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Feb. 6th, 2004 11:26 pm
Sentimental thoughts on trash cinema
For the second time, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu and I snuggled on the couch together as we watched Rocky Horror and, for the second time, he fell asleep when it was little more than half over. I can't blame him. After all, it really is a craptastic movie. The real show is the audience, as the Reader has maintained for years now, and, though I throw myself into it, one person alone cannot do enough to make it entertaining.
I stayed up for the whole thing, though. In fact, I had to remind myself that I have a big day tomorrow in order to prevent myself from watching it all over again immediately afterward. It's not just the nostalgic charge I get from dancing the Time Warp or remembering the performance where my tighty-whitey-clad lap was singled out for gyrations by a Dr Frank N. Furter that makes me sit through the tedious musical numbers and endless, pointless action. More than anything, it's that one scene near the end when Rocky, Columbia, Brad, Janet, and the Transylvanian mad genius are writhing about in the pool together to the strains of "Don't dream it--be it." For a few minutes, I'm immersed in a polymorphously perverse paradise where pleasurable sensation is the only goal and sex, societal norms, and gender are all irrelevant. All the sweeter, in fact, because I know this false utopia is doomed to end in mayhem and multiple murder mere moments later.
The closest I've ever come to that state of abandon on this earth are the puppy piles at the UCBU gatherings I attended in the early 90's. There was a brief time in my life where I was indiscriminate, innocent, adventurous, and secure enough to lie down with a mass of people of both sexes from all over the Kinsey scale under the open sky and forget my inhibitions. And not just me--I still remember the time a straight-arrow fencing buddy of my brother's thanked me afterwards for some gentle caressing. Unfortunately, it gave me an illusion of possibility that was dispelled the first time I tried to pursue him in "waking life".
Was that feeling what I was hoping to regain at Bear Naked all those years? Perhaps, but I doubt it. It was clear from the first event that lust coupled with a fear of disease was going to squelch any sensation of true trust and comfort in that crowd. I occasionally captured a feeling of intimacy with a single partner, but any larger gathering rapidly descended into tawdriness. I know it was what I seeking at a supposedly Dionysian house party in San Jose that turned out to be shockingly hetero after all. (It wasn't the first time I was to find Bay Area breeders more inhibited than I had expected--or, frankly, than my Midwestern college friends.)
Could I find it again? Some things, it's best not to try. Both time my college friends tried to recreate the bawdy dare party some of us spontaneously fell into one night, it failed. There are moments of bliss you can't orchestrate; you can only stumble into them.
monshu and I snuggled on the couch together as we watched Rocky Horror and, for the second time, he fell asleep when it was little more than half over. I can't blame him. After all, it really is a craptastic movie. The real show is the audience, as the Reader has maintained for years now, and, though I throw myself into it, one person alone cannot do enough to make it entertaining.I stayed up for the whole thing, though. In fact, I had to remind myself that I have a big day tomorrow in order to prevent myself from watching it all over again immediately afterward. It's not just the nostalgic charge I get from dancing the Time Warp or remembering the performance where my tighty-whitey-clad lap was singled out for gyrations by a Dr Frank N. Furter that makes me sit through the tedious musical numbers and endless, pointless action. More than anything, it's that one scene near the end when Rocky, Columbia, Brad, Janet, and the Transylvanian mad genius are writhing about in the pool together to the strains of "Don't dream it--be it." For a few minutes, I'm immersed in a polymorphously perverse paradise where pleasurable sensation is the only goal and sex, societal norms, and gender are all irrelevant. All the sweeter, in fact, because I know this false utopia is doomed to end in mayhem and multiple murder mere moments later.
The closest I've ever come to that state of abandon on this earth are the puppy piles at the UCBU gatherings I attended in the early 90's. There was a brief time in my life where I was indiscriminate, innocent, adventurous, and secure enough to lie down with a mass of people of both sexes from all over the Kinsey scale under the open sky and forget my inhibitions. And not just me--I still remember the time a straight-arrow fencing buddy of my brother's thanked me afterwards for some gentle caressing. Unfortunately, it gave me an illusion of possibility that was dispelled the first time I tried to pursue him in "waking life".
Was that feeling what I was hoping to regain at Bear Naked all those years? Perhaps, but I doubt it. It was clear from the first event that lust coupled with a fear of disease was going to squelch any sensation of true trust and comfort in that crowd. I occasionally captured a feeling of intimacy with a single partner, but any larger gathering rapidly descended into tawdriness. I know it was what I seeking at a supposedly Dionysian house party in San Jose that turned out to be shockingly hetero after all. (It wasn't the first time I was to find Bay Area breeders more inhibited than I had expected--or, frankly, than my Midwestern college friends.)
Could I find it again? Some things, it's best not to try. Both time my college friends tried to recreate the bawdy dare party some of us spontaneously fell into one night, it failed. There are moments of bliss you can't orchestrate; you can only stumble into them.