I Think I'd Be A Better Man
I am well on my way to being obsessed with Beyoncé’s “If I Were A Boy.” What can I say? I am a sucker for power ballads about broken hearts (see also: my previous obsessions with Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and Leona Lewis’s “Bleeding Love”). I spend most of my days now singing along with La Beyoncé, mugging at the mirror with a pained expression on my face, and prancing about in undershorts. Winter comes along and I bust out my Playlist of Songs About Broken Hearts or Lost Relationships or Maximum Woe or Just Plain Angst. I don’t know what exactly compels me to select these songs as my relationship is quite happy and loving, nor have I exactly experienced heartbreak but I suppose there’s something about my seasonal affective disorder and sad songs that go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Chester once told me that I would never have truly lived until I had my heart completely, utterly, and irrevocably broken. That may be so, but if that is the case, I have no interest in his brand of living. (This is the man that also told me that I would be a “serial monogamist” like himself and while I have a good 7 years left of his projected decade of faithfulness to Bear, I sincerely doubt I will live up to his expectations.) Yet there must be something universal in the sentiments expressed in breakup songs to make me listen to them over and over again.
I turn to Ani di Franco and Joni Mitchell for sentiments about love, broken, whole, and in-between and I’ve been in an especially queer mood lately. I once included Ani’s “Both Hands” on a playlist for me and Bear, despite the fact that it’s a breakup song, because of these four lines:
And your bones have been my bedframe
And your flesh has been my pillow
I’ve been waiting for sleep to offer up the deep
With both hands.
Ani can encapsulate the tangible ache of loving someone terribly with such poetry. And poetry it is. How often have I fallen asleep curled against my Teddy Bear and felt those very words? Every night we’re together. Poetry is not a form of writing I pretend to understand or especially love, but dear God, Ani can absolutely slay me with her lyrics.
But then what kind of scale
Compares the weight of two beauties,
The gravity of duties,
Or the ground speed of joy?“School Night,” Ani di Franco
The only other who have been able to move me thus has been Joni Mitchell. I always play her “California” on my flights back home to Los Angeles. The other day I rediscovered “A Case of You” in my music library.
You’re in my blood like holy wine;
You taste so bitter and so sweet.
Oh I could drink a case of you, darling,
And I would still be on my feet.
I would still be on my feet.
I have a sentimental heart that I try and disguise behind emotional coldness, but the truth is, I am a complete and utter sap and lines like that can very nearly move me to tears. (I’m also the girl who cried at the end of Wall·E: “Nooooooooooooooo, say you remember EVE, Wall·E, say you remember her!”) Most romantic clichés fail to move me; in fact, they generally have me running in the exact opposite direction, but there is such elegance in the simplicity of Ani and Joni’s lyrics that it I can very nearly feel Bear’s fuzzy chest pillowed against my cheek and my arms ache with the void his absence leaves in its wake.
I suppose the reason Twilight failed to move me was because for all of Bella and Edward’s passion, I felt little of the comfortable sort of love that forms the foundation of so many stable and happy relationships (mine included). John Mayer sings “Our love was comfortable and so broken-in.” Love is the smell of his skin after a shower. Absentminded kisses on the tip of my nose. How my head fits exactly in the crook of his shoulder. White-Harp snuggled between us at night. For me love is not and should not be agony. The only deliciously agonising part about love is falling in it, not being in it. You hear that, Chris Carter? After establishing quite clearly that your two leads are in love with each other, don’t fuck it up with needless angst!
I want to read a book about comfortable love. Sure it doesn’t make for much drama, but comfortable love is my version of sugary-sweet fluffy candy. I think part of the reason Kushiel’s Avatar is my favourite of Jacqueline Carey‘s books because Joscelin and Phèdre’s love is comfortable, even if external forces put it through hell and back. Is there anything wrong with sure and constant love? Why must there always be the token misunderstanding or opposing parents or some other ridiculously contrived plot trick to keep two lovers apart? Worse than keeping lovers physically apart I think is the “Oh this person wronged me, I cannot love them anymore, yet why do I pine and wine constantly?” I think this is my biggest issue with romance novels because the Token Misunderstanding is a huge component of so many books. Also, can we please, please, please not have the sexxing up front? Usually it boils down to:
MAN: I am irresistibly physically attracted to that woman. I could hammer nails with my cock! But no! She is a hoooooor and I must resist her evil advances!
WOMAN: Oh golly gee, that man is so brooding and handsome, it makes my nether regions tingle and swoon! But alas, he will never love me for I am the widow of his father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate and carrying his illegitimate issue! I was beaten severely and never once orgasmed while with my previous husband!
MAN: I cannot resist her advances! (to woman) Let us boink.
WOMAN: Yea, verily thus.
(Sexxing ensues.)
MAN: You slept with me! That confirms my theories that you are a pernicious hooooor!
WOMAN: I have been wronged! I shall run away and be inconveniently found out with a shadowy figure who is secretly blackmailing me for utterly contrived reasons but the scene only makes my True Love After One Boinking further believe I am a woman of loose morals. Oh woe!
MAN: JEALOUS RAGE SMASH RAAR. It does not matter that I considered her a hoor before, now I want to take her away from the clutches of that shadowy man!
WOMAN: Sir, I am being blackmailed!
MAN: I do not believe you! But I will stalk you nonetheless and eventually find out that you were speaking the truth because I love you!
WOMAN: Yay!
(Much more sexxing ensues.)
MAN: And now, marriage.
WOMAN: We will live happily ever after!
JJ: (crying) What have I ever done to you, Romance Novel? Why do you beat me so? Why?
I have no patience for that sort of romance. I hate the Big Misunderstanding. I don’t mind Endearing Obliviousness on the part of both romantic leads as an obstacle to Happily Ever After. Minor Misunderstandings can be okay, although tricky to execute believeably. Mostly I want emotional payoff to come at the end of a book rather than towards the beginning and then fucked up over the course of the narrative.
Perhaps this is why I’m such a fan of Best Friends Falling in Love trope. This too can be tricky because if they’ve been friends too long than it’d be like falling in love with a sibling. I dislike the idea of suddenly waking up and finding the friend has turned hot overnight. It always works better for me when both parties are clearly in love with the other, but won’t make the first move because they’re somehow afraid of offending the other or Crossing the Line. Crossing the Line works pretty well for me as a romance cliché. Hello, Anne and Gilbert! Mulder and Scully! Oh hell, even Bob and Dot from ReBoot!
Now I need to scour my shelves for a Crossing the Line book.
