Romance as a Muse

A couple of summers ago, I met this guy.

He was Greek. We split a bottle of red wine on a balcony and I told him it was hot that he was reading Dostoevsky for fun.

He’d gone through my writing. Asked me if I would make him my muse.

Not quite, but here’s your shout out.

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My grandparents met on a double date. The kicker: they weren’t there together.

They both left their respective dates to dance in the middle of a countryside bridge with each other.

The story goes that the dates sat in the back of the car and let them do it.

It’s our family’s tale of romantic legend. 

Sucks for the dates, but we gloss over that one.

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Romance is such an art, the way it instills itself into mundane moments. It’s everywhere if you look for it. 

It’s in the dinner your friend cooks you. It’s the way the air smells after it’s rained. It’s the way watercolor settles into the page.

A common sentiment I hear now is that it’s much harder to engage with this as we search for something honest through the lens of a digital landscape.

Gabi Abrão wrote about this recently.

She’s my favorite poet. Met her in New York in 2023. We danced together.

“Part of dating now is knowing that everyone is afraid of being cancelled or called a creep or narcissist while in the dangerous magnificent throes of sex and romance and you have to treat everyone like a traumatized animal and repeat over and over that you will not kill them for telling the truth or not knowing what they want or changing their mind or having shadows that seep out

And you’re a sentient grown up who can handle conflict and drama and messiness and in fact what is life without it, and you will not accept sterile contrived pop-therapy-ass HR communication. Fear is not kindness, fakeness is not kindness, in fact it is insulting that they would even try that. 

It is blasphemous even, to cast such a dull performance in the face of gods who blessed us with sentience, who blessed us with nerve endings, who blessed us with magnetic mysteries of attraction, who blessed us with drama and chaos. And if you don’t show up at my door belligerent and cut wide open and in the next 24 hours to argue in the doorway, to negotiate over late night espresso, to make love in blindfold, to play-wrestle, to call me a name you’d later apologize for, to wilt, to confess, you live a lie, because the world is no waiting room.

All that cannot be explained or negotiated or understood beckons for your submission, your gaze, your acceptance, your knees, your unbreakable eye contact, your active participation to complete the quests you yourself have conjured with energy alone, 

Your secret is safe with me, your secret is safe with me, your secret is safe with me.”

When I first read Abrão’s writing, it made me uncomfortable.

I read how she spoke about romance in its rawest form- pheromonal, grungy.

And I remembered the way romance was presented to me in girlhood.

I would be a duckling and eventually a swan. I would find this polished, glittery love and it would bring me a sense of eternal contentment. 

I lived this out and expected my happiness to find me. 

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I’m guilty of filtering myself in the name of emotional maturity. 

This has been tested by multiple people- this dance of power dynamics.

And every time this happens, I’ve become two versions of Amanda Mona: distanced outer shell, and inner shattering.

In these moments of conflict, I thought that to be calm was a strength.

To hold my cards close to my chest, to stifle my feelings- the adult thing to do.

It reminds me of the time I accidentally cut my finger on a kitchen knife in my first Boston apartment. I was quiet, monotonal. Told my roommate, “I’m going to find the first aid kit. I need to see how deep this is.”

Multiple occasions in the past decade, hearing “Yeah, I slept with her.” 

Find the first aid kit, see how deep it is.

What is the “mature” way to respond?

Am I the traumatized animal?

I wish I could go back in time and tell Amanda then to yell, to cry, to be passionate. That romance wasn’t meant to be caged within mental guardrails. That truth and hurt demand to be expressed.

I wish I could tell her that we are children who all want to love and to be loved. We are meant to be gritty, to be inconsistent. 

That you must present in total authenticity if you aim to attract it in others.

That cynicism is a cop out. You have to stay open. You must stay open.

And without this openness, we wouldn’t read the poetry between the lines.

Romance while delivering UberEats.

On the streets of Paris.

Reading each other's writing at a local bar.

Splitting wine on a balcony.

Reenacting the dance on the bridge near school.

It’s astounding the way life opens up once you’ve embraced that perspective.

Romance becomes its own muse, channeled through lovers and friends and small moments in time.

And it’s vulnerable. But I don’t regret a single connection, regardless of outcome. Every relationship was a mirror.

I think we do it a disservice in simplifying it into a fairytale.

It is wild, it is spiritually intimate, and it is the most deeply human experience that we have.

Your secret is safe with me.