Theoretical Physicists Apply Here

I don't know anyone who dates the "old-fashioned" way. It's all online dating services. I even know two couples who met online at E-Harmony and are now married. One happily. One not. Sounds like the 50-50 odds of marriage.

If I ran an E-Harmony add, it would say something like:

Utterly exhausted mother of four seeks theoretical physicist. Bad fashion sense, wild hair . . . fine. Do you like talking about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? Big Bang Nucleosynthesis? Then I want to talk to you! Must love children and dogs. Son has a python, but I don't like her, so snake phobias are OK. Must be spiritual, but if you don't believe in the Big Guy, I understand. Most physicists don't. Music lover, please, as my iPod is more important than food. NO SMOKERS. Must be neat . . . but tolerate mess.

The last line of my personal ad is because my house IS messy, but there is NO way I am EVER going to pick up after another man again.

So do you think I would get any responses? Me either.

But here's the thing . . .

While there are exceptions to every rule, don't you just love how in the movies, physicists look like Russell Crowe??? And how in romance books, fabulously wealthy men who would just as soon eat their corporate opponents for breakfast are secretly just pussycats? How male chauvinists are usually just "messin' with ya" and are actually chivalrous, instead of just really being a**holes?

Which is, I suppose, why we call it fiction.

Why am I pondering all this? Well, I am working on a romance with a professor in it, and he is really dysfunctional (agoraphobic). And I am showing all the ways in which this is paralyzing. It's not something "cute" that just the right combination of romance can cure. Like one day, a la Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, he can just venture out and be fixed.

Which is why, I think . . . any romances I write are generally not quite what the genre demands. Which can be a good thing. Or a bad thing. Depending, entirely, on the reader.

Thoughts?

Romantic Gestures

Here's a fun list of the Screening Room's Top Ten Romantic Moments (not whole movies--the moments within them).

I agree with some of them. I did like that moment in Lost in Translation. However, I think one of my all-time favorite film romantic moments, in a totally quirky oddball film (my favorite kind) was when Herman Blume (Bill Murray) broke ground for the aquarium in Rushmore, prodded by his nemesis/matchmaker Max (Jason Schwartzman).

It's a sign of the pathetic nature of my life that at this point in time, I would find it a very grand romantic gesture if someone said, "YOU sleep, honey, I will clean up the puking child, change the sheets, and start the laundry from this sexy midnight rendevous of stomach flu."

When I think of my books, I like romantic gestures along the lines of Rushmore. Not flowers and wine and so on (ho-hum), but buying someone a beautiful teaset even though you know she will never use it . . . just because you know she will find it beautiful (Spanish Disco). Or creating a garden for her (Diary of a Blues Goddess). Or even holding her head while she pukes (Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven?). And are you, like me, wondering about this vomit theme?

A man once offered to buy me a black sable (I think hoping I would lie naked on it). Gentlemen . . . NEVER offer to buy an animal lover a fur. My favorite romantic gesture though wasn't a man I dated for more than a lunch or two. He was a French cabbie, and for whatever reason, he was smitten (I think because I am ALWAYS nice to cabbies in NYC and offer them candy . . . it's an awful, stressful job, so I always come prepared with chocolates, which endears me to many a cabbie). However, this cabbie invited me to lunch a couple of times, and ever after, for months, if it was pouring at 5:00 p.m. when I left for the 20-block walk to my train station, his cab was waiting curbside to whisk me away, dry and warm--without asking, without anything--he was just there. I found that utterly charming, but alas he moved back to Paris. So if, Michele, you chance to read my blog . . . Bon Soir.

So . . . you writers . . . what romantic gestures are your characters capable of?