SAN FRANCISCO-

Hello, my name is Zoë Brock and I am a hopelessly hopeful romantic.

Love and I have a long and sordid relationship. We’re stuck to each other with that cheap, tacky glue that never dries properly and gets hairs and other bits of icky dirt and effluvia stuck in it and ends up looking like a coughed up owl pellet, minus the skeletal bits. It’s horrible, trust me.

Sometimes I feel as if I live my life adhered to the cheap pulpy paper bound between the flowery covers of a Harlequin romance novel.

Sometimes I wonder if some sticky-fingered house-wife isn’t pouring over the sordid details of my love-life, swooning, moaning and gasping at the more elaborately descriptive paragraphs as she takes a break between episodes of ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ and ‘Days of Our Lives’.

Sometimes I feel like I’m getting paper cuts on my fingers as I try to escape from my papery gaol.

It’s useless trying to escape, of course. There is no way out of yourself. I am what I am.

And I just love the Love.

For example- The other day, while standing at a downtown street corner waiting for the lights to change, I started fantasizing about the moment when I will see My Person again after a long absence. I think about this scenario a lot. We’ve been apart a few months, and still have several weeks to go before we can look at each other and assess the changes and evolutions we have both gone through on our own. My mind wanders to that moment and I drift off into completely fantastical scenes, replete with soaring movie music and zoom shots into locked lips before wide pans up into blue sky.

I gross myself out a lot.

Sometimes these thoughts involve hurried needful sex or desperate kisses. Sometimes they involve me fainting, weak knees giving way, eyes rolling back in head, tall girl dissolving into a pile of floppy limbs and crumpled emotions.

No one has ever accused me of having no sense of melodrama.

Anyway, back to that corner- I’m standing there, weak kneed and gooey, envisioning him as he walks across the street/room/playa- tanned, athletic, half naked, like some stud from a bad Arabian Nights illustration (vomit, I know) and I realize the lights have changed and that I’ve missed my chance to cross. More than this I realize they have changed several times and that I have been standing on the corner of Market and Geary with a stupid look on my face long enough to attract the attention of the nearby flower vendor. He inquires about my well being and I nod, flush, and scurry away in a pink cloud of girlie embarrassment.

Ugh.

Yesterday, while walking home from an adventure at the gay hardware store (a whole other story) I was stupid enough to fall victim to my romantic impulses again. This time my mind was co-erced into dangerous idiocy by the melodic strains of KD Lang singing ‘Hallelujah’ on my iPod.

Oh dear.

Did I listen to it once? Did I listen to it twice? Or did I listen to it three times and send myself into a spasm of mind-fucking that involved such details as sordid spontaneous sex, declarations of eternal love and devotion and, most shamefully, full-blown confetti-strewn matrimony? You guess.

Yep.

And I almost got run over as a consequence.

I should have my own sitcom. We could call it Zoe loves Chachi.

(Did you know that Cha-Chi is the Mongolian term for penis? [Actually I made that up {but it's funny, right?}])

Of course not all of my romantic moments are light and fluffy. Some of them are downright dark and brooding, morose and gloomy. More of a “Jane Eyre” than a “When Harry Shtupped Sally”. More “Donnie Darko” than “The Notebook”.

Sometimes my romantic reality is heavy and smothering and desperate and tragic. My need for someone can be overwhelming to them and to myself.

(Excuse me, a cat needs some attention).

I’m back. Where was I? Romance. Dreams. Vomitous imaginings wrapped in pink lace and scented tissue.

If the adage “have dick, be dickhead” is true then surely the same must be said for women. “Have vagina, be a giant bloody pussy”. Sorry, Nana, I know you’re reading this.
 
 
But after much agonizing and mental self-flagellation I’ve come to the conclusion that being a romantic isn’t so bad after all. Sure, it’s a bit embarrassing. Sure, I cry in commercials and stupid fluffy movies. Sure, I’ve been known to stare at people kissing in the street with a big goofy grin on my head until they think I’m a pervert, but it also means I’m open to the whole damn thing, despite more than a few disappointments and broken-hearted escapades (see archives for further reading material), escapades that could have made me bitter and twisted and far too scared to indulge in this type of thinking.

And, this way, if I’m not getting romanced, cuddled and loved-up in reality, I can always escape to the Fabiolicious fantasies inside my own mind, right?
 
 

 
 
Cor! Look at him! If you knew where my finger was while that picture was being taken you’d be shaking my hand, children.

Or not.

 
 
Have a lovely day. And happy birthday to The Nervous Breakdown. Long may we reign. x
 
 

*ALL PHOTOSHOPPING WITHIN THIS STORY WAS MAGIC PERFORMED BY JOSH ‘DR CHOP’ FLECHTNER. MANY THANKS FOR HIS WIZARDRY, MAY OUR COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS BE LONG-LIVED, COMPLETELY DERANGED AND INCREDIBLY SILLY.

Tags: harlequin novel, jane eyre, Love, romance, vomit, zoe brock

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Fear, France, Humor, Love, Personal, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.