Searching for romance in Longs? Really? Longs may be the first place you think to look for many things, but romance? I decided to give it a shot anyway. My investigation led me to my neighborhood Longs store in the Kaimuki Shopping Center. It also led me to one of my favorite writers.

If I hadn’t asked Lee Cataluna about romance in her book Folks You Meet in Longs (Bamboo Ridge, 2005), I wouldn’t have known that she doesn’t see romance in those monologues of Longs shoppers and employees. Lee told me, “I don’t really think of romance when I think about that collection. I think about needs/wants and people going through Longs trying to fulfill their literal needs and thus their deeper needs.”