When Happy Movies Happen To Sad People

I just finished watching "Under The Tuscan Sun". I'm still teared up. Why? Well, let me tell you. It isn't because I am not Diane Lane (way, way, not Diane Lane). It is because I've lost the opportunity to experience true love. Really. It's a lost cause.

There were times when I might have had a chance. Decisions made. Choices made. And in the end I lost out. I decided to be an actress and singer and my circle of friends became gay men and dysfunctional folk. Of course, when it comes to dysfunctional I am, alas, the poster child. Looking for love in all the wrong places? That would be me.

But all I wanted was love. Missed the boat on that one, though.

Watching Tuscan Sun I wondered what it would have been like for me had I made different decisions. I once had my cards read (so many years ago - even before I actually believed in the efficacy of Tarot..) and my reader said I would - within a year - meet a Frenchman, marry him, have two young sons and live at his vineyard.

Lord, wouldn't that have been amazing?

In fact, anything that smacked of a romance - a lover, a companion - would have been amazing.

Instead I am alone. A tough spot for a true romantic. Because sure, I have handled "aloneness" for nearly 30 years. Since I was 22. Hell, that makes it 31 years.

Of course, I didn't ever really have that companion. That soul mate. That supportive man who stuck by me through thick and thin. I have those brief, Shakespearean type romances. Brief lightening flashes of sex and lust and love that were gone as soon as they came, leaving only a lingering aroma of sadness and bitterness and, sometimes, yearning.

It is a cold night, tonight. March is an odd month. A cruel month. There is a mama kitty outside who had a litter of kittens. I have fed her copiously in the hopes that she will be able to keep them (and herself) alive. I look forward to the chance to feed the little buggers (along with Mama's first litter, Eenie, Meanie, and Mighty Moe that showed up last Spring). They are joyous and wonderful to play with.

The weekend is here. I tried my best this week to hold up the gauntlet. But failed, in some regards.

There's been a relationship that I have watched founder. Communications slow, fates intervene. I cannot bring myself to whine, complain or make mention of the decline. I can only sit silent as it does so. Because it wasn't ever the "real thing". It was a momentary flash of brilliant lightening in an otherwise stagnant and celibate world.

My world.

The Greatest Romantic Songs of the 1970's

I saw the ad. Wrote down the 1-800 number. I want them so bad I can taste them (well except for that piece of crap number, "My Eyes Adored You."

It's a grey, gloomy, day out with a drizzle that's neither a rain-storm nor a mist.

And I feel lonely, grey, sad and wondering how my life turned out this way.

Someone I know only via email and phone sent me pictures of his grandchildren. It's been a long time since my biological clock sounded the alarm. But that old familiar pang sounded once again as I looked at the little boys - all fresh-faced and innocent and wondered, what would it have been like to have held my own child?

Would that I were the pragmatist. Fortunate I am a loner. Because otherwise, this might just be unbearable.

To be all alone.

Why Does A Feminist Love Romances?

I pondered that question this afternoon as I read Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers, a new book about the female American authors and the failure of the literary world to give them their due.

Which prompted me to start thinking about romance novels. First of all, full-disclosure: I am an aspiring romance author. I read them like crazy, love them to death and want to write oodles and oodles of them.

But why does this old, 1970's "I Am Woman Hear Me Roar" feminist admit to that, much less actually, really, truly mean it?

It's not the happy ending, first of all. I'm one of those post-divorce, baby-boomer women who learned the truth about the picket fence existence and I know there's as many true happy endings, romance-wise, as there are Lotto winners. In other words, they're few and far between.

OK, so is it the perfect heroes? No.

It's the women. Whether they were the fragile flowers of femininity of the 1970 novels of Kathleen Woodiwiss, or the contemporary Stephanie Plums, they are the greatest. I love the books because the authors have given the women the minds, the souls, the hearts to withstand their trials, to rise to the occasions and to beat the odds. Whether they're Regency heroines or paranormal vampire slayers, the women are individuals who fight with whatever talents they have - be they wits or weaponry or feminine wiles.

And in the end, that's what feminism is all about, to me. The ability of a woman to take what life gives her and make a life out of it. It won't always be perfect, and it won't always be pretty. But it will always be hers.

Romance novels give me that very special happy ending. Unlike the real world where, no matter how hard a woman may try, the patriarchy gets her down, or the Man, or bad luck, death or taxes. In romance novels, a woman gives it her all and gets what she deserves. It may be the hero, or it may be a happy ending, the life of her child, the career she always wanted, or great sex.

As we all know, that's not the case off the page. So after a day of toiling for the Man, doling out the hard earned cash to pay the piper, and being pushed and shoved - figuratively as well as literally, never getting my due, or even a modicum of respect, of having to watch others get more than their share, and be reminded of the endless hard row of hoeing ahead of me, there's nothing like a romance novel to sublimate that frustration and to imagine a world where my hard work gets me my just desserts.

OK, so I guess that's what I love about romance novels. They are this feminist's idea of a happy ending.