my mom’s ’66 Mustang (the one she sold a few years ago without ever asking me if I wanted to buy it, grrrrRRRRRR!) for some Italian food and a movie. While working on my math homework, I thought about her, thought about how much I loved her, and then innocently asked myself the question, “What if it’s all an illusion? What if I really don’t feel this way?”
Cognitive smelling salts. My eyes open, my brain reeled. I panicked. Damn it, I liked love’s narcosis. I’d been an unhappy camper my whole life, and now, finally, someone made me feel good to be alive. And, you know what? At this early date in our relationship, it wasn’t even about lust.
It was about being in love.
As I recall, I bit my nails (figuratively, and probably literally, too) and bided my time until our date. By the end of the evening, all was well again. A look, a smile, the feel of her hand in mine. It didn’t take much. But the memory of that day, of the way something so potent could go *pop* and disappear — if only for a few hours — has stayed with me to this day.
***
Well, that relationship ended badly. One of these days I might work up the nerve to write about it, but you can bet I’ll fictionalize it to hell and back.
I won’t repeat my courtship with Karen for ya, since I did a bang-up job of that here, here, and here (in that order, thank you very much). But I hope you’ll forgive me if I quote myself:
It wasn’t love at first sight. It wasn’t even lust at first sight. No, what I felt was far more ominous.
Kismet.
I didn’t mention it in any of those posts, but at the time, this kind of bothered me. Why wasn’t I feeling like a junkie on a continuous infusion of smack? The whole relationship felt logical and oh-so-mature. In retrospect, I understand this was a good thing. It’s why we’re still together and still in love* after all these years**. Back then, however, I began to wonder if GFv1.0 had burnt something out of me. Was I less of a person since my brain didn’t feel 10,000 feet above sea level?
See, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand that there is no single thing called love. Forget the obvious alternate meanings (“I love hot pastrami on rye,” or, “Let’s make love,” or, “I love my new Hello Kitty purse,” or — you get the idea). Focus purely on romantic love, and admit it: no two people feel quite the same thing, or have quite the same expectations.
***
I’ve read a few more romances lately. My N = 3 is now an N = 5, or nearly so. I bought a Jennifer Crusie book, What the Lady Wants, to see what all the fuss was about as regards Ms. Crusie, and while it made me laugh and was as easy to consume as cotton candy, the love angle sucked. The protagonists are in lust, not love. Nothing between them remotely resembles love. And yet they fight, they screw, they get their HEA.
Right now, I’m 2/3 of the way through Kate’s Somebody To Love. Kate suggested I try to get my money back on this one, but I really don’t understand her dissatisfaction. Frankly, I’m intrigued. Will either Araminta or Griffin ever recognize their non-lustful feelings for the other? Those two have such a raging case of hormones, the love stuff seems to be sneaking up on them.
Yeah, I know erotica sells. But if I want erotica, I’ll read my Playboy Advisor on Love & Sex.
I am a very sexy cheerleader at a high school in Oklahoma. I have been dating a member of the band. We enjoy sex often, especially when it is preceded by an erotic form of foreplay — spanking. We were introduced to spanking by my parents, when they caught us making love in my bedroom one evening. They told us we could continue to use my bedroom but only if my boyfriend spanked my bottom.
Yeah, I know it’s fake, but so is all the erotica you gals are reading and writing. Anyway, it’s the love angle that appeals to me in romance. I’ve observed stark differences in my own emotional response over the course of my lifetime, and I’m curious to learn vicariously of others’ internal storms.
From my rather small N, it seems common for the author to head-hop so that the reader sees the emotional progression of both protagonists. I wonder: perhaps that’s not such a great idea. Sure, it would be nice to know what your lover is thinking. That may explain why folks like head-hopping romances.
But that’s not how I live. I’m trapped in my own head, and if my lover doesn’t talk to me, how can I know what’s going through her head? If she talks about it, how do I know she’s telling the whole truth?
And is that something I would want?
Think about that I love you. It feels good to hear it, right? But maybe your lover doesn’t hear the same I love you that you do, and maybe your interpretations of I love you don’t match.
As for me, I’ll trust actions over words any day of the week.
You know, somewhere in all of this, I had a point.
D.
*knockingonwood knockingonwood knockingonwood
**Twenty-two this June. Woo-hoo!
Hi Doug,
the strange thing is, when you said this …
Think about that I love you. It feels good to hear it, right? But maybe your lover doesn’t hear the same I love you that you do, and maybe your interpretations of I love you don’t match.
