Poison (1991)

Since discovering my awesome local video store, I've been eagerly snatching up the titles that are too X-rated/obscure/avant-garde for Blockbuster or Netflix. It's been really nice to go somewhere with distinct sections for "Documentary", "Cult", "Gay", "Martial Arts", "Adult", and "Alfred Hitchcock" (to name a few), and I think I finally understand what my college film theory professor meant when he said to never trust a video store without a healthy porn selection.

I checked out a copy of Todd Haynes's Poison, which I knew nothing about except that it supposedly started the whole "New Queer Cinema" movement that was hot in the early 90's. I generally feel iffy about the American independent resurgence from this period; while I think films like Slacker and Sex, Lies, and Videotape are interesting and inspiring for young filmmakers like myself, I also have to admit that I don't find them terribly compelling. However, watching Poison has given me a much stronger appreciation for why this kind of work got people so damn excited in the first place.

Haynes's film unfolds through three interwoven narratives. "Hero" presents itself as a contemporary news documentary investigating the strange case of a young boy who has murdered his father and mysteriously ascended to the heavens. This segment employs a mix of archival photographs, stylized re-enactments, and faux-interviews with local citizens who knew the boy. What emerges is a troubling story of domestic violence and despair, and while it is certainly a "fake documentary", it never feels like a "mockumentary". This is partially because the the subject material is so dark, but it's also because Haynes avoids taking cheap shots at his characters or flattening them into simple caricatures. He instead creates a complicated portrait of a family torn apart by desire and shame, and he leaves it to his audience to decide if the patricidal child is indeed an outcast turned "Hero" or a monstrous killer.

"Horror" mimics the style of a sensationalist 1950's science fiction flick and tells the story of a scientist who accidentally consumes a draught of pure human sexuality that causes him to develop a disfiguring disease. In his madness and sorrow, he finds himself brooding in dark corners of seedy bars, picking up women and infecting them with his fatal sickness. This vision of a nightmare sexual illness was most surely influenced by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, though Haynes seems to be invoking the promise of a post-AIDS world by staging his scenario in with such a pronouncedly retro style; the film-noir lighting, antiquated camera techniques, and hammy dialogue all hammer down the idea of a more primitive time that needs to be left behind. However, Haynes takes precious few chances to violate or complicate these old-fashioned conventions, and at times he seems to have less control of the genre than the genre has over itself.

The final story, "Homo", crafts a stylized tale of tortured romance in an early 20th century prison. Drawing heavily from the writings of Jean Genet, this sequence delves into the psyche of career thief John Bloom who finds himself infatuated with fellow prisoner Jack Bolton. The two men had known each previously at a boys' reformatory, which Broom recalls as an idyllic garden of homoerotic love and violence. However, these halcyon memories stand in sharp contrast to the men's adult penitentiary, which Haynes presents as a cold labyrinth of melancholy repression. Broom and Bolton struggle together against these oppressive surroundings, and they become ambiguously intimate, though neither expresses the kind of open affection that might incur the wrath of their peers.

In one of the film's most powerful scenes, the two men lie next to each other, apparently asleep amongst several other prisoners. Broom is roused as Bolton's leg falls across his own, and Broom begins guardedly exploring his friend's body as he nervously attempts to determine if Bolton is asleep or secretly conscious. This charade is brought to an abrupt end by a disturbance in the cell, and despite the feelings that the two men obviously harbor for each other, they remain unable to verbalize their desires.

This scene strikes me not only because of its beautifully charged eroticism (and it does get pretty damn hot), but also because it so perfectly captures that core experience of the homosexual coming to grips with forbidden lust. This unfulfillable yearning is certainly at the heart of the many bittersweet moments that tormented me throughout so much my young adult life, and I must believe that the same is true for most other gays as well. When I was still in the closet, one of my college professors (different from the wise porn shop one) remarked to me that the great tragedy of homosexuality was having to be near someone that you loved deeply while being unable to say or do anything about it. This has stuck with me, probably because I immediately recognized it to be the awful truth.

I suspect that Poison will likewise stick with me for years to come, though hopefully for less damning reasons. Indeed, one of the most beautiful things about the film is the way in which it so earnestly addresses the fundamental issues facing the homosexual/outsider figure who wishes to integrate with the rest of society. In doing so, Poison pushes aside the marginalized or two-dimensional homosexual that was (and still is) the Hollywood norm, and it simultaneously elevates the queer film beyond the furtive celebrations of unseen pleasures that had so long characterized the genre. Haynes also makes good on the stylistic promise of his avant-garde lineage, as Poison freely borrows various elements from narrative, documentary, and experimental styles of filmmaking in order to create a new voice that is entirely and authoritatively its own.

