I Used To Be Romantic
An exploration of what it means to be a cynical romantic. Part one of two.
The man I loved last Fall finally posted a photo of himself that I didn’t take, and seeing him without a mustache helped stomp life out of the butterflies he used to give me. As I scrolled through his profile I thought about gratitude, particularly for the lesson he taught me the first time he broke my heart1: just because you can look at someone and think they’re the most beautiful person alive doesn’t mean that things will work out, even if he likes you back.
I used to be a romantic — I’d walk into bars and think about how “Hi”s could lead into awkward blushes as legs brushed against one another, and how those blushes might spark some ambiguous future together — then I met Andy. He was broad-shouldered, mustached, wide-eared, and a year ahead of “hot rodent man summer.” Passing one another in the hallway of a karaoke bar, we locked eyes. His were large, misty, and sensitive in the way that all Cancers’ eyes are and they lured my thoughts out of me like an exhale as I placed a hand on his shoulder,
“I’m sorry. I just had to say this — you are so fucking beautiful.”
I told him to put his number into my phone and he did.
After a few months of frigid Chicago living crumbled by, he finally sent a text. So I did the most charming thing I knew when I was 22: invited him to a house party. We didn’t stay more than 30 minutes before going on a walk around the block that ended in my bedroom.
Although I was a romantic, I typically reserved any swooning over affectionate gestures for conversations with my friends, watching romance movies, or my late-night imagination. Buying flowers? Dancing in the rain? Candle-lit dinners? It all seemed magical in my head, when I listened to Chet Baker and daydreamed of dancing with someone much hotter than myself, but in real life it was a no-go. “People just don’t do that,” I thought, “It’s corny.” I kept my heart guarded, and treated everyone I hooked up with like a friend, which pissed off a lot of them and kept me safe and single. I was prepared to do the same with Andy, but on our walk from that house party to the train home I looked at him and was left just breathless as the night we met. He was the spitting image of the man I danced in my head with to Chet Baker.
As the cars sped past us and our conversation ranged from niche horror movies to recounting the drunken fragments of the night we met, I felt a gentle warmth slip into my palm and between my fingers. When I looked down I realized — it was his hand. My heart sank and my eyes were nervous as they traveled up his arm, around the sculpt of his shoulder, over his lips, and into his wide green eyes. He watched me for a reaction and the reaction was shock. Then he smirked with raised brows as if to ask, “Is this okay?”
It wasn’t, but it was too late.
He was holding my hand before sleeping with me and — while to most people that was normal — for someone like me who was groomed to believe that the use of my body was a prerequisite to affection, it was the most romantic thing in the world. I thought it meant something, and the craving for romance that I typically kept corked inside me began to bubble up and wash away my cynicism from the inside-out.
On our second date, he drunkenly told me that he loved me (and forgot). The butterflies of a held hand paled in comparison to the jumping-jacks my heart did every time I gazed into his Cancer eyes from that moment on. I knew it was a bad omen but I was hypnotized: the man of my daydreams liked me back so maybe romance could be real.
But as the weeks rolled by the tint of rose faded. He never wanted to spend the night or hang out in the day and I grew desperate for a date that wasn’t a house party. It seemed that the more interested I was, the less interested he became. While I’d put our dates in my calendar, he’d stand me up for anywhere that had a dance floor.
It was bizarre being on the desperate side of things. I became pathetic in my hunger for romance in a way that would have icked myself out given the roles were reversed. I bought pumpkins for us to carve together — but they rotted in my living room. I overdrew my bank account on a gingerbread house for us to build — but we never even opened the box. Then, at some Halloweekend house party, I drunkenly told him that I loved him (I also forgot). I told him the one thing that I never told anyone,
“I don’t want to be in some low-stakes, no-commitment situationship anymore… I want to be in a relationship with you.”
There was a slow ghost before our last house party together where he delivered the brutal swing that eventually strikes every situationship:
“Let’s keep things casual.”
Then, it was over.
My brief love affair with Andy was like a hair in the food of romance that killed my appetite for it all. I re-equipped my armor of cynicism not out of resentment or heartbreak, but disappointment in both him and myself. Why had I let myself expect romance to be real? To be something that could go anywhere? To believe in a second-date lovebomb? To not split a dinner bill?! I was disgusted with myself and after that Fall, all acts of romance just felt odd and impossible.
Winter came. Then Spring. Then Summer. I had gone on dozens of dates in between and became a different man. And, while scrolling through his Instagram profile didn’t make me feel anything anymore, Andy was a still constant in my mind. There was before him; and there was after him. On every date I went on I kept myself at bay, searching for the signs he taught me to look out for: are they uninterested or are they too interested?; do they insist on spending the night or do they leave when the sex is over?; do they only text me once the sun has set or are they blowing up my phone?. Everything was a warning and I’d reciprocate every gesture of romantic interest with a cold reminder, “I don’t want to be in a relationship. I don’t want to get attached.”
Evenings came and went with a few talking stages scattered in between. During one of them, I found myself drunk and alone in a dive. So, I did the most charming thing I knew when I was 23, I sent out a midnight “wyd” text. Jack, a guy I had gone on a couple dates with, came to the bar and bought me a few drinks past my limit. He sung a karaoke song that I didn’t know and I watched him glimmer under the disco ball of the wooden stage.
When he finished, we stumbled into some chairs at the bar. I stared at his chiseled face and he smiled nervously.
“I think I like you,” I told him on accident.2
He looked at me curious.
“I like you too…”
There was a moment of silence between us and the bartender filled it with clinking glasses. In the background, someone performed a country song to an empty audience.
“I just…” he continued, “I didn’t think you wanted anything serious.”
He was right.
“What makes you say that?” I asked. His feet were both facing me and my feet faced the bar.
“I don’t know. We only really hang out at night and that’s okay, I’m not bothered or anything,” he went on, “you just seem like the casual type.”
“PFFFFFT!!” I almost choked, and a slow hysterical laughter creeped out of me. Jack sat there confused and smiling as I cracked up into my hands. I washed myself down with a slammed fist and cheap beer. It was all so dark and hilarious. If I had another shot I think I could’ve cried.
END OF PART ONE. SUBSCRIBE AND STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO.
In Part Two, I explore what it means to be a “Summer” or a “Tom”; optimistic romance as shown through the personality of one of my closest friends; and, what being a romantic adds up to in the end.
I’m writing this like I haven’t gone back and had my heart broken a couple more times.
Please don’t be mean to me, I swear I’m not as big of an evil douche as I sound.
dope stuff. refreshing to see a gay son on a site for thought daughters.
this is very beautiful 🤍