Romance
The most romantic gesture I ever witnessed was a girl picking lint off her lover’s shoulder. A movement of two seconds that lingers, fifteen years later. Of course there was more to it than that. He was the object of my university crush, the boy I skipped lectures for to steal glances at his forearms pushing the buttons of his favourite spacie. She, was his girlfriend.
What that gesture held was a simplicity of intimacy between the two, amidst the teaming chaos of a university quad, where lustful looks darted everywhere. It was the context of the situation that made it romantic. When I relayed the gravity of this scene to my friends, this context disappeared and their eyes glazed over. It wasn’t their story like it was mine, as the unrequited third party. And romance is all about the specificity of the people involved.
This is why red roses and chocolate have become caricatures of the romantic - they could be bought and given by and to anyone. But romance is like a private joke between the two people sharing it, no one else should be able to get it. And a red rose in the right context, could be devastating.
One of the most romantic presents I have ever received is from my five year old niece. It is a ritual that every time she visits my room, me at my desk facing the sea, she will ask to see the shells and coral lining my window sill. Succumbing to her distraction, I tell her stories of origin for each, stories she asks me to tell again on her next visit. It was after her recent kiwi summer spent up north, that she gave me a cat’s eye and pebble, bought with her holiday pocket money from the local store, to add to my collection.
Romance is not always between lovers. Nor is it confined to gestures. It can be a lens through which you notice life, through the smallest of things - the way a spoon is held, the way a certain light diffuses through a window. I feel my most romantic when I am in tune with my surroundings, as if they’ve been turned up to high definition for me to notice - sleeping with my curtains open so I can dream in moonlight and wake with the sun burning my toes, dancing to a song embedded with memories, or reading a passage of prose that resonates.
But of course romanticism is at its best when you’re completely in tune with someone you’re in love with’s physicality - the rhythm of a kiss, the curves and lines of your bodies meeting or the dusting of a shoulder. There is a mystery to all of these connections, how and why do they make us feel as we do? What is romantic for one could be a bore for another. Romance is hard to explain, and maybe you shouldn’t have to. Romance should just be felt.