Our Favorite Writers Recount the Most Romantic Things They’ve Ever Read
Ruth Curry, co-proprietor of Emily Books
“Giovanni’s Apartment,” from The Wild Creatures Sam D’Allesandro
No small part of the attraction of secret affairs and one-time hookups is the opportunity to shed your identity for a few hours and become someone completely different. “Giovanni’s Apartment” is about what happens when those few hours stretch into weeks and months. A man becomes aware someone is following him down the street; the two exchange a few charged words and go home together, and then the man – the narrator – doesn’t leave Giovanni’s room for the next 32 days. This story nails the feeling of being in so deep you no longer particularly care who you are or what you’ve gotten yourself into, and hints at what might be lurking in the periphery (it is set in San Francisco in the 80s) to make such complete abnegation attractive: “Together we formed one large womb providing a safety neither of us possessed on our own. . . I was shocked to think he needed me. I was willing to let him have whatever I had that he might want, but I wasn’t sure what that might be. My attributes are invisible to me. The beauty he sees in me is different from that which I think of owning. He was falling in love with a person I didn’t know and I was that person.”