Big Fan: A Modern Romance

by Alexandra Romanoff

From my seat at the bar, I can half-hear the murmured conversation of a nearby couple. The rumble of his laugh, and the way she sighs when he reaches for her hand.

Of course, then we ended up having bigger problems. Like his inability to keep his dick in his khakis in the presence of a pretty twenty-two-year-old.

I always feel such a strange double consciousness at parties like this one, which is supposed to be populated by bleeding-heart liberals . . . who somehow don’t mind that everyone attending the party is white, while everyone working it isn’t.

I know I sound competent and smart. But I spend the rest of the conversation with a bitter aftertaste in the back of my throat. My track record should speak for itself. My measured silence for months, paired with my sincere, carefully worded quotes in Vogue—they should have put a lid on this already. How is it not enough to convince anyone that I didn’t want this attention? But rage won’t help me get a job. So I swallow it as best I can and smile until my cheeks ache.

Because if another woman won’t take a chance on me, who will?

Someday, this part of my life will be a long time ago.

All these years of working in politics, but nothing has made me as cynical as the last fifteen months.

And now he does, which is funny, because up until fairly recently, I was pretty sure my life was over.

A swipe of lip gloss. OK. Time to go make my dreams come true, I guess.

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I had forgotten what it was like to feel this way—just totally undone by someone’s art, swept up in their emotions. Experiencing my own feelings as too big for my skin.

“Everyone tells us our opinions are important and our ideas are good. I feel like I already take up so much space in the world. And part of me still wonders . . . do I need to take up even more?”

Politics can be a nightmare and a drag, but it’s also addictive. The high of finding the right argument, deploying the right line. Crafting a strategy that can withstand attacks from all sides. It makes you feel powerful. But then, that’s the thing. That power. How easy it is to love. How hard it is to use responsibly.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, in my many, many long years,” Charlie says. “It’s that the world rarely ends when you think it will.”

“You really like weddings, huh?” “Sure,” he says. “That’s what I like.”

But walking toward Cooper, the world was blurry and faraway, and I thought, Shouldn’t I be able to see my future more clearly?

“And then you said you wanted to love me for the rest of your life. And you said it enough times that I realized that it didn’t matter if I understood why. You knew exactly who you were getting, and you always wanted more. You had chosen me. And I had to start choosing me too. So, Kate, I promise that I will try to love myself the way you love me. And I will try to be worthy of the gift of your love, and your confidence, and your light, and your warmth, every day of our lives.”

But then Charlie turns around and sees me, and smiles. And I know it was never really a choice.

It’s exactly the kind of spring morning that makes you think winter can’t possibly have been as bad as you remember.

I’m thirty-five, not twenty-two, I want to tell her. I am too old to be patronized like this and too young to have bought into Lean In. I don’t just have potential; I have success.

Every time I so much as think his name, I feel mildly insane, like I’m fifteen again and drunk on the sensation of a crush.

You’ve always been good company to me.

I do like the celebrity.” He pauses. “And I hate myself a little for that.”

But I saw it and it made me think of you—a reminder that the world doesn’t always end when you think it will.

I remember exactly what it was like to be that young, and to need someone to tell me who and what I was.

But why did total strangers get to weigh in? What right did they have to judge me? And when did I decide I cared what they thought?

I believe the word is audacious.