In rejecting old forms and striving beyond surface issues like AIDS, sex, and family strife, Haynes turns his attention to the existential problems and possibilities facing the homosexual in the modern world. With Poison, he heralds the coming of a new gay consciousness that looks beyond sexual politics to the much more fundamental questions concerning the problematic role of the outsider in today's America. A bold and exciting New Queer cinema indeed.

Under the Knife

I went back to San Diego last weekend. I had a dentist appointment, and it worked out that I could see my brother right before his birthday and also hopefully get some filming done for the documentary project I have(n't) been working on.

Incidentally, I was also there a few days after my mom underwent a sudden and unexpected knee surgery. This is the third or fourth time she's had it worked on, and she actually seems pretty chipper about it for once. She swears that it's kept her from having knee replacement surgery, and she's looking forward to getting back on her feet so she can swim and play golf again.

I saw her a few days after her surgery, but she was already barely even using her crutches. Half the time she put them down and made a big show out of how she could walk without a visible limp. She's eager to show this off, as her surgeon has told her it's a sign that she's recovering well. She puts a lot of faith in this doctor, and she proudly tells people about how he's the top rated surgeon in all of San Diego.

She told me the same thing when I was in high school and was having mysterious shoulder problems, and I took her advice and let him operate on me. The surgery didn't do much about my pain, except that most of it was now concentrated more severely in my back and neck instead of just in my shoulder. The surgeon said he had cleaned out some scar tissue, but even then I knew this was general medical bullshit meaning that he hadn't been able to find anything wrong with me. I was left with three bulbous, itchy scars that didn't fade or diminish with time, and my back and shoulder pain just became worse and worse. I was in a sling all fall and couldn't even get in the pool to play water polo, and I tried my best to swim in the spring, but I had to quit halfway through the season.

I saw a bunch of different specialists, but none of them were able to help me get over my pain, so I eventually gave up. It still hurts a lot, and I feel it almost every day, but I've learned to ignore it the best I can. My bad experience has left me fairly mistrustful of the medical industry, seeing as it sucked thousands of dollars out me and my parents while I got worse and worse. It's just the opposite for my mom, though. Every time she finds a new doctor or top rated specialist, she seems so aglow with the promise of doing new things with her life. I don't know if she's a little nuts for being so optimistic about these expensive cures, or if I'm the crazy one for giving the health care industry the cold (and wounded) shoulder.

Sometimes I think about giving it another shot. I'm often tempted to imagine life without the constant stiffness and pain, but I'm more than a little afraid I'll just get jerked around again. I'm not sure what's worse: suffering in silence or wasting my time and money to end up feeling used and humiliated.

The last time I saw my mom before I left, she already had the bandages off her knee. She was powering along on the stationary bike in her exercise room. She says the bike is safe because it doesn't force the knee to bear any weight, though she admitted that her surgeon has chastised her for trying to do too much too soon. She asked me about my plans to find a new job, and she advised me to try to find a consulting job. She forwarded me a list of the top rated firms in the industry, and she told me I should work for one of them. They're the best, she said. I smiled and shrugged, not knowing what else to say.

Gummo (1997)

When I was a teenager, Harmony Korine's Gummo was whispered about as the holy grail of disturbing youth culture films. My friends and I had eagerly and nauseatingly consumed the dark fantasies of movies like Kids, Bully and Spun, but Gummo remained a legend that perhaps an older brother had seen or which was hiding in some mythical video store far, far away (it certainly was never carried at my local Blockbuster). We all assumed that it was basically a snuff film and that most of the existing copies had been destroyed by parents, priests, or the MPAA.

Now that I'm older and I have my own accounts at Netflix and Video Journeys (an amazing video store in Los Angeles), I find that Gummo isn't nearly as elusive as it seemed to be when I was sixteen. Hell, back then, "independent" and "foreign" existed only as tiny and hopelessly disappointing sections in the way back of Tower Records. Furthermore, I'm willing to bet that Gummo's scarcity has more to do with its avant-garde leanings than it does with the film's content. It unfolds as a pastiche of tragicomic episodes that flirt with narrative while never fully embracing it, and while the film is often sad, it is just as often exuberant and uplifting. Certainly, it has nothing on the tragic hopelessness of Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream or the nihilistic emptiness that haunts Larry Clark's Kids (which was incidentally written by a 19-year-old Korine).

