I was driving to school yesterday listening to what BBC coined their “Royal Wedding Disco” when the DJ pulled out Journey’s classic “Don’t Stop Believing.”
I almost ran my little Beetle right off the road.
How apropos. You see, I myself stopped believing in fairy tales when I was fourteen. My mom had recently married a man who would wake me each morn by yelling, “Wake up and piss, the world’s on fire,” through the railing of my bedroom loft. I would roll over and wonder what my mother saw in this vile man whom, with bitter irony, would get so plastered drinking Milwaukee’s Best that he’d forget where the bathroom was and piss next to the coal burning stove. That pretty much put the royal kibosh on any romantic idyllicism that I had up to that point.
Don’t get me wrong. I spent a good deal of time in my life wanting to be Snow White, Cinderella, “Baby” of Dirty Dancing fame, and Julia Roberts in pretty much Every. Movie. She’s. Ever. Made (well, except Sleeping with the Enemy.) I’ve certainly envisioned my knight, a.k.a Johnny Depp, swooping me up to take me to Outback Steakhouse for a Bloomin’ Onion many, many times. But I think the older I get, the more I realize that I need to return from La-La Land posthaste. It’s just not reality. And while I still enjoy me some Chick Flick action, I just feel, like so many women before me, that fairy tales in literature, television, and movies set up our little girls for epic failure in the relationship department. I just can’t watch any more.
The Most Realistic Portrayal of Love Ever Televised
That, my friends, is love. It may not look romantic on the surface but lying on the floor next to your partner, after you’ve both just shit your guts out, speaks oodles to what real relationships are all about. That’s why I haven’t watched a stitch of the royal wedding coverage. Personally I’m not over Princess Di, the royal divorce, and her heartbreaking death. Instead, I’ll just push play on The Freak Show, my second favorite episode of Sex and the City, wherein Carrie dates a bunch of freaks, including “the man who appears to have a lending library in his pants.” I’ve known someone similar – so much for fairy tales.
