Our September Great Read, Love beings With An A is a warm, funny and sassy story about what a woman will do for love. In this remarkably assured debut novel by Melbourne writer, Jeana Vithoulkas, twenty-something lawyer, Fiore, is looking for a man. But not just any man. He must be a good dancer, politically aware, articulate with a serious heart to boot. Fiore can’t find him, so she goes to Greece instead.
Nick was with my sisters and me one cold winter night when we went to see 1900 for the first time. It was freezing in the cinema and we sat huddled together with our coats over us to keep warm. In among the sea of emotions we experienced watching the film, Elendina fell in love with a hat worn by Dominique Sanda. Elendina makes clothes and hats and bags, and would probably make shoes if she had the equipment. She takes her inspiration from movies, and that night, between weeping for the old women being killed by the fascists in the rain and cheering when Donald Sutherland was mauled by the peasants, she lusted after that hat. She sketched it roughly in the interval and made it for me afterwards. She made me others as well, including one inspired by Howards End. The Mary Poppins one, as Nick called it.
I told him I was grateful for his advice but wasn’t sure how interested I was in Bruce. ‘He looks bored in my company and I don’t really know why he’s asked me out,’ I said.
Nick looked at me as if I were mad. ‘Well, give the guy a chance. He might be nervous.’ Nick had complained before that my standards in men were too high, but then he’d tell me not to settle for second best. ‘It might surprise you, Fiore, but not a lot of people feel passionate about the Irish question. Or know much about Ugandan musicians living in Belgium.’
Nick was more excited about my date with Bruce. He told everyone at work. He told his friends. He told his neighbour. He even told one of his clients. For months afterwards, I saw people who would ask me, ‘I heard you were going out with Bruce Stewart. Is it true?’
A good friend who loved me to bits, Nick wanted me to be happy. He was always on the lookout for a decent man who might be of interest to me. But given that he was gay he didn’t run into a lot of straight men socially. And when he did, they weren’t always too sure they were straight. He gave me advice, often contradictory, about how to have better success with men.
‘The thing is, Fiore, you intimidate a lot of men. I’ve seen them trying to impress you with something, and if you’re not interested you look bored. Or worse, you get up and leave. Not exactly encouraging. Men have fragile egos.’
‘Why should I act interested in something if I’m not? It’ll just give the wrong impression.’
My boss Victoria was a woman who never gave any man the wrong impression by looking interested. Although she had a man, you’d be forgiven for thinking she could easily have done without. She made it clear she preferred women to men and never missed an opportunity to point out the latter’s inadequacies. Men were a necessary but often irritating fact of life. It was hard to disagree with her, but I marvelled at how she never let her feelings interfere in her unwavering mission to fight sexual inequality wherever she found it. She was a professional woman with very firm views about the salvation of the female sex through work, and she did her best to promote young women who were prepared to put in the hard yards.
‘He looks like a drugged-out boy who hasn’t washed for a week,’ Victoria said when Nick showed her a photo of Bruce in a music magazine. She shook her head in disapproval. She never seemed to be moved by men physically. It just never figured in her approach to them. They didn’t have that sort of power over her at all. I understood it, but thought it rather strange.
‘Don’t you find any man attractive, Vic?’ I asked.
‘Why should I be attracted to a member of the sex that starts wars, rapes women, kills their wives and destroys the planet?’
‘Well, I’ll just go and organise my sex change,’ Nick said sarcastically.
‘Haven’t you ever felt something that you can’t control?’ I asked her. ‘You know, looked across a room and seen someone and your knees weaken –‘ This was the wrong word to use with Victoria.
‘No,’ she said firmly.
In a way I envied her and wished I could be more like her. I could have avoided a lot of dramas in my life and saved my tears for worthier causes.
‘Don’t you ever just crave sex?’ Nick asked.
‘Well, my sexual urges do no translate into a quest for power over everything. And I think all this business about the natural rampant sexuality of men is total crap, a convenient excuse for their obsession with their dicks. For heaven’s sake, why can’t they learn to deal with their infantile urges in a mature way?’
Victorias was absolutely right, but when I fall in love I find it very hard to remember all the terrible things men have done to the world. Perhaps that’s the point. Love makes you weak, blurs your judgement, and is an unreliable indicator of a good relationship. Mihalis was the first man I fell in love with – he was handsome and political and could sing with a voice that made me want to cut my heart out and give it to him on a plate. And he turned out to be a womaniser. Definitely not relationship material. Victoria, despite her intense feminism, shared my parents’ belief that people should be partnered according to the compatibility of their family, education and cultural values; a system where romantic love is not a priority. This might sound like a logical way to organise your life, but in the meantime, what do you do with your heart?
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