I recently called home to check in with my mother. It was a Sunday, the one day of the week I knew I would find her relaxing, probably reading a book, and available for some idle chit chat.“Hi, Honey,” she answered.
“What are you up to?”
“Oh, you know,” she replied. “Just doing some crack.”
“Ah, of course,” I said. “Say ‘hi’ to Edward and Bella for me.”
Drug addiction has become a regular euphemism in my family for the last year or so, as my mother, my sister, and I have cycled through each of the four books that make up Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight series. While the obsession among heartsick young girls may not be a surprise, the fanaticism with these stories is reaching epic proportions – the strange thing is that I am having this addiction conversation on a regular basis with everyone around me - and there is not a pre-teen amongst them.
I picked up Twilight last year after reading Time’s profile on Meyer. I had never heard of her and was baffled as to how this self-professed beginning writer could wake up one morning from a dream and finish a 500-page novel in three months. Let’s not even go into the fact that she was a stay-at-home mom with three kids under five. As a 33-year-old struggling writer, I had only dreamt about merely starting a novel, much less finishing one. I furrowed my brow. I went to Barnes & Noble.
A few weeks later, like a desperate alcoholic downing my neighbor’s cough syrup, I didn’t realize I was addicted until it was too late. Not only was I abandoning more and more of my social life to read at home alone, I would interrupt important conversations to muse absent-mindedly over the nuances of vampire/human romances. I started recommending the book on the down-low to my heartsick friends who had never heard of it. “What you do is this,” I would whisper quietly, so as to disguise the frantic edge in my voice. “Go and get yourself a copy of Twilight.” When I went to Seattle that summer, I was just as enraptured with the thought of long walks under the moody, overcast skies of Edward territory as I was with actually catching up with the friend I went to visit. I even had to stop by a bookstore while I was there because I had unexpectedly finished New Moon on the plane.
The final straw came when my 21-year-old brother, Davin, stood looking at me exasperatedly in the middle of a Barnes & Noble in Walnut Creek, where I had dragged him late in the evening on August 1, 2008 to await the release of Breaking Dawn. He was surrounded by a gaggle of 12-year-old girls dressed as though they were about to attend a “vampire prom,” as per the event instructions, all arguing over who would win Bella’s heart.
“Really?” he said to me, eyeing the blue wristband I wore that read “Team Edward.”
“What?” I said innocently.
That was the moment when I became observer to my own insanity. But as soon as I noticed it, I also noticed that I was not the only one. Once I “came out” to my thirty-something-year-old girlfriends about my guilty pleasure, it seemed they could hardly wait to confess their own experiences of succumbing as well so we could bond in a secret Twilight alliance for intelligent, empowered non-pre-teenagers.
Once my confession was out, the stories started spilling. My friend, Heather, pulled me aside at my birthday party to admit that it was the first time in two weeks she was not constantly thinking about getting home to finish Eclipse. Lara, after many glasses of wine, divulged in hushed tones that she saw the Twilight movie seven times. I bought Suzanna Twilight and New Moon to take with her on her upcoming business trip. Although she was skeptical at first, four days later came her text message: “Finished books. Had to buy 3 and 4 in the airport.” She later reported receiving a text message from a mutual friend who had borrowed the books from her which read: "My feelings for Edward are unhealthy."
So, what is it about Twilight that is so captivating to my well-educated, emotionally mature friends and me? What has turned my mother into a vampire-swooning cougar? I pondered this question recently while staring at the life-sized cardboard cutout of Robert Pattison as Edward in Heather’s apartment. How could it be that we seem to be just as enamored by Edward and Bella as the pre-teen girls? Is it possible that Edward represents the Prince Charming fantasy we have yet to abandon? I pictured each of my friends silently analyzing their boyfriends and husbands with inquisitively arched eyebrows, working out their abilities to provide protection from evil vampires and overwrought werewolves.
Suzanna’s theory holds that it is all about the romance. But I think it is more than that. Edward and Bella draw us in because their story goes beyond the practical circumstances of our everyday relationships. It is otherworldly and therefore has permission to be intense and emotionally bold. In essence, we find in these books what we used to find in our youth – the audacity of an honest love letter, the intimacy of a late night phone call, the breathlessness of a kiss in the rain.
But now, in our thirties, the scheduled minutes of our lives have overwhelmed the potential for those possibilities: we have chosen our careers, our mates, maybe even the names of our kids. We have shelved the unexpected nature that defined life a decade ago in favor of the stability of practical realities. While these choices fill the needs we have now, there does seem to be a tiny something that we are missing. Something…magical. So, we reach for Stephenie Meyer.
As I vaguely contemplate taking a picture with the Robert Pattison cutout and posting it on my Facebook page, I think about this tiny something that might be missing in my own life. A memory stirs. Once upon a time in college, a close friend of mine impulsively took me into his arms in the pouring rain and kissed me with a passion like I have never known. And that wasn’t just romance, as Suzanna might say. That was magic in its purest form. Note to self: Maybe with more of that in our lives, we wouldn’t need Meyer so very, very much.
