Yesterday during my film group, while discussing the ending of Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, I was caught off guard by how everyone else in the group saw the ending—that is, how it actually ended, which I somehow didn’t see. It’s implied—well, ok, not actually implied, but made fairly explicit—that the lisping effeminate medical student had killed the closeted toxically masculine never-bathing tormentor of him and his mother.
At first I was aghast that anyone could have read it that way, but then all the overwhelming evidence that I had suppressed started popping up in my head. (By “popping up in my head” I mean “gently explained by my dear fellow-cinephiles.”) It’s funny how I chose to completely overlook all this stuff, I think because of my naive belief (or projection) that a film with such antediluvian tropes could no longer be made—at least not by such a sensitive and intelligent artist as Jane Campion. Hadn’t she read Vito Russo? Another effeminate psycho killer? And I use “effeminate” here through the antiquated filter of the film’s perspective, not because I find Peter’s affect to be at all feminine, but an expression of masculinity commonly and culturally misattributed to the opposite sex. I saw the ending through my own revisionist lens, a film about grappling with one’s sexual identity, rising heroically above societal rejection, moving past tragedy and learning from it, rather than creating it, and without ending up a lisping bachelor living with mom after getting away with murder.
Or maybe Campion is toying with us, using our deep discomfort with difference to make a point about stereotypes? In that case, then of course Peter didn’t kill Phil. They were just starting to get along. Mom would have adjusted. It’s a hopeful story about fate, a tragedy, an allegory. I actually liked the film a lot better before being challenged to rethink my interpretation, so I’m going to stay with my ending.
CHORUS OF THERAPISTS: What do you mean? Do you think something else happened to her, that she’s not dead?
CHRIS: No no, I’m not saying that… but, actually, I hadn’t thought of that. Great. More content for my already richly and imaginatively anxious dream life. I guess I’m saying that I don’t really have words for what I’m feeling. Of course I know that mom is dead, her ashes rest in an urn on my desk. Disbelief is perhaps something easier to relate to. I can’t relate to her not being here, to hearing her giggle in my head, to seeing her smile so clearly, to feeling my head in her lap. There’s a disconnect between what’s happening in my head and… well, what’s happening in my head. How can she seem so alive and present and not be here? And dad, too… and Sue. A third of my inner family, just gone.
CHORUS OF THERAPISTS: This is life. Death’s an inevitable part of it.
CHRIS (rolls eyes): I remember when my grandfather died. I didn’t really know him, my grandparents lived in Chicago and I grew up in Alabama, and we had visited only a few times that I could remember. Aunt Joan called to say that he had died. I was maybe 10 or 11. I hadn’t experienced death before, and I just burst into tears. He wasn’t even a part of my life, but the idea of him suddenly not being around to even get to know wasn’t something that I had even thought about. He was always just, there. But dead? It was the first time I’d experienced real loss. When Manny died, I was only 27. I spent a year in deep mourning, but my goal was to get on with my life, and I knew I’d be okay, that I’d learn to live with his absence, that it would get easier. My grief was my job. But I had my whole life ahead of me, so many possibilities, maybe even another great or even greater love. Now, with mom’s death, it feels like the slow slide to the grave. I’m six of seven kids. Will I have to go through this again? And again and again and again and again and again?
CHORUS OF THERAPISTS: Well, yes… but…
CHRIS: But what? I’ll get used to it? I’ll live and enjoy every day as if it’s my last? And my sister’s last? And my brother’s last? And my other sisters’? And my other brother’s? And Big Chrissy’s? d’Auggie’s? Zoobie’s? I’m really not sure I can handle it.
CHORUS OF THERAPISTS: Chris, you have handled it. You did learn to live with Manny’s death. Remember at the time you really didn’t know if you’d ever feel even happy again, if you’d ever love again? And yet you did.
CHRIS (interrupts): Oh no… and Bob? I hadn’t even thought of that, Bob will die, too, the other great love of my life, my mentor, my guide… how could I live without him there… here?
