My Instagram Explore page is deceivingly simple for someone of my age and supposed ‘worldliness.’ I’m a junior at a prestigious university studying Anthropology and Creative Writing. I’m well-traveled and well-mannered. I spend my days reading the words of Joan Didion, Anne Carson and Roland Barthes, and yet my Instagram Explore Page resembles that of a thirteen-year-old girl circa 2009, complete with Robert Pattinson fan edits, an upsetting amount of Robsten stan content, and other manifestations of some pre-teen’s sexual fantasies (Pattinson biting his lip, lying on a couch for his at home GQ shoot, smoldering while wearing a particularly flattering heather grey hoodie… the list goes on).
I’m not some twenty-year-old Twilight super fan, though I do appreciate the franchise as it was my first foray into “young adult” reading material. I distinctly remember coming home from my first summer at sleepaway camp (and by summer, I mean one week – I was the kid who cried onto the postcards she’d send home and write, “These are my tears,” in purple ink so her parents would know to pick her up early) to find the first Twilight book on my bed, wrapped with a red bow.
I read about vampires and werewolves and the lowly humans resigned to the mortal realm – helpless, insignificant, only of value if turned or feasted upon – and I imagined what it would be to live without fear of dying, without the promise of a definitive end. At the time, I suppose it didn’t matter either way, as long as someone loved me as enduringly, as passionately, as Edward loved Bella. If I had that, I thought, I would have everything.
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I’ve since outgrown my craving for intoxicating, all-consuming love. I’m older now, wiser, and no longer operating under the assumption that love must be conflated with tragedy in order to be great love. But I never outgrew my taste for Robert Pattinson. My lust dulled over the years, but there remain a few stubborn embers whose flames I stoke from time to time.
‘Humble’ beginnings
Born Robert James Thomas Pattinson on March 13, 1986, the English actor is notorious for having a number of… um… quirks. On the Howard Stern Show, Pattinson admitted to having been expelled from an all-boys school for stealing pornography magazines and selling them to students. The same cockiness that brought on such deviant behavior led to his demise as an entrepreneur – he attempted to steal an entire rack of magazines at once. He was, in a word, overzealous. Upon being caught by a store clerk, his parents were called, his friends ratted him out, and his expulsion wasn’t far behind.
Emma Watson, who?
In 2005, Pattinson appeared as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth movie in the Harry Potter franchise. True to form, Pattinson got himself in a bit of off-screen trouble: he couldn’t remember starlet Emma Watson’s name. The exchange was caught on video, recently circulating around Robert Pattinson Tiktok.
Watson was the bigger name in the picture, and yet to Pattinson, hers wasn’t worthy of the little mental space that a name requires… Perhaps he was just starstruck? Caught off guard? Taken aback by her beauty? No, that can’t be it, she doesn’t seem to be his type – Kristen Stewart, FKA Twigs, Suki Waterhouse – Watson is too stiff, too shrill.
For whatever reason, when Watson asks a young Pattinson to recall her name, the actor looks to Watson, the camera, and back again, stammering “that’s… that one.”
Some may describe Pattinson as disrespectful or arrogant, but I’m not as quick to assume such things. I would sooner describe him as a ‘doofus’ or ‘nitwit.’ Surely there are more eloquent terms, but I prefer the previous – they match his goofiness, his child-like innocence.
After all, he’s the same man who, for no good reason, shaved what looks to be a landing strip into the back of his head for a 2014 red carpet. I could add yet another conspiracy to the record (and there are many), but I won’t; knowing – or assuming to know – why Robert does the things he does would ruin the fun.
In the pursuit of normalcy, a GQ story
Pattinson is weird, quirky, eccentric. In 2017, GQ aired a short film narrated and directed by the actor, detailing his pursuit of a simple pleasure: a New York hot dog. It begins with Pattinson laying across a mustard sofa, obviously perplexed. He makes his way to the window, where he looks down upon a man eating a hot dog. Pattinson is enthralled, obsessed. He must have it.
A polyphony of voices narrates the video, a rather chaotic inner monologue. Donning a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a black bomber jacket that he pulls conspicuously over his chin, Pattinson takes to the streets of New York to fulfill his craving. It isn’t that simple; no, he can’t find the man with the hot dog or the ‘hot dog store.’ He comes undone. The voices grow louder, frenzied.
All is well in the end. The video closes with the actor holding one hot dog in each hand, smiling and contentedly shrugging his shoulders. He says, “I knew I was just a normal human being. You can call me Rob. I eat hot dogs!”
I was giddy watching that video, like I was thirteen again and the boy I liked had given me his jersey to wear to the homecoming football game. For me, Pattinson can do no wrong.
Piccolini cuscino
I recently watched The Devil All the Time, where the actor plays a rather deplorable character – a sexually predacious preacher who preys on young girls – and though I despised his on-screen persona, it remained separate from his person in my mind. Once the credits rolled, he was no longer despicable, disgusting, repugnant; he was the Rob who eats hot dogs, or perhaps he was the mastermind behind Piccolini Cuscino, the hand-held pasta dish (a sandwich of sorts) conceptualized by Pattinson that consists of cornflakes, sugar, pre sliced cheese, penne, and “just any sauce.” When making the previous for Zach Baron, a journalist with GQ, he burned his hand on the microwave-cooked penne and melted a latex glove in a failed attempt to burn the initials “PC” – Piccolini Cuscino – into the top bun with a novelty lighter. Oh, and he wrapped the finished product in aluminum foil and put the whole thing in the microwave. It was chaotic and nonsensical, but for some inexplicable reason it made me smile.
I shouldn’t say inexplicable, for in Pattinson I see the same qualities adored in former SOs – those fitting the description of ‘man-child’ (a positive descriptor, I assure you), whose spirits hadn’t hardened with time and experience, whose glimmering eyes and genuine smile assured their forgiveness, for they were always well-intentioned.
He is, in a world governed by propriety, by evermore shoulds and should nots, a refreshing change of pace: uniquely his own.
So please, bring on the weird. Bring on the eccentricities that toe the line between performative and authentic. I will not apologize for my love of Robert Pattinson, just as I will not apologize for my love of Didion or Barthes. All have a place in my life and in my heart.