Gummo follows the exploits of a group of teenagers and young adults who inhabit the dregs of a Midwestern town that has never recovered from a terrible tornado. These kids hunt cats, sniff glue, tape their breasts, and wrestle with furniture. They crave excitement, sex, freedom, money, power, and beauty, and their lives intersect but seldom too deeply interweave as each pursues his or her dreams. Even the film itself exists as an intersection of various styles and themes; carefully scripted scenes are blended with improvisational snippets, found footage, and 8mm material shot by Korine and his friends.

Gummo thus leads us on an odyssey through the fantasies and nightmares of middle America, simultaneously blurring distinctions between documentary and fiction, narrative and poetry, and shameless exploitation and earnest regard. Throughout, Korine maintains an unwavering sense of conviction and sincerity, and his film has left me with a litany of unforgettable moments, though I am partial to the breathtaking conclusion in which the film's characters rampage through the heavy rain as they are all but drowned out by Roy Orbison's "Crying".

It's a shame that I let something this beautiful elude me for so long, though perhaps my appreciation for the film's dark romance is only possible now that I've gained some distance from that confining world of adolescent angst and madness. The teenage me who couldn't rent Gummo at his local video store probably would have shrugged at the film's strikingly singular characters, and he definitely would have yawned at its lyrical anti-narrative. I guess these tragic kids have to grow up sometime.

Inspiration

Am I the only person who gets unbearably depressed when watching the Olympics? The past two weeks have been like torture as the NBC and its various affiliates stick me with that bittersweet blade of envy that fills me with the most potent mix of desire and hatred whenever I watch those enchanting, athletic creatures as they flicker across the television screen. Desire because I lust after their glory- I want to compete at the highest level, become master over my field, and be young and beautiful and perfect forever (athletes may grow old, but the aged are perpetually washed away by new crops of the youthful). Desire also because Olympians are hot, and I wanna look like that, fuck like that, and fuck people who look like that. But then there's the other side of envy- the hatred. I hate these people for having something that I can never have, and I hate myself even more for not being able to have it. These have been perhaps the most painful Olympic Games for me because, at 24, this is pretty much the climactic moment at which I could have been able to compete like that if only I'd lived my life a little differently. Or a lot differently, more likely.

So instead of inspiring me by making aware of the human potential, the Games depress me by making me aware of my own failures and insecurities. I look in the mirror and I see a tall, skinny kid who might've actually made something of himself if he had gotten into sports instead of video games when he was growing up. Or maybe he could've gotten somewhere in college sports if he hadn't quit swimming after just one year. But he didn't try hard enough. Or maybe he just didn't care. He doesn't know why he wasn't able to push himself to this level, and- this part burns the most- he knows that no matter what it's too late. He can't capture the transcendent glory and beauty of those other kids on the TV screen.

It's for this reason that I'm not inspired by Michael Phelps's eight gold medals. On the contrary, it pisses me off because I know that I'll never be as good. And what exactly is supposed to be so inspirational about that guy anyway? He's a 23-year-old with a perfect body type who has trained extensively and is now- surprise!- dropping records like flies while he's in the prime years of his life.

The knife digs deeper when I watch the younger kids- the ones who are 16-20 (or potentially much younger in the case of some scandalous Chinese gymnasts)- and I marvel at how well put together they are at that age. I think back on what I was doing during those years and it's a terrible mess. I was still struggling to figure out who I was, where my values were, and what I wanted, not to mention whom I wanted. Thinking back, some of my first pangs of boy-love sprung up while watching the divers at the Games of the 1990's, and I actually harbored a secret desire to become a diver for a while but never went anywhere with it because I feared it would make me gay (Dear Past Mike: it's not the diving that'll do that to ya). Nowadays, the jealousy squeezes me the strongest whenever I see Matthew Mitcham. He's young and beautiful (and blond) and so damn OK with his sexuality (even if NBC isn't). Makes me wonder: if I had been smart enough to come out at 14 instead of 23, would I have more of a grip on my life now?

I worry that this is indeed the prime time of my life, and that I'm letting it waste away. Watching these Olympian gods as they fulfill their full potential makes me realize how little I've managed to accomplish. I moped around as a kid, moped around as a teenager, got into a decent college where I mostly moped around some more, and now I'm a mopey 20-something who's buried his dreams and ambitions. Makes me wish I could lift myself up, do something great, and prove myself/my friends/my parents/the world wrong.

