If This Were a Romantic Comedy

Here’s how it happens. We meet in the soft evening light at a national landmark, preferably he Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower, but I guess the Chrysler Building or something could do in a hurry. Eyes blazing with desire (don’t ask me how eyes can blaze, they just do) you run toward me and confess your love. You have loved me since you first laid eyes on me—no, since before you laid eyes on me! Perhaps I appeared to you in a dream. I sob and embrace you—wait, even better—I slap you and begin to turn away, and then I sob and embrace you. The music swells dramatically and our silhouettes kiss passionately as the credits begin to roll.

If this were a romantic comedy, a climactic declaration of love would have surely been due to me by now. If this were a romantic comedy, I’d only have to endure an hour and a half of witty banter and will-they-won’t-they tension before my soulmate would chase me down at the airport and stop me before I boarded my one-way flight to Paris.

But this is not a romantic comedy, so I sit here writing in the library, miles away from the airport and fully aware the man most consistently present in my life for the past few months has been the protagonist of a Netflix-exclusive TV series. And he’s already taken.

I grew up watching “Sleepless in Seattle,” “Clueless,” “10 Things I Hate About You,” “Sixteen Candles”…I saw every variation of the adorably quirky heroine find, lose, and find love again. Love could happen at first sight in an artsy bookstore (“Notting Hill”), after years of a friendship wrought with sexual tension (“When Harry Met Sally”), even with your worst enemy (“You’ve Got Mail”).

No matter the circumstance, you could be sure of two things: 1) The audience would know you should be together within the first five minutes of the film, if not from the trailer, and 2) Your courtship would drag out until the final credits. Love wasn’t necessarily immediate (“Knocked Up”), it usually wasn’t convenient (“Shakespeare in Love”), but it was nearly always inevitable (every piece of film and literature since “Pride and Prejudice”).

So why hadn’t it happened to me?

The danger of watching too many romantic comedies is that you begin to see any and every member of the opposite sex who crosses your path as your potential soul mate. Even his smallest gestures are coded symbols of romantic ardor. He keeps the pen he borrows from you in class? He’s obviously treasuring the token of your love.

In high school, I was hopelessly in love with a close male friend. I modeled our romantic story on “When Harry Met Sally,” where, after twelve years of platonic and then not-platonic relations, Harry runs to find Sally on New Year’s Eve and, you guessed it, dramatically confesses his love for her right before the clock strikes midnight.

Of course, for five years, the male friend in question had demonstrated about as much romantic interest in me as any healthy red-blooded male normally demonstrates for a sea urchin. Yet I convinced myself that not only was he denying feelings for me, he was hiding his love for some noble purpose, possibly involving the fate of the free world.

What actually happened was not nearly classy enough to fit into a script by Nora Ephron. At a friend’s birthday in my senior year of high school, the first time I went to a “real party,” said male friend made a drunken proposition to me in the bedroom of the poor party host.

Granted, this was not exactly the dramatic confession of love I had so longed for, but it still fit into my theory about the guy’s denial of his own feelings. I convinced myself that the influence of alcohol and the seductive powers of my recent haircut had temporarily impaired his self-restraint, causing him to give into the fierce passions that he had bottled up for so long. Reader, I made out with him.

For months afterward, I still expected him to show up at my doorstep (I had reluctantly given up the hope that we would meet at a national landmark), apologize for his ungentlemanly conduct, and beg that I would love him anyway. Of course, he did no such thing—he just ignored me and went on to hook up with my other best friend. And I didn’t even get to slap him in a public location.

Undaunted, I had high hopes that I would find my romantic-comedy ending at Harvard. After all, this was the site of “Love Story” and “Legally Blonde.” After seeing “Pitch Perfect,” I became determined to fall for a guy in the rival a cappella group. I’m a sucker for forbidden love, but sadly also tone deaf.

Needless to say, I still have yet to be wooed at a national landmark (and come on, we basically go to school in one—it’s so easy!). I began to despair when by early November, the most romantic gesture I’d received was the waiter at Café Pamplona giving me the after 7 p.m. student discount at 6:50.

And when I did have kind of a romantic comedy-esque experience, I still wondered months later whether it only existed (exists?) in my head. Turns out that without a soundtrack and appropriate zoom-ins to show those blazing eyes, it’s kind of hard to tell.

But maybe what makes life better than a romantic comedy is that the dramatic confession of love hasn’t happened quite yet. After all, what exactly does the couple do after the credits roll? Do they just go on a date and ask each other where they’re from and how many siblings they have? It seems like the rest of the relationship would be a bit of a let down after that.

If this were a romantic comedy, the appropriate man would take this article as a cue to confess his feelings for me on the steps of Widener or the middle of the football field (“Never Been Kissed”). But this isn’t a romantic comedy, so he’ll probably never read this.

Or maybe he will, and just think I’m a little weird.