As for me, I’ll trust actions over words any day of the week.
… you paraphrased St. Ignatius of Loyola, who said that love is best shown in deeds not words 🙂
I wanted to thank you for your comment on my blog about the despair thing. I deleted the whole post, deciding I was being too personal, but I appreciated what you said about despair being the reasonable reaction to certain situations … thanks.
Great post, Doug. Still, I wish you’d elaborated on your Hello Kitty purse just a bit.
Oh, Doug. What the Lady Wants is an OLD Crusie. What you need is a new one. Say, Bet Me. Or Faking It. Or Fast Women. You’ll believe then. 🙂 But I do agree, in a lot of romance, I don’t see anything more than lust between the characters, and the sign of Tru Lurrve is that he thinks she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen and she thinks he has the biggest schlong of any man she’s ever seen. (sorry–just read a couple of bad romances back to back. Believe it or not, I’m actually a fan of the genre.)
Congrats on 22 years, Doug. We’ve been in love for 22 years, too–in August, we’ll have been married that long.
Congrats on 22, Doug. Gary and I will have anniversary number 19 in August.
There’s a theory, btw, that the two POVs in love scenes aren’t trying to present both mindsets, but actually explore the masculine (aggressive seducer) and feminine (passive recepient) sides of the female reader.
Thanks, everyone. Crystal, you’re welcome. Remember that what Judaism and Christianity have in common is a keen sense of GUILT. And to feel guilty over something like depression and despair . . . good God. No. Really.
Maureen, I keep it with my manja and my sparkly pink lip gloss.
Okay, Darla, you’re on — I’ll pick up one of her later books & see what I think.
Robyn, that’s interesting. But couldn’t the same thing be explored from one POV?
My husband and I named our first child at our second dinner together. “I love you” came weeks later. Ten years and three kids later, we are delighted when it’s the other one on the phone. You can tell that Darcy is really in love with Elizabeth at the end of the latest (Keira Knightly) Pride and Prejudice because he CAN’T hardly say it. So saying it ain’t nothing, though you know all us smart bitches love you…Happy SBD. xoxoxo
BTW a really good historical novel with a good love story a strong heroine and an albino (go figure.) It’s called Madison House by Peter Donohue. Small press and winner of the Langum Prize for this year…I got to meet Donohue and his wife this weekend and they are quite cool. The novel is too. I’ll post more about it this week.
It wasn’t love at first sight. It wasn’t even lust at first sight. No, what I felt was far more ominous.
I love that!
Well, I’ve said it before and know I sound like a prude, but I’m with you on the erotica. Good, (short) stroke-worthy erotica can be found for free on ye old Internets. But 300-pages of stroking…Zzzz. Pass the plot, please.
People who absolutely loath each other can have mind-blowing sex, so the sexy-pieces-fitting scenario doesn’t work for me.
Nearly every romance I’ve read, to date, has had an unbelievable love story. Unbelievable in that neither character really gave the other anything besides happy nethers (even in stories with little or no actual sex.) When I read a “love” story, I want to see something in each character that brings out the best in the other. I want to see that moment where each looks at the other and thinks, “Dang, He/she is an awesome human being.” I want to see the suggestion of the relationship glue that will hold them together through colicky babies, broken stoves, leaking roofs, and even darker things.
Half the time, in order to create false sparks, the two engage in un-witty repartee, a la, Han and Leia, only for 300-bloody pages. All I can think is, “Eesh. If they bug each other this much now, imagine what’ll happen in ten years.” Rarely does the repartee carry any underlying fondness.
Cruise’s “Bet Me” is kinda cool because the two characters actually get to know each other and dare I say it, develop a friendship along with all that hot attraction. That’s why the book worked for me (despite the heroine’s irritating relationship with her mother.)
Thanks for the recommendations, you two. Pat, have any romances fit the bill for you, based on the criteria you’ve mentioned? Because, yeah, I’d enjoy something like that, too.
Crystal
St. Ignatius of Loyola […]said that love is best shown in deeds not words
So Extreme was drawing on St. Ignatius* when they wrote “More Than Words”?
“…more than words to show you feel / that your love for me is real”
Gee, and here I thought they were just trying to be all poetical in order to get into a girl’s pants. But no, they were spreading the word of a saint.
* And I’m sure I’ve been into a church named for St. Ignatius at some point in my life, too.
The best kind of erotica has people involved. Without the personalities and mental bushwa, it’s porn. Not that there’s anything wrong with porn–it’s just not the same thing.