CHORUS OF THERAPISTS: Bob is married to someone else, he’s happy, he’s a published author, accomplished, content, he’s had a good life, you’ll always have the memories of your time together…
CHRIS (interrupts again): Okay, don’t even go there. Mom told me many times in her final months that she’d never forget what I did for her, moving her in with me for her last year, taking care of her. I remember responding, jokingly, “Mom, you’ll be dead, how will you remember? When is this future time that we’ll be sipping a glass of wine together, reminiscing about these days that you’ll never forget? I appreciate what you’re saying, and this has been the greatest experience of my life, to spend these final days with you. I feel your gratitude now, and I am very grateful, too, for this time together.”
PAUSE
CHORUS OF THERAPISTS (lowering their heads and raising their eyes and bushy eyebrows above their glasses)
CHRIS: Oh. Right.
CHORUS OF THERAPISTS: Yes. You’re absolutely right. You’re still alive. Your siblings, dogs, Chrissy, Bob and all you friends…
CHRIS (interrupts again, shrieking): And my friends! I forgot about them, too, they’re all going to die!!
CHORUS OF THERAPISTS: Chris, focus… Your mom is gone. But those final days were among the finest you spent with her—you just said so—a really special time made all the more special and urgent by their impermanence. You’re at an age where death is going to be more prevalent…
CHRIS (interrupts again): But I lived through the AIDS crisis, when so many of my friends, boyfriends, my partner, fellow artists, all those gray faced men in my neighborhood carting around their oxygen tanks, they all died, so quickly. And Augustine, my sweet beautiful Augustine. If I hadn’t seen an acquaintance in 3 weeks, I’d be afraid to ask how he was, afraid that he, too, would be dead. I actually haven’t asked John West if his former lover, Chris, whom I last saw in 1993, smiling, still young, so vibrant and alive, but with that telltale gray skin… is he, is he dead, too?
CHORUS OF THERAPISTS (collectively, but quietly, and somewhat sympathetically, sighing): That was an insanely painful time, and you made it through. Just as now, just as what you were saying. You learned to live with death at a very early age and experienced more death than anyone should at that age.
CHORUS ABRUPTLY STARTS TO CRY
CHRIS: Sheesh, guys, brace up. I’m the one who’s supposed to be crying.
CHORUS OF THERAPISTS (sniffling, then sobbing loudly, cathartically): But we are you, we’re in your head, and we were there, we remember. How did you do it? How did we do it?? Don’t you remember Jesse Helms, the Moral Majority, all those people who didn’t care if you or your friends died, who called you names, who wouldn’t let your friend go to his own lover’s funeral???
CHRIS: Okay, guys, really, get it together. Listen… to the sound… of my soothing voice. And I’m paying for this session, remember? But see what I’m saying? It’s not as easy as just accepting that we’re strong, that death is inevitable, that we should live every day like it’s our last, carpe diem and all that shit.
CHORUS OF THERAPISTS (finally pulling it together): Helen Reddy said all that needs to be said here:
Oh yes I am wise But it’s wisdom born of pain Yes, I’ve paid the price But look how much I gained If I have to, I can do anything I am strong (strong!) I am invincible (invincible!)…
SCENE FADES TO BLACK AS MUSIC SWELLS AND IS ABRUPTLY CUT OFF BEFORE HELEN CAN EXCLAIM LOUDLY AND PROUDLY “I AM WOMAN,” WHICH WOULD LEND AN AIR OF GENDER DYSPHORIA—NOT ENTIRELY WITHOUT ITS PLACE, BUT HERE, MAYBE IT WOULD GET A LITTLE CONFUSING
During my time caring for my parents in Alabama, I met my friends James and Barb and Annetta for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant in Homewood. As they sat down, I blurted out “I just had a fling with a closeted former NFL linebacker. His thigh was the size of me…”
Barb looked at me disbelievingly, “You had sex with a stranger?”
“Well… his kids were at school and we…”
“Wait… Kids? At school? He’s married?”
“Well, separated, but…”
“And he’s closeted?”
