In Search of the Next Romance Novel Cover Man

CJ Hollenbach, romance novel cover model,posing with a romance novel convention attendee.

The Panorama Book Review 33

ome books are meant to be judged by their covers. Youknow the kind: Comanche Rose, Petticoats and Pistols, Ten-der Warrior, Sea of Desire. You see them lined up in airportbookstores and supermarket wire racks, their embossedtitles accompanied by a shirtless he-man clutching aswooning, bosomy maiden. The ardent couple might besitting astride a black stallion, standing amidships on a

schooner, or admiring a vast, castle-containing idyll. Perhaps thereis a stately carriage, or thunderclouds streaked with lightning, or ahawk perched on the hero’s outstretched arm. Shirts are unbuttoned,bodices unlaced. The light is right, the palette is warm, and the hairis always flowing.

These are the pastel dreams of romance novels. But behind eachpassionate Regency nobleman or brooding sheikh, there stands areal man—a man named Fred, or Travis. I know this because I amlost in a thicket of aspiring romance heroes right now. “Tight,tanned, and in command,” as one of them puts it, these guys have as-sembled at the Downtown Houston Hyatt for the fourteenth annualMr. Romance Cover Model Competition. This is the proving groundfor future Fabios.

Mr. Romance is a multi-day marathon competition, and what’sabout to get started is the Saturday-night highlight, the momentwhen one man will walk away with the crown. A service area behindthe Houston Hyatt’s Imperial Ballroom is doubling as an improvisedgreen room, and this is one place where alpha males are not afraid toaccessorize: capes, kilts, and fringed vests are paired with spurs, quiv-ers, bandoliers, and at least one yarn-headed hobbyhorse. Near theemergency exit an Indian warrior is slipping a beaded band over amassive bicep. A permed knight puts down his sword to fluff his hair.

A cowboy shimmies into chaps, ties on a red bandana, and announcesthat “It’s bandito time!”

Out beyond the curtain awaits the grand prize: a guaranteed ap-pearance on the cover of a book by this year’s sponsor, romance-publishing giant Dorchester. I look around the room. Some day soon,one of these anabolically proportioned young men will be renderedin oils, bedecked with a headband or Viking helmet, his windsweptlocks beckoning readers in checkout lines across the nation.

Lured by this opportunity, a dozen contenders have assembledfrom far and wide. Collectively, they represent the full range of well-groomed, gym-derived masculinity. Jason Santiago is one of thisyear’s strongest challengers—a confident and chiseled actor who’sbeen here before and fallen just short of first place. On the oppositeend of the dreamboat spectrum, Travis Greiman is a shy countryboy; he’s making the soft sell. Next to him stands Fred Williams, anenergetic African American with rib-eye musculature who’s playingthe gregarious showman. Shirtless and twirling toy six-shooters,Fred comes with a complement of rotating outfits, like an action fig-ure. “I got it all worked out, with props and everything,” he says. Hegives me a tour of his various looks: Western Fred, Formal Fred,Dancing Fred, Feudal Chinese Aristocratic Fred. “It’s gonna be offthe chain!” he tells me.

With a few minutes to curtain, everyone focuses on finishingtouches. Travis coils his bullwhip. Jason does pushups for pectoralinflation. Fred arranges and rearranges his props. Oddly, there’s nomirror back here, so everyone is forced to tell each other how theylook. “It’s cooler if you hold the sword with two hands.” “Your bolo’scrooked.” “I like them fangs!”

Beyond appearances, and fangs, the competition is also aboutcourtship, or what the official Mr. Romance program calls “RomanceI.Q.” Throughout the competition, each of these guys needs to provethat he is the most romantic among the suitors—the sweetest, mosttender man a woman could want. For that, they also came prepared.At one point, Fred furtively opens a black leather bag to give me a

The OnlyMuscle I Can’t ControlIN SEARCH OF THE NEXT ROMANCE NOVEL COVER MAN

NONFICTION BY

Joshuah Bearman

Joshuah Bearman has written about real-life superheroes, CIA missions, and theworld’s greatest Pac Man player for Harper’s, Rolling Stone, and This AmericanLife. He’s working on a memoir, called St. Croix, to be published by Riverhead.

PHOTOS BY BRAD FARWELL

S

34 The Panorama Book Review

glimpse of his “secret weapon”: a bouquet of roses. But not just anyroses—“Chocolate roses! Brought ’em all the way from St. Louis for thatspecial edge.” Mr. Romance isn’t just about muscles, he says—“It’s aboutunderstanding women.”

Mr. Romance is the main event at Romantic Times, a vast an-nual celebration of all things romance writing–related.Imagine a temporary portal to a parallel dimension dedi-

cated to a perpetual bachelorette party and you will have some idea ofwhat it’s like. I arrive on the second day, and am greeted in the lobby byCindy Walker, the contestant wrangler. Cindy is the one who locatedthe candidates, vetted their applications, and scheduled them in the pro-gram, which promises all visitors the chance to see “a dozen gorgeousyoung men” in competition. Around us, the hotel is overflowing withthose visitors: several thousand romance-crazed readers, editors, agents,authors, cover artists, and publishers, all gathered for the workshops(“Hijinx and Hot Kisses”), panels (“Adding Trends to Today’s Histori-cals”), social events (Cinnamon Buns Mixer!), and, of course, the dramaof Mr. Romance.