Maybe this is what inspiration feels like after all. At first, I thought I was only really inspired by Dana Torres, who picked up three silver medals in swimming at the tender age of 42. But her story just made me relax because it seemed to promise that I still had another 20 years to achieve glorious things. This is uplifting, but it also threatens to make me complacent for the next two decades. Instead, I'm more spurred to action by the athletes who have already tasted perfection at such a young age. I'm intimidated, jealous, and totally bummed, but I'm not out yet. Not until I give up on myself.

The Dark Knight (2008)

My boss has been asked to write an op-ed about the new Batman movie for the New York Times, so I've spent the last week helping him research his article. After several days of digging through tantalizing reviews and letters from concerned parents about the film that many of my friends have described as the best ever made, I found myself so totally compelled to do a little research screening of my own. I couldn't help but feel like I was failing myself, as I had actually been somewhat proud of the fact that I had not seen a single film in a Los Angeles theater since first moving here last fall.

I went to the Arclight, which I chose mostly because it is next door to Amoeba records, which I had been wanting to visit so I could pick up the new Ratatat album. I paid the painful $14 ticket price (mere pennies cheaper than my new CD), and I settled into my assigned (?!) seat to watch the film. Refreshingly, there were no commercials or advertainments before the film, and there were an appropriate number of topical trailers. That alone was almost worth the ridiculous price of admission.

I had largely enjoyed the franchise's last incarnation, Batman Begins. It was a welcome departure form the Batman movies of the mid-1990's, which I remember enjoying when I was a kid but now strike me as totally unmemorable. Batman Begins was dark and different and psychological, and it came around at a point in my life when I thought that those things were all very important. It was also full of psychotropic drugs and ninjas, both of which surprisingly worked in the film's favor. I also remember thinking that Christian Bale made for a pretty good Batman and that Christopher Nolan had regained his cool "guy who made Memento" status that I had started to question after Insomnia .

While researching The Dark Knight at work, I had come across a bunch of articles that mentioned Heath Ledger's death. The ones that went into any detail seemed to always use the exact same phrase: "accidental prescription drug overdose". I think this is a little silly - after all, overdoses are generally assumed to be accidents because when they happen on purpose, they are more accurately described as suicides. As far as the "prescription" drugs are concerned, I don't see how it makes a difference that his drugs originally passed through a pharmacist's hands. People who misuse these kinds of rich white people drugs are not any better than those who struggle with meth and heroin; all are equals beneath the specter of drug abuse. Furthermore, Ledger's fatal cocktail included Vicodin and Oxycontin, two drugs for which he did not have a prescription. I don't bring this up to besmirch Ledger- his death is very sad, and he will be missed and remembered by friends and fans alike (myself included). However, sugar-coating it as an "accidental prescription drug overdose" suggests that Ledger's demise is some big cosmic mistake that is somehow different and more wholesome than the fates that have met others who struggle with addiction. Prescription drug abuse in no more wholesome than controlled substance abuse, and it is only by putting this attitude aside can we fairly address this issue as a universal problem that continues to affect so many people from all walks of life.

My semantic nitpickings aside, I can at least agree with all the critics who have lauded Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight. His crusty, reptilian, anarcho-punk Joker is right on, and he fills his scenes with an intense, comic insanity. He is the modern nightmare terrorist- he's oblivious to death and danger (but miraculously resilient), he can constantly and secretly rig explosives throughout Gotham every few hours, and he kills indiscriminately and without any rational rules. We don't have to ask why he incessantly needs to recite inane monologues or how he manages be in any and all places at once. He can do all this because he's the fucking Joker- no further explanation is needed.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn't get off so easy. As some others have pointed out, the Joker isn't the only character with magical teleportation powers or over-written, dialogue. Furthermore, The Dark Knight is jam-packed with twisty little moments when the film seems to either scream or menacingly whisper, "Surprise!". The first few of these are fun, but after a while they start to become cheap, predictable, and increasingly unintelligible. The film can only foil our expectations so many times by with tricks like "this seemingly unimportant character is actually someone else in disguise!" or "this good guy is actually evil!" before we give up any attempts to invest ourselves in the narrative. It's that old Alfred Hitchcock rule: instead of letting the bomb explode and surprise everybody, it's better to show the ticking bomb under the table and let the suspense build as the audience agonizes over what they know but the characters on screen do not. This is seldom the case in The Dark Knight, which allows its onscreen characters hold their cards close to their chests before suddenly throwing them in the audience's face. Consequently, hardly any of these characters seem to grow or learn or change- they're too busy lurking in the shadows until they can jump out and shout, "Gotcha!"