“I assume so. So when I arrived he led me quickly to his basement where…”
“His basement?? You went to a complete stranger’s house and let him take you into his basement? He could have been an axe murderer…”
I hadn’t even thought of that. I started to get a little frustrated. I hadn’t had any sort of intimate relations in how long? and was eager to share my adventure with my friends. My linebacker was a very sweet man, so seemingly eager to connect. He lived only a few miles from my childhood home and told me of orgies that he’d arranged when he was a kid in middle and high school (middle school??) with the other boys in the neighborhood. I listened dumbfounded, remembering my fairly chaste adolescence and almost constant unfulfilled desire. And orgies were happening down the road? That I actually could have gone to?? I was mesmerized by this alternate vision of childhood.
Barb is a teacher, in a business college, and Annetta as well, instructional design and group dynamics stuff. They co-teach a class that integrates principles from Harry Potter and Hogwarts. They balance each other beautifully, Barb the gentle lecturer with lingering midwesternisms and Annetta from Salt Lake City but with what sounds like a Brooklyn maybe? accent, and an endearingly aggressive disposition, Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny with a huskier voice. James was my gay buddy in high school and is one of my closest friends still. James was very out by the time I met him, my first role model. Nobody messed with him, he was like Liberace or John Waters, fabulous and fearless and entertaining and smart. At the Miss Poinsettia contest in 10th grade, I wore a sexy strapless gown but forgot the words to my song when I stepped onto the stage, Leon Redbone’s “I Want to Be Seduced.” James appeared on stage blowing bubbles and giggling, just brilliant. James, Barb and Annetta are this dynamic trio of wit, intelligence and delight and I savor every moment with them.
The food arrived and my linebacker’s thigh faded from the conversation, the brief pleasure we experienced eclipsed by the comfort of beloved friends and great food.
Bob came to visit. He’s living in Sweden now, with his Catalan husband, but spent a few weeks here promoting his new book of collected essays and short pieces. I’m in there a little, a nice essay he wrote about my Out of Breath installation, and several essays written while everyone else was fighting for marriage equality and we were breaking up.
He stayed here, in the bed that we shared for 12 or so years, while I slept on the sofa in my office. After he left I woke up the next morning, groggily jumping up to make his tea, momentarily still a couple. We had so easily slipped into our old domestic routines over the length of his visit, I was genuinely discombobulated by his absence. So in the span of, say, 30 seconds, I went from semi-consciously thinking we were still together to reliving in fast motion every detail of our breakup, and just burst into tears.
Bob taught me how to integrate my own desires and narratives into my art, how to transform personal experience into something aesthetic. Other than Busby Berkeley, he’s influenced the direction and content of my art more than anyone else.
Stavros, meanwhile, has a new boyfriend. I’ll be traveling around Greece with them in September, and shooting images for my new project, Stavros at His Bath. I’ll tell you more about that project as it develops.
Being boyfriendless is actually going very well. I have puppies now. I’ve been dating and meeting guys, but my relationship with Bob set such a high standard, I find that I’m so picky. And guys my age are so busy all the time, maybe I’ll wait until I’m in my 60s to find someone to settle down and share ailments with.
Stavros, Dean & Mike, and I spent a few days on Tinos last week, one of the larger islands in the Cyclades. Tinos isn’t on the radar for many non-Greeks, and perhaps because of this, the island feels somehow less corrupted by tourism. The Venetians controlled it until 1715, long after the rest of Greece had fallen to the Turks, and a legacy of the long Venetian presence is a mixed Catholic/Greek Orthodox population and elaborately designed dovecotes that dot the entire island. There’s a thriving marble folk art industry. Every door and window on the island has a carved marble transom, each house incorporating some marble decoration or detail.