For many of these women, Cindy explains, Romantic Times is theirvacation. Leaving their husbands at home, they take a few days eachyear to explore in person the fantasies they love to read. They bringcostumes. They stay up all night. They playfully paw every man in sight.“A few come from as far away as New Zealand for the fun,” Cindy says.Foreign contingents aside, the clichés about romance readers appear tobe true—they tend to be middle-aged ladies from the South and Mid-west. There is a tremendous preponderance of floral print, bangs,paunch-concealing blazers, puffy-painted and/or bedazzled sweatshirts,and QVC jewelry. But I will also say this: everyone here is unfailinglykind. They may be lumberjack-fantasy devotees on an extended raunchyweekend, but they are still heartland mothers, instinctively warm andfriendly, and they make all visitors feel instantly welcome.

Especially the Mr. Romance contestants, who by design are thephysical focal point of a hotel’s worth of concentrated estrogenic imag-ination. “Constant mingling,” Cindy says, “is a key part of the competi-tion.” The judges’ identities are unknown until Saturday night, Cindyexplains, meaning that the contestants spend four days proving their“romance skills” to as many women as possible.

They get their chance to do so at a dense schedule of photo ops, cos-tumed dances, and water-volleyball tournaments, as well as at the “wildand wacky” panel, and the themed galas, like “Mystery Chix and PrivateDix,” and tonight’s extravaganza: “Vampires of the Wild, Wild West.”

For the young men competing this weekend, the appeal of all thisis the apparent reciprocity of the fantasy. “It runs both ways!” says vet-eran Mr. Romance presence CJ Hollenbach. Let’s face it, CJ says: whowouldn’t want to spend a few days as a Scottish warrior surrounded bywomen? Plus, there’s the career advancement. “I entered in the firstcontest in 1993,” CJ says. “And things really took off. I mean, look atme now.”

At forty-three, CJ still has ass-long hair treated to a straw blond,pointed sideburns, and unnervingly light gray eyes. Appearing inOdalisque repose on dozens of covers and calendars, CJ looks like hecould transform by night into a Siberian husky. He didn’t win his firstMr. Romance—“It was much tougher back then”—but just appearingin it jump-started his career. He’s appeared on such covers as Viking

Above right, CJ Hollenback demonstrating a traditional cover pose with afan. Below, Hollenbach on the cover of Viking Seduction.

Seduction and Lady of Sherwood, and his honors include 2001’sBrazen Heroine Fantasy Hunk of the Year. CJ always returns to Mr.Romance—for the fun, for the fans, and, he says, “to mentor the up-and-comers.” He tells the new blood that it’s tough to make a livingat this, especially if you’re not in New York. “But it is possible,” hesays. “I mean, Fabio—hello?”

Because of his hair, CJ bears a superficial resemblance to Fabio,which he relishes. He doesn’t even mind that some people call him“Fauxbio”—being an ersatz Fabio goes a long way in the romancecommunity. Here, the Legend of Fabio is a foundational myth: he isthe man against whom all other men are measured. At times peopletalk about Fabio as if he were a magical being. His eyes shine likemoonlight, they say, even during the day. Crowds part for him like theRed Sea making way for Moses. CJ himself once wrote that his firstglimpse of Fabio, years ago, felt like gazing upon “a sturdy Italiansequoia.” And don’t forget that inside that bristling bodybeats a loving heart. Fabio does charity work, speaks out againstsmoking, and, according to the Romantic Times fact sheet, “wants topromote a world without all the guns, hatred, and anger.”

Fabio made two hundred thousand dollars on covers in 1992—and that was before his massive brand expansion, including fitnessvideos, a series of novels under his own name, an album of love songscalled Fabio After Dark, a 900-number chat line, and those ads forI Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! No one since has created that kind ofsuccess, CJ admits, but Fabio serves as a beacon to all who follow.The first cohort of Fabio’s heirs included John DeSalvo and SteveSandalis, who went on to grace fifteen hundred and six hundred cov-ers, respectively. Then there were Jim, Kurt, and Kris Bartling, threehog farmers from Unadilla, Nebraska with matching platinum maneswho took a page out of Fabio’s marketing notebook and created theirown “romantic” sausage line, called Hickory Hunks. “A win at Mr.Romance can create all kinds of opportunities,” says CJ, who has yetto get into perishables. “That’s why the stakes are so high.”

Have you ever read a book by Nora Roberts? Me neither.We may well soon be in the minority, though; Robertsregularly outsells Clancy, Grisham, and King combined.

There are 400 million copies of her 189 titles in print.And Roberts is just one of many—if you ask Heather Graham,

sponsor of tonight’s Vampire Ball, how many books she’s written,

she can’t even remember. “Stopped counting at a hundred andtwenty-two,” she’ll say.

