I lived abroad last fall. It feels weird writing that, because it feels like it’s still happening and also like it never happened at all. But I did it, and it felt like a time away from time, a space waiting for me in the requiem of my dreams. It felt removed from reality, a whirling romantic whimsy, typed up by some lonely writer. Buenos Aires, the city that captured me and twirled me around in its exhilarating slowness. And yet, my love affair with the city was intimately bound up in its temporality, the fleshiness of its deadline, the aching reality of the security lines at Ezeiza. And so I stared down that deadline while I kissed Buenos Aires full on the mouth, wishing I could climb into the bones of the city and its inhabitants. The surreality of my time there made it feel like anything was possible, like everything was touched by magic, like even the smallest of things–the fractured sidewalks and flowers (weeds?) in gutters and smudges of ash on a table–deserved to be made beautiful. And like an exquisite book that ends badly, I was shit at goodbyes, mostly because they made solid the shimmering edges of time and space. If I never said goodbye, I never had to leave, right?
(I think that’s why some authors never stop writing sequels. They get too attached to the worlds they’ve created, even when their words run dry and ragged. They refuse to say goodbye. Or maybe it’s just their editors’ doing and the endless machine of capitalism, and I’m romanticizing it all. Your call.)
I think that’s what historical romance is to me. A space of words and worlds that rips open time and space, if we are arrogant enough to believe that they are there in the first place. They shimmer with unreality, books brought about by both meticulous research and an unchecked obsession with the fantasy of our unknowable past. They live in the sliver of space between reality, if such a thing exists, and fiction, which is what makes them so enticing. They offer us up a whimsical world trapped behind glass, familiar and yet wholly out of reach.
Forgive me. I’ve fallen into abstractions. And I will fall again.
One of my all time favorite historical romances, Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas, highlights my feelings perfectly. It is not a story that is inherently unique, nor is it a book that is particularly well-written. It is a fairly classic reformed rake (or playboy, for my contemporary romance readers) story. But everything feels heightened. It feels like the saturation has been turned up too high. It feels like when you look into a light and see spots dance in your eyes even when you’ve squeezed them shut. It’s the kind of book that nestled itself into my collarbones.
Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent, from the book, describes it best:
“He felt invaded by something, some kind of ardent disquiet that felt like a sickness… something that made him go from one room to another and then forget what he had wanted. He had never been like this… distracted, impatient, agonized with yearning.”
“‘Half measures. My god. I love you so much that I’m drowning in it. I can’t defend against it. I don’t know who I am anymore.’”
And how can you not just adore something that lends itself over so wholly to emotion? And not just any emotion, but that full-throated, agonizing kind of wanting that takes you over, the kind of feeling that makes your eyes water. And all of it set within a time away from time, one that slips through your fingers while you read, quickly making you an addict of the past.
And so, we succumb.
Love in the Time of the Feminist Subjunctive 
Leave a comment