Why? with Michael Davis

Why?
Michael Davis
Davisstories.com
Author of the Year, 2008

The other night I was working on a passage in a new novel (VEIL OF DECEPTION) where the hero was struggling with understanding WHY he was falling in love with the heroine, and why he needed her so damn much. Oh, I should mention, I’m a guy and I write fiction with a romantic core. Yeah, a big alpha male writing about love, OMG (g).

Now, ignore the physical elements. We all know that men physically need women in their lives. I don’t know about the reverse, but I do know as a man, even an old dude, we still needs the physical, only at my stage of life its more a confirmation of our internal bond than the hunger that exist in my younger years. But I digress. I asked myself, “Why does the hero want her/need her intellectually, emotionally?”

I know that’s a strange question to ask one’s self. Most would say, “Who cares.” Ah, but that’s not me. I always analyze every facet, ever premise in my existence. I’m just weird like that. Some would consider me AR, and perhaps they’re right, but I am what I am. Damn, I digess again (do that a lot lately). Any way, while writing the passage, I was seated next to my wife on the couch, only as usual, she was sawing a cord of wood next to me (e.g. asleep).

I stared at her for several minutes and pondered why I love this woman, why do I need her presence in my day, why is it when we’re apart, I feel less than whole?

Now hold on to your socks because you may disagreement, but for me I reached an epiphany. It wasn’t all the years we had spent together. I’ve always loved her. It wasn’t the physical. I would still love her even if that were gone (though I would be an unhappy camper). So what the hell was it? Then it hit me in the heart like the radiant heat of a warm fireplace. It was all the things that differentiated her from me as a woman. Truth is I feel warm emotions toward most feminine women because of how they differ from me. Their tiny hands, their small feet, their constant sparkling eyes, the tone of their voice, the fact they can only lift 1/5 of what I can, there soft skin, the crazy confusing way they communicate, their need to be protected from the scum and demons in our world, their fragile emotions, everything that makes then different from me makes me love them all the more. Of course there are women out there that have lost the concept of what being feminine really means, like those nasty bossy ones in congress. But romance stories aren’t about them and I don’t sense the warm fuzziness for them anyway.

Now I know that sounds corny, and I’m committed to only one woman in my soul, but I adore most feminine women for that very reason, because they’re so damn different. I don’t feel that way about guys, only women. I like guys as buds, but my linkage with them is different. The question that remains is, “Do women feel positively about men for the same reason?” Do they get a warm response inside when they deal with men other than their spouses because they are so different from them as women? And is that part of the equation that attracts them to their soul mate; the difference? I don’t know, but it was enlightening for me as a man, and helped me better express the hero’s emotions toward the heroine. And why would how I feel be relevant to writing about the hero? Because, in my stories, in some form or shape, there’s a little of me in all my heroes, except for the six pack abs and curly hair. Those days have disappeared.