a tribute to my friend ‘H’, one of the many lost to COVID-19. By that I don’t mean that she died, I mean that she disappeared from my life. There are so many like that. Anyway, maybe I’ll send her this blog, maybe I won’t. As soon as I started watching The Bat, I thought of her. An awful movie. 'H' is a lesbian and a huge fan of film noir (as many lesbians are -- but ‘H’ is a very special lesbian). Since we are on the subject of lesbians — wow, apparently Agnes Moorehead was one. Wikipedia says there was much speculation about her sexuality, and Paul Lynde said "Well, the whole world knows Agnes was a lesbian – I mean classy as hell, but one of the all-time Hollywood dykes.” That explains a lot. The only reason I chose The Bat was because of Agnes Moorehead — Vincent Price bores me, and yes, it’s about a killer called ‘the bat’ (yawn) who is terrorizing the town, there is a very complicated plot which I didn’t even bother to follow, and it was taken from a stage play, and they’re all in an old house, and he’s killing people. Kind of Agatha Christie without Agatha Christie (who you really do need, if you’re 'doing' Agatha Christie). Anyway, at the centre of it all is Agnes Moorehead, who plays Cornelia Van Gorder — a mystery writer who buys an old spooky mansion. (It sounds like a great plot idea but nothing comes of it.) However, Agnes gets to prance around and be Agnes Moorhead. First of all there’s something enormously strong about her — which means she played a lot of spinsters and teachers etc., but then when she gets to play the lead you see what an amazing actress she is. She’s in an awful lot of movies with bad actors, like -- let’s say Rock Hudson -- and all of a sudden when she walks in the screen comes alive. Immediately you know something is up with Cornelia Van Gorder — she’s got something on her mind, always, I can see Moorehead’s actress mind working on the character mind of Cornelia; I presume Moorehead’s approach would have been ‘Well she’s a writer, so she’s always plotting things. Very pragmatic, down to business, everything serves a purpose, she gets things done.” How can I explain it, Moorehead always comes up with something that drives the scene. In Bewitched, where she played Samantha’s mother Elvira -- it was disdain, she was simply disdainful of everything, and she was the funniest thing on the show. 'H' is writing a play about Cornel Woolrich, so now I will write about how obsessed both of us are with him. Cornel Woolrich is a little known American mystery writer; he is little known because he was gay, okay? Yes he was a very sad little alcoholic gay man who lived with his mother all his wife (I identify, as I drink too much, and my mother took up residence in my psyche long ago -- and refuses to move out). Probably the most interesting thing about Cornel Woolrich is that Hichcock based the leading character in Psycho on him. (I may have written about this in another blog, but at this point, I don’t give a you-know-what). You see Rear Window was based on Woolrich’s short story, and Hitchcock saw him on the set, and well -- how could he resist? Woolrich was a very gaunt, shy, sallow, half-dead looking sort of person. He in his mother lived in a hotel — in the days before apartment buildings, when you could to that sort of thing. (My mother lived in a hotel — Sutton Place in Toronto— people who live in hotels are very special people, or at the very least they think they are, which is much the same.) The details of Woolrich’s life have kind of left my brain, but I know after his mother died, he was devastated and continued to live in the same hotel room for awhile, and then moved to another hotel, where he drank himself to death. There were many movies based on his books, including Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black. He wrote as well -- or better -- than Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett, but he wasn’t heterosexual or dashing like them, and often wrote from the point of view of a female character -- so everyone ignored him. What captured Hitchcock’s imagination about Woolrich was a man who was in love with his mother. I was once in love with my mother so I get it. (I’ve written about that over and over. I just wrote another play about her.) Suffice it to say that I believed that she could read my mind. I told my therapist when I was 19 that I wanted to tell my mother to f-off — just in my head. And the therapist said -- 'well why don’t you?' and I said, 'because I’m afraid she’ll know I cursed her in my head' and she said -- 'but your mother can’t read your mind.' This was a huge revelation to me; I started to tell her to f-off in my head all the time after that, and then actually did it to her face which she didn’t like at all. But I’ve abandoned 'H' (which if you knew the rest of the letters in her name, would be a very poetic statement). I love 'H' very much. You know those COVID-19 friends you lose for awhile— you didn’t used to see them very much, maybe once every two months. But after COVID-19 she moved out of town and of course no one was supposed to see anyone. 'H' is tall, lanky and looks just like a boy, even though she is definitely a girl. I think the reason I am a little in love with her is because she is -- like me --completely unsuited to live in the world. There is a sense that she wouldn’t know how to turn on a tap if her lover didn’t tell her how to do it. I have the same relationship with my partner. He imagines that I am totally inept and dysfunctional without him and — it’s not true! It’s simply not. He says I would still be living in a hovel over the Kentucky Fried Chicken Take-Out at Church and Wellesley, if it wasn’t for him. This is only partially true, and anyway I really didn’t mind living there. But 'H,' like me, really understands nothing but the fictions she makes up in her head; she kind of lives in there, and when she has to suddenly do something in the world (you see this sometimes when she’s thinking, and then turns and looks at you) you realise she’s saying to herself ‘Oh yes, life! I have to deal with that, don’t I?' I identify. For people like us it's a difficult life, but unique in a way that you perhaps will never know.
