A Photo from the Eighties

The early eighties were my formative years. I taught myself literature and cinema in the seventies, just by reading the newspaper supplements and watching every movie, from classic Hollywood to experimental cinema, on Dutch, German and Belgian public channels. But at  the start of the eighties I left my home and moved into a dorm.

I had my only long lasting friendship in those years. A male friend,  a dark handsome stranger he was, he looked like a cross between  a young Humphrey Bogart and Montgomery Clift.  It wasn’t sexual in any way. It was more like a  classic male friendship in westerns by Howard Hawks and Anthony Mann.  Think about  Im Lauf der Zeit, the 1976 roadmovie by Wim Wenders;  probably our favorite film those years. 

We made trips together, later  the three of us, with his girlfriend, we went to concerts and exhibitions, we recorded some songs on a cassette recorder.  I remember one song I’d written about Kierkegaard and his love for Regine Olsen, with  the title 'The Kierkegaard Blues'. 

Here’s a photo form those days. I love the androgynous image  of me this photo depicts.  There’s a softness in my face, now long gone, my fingers are not that long though, I love my hair here, now I’m having a bad hair day every day. 

                                                                       

 I fell in love with a girl from time to time, but it was always unrequited.   I had no idea  what to do would that not be the case.   I loved boyish girls. In my diary is a note: “I don’t know if I can handle an excess of femininity.”  I  remember  I  had a photo  from a magazine of a slim, small-busted shorthaired girl on the wall of my room.

I probably thought : equality in appearance  = equality in all, and that will exclude sex.  Some theory, haha. Reminds me of  Francis Fukuyama’s idea  of the end of history with the victory of liberal democracy.

I longed for the company of girls, but when I came upon a group of girls on the street or in a café, and I listened in to their smalltalk, heard their laughter,  I felt excluded from their intimacy, mocked. (My imagination fuelled by my sense of inferiority.)  And that hasn’t changed since, I ‘m afraid.  [ I try to evade the company of a group of men ].  

Remember The Smiths’ song  ‘I know it’s over’, from their 1986 LP The Queen is Dead,  when Morrissey sings :

 ‘Love is natural and real 

But not for you, my love Not tonight, my love 
Love is natural and real But not for such as you and I, my love’

I know it's over, The Smiths

I know it's over , Jeff Buckley (cover)