So I don't often post things that are frightfully personal (by which I mean penetrative) here, but I will write now that years and years ago I had a surprisingly enduring physical relationship with a man who looked like a youngish Robert Deniro, and it was awesome until it wasn't anymore; he was Italian, and in sexual terms they tend to start strong and slow down, so after two months I moved on to greener pastures.
But during those first heady (heh) weeks I have to admit that part of the charm, only a part, was realizing things like "I'm being .....(whatever was happening at the time).... by a guy who looks like a youngish Robert Deniro." And to cap it all off, he was a bad boy, who'd just finished doing time for armed robbery; he got in fights; he also claimed to be a gigolo. Now, I imagine if I was on the market now, that sort of thing would have me out the door even before my bra started chafing me, strong resemblance to YRD or not, but at the point I was with YRD I was 20 or 21 and as dumb as shit, so somehow it had the opposite effect. Fuck, I can't believe how dumb I was. I'm not the sort to regret her roundheel days - in fact I don't know any former roundheels who regret their roundheel days - but nonetheless I was really as dumb as shit sometimes. Something that helped me to realize I'd been as dumb as shit and to be rather smarter than shit afterwards was the knee-buckling relief I felt every time I tested negative for HIV for the next three years.
Nonetheless over the last decade or so I've occasionally thought back to YRD with a certain vestige of my 20-21 year old idiocy compounded by the fact that I didn't catch anything, a sort of "I got a lot of awesome.....(insert action here).... from a bad boy who looked like a YRD." Even a certain relief, not unmixed with smugness and probably not irrational, that I'd done something that retarded when I was young enough and stupid enough to really enjoy it, but not so young and so stupid that I couldn't figure out that this was not an appropriate thing to continue doing with my reproductive life.
And then last night we watched the 1991 version of Cape Fear. Holy fuck. Suddenly looking like a youngish Robert Deniro, even in my memories, became a real non-asset.
I didn't like the film, Jessica Lange and Nick Nolte annoyed the hell out of me and the PI always drinking the Pepto Bismol with bourbon got in the way of my suspension of disbelief too. Worst of all, though, you're not telling me that even in the American South in the early 90's a woman can get her cheek bit off in a sexual encounter, not to mention all the other injuries, and then not be capable of arguing that it was criminal battery, especially when it had been done by a man who'd just got out of prison the week before after a 14-year sentence for battery while the police and the public prosecutor are searching for ways to put him back in jail. An alienated roundheels getting punched in the face back in the Robert Mitchum version in the 60's made some sense, but in those terms the 1991 version made no sense: it was just stupid, insulting, and if it weighed on the mind of even one woman who had been raped and was considering whether or not to report it, fucking criminal. Spits.
But Robert Deniro's performances as a frightening, disgusting creepy and violent piece of murderous shit was phenomenal, really very excellent. Excellent enough that the fact he was playing a swamp redneck while having one of the woppiest faces in cinema was only occasionally funny. So excellent, in fact, that I think my days of smugness over YRD are out the window for good- any vestige of the smug is gone, replaced with straight relief over fact that, you know, I'm still fucking alive.