The only exception to this trend is Gotham District Attorney Harvey "Two Face" Dent, played by a soon-to-be-hideously-scarred Aaron Eckhart. Dent begins the film as proud force of chivalry and justice, though he quickly abandons his principles as he attempts to protect girlfriend Rachel Dawes (Batman's ex-sweetie, inhabited this time around by Maggie Gyllenhal) from the Joker's reign of terror. Dent's transformation for paladin to maniac is inevitable, but it never feels convincing. Painted in broad strokes, he appears as too much of a caricature both when valiantly riding his high horse and when wallowing in villainy after he has fallen. Throughout this process, we watch as he fires off strong bursts of emotion, but we are seldom given the opportunity to understand the conflict and struggle that will lead him to betray his ideals. Presumably, the filmmakers had hope to pin this on Dawes's death, but even this proves problematic- Dent and Dawes hardly seem passionate, let alone intimate, and while the film is largely silent on issues of chronology, it appears that the two have been together for perhaps a year or two at the most. It must hurt terribly to lose someone like that, but Dawes's death feels like an overly dramatic attempt to justify the reason why Eckhart spends the film's final hour with half his face melted into a cartoonishly hate-filled CGI mask.

The film itself is filled with similarly overwrought yet ultimately shallow contrivances. The Bruce Wayne/Rachel Dawes/Harvey Dent love triangle occupies far too much screen time without producing any satisfying payoff, and the same can be said for a painstaking interlude that brings Batman to Hong Kong for a drawn out spy game and corporate infiltration sequence. Many action scenes follow rote, mindless, and blitzy cutting, and the finale amplifies this visual headache by presenting much of the battle as an x-ray vision clusterfuck. All this hot air swells the film's thin skin, eventually ballooning it to an overlong two and a half hours.

In its finer moments, The Dark Knight features compelling and often pleasantly subtle performances from Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and an almost unrecognizable Gary Oldman. It also achieves many admirable victories in its attempts to reground the superhero film in the realm of the real, but these are matched evenly with the film's many moments of bombast and incredulity. Also unfortunate are the film's attempts to blink away moments of ultra-violence; undoubtedly choreographed to gain a wholly undeserved PG-13 rating, The Dark Knight quickly cuts away from many of its most sadistic episodes or otherwise allows these moments to occur unseen. In one scene, the Joker slides his knife across a rival gangster's quivering lip as he recounts a story about how he received his own facial deformities. However, the climactic face-slashing is never seen, heard, or even cinematically articulated; the mob boss simply falls to the ground, leaving us to wonder, after all the wonderful buildup, whether we've missed something. Incidentally, this is exactly how I felt as I left the theater.

Scar Tissue

This Art school guy that I've been kinda dating invited me to join him and his friends for frisbee and tree-climbing last weekend. I thought it would be nice if I made us some snacks, so I packed bananas, apples, trail mix, Martinelli's apple juice, and peanut butter and jelly as well as roast beef sandwiches. I wore my ragged pirate shorts because they would be fun to play in, and I was eager to ride my motorcycle to the park, mostly because I thought it would make me look cool to the art guy. This ended up being an awful idea because I got lost and tried to do a U-turn on a hill and almost put my bike down. I caught it with my body, but the hot engine was pressing into my exposed leg, and I ended up burning myself pretty badly. I finally made it to the park, and I was getting frantic and also a little pissed off because nobody seemed to care that I'd burned myself. I managed to cool it down with the cold Martinelli's bottle, but I still found myself pretty pissed off for the rest of the day.

We went to this funky little art gallery where I found some ice that I wrapped in a bag and placed on my burn. Apparently ice is bad for burns, but it felt good at the time. One of the artist guy's teachers was leading a meditation, which I had thought was corny but actually found to be very relaxing. It was a little weird as he guided us through it, though, because he kept mentioning our anuses and telling us to visualize ourselves inside of them. He was at a party at art guy's house the weekend before, and he had abruptly kissed me on the lips as he was leaving. I didn't say anything about this to anybody, but it definitely weirded me out.

