Romance: Books
I'm not very traditionally romantic. I don't like beating around the bush, which I think lots of traditional romance is. Get to it, I say! But here is one example of how even nontraditional things can still be romantic.
Something I did with this guy I knew in college that I've never done with anyone else: we'd pick one book and read it together. The same book. One person would read as far as they wanted, write comments on paper and leave them in the book, mark the beginning and ending spot, then give it to the other person. We went back and forth, reading and writing comments, passing the book off to each other at parties, in cars, on doorsteps, at the library, wherever we happened to be. It's possible I worried whether I was thin enough or sexy enough or any of those things, but I don't remember that at all. What I remember is sharing ideas and jokes and enjoying each others' company. (And one slightly disastrous fishing expedition.) There were dates and flirting but I never called him my boyfriend and I never slept with him. It was...non-traditionally romantic and sweet. (The picture above is the only photo I have of us together.)
The books were both non-fiction, which I prefer, and fiction, for him. The only titles I remember are The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and something by Carl Sagan. When we were 26, he gave me this old, old edition of The Great Gatsby, because he remembered Fitzgerald was one of the few fiction authors I like. (Joyce is another.)
Reading books together is romantic. I stand by that.
Something I did with this guy I knew in college that I've never done with anyone else: we'd pick one book and read it together. The same book. One person would read as far as they wanted, write comments on paper and leave them in the book, mark the beginning and ending spot, then give it to the other person. We went back and forth, reading and writing comments, passing the book off to each other at parties, in cars, on doorsteps, at the library, wherever we happened to be. It's possible I worried whether I was thin enough or sexy enough or any of those things, but I don't remember that at all. What I remember is sharing ideas and jokes and enjoying each others' company. (And one slightly disastrous fishing expedition.) There were dates and flirting but I never called him my boyfriend and I never slept with him. It was...non-traditionally romantic and sweet. (The picture above is the only photo I have of us together.)
The books were both non-fiction, which I prefer, and fiction, for him. The only titles I remember are The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and something by Carl Sagan. When we were 26, he gave me this old, old edition of The Great Gatsby, because he remembered Fitzgerald was one of the few fiction authors I like. (Joyce is another.)
Reading books together is romantic. I stand by that.
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