247: What Is This Thing?

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass.

Ira Glass

If you listen to the lyrics to this song, I have to say, it couldn't really be stated more simply. I had you. It was happy. You left. What was that about? More than any other pop song, it just kind of throws its hands in the air and says, what the hell? Not even at the person who left, but at the very idea of love.

Here's Keely Smith.

Ira Glass

Here's a story for you. Back during World War II, an infantryman named Joe Garland fell in love-- completely, breath-stoppingly in love-- with this college student named Helen Bryan. They wrote back and forth, and when the war ended, he was eager to get married. But her parents thought that she was too young. They wanted her to finish school. They did not see what all the hurry was. He wouldn't have it.

Ira Glass

Joe gets the family he wants, has two kids. Helen marries later, has four kids. Everybody's doing great.

30 years pass. And he's doing some research on the war years and needs to ask Helen some things. So they see each other. Sit down and talk for the first time, really since they broke up. They have lunch.

Ira Glass

They both conclude that it's something they can't ignore. They divorce their spouses, they surprise their kids, and they marry each other.

And now, over 20 years later, they still talk like a young couple in love. They moon over each other.

Ira Glass

But if you ask them, what is this thing? What is different about the love that they're feeling now compared with the love that they each felt in the decades they spent married to other people? It gets hard to describe.

Ira Glass

Our reporter Sean Cole went around and around with them on this. And although these are the most articulate people in the world-- she works with the UN, he's written 22 books-- they kept talking about very prosaic things, very sensible things. Like sharing. Until finally Sean asked, isn't there anything more primal at work also? And they both said, well, of course.

Ira Glass

Which, I suppose, just brings us back to our original question.

Ira Glass

Today on our program, people trying to answer this very straightforward question. Our show in three acts. Act One, Inside the Romance Industry. Act Two, The View From the Other Half. In that act, four people who've had to reconsider all their ideas about dating and love. Act Three, a real-life love story. That one from writer Sarah Vowell. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One. Because we live in an industrial democracy, there is a business to cater to pretty much every human need that we have. And that includes our need for romance. There are businesses in flowers and cards and diamonds and getaway spots. And there are romance novels, where an entire industry is answering the question "what is this thing called love?" for a living. Reporter Robin Epstein attended the annual convention of the Romance Writers of America at the New York Hilton. Four days, 2400 attendees.

Robin Epstein

Romance writers know what you think of them, and they don't give a rat's ass. One of the first conversations I had at the Romance Writers of America conference is with Jennifer Crusie and Patricia Gaffney, two of the most prominent and bestselling writers on the market today. And they wearily list the most annoying questions that are repeatedly asked by people like-- well, like people like me.

Robin Epstein

In my defense, I will say I was expecting to find an entirely different breed of humorless woman here-- humorless-delusionals. But instead, I immediately find myself encountering smart, funny women who are part of a business empire, one with rules and behaviors all its own.

Robin Epstein

This smartly-dressed woman, Liz Bemis, is a web designer from Ohio, and like almost all the other conference attendees, an aspiring novelist. She's stammering through one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the convention-- the editor pitch meeting. These early morning pitchfests in the basement of the New York Hilton are what draws most of the 2400 conference attendees. This is their chance to describe what they've written to book editors in hopes of becoming a published author.

At folding tables set up in conference rooms, editors from all the major publishing houses-- Avon, Kensington, Berkeley, and of course, Harlequin-- sit with their notebooks and bottles of water. The would-be authors parade in four at a time and are given 20 minutes to make their pitch before the next group enters.

Robin Epstein

It's easy I understand why Liz and her fellow aspirants are here. What's less obvious is why May Chen, the sleek, young, New York editor, has gotten up early on a Saturday morning to listen to her.

