dread + the city

got word today that a friend in nyc is being evicted from her place. the building has been condemned by the city and tenants have to clear out. this morning i saw a frantic post from her on fB to friends in brooklyn. the girls of course came to the rescue! she had convalesced at their place after getting her wisdom teeth pulled.

what saddens me is that this is yet another stroke of grave misfortune for a woman i met randomly waiting tables at a cafe restaurant in east harlem. i was trailing and unlike most people in the restaurant biz training you, it's sink or swim, baby. keep up or die tryin. she actually took the time to decipher the broke-down POS system for me, stayed after closing to share a glass of wine and we swapped our dreams of being groovy get-down artists in the big apple. our second chance as we were into our mid-30s at the time. she had come back from arizona, myself from cali, having left new york years before when i finished art school. but the difference between us is that i knew when the tough get going and can't find a job, while the bills keep piling up, and the sublet fell through with friend-turned-psycho, and having my cats in tow and stuff in storage on varik street and the money running out.. the tough go back home and re-group.

she stayed; eeking out a hustle here, a hustle there (rarely involving her photography) and an endless string of men somewhat good, but mostly bad to keep her afloat. she drank heavily and she partied incessantly. she got insanely thin even for her already petite frame. she bounced from one 'boyfriend's' place to another and residential hotels in between.

i knew bits and pieces of her past, but over time threaded together a woman from an affluent background. (she once mentioned having to pay for her parents' extensive art collection in storage back home. art collection?) i guess the parents were gone, but there was a brother who she had some on-going static with over the very costly lease (or payments?) for a high-end truck.

she had lived in europe for several years in the 1980s being arty and fabulous. she was well-educated and culturally sophisticated. she had been working professionally on photo shoots in california and the southwest. she knew people, but it seemed they had forgotten about her . several years ago, she got a job in the rothschilds household in the city. yeah, that family of insanely old school (18th century!), old world european wealth in international banking and finance. she said their art collection was amazing. a driver would pick her up and take her to the 'residence'. i was enthralled and fascinated with her anecdotes. she had hoped one day, to get some of her art into someone's face. a rothschilds as benefecator is certainly big time.

then health problems began to plauge her; abnormal pap smears, possible HPV, pre-cancerous cells on the cervix. all of this she would play off with her usual ironic and acerbic wit. on the occassion we've stayed in touch, she became more and more disconnected, nonsenical and angry. i've deleted her 'sounding like a crazy lady' replies on fB a few times...what ...? little asides about my ethnicity i found offensive; well yeah, but you're not full black. say what? underlined i felt with some displaced disappointment that she isn't any bit black. i stopped talking about race with her after that; keeping things in the safe zone of art and intellectual bantering. waiting for godot! going to the goog! etc.

eventually i stopped talking to her directly because i sensed a cool person caught up in a deep black hole (i have enough of that with immediate family, thanks!). i keep tabs on her through a mutual friend, who is herself a generous and sweet soul. i spoke to her today about the situation and she was on her way to long island, but seemed a bit distressed at her staying long-term given the highly negative space she's in.

still despite all her ups and downs and hard times, she's never simply gone home. it's as though misery loved being miserable in gotham; a harsh place to be falling apart. but she's in my thoughts and i pray for her.

leave her to heaven

one of my favorite movies from hollywood's golden age is leave her to heaven with gene tierney (one of the most gorgeous women of the era) and cornel wilde. it was the fatal attraction melodrama of its time, but much more quaint and subtle. no obsessed knife-wielding woman here; it's all in the crazed, desperate eyes of gene's character, ellen; her hands in knots as her desperate love for her husband gradually becomes more self-destructive.

there's some issues with the characterizations, taken into the context of the social mores of the time. women of a certain class in america spoke with a discernible north-atlantic accent, were impeccably groomed and dressed and only worked in the home or supervised work in the home. they were refined and educated solely for the purpose of marrying well. hollywood dished up this image of perfection for generations; much like the bad people pay for their bad ways and good people prevail or make saintly sacrifices narrative. there were no gray areas in the american experience (the production code adhered to this strictly through moral fascism and censorship). it was a simpler time; long before audiences became more sophisticated and the cultural landscape of america began to change.

what i love about this movie primarily is gene t. she's a scene stealer in her expressions and the subtle hits of mania hidden underneath her cool and appropriate exterior. she can say nothing and still drop a bomb on everyone in the room with her energy. by comparison, other actors do their parts effectively, but not quite so captivating. gene simply had the most interesting and complex role. her suffocating sense of love is explained through dialogue that she was fixated and obssesive over her father who has passed away. how she, her mother, and sister survived this creepy reverse-oedipal daddy issue drama is never really explored. her mother states, in some form of denial maybe, that 'there's nothing wrong with ellen, she just loves too much.'

in old hollywood lingo, love was the code word for everything good, salacious, evil, noble, sexual and destructive that motivated a human being to do anything. 'do you love her?'
'why yes, yes i do. quite desperately really.' translates into i want to fuck her so bad i can taste it.

the production design by art director Lyle R. Wheeler is stunning; the interiors are painstakingly detailed in the couple's lakeside house, back of the moon and the family's colonial beachfront cottage. one of the earlier color films (cinematographer Leon Shamroy won an Academy Award for his work), everything is in deeply saturated tones of blues, reds, browns, teals and yellows. fascinating to look at even though i doubt gene's lipstick palette actually existed in the real world; it beautifully contrasted or complimented her costume changes.

at the heart of the story is ellen's obsessive love for richard and lack of self. when richard's younger brother danny is given doctor's approval to live with them at back of the moon, ellen tries to no avail to talk his doctor out of it; feeling danny's presence an intrusion. her mother and sister come to visit, she becomes sullen and rude and then sees the friendly disposition between richard and her sister, ruth, as a threat.

ellen although beautiful and impeccable on the surface, is a train wreck of a human being. through a series of events she opportunistically either eliminates people richard also cares about or alienates them from their lives. she deliberately injures herself and miscarries their baby, seeing the baby as competition for richards's affection.

finally, the truth revealed of her twisted love for richard and her obsessive, destructive actions, he leaves her, but not without ellen taking one final bizarre act of revenge.

classic melodrama!
draq queen kitty