Purple Noon I’ll never know, the original title in French is Full Sun, which makes a little more sense; the main thing about this movie is it stars Alain Delon, who I’m vaguely familiar with, but I can’t remember what I’ve seen him in. Oh yes — and Patricia Highsmith’s comment on the film — it was the first adaptation of her novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, and she called the suggestion at the end that Ripley would be brought to justice a betrayal. It is. Highsmith wrote several novels about Ripley. I’ve read most all of them; she had the uncanny knack of getting inside a twisted brain. Her killers are most often cultured fellows, and certainly sympathetic — they just have one ‘quirk’. Many of her novels though — not the Ripley ones — present really interesting moral dilemmas. In one of her novels a young woman falls for a Peeping Tom. The Peeping Tom is kind of a nice shy guy; she is more predatory than he, so she invites him in. In another one of her novels a man sets out to kill his wife, but is not able to carry it out, then she dies. Is he somehow then guilty of murder? Purple Noon has been called sun-drenched, and indeed it is. I am trying desperately to remain calm, but I’m supposed to be going to Montreal on Saturday, and yet again the whole trip is fraught with anxiety. Will it live up to expectations? Will life begin there again? Will I be sun-drenched, or just desperately lonely for life the way it once was? My therapist says I have to come to terms with loss; I’m certainly not very good at it. My best friend tonight reminded me that it is going to happen to all of us — death — because her ex-husband just died of brain cancer. Then she told me that she would be there to take care of me when I passed away. I’m not even sure I believe her — not because she’s a treacherous person but because she has also told me before that she is categorically not good at that. But with her ex-husband, she was. She just sat downstairs and drank -- with the knowledge that he was dying upstairs -- helped him as much as she could, and did the most beautiful thing you can imagine. For she said to him “Are you afraid of death?” And he said “No. I’m just afraid of leaving this house.” So he never did — that is, he died there. She did take care of him, so perhaps she will take care of me. At any rate it’s the thought that counts. Dear me what brought that on; well I’m somewhat ill — nothing serious it appears — but I never like to get ill before travel, and then there is my own mortality which keeps staring me in the face. I mean when am I actually going to start living again? Enough of that. So, Alain Delon plays a luscious Mr. Ripley, less guilt-ridden and certainly less gay then Matt Damon. And far far prettier. He’s quite unbearable to look at him; he is perhaps the most beautiful man I have ever seen, and that says a lot (or does it because I call a lot of men beautiful.) There is the blue of his eyes, which matches the sea, and those cheekbones, and the firm line of his jaw, the casual straight hair, his lean body and yes the bulge in his bathing suit (I think they didn’t even notice of such things in the 60s. Elvis’ bulge is quite out of this world in some of his movies — did no one notice?). The thing about Alain Delon is that he reminds me of Tim Guest. I don’t know if I have ever told you the story of Tim Guest. He was another one who was too beautiful for words. He was too beautiful for me; I never had sex with him, I wouldn’t have known where to start. I had heard of him, he was famously the lover of Felix Partz — part of General Idea. I remember looking at photos of Felix Partz and wondering how Tim could have been in love with him; but back then I had no idea how strange love can be. I moved into 67 Homewood and Tim lived there. We hung out quite a bit; I had never met someone quite as brilliant and quite as beautiful. It was odd because everything he said was interesting and complex and somewhat sarcastic in a gay sort of way, and at the same time he was so drop dead gorgeous that you wanted to just drop to your knees and worship him. The only thing I remember — besides the long list of beautiful young men he dragged to his room — were his comments on them: “I like to watch the very very clean boys get dirty” and then at one point: “Don’t you love it when your screwing them and they look surprised?” (I had experienced the first thing but not the second.) He was an art curator, and later he curated performance art for Rhubarb! (at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre — the theatre that I used to run). This is so Tim Guest: he said -- “I have this fabulous piece — it’s a homeless guy (I think he would have called him a ‘rubby’ back then) and he takes a bath in front of the audience! That’s the whole piece!” This was Tim’s sense of humour to a tee. The piece was performed at Tarragon Theatre, and I remember the bigwigs there -- Urjo Kareda and Mallory Gilbert -- were not amused. I liked it. I felt morally compromised watching it; but I thought, that’s the point, isn’t it? After all, the guy was getting paid, and he got a bath, and he seemed to have a good time. (Nowadays you would probably be run out of town for it for programming this.) Then Tim moved to New York, and found another lover and I was so happy for him — that seemed like the perfect ending. And then suddenly I heard that he had mouth cancer, and had died -- just like that. This devastated me. I didn’t want to think of him as anything but the most beautiful boy in the world. Sorry this blog has been so much about cancer. It’s strange the way COVID-19 makes me, at least, think less about COVID-19 than just dying in general. Because it is a kind of death. All the crime going on everywhere, and the ODing, and just the look on people’s faces - or just the faces you can’t see because of those damned masks, or the fear of each other. That’s it. We are all of afraid of each other in a way we weren’t before, ever, and that’s a kind of death in life. Sorry. Best not to think about all this, I guess.
