"LIke A Scene From A Movie"

I was seriously frustrated by some car problems I had yesterday morning-- for more on this, read my post for En Mass to get an idea.

By the time I got home and slept, I was in quite a state. Only a phone call to my mother calmed me down. She didn't have any soothing advice for me, because I asked for none. Instead, she told me about her day, her problems, her dilemmas, and it made me feel better about my own.

Normally, I get alienated by people who don't ask me about my life, but my mother is my mother-- she already knows what my life is all about, all I have to do is confirm it for her.

Later on in the evening, I went over to Holly's place. She and Deborah and their friend Richard were eating, drinking and sitting by the jacuzzi. I figured it would be nice to relax and spend some quality time with Holly Golightly and company before she left.

I was prepared with a piss-and-vinegar 'tude and some pot in my bloodstream. For one thing, I cannot stand Deborah-- she is fake and shallow and proud of it. Richard is cool, but I feel bad for him-- I think he's sprung on Deborah, and therefore puts up with her shit with an almost inhuman tolerance. And I don't like Holly when she is with Deborah, because she starts competing with her over who is more shallow.

After some jacuzzi time and some beer and wine, we retired to Deborah's apartament, to watch Cold Mountain. My stomach sunk when I heard the title-- I know it's supposed to be a good movie, but I wasn't in the mood for an overlong period piece.

To my surprise, the movie was excellent. It's about an old-fashioned subject, really, that of true love standing firm through thick-and-thin. I relate to that topic, because I was once that type of guy-- the type who would walk through Hell Itself for just ten minutes with the one I adore. I would put myself out on the line every time for love, and it always knocked me around a bit, but it never beat me.

I haven't walked 500 miles for a woman in over a decade. Eve was the last girl I did that for, and she showed her appreciation by dumping me the minute I relented in my subservience to her.

She had no faith.

I have been accused of that very thing, but that goes to show how little people know my heart. I believe in love, for example, but then again my definition is a little different than with other people.

To the majority of people out there, love is holding hands and staring into each other's eyes and smooching and buying flowers and candlelit dinners and pillow talk and drawing little heart shapes in the peanut butter...

To me, love is honesty. Love is not using the other to gain advantage. Love is standing up for what you believe in. Love is defending someone's besmirched honor. Love is sacrificing yourself and your happiness so that others can be happy. Love is loving the unloved as well as yourself, and staying true to your principles in the process. Love is loyalty and trust.

Everything else is just foreplay and sex. I wish people would call these things by their proper names, and not by the societal definitions.

Anyway, to truncate the events of last night: I really dug Cold Mountain. Sure, I made snide remarks throughout the movie along with the others, but that's me, that's how I express what I like sometimes. My teasing is done out of love.

But during the movie, Holly's comments struck me as very telling. She found the war scenes boring, and didn't make any connection to current events. She kept finding fault in Nicole Kidman and Jude Law's accents, when really they were quite passable. It didn't detract from my enjoyment of a film that I had absoltuely NO choice in selecting for viewing.

Towards the middle, there is a scene where Law's character beds down for the night with a lonely woman whose husband was killed in battle. She does not want to sleep with him; rather, she only wants a person lying in the bed next to her.

Holly said at that point, "If this were reality, he'd stop trying to find Nicole Kidman and just stay there."

I looked at Holly. "But he loves Nicole Kidman."

"Yeah, but he's warm, in bed with Natalie Portman... it's just not realistic."

I thought about the many times she had me spend the night in the bed with her, as she cried her tears and whined about this city that crushes her spirit. Not once did she ever ask me about my hopes and dreams, my fears, my desires. Not once did I make a move, and now I know why.

I guess I didn't really love Holly after all.

Does it sound like sour grapes, like the words of a man who didn't get what he wanted? If you feel that way, then go ahead and think it-- I won't stop you from thinking that. But I know deep inside that, if Holly had truly inspired passion in me, I would've gone to great lengths to show her how I felt.