Want some more dazzling figures? Romance boasts $1.5 billionin sales; 55 percent of all paperbacks; one out of four books sold; 60million readers in the United States alone. Cindy says that many ofthose 60 million readers read twenty or thirty novels a month.Among the devoted core, some women can read several steamy pa-perbacks a night.

These books are popular for a reason, Cindy says. For the womenin the Downtown Houston Hyatt, what those novels and their coverscommunicate is an extremely powerful idea, one that makes this seem-ingly obscure exercise in kitsch a direct window into some kind ofstructural fantasy etched into the female mind. “Romance is a verypotent, universal message,” Cindy says. “And that’s what so greatabout the Mr. Romance competition. For four days, all these men haveto live that message.”

In recent years, the romance message has broadened into manyoverlapping sub-genres of commodified desire. You can seethem on display around the convention floor; traditional cate-

gories like Historical, Regency, and Western Romance sit alongsideRomantic Suspense, Future Romance, Time-Travel Romance, andParanormal Romance, which deals in vampires, werewolves, and theoccasional shape-shifter. (As Marianne La Croix, a successful para-normal romance author, put it to me, “Some of us like that beast in aman.”) There’s even interest in extraterrestrial romance—Close En-counters of the Sexy Kind is a typical title—and at one point I over-hear a group of fans and authors debating whether they’d prefer tobe seduced by Darth Vader or Yoda. (The crowd seemed evenly split.)

The candidates for this year’s Mr. Romance are equally diverse.Mark Posey, a Canadian professional wrestler who goes by the nameMr. Intensity, strikes stern poses cribbed from the ring; Ozzie, anArgentine gaucho who sired eight children by age thirty-five, signsvarious non-fatherhood-centric calendars; and Chris Hayes, a twenty-two-year-old jujitsu instructor, tells me he’s debating what to focuson these days—trying to decide between “this romance novel thingand maybe getting into Ultimate Fighting Championship.”

At another table I find a stack of copies of Men of Desire, its coverfeaturing an intensely gazing Jason Santiago armed with a pistol.Then I look up and see the real Jason entertaining admirers with thesame intense gaze. “I’ve already had a couple meetings,” he says dur-ing a lull in the crowd. “And I’m feeling good about my chances.” Aself-described professional model and actor who “just made the bigmove” from Akron, Ohio to Salt Lake City, Jason tells me that Mr.Romance is supposed to be a stepping stone to his dream, which is TVand movies. As I wonder about the television opportunities in SaltLake City, Jason says that his manager thought he needed to test thewaters in a smaller pond before going to a place like Los Angeles.

In the meantime, Jason is looking forward to the finals as an act-ing opportunity. The Cover Posedown, one of several decisive events,is the Mr. Romance contestants’ big creative moment, a time to showthe judges their interpretive strengths—to be, for a few minutes, a fig-ure out of fantasy. “I have to play an Indian Warrior,” Jason tells me.

Jason’s shirt advertises that he’s one of “The Cavemen,” mean-ing that he’s sponsored by Ellora’s Cave, a relatively new publisherspecializing in Erotic Romance. Traditionally, romance novels havedescribed sex with a uniquely euphemistic vocabulary (e.g., the “wavesof pleasure” a young woman might experience in “her dewy folds”),


Mr. Romance is themainevent at Romantic Times, avast annual celebration of allthings romance writing–related. Imagine a temporaryportal to a parallel dimensiondedicated to a perpetualbachelorette party.


but in recent years Ellora’s Cave—a double entendre I’m not sure isintended since it is never once acknowledged by anyone—has built itsreputation on books that read more like Penthouse Letters. Some read-ers, Cindy among them, remain skeptical of the harder-edged stuff.The divide came into focus during last year’s Mr. Romance, when El-lora’s Cave sponsored a group of contestants who got out of line. “Alot of them were strippers,” says CJ, “with corresponding attitudes.”They formed an insular, aggressive clique, and Jason followed theirlead. “At first I didn’t want to let him back in,” Cindy explains. Aftera turbulent contest, Jason realized the error of his ways, apologized,and won her over. Some guys misunderstand what this is about, Cindyadds rather assertively. “We have to keep things classy.”

This year, unfortunately, the classy mandate is creating tensionagain. Julian Fantechi, a strong Mr. Romance contender and four-time Playgirl centerfold, is over at the booth for Between Your Sheets,a management service for romance authors, signing copies of his firstcover: Ashley Kath-Bilsky’s The Sense of Honor. Cindy says Playgirlmodeling is not appropriate for Mr. Romance; Julian is in the cur-rent issue. Reportedly, Julian was told to leave hard copies of themagazine at home, but he brought them anyway, earning a repri-mand from Romantic Times authorities. “We have rules here,” Cindysays. “And Mr. Romance is a PG operation.”

With their experience and exposure, Jason and Julian seemto have some institutional momentum, but Fred isworking hard to chip away at their lead. In the back cor-

ner of the hall, he’s commandeered an empty space for his ownmakeshift booth, where he’s been waging a very effective charm-based counter-campaign.

