Romance
By Tom Keating
With Valentine's Day in the air, I thought it might be fun to reprise a speech I gave in assembly years ago. In the years since, my feelings about romance have remained the same.
When I tell people outside Pingry I’m an English teacher, they often ask, what’s my favorite book? My answer is always the same: The Great Gatsby. Not because the novel is popular with my students or it’s some profound commentary on the American Dream. It’s because Jay Gatsby is the ultimate hopeless romantic, a man who risks everything for Daisy Buchanan, the woman of his dreams. For Gatsby, it is all about getting the girl, and when he loses her, he loses it all. My life is nowhere near that dramatic, but I, too, wear my heart on my sleeve, and when I fall in love, I fall hard, regardless of the prospects for success. We can be motivated by many things in life—career ambitions, the need to please others, or many other things. What has always driven me is romance, especially the haunted, Gatsbyesque variety, a longing that cannot be denied, a desire that cannot be fulfilled. And so I thought I might review some of my failed quests for romance over the years, my greatest hopes dashed by the harsh reality of unrequited love. Mind you, I’m not seeking your sympathy; rather, I hope my sad stories can provide a few laughs, and perhaps even illuminate a truth or two about this thing we call love.
There are many stories to choose from, but I have picked three, and I start with one that dates back to my early adolescence. I grew up in a nondescript suburban cul-de-sac—nondescript, that is, except for the presence of Debbie Goldberg, who lived up the block. To my fourteen-year-old imagination, she was everything one could desire, and more. Curly hair, inviting smile. What can I say? She was beautiful. Despite her residential proximity, however, I had made little progress inspiring in her the same feelings that raged in my soul. Then luck intervened, or perhaps it was divine intervention. One day, a terrible storm struck, and it tore through our neighborhood like a biblical plague. Fortuitously, it uprooted a giant tree in the Goldbergs’ front lawn. As soon as I saw it, I knew what to do. I got my dad’s chainsaw, put on my tightest muscle shirt to show off what little physique I had, and headed up the block. I knocked on the front door of my would-be paramour, and her father, Mr. Goldberg, answered. To him, I must have looked and sounded just a little ridiculous. I said I had seen the fallen tree in his yard, and I had come by to cut it up and stack it. Mr. Goldberg looked at me for a couple seconds, smiled, and said, “Sure, kid, knock yourself out.” And for the next two days, that’s exactly what I did, cutting that enormous tree into sections and hand splitting them with an ax and wedge. I worked right beneath Debbie’s bedroom window, hoping to play out Shakespeare’s famous balcony scene, my Romeo to her Juliet. Romeo? More like Paul Bunyan in that get-up. All the while, I waited for Debbie to come out and say hi, offer me some lemonade, and casually propose we run away together to a tropical island. Alas, it never happened. I’m not even sure Debbie noticed my presence, though she could hardly have failed to hear the chainsaw buzzing loudly in her yard. I worked to exhaustion, but got nothing for my toil save the bitter wisdom that wanting in life is not the same as having. My desire, in spite of its urgency, remained unfulfilled. It was devastating to me emotionally, but at least it was not a total loss: I performed about twenty hours of community service, and Mr. Goldberg got two grand worth of tree work for free.
A similar incident occurred a few years later in high school. As a junior, my romantic prospects were virtually nonexistent, and I hobbled through the year trying to keep my spirits up. Then in spring, everything changed. I came across a girl in school named Sue Stoddard, and it was as if I had been pole-axed. Dark hair, pouting lips. What can I say? She was beautiful. And while I barely knew her, I boldly devised a plan to change that status. The school year was ending, and Sue lived 4.2 miles across town. I knew the distance so precisely because on the first day of summer vacation, I mapped out a running route that would take me along her street and right past her house. My plan involved donning my tightest muscle shirt and running past her property once each day in the hope she would be out in the yard or walking her dog. Coincidentally, we would “happen” upon each other, instantly sparking the flames of true and eternal love. That was the plan, anyway. And I executed it faithfully, setting out each day to cover the eight-mile round trip, inspired that I would eventually meet the girl of my dreams and fulfill my destiny. I did this every afternoon from early June until Labor Day, and by the time I returned for my senior year, I had transformed myself from a junior slacker perpetually at the rear of cross-country races into a svelte, swift-footed senior seriously vying for the number one spot on the team. I had gotten fast, real fast. What I hadn’t gotten, however, was the chance to meet Sue Stoddard. When I returned to school and started asking around, I learned that she and her family had spent the entire summer at their second home on Nantucket. I had run ninety-some times past an empty house. That’s just shy of eight-hundred miles, making Gatsby’s futile attempts to win back Daisy seem downright sane by comparison. For a second time, my efforts at romance had been in vain, plunging me into the depths of despair. But again, not a total loss: at least my cross-country team won counties that year.
