The Sheila Variations

Anecdotal film review: "Fearless"

Okay, so I am trying my hand at Jonathan's anecdotal film review idea ... the idea is to review a film by telling a story - and not ever mentioning the film itself in the story. If you've seen the film, hopefully you can make the connections ... or maybe it will puzzle you, or make you think, or bring up stories of your own ...

My review of Fearless:

I couldn't sleep. My skin was still buzzing from his touch. I felt marked, and my mouth hurt from the kissing. I would have bruises all over me the next day. But then, I've always bruised easily. I had a single bed, and there were no curtains on my windows. It was dawn, so there was only a greyish light in the air, and the windows of the building across the alley stared down at us blindly. He was fast asleep, breathing heavily through his mouth. There was a rattle in his chest. Probably from the fact that he smoked Marlboro Reds, lighting one off the other. He had a thick crazy mop of black hair that stuck straight up like a troll doll's in his sleep. His arm was thrown lazily over me, and he was out. I was not used to company, to having anyone be there, so I couldn't slow my brain down, I couldn't relax. I wasn't tense so much as alert. Everything came at me in acute almost painful detail. The feel of his arm across me, his big rough hands with the fingertips stained by nicotine, his head thrown to one side, revealing his throat to me nakedly.

I want to be clear. I didn't feel tenderness towards him. I didn't feel a soft womanly closeness, or a cozy comfy sense of intimacy and all's right with the world. Nothing like that at all. The air shimmered with shards of glass. It almost felt good, to be flayed like that, but it was why I couldn't sleep. How could I sleep when all the world's dark magic was lying in bed with me? How could I slip off into unconsciousness when the greatest mystery of all - another human being - was flopped there beside me? He was so vulnerable in his sleep, and yet so firm about it! He was vehemently asleep. There was no doubt at all about his state, and it left me free to be in awe of him. The light was so dim I couldn't see him clearly, he was half in shadow, dark hair, pale ghostly skin, his pose in sleep unfettered, unmoored, free.

We had spent the night at a pool hall, and I had watched him consume ferocious amounts of alcohol, which didn't seem to affect him at all. He had had an odd gentlemanly manner about me drinking, he wanted to protect me from excess, and wouldn't let me do a shot with him. "No. No. Don't be like me." We had met his friends, we had played pool, he was the loudest most insane person there, occasionally bursting forth with loud monologues on the state of the world, and the state of his own life. "I am with HER," he shouted to the indifferent bar full of rackety winos - pointing at me - "and life is GOOD!" He was a raging goof. Life ran high in this man. Like a fever. He would give me quick appraising looks, taking me in, and then nod to himself. I wasn't sure what those nods were about, I didn't know his cues yet, although there would come a time when we pretty much were able to communicate via ESP and body language. We would have full conversations with no words. But we weren't there yet, and so he would look at me, take me in, and nod to himself, going back to his pool game. Was he approving? Did he like me? Was he suspicious of me, and then with one look realized I could be trusted? I wasn't sure, but I liked those looks he gave me. He was not a verbal person, or not one to pontificate on his feelings ... He was more about playing pool, smoking cigarettes, and occasionally attacking me, pouncing on me from behind, as his goofball friends grinned at me. He was a mystery to me. I had no idea about his inner life. I knew he had one, of course. And his face, when awake, blazed with expressions, momentary, here and then gone, impressions, unsaid thoughts ... a constant newsreel flickering across his features. He kept himself to himself, and yet he also was the loudest guy in the room. When he kissed me, I liquified. Instantly. See that puddle over there? That's Sheila. I was in thrall. Yet he didn't seem to mind. He seemed okay with it. For the time being, anyway. It was easier to be in thrall when he slept, so I wouldn't be bothering him with it, and I had never seen him sleep before.