“I’m a writer, too,” he says, showing off stacks of postcards he’smade, with his poems superimposed over pictures of himself. At sixfeet and 220 pounds, Fred is seriously yoked for an AT&T networktechnician and part-time poet from St. Louis. He flips through a binderholding his oeuvre to date, which is available for anyone who wants totake a closer look. “This a great time to network,” he says, as befits anetwork technician. You never know who you’re talking to.”

And Fred likes talking to everyone. A cheerful extrovert whothrows his arms around the ladies, Fred asks about their sons and play-fully inscribes books with Keep last night between us, or Had a greatnight—will get shoes later! Fred also seems to be a dyed-in-the-wool ro-mantic: his poems are about roses, beating hearts, and lovers on beaches.

In other words, Fred seems to understand what Cindy believesis the strategic key to winning Mr. Romance: “Providing the wholepackage.” Mountainous, hard-earned abs might get you attention,but it’s “that sense of romance” that seals the deal. “Mr. Romance,”Cindy says, is a place where “nice guys don’t finish last.”

By now, my own favorite nice guy is Travis Greiman. Talland handsome, twenty-two-year-old Travis is well propor-tioned but by no means a bodybuilder, and he’s come to Ro-

mantic Times for years with his mother, Lois Greiman, a moderatelysuccessful author of Scottish historicals. “One year, she put me in akilt at her booth,” Travis says when I catch up with him not far fromwhere Lois is signing some of her books. “There was also a raffle formy sword.”

Travis may be too nice: he’s painfully shy, which makes himall the more sympathetic for allowing his mother to dress him up

to attract attention. “But it worked,” he says, “so I come back withher each year.”

At the moment, Travis has more of a cowboy look, althoughI discover it’s not really a costume. “We live on a farm in Minnesota,”Travis says. “Raising horses.” So the hat and boots are real, and thebuck knife too. He even brought his own bull-whip.

At home, Travis spends several days a week helping a quadri-plegicman take care of three adopted kids. He’s also enteringmed schoolnext year, so he’s not really interested inmodeling. “Mymom convincedme to enter the contest,” he says. “So really, I just do it for her.”

In fact, the only reason Travis is here this year is because hismom promised she’d take him camping in the Ozarks on the wayhome. Out in the parking lot, he says, their car is filled with gear.Travis starts telling me about how much he likes the outdoors, lessfor hunting than for hiking, and pretty soon I’m imagining his care-free farm life with his mom—splitting wood, smoking jerky, andspending crisp autumn mornings picking wild berries for breakfast.When I ask him what else happens on his magic idyll of a homestead,he softly adds, “Me and my mom also breed golden retrievers.”

Incredibly, Travis is an involuntary bachelor. He has never hada real girlfriend, he says with an embarrassed smile—an alarmingdiscovery, because if Travis is coming up empty, what does that meanfor the rest of us? Somehow the altruistic, handsome cowboy and fu-ture surgeon who spends his free time surrounded by foals and pup-pies hasn’t figured out how to attract a woman. “I don’t know,” Travissays with a sigh when I press for details about his love life. “I guessI just don’t know what women want.”

Chris Hayes, a twenty-two-year-old jujitsu instructor,tells me he’s debating whatto focus on these days—trying todecide between “this romancenovel thing andmaybe gettinginto Ultimate FightingChampionship.”

TRAIN

The feverish train cries home, homebecause it cannot remember where it comes from.In recompense the men tear up its tracksand put an end to its nightmare of motion.

—Troy Jollimore


Here’s what a few minutes in the Houston Hyatt’s ground-floor bar reveals about what women want:“A bad boy who is secretly kind.”

“Sexy but dedicated.”“A conqueror who turns out to be loyal.”“Someone who shakes up your life and seduces you, and then de-

cides to settle down.”These descriptions are all variations on the inviolate formula of

romance novels. First, a pretty girl encounters a mysterious hero; then,a sensual cat-and-mouse game ensues, complicated by obstacles to loveboth external (warlords, earthquakes, etc.) and internal (the pricklyEnglish rose is too haughty, the Greek tycoon is too stubborn); even-tually, though, the dust settles, and a couple is left standing.

“Readers want an alpha male who can commit,” says Jo CarolJones, the Romantic Times convention director. “That’s the funda-mentals.”

It’s a commitment that entails transformation. “The romance pro-tagonist is always flawed,” explains author Ashley Kath-Bilsky. “And allhe needs is a good woman to straighten him out.”

In its guidelines for aspiring authors, the Romance Writers Asso-ciation calls this “an Emotionally Satisfying and Optimistic Ending.”With the inevitable ESOE payoff, the books function as relationshipprocedurals. Just like they always get their guy on Law & Order, ro-mance novels always deliver a cosmic emotional justice. Women whotake risks are rewarded with true love.

For Romantic Times regulars, the greatest example of an ESOEis what happened last year, when Evan Scott (First Runner-Up, 2003,Kansas City) secretly arranged to stop the show midway through sohe could take the stage and propose to his astonished girlfriend infront of everyone. As you can imagine, the entire place went freak-ing nuts—or so I gather when I ask witnesses to recall the momentnow, a year later, and their eyes glaze over like it’s happening all overagain. The consensus is that it was the most wonderful thing theyhave ever seen.

