Romantic

Romantic. 1. of or pertaining to romance. 2. impractical or unrealistic, fanciful. 3. imbued with idealism, a desire for adventure…

The boat was for weekends.

For getting out of our small apartment, for a break from the strict swim schedule you kept during the week, for escaping carpools your mother drove and for fleeing the boredom that was your father’s desk job. The boat was for your own can of beer, a Budweiser taken boldly from the red Coleman cooler in view of your father. A test that seemed impossible for the fourteen-year-old you to pass, but what was a “no” back in the four walls of the apartment could become a “yes, only one” out here in the open.

The boat was for freedom, wind, daydreams, casting a line and being lulled to sleep by waves.

Mornings in the delta were about paddling around the murky waters in your yellow dingy and getting sunburned shoulders. Afternoons were about stretching out on the top deck and reading The Enquire, Parade and Tiger Beat until sundown. The evenings were about dinner, something bbq’d with a side of chips, then the card games, black jack moving into poker, while Haggard drawled in the background.

The boat was for family only.

That’s partly why the boy is still so easy to recall. Like the icy beer your father let you sip, someone to hang out with that was your own age was a rare treat. You don’t remember his name, his features have grown blurry and you can’t remember how you filled all of your time together but still he floats inside your head. When you had to say goodbye the night before you were to leave you felt an unfamiliar tightness in your chest, leaned in, gave him a hug, then ran down into the bow of the boat to hide and start missing him.

The boat was for a memory.

That night the summer heat was unbearable so you left the porthole open above you. Hours later, when you were supposed to be dreaming, but weren’t, were still up, still thinking about that boy, about how he had made you feel different, beautifully strange, one at a time, chocolate kisses, little silver stars, started falling into your porthole, started crashing, one by one, onto your flannel-lined sleeping bag.

The boat was for the beginning.

4. preoccupied with love or by the idealizing of love. 5. expressing love or strong affection. 6. ardent; passionate; fervent…

“You’re gonna dieeee.”

You’re home alone in the shower with Axl Rose turned up and screeching about the dangers of The Jungle on the tape deck when you hear something. You ignore the banging at first, but whoever it is won’t stop so you rinse the conditioner out of your hair and grab a towel. You go upstairs to look through the blinds. You can’t make out the face and the body looks unfamiliar until he turns. Then you catch a glimpse of white plaster on two arms and your blood, breath and heart stop.

On the porch. The gift. This morning…

You were picking up the newspaper off the porch when you found a jacket; new, gray and lined with white fur lying on the deck. A piece of paper stuck out of one of the pockets. You pulled it out and found a poem. A beautiful, tortured love poem written in erratic blue scrawl.

You thought wrong house, wrong girl, until you saw the broken arms.

You dress quickly and open the door. How did you find me? Told your mother I was a friend that had lost your new address. How did you get here? Eight hours on the Greyhound, hitchhiked some then walked the rest. Why? Because I love you.

You’re nineteen, you think you know what you are doing, say things like forever, perfect and happy with recklessness and ease. You’re nineteen and think you know what you want so you tell him you love another.

He doesn’t try to come in, doesn’t try to talk you out of it, he just turns and starts walking down the street…

7. of or pertaining to, or characteristic of style of literature and art that subordinates form to content, encourages freedom of treatment, emphasizes imagination, emotion and introspection and often celebrates nature, the ordinary person, and freedom of the spirit.

You meet this guy while setting up his lumbar myelogram. He is a patient for the neurosurgeon you work for. After a few dates—tequila, dancing, foreign films, afternoon of canoeing—he give you a gift with a condition. The gift is a paperback of Ayn Rand’s, The Fountainhead. The condition is you can’t see him again until you’ve read the entire book. You like this, an assignment for love. How can you refuse 695 pages back to him? You read at your desk in the afternoon when you should be returning phone calls, setting up surgeries and swaying claims adjusters to okay procedures. You forgo sleep, skip the gym and bring the book in the bath with you because you know it has to be there, some deep meaning about the two of you in the tortured relationship of Henry Roark and Dominique but it’s not just the book that has an end.

8. of or pertaining to a musical style, esp. of the 19th century, marked by the free expression of imagination and emotion, virtuosic display, experimentation with form and the adventurous development of orchestral and piano music and opera. 9. imagery, fictitious or fabulous. 10. noting the role of a suitor in a play about love: the romantic lead…

Your girlfriend is horrified when you tell her. You can hear her Malibu Barbie dreams of marriage popping over the phone when you say no, we don’t always get each other gifts for Christmas, no, we don’t do expensive dinners out for birthdays, no, you can’t remember the last time you got a bouquet of flowers from him and no, we don’t go out dancing. Ever.

It’s not that you don’t remember mood lighting, because you do. Its’ not that you don’t remember the sexy bras he likes you to wear because you do. It’s not that you don’t remember getting absolutely giddy over your 1st, 5th and 7th month anniversaries together because you do.

But it’s not about the Top 5 for you:

the heart-shaped pendant
the box of Godiva truffles
the lingerie
the red roses
the ring

What it is about for you:

the image of him holding his beautiful cat that is too sick to save.

the words you hear him way into his furry gray ear that break your heart.

the worry in his eyes he can’t hide as he stands over your hospital bed as you wake up from surgery.

the drive from hell in the torrential rain at night that leaves you both exhausted and pissed off at each other and how his fall over an open suitcase in the hotel room makes you two laugh so hard you cry.

the love that somehow continues to thrive underneath the dirty clothes, the compromises, the neglect, the interruptions of small children and dinners of mac n cheese served under florescent lights to the mood music of Hilary Duff.

You are sure your friend would not call this romantic.

But you do.