Tuesday, November 04, 2003

 

ENTRY 059


(WARNING: contains spoilers)


The movie Cinema Paradiso revolves around a tiny movie theater in an Italian village, and the boy who befriends the projectionist. The local priest compels the projectionist to bowdlerize the films by snipping out the parts of the reel that show kissing and other physical expressions of affection. Years later, the boy is a prominent director--but while his career has been a success, he has not found lasting true love. At the end of the movie, the grown-up boy views a mysterious reel of film bequeathed to him by the late projectionist. It includes all the expurgated kisses and romance that had never been shown in the old theater, just a tidal wave of tenderness and emotion, and he is overcome with the realization that this is his solace...that this, too, is a deep sort of love. While I found Cinema Paradiso to be, on the whole, somewhat cheesy and manipulative, that final scene gets to me every time. It is absolutely stunning, and lovely.


(end spoilers)


Why I explain all this will become clear.


My Halloween week was scary. Scary in its lameness, and not due to bloodshed or post-Labor Day white or anything like that.


Let's start with the Mediabistro editorial professionals party last Thursday evening at World Bar, owned by Donald Trump and located in the vicinity of the United Nations building, otherwise known as Social Siberia. There ain't nothing out there, folks. I went to this thing with a couple of young ladies from work whom I actually like fairly well. When we arrived the place was nearly vacant, and I had this sinking feeling about the social prospects. Not to mention that the bar had absolutely no visible character.


I was slightly placated by the opportunity to meet Laurel Touby, the founder of Mediabistro, so that I could at least tell her that I checked her site every day for job listings while I was unemployed. She seemed like kind of a magazine journo playa, but was pleasant enough. (But, um, the white feather boa...really necessary?)


Things looked a little dim again, however, when I realized that I had a mere $10 to my name, and it was cash bar only. My coworkers all tried the Green Goblin, a lovely green bilge that, while tempting, didn't seem well-suited to hit my particular spot. I ordered a Corona, which the bar did not have. So I made it a gin and tonic, figuring it would be $8 or $9 and I could at least leave a tip.


Wrong. It was an even ten, so I was cleared out on one drink with no tip to leave. Of course, I looked better than the older woman next to me, who was pissing and moaning about a $13 glass of pinot grigio. "What does your pinot grigio have that others don't?" she demanded.


I did not try the $50 World Cocktail, which is made with, among other things, Veuve Clicquot and Einstein's actual semen, and comes with a free whore.


My account of the rest of the evening shall elide the frizzy-permed fortysomething nightmare who was hitting me (me!) up for a job until I sicced Laurel on her ass (the event's rules: no freelancers, no job-seekers), and the sleazyish older man who was chatting up the girls, and the lack of eye candy. I declared the evening over at a very sensible hour.


Halloween proper was even scarier, if you include the fact that I spent several minutes of it in Times Square, a locale that is guaranteed to pull the rug out from under your faith in humanity. But I digress. Roger had invited me to see The Boy from Oz, with which I wouldn't have bothered had the ticket not been gratis. But they were, Blanche, they were.


I have to say I've never been a tremendous fan of Hugh Jackman, but he totally cohered an otherwise schlocky production with his sheer charisma, utter energy and devotion, and complete immersion in the "gayness" of the role. The audience was eating out of the palm of his hand, or the button of his belly, or what have you. I kept trying to imagine the show without him, and shuddered.


On Saturday, Phil and I had plans to go pub-crawling and get totally wasted. Believe it or not, this was my idea; I'd become worried that I'd lost all connection to my id.


Unfortunately, when we met up, Phil had an upset stomach, and we stopped at a drugstore for something to soothe him. By the time he recovered, he'd decided he didn't feel like drinking anymore. We nevertheless met up with a group of guys he knew, one of whom seemed to take an interest in me. The guy was a lawyer, so, since I'm not feeling too creative at this hour, let's call him Lawyer.


Lawyer was pretty cute, I thought, but the intriguing thing was that two or three extremely attractive gentlemen were giving me the eye at the same time. Somehow I was "on" that night; it was something about my attitude. I was feeling good, which was perhaps a manifestation of a gradual, steady improvement in my spirits that's been occurring over the past couple of months.