Evan Scott is here again this year, and when he tells me the storyhimself over a few drinks, he says he came up with the idea by just fol-lowing the cues from the novels his girlfriend reads. “You can learn alot from what’s in those books,” he says, adjusting his straw hat andsleeveless gingham shirt. “If more men read them, there would be a lotmore happy women out there.”

What Evan is indirectly saying is that there is a secondary fantasyat work here. Over the course of the contest, we’ll witness the ESOEtransformation almost literally, with costumed courtship being tradedfor a final appearance Saturday night in nuptially appropriate formalwear. But many romance readers are already married. For them, what’sreally appealing is the notion of changing a man at all. They don’t needto turn a hero into a husband; they want their husbands to become he-roes. They’re after a glimpse of “the whole package”—robust but car-ing guys, the kind of guys who might take a bit of extra time toappreciate their wives the way Evan Scott does. Sure, these things areclichés. But they’re sturdy, satisfying clichés—easy for their men to liveup to. And is that really asking so much?

When I run into Travis and his mom again, she’s wearinga homemade campaign pin with his face on it. “I’m try-ing to spread the word,” Lois says, smiling at Travis,

who blushes adorably. By now, I basically want to be Travis, the most

Top, a romance enthusiast meets Sasha White (left), noted romancenovel author. Middle, a cover man meets a fan on the pageant stage.Below, romance readers meet Mark Johnson, another contender.


eligible bachelor alive. So far, though, Travis seems to be getting lit-tle traction at the competition, according to my preliminary pollingaround the hotel:

JULIAN: 15JASON: 12FRED: 6TRAVIS: 1

Perhaps predictably, the actor and former troublemaker Jason iscoasting along, while friendly Fred and trusty Travis are strugglingto make a dent. And then there’s Julian, leading the charge, despiteturning out to be, in Cindy’s words, “a real problem.” He has beenlate to events, if he shows up at all. At the water-volleyball tourna-ment, he refused to go in the pool. And earlier today, Julian wascaught with those Playgirls again. “That’s not how a man who wantsto call himself Mr. Romance behaves,” Cindy says fretfully.

Around the convention, everyone agrees that the “bad-boy ques-tion” is the central dilemma of Mr. Romance. Even the Yoda versusDarth Vader discussion turned on this issue. “Darth may be evil, buthe’s tall, dark, and handsome,” one woman said. “And no matter whatpeople say, there’s no way little wrinkly Yoda would win Mr. Ro-mance.” All of which brings me back to high school, when I firststarted suspecting that the deck was stacked, perhaps even biologi-cally. Since then, my suspicions have only deepened: a recent scien-tific paper entitled “Male Pheromone-Stimulated Neurogenesis inthe Adult Female Brain” was translated in the mainstream press withheadlines like WHY WOMEN LOVE HUNKS. It described a study show-ing that simply being near dominant males triggered brain growthin females. These were mice, not people, but the implications areclear, and thinking about it now, I can’t decide if proof of a neuro-logical imperative that hardwires women to gravitate toward ass-holes would be tragic or a relief.

But science aside, when Cindy talks about her nice-guy theory ofMr. Romance and says that Julian’s aggression will be self-defeating,I really want to believe her. I’m soon marrying the girlfriend I’vehad since college, but in solidarity with Travis and his worldwidebeta-male cohort, I have developed a vested interest here. Finally, achance to turn the tables! Because what Cindy has promised, afterall, is a corrective to human gender relations. Alpha males will betamed; nice guys will be rewarded.

And yet when I return to my survey, there’s Fred still busting assto stand a chance for second place and poor Travis barely in the run-ning. What’s wrong with these women? Don’t they understand?While arguing his case with some conventioneers, I realize I’vecrossed the line from rooting for Travis to push-polling:

“So, that handsome Travis sure seems like a shoe-in for Mr. Ro-mance, right?”

“Well, I kind of like Jason.”“Hmm, interesting. But did you know that Travis raises horses

and takes care of a quadriplegic’s children?”“Well that’s impressive. And sweet.”“Yeah. That Travis is really something special.”

L ater that night, the Vampires of the Wild, Wild West galais getting started. The book tables have been replaced withbanquet tables, and there’s dinner, but more importantly

there are two full bars. Parading around the room are grown, girthywomen in corsets, capes, black gowns with empire waists, and epicfolds of red velvet. At one table Travis’s mother Lois is admiring her

son’s costume. “Doesn’t he look great?” she asks.“I thought about being a vampiric cowboy,” Travis says, “but

I didn’t have any fangs.”Soon, everyone is drunk. At one point I find Fred entertaining an

extraordinarily amorous senior citizen named Jan, a romance authorfrom Texas; she has one hand on Fred, the other on the quarter-emptyfifth of Jim Beam hanging out of her purse. “When yer seven-tee-oneyeers old,” she says with a sway, “yew cain’t give a damn no more!”

“I shouldn’t encourage you,” Fred says with a big smile, whichhas the effect of encouraging her even more.