The answer-- money. Over half the paperback fiction sold in the United States last year was romance. Over half. It's a $1.52 billion a year industry. And how about this? Romance writer Nora Roberts routinely outsells and outproduces Stephen King, Tom Clancy, and John Grisham. If basketball coaches scout public courts for future stars, this year, the basement of the New York Hilton is the romance editors' [? Roscoe ?] Park.

Robin Epstein

This pitch perfectly incorporates all the elements of the typical romance novel, which is outlined by the Romance Writers of America on all its literature, and on its website, and by every representative I talked to. At the beginning of the book, there's a conflict keeping our lovers apart, and by the last page, there's a happy ending. This is what the RWA guidelines call "emotional justice." Good is rewarded. Evil is punished. Everyone gets what they deserve.

The problem, as every editor and writer knows, is that if there's always going to be a happy ending, why would you keep reading? The difference between a good romance novel and a bad one has to do with sheer writing skill-- how well the characters are developed, the author's voice, and the complexity of the obstacles standing between the lovers and their ultimate happiness.

Outside this room, women mill around nervously awaiting their turns. Some practice their pitches, reading from index cards. Some take out pictures of their children. The RWA stations volunteers down here to make sure things keep running on time, but it's no secret that the volunteers are also here to keep anxious writers from going over the edge.

This is volunteer Victoria Malvey. She's a tall, maternal-looking woman with a lot of blonde hair.

Robin Epstein

Victoria, it turns out, isn't just some volunteer. In fact, she doesn't need to be at this conference at all. She's already achieved what most of these 2400 writers are dreaming of.

A lot of the publishing pros here turn out to be surprisingly helpful, even the ones who claim at first that they're not.

Robin Epstein

Kate Duffy is the editorial director at Kensington Books. She's leading one of the 168 workshops being offered at the conference. Her workshop is called Query Letter Practicum, and it's packed to overflowing with more than 200 people. A stack of query letters she's recently received on her left, she starts reading them, and mocks each as she goes.

Robin Epstein

The cover letter goes on for several paragraphs. The bizarre plot turns continue. And Kate Duffy is not finished.

Robin Epstein

And then something remarkable happens.

Robin Epstein

This happens over and over again. A medieval historical with a nonsensical plot involving a dark duke with visions of the future and a glass-blowing heroine with a debt-ridden daddy? Send in the first three chapters. A letter full of grammatical errors telling of a paranormal romance between a demon earl and a spunky woman bent on thwarting his plan, described in several paragraphs of impenetrable plot? Send it! And then this contemporary suspense, involving an ace reporter who falls in with the Camden Thieves, a notorious gang of ne'er-do-wells.

Robin Epstein

Kate asks for the first three chapters of the manuscript. What the hell is going on here? The famous authors are nice. The editors are nice. Everyone is nice. And this is the publishing business.

I make my living as a writer. I've written for magazines. I've been on the staff of network sitcoms. And I think I speak for all professional writers when I say that this is the twilight zone. Writers are actually receiving courtesy and encouragement from industry professionals, and almost more shockingly, from one another.

Where's the back-biting? The not getting your phone calls returned? The people who send you form rejection letters and don't even take the time to sign them? Where's the humiliation? Why is everybody being so kind?

Well, it seems the answer to this question is twofold. Part of what's going on here has to do with the numbers. Publishing is a business that usually sees a lot of people fighting over a very small piece of pie. There can only be so many books published because, sadly, there are only so many readers, and only so much interest.

But in the romance genre, because demand is so huge, they've got a very, very big pie. A big mainstream publisher like Simon and Schuster or W.W. Norton will almost never publish an unsolicited manuscript from an unknown writer. Not so for Kate Duffy.

Robin Epstein

But demand is just one answer to the niceness puzzle. The second becomes obvious when I enter an awards luncheon being held in one of the Hilton ballrooms. As soon as I walk in, it's stark. I'm immersed in a sea of 2000 female heads. It's like the world's largest bachelorette party.

