Romance Is My Day Job

by Patience Bloom

  No, it’s time to find a real boyfriend, and having a date to the dance seems like the logical first step. Being shy and bookish is just not fun anymore. Do I want to spend another year watching all my friends go out and date? Nici and I are on the same page.

  At the beginning of the year, we went through the roster of new students, making notes on who’s hooked up with whom and their secret nicknames. Nici is in love with Promising Actor and with Senior Who Doesn’t Know She Exists. She’s written reams of poetry about them, drawn countless roses with her married initials scrawled inside. I noticed Kent immediately because he is so tall and has that “life is effortless” look about him, which I love. I’m not sure what color his eyes are since his floppy blond hair covers them. The instant he walks into a room, my stomach goes cold.

  My reaction and our connection is a lot like a Harlequin romance, I insist to Nici, and explain my findings: Kent seems casual, as if he doesn’t care about me, just like Devlin’s attitude toward Faun when she comes to work as his secretary. It’s almost a hostile relationship. With Kent, I almost feel as if he secretly loves me but pretends not to know who I am. How could he not know who I am? It’s a small school. The final piece of evidence is that I’m falling deeply in love, absolutely freaking out inside because he’s so beautiful. It must be fate that we wind up together. Nici agrees with me, and she’s the expert.

  “Maybe you should ask him to the formal,” Nici suggested just last month between drags of a cigarette. We were sitting in the “butt room,” our dorm’s smoking lounge, where we conduct our top-level discussions. It’s a tiny, dark room, like a filthy jail, littered with cigarette butts, the perfect place for us to deal with our new problem. My good friend Diane was also with us. She is an intellectually curious, blue-eyed blonde who is direct like Rizzo from Grease and dreams of a man-sandwich with Sting and Billy Idol. Her motto is usually, “Go for it!” Between these two, I knew I was in trouble with the whole Kent idea, because they would encourage me.

  The Sadie Hawkins winter formal was fast approaching and I intended to find myself a date—and not just a platonic guy friend, but a real date date. The problem was that I had to do the asking.

  “Okay, I’ll ask Kent.” I took a giant gulp of my Tab soda, then a drag.

  “No, really, I dare you.” Nici blew out a long stream of smoke.

  “Sure, I’ll do it.”

  “Do it!” Diane said loudly, urging me on.

  This is how a bad idea was born.

  Our main worry was the competition from the rash of new sophomore girls, known as “mid chicks.” Mid was the Taft term for sophomore, and adding chick must have been organic since, truly, they were babes, the fresh new faces to our old sack of potatoes. They sashayed into the dorm, squealing over concerts attended, vacations had, parties thrown. They overshadowed us with their miniskirts and long, tan legs. The mid chicks made it all seem easy, like they just woke up from a fabulous nap. The boys noticed them immediately. They were exciting and bombshell gorgeous. And, worst of all, mostly nice. We had to hate them on sight since they were stealing our chance to star in a romance novel come to life. These girls were in my universe for a reason, to make me fight harder for the cute boy. So I had a little competition. I could still snag the hero of my dreams.

  Faun always pulls courage out of thin air—if the stakes are high enough. She needs someone to drive her to visit her mentally unstable brother in jail (who then tries to kill her). Faun doesn’t really drive or operate any kind of machinery, unless it’s a typewriter. At first, she insists on walking the twelve miles to the penitentiary even though she might miss visiting hours (logic sometimes goes astray). Then she sees Devlin in his sleek Jaguar and asks him for a ride, her chin defiantly stuck out. She almost dares him to say no.

  I am so like Faun. I want this. It was my destiny to ask Kent to the dance, my bold attempt to be less of a wallflower. Kent and I will experience lasting happiness through thick and thin. Then we’ll get married.

  Isn’t that how the story goes?

  • • •

  I agonized for weeks over asking Kent, how to get to know him since we’d never spoken before. Not even hello. He had no obvious reputation, and I couldn’t investigate him without arousing suspicion. Our friends were leagues apart. Telling Nici and Diane about my crush was bad enough, and now I wanted to ask this stranger to a dance? That was eye-twitchingly insane. It would take serious work to bridge the gap between Kent and me, especially since I wanted to marry him in the future.

