romantic comedy? oh.

When Harry Met Sally is Emily's and my favorite movie from our roommate days. Harry Connick Jr, clever dialogue, and the small, yet exhilarating, hope that someday our best guy friends will be...the one.

It was on AMC tonight and I watched it.

Besides making me incredibly anxious to see Jerry, in New York, during the winter with the pretty snow and the holiday cheer, it also made me rather heartsick.

Here's a question I ask myself: armed heavily as I am with feminist rhetoric and theory, am I allowed to moon over such touching saccharine romance?

The answer is, of course a feminist can have romance.

But oh, to have someone sprint city blocks for me in New York, on New Years Eve, to tell me he/she loves me, has always loved me, especially when I do that thing with my eyebrows.

Then there was a new emotion, utterly confusing and gut-wrenching for the very strangeness of it to my collective emotional psyche.

I actually wanted to get married.

My vendetta against marriage is not really against marriage- I would consider the actual union as a possibility- but rather I have (or had) no desire for the actual ceremony, the pomp, the circumstance, the delightfully 80s puffy sleeved bridesmaid dresses in tones of mauve and forest green.

Tonight there was a little twinge in the back of my mind that tried valiantly to build me up into a fervor (my sensibility being much more authoritative, it was silenced and rebuked heartily). Something about getting to dress up and be the most beautiful woman of the day (unless of course I marry a woman, in which case, it's a photo finish), to glow and have flowers and fuss over which uncle has gotten drunk enough to serenade me with Men At Work songs.

Just so you know, I've checked my temperature and I'm not running a fever. It's likely the late hour and the aftereffects of the combination of controlled substances I used yesterday are working together to create an irrational and completely silly Meg Ryan sympathizer. This feeling will likely pass after I sleep on it, which I will point out, embarrassed, tomorrow.

For now, I have promised myself a luxury: I will indulge the fantasy this evening as I settle into bed, knowing that my imagination will not be satisfied with touching romantic comedy and will in the end introduce a rampaging rhinoceros, or perhaps a scorned transsexual lover, that will tear down the whole facade and leave me helpless and depressed. My imagination likes me that way, because misery creates the greatest art.

It's an odd thing, this romance. Sneaks up on you while you're brewing green tea and taps you on the shoulder quite in the same way your young cousin might when she's put gummy bears in your underwear. Suddenly I'm looking around at the people I know and thinking, "if the lighting were just dim enough and I was idly swirling a glass of red wine, well..." Disconcerting and foolish, all at once.

Upon reflection, gummy bears in my underwear sounds quite enticing, and I think I will dream about that instead.