The fact that this industry has been structured and run almost entirely by women makes a difference. Support networks abound. Virtually every town in the country has a romance writers' group, where wannabes can come to get encouragement and gentle critical feedback. And those who have succeeded make it a point to make time for others coming up. They become fans of one another.

Even the one man I ran into bought into the biological explanation for all this goodness. Literary agent Steven Axelrod.

Robin Epstein

Over half the annoying questions reporters always ask romance writers were ones I had scribbled in my notebook before I arrived here. And I managed to invent one of my own. I thought it would be funny if I'd ask people at the conference if there was a difference between the romance in their lives and the romance in their books.

Appropriately, I got a blank stares. Like, honey, if you don't already know the answer to that ignorant question, I can't help you. Romance fans are aware that the romance in the book is made up, thank you very much. Romance fans read for fun, and they're just as capable of laughing at their own genre as you are.

Here, Julia Madden and Victoria Dahl, two aspiring romance writers, talking about one of the classics in the genre with me and producer Alex Blumberg.

Robin Epstein

Still, everyone I talked to at the conference-- every reader, writer, and editor-- said she believed in romance, and believed it happens in real life. And sometimes in real life, it even follows the rules of a romance novel. One of the most emotional moments at the conference occurred at a keynote address by author Teresa Madeiros at an awards luncheon celebrating librarians.

Robin Epstein

There you have it. A couple in love, an obstacle to their love, and in the end, emotional justice. Who can resist that? Why would you want to?

Ira Glass

Robin Epstein in New York.

Coming up. If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, what do you have to learn about love when you switch from one planet to the other? Well, it turns out, a lot more than you think. In a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week, of course, we choose some theme, some subject, some question, and bring you a variety of different kinds of stories. Today's program-- with Valentine's Day fast approaching-- What Is This Thing? Stories about love and people making sense of love.

We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two. The View From the Other Half.

Sure, it's a grand generalization, but I think that it's safe to say that men approach love and relationships differently than women do. Most of them. And in the last few decades, thanks to medical science, tens of thousands of people have switched from one side of the divide to the other. When they did, among other things, they had to relearn how to find love and how to be in love from the other side of the gender line.

Griffin Hansbury offers this report from the front lines. A warning to listeners that they do talk about sex in this story. Here's Griffin.

Griffin Hansbury

Every so often, I get together with the guys. We grab some dinner, have a few drinks, maybe go bowling. It's typical guy time. We talk about the usual stuff. Work, women, the shape of our nipples.

I guess in some ways we're not so typical. All of us were born female and were raised as girls. Today, with the help of testosterone, we all live as men. We're trans guys. Sometimes it seems that's all we have in common. If we weren't trans guys, I doubt we'd even know each other.

Romance, on the other side of the great gender divide, has meant different things for each of us. One guy lives with his wife in the 'burbs. One plays the field. Another is still trying to find the field. And a couple of us-- myself included-- are in long-term relationships, hoping they'll last a lifetime. But all of us are still finding our way.

After transition, it became harder for me and my friend Ray to find women to date. It wasn't always like that. Back in college, we were both known as BDOCs-- Big Dykes On Campus. Here's Ray.

Griffin Hansbury

Looking at Ray, you can't see a trace of the female he once was. He's got a T-shirt that says "Italian Stallion," a goatee on his handsome face, and impressive biceps that he's built up with weight lifting and testosterone. Testosterone puts hair on your chest, lowers your voice, and basically turns you into a teenage boy. Giddy and girl crazy, staring in the mirror every five minutes to see if those sideburns are coming in yet.

Ray looked forward to being a single guy for the first time in his life-- until it actually happened.

Griffin Hansbury

When you hang out with a bunch of transsexuals and you talk about dating, eventually you get to The Crying Game. When we talk about The Crying Game, what we're really talking about is that intimate scene where the trans woman opens her robe to reveal the truth and the guy responds by puking in the bathroom.

For most people, it's a surprise ending, nothing more. But for me, and for many trans people, it's the ending we fear the most-- even for our happiest and most fantastic stories.

