The Triangle of Love

Haha, what a cheesy title for a blog! But cheesiness is this phrase’s most minor offence. It’s also been used, I have learned from hovering over Kindle/Nook readers on the train, as the most private of places for a woman.

An avid reader, I have long been fascinated with the advent of the e-book and, before recently getting one myself, was drawn to people on the train using them. And just like when the person next to you is spreading their newspaper onto your lap on the train, one can’t help but eye-wig on a neighbor’s reading—especially if one has forgotten their own, obviously superior, reading material. e-books are no different, and perhaps attract even more personal space invasion. Curiosity is not only for the device itself, but for what the person has bought and downloaded onto their crystal clear, easy to read (even from a distance) screen. (As a side note, a woman recently snapped her newspaper shut in disgust at my invading eyes on the subway. I was so hurt!)

So for the last few weeks, I’ve been hovering over any e-book in my immediate vicinity, and have observed a most fascinating result: of the ten or so people I have space invaded, at least eight have been reading romance novels (aka: soft porn!). The first time I glanced across the words “triangle of love” (followed by penetration, repeatedly, by a [insert: manhood, love sword, pulsating member]) resulting in WAVES and WAVES of ecstasy (apparently in romance novels, the multiple orgasm is not a myth), I blushed to the gills. WTF? This is what my grandmother enjoyed reading all of these years? No wonder you couldn’t pry Daniel Steele out of her hands! Mildly disturbed and slightly intrigued, I quickly glanced away, lest I be caught reading the racy text by the reader who is clearly in a ‘private moment’. But this was not a one-off event, and in the days that followed, I kept seeing more and more people reading romance, and more and more triangles of love being infiltrated! Weird but true. NYC commuters LOVE their trashy lovefest novels!

But why would anyone want to read romance novels? They’re terribly written, cliché ridden (he was as hard as a rock), hopelessly chauvinistic (the feisty young woman always being tamed by the rugged, demanding man)—or so I’ve been told. I guess I wrongly assumed that for someone to shell out the near $300 bucks for an e-book (or more if you are so savvy and hip as to get the iPad), they must be readers of a certain level of taste and quality. Well, my conclusion is that it’s an escape like anything else—like bad TV. How can I scoff at pervy prose when I watched Rock of Love season 1, 2 and 3 for shitsake.

Now that I have my own Nook, and am the victim of other space invaders hovering to get an eyeful, I feel even more obligated to only read good literature or classics. Nobody is going to get their cheap five minute commute fix off my Nook! And FYI: yes, it does annoy me when people hover over my shoulder (ever the hypocrite), but since getting the newspaper slammed shut in my face last week, I’ve been ensuring that I share, and always position my book just so, so that my neighbor can enjoy a little Wharton on their way to work.