Most people make the pilgrimage to Tinos to visit the church of the Panagia Evangelistria, or Our Lady of Tinos. It was built on the spot where a miraculous icon with healing powers, thought to have been made by Luke the evangelist, was found in 1823. A few years earlier, Our Lady appeared to an elderly gentleman, telling him to wake up and dig up the icon. He told a local priest of his vision, but they both agreed that it may have been the devil in disguise, so best to proceed with caution. Mary kept appealing to this guy, disrupting his sleep to no avail. She finally moved on to a local nun who was a little more receptive to her directives, and bingo, she led some guys with shovels right to it. The icon was found the day after the creation of the modern Greek state, so Our Lady of Tinos was declared the patron saint of the emerging Greek nation, and the construction of the church was its first large architectural project.
On the feast day of the Dormition of the Virgin (August 15), penitents crawl from the port up the hill to the church on their hands and knees as a sign of devotion, many seeking to be healed in some way. There are carpeted crawl-ways leading up the hill, and, at the top, a ghoulish statue of a crawling believer with outstretched arm and no face. It really freaked me out, the statue, reminding me of the Ghost of Christmas Future, the one who finally spooked Ebenezer Scrooge into buying that Christmas goose and new legs for Tiny Tim. The icon is displayed in the church under a mound of glittering jewels. I stood in line to photograph it, everyone in front of me kissing it and praying feverishly, but when I finally got there, I just sort of stared at it, not really able to comprehend what I was looking at, a mound of shiny baubles under glass. Beyond the reproduction icons and plastic holy-water bottles of the main town, ah, the magic begins. Great food, villages unspoiled by time, dramatic landscapes, fantastic beaches, charming little museums, and people living off of and sharing the bounty of the rugged landscape.
We stayed in an apartment overlooking the bronze-age acropolis of Vryokastro. Starvos and I ascended to the top of the acropolis early one morning, to see the sunrise, and got in the way of a humpy hunter chasing a cute little bunny, who seemed annoyed to see us in what was clearly his domain, shotgun shells strewn here and there along the path, his hounds barking and howling, just like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I like to think that we saved a bunny that day.
In Kambos is a museum devoted to the work of Costas Tsoclis, an artist who creates paintings and sculptures saturated in antiquity and nostalgia, and that often extend beyond their frames. Outside he’s created a fabulous and whimsical large-scale semi-abstract depiction of St. George slaying the dragon. Inside are several room-sized painting installations. The museum is so well designed, that even the bathroom window frames a poetic installation, a single cross leaning against a corner of the empty back courtyard, blue skies and a single cloud above. The only restaurant in town was run by a man named Stefanos, an older gentleman with a wide and toothless smile, who served up cuisine of ingredients entirely home grown, including these fantastic fried wild herb “horta” balls. We ate at his son’s restaurant in the main town a few nights later, and it was just as delicious.
Driving north across the center of the island, we turned a corner and suddenly it seemed like we were on the moon. For as far as we could see, the entire landscape was filled with giant boulders, as if someone dumped a bag of giant rocks everywhere. In the center of this tremendous cyclopean rock-scape was a quaint village, Volax, with all of its houses built into, onto or around these massive stones. An artist covered the doors of vacant houses with handwritten transcriptions of various Greek poems, giving literal dimension to the weirdly poetic experience of the village.
I climbed Mt. Exobourgo one day, site of a crumbling Venetian fortress, the administrative center of the island from the 13th to 18th centuries, while Stavros slept in the car. Standing for 500 years or so, the fortress and town inside were dismantled by the Turks in 3 days.
Pyrgos, on the north central side of the island, is one of the island’s largest villages, with several museums devoted to marble art and production. The houses and streets seem to be interconnected physically and visually, as if carved from a single block of marble. There are so many villages to tell you about, each with its own unique character, charm, and history, but enough already.
As I mentioned in my previous post, Stavros and I had decided the week before departing for Tinos to be just friends. Once on Tinos, we further decided to start seeing other people by seeing the same guy, and at the same time. His name means “sugar” in Greek, and he is as sweet as they come, a sort of furry Greek Mighty Mouse: short, muscular, carpeted in fine hairs, laughing and smiling. He’s married, to a woman, and has children, but he eagerly jumped into our four arms. He was tender, passionate, and talked to us for hours, so free with the details of his life on the island. I remember looking at Stavros across our Mighty Mouse sandwich and seeing someone different, someone I hadn’t seen before, my boyfriend being passionately engaged by someone else. I felt for a moment as if I were an intruder, but then Stavros looked into my eyes, kissed me, and suddenly I felt like we were celebrating not the end of something, but a new beginning. Remember Audrey Hepburn at the end of Roman Holiday, returning to her duties as a princess? On the plane now back to my life in San Francisco without Stavros, invoking Audrey when asked about my favorite island, I say “Tinos,” Tinos without hesitation, glassy-eyed and with memories that I’ll cherish forever.