I chatted for a while with Lawyer, although it was one of those conversations in which you sense you're trying just slightly too earnestly to keep things going. At one point things sort of lost steam, and I found myself inventing something "curious" at which to gaze, but with enough shifting of my head that Lawyer wouldn't be able to figure out just what it was. Eventually our dialogue was revived by the subject of old movies, about which, fortunately, he knew a bit.


Long story short: about two hours later Lawyer was inviting me into his bedroom, into which I unsteadily made my way (after drinking more than usual, which isn't too hard for me to do). As it was happening, there were fuzzy thoughts quivering in my skull, things like "This isn't me" and "What about the firm resolution I made three months ago?" But these things contrasted with the alcoholic warmth in my limbs and lips, and the loneliness I hide in my tongue and teeth and gut, and the pathetic ease of just giving in.


I slung myself onto the bed, and Lawyer threw the book at me--gently--for having my shoes on. Shaking my sloggy, too physical head, I fumbled through the shoelaces and heaved first the left, then the right shoe onto the hardwood floor with a clatter that sounded for all the world like willful resignation. With a bouncing thump I fell back onto the mattress and lay there, waiting for the earth to catch up to me on its axis.


"What do you want to do now?" he said, and I replied, "I don't know." It was the truest thing I'd said in that apartment, and yet not true at all. I was excruciatingly aware of the inevitability of everything, and rolled over like a corpse toward him for the kissing, muttering at some point that I hadn't had sex in a year and a half. He seemed to take that knowledge okay, although I would have been appalled at the self-revelation to some relative stranger had I been in control of my faculties.


The kissing was better than I expected, but I didn't entirely like the taste of him. Something was too sour, too impersonal, like the difference between a Hostess cupcake and something you buy at a school bake sale. Then a series of awkward removals of clothing and lo and behold my dick was in this guy's mouth and I really didn't want it to be there. Nor did it, apparently. It didn't stay hard and as the walls tilted slightly in my faintly inebriated condition, I recalled reading somewhere that after two drinks a male has considerable difficulty maintaining an erection. But I knew it was more than that. I knew that I was relieved I couldn't stay hard, because I was right all along, again, for the umpteenth time. I didn't really want this.


I finally mumbled, "I'm sorry, I think I'm too drunk for this." Such a handy, grateful excuse, and Lawyer seemed to accept it and rolled over to his side of the bed. I followed him a minute later, sort of rested my head against him and said, "You know, this is what I miss more than anything. Human contact." He responded with "Well, I guess we should get you home before it gets any later." I had barely the presence of mind to play this off with some trace of humor, although without the alcohol in my system I would have been too discreet to have said what I did, which was something along the lines of "Hey, it's really late, can't blame you for kicking me out." Lawyer said something about his not kicking me out, not really. But I didn't buy it, and I knew he knew I didn't, although I had just enough control to refrain from expressing that.


The really nonsensical thing was that he gave me his card and said I should call him. I clumsily thrust the card into the pocket of my jeans, knowing that I'd never call. I wonder if it was obvious to him that, as I walked out the door, I was thinking to myself that inhospitable people are such a turnoff.


I mean, it was a king-size bed. I don't take up much space.


But it wasn't me he wanted. My naivete sometimes astonishes me.


So I stumbled to the subway in the dark, gladder to be toiling home at 3:30 AM than I was to be enmeshed with some stranger's naked body. The sheer meaningless of it is what got to me. Things after that were sort of a blur, really, but at some point in the wee hours I woke up on my bed, fully clothed, with the lights on.


It was some mechanical noise that had roused me, and after a minute I realized the source: my VCR, which I'd set earlier, had switched on to record another of my old classics. And that's when I remembered the overwhelming scene from Cinema Paradiso, and that those celluloid kisses and silver-nitrate embraces were the passion that would never send me out into the dark or pretend to be anything other than what they were. They would never let me down.

1:04 AM

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