Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Year 04

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Laying on Elise’s sister’s floor last night i dreamt that i was in Paris.

It’s funny how my brain works when i dream these things, because in my dreams every time i left the apartment to walk around on the street, or to head to the Eiffel tower, i spoke french. And, i spoke quite good french, though i couldn’t seem conjugate any verbs in the past tense. But every hour or so i would wake up and realize that we were in Jenny’s studio apartment, in Washington DC, which is nothing like Paris at all. Well, maybe a little.

So now i’m in Washington DC. Jenny and Elise and Rob decided they wanted to see a Harry Potter movie, but it seemed like such a waste to me. Washington DC, on July Fourth, and in the rain, which i think is a little bit romantic.

So, while they planned their trip to the movie theatre, i planned my trip wandering around the city.

I’ve only wandered in two cities now, both times with Rabi, so i feel a little displaced doing it by myself – not knowing that you have to swipe your card to exit the subway (i think i was almost arrested). But, here i am, three hours of my own, on my own, in this strange city that operates in ways that i’m not used to – swiping your card to get out of the subway, numbers counting down to tell you how long you have to cross the street.

It’s peculiar, and i’m wet, but i don’t mind. I don’t have anything with me but my cell phone, my wallet, and my day pass, and i’ve got three hours to learn my away around city number four for Peter. (originally an audio post)

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2004/07/108896658141001659/

In which i attempt to review a movie, but in actuality do no such thing.

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There is a certain romance to a love unrequited. That’s what we are taught, what has been ingrained in our heads since the days of cartoons with their eternal suitors, never suited, and in books and films where the protagonist strives but never to have.

And then there is Spiderman. Spider Man. Stupid red and blue comic hero who, truth be told, i never liked very much. He caught my childhood attention as a cartoon because he was smart, and witty, and had my name, but he never played a favorite in my world of superheroes. I eschewed his toys. I rarely bought his comic. But his movie. How could i resist his movie?

Overwrought, overly animated, amateurishly directly, but oh that acting. Tobey, sweet Tobey who i’ve hated in every role he’s ever played because in reality i suspect i don’t like him at all, he brought poor Peter Parker to life in front of my eyes. Peter, me, that space that we’ve always shared inside of my head.

It wasn’t really Tobey, though, not at all. It was Mary Jane.

Mary Jane, a big-haired, ever-changing cipher in the comics, once upon a time so patterned after a certain Julia that Ms. Roberts seemed all but cast in the role. Yet, times change, and people win Oscars for terrible boring movies with no momentum, and Peter remains eternally youthful. And so, you see, it could not be Julia.

That cipher was rewritten, scripted into the house next to Peter’s with the awful never-seen father yelling from within, eclipsing – nay – supplanting Gwen Stacey to ensure that this re-imagined Mary Jane Watson was and could be the one and only ultimate love of Peter’s life.

This changed the nature of Peter, and Spiderman. He stopped being the underdog – he never let Gwen fall off of that bridge because he saved her (as MJ) in the first movie when she was – by comic book rites – supposed to plummet to her death. And he killed Green Goblin in the process. What a debut.

Really, they had no choice. If they had killed the father-figure and the girl it would have been too punishing and, after all, they weren’t about to bring Uncle Ben back to life. Dead Uncle Ben is the cornerstone of all things Spidey. But, Peter was supposed to have lost so many things, to have lost Gwen and to be afraid to ever love anyone else again. So, to make Peter the eternal underdog, they withheld Mary Jane. Teased us with her adoration, baseless, lacking foundation, but so tangible in the ever-hurt eyes of the estimable Ms. Dunst, and proving her to be ultimately unattainable at the end of the first film in that crushing, crushing scene in the graveyard.

I may have liked Spiderman 2 less than I liked its predecessor. Raimi is a hack, with his horror conventions and his guest stars. It had its comic book moments, but it was also too heavy handed, never funny or fierce enough. Tobey as Peter worked only so much as Tobey as an everyman, and Dunst as MJ was limp. Lifeless. Not the headstrong MJ of the 300s of Amazing Spiderman.

What was perfect, undeniable true, was that longing. That always wanting, never having, delirious joy in seeing, pain in saying goodbye. The tension. The tension was true Spiderman, tearing him and her apart at once, weakening him in its strength and strengthening her in her resolve. It was the dramatic backbone of the first film, and the entire skeletal structure of the second.

