Finished Demos: It's A Pretty Good Song, Babe, You Know the Rest

We're not dead. We just don't update regularly and my normal columns don't have an easy parallel here. So. I gave this to a college writing magazine at the end of January, and that issue still hasn't been published.

I eminently dislike sitting on writing when the only thing that's keeping from being seen is sorority obligations, which are things that do not hold a large amount of power in my life. Anyway. This piece (whenever it comes out) will be called Let Me Take You Out and it is about, well, girls and boys presuming there is a right time and place to go back to for authentic romantic expression.

Fuck that. (Oh, the title comes from a Gaslight Anthem song.)

What makes romantic expression authentic is the intent behind it, not when it was expressed and if that gets obscured, then I think we're in a world of trouble. Whenever this gets published on paper, I hope, I hope, I hope that the introduction below gets printed with it.

Romance, like love, might be beyond verbal expression. I don't even know if it's appropriate to say I'm grasping in the right direction, because that would suggest a Platonic form (look it up) of romance, which is not an idea I currently want to commit to. Remember: I don't know romance and I never will.

Hugs/Kisses,
Charles Victor Szasz


There's this little thing that's clawing away at the back of my mind: Romance isn't dead, but there are some people that are pretty determined to pronounce it dead on arrival despite its steady breathing and lively EKG.

Before I even begin, let's make it clear who I'm not speaking about. The kids (and adults) who go out to places where they can drink alcohol and orgasm mutually are not really a part of this discussion. if you want to complain that they're killing romance, this isn't the venue.

It's the kids who are trying to "go back" to an earlier era of courtesy and social cues that have been overly romanticized. (These people may be related to the people who think World War II was the Good War. I loathe the Holocaust, but there is no good war Ever. [More crimes were averted, I'll grant you that.] Over 40 million died in over World War II. To put that in perspective, go to a beach. Now imagine each grain of sand is a naked, ruined corpse, pale from malnourishment and smeared with the excrement of the lifeless vessels on top of them. That's war.) You know the type. Cynically, they're the douchebags who think that with a fedora and an antiquated dress code, they're somehow being gentlemen or ladies. They seem to have mistaken being romantic for being suave. I have no words for them, but then again, I've constructed them as an easy target.

Less cynically, but more pointedly, there's the people who genuinely believe that there is some golden age for romance to go back to and closely adhering to that standard will make them romantic. It's this group that's more worrisome to me, since they're more authentically disposed towards the idea, but are heading in a direction which avoids the problems that they claim to have a solution to.

Some say Victorian England, some say it's the period before the Second World War (1920-1940), some go to France, but all say that Romance is dead with a seriousness that makes me smirk. Romance, as I characterize it, the crossroads of concern, humility, sentiment and action, can't ever die because there's always going to be something genuine there. Modern Life is War got it right with "Fuck the Sex Pistols": The grass was never green. There was never purity. Some say it's all over. Stupid fucking jaded burnouts...You don't get to decide. It's ours. Go away. Shut up. Little else in my mind needs to be said. It is the genuine emotion that can never be a product of a particular time and place that makes love and the expression of it romantic.

It's the why and less the how, and that's where I take umbrage with this group of well-meaning kids who want to go back to something else. They want it to be codified, written down and definitive. There aren't many hard and fast rules to go by and for a lot of people, that's frightening. That's their prerogative, though, as is the focus of this submission, I believe they're barking up the wrong tree. I do not mourn the death of labyrinthine social codes around romancing the people of your desire. I don't think it's a good idea to go back to a time when the idea of romance was limited to straight white people. I am supposed to show you how much I care by giving you a rose or dancing slowly? How disappointingly limiting, not to mention exclusionary.

Going "back" to something lacks the ability to grow and blossom with the different intersections of gender, desire and sex, that are finally acceptable to express in public in the college's bounds and in some large cities. Our traditional dances are gendered for men who like women and women who like men. But you know that already. Remember, people are left out by these universal romancing ways. The reason why things like putting your jacket down over a puddle so the girl doesn't have to step in the water are supposedly romantic is because it comes out of a desire to make the person's life a little easier, cost be damned. Just to see you smile, as Tim McGraw sings, is the essence of the idea.

Romance is (Did I just type that? If you ever see the phrase "something is" without any kind of background, your bullshit detector should go off loud and clear.) an ideal that is meant to be reached for and never grasped, I believe (Phew.). You, I or anyone else can never ever think of ourselves as romantics, because at that point where I think I've got it, I've lost it. It's in the humility of knowing you would give up what you have for your lover but knowing that your lover would never ask it of you. It is crucial now to mention that I do not submit myself as any kind of answer to the questions I pose. I will feign suggestions but I am far too suspicious, neurotic and unreasonably paranoid to be a model for anyone, except in what not to do. (Did I mention the low self-esteem and depression?)

If you want to be romantic, I think you ought to first figure out what romantic means to you, and apply those ideas to a modern context. I initially compared this to Batman, but somehow, using a fictitious character who is almost completely incapable of sustaining a meaningful adult relationship (sexual or emotional) seems wrong here. You will make mistakes. I will make mistakes. It hurts. It breaks. But, in making the mistakes you are acknowledging the ever-expanding possibilities of modern interaction and expression that didn't exist during a fictitious Golden Era, whether it's comic books or Americana.

I don't feign to understand romance. I just see people looking in one direction and I think I see what they're describing in a different direction. I'm very, very distrustful of the desire to go back or say anything is dead. But then again, I'm a white heterosexual male, I've hardly ever needed help raising my voice.