  Like any infatuated girl, I spent a lot of time watching him, though he appeared unaware of this. I did my usual timed hallway run-ins, post-dinner lagging in his general area, and showing up at the snack bar after study hall and lurking around his friends. Nothing quite worked, which didn’t stop me. The imagined romantic conflict between us filled many pages of my diary, my ultimate confidant. Kent took Spanish, I took Latin and French. He liked the Dead, I liked Duran Duran, Culture Club, and Wham! He lived in the boys’ dorm, I was in the girls’ (obviously). We were both quiet. Only a miracle would bring us together.

  But miracles happen in the perfect love story, and I devised a plan of attack. I didn’t have time for a gradual getting-to-know-you montage, so I dove in, ready for all outcomes.

  On weeknights, we had a lecture of some kind in the main auditorium, given by the headmaster, teacher, or some educational luminary. Wearing coats and ties, skirts and dresses, the entire school attended. It was twenty minutes of reflection or cultural enrichment, and many of us fidgeted, dozed off, or flirted with whoever sat next to us. One time, during the assembly, Nici made herself pass out by pressing on her jugular vein for too long, just to see what would happen.

  The appointed evening arrived, and during the night’s lecture, I squirmed in my seat and mustered my courage to do the deed. Between the lecture and dinner was my window of opportunity.

  At the end, I rushed out of the auditorium and waited for his section to let out. I was going to do this crazy thing, so unlike me, as if an alien had taken over my body. But this was how love stories began—with inspiration (Kent) and one person taking that leap of faith. Sweet Faun goes out in front of the school and belts out an amazing song. Or perhaps Devlin is in the hospital—poor guy fell down five flights of stairs trying to catch Faun’s kidnapper. He’s been unconscious for days. Only Faun can defy modern medicine by kissing him out of his coma. And then Devlin whips out a diamond ring.

  If I made a fool of myself, I’d be mortified, but not for long. I could hide in our dorm’s smoking lounge until my humiliation dissipated. My imaginary boyfriend “Jason” could emerge on this special occasion. If Kent rejected me, I’d tell a whopper—“Oh, I forgot, Jason might drive all the way from Cape Cod for the dance.” There was the option of chickening out, too, but once I decided to ask, I had to follow through.

  Here came Kent—Devlin—sauntering out the door with his signature shuffle, hair in his face. I couldn’t fathom how he saw two feet in front of him, but I was ready to lead him in life, shape his future.

  I pounced. Hard. “Hi. Can I ask you something?”

  He had a blank look on his face, no doubt because my identity was a complete mystery to him. Was this a joke?

  “Would you go to the dance with me?” I blurted out with students milling around me, no doubt oblivious because they would never expect me to do something so daring.

  He seemed to consider my request for a second or two. “Sure,” Devlin said, shrugging, maybe even amused.

  Oh God. Really? “Great.”

  This was so easy and the beginning of my better social life. Next stop, a romantic picnic in the north field with us holding hands and smiling at each other. I’d bring a basket of fried chicken, potato salad, and pie—typical romance-novel picnic fare. No idea where I’d get those items from, but who cares?

  Kent hesitated. “So, what’s your name?”


  The embarrassing question didn’t matter. It was one of those cute anecdotes you tell your grandchildren.

  Over the following week, I spent hours thinking of how to act, what would be the perfect dress, whether he would want to go out with me. I couldn’t sleep. Nici and I had many, many emergency strategizing sessions in the dorm’s smoking lounge.

  “What are you going to wear?”

  “I don’t know. A dress.”

  “Make sure it’s not too baggy.”

  “What if he says something to me?”

  “You just talk. It’s called conversation.”

  “But what do I say?”

  “I dunno, that you grew up in France?”