The boys, Stavros, and I took a little day trip to Marathonas last week, just a little northeast of Athens. It was here in 490 BC that the Persians were crushed by a considerably smaller contingent of clever Athenians. In a pivotal moment in European history, the victory proved that the young democracy could appoint the kind of political and military leadership necessary to repel such an ambitious empire while at the same time avoiding a return to tyranny, leading to the eventual rise of Classical Greek civilization and its continuing influence today.
Near the site of the battle, in Nea Makri, are the remains of a sanctuary and bath complex dedicated to the worship of Isis and other Egyptian/Hellenic gods. It was built around 160 AD by Herodes Atticus, the Roman consul of Athens and buddy of the Roman emperor and total heartthrob Hadrian. As far as I know, it’s the only such complex found in Greece. Herodes was inspired by a similar complex that Hadrian built at his villa in Tivoli, in turn modeled after an Egyptian sanctuary in Canopus on the Nile Delta.
On the site are replicas of the statues found there. The originals are located in the Archaeological Museum of Marathonas, a wonderful little museum nearby, which also includes finds from the area going back to 4,000 BC. The statues combine characteristics of Egyptian and Greek goddesses, and, as if designed for a Cecil B. DeMille epic, are very theatrical and seem oddly not of their time. One statue holds in her hands three small roses, symbols of both the Egyptian Isis and the Greek Aphrodite. Another Egyptian-looking goddess holds a sheaf of wheat, symbol of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, closely tied to the change of seasons.
A few days earlier, at the Museo Archaeologico in Athens, I had seen a statue of Antinous, Hadrian’s lover, as an Egyptian god. Antinous was associated with Osiris after he mysteriously drowned in the Nile and was deified by Hadrian. The wall label indicated that the statue was found in Marathonas, so I’m assuming it was part of the temple complex there. But Antinous was pretty much everywhere during that time. The sad obsessed Hadrian not only declared him a god after his death and commissioned thousands of humpy statues of his likeness, he also built a city on the site of his death, Antinopolis. He also identified a star in the sky as Antinous, a rosy lotus that grew along the Nile as the Antinous flower, and proposed a new constellation of Antinous being carried to heaven by an eagle (the constellation Aquila. Remember Ganymede was swept up to Olympus by Zeus, in the form of an eagle, to be the gods’ cupbearer).
Ganymede was the loveliest born of the race of mortals, and therefore the gods caught him away to themselves, to be Zeus’ wine-pourer, for the sake of his beauty, so he might be among the immortals.
I have such a crush on Hadrian. First of all he’s exactly my type with his big face and wavy hair and beard. Secondly he turns his boyfriends into gods. He wrote an autobiography, unfortunately lost, that I am hoping turns up someday.
But anyway, back to the little Archaeological Museum of Marathonas… in addition to the Egyptian-Hellenic god statues, there are many interesting grave stele and funeral monuments, including a herm unusual for having a penis and not a head. I’ve often wondered if one day archaeologists will find a hidden room somewhere filled with all the gentle-talia that have been hacked off of old statuary. I can imagine some modern-day Shemp opening the door and all the marbles spilling out around him in a river of white willies.