Later that night, we went to Roscoe's Chicken Waffles in Hollywood. I'd never been before, and I was kind of surprised to learn that the restaurant did indeed serve fried chicken, giant waffles, and very little else. I didn't try the chicken, but my waffle was pretty wonderful, and their biscuits were good, too. Art guy ordered an "Eclipse" to drink, which was orange juice, fruit punch and lemonade, though it was served so that the three layers remained distinct, at least when it arrived at the table. He let me have a sip but gave a stern warning not to let the flavors mix.

He has something of a devil may care attitude about the things he does and the adventures he goes on. It's one of the reasons why I like him, but I also get worried because he's so loose with his money even though he has so little. I've bought him dinner and ice cream a few times, which I don't really mind, but it surprises me how often he eats out, seeing as he's always complaining about how hard it is for him to make ends meet. Once when I was staying at his house, the power went out and he started lamenting how he hadn't paid the electricity bill. Luckily, it was just an outage, but it was still pretty scary. He can't afford to fix his car or go to the dentist, and he scrambles to make rent. He asked me if I would cosign on a loan, and I felt rude saying no, but I realized it was the only sensible thing to do.

After Roscoe's, we went back to his place with some of his friends and watched The Golden Girls on DVD. He figured out a function on his remote control that let him zoom in and loop certain clips from the show, which was way funnier than it sounds here. I'd never seen the show before I met him, and I guess it's a good part of my gay education, but I don't think I'm set to become a super fan. Maybe I'm just biased against TV, but I couldn't totally get over all the conventional sitcom stuff. Still, I can see how it's so popular with the gays- it's hard to put into words, but I think the lives of those four old ladies are something of a fantasy version of what some guys hope their lives will be like later on.

My own fantasies have already gotten me in enough trouble. My burn wound bubbled up and blistered. I foolishly sloughed off some dead skin right after it happened, and it looks really awful right now. I'm worried about it becoming infected or causing some kind of permanent damage. I'm also worried about what kind of scar it might leave. I guess I shouldn't be freaking out about this- after all, it's on the side of my leg, not my face. Still, it makes me sad to think that I've somehow ruined a little part of myself. In fact, permanency scares the hell out of me, and I'm not really sure why.

Art boy told me he thought a scar would be sexy. Then again, he said the same thing about a beard, glasses, and long hair- but still it made me feel better knowing that the burn didn't weaken my image for him. I feel stupid trying to impress him by riding a motorcycle, and I haven't been able to get back on my bike since the burn. I keep wondering if I should regret this bike- only after buying it do I realize all of the other things that I could be saving my money for. I wonder why I give into these impulses and why I can't actually make my life work out the way I want it to. Instead, I somehow always end up getting burned.

The Thing that Goes

I bought a motorcycle on Craigslist this week. I still don't know exactly why I did this. I already own a very reliable car (which I often need for transporting video and sports equipment), I don't exactly have a steady paying job, and I otherwise try my hardest to avoid doing rash, potentially life-changing (or life-ending) things like this. Besides, I'm half scared to death of motorcycles. But I'm also half in love with the things.

I think my infatuation started last winter when I bought a collection of Kenneth Anger films on DVD. I had seen a clip of Scorpio Rising once before, but watching the whole thing touched some strange nerve deep inside me. I watched it again and again and again, which is strange because I almost never feel compelled to watch anything- even movies I love- more than once a year or so. But something about Scorpio demanded repeat viewings, if only to solve the mystery of why I found it so affecting.

And I'm still not sure I can put my finger on it. It might be the beautiful but almost naively simplistic cinematography. Or the amazing and ironic pop music. Or the conflation of James Dean, Jesus, and Hitler. Maybe it was just the biker boys.


Scorpio was one of the first films I saw after coming out, and I think this set me up to identify with Anger's cinematic fascination the male body. Scorpio's bikers preen and polish themselves just as they do their motorcycles. The bikers' existence draws structure through costume and ritual and subcultural mythology- they are their own self-perpetuating gods, just as magnificent and tragic in genesis as they are in death.

A few months later, I met up with one of the subjects I've been following for my surf documentary. We had gone to high school together but had never really been close friends, and I hadn't seen him in five years. His footage ended up being pretty amazing, as he was emotionally sincere and unafraid to bear his soul. He had great stories and uncanny camera sense. And he was gorgeous and rode a motorcycle.