“Whah don’t yew give this fei-stee ol’ gran-ma,” she singsongs,rubbing Fred’s arm, “a re-uhl…”—she pauses, takes a breath—“…big…”—takes two breaths— “…kick tonight!”

Now she’s hyperventilating, like a prank caller. She puts her handon Fred’s chest. “Hey now!” he yells, with mock indignation.

“Oh, par-DONE,” Jan declares, “but that right there is some re-SERCH!”

Jan offers me her bottle—“And where’s YER hooch?” “I alreadyhad a few.” “Well, we cain’t have yer hands empty!”—and then dis-appears into the evening’s swelling revelry. Another aspiring author,Maggie Wiseman, runs past clad in black with a bowl of redMaraschino cherries propped up square in her cleavage, a daring useof props which probably pushed her over the edge to win the cos-tume contest. When passersby empty Maggie’s bowl, she heads tothe bar: “Time to get a refill!”

OF ALL THE. . .

Involved in a conundrum Ipass it along to the consumer.You can afford it. Does everything have to be tragic,and why can’t the world get up and play tennis?

—John Ashbery

Around the convention, the“bad-boy question” is the cen-tral dilemma ofMr. Romance.“Darth [Vader] may be evil, buthe’s tall, dark, and handsome,”one woman says. “And nomatter what people say, there’sno way little wrinkly Yodawould winMr. Romance.”


That’s all fine by her husband, Jesse Wiseman, a thirty-two-year-old sergeant in the United States marines whose wife started writingsteamy scenes to pass the time while he was deployed. With his crew-cut, aptitude for field-stripping an AR-15, and collection of Warhammerbooks, Jesse seems out of place at Romantic Times. And he’s somewhatskeptical about the Mr. Romance competition. “At first glance,” he says,“they’re not the type of guys you’d want in your foxhole.”

At the moment, those guys are fanned out across the dance floor,humoring the competing advances of clusters of women twice theirage. Jason, in a black suit and flaring crimson lapels, a bloodsucker byway of Havana, is posing with a sanguinary Marie Antoinette for thebenefit of camera-wielding onlookers. Fred, sporting smoked shadesand a decidedly contemporary suit for a vampire, looks like Blade’snightclub alter ego as he jumps between partners. And when Travis, infangless cowboy gear, limbos all the way to the floor, he surpriseseveryone by snapping back upright like Jet Li.

As the Vampire Ball lurches toward the small hours, it starts tofeel very comfortable in the Downtown Houston Hyatt. Like maybethis is our home and we have all been here forever. The smiles areeuphoric. Identities have been transformed. Lives at home are forgot-ten, and the future is put on hold as the dance floor is united by JimBeam and an unyielding faith in transformative love. This is how thefantasy that lives in the covers of those novels is animated for a fewnights each year.

Judging from the faces on the dance floor, no one’s going anywhereuntil the music stops. The mutual mission of Mr. Romance has finallyerased the inhibition barrier. Michael Jackson reminds us to Leave thatnine-to-five up on the shelf. Kool & the Gang instructs the crowd to Getdown on it. Lionel Richie suggests we do it All night long. And that’sexactly what we do.

The next day I wake up at noon, amble downstairs, and discoverthat scandal has struck Mr. Romance. “We had to kick out Ju-lian,” Cindy says. She shakes her head at the magnitude of the

situation. “They’re escorting him from the building now.”Around the room, there is hushed chatter about Julian’s fate. This

is clearly an unprecedented punitive event at Mr. Romance, and Cindysays she’d prefer not to discuss it. Surprisingly, I have to cultivate mul-tiple sources with various offers of background, deep background, anddouble-secret-probation background to get the details, which are these:Julian was caught distributing his Playgirl centerfold again. This morn-ing it was on the floor of the convention—the final straw. CJ was sit-ting next to Julian and suspected some fishy commerce beneath thetabletop. “I can’t be sure,” CJ says. “But I think he was selling them for$25 apiece.”

CJ thinks Julian made a mistake, but also points out he’s seen farworse “hanky panky” at Mr. Romance. It’s a fine line they tread here,trying to keep actual sex away from an industry premised at least inpart on sexual fantasy. “I mean, come on!” he says. “Everyone stays upall night, drinking in a hotel. People get carried away.” Fans, CJ says,have been known to put pictures of themselves, scrawled with roomnumbers, under the doors of the Mr. Romance candidates. And thereare enough younger women here to tempt the contestants. This yearCJ claims to have information that certain unnamed people have been“intimate” with conventioneers. Last year there were rumors of athree-way involving a contestant and two fans—a mother and daugh-ter. “And this place is full of gossipy women,” he says. “They all knowthe score.”

“I don’t care what else is going on, but rules are rules,” says Annette

Above, former Mr. Romance Mark Johnson sings a song from A Storyfrom My Heart: The Only Muscle I Can’t Control. Below, FredWilliams, Mr. Congeniality, poses with a fan in the lobby.