Last night Dean & Mike came over for dinner. I inadvertently made exactly the same thing that I made for them when I had them over last time. In my baby-gay days, my older buddy William would have me over for lunch and always make the same thing for me, a sort of flavorless broccoli pasta and a green salad. Always. And he’d always ask excitedly how I liked the pasta, as if it were the first time for me to experience it, and I’d always find something positive to say, like “the broccoli was cooked perfectly!” I got a kick out of it, each time wondering if there would be some kind of variation. I attributed it to the onset of senility, normal for people over 45, I thought. And now I am William. The thing is, these guys are vegetarians, well, sophisticated pesca-occasional-bacon-itarians, and I’ve run through all my veggie standards, so maybe I’m seized by a lack of culinary exploration and not some nascent middle-aged senility… not quite William. I hope.
I wonder if I’ve already written a post about this?
We watched Funeral Parade of Roses, Toshio Matsumoto’s wild inversion of the Oedipus myth, set in the gay subculture of late-60s Tokyo. The fractured narrative and visceral imagery and occasional shots of the filmmaking process and interviews with the actors were simply electrifying. Nothing else is like it, well, I should say that nothing else that’s like it is terribly watchable, and certainly nothing as engaging from or about the gay community lately. Except maybe the lesbotic but more mainstream Blue is the Warmest Color, which so profoundly and intimately captured erotic awakening, and Concussion, examining the other end of the erotic timeline. The thing I love most about those two recent films is that homosexuality is incidental–no coming out stories, no suicides or conflicts over their sexuality, no tidied-up sexless made-for-primetime-viewing homobots, just real people struggling with real issues who happen to be gay. The queens in Funeral Parade of Roses put on the masks of another gender in order to simulate acceptability, and despite the artifice and posturing, seemed so sadly real, like killing one’s mother and sleeping with one’s father were not only plausible, but inevitable.
Earlier in the day a new buddy from the east came over for tea, let’s call him Bill Cosby. I had met him only earlier that morning online, and because we hit it off so swimmingly and he was leaving town the next day and I had but a teeny window of availability, I abandoned my cardinal rule of meeting in a public place where I could easily escape from, and asked Mr. Cosby up to the CocoPlex for a spot o’ tea and conversation. What a story he told me! He’s married, and to a woman(!), and has all these kids, and only came out of the closet a few months ago and is staying with his wife as they transition to whatever is to come. I admired his honesty and openness, and could sense the relief and enthusiasm he must be feeling to finally express a side of himself that’s been dormant for so long. He even blurted out that he’s a Republican. We were sitting on my back deck at the time and I quickly glanced around to make sure there were no neighbors passing by who may have heard his pronouncement, briefly fearful that my leftist credentials would be tarnished by association. I didn’t directly tell him that I’m a Prius-driving ultra-liberal socialist, but I did chastise him for supporting a fascist regime whose backward fantasy-based environmental, social and fiscal policies are going to take decades to unravel if the public ever wakes from its brainwashed tea party stupor.
Anyway, he’s sort of exactly the kind of middle-aged guy that I always went after during my halcyon twinkie days (balding, furry face, dark eyebrows, hairy forearms, yadda yadda, you all know my type) and now he’s, like, my age! I felt an instant affinity, having experienced the same thing with Bob, realizing I was drawn towards something else but not wanting to end such a beautiful relationship and eventually deciding it just wasn’t fair to anybody. He’s at the beginning of this process, and like a bad therapist, I told him what was going to happen by telling him what happened to me. A delightful man, starting a new life in middle age. Lou Grant said, “You’ve got spunk,” and so does this guy, a lot of spunk. Lou also said “I hate spunk,” but I love it, and am eager to follow this developing story.
The Board of Supervisors here has passed legislation making it now illegal to be naked in San Francisco. Except behind closed doors, or during the seasonal bacchanalias and street fairs. The mayor has a week or so, I think, to sign or veto it, so you can still be naked for a few more days without getting in trouble. For some time now, all the guys in my neighborhood with shaved pubes, after discovering that nudity by itself was not illegal, decided to hang out in the Castro Commons in their tenny-runners and nothing else. Seeing them walking down the street naked as jaybirds with backpacks was one of the great joys of living in this neighborhood. I’m really saddened that it’s come to this, enforced tan lines. When I moved here in the early 80’s, I remember a kind of “anything goes” attitude, our diversity and uniqueness celebrated. Now it seems all about melding into a mainstream. Where have all the sissies gone?? Thank you Sylvester that there is at least a RuPaul on TV. I’ll miss the naked guys and their golden leathery shaved skin and little button peepees. And that one very talented naked plein-air painter.