  That would impress him. But Kent and I rarely talked during those weeks leading up to the dance. We said hello at the snack bar yet had no other contact. Could you have great love just by staring? We needed to interact on another level, like talk or share interests. Though, in romance novels, you don’t need a lot of talk or shared interests. Well, okay, that wasn’t true, since Devlin displays astounding knowledge of, say, gargoyles on European cathedrals, usually in just one scene as he and Faun are walking down the Seine, thereby proving to her that he is an intellectual as well as the owner of a giant appendage in his pants (not that I want to see this firsthand). Maybe Devlin secretly has a PhD in archaeology as well as an MBA, but Faun doesn’t know this until some benevolent fairy godmother tells her the truth about him, that he’s full of depth—not just chiseled features. Really, Devlin is beyond mysterious. Which made me think Kent could be perfect for me, since I knew nothing about him.

  Deep down, I started to dread the dance and had the feeling it would be a failure. How could Kent become my boyfriend out of nowhere? I had overthought the whole thing. My future love with Kent could be all in my head.

  • • •

  Well, the moment has arrived. There’s no turning back now. I am on this date with Kent. As we go toward the school cafeteria I feel like Cinderella, with a few jitters and some doubts. Maybe, though, he’ll kiss me at the end of the night even if it seems wrong. Walking next to him, this giant blond boy, I can’t imagine us as a real couple. This is what happens when I try to turn the Joy of Staring into a viable relationship.

  We move into the cafeteria, where the dance is taking place, with its special lighting, streamers, and posters galore. Outside the cafeteria, a line of couples in their taffeta and tuxes wait to get their photographs taken. For some reason, Kent and I glide by the photographers, perhaps because the line is too long, the punch is too irresistible, or they’re playing “Rock Lobster.” As such, there will be no evidence that we ever went to the dance together.

  I’m sure Kent and I should talk about something, but we don’t. People sort of leave us alone, walking around us as if we’re a museum exhibit. On The Love Boat, conversation is effortless. Julie McCoy, your cruise director, would know how to seduce a sixteen-year-old boy, no problem. I’m disappointed we’re not this easy-breezy couple. The awkwardness is more than I can bear, and it’s due in part to our not knowing much about each other—plus my idea of flirtation is to show up. Dances are not about fun at all, mostly just freaking out over nothing and a depressing walk back to the dorm at the end of the night.

  So it’s a little obvious to me this is a wrong turn in my love story, but not fatal. Maybe we won’t be an ecstatic couple. At least I know this. He won’t kiss me under a full moon or father my child accidentally on the topmost soccer field. As the music gets going, with decked-out couples dancing away, there are no fireworks between me and Kent. This I can admit to myself, though it gives me an empty feeling—like, who do I have a crush on now? I do feel some relief, too, because I expended a lot of energy thinking about Kent. We are not made for each other, and I can always go back to obsessing about John Taylor, who is perfect (and the tabloids say he’s a virgin!).

  I start to rally and notice how the cafeteria has been transformed into the dance of our dreams with the cheesy decorations, the refreshments, and the sea of couples on the dance floor. There are other occasions when my peers dress up, but the gowns and tuxes take my breath away. My classmates clean up good. It’s preparation for their lives ahead, with professional functions, weddings, parties, and fund-raisers. These students are the hope of the future. Tonight, they look the part.

  Kent and I dance a little. Most eighties music brings out the beast in me on the dance floor. For instance, that laugh at the beginning of “Hungry Like the Wolf” jump-starts me to the point where I have to find Nici and then thrash in front of the nearest speaker. This time, I hold back on any wild moves since Kent is a mellow side-to-side dancer. As other people jump and twirl around us, Kent and I smile at each other now and then, not quite participating in the real festivities. I start to feel uncomfortable, like I should have left him alone so that he could have a better time with his own friends. I don’t hate him at all for being such a sedate date. He’s a really nice guy, just not my partner on my real-life Love Boat.

  Within the hour, I am alone.

