If you are ever looking around for proof that men and women are wired differently, Romance Novels are just the ticket. I have an aunt who spent her entire working life as a librarian. Occasionally, we would get a box of books that she had skimmed from the pile that was slated for destruction/recycling. Many of these were Romance Novels.
I had free access to piles and piles of romance novels for decades and I have never read one.
I read the back covers. I did the age old adolescent trick of opening used books to the spot that opened most easily. That’s how you find the dirty parts. It worked for 1984 (that was more fraught than it was titillating). I may have read a few pages here and there out of curiosity, but I never actually dove in to a romance. I understand the concept of vicariously enjoying romance and these novels effectively accomplish this.
I read the Westerns and the Science Fiction and the Memoirs. It was rare for me to read a mystery. It may be that I stayed away from the genres that were notoriously habit forming. As a consequence, I am not in the habit of reading books at all. I read 3-4 books this year and that was really surprising to me. I started obtaining books to have with me when I was held up in airports and I find myself binging on them after my trips.
I do not have any aversion to the concept of romance. I sat on a bench at a lookoff just last evening watching the sun set with my love. There was also a long walk.
One of the most intense romantic moments involved me sitting up in bed playing guitar and singing and having my lover embrace me from behind and press her face between my shoulders. The song is a bit emotional and at one point there were tears running down my spine. I am including the words below. They were written by an Australian Poet.
The colours of the setting sun
Withdrew across the Western Land-
He raised the sliprails, one by one,
And shot them home with trembling hand ;
Her brown hands clung - her face grew pale-
Ah! quivering chin and eyes that brim!-
One quick, fierce kiss across the rail,
And, ‘Good-bye, Mary!’ ‘Good-bye, Jim!’
Oh, he rides hard to race the pain
Who rides from love, who rides from home;
But he rides slowly home again,
Whose heart as learnt to love and roam
A hand upon the horse’s mane,
And one foot in the stirrup set,
And, stooping back to kiss again,
With ‘Good-bye, Mary ! don’t you fret !
When I come back ‘ - he laughed for her-
‘We do not know how soon ’twill be;
I’ll whistle as I round the spur -
You let the sliprails down for me.’
She gasped for sudden loss of hope,
As, with a backward wave to her,
He cantered down the grassy slope
And swiftly round the dark’ning spur.
Black-pencilled panels standing high,
And darkness fading into stars,
And, blurring fast against the sky,
A faint white form beside the bars.
And often at the set of sun,
In winter bleak and summer brown,
She’d steal across the little run,
And shyly let the sliprails down,
And listen there when darkness shut
The nearer spur in silence deep,
And when they called her from the hut
Steal home and cry herself to sleep.
And he rides hard to dull the pain
Who rides from one that loves him best….
And he rides slowly back again,
Whose restless heart must rove for rest.
Henry Lawson (1867-1922)