I’m trying to get caught up on my film viewing. I tend to see very little in the theaters now, only those films with really loud explosions and Bruce Willis. On Fridays I read all the film reviews and then add the interesting ones to my Netflix queue. By the time the film is released on home video, I’m usually about 3-9 months behind the rest of my film-enthusiast friends, but I get to watch movies in my underwear with a glass of wine and on a 10 foot screen. My dream as a kid was to have such a screening room in my house, and the accessibility of home theater projection systems and blu-ray has made the experience possible, affordable, and negligibly different from the experience of seeing something at, say, the Opera Plaza. Here’s what I’ve seen over the last week:
Jesus Henry Christ, The Sisters, Love Crime, Norwegian Wood, Guest of Cindy Sherman, Frankenweenie (at the cineplex), Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Belle de Jour, Belle Toujours, Looper (Bruce Willis, so at the cineplex), Roma Città Aperta.
I’m still a little dazed from Rosselini’s neo-realist melodrama Roma, Città Aperta last night. First a pregnant Anna Magnani is shot dead while rushing to reach her fiancé as he’s being taken away by the Gestapo, and on the day that they are to be wed! And then, after our other hero is tortured to his death with torches and clamps and whips, the cute parish priest is tied to a chair and shot dead! Seeing Anna Magnani shot in the back was unsettling enough, but the chubby little priest… che roba brutale!
I had my teeth whitened. It lasted for a day, and then my diet of Trader Joe’s mini chocolate peanut butter cups and iced tea instantly re-yellowed them. The dentist was the only one in the office when I arrived mid-afternoon. And I was her only patient. Perhaps for the whole day? She told me cautiously that she was born “overseas,” and we hit it off instantly when I mumbled some Arabic that Nemr taught me. I was there for 3 hours. She talked the entire time, like she hadn’t talked to another person in weeks. She’d ask me a question and I’d gurgle a response. I had the feeling that she doesn’t have many patients. It really felt like the backdrop of a film, I mean the absence of employees, fellow dentists, hygienists, and patients, like if my Arab Dentist/Terrorista put me to sleep I’d wake up in a male brothel in Morocco. With white teeth, of course.
I’m starting to learn Greek. It’s all about rote memorization, as most words have nothing to do with anything I’ve heard before and seem completely disconnected from their meaning. At least now I can read stuff. At a five year-old level. I spent the better part of yesterday trying to pronounce the word for “the hotel.” It’s “το ξενοδοχείο,” pronounced like “to-xen-o-doh-cHEE-o.” It seems like way too many sounds for such a simple concept. The book that I’m using is really great, because they don’t have conjugation tables or declensions of articles, just dialogues, so you learn the language by absorption and repetition. I yearn for those days when I didn’t have to study, when my brain absorbed whatever it read. I remember once in 4th grade a student talking about studying for a test, and I was paralyzed that I didn’t know what that was or how to do it. I just seemed to grasp and remember everything. Already I’ve forgotten what that word was for hotel.
I had my teeth whitened. It lasted for a day, and then my diet of Trader Joe’s mini chocolate peanut butter cups and iced tea instantly re-yellowed them. The dentist was the only one in the office when I arrived mid-afternoon. And I was her only patient. Perhaps for the whole day? She told me cautiously that she was born “overseas,” and we hit it off instantly when I mumbled some Arabic that Nemr taught me. I was there for 3 hours. She talked the entire time, like she hadn’t talked to another person in weeks. She’d ask me a question and I’d gurgle a response. I had the feeling that she doesn’t have many patients. It really felt like the backdrop of a film, I mean the absence of employees, fellow dentists, hygienists, and patients, like if my Arab Dentist/Terrorista put me to sleep I’d wake up in a male brothel in Morocco. With white teeth, of course.