Lest you think these stories are merely the frivolity of my distant teenage years, the third comes from my early years at Pingry. Once again, I was single with, alas, few prospects for romance. It was early March, just before Spring Break. I was in a bike shop in Far Hills, standing in line with my merchandise, when I noticed a stunning young woman ahead of me buying a pair of bike shorts. Cute ponytail, long legs. What can I say? She was beautiful. My heart broke as she exited the store, and when I got to the cashier, I asked him who she was. “Oh, that’s Allison,” he said. “She’s quite something, no?” “She’s quite something, yes,” I replied. I said I would love the chance to meet her, and then the cashier told me she was in the store’s cycling club and a regular on their Wednesday afternoon group rides. I seized upon this information and resolved to show up the following Wednesday, again hoping to “casually” run into the woman of my dreams and take it from there. I went home and laid out all sorts of tight-fitting cycling clothes to maximize my chances of making a great impression. I tried on an outfit and gazed in the mirror. Not too shabby but, it being early March, I noticed that my arms and legs were strikingly white after a long and largely sunless winter. Not cool, so I drove to a drug store and bought a can of Ban Dis Ole instant tanning foam. I returned home to get a deep tan to match my killer outfit. In my enthusiasm and haste, I didn’t bother to read the instructions on the label. I really should have, though, because instead of applying the recommended dollop or two, I used the entire can, all twelve ounces. When I finished, I looked in the mirror and noticed two things. One, I was as bronze as the statue of John Pingry in the front of the school, and two, my hands, for all the rubbing of the foam, had turned a bright orange; they looked like they might even glow in the dark. I took a long shower and scrubbed as hard as I could, but to no avail: my condition was indelible. My only consolation was that, because of the vacation, I didn’t have to show up to Pingry looking ludicrous in front of eight-hundred students and colleagues. The funny thing was, however, that, despite my clownish appearance, I never once considered giving up my quest to get the girl. I was going on that ride no matter what. I spent the week thinking about possible solutions. But in the end, I just went as I was—a copper man in spandex—figuring I would come up with something on the spot. And of course, tragically, or perhaps fortunately, I didn’t have to: Allison wasn’t there, an absence that stung far worse than the strange looks I got from the other group members who had shown up. Again, my wild romantic imaginings had come to nothing. And this time, there was no fringe benefit: I simply rode all over Somerset Country looking like a complete idiot.
Three quick clarifications here. One, although these are stories of failed romance, I am not a total loser. Over the years, a few relationships have worked out in my favor. But today, I want to emphasize tales of unrequited love, precisely because, as I hope to make clear in a minute, it is the urgent longing for the relationships that don’t happen that ultimately makes finding true and lasting love all the more fulfilling. Two, what I am talking about here is the pursuit of romance, not stalking. Big difference. Romance is getting up the nerve to send someone a love poem, or flowers, or an invitation to play miniature golf. Stalking is lurking for someone in the parking lot after dark. One is beautiful; the other requires psychiatric intervention.
And three, my detractors will no doubt criticize this essay for over-emphasizing the physical side of romantic attraction in favor of more important, substantial qualities like personality, character, and intellect. They have a point—sort of. Of course, looks can only go so far; everyone knows that. But read Plato’s Symposium, one of the all-time great meditations on love. Although it contains no references to chainsaws, running shorts, or tanning foam, it does say that our first attraction to another person is physical, and that physical desire sparks the quest for higher love—ultimately, the eternal love of the soul. When you gaze across the room at a classmate, or at an Instagram photo, or at that intriguing stranger ahead of you in line at Starbucks, you experience the humble beginnings of attraction which, in the right person, can lead us, onward and upward, to love in its most ideal form. And when you act on romantic impulses, however incautiously, you begin a journey that can lead to spiritual union. So sayeth Plato. I spent thirty years of single life searching for romance, as many of us do, falling hard along the way, picking myself up, and starting over. Like Gatsby, many of my romantic efforts proved futile, but all that misguided romance ultimately deepened my understanding and capacity for love.
Twenty years ago, I met Jennifer Winell. Soulful eyes, graceful curves. What can I say? She was beautiful. This time, however, something deeper took hold, and we fell in love—a love that has led me to the fulfillment I had been seeking all along. Would this have happened without all my failed attempts along the way? Who knows? However, I do know my years of romantic longing made true love all the more special when I finally found it; my sad journey as a hopeless romantic ended, and another, the journey, began. So this essay concludes with a double dedication: to my wife Jennifer, who helped me find the kind of romance that ultimately makes all the searching and mishaps worthwhile. And to all the hopeless romantics out there, to all the silly situations you are going to fall into in the coming years, with or without the tanning foam, though I recommend without. May you have the faith in yourselves, and in romance, to find, as I finally have, the love of your life.
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Author photo by Anthony "Truncs" Truncale '26
To contact the author: Mr. Keating