Batista, the contest director. Julian and the others all signed a contractin which they agreed to conduct themselves in “a gentlemanly and re-spectful manner.” Grounds for disqualification include soliciting con-vention attendees, a felony record, and, of course, sabotage. WhenI ask if bringing stacks of one’s own Playgirl spreads constitutes sab-otage, Annette says it’s a larger issue. “We had to send a message,” shedeclares, “that Mr. Romance will not tolerate divas.” Cindy adds thatJulian failed to respect the dignity of the office he was seeking. “Whenyou are Mr. Romance,” she says, “your place on those covers meanssomething. It’s larger than you. You have to be more than a sex object.You have to represent a grand idea.”

Perhaps that’s why Cindy asks Jesse Wiseman, the marine, to re-place Julian. That and the fact that “he’s one of the few men in thebuilding.” She catches Jesse upstairs and gets him to agree to beready in two hours. Jesse says yes mostly to make Maggie happy. “Ifthe guys in my platoon ever saw this,” he says, “I would never hearthe end of it.”

It’s Saturday night, the main event. DJ Big Tom just kicked offthe final pageant with “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.” Thestage is set with hay bales, wagon wheels, and a fake bar

draped with feather boas. The judges are seated, their identities re-vealed: three honchos from Dorchester and a local romance author.Starting with Travis, the contestants emerge one by one, and a spec-ulative fever grips the room. I don’t mind confessing to some ex-citement of my own. A round of additional polling during rehearsalsuggested a narrowing race. Now comes the moment of truth, de-cided over several events: three “Posedowns”—Cowboy, Cover, andFormal—and the notorious Date Round, where the men will woowomen with their words.

Quickly, the field starts shaking out. Young Travis holds his ownin the Cowboy Posedown, but for the Cover he’s only moderately con-vincing as Connie Mason’s Highland Warrior. The audience can tellhis heart just isn’t in it, and what they favor instead is the hammed-up, rippling machismo offered by Fred and Jason. When Fred dis-tributes his chocolate roses, the audience lets him know that his secretweapon is striking its target—“Arrest me, sheriff !” is heard from thecrowd. Later, Jason is given his promised star turn lamenting hissquaw’s tragic death while, bizarrely, the Raiders of the Lost Ark themeplays. No one notices the incongruity, lost as they are in the moment’spathos. What they do notice are Jason’s smoldering stare and hisfringed loincloth, a winning combination that causes someone to yell:“Show us your peace pipe!”

The only surprise is Jesse, a crowd-pleaser despite being shorter,smaller, and, as he says, a man who lives up to his infantry nicknameDogface “for the obvious reasons.” It’s Jesse’s backstory that winsthe room over: he’s done three tours in Iraq, and he’s shipping outagain next week. In the minds of romance readers from mostlyred states, this is powerful stuff. Everyone also knows that he’s herewith Maggie, who just sold her first book. “He’s a real-life hero,”Annette says.

Soon, it’s halftime—and why not slow things down with a littlemood music? Mark Johnson is yet another former Mr. Romance con-testant, a one-time stuntman at Medieval Times who left all that be-hind to write his own songs “inspired from everyday experiences.”(Which I suppose accounts for the fact that, yesterday, Mark saw oneof CJ’s beefcake photos and said he would write a song about it. “Hesaid he was moved because it was so beautiful,” CJ said. “Weird,


huh?”) Mark has just recorded an album called A Story fromMy Heart:The Only Muscle I Can’t Control, and once he starts singing, I under-stand what CJ meant when he said that the talent-show portion ofMr. Romance from previous years had been cancelled “for humani-tarian reasons.” As saccharine as he is sincere, Mark has taken thecloying emotional elixir that stirs the romance novel and set it tomusic. And the women love it. Especially when Mark takes a mo-ment between songs to look the entire audience in the eye and tellthem how he loves being a “natural-born hugger.”

When the show starts up again, we’re in the Date round—thetreacherous stretch that relies on wits—and some gaffes emerge. Thewomen are pulled from the audience at random, and await the men onstage. When Travis takes the chair, he looks nervous, like a freshmanwho accidentally wound up at the prom, and what should be his im-peccable Mr. Romance resume—puppies, horses, the quadriplegic—gets lost in a steady stream of stammering. Fred makes the mistakeof leaving his glasses on throughout the date. He’d planned to say“I’m blinded by your beauty,” but didn’t get the chance before thecrowd noticed. It’s Jason, though, who steps into the biggest disas-ter when he sits down opposite his date, turns ninety degrees, andstarts telling the audience how much he loves sports and workingout. “Talk to the lady!” someone yells. Jason looks stunned, tries tochange course, but he’s screwed. Oh I’m sorry, he says, I’m reallysorry, well a little about me… and then the buzzer cuts him off.

It’s Jesse who makes the simple but noble gesture all thesewomen are waiting for: enough about me, what about you? He yields

his time to hear from his date, a woman named Beth from Cleveland,and the crowd goes wild. Hands folded, he listens attentively whileBeth talks about what a nice time she’s having here at Mr. Romance.