I’m maybe one of the sources of the notion that romance genre readers are exploring both masculine and feminine personas while reading. And yes, it can be done through the same POV, and I personally think it’s more powerful that way. Extrapolating from the old rule “Show and Don’t Tell,” I usually at least attempt to make the character who is feeling the most intensely the NON-pov character, because this forces me to “show” and thus in my personal theory makes the effect more powerful. However, it is usually the most difficult way to do it and sometimes it’s just not possible to show what you want to show. (Say, with a really physically controlled character, you can end up with a very flat Hemingway-esque effect, which ain’t to my literary taste.) I’ve also learned over time that for some readers this doesn’t seem to work, because for whatever reason they just don’t pick up on the “showing.” They tend to be the readers who don’t like my books, lol. 😉 The criteria I use to discern whether I screwed up and didn’t show what I wanted to show well enough, or whether the reader didn’t pick up on it, is whether or not ANY readers get it. If some do, then it’s there to be seen. That’s about the best I can do.
Ack, no preview, so I have no idea if my blockquote is tagged correctly. Will hope for the best. 😉
LK
Thanks, Laura. Great discussion!
I’ll need to keep this in mind when I write my dom female pirate/submissive male aristocratic airhead saga 😉 What does Captain Moon keep in her locked cabin??
Laura Freaking Kinsale wrote something in your blog. Doug.
You need to get yourself to a store and buy one of LFK’s books. That’s romance.
yet another LFK drooly fangirl.
Yup, I’m jazzed. 🙂 🙂
Hah. She beat me to it. I was gonna cite the LFK use of POV in The Shadow And The Star as one of the best examples in anything ever written, of how best to use POV as an incredibly powerful writing tool that most writers completely neglect. It’s a great (terrific, life-changing) read anyway, but read it with an eye to learning from how POV is used and you’ll learn scads.
Okay, folks, looks like I have enough book suggestions to make a Barnes & Noble order. (They’ve started to do free shipping for over $25, I think.)
Haven’t they always done free shipping for orders over $25?
(PSA: Sign yourself up for MyPoints while you’re at it–6 points per/$ spent at B&N and eventually you can get yourself a gift card for more free books.)
I hope a couple of the books you’re ordering are Laura Kinsale’s. Her Shadowheart is the first romance novel that ever blew me away. If you want characters with emotional connections in a romance, you can’t do better. Wish I’d thought to mention her earlier.
Thanks, Darla. I picked up the one Beth recommended, but I’ll take a look at Shadowheart.
I just want you to know how ridiculously happy I am (seriously, like screaming-for-Elvis excited) that someone gets to read The Shadow and the Star for the first time. And it’s your first Kinsale. Holy crap.
If you don’t like Leda and call her wimpy and stuff? I’m afraid I’ll have to hunt you down and slaughter you. Sometimes people don’t quite get that character (a sign of grave stupidity) and it makes me murderously angry when they slander her.
That is all.
on MY way to get Shadow and Star, too, Beth. My first Kinsale. Patricia Gaffney was my gateway drug.
Congrats on the celebrity notice, Doug!
Oh, Gaffney’s a goddess.
Have you seen the old website she & Crusie did together (Crusie = Passion Ann Heet)? Loads of fun: Passion Ann Heet’s Fan Site for the Insanely Great Patricia Gaffney.
Er. Not that it will help you in your quest for the definitive romance novel, Doug. But it is an entertaining time sink.
Pat, have any romances fit the bill for you, based on the criteria you’ve mentioned?
No. Ward’s Dark Lover came close, but lost it on the homestretch when the heroine lost her original, smart, career-girl identity once she fell for the hero. Aphrodite’s Secret, by Julie Kenner is the only light romance that scored an “almost,” ironically because I like the heroine’s son. (Never read Kinsale; will have to give her a try.)
My favourite romances aren’t romance. Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks is my all time fave. Holly Black’s Tithe isn’t bad either, but lacks the romantic depth of WFTO. Tad Williams epic trilogy Memory, Sorrow and Thorn contains a great romance/coming of age story. Tanith Lee’s The Silver Metal Lover is a good tragic love story. Robin McKinley’s Deerskin, though icky at times (incest/rape), is a great example of how it is possible to have a hero who is less than perfect physically, dare I say unnattractive?
Though I keep trying romance, I’m surprised how ultimately “unromantic” much of the genre is.
Thanks. More books! My wife reads them at 10x my speed, so she’s always hungry for more.
[…] I guess that’s love. As I’ve posted previously, I have a problem with the word. […]