The emotional curve-ball

I don’t know if this qualifies as Grinchitude or not. Probably not, because it’s all about a phenomenon – a social quirk, or something – that I’ve hated for a very long time.

Hard to know what to call it. The curve ball? The sucker punch? The corkscrew?

How about “turning it around”?

I know a few people who are masters of this subtle torture. Their usual method is to needle you, and needle, and needle, and needle, finding the raw unprotected areas of your psyche and drilling into them with incredible accuracy and skill.


This needling goes on and on and on until you finally just have to protest. Finally, you say something. The needler then gets all trembly and woeful and wounded, and accuses YOU of being abusive. "How can you do this to me? I was only trying to help you!", and all that crap.

One person, who for some unknown reason shall remain nameless, was the undisputed master of this technique (for that is what it is, a “method” or even a way of life perfected over many decades).

Over a period of many years, she found those tender spots and jabbed them ruthlessly. Having chosen a sad parade of losers to be intimate with, she was unmarried, and the fact that I married so young caused her to make remarks like, “So I guess you think you’ve got your whole life figured out now.” This was a nice substitute for the usual response to a wedding: “Congratulations!”.

There were others, and they went on for years and years and years. Preparing a turkey for Thanksgiving, my mother said, “Look what it says on the label.”

My sister looked. “A young hen. (Nudging my husband) Well! Bill, you sure know about young hens, don’t you? Why don’t you tell us all about it?”

Since she was thirteen years older than me and clearly superior to me in every way, I said nothing.

More volleys were to come. When she visited us in Alberta while my kids were small, she kept shooting me exasperated, incredulous looks whenever they acted up in the slightest. Then she said in a voice laden with judgemental pity, “I’m just trying to imagine what your days are like.”

I was supposed to be OK with that one, really I was, and I guess take it as advice to throw out my current life and get a new one, preferably exactly like hers.

Anyway, it went on and on and on.  Her pet names for me were “weird” and “crazy”, said in a lilting, shrugging, I’m-writing-you-off sort of way. When I said I was nervous about moving to Vancouver and wondered what would happen if I couldn’t adjust, she did her finest cool, I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-you shrug and said (I’m not making this up):

“Oh well, then I guess you’ll just self-destruct.”

The fact that my brother was seriously mentally ill and died tragically young on the streets of Toronto was all part of the equation. It was meant. Believe me.

I made the mistake of writing her a letter once, an enthusiastic letter about how my life really seemed to be coming together. Bad mistake. Her reply seemed to weigh 5000 pounds in my hand. It was eight pages of advice. Advice telling me how I SHOULD be living. How I SHOULD be going to university and getting past my basic illiteracy and freeing myself from the “backwater” of the small town I was living in (and loved).  How I SHOULD be joining the staff of the local newspaper, “even if you’re just covering the junk items like weddings” (weddings!). Was I supposed to just walk in and join?

That was that, and I had had it with the completely gratuitous advice, the “correction” of my happiness to suit her rigid agenda, not to mention her totally fucked-up life. I was going to tell her what my days were like. I still don’t think it was a nasty letter, but I pointed out that I never told her what to do (true, I was afraid to), so why did she feel so free to plan the entire rest of my life, which I was obviously wasting on a happy marriage, good friends, raising children, doing volunteer work and community theatre, teaching part-time at the pre-school, etc. etc. etc.?

I don’t know what happened, but something about trying to finally make myself heard brought forth the most poisonous, twisted reply I’d ever received.

“Don’t pay any attention to me, I’m just an old person and obviously I don’t know what I'm talking about. I can tell you don’t care about my feelings at all and you don’t care if you absolutely devastate me with a letter like that, but I don’t mind because it’s obvious I don’t know what I’m doing and will never tell you anything again.”

It was a torpedo.

It went straight to its mark in my solar plexus, and lodged there, leaking poison.

What happened? I wrote back and apologized!

Apologized for finally telling her how I felt, for telling her how the layers of raw irritation from being slighted over and over and over again had finally become intolerable.

