On my way into Walmart for a few groceries, I stopped to look at flowers. For some reason I’ll never understand, they are displayed at the entrance in front of the turnstile, forcing you into a kind of now-or-never situation: either pick them up now, and then feel the silent rebuke of their stems dripping dry as you go about picking up the rest of your items, or pass them by after you’ve checked out and feel aggrieved that once again, you forgot to go back for them.
I know, I know. Walmart is a horrendous place to buy flowers. It’s a horrendous place to buy anything, really. But let’s just set that aside for now, shall we, because it’s not the point of this particular story. The point is, the only single-variety bouquets that were in fresh, lovely condition, were roses. And the freshest, loveliest ones, were red.
Back in December, I had bought a bouquet just like them. I cut their stems short and arranged them in a squat, square silver vase, along with a few sprigs of yew I had clipped from the bush in my front yard. I set them on the kitchen table, which I had covered with a cloth patterned with holly berries. The effect was pretty and festive, full stop.
Right now though, it’s nearly February. My table is bare once more and the yew, covered in snow. I would have to display these beauties in a tall, clear glass vase.
I turn away, and push my empty cart through the gate, determined to forget them, to come back another day and buy a bouquet with fewer connotations.
But I can’t forget them.
I think about them as I wheel through the dairy aisle, and while picking through the tubs of vanilla yogurt, looking for the most distant expiration date. They follow me to the bread aisle, where I fill my cart with four distinct permutations of the same basic ingredients: cheese bread, hamburger buns, hot dog buns, and croissants. They call out to me as I head to the checkout. Last chance…
I could go all the way around the cashiers and self-checkout terminals, collect the damn things, and circle back. But I don’t. Instead, I duck through the gap in the two metal bars attached to the turnstile, which are all that’s standing between me and the flower display. It’s more like the suggestion of a barrier than an actual barrier. It only keeps out people who are physically unable or unwilling to ignore it, to flout its message in a most undignified display of laziness. I am both able and willing.
Still, as I nestle the flowers in amongst my simple carbohydrates, I’m well aware that while I do not care if my fellow Walmart patrons think that I’m lazy (because I am), I care way too much about what these roses are saying about me.
It goes something like this:
Red roses are the universal symbol for a declaration of love, the most basic statement in the nuanced language of flowers. They are what the most unimaginative cis-gender man buys for his wife, or girlfriend, or both, because he figures he can’t possibly go wrong. Every woman likes roses, and red are the most romantic ones, and isn’t he clever for knowing that.
In buying this symbol for myself, a single mom, and displaying it on my kitchen table, am I expressing my approval of or (so much worse) yearning for, the sort of romantic relationship it represents? Or am I trying to prove some kind of convoluted point about self-reliance, that I don’t need or want a dude to buy me a cliche bouquet, I can do that for myself, thanks? Why don’t I just scrawl ‘pity me’ on a piece of paper and tape it to my back? It would be cheaper.
A rose is a rose is a rose.
Loveliness extreme.1
It’s amazing, really, how many token barriers I’ve been unwilling to cross. For many years, I have walked all the way around the romance section of the bookstore, unwilling to be caught dead in there while also a newlywed/wife/widow. I mean, what would it say? That I was interested in reading sexy fairytales, because IRL romance was not enough/nonexistent/only a memory? That I agreed with the genre’s underlying assumptions about where romantic love fits within the spectrum of human experience?
Only some of those things were true, and in no way was I prepared to admit which ones, even to myself. Also, to be fair, I first started avoiding romance in the late 80s/early 90s, when my understanding of the genre was limited to a twirling rack of Harlequins with half-naked, hetero couples on the cover. My mom firmly told me these books were “silly,” a waste of time for any reasonably intelligent woman, and I believed her. I mean, she was absolutely correct, right?
But the genre has evolved in the past thirty-odd years, and so have I. I’m more open to letting people think what they want of my various choices, because I have a better understanding of the truth than I once did. But I haven’t been imagining it. Total strangers, and even the people you love, do jump to wild conclusions from a glance at the books you’re reading. I know, because obviously, I’ve done it myself, to myself and others. But also, this.
Over the past week or so, I brought home a few romance novels from the library. Contemporary single parent romances, both straight and queer. And I kid you not, my twelve-year-old picked up each one and raised her eyebrows at me, as if to say really? what does this mean?
She’s recently started reading romance herself (as in middle-grade/YA, not the Harlequins of my youth) and was surprised to see these books in my TBR stack, which, for as long as she’s known it, has exclusively contained literary fiction and non-fiction (a.k.a. the boring stuff her mom likes). She was clearly concerned by the real-life implications of this shift in my reading material. And she’s twelve.
I wiggled my eyebrows back, just to get a rise out of her (which totally worked) but of course, she had no reason to worry.
The romances in my TBR, like the red roses on my table, mean just one thing: I’m done with forgoing things I want, for fear of what others might read into it, about my character, my values, or my life.
Allowing the potential judgement of others to override your heart’s desires is silly. Simply accepting, without question, the bizarre cultural norms standing between you and something as simple as a book, or a rose, is both silly and a tragic waste of time.
If I somehow manage to instill these concepts in my daughters, sometime before they are ready for IRL romance, I will consider my work here well done.
What about you? What have you left on the shelf for fear of what it might say about you?
To quote the one bit of Gertrude Stein we all know, and the only bit of “Sacred Emily” I understand. English majors who get the whole thing are either much, much smarter than I am or fooling themselves).
A rose is a rose is a rose.
I love the smell of stigma-disintegration in the morning! Welcome to the heart side; we have cookies (not a euphemism) (but in Helena Hunting's Pucked series, that is absolutely a euphemism).
I previously left monster romance on the shelf for fear of judgement and now that's out the window, I've read The Dragon's Bride by Katee Robert, half of Ruby Dixon's Ice Planet Barbarians series (content warnings re: SA off the page in both of those), and HELLO SHIFTERS! Nalini Singh just really gets what I want in a book and then shows me things I hadn't ever thought of but now am obsessed with, almost 20 books in to her Psy-Changeling series.
I want to see even more body diversity on covers, but that rant is for another day. Thank goodness for Olivia Dade (who you linked to here, yes!!!), and Seressia Glass, and Talia Hibbert, and Jackie Lau that's starting to become a regular cover occurrence.
You know the next time we meet I'm going to have a trunk full of books for you to borrow, right?!
I loved everything about this post. I bet you love walking into your house and seeing those roses waiting for you. I'm glad you did not deny yourself.
I have always loved romance in novels but, like you, have avoided romance novels themselves. I'd like to change that. Which ones have you liked the most?