It was all in Kirsten’s eyes. She took the girl, the too-perfect blind date oft-pushed by good old Aunt May in the comics, and turned her into something altogether different. Symbolic. Real. There could be no Spiderman without this Mary Jane. She was as instrumental as poor dead Uncle Ben or that nameless robber and ever-suffering May. In the cinematic universe, she had been woven in so tightly, so close to the center, that Spiderman could never exist without her. In her absence, he could do nothing but unravel.

Kirsten brought tears to my eyes in every scene for being that perfect thing – that unrequited, unobtainable love, eternally romanticized and forever untouchable. Only movies show us that touch, thrill us with that perfect kiss or that glimmer of recognition in her eyes, pools of unwavering truth and belief, frightening in their realness in every scene she plays.

I have had a crush on Kirsten ever since she played against Mr. Cruise. I fancy that i look a bit like him sometimes, sans snaggled tooth, i think because that would put me closer to her. The flowergirl in my father’s wedding was perfectly little and blonde, like her, and i juxtaposed the two in my fantasy-life until high school as the girl who played my unrequited love, unsuspecting but strangely dedicated to the eternal leading-on of me.

I feel sometimes that i live to be lead on. Did i get into the right college? Did i get the part? Did i get the job? The thrill was never in the answers, but in the anticipation. This site is about anticipation; it is my endless anxious wanting to know but loving the wanting and the not knowing, the delicious tension therein. My writing, at its finest points, is searching for something just outside its grasp, trying to attain the unattainable, to pen a sketch of an infinitesimal gap between me and something or someone else that at that frozen moment in time i cannot, and will not, ever have.

Kirsten’s eyes drew tears in my own, half drunk and staring at the screen, because in Spiderman she is it. She is my crush. She is the juxtaposition, the wanted but never had, the just two steps away. Maybe i should have acted. Maybe i should be in film. We are the same age, Kirsten and i. I could be her leading man.

We all aspire to have the perfect, filmic ideal, but we so rarely do. Now, staring into my twenties, i see joy in the successes more modest, and the achievements actually had rather than those merely anticipated. I suspect, nay, predict, that my lips will never touch Kirsten’s, in reality or as the wanly beautiful Mary Jane Watson. She, and the woman she played in the movie i did not like but eminently enjoyed, are the perfect representation of that unrequited love.

And then, at that teary wishing-it-was-me-in-the-ripped-up-suit-saving-her moment, i looked beside me, and realized that i have it. Her. That thing, that never attained thing, too perfect so that it can be endlessly redescribed by the imperfections that we call art. I remember the scant days between courting and kissing. I hid them from this website almost presciently, as if i knew that in describing the agony of the indescribable tension that i would eventually have to admit that i had overcome it, turned it from dreamed to dreamt. It’s on another page in a different place, and i rarely hint at it at all to this day. But I love Elise, love our stupid quirky banter from computers across the room more than i could ever imagine loving that unrequited, untouched tiny Kirsten-thing in my head. I reject the imagined perfection. Because, no matter how perfect our imagined life might be, how could it be better than what i am living right now?

I did not like Spiderman 2. You should go see it, and for every contrived moment, or bad shot, you should think about Peter, Peter Parker, and how he wants such simple things but goes to such extraordinary lengths in his not having them. And you should want to be him, swinging high above New York at twenty-four frames per second, twenty-four hours a day for all of your life. And, then, you should realize that like any art, Peter is a glistening imperfection, endlessly torn between want and have so much that we are drawn in droves, record setting droves, to watch him flail between the two, a gossamer moth torn between the Sun and the Moon.

You should go see it, and realize that your life is a higher art than art, because it is crystalline in its perfection, alive instead of celluloid, yours instead of everyone else’s. And you should leave pleased.

Hurt Me So Good

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I had missed what Vincent said, my head cupped back into the green porcelain bowl while his massive fingers roamed my jungle of hair. “Hmmm?,” i let drift up from my near-hypnosis, enjoying the warm water and the dull pain of the massage of my scalp.

“I said, am i hurting you?”

Vincent has a funny lisp of an accent, and newly acquired Key West tan that makes me think of limes when he talks about it. Funny, him shampooing my hair; five years ago he was writing a letter to Brown on my behalf, informing them that my father would not be bearing the financial burden of my tuition.

“Oh, not, not at all. I have a high tolerance, anyhow.”

Moonlighting on a rare Thursday from his other job (presumably as a Social Worker, as that’s why he wrote me the letter in the first place), Vincent is content to allow me to enjoy my scrub in silence, simply nodding my affirmation to his offer of extra-special conditioner. As he finishes, a thought occurs to me:

“This must be terrible for your hands.”