I had hurt her, obviously. Devastated her! I felt awful, like a terrible person. She was just trying to help me! Wasn’t I living in a useless backwater? Wasn’t my marriage really a sham? Wasn’t I weird and crazy, and why couldn’t I just take those nasty names in good humor? (By the way, in a typical example of refusing to take responsibility for wounding me, she later claimed those labels were “compliments”).

OK, then, finally we come to it: the curveball. The way cruel people jab and jab and jab, and then when you finally hit back, their faces crumple and they lower their heads and begin to whimper with well-timed tears spilling down their quivering faces:  how could you do this to me? How could YOU be so cruel as to wound a person like me, who only has your best interests at heart?

She turned it around on me, made ME the cruel, unforgiveable abuser and herself the baffled, wounded victim whimpering and slinking away.

Why the hell do human beings do this? It’s called “not taking responsibility”. It’s called being twisted around like a corkscrew, and maybe not even knowing it, or wanting to know it (just a little thing called denial, a thing that destroys lives).

I could go on and on, but someone is reading this, maybe, and thinking, “poor soul, she’s full of bile, what’s the matter with her?”, or, worse yet, “Why isn’t she being more positive?” Especially at Christmas.

Oh, yes. Christmas. The detonator of emotional landmines.

There’s one more example of a really weird emotional twisting that I still can’t figure out. Maybe 25 years ago I was in the washroom of the local high school (probably while working on a community theatre project), when a woman with an English accent came tiptoeing up to me, and in a soft, almost apologetic voice she said:

“Sometimes, from many, many years ago. . . “

“Excuse me?” I was barely aware of who this woman was, let alone what she was talking about.

“From many, many years ago, someone says something that can be. . . “

“Who? Saying what? What do you mean?"

“I just don’t want you to be hurt by it.”

“Hurt by what? What are you talking about?”

“You mean you didn’t hear it? Oh, all right then, forget about it.”

“Forget about what? Why don’t you just tell me?"

“Oh no, if you didn’t hear it then I won’t tell you.  Believe me, it’s better that you don’t know.”

I felt like screaming by then. “Someone” had said “something” about me, “something” very very hurtful apparently, based on "something" from many many years ago, and this woman, whoever she was, was convinced that I had heard it. Or maybe she wasn't, I don’t know. I had no idea what she was talking about or who might have said something about me, but by now, of course, I was dying to hear it. Who wouldn't be?

“Look, I wish you’d just tell me what the person said. I really want to know.”

“Oh no, no, no, if you didn’t hear it – "

“But I think I have a right to hear it!”

(A wounded silence; tears slowly filling the wide, Bambi-like eyes.)

“I was only trying to protect you from the truth. People always say you’re an unkind person. And now I know why.”

Exit, stage left (via washroom door).

And that was the end of the exchange.

Some sort of double-whammy: dangling this unknown bafflingly nasty thing in front of me, pretending to be sympathetic, snatching it back, then acting all wounded when I insisted she TELL ME what this remark was, neatly turning the hurt around and jamming it forcefully up my nose.

Does anyone know how to stop this shit before it becomes totally toxic? Does anyone know how to neatly intercept such crap and hurl it back at them where it belongs? Is there even a name for this? The only one I’ve found is “turning it around”. But that sounds too mild for something so twisted.

Honestly, I’ve had enough. I don’t care if it’s Christmas or Columbus Day, I need to get this out of my system. There, I’ve done it, and I hope you see yourself. You know who you are.

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The most romantic kiss in screen history!

The most romantic kiss in screen history. . . not Scarlett and Rhett. . . not Rick and Ilsa. . . not Bonnie and Clyde. . . but. . .

HAROLD AND JOBYNA!

Having written a novel about his life, a novel which I hope will find wings in the year 2013, I feel like I know Harold Lloyd personally sometimes, and I certainly know the course of his career. He probably made a couple hundred movies all-told, starting in 1917, but his classic films came out in the early-to-mid '20s. In rating his best pictures, most silent film buffs would probably name The Freshman (which is about . . . a freshman, a nerdy overaged college boy desperate for popularity) and Safety Last, in which safety comes last as Harold climbs up the side of a dizzyingly-tall building and hangs off the hands of a huge clock.