Griffin Hansbury

It's so hard to break the news to a woman about your past, that Ray and I have almost never risked it.

True story, though. I was on a blind date with this woman. We had lunch. We'd been talking for hours. And I was just getting ready to come out with my big revelation. And she says to me, there's something I have to tell you. She looks kind of nervous and she says, up until now, I used to date women. Does that bother you?

I said, no. It doesn't bother me. Because up until now, I used to be a woman. We never had a second date.

My friend Ethan doesn't have these problems. Unlike the rest of us, he's had absolutely no fear of The Crying Game. When I ask him how he can be so confident, he just shrugs his shoulders. It never occurs to him to be afraid.

An easy-going and good-looking, dance club DJ with mutton-chop sideburns and armloads of tattoos, Ethan's a babe magnet. In his glove compartment, he keeps a spare toothbrush and a clean pair of boxer shorts. That's confidence. Ethan can pick up a woman in a bar, tell her about his past, and go home with her the same night-- no big deal. Here's an example of the kind of story he tells.

Griffin Hansbury

But even Ethan encounters dating difficulties. He's always dated women casually, but it's different now that he's a guy. When he doesn't call someone for a week, or when he's busy with someone else on a Saturday night, he now gets angry emails from unhappy women. The old rules he used to play by have changed.

Griffin Hansbury

We've all had to adjust to these strange new codes of behavior. Before I looked like a man, I could talk to women about how I liked going to strip clubs, and that made me cool and edgy. Now it just makes me a jerk.

My friend Nate is a different story than the rest of us. Most of the guys in the group always wanted to be men and were attracted to women. Nate wanted to be a man, but he was attracted to other men.

Griffin Hansbury

It is a little hard to understand, I know. But today Nate is a cute gay man with close-cropped hair, stylish glasses, and a trim, compact build, looking for another cute gay man to date.

In his search for love, Nate had a harder time than the rest of us figuring out his target audience. Like everyone else, he couldn't understand how a female-bodied person could be a gay man, and he went through a long process of elimination. He knew he wasn't a straight girl. He felt like a boy. Maybe he was a lesbian.

Griffin Hansbury

After the lesbian experiment failed, Nate finally realized what he had to do. He got chest surgery and started taking testosterone. Nate liked to joke that he's the only person he knows it's been L, G, B, and T-- the common shorthand for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. And for every letter, there's been a coming out to his parents. Think about that for a second.

But so far, all his hard work hasn't helped his love life much. Meeting men isn't too difficult for Nate. He's got a couple ads online, and gets regular responses. He goes out on a lot of first dates, but there aren't a lot of seconds.

I haven't had anyone, you know, throw up like in The Crying Game. So I guess that's a good thing. But the best one was, I met this guy through a friend of a friend, and we met up, and walked around the city. And we ended up at Hudson River Park and we watched the fireworks at the end of the Gay Pride Parade. There's some beautiful fireworks at the end of the parade. And I don't know. I guess you could say it was romantic.

We had a subsequent date, and at the very end of the date, I said, you know, there's something that's kind of hard to tell you, but I feel like it's time to let you know. And he said, what, you're transsexual? And he was joking. He was trying to come up with the weirdest thing that he could think of, just to make me feel better.

And I wish I could just go out there and date whoever I wanted, and they didn't have to be this incredibly open-minded person, you know? My therapist the other day said, he actually said, we'd be both [BLEEP] ourselves if we didn't say that it's going to be incredibly difficult for you to find a life partner. And I'm thinking, God, I'm paying you for this?

Still, Nate keeps trying. He's cute and funny, and he's playing the game, which is more than he ever did before transition, when he couldn't even get off the bench. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before Nate finds someone to curl up with on the couch to watch Will and Grace.

So you spend all this time waiting for love to come along, worrying that it never will, and wondering what you'll do with it now that you've got this new body. What happens then when love finally shows up?

