Like slow-spinning redemption

Reader, I married him.

Jane Eyre almost always comes to mind when I get to The Scene. I think because I'm reminded that Charlotte Bronte got away with that simple yet heartfelt declaration. They're a whammy, those four words.

But you can't do that nowadays. At least, not in the type of books I'm reading. You know, the kind I have to hide behind a copy of the Herald Tribune lest everyone around me gets the urge to throw some rocks my way.

Anyway, a statement of four evocative words simply can't carry you from a flurry of The Looks to The Great Understanding. There's The Non-Accidental Grazing, then The Flaring Eyes, then The Slow Burn and finally, The Mad, Hot and Heavy -- all of which comprise The Scene. Occasionally, there's The You're-A-Virgin spiel then The Precarious Hold on Self-Control but that’s about it.

Scoff at my horrendous tastelessness. I know it's not surprising to those who know me well. I am, after all, the girl who wails to Aerosmith's gasgas love anthem whenever I entered the FA Room last year. I listen to My Chemical Romance and think One Tree Hill is a blessed cornucopia of dramatic hotness. I wear yellow Daisy Duck shoes with a skull-and-bones ID holder, for shit's sake. My taste is not one of the things anybody would praise.

Tanggap ko na.

Wait. I've digressed. Damn it.

Ahem.

So I neared The Scene. Mousy Jane's voice floats into my head, along with an image of Rochester beside the fireplace. And I got philosophical. Then I put my book down and trotted off.

...

Martin asked me if I've ever read a book with Fabio on the cover.

"Of course," I replied, indignant.

And then the boy laughed.

I plunged into a dissertation of Fabio's nicer attributes, thinking it prudent not to mention his more obvious ones (read: man-boobs, and the long, flowing blond hair). But then I was faltering, gesturing more than speaking, and after a few more spurts, I finally fell quiet. And talked about a gate instead.

(For the record, book covers of the romance genre almost have nothing whatsoever to do with the story inside. It's not just the Filipino 35-peso “novels” with Justin freaking Timberlake and Jessica Biel on the cover. I'm talking about scantily-clad wenches with big blond pirates doing some acrobatic feats atop some jagged rocks beside a roaring, frothy sea. Most of them people, in fact, do it up against the wall. Or the escritoire. Or the nearest haystack -- you get the picture.)

There I was, being philosophical yet again, knee-deep in mindless small talk about the abundance of shiny tiles in airport terminals. Thinking. Going through the motions. Thinking. And then Mousy Jane pops into my head, along with page 86 of Jennifer Crusie's book, all reminding me why I was reading the farking book in the first place --

I don't need aliens or dwarves with bad feet or seventeen-year-old wizards with lisps to escape. The things I read in these "filthy" books offer an escape that is unparalleled by any other genre or distraction or literary credential-ed opus because it all seems reachable, The Looks and The Heavy Breathings, all of it.

Declarations in the rain, swathed in dampening silk, this guy with a leather jacket/tight breeches with a rough Scottish brogue kneeling at your feet -- these don't happen. Especially not together, in one lifetime. Or in three days. And not in so many overused adjectives like "sensuous" and "fiery" and "delicate".

But the books could almost make you believe they could.

Come on, children. Thaw those hearts a little.

Sigh. -- or in horribly written literature, "her mouth let out an audible sigh." Whatever. I just wish I had someone -- other than my roommate Mabs -- to talk to about the inevitable giggle-fest regarding "throbbing manhood" and "secret, molten honeypot" and "scalding hot seed" and "I looked into his eyes and knew that he was cheated on by his last three girlfriends, his father left the company to his evil twin brother, his mother was never there, he got a D in Calculus and he had a goldfish named Andy. I just knew." And yet another kind of giggle-fest about the lords and ladies, the FBI agents and the psychics, the CEOs and the schoolmarms, the rock stars and the writers, the 2,500-year-old vampire and the 18-year-old magician who's actually the daughter of the King and Queen of "their kind" and all the stupid misunderstandings that could have been avoided if the heroine wasn't Too Stupid To Live, or the hero wasn't some pa-Byronic hero who insisted holding on to his idiotic stoicism regarding the fluffy kind of love.

Sigh.

Just prickly. I am, after all, down to my last tangible "bad" book. Meron bang malapit na Booksale sa Paranaque, ladies and gentlemen?

I needs to gets me some life! (-_-)