I like those, yes, love them in fact, and never tire of watching them (in fact I may watch them again tonight), but there is more pain and poignancy in The Kid Brother, and more still in Girl Shy, in which his characters are passive, even downtrodden youths who haven't yet discovered their manhood. This revelation/transformation always happens through love: Harold Lloyd's films are among the most romantic ever made, and none more romantic than my personal all-time favorite. . .

Why Worry?

This movie has the best title ever written, since it essentially means nothing and signals the fact that we are about to watch the very first screwball comedy. Never mind that the actual first screwball comedy would come out more than ten years later.

Against type, Harold plays a wealthy idler with all sorts of imagined ills who escapes to a tropical island with his gorgeous nurse (played by the sad-eyed, kewpie-lipped Jobyna Ralston). Said nurse is madly in love with Harold, who doesn't even seem to see her except in moments of unexpected contact: i.e., when she trips and falls into his lap as he sits in a totally unnecessary wheelchair. The slow-blooming smile on his face before he dumps her onto the ground communicates a subtle but very real sexual tension that will permeate the whole film.

She pines for him, he ignores her: it's the antithesis of practically every other Lloyd film, turning everything on its ear and releasing a madcap energy that outstrips anything in his other comedies. To add a little excitement, a dangerous anarchist plans a revolution on the island, causing all sorts of feverish violence that makes Harold exclaim, "You fellows must stop this. I came here for my health."

This shot illustrates one of the best Harold Lloyd gags ever: mountain-climbing up the side of a giant to try to remove his rotten tooth. (Never mind, you had to be there.) Wacky gag follows on wacky gag as Lloyd reaches a sort of fever pitch of brilliance and mad originality. At one point his nurse, dressed as a boy (a most unconvincing disguise) becomes furious with his self-centredness and hypochondria and begins to cuss him out as only one can in a silent movie. She's standing up, he's sitting, in the passive position, and once again that dreamy smile begins to play across his face before he tells her she has very beautiful eyes.

This comedy breaks every convention of the era, including the rule of the silent screen kiss: almost always quick, comedic, and preferably behind a screen. When Harold suddenly realizes he is madly in love with Jobyna, he doesn't just peck her but seizes her in his arms and kisses her with ferocious passion, something I've never seen in any other silent film, not even The Sheik. She resists for a second, then melts into his arms with a subtle leg-pop that conveys complete surrender.

How many takes were required to capture that volcanic kiss? I wonder. In any case, I envy Jobyna. There are murmurings that they were "involved", as he was involved with so many women in his lifetime. There was something seductive and bedroomy about his eyes (along with the canny intelligence and a touch of wildness) that was there for a lifetime.

And so: today, after literally years of searching, I've found a picture of that kiss! I can't find a video of it, I'm sorry, so you'll just have to watch the whole movie. Better yet, buy the DVD set, The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection, superbly remastered with charming, energetic scores by Robert Israel and Carl Davis.

Harold, Harold, you have basically ruined my life! I have probably gained 25 pounds because of you, due to all my fretting, my unproductive fuming. I need to tell your story so badly I ache with it. I KNOW I can do this, I feel it! I have it in me, I have the goods. And I'm not always this confident about my work. 

What is it about a person who has the power to wreck your life from this distance? We were alive at the same time, yes, but he died when I was just a teenager. We were on the same planet together at the same time. Aieeeeeee! My heart! When will this hopeless yearning end?

SYNOPSIS: THE GLASS CHARACTER  by Margaret Gunning

I would like to introduce you to my third novel, The Glass Character, a story of obsessive love and ruthless ambition set in the heady days of the Jazz Age in the 1920s. This was a time when people went to the movies almost every day, living vicariously through their heroes: Valentino, Garbo, Fairbanks and Pickford. But comedians were the biggest draw, and broad slapstick the order of the day - with one very significant exception.