  I know this happens a lot at dances. The year before, I ditched someone, ran to hide in a stairwell, and I know I hurt him. This is karma paying me back for spurning such a tender heart. Kent is not my Devlin. He’s an affable Deadhead with great hair—and he has vanished. I’m not sure how or when, maybe when he went off with a group of friends. I totally expected this and don’t even try to find him. How could I have ever mistaken him for Devlin?

  And yet I’m sad. Paranoid, too, that he devised some secret plan to escape my clutches. If that’s even true, I won’t let it get me down. Maybe I could just blend in and pretend everything is okay. No one will see my disappointment. What’s so special about this dance anyway?

  It’s like any other, with four different years of classes mingling and moving on the dance floor. As I scan the room, I see Nici is happily losing her sanity—and her heart—dancing with Prescott, a tall new sophomore boy with a drawl. A skilled seducer with a fleet of adoring girls, Prescott easily indulges Nici—another female—on most levels, laps up the attention, and pays her those crucial compliments (you look pretty; aw, you’re so nice; wow, you’re intense; I’m sure he likes you, he’d be stupid not to; screw him, you deserve better). Judging from her glow, he might become a serious addition to her stable of crushes—which means hours of deliberation and romantic scene planning in the butt room for us.

  Along with the movement of colors and shimmering fabric, I watch how some couples hold each other in public, while others dance in large unisex groups. Real romances start on this very dance floor. Then the couples move out to the patio off the cafeteria. They sit out on the stone wall and talk and kiss until curfew. Or they go out to the cemetery next door. . . .

  With every dance, there’s a new expectation that this one will change my life—someone will appear and declare himself, will want me, that little red-haired girl who sits in the bleachers. But not this dance. Certainly not with Kent.

  I do my best to dance in heels and appear sinewy in my tight blue dress, but I wind up on the sidelines, nursing that too-sweet punch. Maybe in an hour, I can make a quiet escape, count this night as a total failure. But at least I tried. I always try.

  Tears threaten, but I force them back.

  It’s almost a losing battle when, suddenly, the unthinkable happens.

  “You wanna dance?”

  I turn around and see Sam, the popular senior with a reputation for funny and crazy behavior. Dumbfounded, I stare up into his animated face, his big green eyes full of mischief. He once threw a boy’s whole bed out the window. He often pulls crazy stunts like running full speed at the wall to test the strength of a helmet. Without hesitation, Sam damages school property, lovingly torments his teachers, and sets up residence in the infirmary with his many injuries. Maybe he should have gotten kicked out, but he always just teeters on the edge. He is u
ntouchable, and no one hates him—except maybe his football coach, but only when Sam turned warm-up exercises into a Chippendales show.

  To me, Sam is that boy who basically runs the school. And now he’s looking at me with this smile on his face.

  I nod automatically. Who wouldn’t dance with him?

  His hand grabs mine and whisks me onto the floor, guiding us to some pop song, possibly “In a Big Country,” but the song doesn’t register in my head. I’m too stunned. How does Sam even know to pick me? He has no clue I exist and now here he is, grinning down at me, his hand on my waist. He doesn’t sense what I’m going through, does he? We’re just having fun, and my mood changes in an instant.

  Sam is one of those experimental dancers, as in he jumps high in the air like David Lee Roth, then comes down in a split. I laugh, just marveling at how insane he must be. He laughs with me. There’s warmth behind his eyes, and I wonder what he’s like when he’s serious. I feel as if he can see through me, but I go with it, taking in the fact that this is the boy who launched wet balls of toilet paper out the window at visitors. The scary imp you don’t want to double-cross because he will come back at you ten times harder.

  One wouldn’t call him a ladies’ man, though he is fiendishly cute. The class clown doesn’t usually attract a flock of females, not until later. At the same time, it’s hard not to go dreamy-eyed over his fearlessness, how he hurls himself at bigger men in football. Just recently, for good luck, our stern headmaster asked Sam to rub his bald head in order break their football team’s losing streak—in front of the entire school. This is the power of Sam.

  I’m thrilled he’s paying attention to me. Delirious but preparing myself for the bucket of blood falling from the ceiling like in the movie Carrie. The night has mostly been a disaster . . . except for now.