While folding laundry last night, I was listening to a Motown compilation a friend burned for me, and – naturally – dancing around the room, when “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” came on. For the first time in a while, I listened to the words, and I found that “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” hit the root of an issue I have been thinking about lately: extreme gestures.
In Fairytale Land, if I found myself attracted to someone; then found him asleep on my doorstep night and day just to keep me from walking away, as David Ruffin of The Temptations sings, I might be flattered by his gesture.
However, in Reality Land, where I proceed with extreme caution, if a man pulled a stunt like that, I would most likely have to step over his lazy, unemployed ass to get to work, where I would have to promptly call the cops (or, at the very least, a beefcakey male friend) to rile him from his sleep and off my doorstep.
And herein lies my dilemma. When did I stop thinking that extreme gestures have romantic intentions? Are extreme gestures something done by normal people, or are they an act of desperation? When did I turn from a hopeful romantic to the cynic I am hastily trying to avoid being? When did I stop hoping that I would be swept off my feet?
At the end of August, the acquaintance of mine who was planning on a summer romance in the summer of ’06 (see “Summer of Love”) met an old flame in Aruba; he came from the upper Midwest, and she from South America. As it turns out, to my surprise, they had a great time together, even though years had past between their last face-to-face visit.
If I traveled to see a man that I hadn’t seen in years, as my Irish luck would have it, I would be That Dumb Girl, hacked to pieces hundreds of miles away from my family. At my funeral, while my mother uncontrollably cried, everyone would say, pitifully, “I told her so” over my closed casket. (And if I didn’t get hacked to pieces, my mother would most likely do it when I returned out of sheer disappointment.)
It seems as though somewhere along the way, I forgot how to take a leap of faith, to believe that he is smitten and not a stalker waiting to chop me into pieces. But my doubtful, cynical, experienced side tells me that he has an agenda instead of a Romeo complex.
Juliet seemed enamored – not frightened or standoffish – by Romeo’s extreme gestures: kissing her off the bat, monologuing to her about the moon, wanting to marry her after seeing her once. For most women I know in the modern world, Romeo’s actions, while romantic, are so far out of the realm of possibility that they have been elevated to perfection.
In my adult life, I have learned that the world is much more complicated than anything I could have bargained for and life is full of catch-22s. For example, if I am attracted to a man and in a hopeful mood, an extreme gesture could sweep me off my feet and send me into a delusional love haze. (Sometimes I think that the sweeping is all that it would take to dissolve my cynicism.) However, if I am less than attracted to a man, his gesture could register as dangerous, stalking and frightening and I would promptly walk / run away. Likewise, if he is less than attracted to me, my frequency of phone calls could alarm him, and he might think I am not mentally stable, that I am not normal, that I am a Bunny Boiler when in fact I am just a normal gal interested in a man.
Today, people seem to be so desperate for romance, so desperate for something that resembles an ideal that extreme gestures seem like the icing on the cake, the proof that he / she is not dating (or sleeping) around. So we weed out the ones who cannot present us with an extreme gesture, who won't get on an airplane to prove interest and intent, who don't show up at our window dressed in a Renaissance Romeo costume.
Frankly, I don’t need or want all of that. All I ask for is someone normal who brings me flowers every once in a while.
• "A Single Serving" appears second and fourth Mondays every month, exclusively in Lumino Magazine. E-mail Melissa at m.koss@yahoo.com.
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