In the last few days, I’ve returned to two movies from long ago that gave me great pleasure then and have just brought me fresh joy. From 1953 (when I was in high school, in Pennsylvania), Roman Holiday, starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck (which came up on a free classic movie channel on my cable service). And from 1963 (when I was in grad school, in Massachusetts), Tom Jones, starring Albert Finney and a cast of wonderful character actors (which I had just gotten the DVD of in the mail).
Two notably different times in my life. In 1953 I was just a year into puberty, early onset having struck me the year before, and I was somewhat dazedly coping with having become a fully sexual being almost overnight and being enmeshed in powerful mixed feelings. Audrey Hepburn was elegantly adorable, I’d love to be hanging out with her, but I was alarmingly moved by the idea of zooming around Rome on a Vespa in Gregory Peck’s lap. Plus, he turns out to be a very model of manly moral values (yes, you can sing it). Lying in bed, I imagined I could smell him, and that made me happy.
In 1963, I was married and in various kinds of emotional crisis about my sexuality, but maintained all sorts of more or less ordinary life, including lots of movie-going. When Tom Jones came out — I was long hooked on the Fielding and had read it enough times to have already memorized some of the lines that got lifted for the movie — I saw it with my wife, with a woman who was one of our Cambridge friends, with another guy I was in grad school with (using the occasion to come out to him; that went well, he was really sweet and supportive), and twice by myself, out of devotion. It was full of verve, bawdy, outrageous, wildly funny, and thoroughly good-hearted. It lifted my heart.
This morning I watched it while working on another posting for this blog — I’m usually doing several things at once — though that certainly impeded my blogging. Because I kept breaking out in laughter. And, worse, anticipating, calling out character’s lines just before they spoke them in the movie. Sing, Thick Thwackum, thy bounty has flown. And more, dozens more. I clearly had memorized really big chunks of the script in 1963.
(Academic note. This is conscious / explicit memory, to be contrasted with the subconscious / implicit memory exhibited by my man Jacques in dementia, as sketched in my 8/16 posting “Experiencing it again for the first time”; J repeated his earlier commentary on favorite movies without being aware he was doing so.)
(Scent notes. I’m not sure, but I think the sharpness of my senses of taste and smell kicked in with puberty, and that got me those musings on Gregory Peck’s body scent. Meanwhile, in pre-puberty days, I would sometimes help my dad on sweaty household projects (it was an old, very odd house, forever in need of fixing and revision). Then I’d catch the smell of his exertion sweat — no one could miss it, my mother complained, GO WASH YOURSELF — and thought that I might have that smell someday, but that seemed inconceivable. And then suddenly I did, but way too often and in industrial strength. And it got trapped in all the body hair I’d suddenly developed.
I overdeodorized heavily, got family flak for that; the verb reek was freely bandied about. Yes, this sounds like a Zits strip, but it actually happened.
I cut the dosage, found less aggressive deodorants, discovered that sandalwood suits my body chemistry. Most important, I stopped pumping out pheromones like a stag in rut. It got better. Ever since, I’ve been giving off essence of locker room, with (currently) a very light coconut and vanilla deodorant to moderate it some; you can now say fairly that my armpits smell delicious. )
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