Well, more importantly for me it was the last day of vacation. I woke up feeling pretty good. NYE was out of the way, and I had plans with Justin today. I was looking forward to seeing him. I had decided not to go through all the rigmarole to make peas and greens today. I had peas in the fridge from the dinner I made for Tony and Rhonda, and the results with the kale had turned me off of making greens (which are a huge pain to make anyway). Plus I had enough food in the fridge to eat on for a week - I really didn't need to cook anything else.
I decided to get some things done before I went over there this afternoon. First I did my feets. This is one of the many things I had on my list to do during vacation that had not been done, and they needed some attention. If nothing else, seeing Travis's fees the other day had reminded me of the perils of ignoring said region.
That done, I ran through one more pile o' pants, loaded up the car, and headed out. I dropped a load at Goodwill, and then took the recycling again. I've done a lot of cooking in the last week or so, and things had just built up. Plus I had cleaned out the drawer of old Christmas cards (I keep them to remind me who sent a card, and to make gift tags for the next year), so there was stuff that needed to go. I ran by the store to pick up a couple of things to have for lunches for the remainder of the week.
I had gotten home to have a spot of lunch, get cleaned up, and wait for the call when I realized I had a message from Justin. Another cancellation. Sigh. This really seems like a trend. So I'm kind of wondering if my deodorant is letting me down here, or if I'm just a drag to be around? Guys want to have sex, but none of them seem to want to hang around or do anything else.
I decided there were worse things than to have a quiet evening before I go back to work tomorrow. I became one with the sofa and was chasing guys on the internet just to watch them run when I got a text from Logan. They were going to see Django Unchained, but since I am not much in to Westerns, I declined. I'm not really into going to the movies anymore. It's not comfortable, the snacks are astronomically priced, and people are generally inconsiderate. My plan used to be that I would just watch things when they came out on video, but now that DVD rental is dying, I just miss a lot of movies, or wait until they come on TV. If I'm going to spend that kind of money and put up with the hassle, it has to be something I really care about seeing.
About an hour or so later, I got a text from Russ. The movie had changed. They had decided to see The Miserables. Sigh. Now I had seen it on stage at the Fox Theater in Atlanta years and years ago. My old roommate Ty probably had a hand in that, because I wasn't that erudite at the time. I remember that it was beautifully staged, but also tragic. I am SO not into tragedies. But with the mood I'm in, and with being kicked to the curb several times in the last month or so, I was in the right frame of mind to see it. Plus it was pretty much not optional. I know that every gay person in the world will see this movie, and it will be talked about in all social settings for months - basically it is required viewing. Although I hated to use my gift card to go see this movie, I bit the bullet.
I got to the theater before the boys, of course, and it was moviegeddon. It was yet another drizzly, yucky day (I have been plagued with nasty weather during this whole vacation - my yard is like freakin' cheesecake), and everyone was at the movies. Since this was a just-released blockbuster, I was worried that the show would sell out before the boys even got there. I texted Billy and ended up getting tickets for all of us, although I didn't relish seeing the movie in a packed theater. As it turned out though, that fear was groundless. There was more than one movie starting at about the same time, and when we got into the theater there were surprisingly few people in there.
***
The movie, as I expected, was beautifully done. The cinematography was gorgeous, if grim. There were very few clean people in it. Almost everyone was filthy and miserable. The love story really didn't do much for me. Although Cosette started off with kind of a rough life, she had been so sheltered from the world that as a young adult I found little to identify with in her. Her 'romance' with Marius (in the movie they 'fell in love' based on one glimpse in a crowded marketplace where they didn't even speak) strained my credulity to the point that I had a hard time investing myself in whether or not they ended up together. The duet they did where butterflies were fluttering up from a France they had definitively established as a dung heap bordered on the ludicrous.
Fantine's story was tragic, but her character was ruined so quickly and precipitously that you really didn't have a lot of time to get invested in her before she was destroyed and died. In a way, her character was such an archetype, so perfectly innocent, that she really didn't seem human. Anne Hathaway did a great job with that role, and her rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" definitely tore down the set. But I was distracted from the moment by the decision to leave in places where she went flat during the song. Obviously those could have been auto-tuned out. So while the song was going on, I was wondering about that decision. Was it to maintain the purity of the emotion in the performance? The song was done in a single take. Was the device that Fantine, as a destroyed character, couldn't sing a song perfectly? There were several possibilities, and I guess you could argue a case for any of them, but wondering about which was the rationale actually pulled me out of the moment a bit.
The center conflict between Jean Valjean and Javert, and the extremes they go to for honor, and for who they are, seem so dated as to be hard to believe for me. There was a time when a man's honor meant something. When your word was your bond. When why you did what you did was more important even than your actions. When you could in fact be ensnared in a conundrum of honor. Sadly, I think those days are over. Maybe it's my job. Maybe I'm just cynical. But it seems that these days we live in a world where appearance is everything, and substance counts for little for most people. These days, The Scarlet Letter seems like a more relevant story than Les Miserables. On the other hand, in these days of the 'fuck the poor' tea party mentality, perhaps we need to be confronted yet again with the inherent unfairness of the world towards the disenfranchised. Modern America bears more resemblance to the court of King Louis XVI than anyone should be comfortable with.
They did do a good job of putting faces on the French Revolution, and making you care about whether or not they succeeded. But the tragic loss and waste of life necessary to move any such cause forward, and the futility of taking a stand when the people wouldn't back them up, were underscored to the point that the tragedy of their deaths made it hard for me to feel uplifted by the cause in which the lives had been given.
But out of all of this, what absolutely tore me out of the frame was the death of Eponine. The theme of unrequited love, of loving someone who will never care for you, of loving someone to distraction and to the destruction of yourself, of constant and unsatisfied longing - now that was a theme with which I could identify. When she died I was a weeping mess.
And then it was over. I felt raw and emotionally bruised. While I was glad I had seen it, and had known I would have to, I was really glad to have it behind me. While I can understand and appreciate the art of dying kittens, it is a traumatic thing to put yourself through to experience. While I can understand the draw of a tragedy, and while I can understand the value of this one in particular; a tragedy has never held any particular allure for me. There are far, far too many people ruined and destroyed in real life for me to seek that out as a form of entertainment. There is so much sorrow in the world already, for real, that borrowing more sorrow seems a reckless thing to do.
***
The movie over, we went to supper. The boys were coordinating dinner with people via phone as they walked out the doors, but since it was ugly weather, and of course they had given no one any advance notice, most people weren't available. We ended up meeting Jake and his new boyfriend, Brantley, who is conspicuously gorgeous. Jake has been single again for a week? Maybe two? I was reminded of the amazing capacity for recovery of the young. I can't imagine having the time to bounce back, much less show up with a beautiful new boyfriend in such a snip of a minute. Well Jake is young and hot. And good for him.
Dinner was at Cheddar's, where our waitress was conspicuously sweet, despite Russ's being difficult (he has decided he doesn't like the large booths there, probably because he doesn't like getting up to let Logan out, but refuses to sit on the inside seat), and we had a good meal. I had the fish tacos, which were really delicious.
After supper, they were all heading to Yogurt Molehill. I had intended to go too, just to be sociable; but when I got in the car, it was already 9:30. I know I have a beastly day ahead of me tomorrow. Plus it was still ugly, drippy, nasty weather. Plus I had a little bit of a sour grapes thing going on over Brantley. He is so obviously much better suited to be with me, and yet he is not. It's absolutely petty and small of me I know. I hate to admit it even to myself, much less to you, gentle reader; but that's how I felt. Pleading time, I called Billy and asked him to convey my regrets. Then I went the hell home and went to bed.
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