 

Standing beside Keaton and Chaplin in popularity and prowess was a slight, diffident man named Harold Lloyd. He hid his leading man good looks under white makeup and his trademark black-framed spectacles.  Nearly 100 years later, an iconic image of Lloyd remains in the popular imagination: a tiny figure holding on for dear life to the hands of a huge clock while the Model Ts chuff away 20 stories below.

With his unique combination of brilliant comedy and shy good looks, Lloyd had as many female followers as Gilbert or Barrymore. Sixteen-year-old Muriel Ashford, desperate to escape a suffocating life under her cruel father's thumb, one day hops a bus into the unknown, the Hollywood of her dreams.  Though  the underside of her idealistic vision is nasty and fiercely competitive, she quickly lands extra work because of her Pickford-esque ability to smile and cry at the same time.

When her idol Harold Lloyd walks on the set, her life falls into a dizzy whirl of confusion, attraction, and furious pursuit.  Muriel tries on and sheds one identity after another: bit actress, waitress in a speakeasy, "girl reporter", script writer - while Lloyd almost literally dances in and out of her desperately lonely world, alternately seducing her and pushing her away.

While researching this book, I repeatedly watched every Lloyd movie I could get my hands on. I was astonished at his subtlety, acting prowess and adeptness at the art of the graceful pratfall. His movies are gaining new popularity on DVD (surprisingly, with women sighing over him on message boards everywhere!). The stories wear well and retain their freshness because of the Glass Character's earnest good nature and valiant, sometimes desperate attempts to surmount impossible challenges.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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Beauty and horror: the binding of women's souls

An excerpt from The Three-inch Golden Lotus: a novel on foot binding by Feng Jicai

(Blogger's note: foot binding was a practice which was almost universal in China for nearly a thousand years. It was only banned in the early 20th century, though it was carried on in secret for many decades. Little girls had their feet contorted and crushed into the “ideal” measurement of three or four inches long. A powerful fetish sprang up around this hideous practice, with men becoming “connaisseurs” of  foot deformity and the various ways in which the instep buckled and the toes were crushed into lifelessness.  Jicai’s novel is both brilliant and hair-raising in exposing a barbaric, horrifying practice which made little girls marriageable and desirable, providing their only chance to “marry up” and save their families from destitution. Many say Jicai's novel is satiric, not just uncovering a shame from the past but holding up present-day social atrocity for close, uncomfortable scrutiny.)

In this scene, Fragrant Lotus, a five-year-old girl who already has beautiful tiny feet, is initiated into womanhood by her beloved grandmother. To start the process, she forcibly breaks the little girl’s toes and folds them under the sole.

“Granny’s hands moved fast. She was afraid Fragrant Lotus would start to kick and scream, so she quickly completed the binding. She wrapped the bandage around the four toes, down to the arch, up over the instep, behind the heel, and then quickly forward, over the four toes once again. . . Fragrant Lotus’ mind was filled with waves of pain and pinching, folding and contortion. . . The four toes, now next to the arch, were locked firmly in place, as if by metal bands. They were unable to move, even a minute fraction of an inch.

“. . . She set about collecting shards of broken bowls, spread them on the ground, and smashed them into small, sharp bits. The next time she rebound Fragrant Lotus’ feet, she put the bits of porcelain inside the bandages, along the soles of her feet. When Fragrant Lotus walked, the pottery bits cut into her skin. . . The cut feet suffocated by the bandages became swollen, inflamed, and pus formed in the wounds. Whenever the bindings were changed, the old bandage had to be ripped off, tearing off pus and chunks of rotten flesh. This was an old method in the north China foot-binding tradition. Only when the bones were shattered and the flesh was putrid could the feet be properly molded into the most desirable shape.”

ENOUGH! We won’t get into the way Granny pulls out Fragrant Lotus’ toenails and pounds her feet with a rolling pin to make them more malleable. Though I am sure Jicai did his research with the utmost care (it matches everything I’ve ever found on the subject), at a certain point it becomes too headspinningly horrendous to even take in. How many millions of little girls had their childhood stolen from them in this way, forced to live the rest of their lives with a literally crippling deformity?