Vincent takes a thoughtful pause from wringing the water from damp wisps of hair dripped on my neck. “You know, no one ever asked me that before. It’s hard. They get sore.”

I nod in quiet affirmation, remembering the highschool pothead who used to wash hair to fuel his addiction, and how angry and red his fingers looked after his first week. I feel rare and different in the salon, even though it’s owned by someone who was at my mother’s wedding and the receptionist is practically my aunt. I recognize people there. A woman walks past, and i squint. Did she anchor for channel ten?

It is my first time back since graduation, with my mother footing the bill. I have made an effort to fit in with the clientele, all of whom some combination of affluent, metrosexual, and of a higher social class than my own. I am bedecked in two-day stubble and bikini underwear that do not show over the top of my low-rise jeans.

Last time i felt more out of place, but this time the underwear seems to be doing the trick. I sit up straighter, conscious of my non-abs winking out from the window of shirt open at my waistline. Still, my voice is unrecognizably indoor and polite, my glance meekly averted from the obvious power-person being lead towards the stairs. She looks like Cheri Oteri, who is from the nearby suburbs. Whoever she is, she whisks past with a high pitched male friend in all black with brown sandals yapping in a gratingly high tenor while waving a limp wrist to and fro like a flamethrower.

I just made a pun, i thought, because i think in italics tags. Even i would not dare mix brown sandals with black clothes; i quietly salute the yapper’s blithe disregard of conventional fashion wisdom. Vincent is done with me, and i wander up through the antiqued hallways to the main room for my cut. It has the same fireplace my apartment does, only mine was a cool million less.

The lengths i will go to for a good haircut.

The Bitch is Back

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Jett Superior, one of my all-time favorite peddlers of snark, is back online with an astounding new layout. While she was on her extended hiatus, she asked her readers to put an old set of her lyrics to music, promising to post them upon her return. She hasn’t yet, but here’s my version.

Here at CK we don’t go on hiatus, we graduate, take long naps, try to buy cell phones that take pretty little pictures that we can display while not on an aforementioned non-existent hiatus, and play City of Heroes until 4am (thus necessitating longer naps). We pretty much being me, along with my omnipresent sidekick slash new roommate slash built-in fanclub Elise.

She finally met my dad the other week, he who owns a gun shop and a flock of plastic lawn flamingos, and makes “boop boop” noises when he pulls a U-ee in the middle of Market street. She has not met my cousin Cary, age seven, but the lass is nonetheless intrigued by the concept that my partner/roomie/stalker has “Chinese Eyes.” My aunt claims that this, though perhaps verging on offensive, is a reflection of unspeakable jealous curiosity, as said eyes are a particularly fashionable favorite of my cousin’s. In the car on the way back from the el Cary politely enquired if “Have you kissssssed her?,” to which i responded “Oh, a few times.”

Otherwise, life is similar to how life was last time i mentioned life, except for the piece of parchment with the shiny Magna Cum Laude sticker sitting on my mantel and what seems like eleventy-thousand people trying to make me feel anxious about whether or not i really have a job (don’t worry, it’s not working). I think Elise is appalled at how much time i spend a) listening to music, b) doing nothing but looking productive, & c) being so frighteningly productive that i cannot stop talking or moving, sometimes all at once. Still, things are fine, especially now that i unpacked my Ani DiFranco mugs.

Transmissions from the planet Peter.

Death March

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I don’t like graduation ceremonies. I never have. Not since kindergarten, at least.

For me, the excitement of a thing comes when it’s really over. In high school, i had to go to two more days of class after my graduation ceremony; it wasn’t really over yet. I was sour at graduation, grimacing in pictures and grudgingly displaying my diploma case, which did not yet contain that immortal document.

I woke up later than i meant to today, though i wound up meaning to wake up late. The apartment looks like a war zone between IKEA and Home Depot, as last night Elise hung drapery brackets while i threaded her maddeningly complicated sexy blue sewing machine. The obsessive organization of our first week has given way to a more laissez-faire approach to apartment decorating, where we move things closer to their presumed destination incrementally in case they find some other suitable home on the way. It’s fun. I want to stay here and work on it.

I finished my last graduation requirement last Friday at 10:03AM. I went through all the emotions that day – the glee, the sudden sense of freedom, the irrational tears. Today is an afterthought; i am already apart from the Drexel family. I know the week was meant for getting your requirements in order and moving out, but i got my life in order and moved on. I don’t want to go back to that gym to sit and listen to Taki – i have earned the right to avoid it.

But, otherwise, what would they take pictures of?