THE LOVER

Okay, if the notion of my sex life is unappealing to you, skip this entry.

Really.

So my Brazilian Angel lent me several DVD’s to comfort me in my time of illness, as a celebration of my open class and as thanks for hooking her up with an English Teaching job. I borrowed “The Story of O,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Lover.” Frankly, I borrowed “O” because it’s got such cache and I’ve never seen it. I borrowed “Brokeback” because my Brazilian Angel insisted I see it for cinematography. I borrowed “The Lover” because I’m madly in love with “Short Tony” but I’ve never seen anything with “Fat Tony.” (There are two actors in Hong Kong named “Tony Leung.” The younger one is nicknamed “Short Tony” and he was the bandit who steals Zhang Ziyi’s heart in “Crouching Tiger.” The older one is nicknamed “Fat Tony” [which he is anything but] and he has an amazing reputation though I have not seen any of his films.) I vaguely remembered “The Lover” being an important film in his oeuvre but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember why.

Whoa. Yeah, I found out. It’s definitely something I would qualify as “pornographic.” As much as “O” was supposed to be sexy and racy, I found “O” to be tedious and self-indulgent. It epitomized everything I find unappealing about role-playing. “The Lover,” while tiresome in its dated (at least in my head) overt racism has some seriously lovely love scenes. The basic story is that a young girl (bordering 16) meets and is swept into an affair with a “Chinaman.” The narration is the young girl as an old woman and the voice is the gravely voiced goddess Jeanne Moreau.

Frankly, I’ve never been one for bodice ripping, colonial/forbidden affairs but I really liked this one. Hell, even the roles are inverted, as I like; the “Chinaman” has the upper hand financially against the broke white girl. Perhaps it’s the oppression of a sex-“free” China bearing down on me, perhaps it’s my own youthful lunacy looking me back in the face, perhaps it’s a little of those things and then some but wow, it made me realize just how empty my bed is. Even now, I’m plagued by the thought of a lovely gentleman having his way with me on the floor and then kissing me sternum to hip once we’ve both collapsed.

I watched the movie once and then immediately watched it a second time through the moment the credits started. While in college, I had an affair with an older man with whom I played similar games with the things that sound grown up verses the truly adult honesty. When I returned from Paris, what had been a passing interest blossomed into a lot more. I had apparently always held his undivided attention but something had (apparently) shifted in me to the point that he could no longer not advance. I was, for reasons I am unwilling to divulge, unable to discuss the affair with even my closest friends; telling my housemates I was with my friends and my friends I was with my housemates to buy time alone with him. He truly loved me and I was too damaged up to handle it at all, much less well. I toyed with him too much and eventually immolated the relationship, pushing him to take a position on the other side of the country. We had our stolen moments and, just like in the movie, every time I saw his very specific car I knew he was there for me.