Ray, the Italian Stallion from earlier in my story, has been with his girlfriend Amy for nearly a year. She knew he was trans right from the start, because Ray's roommate introduced them. Ray fell for Amy the moment he first saw her, and she fell for him. But Amy had never dated a trans man and Ray had never dated a straight woman, so nobody made a move. Six months passed with no contact at all.

Finally, it was Amy who got things going. She dropped Ray an email and their courtship began at a glacial pace, including a long series of platonic lunches and dinners.

Griffin Hansbury

Finally, one night after a movie, Ray walked Amy home, and they lost themselves in conversation for 70 long blocks.

Griffin Hansbury

Romance is about overcoming obstacles. And in a way, Ray and Amy's story is the perfect plot for a romance novel. Girl meets boy. Girl grapples with the fact that boy used to be a girl. Girl falls in love with boy. I'm surprised Harlequin hasn't jumped on this one yet.

I like to think that trans men give you the best of both worlds. I hear so many women say things like, I wish my gay best friend were straight for like a day. Well, that's us. We're your gay best friend, and we want to date you. We want to go shopping and take dance lessons with you. It's not a bad deal when you think about it.

But of course, even with all the good stuff, no trans man is perfect. There is one big thing missing. Or maybe it's not so big.

Griffin Hansbury

If you passed them on the street, you wouldn't know that Ray and Amy were anything more than ordinary. The only way you would know is if they told you.

Coming out is something Amy never had to do until she fell in love with Ray. Now all of a sudden she's co-starring in The Crying Game, and people look at her differently too.

Griffin Hansbury

Transition itself is in some ways the most romantic undertaking of all. It's an idealistic adventure, extravagant and kind of unreal. You commit yourself to a feeling early on, a dream you've had all your life, and then you do it, believing all the while that the impossible can be made possible, that the great divide can be crossed. It's a total leap of faith, like falling in love. You don't know what will happen when you get to the other side, but you go there anyway.

Ira Glass

Griffin Hansbury.

Ira Glass

Act Three. A Love Story.

Well, we wanted to end our show today with a love story. A little real-life fable with an answer to the question, what is this thing called love? Sarah Vowell believes that she has just the one.

Sarah Vowell

The marriage of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash is the greatest love story of the 20th century. The first time Johnny saw June, he was on his high school senior class trip to Nashville, and she was on stage at the Grand Ole Opry, singing with her famous relatives, the Carter family, and cracking jokes with Ernest Tubb.

Years later, in 1961, the Opry was where they would meet. They were backstage, and Johnny went up to June and told her, "You and I are going to get married someday." She laughed and told him that she couldn't wait. I'm guessing that when Cash went home that night, he didn't mention this to Vivian, his wife.

Not long after that, June joined Johnny's road show and they were traveling around the country together on tour. His wife mostly stayed home, and so did her husband. But June Carter was a lady-- a solid, accomplished, well-meaning Christian professional. And no solid, well-meaning Christian pro willingly falls in love with another woman's husband, especially if he's a pill-popping speed freak like Johnny Cash was back then.

Years later, June would describe falling in love with Johnny this way. "I felt like I had fallen into a pit of fire and I was literally burning alive." So June, who had been a professional musician since she was as tall as a ukulele, called her songwriting partner, Merle Kilgore, and they wrote about June's forbidden feelings for Cash.

It was a song straight out of Dante. They gave it to June's not particularly Dante-esque sister Anita, who recorded it as "Love's Ring of Fire."

Sarah Vowell

Johnny Cash heard Anita Carter's record, and then one night, he had a dream. He dreamed of mariachi horns playing this song. Some say it was the influence of the then-popular Tijuana Brass. Others say it was the barbiturates he took before bed to take the edge off the amphetamines. Either way, Johnny cash went into the studio with a couple of trumpet players and made his dream come true.

