Cringe

If my romance isn't corny I'll be giving it back

Estudio para Giralda (2001) by Julio Larraz

Last year for Valentine’s Day my husband took me to the Berkshires as a way to reconnect after giving birth to our second child. We spent a childless weekend eating, drinking, and catching up on sleep. He surprised me with red roses which sat at the breakfast table of our hotel room all weekend. Every time I laid my eyes on them I’d ~melt~ a little bit. The sight of these roses made me feel so flushed with romance that I decided to put them on IG stories along with a poll asking the following question: Should acts of romance be shared or remain private? Unsurprisingly, about 60% of voters responded with private.

Valentine’s Day is coming up (notice my long lead anticipation on the topic) and as a response to last year’s poll I want to tell you I understand why we can’t stand to see acts of love.

Listen, I get it. Mass media and culture will tell you men are trash, that the trashcan emoji should only be used when describing relationships. Movies will train you to believe that fairytales exist. Your mom and your Tía will never approve of him and convince you he’s “beneath you.” It’s not easy to see love out in the wild. It can be somewhat of a head scratching moment to think about what it takes for someone to have the audacity to post red roses on Instagram. It will take a hell of a lot of control to not impulsively DM her with “Get a life thirsty bitch!”

When I think of real romance: the raw, tried and true stuff - I think of Bachata. More specifically, I think of Prince Royce. Have you ever paid attention to Prince Royce’s lyrics? Have you ever witnessed two people dancing to Bachata? If you’ve answered no to either question, I promise you’ve yet to witness romance. 

Y el corazón no tiene cara

Y te prometo que lo nuestro nunca va a terminar

Y el amor vive en el alma

Ni con un deseo, sabes que nada de ti irá a cambiar

(And the heart does not have face

And I promise you that ours will never end

And love lives in the soul

Not even with a wish, you know that I’d change nothing about you)

I know that I’m biased, I like to share. I don’t keep a lot of things private. But sometimes Prince Royce serves as my reminder that we only complicate things because we feel so unsure of ourselves. Prince Royce serves me with other things too. However, I’m married, so I will not go any further with my feelings towards him at this time.

Si eres gorda o flaca

Todo eso no me importa a mí

Tampoco soy perfecto

Solo sé que yo te quiero así

(if you are fat or skinny

All that doesn't matter to me

I'm not perfect either

I only know that I love you like this)

I wish people reveled in the basic-ness of romance more. I don’t want it to be as complicated as it seems to be. To be fully immersed in romance, one must be basic. Because when you’re able to take something that’s so excruciatingly complicated, understand it, tangibly break it down, bit by bit, is when it becomes simple. It’s when it becomes basic. So, when someone says you’re basic, take it and run. You’ve won this round of love, you’ve succeeded against all odds. Post your roses, your hand holding, your partner making you chamomile tea to help you with your IBS, innocently buying you the wrong tampons at CVS.

They say that women love the way their mothers did. Do you find that to be true? If so, will we end up like they did? I say, if we know better we must do better. Especially on the acts of love. At the peak of the information age, the era of vulnerability, the era of accountability, we must accept that we are all very confused mammals when it comes to romance. 

When I used to visit my grandparents farm, my grandmother used to shop our avocado trees, circling them, constantly looking upwards, picking the ripe ones. She’d come back with about 5 or so, resting like eggs in her apron. She’d plop her apron ontop of the cutting board and start slicing them down the center. She’d smack her knife into them with one hand and circled the avocado with the other so the knife does a full 360. One half would clunk on the countertop. She’d discard the ones that weren’t at peak ripeness. She’d serve my grandfather his lunch, with a side of avocado salad. There were times, however, that my grandfather didn’t agree with the level of ripeness of avocados he was served so he’d push the plate away from him. Passive aggressively, he’d comment to my grandmother how these weren’t ready, that she’d plucked them too soon, that he wasn’t going to eat them.

Listen, my grandfather was an asshole. I can say that now because he's dead. I can write and write and write about how much he’s taught me, how much meaning there is to life if you just let yourself look at it the right way. He taught me what real labor is, how a life of service is a life with overwhelming meaning. He taught me when you work really hard at something, with persistence and patience, sometimes that turns you into a little bit of an asshole. To him, he was “passionate.” To that end, he was unapologetic for the way he wanted to receive his love. For him, labor was his romance. It was acts of service. It was performative. For her, it was the same. They labored so much for each other on the farm. In the afternoons they’d go out to the patio to dance to Roberto Torres while the dogs layed out beside them from a long day. He held her close by the waist, led her confidently and with experience. They’d look over eachothers shoulders, never needing to look down to correct their footing. 

I have a hard time seeing both the good and the bad at the same time. Something between them worked out, persevered. Something had to have broken in their relationship for them to have shown such compassionate repair, such immaculate understanding of the other person. Should he have eaten my grandmothers avocado salad that day? Yes. Would I have told my grandfather to go fuck himself after pushing my avocado salad away? Probably. You know you have found romance when a person is able to translate the other persons flaws and not tell them to go fuck themselves. Romance doesn’t look the same way to everyone.

Have you confused romance for what they told you it was in the movies? It takes a great amount of reason - which I don’t have because I’m still too young -  to understand romance (Unfortunately I’m not even middle aged yet!). Two lives come together as a continuation to the lives that came before them. He loved the way his father did, she loved the way her mother did. But at one point they pulled their lives down from the shiny shelf, dusted themselves off from the facade of what romance should be, laid themselves firmly on the ground, and accepted each other's love. He pulled her up from the couch almost every night to dance with her. He held her body with hands of gratitude. She still went out everyday and looked upwards to pick avocados to his liking. Love really is basic. Love really does grow. 

They will tell you that these days, acts of romance are a stunt: that we flock to Hallmark like sheep just to buy an overpriced greeting card with a pre-K level poem on the inside of it. They will tell you it’s a cheap gesture to go to your local bodega to buy a dozen red roses. You’re a try hard for thinking you can make Julia Child’s Coq Au Vin for your tired and disgruntled lover who won’t even appreciate the hours of labor that went into getting those flavors just right. I can assure you that these are the same people who have experienced glimpses of romance to only turn it down due to their own fears and frigidness. Reluctance carries so much symbolism of internal conflict. You think these people allow themselves to listen, I mean really listen, to Prince Royce?

Prende una vela, rézale a Dios

Y dale gracias que tenemos ese lindo corazón

Prende una vela, pide perdón

Y por creer que tú eres fea te dedico esta canción

(Light a candle, pray to God

And give thanks that we have that beautiful heart

Light a candle, ask for forgiveness

for believing that you are ugly 

I dedicate this song to you)

You wouldn’t share a love like that on Instagram? I mean, why not? How did you get here so bruised and battered and reluctant to the basics of romance? Happily we turn our backs on the best and brightest things in our lives. But whichever way you turn, it’s always going to be the same life you’re facing. It will be more of the same. Resolve your ambivalence - romance should be passionate, cringeworthy, utterly disgusting stuff. Pure romance is basic, it’s able to live with yourself. Get out of your own head, start trusting yourself, put some faith into this. Give all of your flaws a high-five and let your body move. Make Prince Royce proud.