And when it is all said and done, the reason why I never made the move is because she turns me off, with her pithy cynicism and lack of depth.

She relayed an anecdote while we were in the jacuzzi that made me cringe. "In high school, I had a wealthy boyfriend, and on the last day of school a bunch of us went to his house for a party. His parents were out of town, so he opened up bottles of Dom for all of us. And we all sat in the jacuzzi, drinking champagne bottles, and one of our friends said, 'Poverty sucks'. We all laughed, it was so funny, like a scene from a movie... I was just reminded of that right now, sitting here with you guys."

It would've been funny to me if I'd felt that Holly had changed since those days she recollects so fondly. But I didn't laugh, because I know she still feels the same. That's why we never saw eye to eye on certain things. That's why I know the real reason she is going back to Florida. That's why, as much as I love her, I cannot truly connect with her in a deep, meaningful way.

She doesn't believe in love. She doesn't believe in the hard work that goes into loving someone or something so much that everything else gets pushed to the side. Love, to her, is a champagne bottle in hand and a denouncement of poor people. Love, to her, is being onstage, playing Rock Star and preening like she's been signed to Sony, while her bandmates are the ones who are making it all happen. Love, to her, is saying whatever she thought I wanted to hear because she thought that she was charming enough to make me do anything she asked me to do.

At one point, Deborah, who ironically was acting cool and mellow for once, got up from the couch and sat in Holly's seat while Holly was using the bathroom. This left a big open space next to me. If we'd been alone, Holly would've snuggled next to me and made herself comfy. But because we were sitting with these people that she obviously admires so much, she sat in another chair.

I made a comment. "I guess I have cooties, don't I?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"You'd rather sit over there than next to me," I said.

"No, it's just that... it's just that I like to lean on a pillow, and..."

"Whatever." I was smiling, relishing this moral relativism on her part. For all her talk of "I love you" and all that entails, she really doesn't know anything except how to protect her self-image.

Deborah was being flirty with me, which made me a bit nauseous, seeing as I despise her and what she normally stands for. The fact that I found her slightly more tolerable than Holly should tell you how awkward I felt after a while.

Richard, drunk and lethargic, slept through most of it.

After the movie ended, I finagled a ride to work out of Holly. I needed to feel like I'd gotten something out of this whole evening. Sad, isn't it? I was looking forward to a nice night, and instead I ended up looking forward to getting a ride to work.

I don't feel so bad about not being more forward with her. In fact, I feel a small tinge of pity for her, because I'm not sure if she's going to find what it is she is looking for unless she stops living in a fantasy world where she gets everything for nothing.

I always doubt my ability to love, but after last night, I am now convinced that I know a lot about loving. I have loved in the past, and I guess I know what it is I want now because no one seems worthy. And yet, I go on loving many things: art, poetry, literature, cinema, the spaces between friends and intimate moments with strangers, life, love, and liberty... I love all of these things so much that I am vicious when it comes time to defend them.

If love is co-dependence and self-delusion, then yes, I don't know the first thing about love.

But I suspect that it is much more. It is faith, yes, and it is trust and loyalty, but it is also dignity, and I am glad that my time with Holly nears its end with me realizing how undignified our bond is. Sometimes I feel so dirty after hanging out with her and her friends, because I feel like I have just been spoonfed a load of horseshit, and most times I do not call her on it because I know how upset she'd be if I exposed that part of her.

Call it what you want. I don't care. I guess I am picky, and have impossibly high standards for people. But is it too much to ask humans to act like humans, instead of slaves to fame and fortune?

I wish Holly the best of luck. I think last night was our last night. I don't know if I have it in me to see her off before she goes. I've had enough of trying to convey my emotions to a person who doesn't even know what it is that drives me as a person. You blog-readers out there-- you know more about me than Holly does.

So I am calling it quits right here and now. Holly is gone, as far as I'm concerned. There will be no need to see her on her way. She'll write, she'll call, when it is convenient for her.

I think it's better this way.