PLAGUE DIARY 51: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Rhapsody (1954)
This movie is triggering for me for a number of reasons — a)  I once pondered being a professional musician, and b)  Elizabeth Taylor as a woman in love. One forgets occasionally how gorgeous she was — though those breasts do strike someone of my persuasion as somewhat ridiculous. I remember hearing of Elizabeth Taylor in the movie version of A Little Night Music, singing ‘Send in the Clowns.’ Apparently, when she sang “Are we a pair?” she glanced, somewhat briefly, at her own immense breastulums. Well, in this movie, it’s not her fault. Those 50s dresses were cinched tightly at the waist, and the torpedo bra made it a lethal combination. This is the most unfeminist movie ever made. Taylor learns how to be a woman, which means loving a man — i.e. encouraging him and listening to him play music — and (very necessary) remaining in the background (breastolios or not). She does a lot of listening — mostly to Tchaikowsky’s Violin Concerto (Vittorio Gassman) and Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto (John Ericson). The two stellar instrumental soloists are also beyond gorgeous (Ericson was famous for appearing as a nude centrefold 20 years later in Playgirl magazine). She's torn between two lovers. But she’s only really in love with Gassman. However, she bullies him into skiing in St. Moritz instead of practicing. They split; she attaches herself to second banana John Ericson — who suffers, because she doesn’t really love him. Ergo, everyone suffers. Gassman says to Taylor: “There is only one way you can help me: by staying away from me.” This has special relevance for us today. But Rhapsody triggers me, because when I was having sex with girls, I was definitely afraid of smothering women (that is being smothered by them, not smothering them). Gassman says he “cannot be possessed or smothered.” But there’s no stopping Taylor, who writhes abed wiggling her tremendous breasticulas, tortured, listening, to Gassman playing the violin on the radio. I knew I was triggered the minute she began covering him with kisses. All I could think about was — doesn’t he feel pressured to get an erection? That’s what happened when women necked with me. I never had any trouble though, because I was of an age when erections popped up at the slightest provocation, willy nilly. (The fantasy I utilized to turn myself on was imagining my own ass naked. It always worked.) I was terrified of marriage from an early age — before I even knew sex existed. After I went to Provincetown with my girlfriend when I was 27 I went a little crazy and threw a fork at her, and decided I was gay (the fork throwing was an accident). I remember my father inquiring ‘aren’t there a lot of bisexuals in Provincetown?’ — and I knew that I was one of them, but attached at the hip to her. It’s easy to blame my smothering mother for all this, but I think I am scared of men smothering me as well (I do like being strangled though - just kidding. Or maybe not). But let’s not blame my poor mother; My upbringing was the same as most boys in the 50s — a bored, sexually frustrated, lonely mother,  and an absent father. And lots of young men raised in capitalist nuclear families didn’t turn out gay. I think I’m just afraid of love. Which brings us to to COVID-19. I do need to have people around me — but ones that I cannot get close to for some reason. I used to have a friend with a very large penis (excuse me, it’s relevant) who as far as I know was incapable of making a luncheon date with anyone. That is, you couldn’t call him up and say — do you want to go to dinner and movie on Friday? But he was always out; the only good conversations I ever had with him were when we met on the street. And then I realised that if he usually just walked around, meeting people on the street, sometimes talking with them, sometimes having sex with them. That was his life. And he was completely spontaneous in this way (something I am completely incapable of) -- in other words his day was empty until he happened to meet a person by chance and then things would happen — whether it was a complete stranger or someone he knew well. My father was somewhat like this. He had long conversations with shopkeepers and waiters, and they adored him. (He had no idea what to say to me however.) What happens to the people who need to be around people, but not close to them, during COVID-19? You can say who cares? — they’re obviously screwed up. And that would be unkind of you; which I suggest is an undocumented side effect  of COVID-19 (despite the ubiquitous moralizing). But when I think of loneliness I think of Robert Spergel. He had an enormous effect on me. I was in a string quartet at the Royal Conservatory of Music when I was 20 years old, and he was my teacher; I don’t know even if I knew he was a ‘cellist then. But I was trying to play the ‘cello, and he was very nasty to me, a little spiteful, the epitome of a mean, scary, old man. However, he knew music. It seemed to me that he had a particular contempt for me — was it because he was a talented musician and I was not?  Looking back on it — I was quite attractive at the time ( who wasn’t at that age?) — could that have had something to do with it? Anyway, years late  I saw him at The Cellar, a gay bathhouse, loping along and then peering around a dark corner, his flabby belly and tits exposed, his towel lingering dangerously in the saggy groin area. He was very old. For me, it was terrifying. I had not known he was gay. Then I googled him: he had been a child prodigy, playing the ‘cello with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the ripe old age of 12 (Bobby Spergel! — profiled in the Canadian Jewish News!). And then I saw a picture of him of him when he was 16; he was a Young Blonde God.  It’s merely a fantasy that Robert Spergel was lonely. But that tragic story — an ex-prodigy,  later being so mean to a young handsome gay ‘cellist (me), and the climax — cruising the halls of The Cellar — conjures up loneliness. But I too was at The Cellar, sitting in a room, taking on all comers. Was I lonely? Am I lonely? Strangely enough, not as long as I can be among people, smell their smells, feel their scorn, rub up against them (when permitted) -- and watch everything they do — and imagine everything else. I love watching. And today at my guest house in Toronto, looking out my window as people hurry by, masked, I think….well, today, they are so far from me. They can’t hurt me, can they? And that is, I suppose, a consoling comfort. Or is it?