Lloyd Dobler Ruined Me For Life

I have always been a fan of The Grand Gesture. Someone being so in love that they can’t help but do something drastic to prove it. I don’t recall when I figured out what that was, but I’m sure it was after seeing the movie Say Anything. It was my older brother Andy’s favorite growing up, and I remember hearing him quote it, “I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen,” before I even understood what significance that sentence held.
My mother was, and still is a hopeless romantic. Before I started kindergarten, I would sit on the floor with my box of toys and watch soap operas with her. It is obvious where I got that quality from, just as I inherited her bad knees and big brown eyes. Perhaps I was doomed from childhood, or maybe it was more like a cancer that started out small and grew larger and larger as time passed.
Ever since I saw Lloyd Dobler hold that boombox over his head in Diane Court’s driveway, I was convinced that was love. Peter Gabriel’s song In Your Eyes evokes an emotional response every time, and I've always longed to hear someone play it just for me. If I was her, I would’ve gotten out of bed and ran downstairs to meet him. I still want her to every time, and just as he is disappointed, I am too.
Recently I’ve realized that my ideals of love and The Grand Gesture come from movies, which isn’t a novel idea, except for the fact that my favorite romantic scenes aren’t what you would call “conventional.” Maybe not everyone would want some guy in a trench coat out in their driveway in the middle of the night, and maybe not everyone likes Peter Gabriel.
I might cry every time I see it, but I actually wouldn’t want Jerry Maguire in my living room, telling me I complete him. I want to be Caroline from Untamed Heart, and dance with Adam in a dark diner to James Brown’s Try Me. I want Jason Dean from Heathers to tell me “Our love is God, let’s go get a slushee.” I would’ve killed to be Sarah in Labyrinth, and instead of rescuing the baby brother and going back to the real world, I would’ve stayed with Jareth The Goblin King, and been his Queen forever.
I’m not one for red roses, I’d much rather have wildflowers and I don’t melt when doors are opened for me, but I do love handwritten letters, or surprise picnics. If you take a train in the middle of the night and show up at my door, I will love you forever. But what makes me perhaps, even weirder, is the fact that I love executing The Grand Gesture, just as much as I love receiving one.
I have been the girl who throws pebbles at windows to get you to come down. I have made valentines out of blocks of wood and sent them across the country. I have spent hours making mix CDs containing secret song messages with cut and pasted album covers. I have flown three thousand miles on a whim. I have taken hands and slow danced in parking lots. I have tried to make life a little more movie-like.
And what’s troublesome to me is, where are all the girls in these movies? They are always the ones receiving The Grand Gesture. Sebastian shows up at the airport to stop Annette from leaving in Cruel Intentions, and Noah is the one who writes Ally 365 letters when they are separated at the end of the summer, in The Notebook. Edward saves Vivian from life as a hooker in Pretty Woman, and Johnny tells Francis’ dad off with that famous line, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner,” in Dirty Dancing. But where are the gutsy girls?
There are a few movies where I have seen some amazing Grand Gestures by women, and it gives me hope that I am not a totally dying breed. Claire makes Drew a road map, complete with coinciding mix CDs, only to show up in the middle of nowhere at a farmer’s market to kiss him, in Elizabethtown. Amelie creates an elaborate plan to make Nico fall in love with her, by sending him on a sort of scavenger hunt in Amelie, and Lee refuses to move from Mr. Gray’s desk chair until he admits he loves her, to the point where she pees herself in Secretary. Lindsay runs across an entire baseball field during a game to tell Ben that she loves him, and in turn gets arrested in Fever Pitch, and Sandy magically morphs into a rebel to prove her love to Danny in Grease. But honestly, those are the only instances that come to mind, and what’s even more disturbing is the fact that men seem to be afraid of women and their Grand Gestures.
There is an episode of Sex And The City, where Carrie shows up at Aidan’s apartment, and throws pebbles at his window to get him to come down, and she says, “When men attempt bold gestures, it’s generally considered romantic. When women do it, it’s often considered desperate or psycho.” And I want to scream and say, yes yes yes, why is this? I feel like I know deep down inside that men like feeling loved just as much as women do, but is it just a certain way that they feel it’s acceptable? I suppose it just depends on the person. Maybe some of those boys I bestowed Grand Gestures upon thought I was nuts, and perhaps that is why all of those relationships, (or maybe just some) are now defunct.
But the other problem is this; do people even own boomboxes anymore? Sometimes completing The Grand Gesture to evoke a smile on someone else’s face isn’t enough, and I long to hear In Your Eyes from outside my bedroom window some night. When this doesn’t happen, (and it never has), I feel disappointed. It just wouldn’t be the same if Lloyd Dobler stood outside Diane Court’s house with an Ipod equipped with Bose speakers, and if he had a CD player, I’m sure it would skip when he lifted it over his head. How is it possible to have faith in unconventional romance when letters have been replaced with text messages and slow dancing has been phased out by dance clubs?
I’m not saying that there have been no significant Grand Gestures in my life. I have been woken up in the morning by someone singing to me, I have been taken to watch planes take off when I was feeling restless, and I have had books made for me out of bindings and plastic and x-rays. I have had someone show up at my door when I least expected it, I have had a song written about me, and I once received an old typewriter as a gift for no reason. But it is never enough, I always want more, and I’m always imagining what could be.
The times I have plucked out, are the times my brain has latched onto, the ones that felt like movies, which are thrown up in front of my eyes and probably remembered as more romantic and significant than they really were. Our memories fail us, they make mountains out of molehills, and build upon each other to create a larger idea of what It’s Supposed To Be Like. But it’s not supposed to be like anything, because every love is different, and incomparable. Lloyd Dobler seems like the perfect man, but only because we see what Cameron Crowe wants us to see. He’d probably end up getting annoying after a while.