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’