Sarah Vowell

The peculiarity of the song's orchestration is topped only by the weirdness of its credits. Here was a married man singing a song written about him by the betrothed woman who was in love with him, and singing the record back-up "oohs" were said woman, June Carter, as well as her sister and her mother. Mother Maybelle Carter, the most respectable elder in the history of country music, if not America itself. Listen to how cheerful they sound.

Sarah Vowell

In this song, to compare love to fire, isn't just the pop music sexy heat cliche like "you give me fever" or "hunka, hunka burning love" or "it's getting hot in here." This is fire as in brimstone, old-time religion, written by the daughter of a people who believed in the eternal flames of hell.

June Carter was coveting her neighbor's spouse, which meant she was breaking one of the Ten Commandments. Loving Johnny Cash was a sin, and for her, the wages of sin were death-- a death in which the sinner spent all eternity as nothing more than kindling.

When June Carter admitted to herself that she loved Johnny Cash, it is, in a small Country and Western love song way, not unlike the moment Huck Finn resolves to help the slave Jim escape, even though he's been told that doing so would be wrong. "All right then," he says. "I'll go to hell."

This is from June's recording of "Ring of Fire." Notice, no trumpets. Just an old-timey fiddle, and she strums her autoharp, maybe ribbing her husband a little by pointing out in the liner notes, "That's the way I've heard it from the beginning."

Sarah Vowell

There's an acre of misgiving in that little word, "oh." As in, oh, what have I done. Oh, his poor wife. Oh, Lord, forgive me. Oh, for crying out loud, I better flush his pills down the toilet yet again. Oh, I am Grand Ole Opry royalty, and this belligerent drug addict is about to get banned from my beloved Opry for smashing out the stage lights with a mike stand, and oh, I'm going to love him anyway.

"Ring of Fire" became a number one hit for Johnny Cash in 1963. Then, finally, he got divorced, and June got divorced, and he got sober, and in 1968 they got married.

When I say that Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash's romance was the greatest love story of the 20th century, I'm not just thinking about their fiery courtship, though your better love stories do require that obstacles are overcome, and the Cashs had plenty of those. I was really thinking about their marriage-- 35 years of actual happily ever after.

The pictures of the two of them together through the years are almost suspiciously entertaining to look at. Johnny's cracking June up, or she's cracking him up, or in my favorite, the photo on his compilation album, Love, she's fallen asleep against his shoulder. His chin is resting on her head, and he might be smelling her hair. In his liner notes next to that picture, Johnny Cash says that he's sitting there thinking about Robert Browning's poem about the death of his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning, when June Carter Cash walks in and wonders what he'd like to eat for lunch.

And that seems about right-- the two of them in a room together, pondering sandwiches and poetry. Grandly, he often credited her with saving his life. But he also bragged, she likes the same kind of movies I do.

On June's solo album, Press On, after her "Ring of Fire," the very next song is a duet with Johnny. It's a gospel ballad narrated by an old married couple worried that one will die before the other. Worried about getting left behind. "If it proves to be as well that I am first to cross," June sings, "and somehow I have a feeling it will be."

Sarah Vowell

As she predicted in the song, June died first. Four months later, Johnny was buried next to her, because, as he once said, "This thing between us has been happening since 1961, and I just don't want to travel if she can't come with me."

Ira Glass

Sarah Vowell has got a brand new book, Assassination Vacation, that comes out in April.

Ira Glass

This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. Our program was produced today by Alex Blumberg and myself with Diane Cook, Wendy Dorr, and Starlee Kine. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Elizabeth Meister runs our website. Production help from Todd Bachmann and Stacy Tiderington.

[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS]

[FUNDING CREDITS]

WBEZ management oversight for our program by Mr. Torey Malatia, who is officially our boss, but really, at this point, after all these years, he's more like a co-worker, and he's my friend. And his dad just died this week, and all of our hearts go out to him, and his mom, and his family. We'll resume making fun of him in a week or two.

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

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