I stared at him, in the fuzz-brained dawn. His life was right there. I could feel it in the room with me, a tangible presence. I almost had the desire to gently rip his face off - gently! so as not to wake him! - so I could maybe get at the source of his life behind the skin. Where was it. Where was his life. Could I hold it in my hands? His chest rattled. We were young, our bodies had not yet begun the steady deterioration that gets us all. But he was reckless, I perceived that even then, he was excessive, possibly addicted, the word "No" didn't exist in his body. At all. I had never seen someone drink so much and still be standing. He didn't even sway or stumble. What was he doing? Why? Was there a hurt there he was trying to forget? (There was. I learned it later.) It's not that I hovered over him worryingly in the dawn. It wasn't that I worried. It was that I lay there, staring at him, acknowledging the truth of what I was seeing. I was not fooling myself, I was not justifying him to myself, I was not protective. I saw things in him. I saw stuff going on. And I saw how he handled it. I had no decisions to make, it was way too soon, I had no bet placed in this fight. Not yet. Let others tell him how to live his life. Let others cluck over him about his smoking and drinking. That would never be my role. I look back on that first night with him, and now I realize that I was making some decisions about him. Yes. Even that soon. Crucial decisions. It was a clear-eyed moment, in that dawn, my skin still humming from his hands, his heavy breathing filling the room with life. It wasn't love. It was alert-ness. I had been in a fog for years. I had narcotized myself in my own way, with depression. I was awake now, and without putting too fine a point on it, he woke me up. Now there is some responsibility in that, of course, and many people are not up to something like that. They do not want to be responsible for waking somebody else up. Or they are not even aware that there IS a responsibility. He was not a talker, even that early on I could sense it. I'm not really a talker either. And my experience of him that dawn is nothing I ever shared with him. In fact, I haven't shared it with anyone but David. It sounds too weird, and too on-the-verge-of-psychosis to trust with just anyone, but true to form, here I am putting it on the Internet.

As I stared at him, the sensation of being in the presence of his life - not the events and memories and things that make up his life story - but his actual life - the physical workings of it, the blood pumping, the brain firing synapses, the lungs filling ... became overwhelming, and I was frozen with it. Life came across at me as an actual emanation, something I could almost touch, or see. He was there, a man, lying naked and asleep in my bed - so I could see that of course, but there was something else being expressed to me, some other message coming at me ... in every breath, every slow raising of his chest, the warmth of his skin. Astonishing. An astonishing awareness of life itself, its intricacies and simplicities, the miracle of it, and yet the boring everyday-ness of it. I put my head against his chest, and rested it there. My head rose and fell with his breathing. And I could feel, like an insistent thrum in my head, my ear, vibrating ... his blood pumping. I could hear it, a slow ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum ... but it wasn't so much the hearing of it that struck me; I felt like it actually entered me, like I somehow "synched up" with it, and, by association, with him. There it was. Whatever "it" was. Life. Not mine. But his. Its essence. Its actuality. There it was.

And I knew that it had something to do with me.

I know that part sounds crazy, and yes, it is crazy. I felt crazy. But that pulse, that insistent relentless pulse, drumming its way through his body, struggling through the alcohol and nicotine ... I could feel it working. I could feel it needing to continue, I could feel its sluggishness even, as though it knew its "host" was poisoning himself, but it needed to keep trying to do the work it had to do. At some point, I found myself actually pressing my ear down on his chest, like an anvil, trying to get in there, closer to that ba dum ba dum ba dum ... He didn't wake. And suddenly, out of nowhere it seemed to me, it felt like my last shred of armor dissolved into nothing - and I found myself in tears. Not sobbing, no, just quietly crying. I can't even say why. I won't ruin it by trying to say why. I kissed his chest. I hugged him, with abandon, pressing my ear down into his skin. And the pulse was suddenly no longer inside his chest behind a barrier of ribs and muscles.

I will try to explain.

I was suddenly in there. I was in there, with it, with the essence of his life, standing on the sidelines, as though watching the Boston Marathon, only it was his pulse I was watching. I didn't see the blood or anything like that, just a rushing sense of movement, neverending, quicksilver, thrumming, thumping, moving, here and now gone ... and I felt myself cheering it on. My spirit, my soul, screamed as loud as it could: "GO! GO! GO! GO! GO!!!! YOU CAN DO IT! GO! GO! GO! GO! WHOO-HOO! GO, PULSE, GO!" That was what it was like for me, lying with my head on his chest, in the dim grey dawn. It felt urgent, fierce, and there was a sense of protectorship, and ownership. I was invested in that pulse. Like I said, I did not look at him with a soft tenderness, or with love dawning in my heart. I did not cuddle up beside him, enjoying the physical closeness in the aftermath of all hell breaking loose. No. I cheered his pulse on. I cheered as loud as I could. He didn't wake up, which surprised me. I was sure he would have heard my spirit screaming from inside his circulatory system.

I didn't even know his last name.

Posted by sheila | TrackBack