PLAGUE DIARY 18: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

The Kennel Murder Case (1933)
I’ve never felt so alone. I’ve done it to myself really, I’ve done it all my life. Where does it come from? This need to not think the way everyone else does? Am I actually an independent thinker or just seriously nuts? When I was in junior high I came here from the U.S.A and I was the loudmouth in class, who always knew everything, and nobody liked me — because I got 100% in geography. I was the outspoken American, I got it from my mother. She encouraged me. Was it her fault? I used to carry a briefcase to school, and I played the ‘cello. I was in love with Tom Underwood — even though I didn’t know it — who lived across from me in the town houses on Cassandra Boulevard. He was always trying to get me to hit balls with a hockey stick. Tom’s father was the hero of the neighbourhood; when some sort of giant machinery (was it a tractor?) got out of control — he hopped on it and stopped it. Apparently lives were saved. To me Tom’s dad looked like a skinny old alcoholic loser. Tom’s mother was a big blowsy brunette who always wore too little. I think she was onto me. I still have pictures of Tom in my basement, sitting with my guitar, lanky, with thick juicy lips and a great shock of brown hair over his eyes. He was always outgrowing his clothes. When I got into high school I decided that I was going to get lower marks and become social. It didn’t work. In high school I was still an outcast despite my efforts to fit in, so I discovered Ayn Rand. That was a huge mistake, it only isolated me further. I knew from my mother that I was special — ergo I was Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. Yeah, it was her fault. I fell in love with the lifeguard at our town house pool, his name was Rick, and he let me watch things (I was taking swimming lessons, earning my bronze) while he screwed all the sexually frustrated housewives in our neighbourhood. He was always trying to get me to kiss girls, and I was terrified. Rick sat with me in the cabana at the pool one day with the door shut, and made me listen to all the dirty lyrics from ‘Louie Louie.’ ‘You’ve got to go to the CNE and kiss a girl ,’ he said. I didn’t want to, but I loved it when he gave me advice. ‘Just go up to some girl at a party and feel her tits. Just cup both of them in your hands.’ He would say. “They say they don’t like it, but they do.”When I finally went to the CNE with Tom and two girls, I lost them in the crowd, and ended up walking up the half finished Don Valley Parkway alone. Later on in high school I started dating Alison Knowles, whose father worked for Elwy Yost, and who used to wear stockings that matched her dresses. ‘A girl always matches’ she said. So she wore orange dresses and orange stockings, and green dresses and green stockings, etc.. (But that’s the way it was in the 60s.) We used to lie on her bed in the basement and neck to 'Scarborough Fair.' I used to get erections. Now and then when we were necking she would say ‘Uh oh, not that’ as if I was a masher who was going to rape her. But honestly, I had no idea what she was talking about. I can’t remember much about the rest of my high school years. When I got into the York University acting program I put all my energy into theatre; it was the only thing that made me happy. I had a girlfriend when I was at University, her name was Paula. She was very cute and very nice but I only had sex with her out of obligation. When I got involved with theatre I stopped feeling so much like an outsider, but inside I knew I was gay. Groups of New York actors were always coming to York University to  workshop with us. I remember once Gorden Masten told me that one of the male New York acting teachers had said I was ‘a real cutie.’ It was disconcerting. Ron Francis (an acting student) came to my room in residence and tried to kiss me. I said ‘No no!” He said ‘I just assumed..…’ It seems to me now that all during that time when I was desperately unhappy with my girlfriend Paula, and I only had the theatre, I was trying to fit in and be not gay but normal. So maybe I achieved that for awhile. Then I came out of the closet, and suddenly I was a bit of a star, and I did gay plays. All of a sudden I guess I had achieved what my mother had predicted, and what I had wanted all along — I was special, and the more friends I had, the more plays I put on, and visa-versa. But then I started speaking out again, and it was just like back in junior high. I was the loud American with the briefcase, only this time I was a drag queen and talking about being promiscuous. Jane my alter ego was taking people on walks through the gay village and talking about where she had sex. My picture was on the front of newspapers and magazines — I was intoxicated. More and more I was a polarising figure, and I was aware that people in my own community didn’t like me, but I kind of couldn’t stop. I was infamous — and it made me very insecure to be a bad boy that so many people hated. But on the other hand, it was kind of fun. People were always talking about me, it seemed. Was I doing it all just to get attention? Is that what the problem is now? Why I need so much to go out to bars and go see plays when everyone else seems perfectly happy — even inspired — to stay at home? And why I am writing a blog that just pisses everybody off? Is it because I want to be the centre of attention again? Do I actually believe everything I say I believe? I’ve written a book about Edward de Vere being the real Shakespeare. It makes me an outcast in the academic community. I do believe Edward de Vere was Shakespeare, (I’m sorry) but am I truly an original thinker, or am I just drawn to outlier ideas because I’m still that loud American being egged on by his crazy mother who was oddly obsessed with her ‘special’ son? I watched an old movie today and it made me feel absolutely nothing. Maybe art doesn’t really affect me anymore, maybe all these blogs are just stupid attempts at attention. The movie was called The Kennel Murder Case, starring William Powell — who I never really liked much. He plays a detective who is only concerned with the facts. Should I be more concerned with the facts? I honestly don’t believe that the government’s plan to deal with COVID-19 is the best one. (Sorry again!) I wish William Powell was around to get to the bottom of this mystery. At one point he thinks it’s the Chinese Cook, but then we realise this isn’t a racist movie, that Loki just looks like a villain because he’s different. I guess I look like a villain because I’m different. I’m really traumatised when people move away from me on the street because of COVID-19 — and it’s only because people have done that to me in the past because I’m gay. So maybe I should just buy a face mask — as that’s clearly what separates the good people from the bad now. The good people wear masks, the bad people don’t. Maybe I should go buy some toilet pepper and hurry home like a zombie wearing my mask, eager to get out of the public square, eager to hide at home so that old people like me will continue to live. Then people would love me at least. Mary Astor was so beautiful in The Kennel Murder Case. Sorry I said that. I don’t know why I’m so seduced by beauty, I don’t know why I care about beauty, I don’t know why I want this blog to be beautiful. Because it can’t be — not today — because I’m so depressed. No one cares about old movies or beauty anymore — except me — and no one is interested in outliers anymore. It’s best to just give In.  I was going to suggest in this blog, originally — are you sitting down?— that logic is not the best way to solve anything — even murder mysteries — because logic is fallible. In fact that’s what I planned my next Shakespeare book to be about, the fallibility of logic vs. the truth of art. Because in art — ‘ A is not A.’ That's what a metaphor is; when something is something else.  A lie that is true. Maybe that’s what I’ve written here today.  Something that’s not true. Maybe I’ve given you a lot of little facts from my life — all of which are true, but then put them all together to concoct a giant untruth (which is what science sometimes is too often, really) — out of a desperate compunction to get your attention. Maybe I’m not depressed. Maybe I’ve been leading you on. Oh look - another person wearing a mask! I really must consider doing that.