WHY I LOVE MEL GIBSON'S "MAVERICK" (PART TWO)
FLASHBACK -- TEN YEARS AGO, THIS VERY WEEK:
They say the first break-up is always the hardest, but I haven't found that to be true. First girlfriends become glossed over, any early adolescent puppy love pains neutralized after awhile by the sheen of nostalgia for a time and place. It's that second girlfriend that really sticks. It's that second one that makes me call up my inner Maverick whenever I think of her. The second "serious" girlfriend usually comes along in your late teens, when your future plans suddenly become very real, and those future plans almost always include a significant other, and you usually can't picture anyone other than her being with you forever.
In the second week of June, in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-four, it all came crashing down for her and I after two and a half years. She told me she was seeing someone else. What's worse, he was everything opposite of what I was. I was (am) of average height, dark, bookish (see photo at left). This guy was a big tall chunk of Danish ham, athletic, with a flowing mane of white-blond hair. SonofasonofasonofaBITCH!!
It was over...
ONE YEAR LATER
A year gone by...a year of playing Soundgarden's Superunknown over and over... "Stuttering/Cold and damp/Steal the warm wind tired friend/Times are gone for honest men..."
a year of discovering the medicinal powers of the Drink...and a year of immersing myself in dark and nihilistic cinema...it was the year of pulp fiction, a year of things to do in [wherever] when you're dead...and a year of being driven crazy by not seeing her at ALL. Sometimes, contrary to expectations, the pain of a split is dulled by mere presence. A "hey-how-you-doing" phone call, an awkward nod in the coffee shop. It was a small town, but she was NOWHERE. All I had was second-hand reports. Oh, I saw her here three nights ago... I think she's engaged now....
Now a much more mature man of twenty, it seemed to me I was given a second chance of sorts. When I heard her nervous, hesitant voice on the phone asking if I wanted to "do something sometime" it was as if...well, to paraphrase Mr. Cornell and Co., it was as if heaven had sent hell away.
She kissed me when I left that night...she kissed me again the next day. The Danish ham was nowhere to be seen. Within a month, I was visiting her regularly at a duplex she lived in (alone) in another town fifty miles away. She was affectionate, fun, and distant. One time, I spent the night. "No funny business," she warned me as I crawled, fully clothed and needy, into bed to lie platonically next to her. Of course, there was funny business in the deep of the night, inspired, exhausting, mutual.
The next time it was too late for me to drive home, she made it clear to me that I would be sleeping on the couch. This I did not do. I crept into her room, and knelt at her bedside.
I don't know if she was asleep or awake at that point. I whispered to her form that I would live for her, die for her, amuse her, protect her, for as long as she wanted.
I knelt at her bedside, as if in prayer or penance, until the sun came up. For those five or six hours, I no longer existed. Anything that was me had vanished. I was just adjunct of her.
We left her place at the same time, her to work, me back home. Her car was ahead of me on the highway for awhile, slowly but steadily pulling away. Soon she was a red speck, then she was gone. The symbolism was too brutally obvious to ignore. It was over again...
I got into my own bed that morning, still an empty vessel, and alternately dozed and sobbed. The kind of crying you left behind in early grade school, where your sinuses swell and your breath comes in watery hitches.
At around five that evening, I pulled myself out of bed, and flicked on HBO. It was about fifteen minutes into Maverick. Idly at first, then with growing interest, I watched...
To Be Continued
FLASHBACK -- TEN YEARS AGO, THIS VERY WEEK:
They say the first break-up is always the hardest, but I haven't found that to be true. First girlfriends become glossed over, any early adolescent puppy love pains neutralized after awhile by the sheen of nostalgia for a time and place. It's that second girlfriend that really sticks. It's that second one that makes me call up my inner Maverick whenever I think of her. The second "serious" girlfriend usually comes along in your late teens, when your future plans suddenly become very real, and those future plans almost always include a significant other, and you usually can't picture anyone other than her being with you forever.
In the second week of June, in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-four, it all came crashing down for her and I after two and a half years. She told me she was seeing someone else. What's worse, he was everything opposite of what I was. I was (am) of average height, dark, bookish (see photo at left). This guy was a big tall chunk of Danish ham, athletic, with a flowing mane of white-blond hair. SonofasonofasonofaBITCH!!
It was over...
ONE YEAR LATER
A year gone by...a year of playing Soundgarden's Superunknown over and over... "Stuttering/Cold and damp/Steal the warm wind tired friend/Times are gone for honest men..."
a year of discovering the medicinal powers of the Drink...and a year of immersing myself in dark and nihilistic cinema...it was the year of pulp fiction, a year of things to do in [wherever] when you're dead...and a year of being driven crazy by not seeing her at ALL. Sometimes, contrary to expectations, the pain of a split is dulled by mere presence. A "hey-how-you-doing" phone call, an awkward nod in the coffee shop. It was a small town, but she was NOWHERE. All I had was second-hand reports. Oh, I saw her here three nights ago... I think she's engaged now....
Now a much more mature man of twenty, it seemed to me I was given a second chance of sorts. When I heard her nervous, hesitant voice on the phone asking if I wanted to "do something sometime" it was as if...well, to paraphrase Mr. Cornell and Co., it was as if heaven had sent hell away.
She kissed me when I left that night...she kissed me again the next day. The Danish ham was nowhere to be seen. Within a month, I was visiting her regularly at a duplex she lived in (alone) in another town fifty miles away. She was affectionate, fun, and distant. One time, I spent the night. "No funny business," she warned me as I crawled, fully clothed and needy, into bed to lie platonically next to her. Of course, there was funny business in the deep of the night, inspired, exhausting, mutual.
The next time it was too late for me to drive home, she made it clear to me that I would be sleeping on the couch. This I did not do. I crept into her room, and knelt at her bedside.
I don't know if she was asleep or awake at that point. I whispered to her form that I would live for her, die for her, amuse her, protect her, for as long as she wanted.
I knelt at her bedside, as if in prayer or penance, until the sun came up. For those five or six hours, I no longer existed. Anything that was me had vanished. I was just adjunct of her.
We left her place at the same time, her to work, me back home. Her car was ahead of me on the highway for awhile, slowly but steadily pulling away. Soon she was a red speck, then she was gone. The symbolism was too brutally obvious to ignore. It was over again...
I got into my own bed that morning, still an empty vessel, and alternately dozed and sobbed. The kind of crying you left behind in early grade school, where your sinuses swell and your breath comes in watery hitches.
At around five that evening, I pulled myself out of bed, and flicked on HBO. It was about fifteen minutes into Maverick. Idly at first, then with growing interest, I watched...
To Be Continued
And what the fuck this has to do with Maverick, I still want to know...
I will reserve more prolific commentary for the story's conclusion.