But even this isn’t the worst. Jicai also delves into the creepy fetishes men developed around bound feet, which were sometimes unwrapped and “played with” in the marriage bed. Foot competitions, in which feet were judged on size and shape (the smaller and pointier the better) were a common diversion, with women hiding behind screens so that only their deformed feet showed in their three-or-four inch, gorgeously-embroidered, teeteringly high-heeled shoes.

Because of her exquisitely-bound feet, Fragrant Lotus has “married up” into a wealthy family with a typical foot obsession. An impromptu foot contest springs up when a number of perverted old men show up to indulge their fetish. Mr. Lu, a self-appointed expert on the subject, begins to expound:

“Small feet are beautiful or ugly based on their overall appearance, which can be further divided into two elements: shape and form. Let us discuss shape first. There are six terms to describe shape: short, narrow, thin, smooth, upright, and pointed. Short refers to the foot’s length from back to front, and it should be short, not long. Narrow refers to the breadth of the foot from side to side, and it should be narrow, not wide. . . "

"Pointed refers to the toes, which should not be blunt but should come to a sharp point. If they have a slight upward turn, they are even more seductive. However, the degree of upturn should be just right. Too much will cause the point to stand upright, like a scorpion’s tail;  too little and it will droop downward, like a rat’s tail. Neither of these will do. And that, gentlemen, completes the discussion of the shape of the lotus.”

It goes on and on from there, for pages and pages, as various points of confirmation are discussed in detail as if the men are talking about flower varieties or dog breeds. The longer you think about this, the worse it gets: these crushed feet are being celebrated, the women’s lifelong crippling lifted up as rare beauty. The most unbelievable aspect of all this is the true meaning of the term “fragrant”: what it comes down to, as far as I can tell, is the horrid whiff of dead flesh coming from the rotting toes.

From a foot binding site come these startling revelations:

“Men who were turned on by bound feet were referred to as “lotus lovers”. They were aroused by the mysterious feet and were thrilled when the cotton covers were taken off. They inhaled the fragrant aroma and took delight in smelling the bared flesh. The husbands would fondle the foot in the palms of his hand before gradually caressing it with his mouth. He would place watermelon seeds or almonds between the toes before eating them from the woman’s foot. Beside these strange fetishes some men would drink the water that had previously been used to bathe the feet. The bound feet would be treasured like gold.”

When Fragrant Lotus loses the foot competition, not by inferior feet but a cheap pair of shoes, she decides to commit suicide: “In the Tong family if your feet were bad, you were finished. This family was like a chessboard, and bound feet were the individual chessmen. One false move and the game changed completely.”

Her only solution is to consult with a foot binding expert who says her feet are not "bowed" enough to be truly beautiful and must be rebound. ("Bowed" refers to the buckling upward of the crushed instep, forcing the front of the ankle to bulge outward.) Thus she experiences the torture of her girlhood all over again in order to gain favor in her own family.

The Three-Inch Golden Lotus isn’t history so much as social satire. Jicai seems to be whispering to us beneath the fascinatingly awful story: “Have things really changed so much?”  Instruments of torture, all the various means of squeezing, deforming, removing, wrenching out of shape and cutting away: they are all part of woman’s presence on earth.

Corsets, high heels, female circumcision, clitoridectomy, where does it stop? Now women are having surgery on their feet to “correct” problems that might keep them from wearing the five-inch skyscraper heels that are currently in fashion. In fact, the newest invention is the "ballet" heel in which the wearer literally walks on the ends of her toes with seven-inch stilts under her heels.

All in the name of fashion, but why? Do women do this for each other? Why are men so afraid of women? Why won’t they let us walk, breathe, have an orgasm? Why was being deformed and crippled such a sexual turn-on in an advanced civilization for a thousand years? Do you really think all this pain is part of the past, has come to an end? Why do women collude with men in taking on so much pain in order to be “beautiful”? What’s beautiful? And why?

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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