It’s a tactful move, one that sets the stage for the contestants’final appearance, the Formal Posedown. Fred repurposes his suitfrom the Vampire Ball as he escorts an adoring heroine around thestage, while Jason predictably sidles up to his woman in classic Latin-lover mode: red silk shirt, gold cross, three buttons undone. Thenit’s Jesse’s turn. We see a woman at the end of the catwalk, waiting,forlorn. Suddenly Jesse appears, in the sharp lines of his pressed ClassA uniform, ceremoniously displaying his stripes and ribbons. He putsdown his bag, she runs to him, and as the pair reenact a soldier’shomecoming the room erupts into a massive standing ovation. Outin the audience, the moment rings true for Maggie. She starts cry-ing. Then other women start crying. Even one of the judges getsmisty as Jesse carries the woman into the figurative sunset.

By now, it’s clear that my hopes for Travis have been misplaced.I thought his soft touch and solid credentials might exert a quiet power,like a submarine that runs silent but deep before triumphantly surfac-ing, torpedoes armed in all ports. I was wrong. Travis is a distant mem-ory to the women in the audience, for whom Jesse’s performanceintroduces the distinct possibility of an upset over Jason.

The judges tally their score sheets, and then, one by one, the re-sults are announced: Mr. Congeniality, the feel-good award chosen bythe other contestants, goes to… Fred Williams! Fred hugs everyoneon stage. He’s still waving to the crowd as another sealed envelopeis delivered to the stage for the coveted Reader’s Choice Award. AndFred takes it again! More bows and hugs for each contestant. ShouldFred take all three, I calculate, we will witness a minimum of sixty-four man hugs by the time the ceremony is over.

Then comes Jesse’s name—for First Runner-Up. He walksslowly to the judges’ table, clicks his heels, and snaps a crisp salute.Maggie is overjoyed, shocked that Dogface ranked at all. She’s stilltrying to regain her composure when the announcer calls out that“THIS YEAR’S WINNER IS JASON SANTIAGO.”

D eep down, I think, we all knew this moment was coming.You can see it on the faces of Travis and Fred, who clapgraciously as Jason explodes out of the lineup blowing

two-handed kisses in his first moments as this year’s official Mr. Ro-mance. Travis just didn’t have enough spark on stage. Fred’s naturalcharisma gained some ground at the end, but not enough to overcomeJason’s semi-professional bearing and raw appeal. Inhabiting his new-found mini-celebrity, Jason is soon surrounded by fans, his sponsors,and a local news team looking for a reaction. “After this,” he says intothe microphone, “the sky is the limit! Now anything is possible!” ThenJason gets a bonus hug from Mark Johnson.

“I would have preferred Fred,” says a fan named Isabella. “Ithought he worked harder to make every woman here feel special.”Another woman says that Jason should have been docked for his un-forced error on The Date. “They just chose the look,” she says.

When I talk to the judges, they confirm as much. Sure, RomanceI.Q. and all that is important, says Lisa Williams, one of the judgesfrom Dorchester. “But the cover has to sell books too.” Just as I sus-pected, Darwinian sexual selection triumphs: Fred is plenty good-looking, but not quite as good-looking as Jason, and no amount ofcharm could make up for that, especially once Jason took the stage in

Fans have been known to putpictures of themselves, scrawledwith roomnumbers, under thedoors of theMr. Romancecandidates. Last year there wererumors of a three-way involvinga contestant and two fans—amother and daughter.

THE CLOUDY VASE

Past time, I threw the flowers out,washed out the cloudy vase.How easily the old clearnessleapt, like a practiced tiger, back inside it.

—Jane Hirshfield


nothing but a suede loincloth. The package, it seems, might bemore important than the whole package.

None of the other contestants seem disappointed. Fred looksecstatic with his dual trophies. Travis’s mom thinks he should havewon every prize, but Travis says Jason deserved it. Even Jesse isshocked at what nice guys all these pretty boys turned out to be.“But to be honest,” he says, “I’m glad I’m not going back to Iraq asMr. Romance.”

After the show, Cindy diplomatically tells me she liked all thecontestants equally. “And don’t forget Jason has come a long way,”she says. She reminds me how he turned himself around afterfalling in with the rowdy, uncooperative Cavemen last year. “It tookawhile,” Cindy says, “but Jason learned to be a real gentleman.”

As they’ve said all along, the true measure of romance is trans-formation. Travis started as a sweetheart, Fred was always acharmer, but Jason traveled the ultimate romance trajectory: fromlast year’s cad to today’s well-groomed man of manners. Even morethan nice guys, it seems, Mr. Romance rewards men who let womenshow them the way. And this may be the genre’s larger, more uni-versal fantasy: simply the power to change a man at all. “No manstarts off as the perfect hero,” Cindy says. “They all need a differentkind of kick in the pants. And that’s what we women are here for.” b

LOVE POEM

I ache for youwith all of the teeththat fell out of my mouthwhen I was a child

—Troy Jollimore

ONE TIME

Didn’t we already eat?“But That Was When I Ruled the World”on frequent rotation,2009

—Rae Armantrout

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

“a stance of mystery and not knowing towards the world”I thought about that for a while and even tried standinglike one-third kung fu the other two an amalgamof disco and weather.

—Matthew Zapruder

Documents

In Search of the Next Romance Novel Cover Man