Four months later, I find myself looking over a 2001 Suzuki 500E: midnight blue, 487 cc engine, standard bike. The owner is a musician who works from home, and I find myself nervously questioning his thinning hairline, goatee, and olive-skinned complexion, as if any of these things should serve as a dire warning, but I get the impression that he is just as nervous about the whole thing as I am. I feel funny negotiating a price with him- it's the type of thing that I relished doing when I was traveling in Asia, but it feels strange doing it in America. It probably makes me uncomfortable because I have so little experience bargaining, and I'm afraid that I'm doing it all wrong. Is my first price too low? How am I supposed to read his response? Haggling is a skill that has more or less been bred out of us polite, upper-middle class America (does that even describe me anymore?), but this is a deficiency that I so badly want to fill. Kind of like how I feel about motorcycles.

I come back a few days later to pick up the bike, but it starts giving me trouble, and I find myself regretting taking three months to buy a bike since finishing my safety course. The motorcycle lurches and sputters but doesn't really go anywhere. I start getting frustrated, and eventually get it moving, only to have the bike stall out as I stagger forward, and I struggle for a few seconds before the bike falls to the ground. It's not a bad fall, but the cap at the end of the handlebar is a little bent. Much worse, the bike won't start. The engine whines and gasps, and slowly gives up. I push it back to the sidewalk, afraid that I've tragically broken the thing already, and soon the bike won't even respond to the starter button.

This is exactly the embarrassment that I had been dreading, and all the discouraging words of my friends start come back to me. But I pull myself together and go get the old owner out on the street with his voltmeter. Turns out the battery, like my ego, is totally shot, which explains a lot of things and actually makes me feel a lot better. I want to be pissed at the guy, but I figure he's more dense than dishonest, so I don't bother with it.

A fresh battery improves things greatly, and I take the bike around the block a few times to get a feel for it. I start remembering how to work the clutch to shift gears, and it all feels pretty good. This lasts for about five minutes before I manage to drop the bike again. After propping it back up, I quickly realize that there's no longer a brake lever on the handlebar. A trip to the dealer (new brake lever), the grocery store (WD-40), and my roommate's toolbox (metric-size socket wrench), and the bike is functional again.

I ride the bike around the neighborhood where I bought it, and I notice a lot of the residents are Hispanic (the types that conservative talk radio is always warning me about). There's a family talking in Spanish as they pack their SUV for a picnic, a group of people who have taken over a large chunk of one street with an RV and a table full of delicious smelling foods, and a young man selling oranges and water on a street corner. I see a piñata set up on the side of the street, and I wonder if it's someone's birthday. It's my birthday in a few days, but I don't have any plans other than going to work. I want to have a party, but I don't know enough people in Los Angeles to invite over, which makes me kinda sad.

Eventually, I decide to ride the bike to my apartment, even though it means leaving my car behind to pick up later. The ride back is something I had been dreading, as I've been deathly afraid of being too incompetent to operate the motorcycle outside of residential streets. To my surprise, everything goes really well. I don't stall at traffic lights or have too much trouble shifting gears. I also get going fast- up around 45mph- and it feels great. Or at least it does until I get to the main street near where I live. Without warning, the engine stops turning over and the bike dies while I am in the middle of the street. Somehow, I manage not to panic as I walk the bike over to the side of the street.

I open up the fuel tank and find that I can see the bottom pretty clearly, which I take to be a bad sign. I'm frustrated because the old owner told me there was enough in there for the bike to go another 125 miles, and I haven't even taken it 50. I walk a few blocks to a gas station. There's another biker there, a stocky Hispanic guy with a chin beard. He looks at me walking up there with my helmet under my arm and right away says that it wasn't my fault and that his bike ran out of gas just one week ago in Long Beach. His friendliness makes me feel better, and the attendant is nice too, though the gas canister he sells me is the most complicated piece of cheap plastic I've ever encountered.

I ride back to my place, but it's not easy going. It takes a little while for the gasoline to start flowing again, and then I can't keep my engine properly revved. I stall the bike and lose power at least half a dozen times on the way back- it's a wonder I don't cause any accidents. I eventually get home in one piece, but now I just keep worrying about what I've gotten myself into. What exactly made me think this was a good idea in the first place? What could I have done during all these months when I've lusted after a motorcycle that doesn't fit my needs or lifestyle? Does this have anything to do with why I find myself so isolated from everything and everyone around me?

Luckily, I'm too worn down to worry all that hard.