What Fuels These Motives Be…… or…. Where Have All The Flours Gone?

Dear Readers,

Have you ever taken a vacation and immediately thereafter felt you needed another vacation in order to recover from the vacation you just had?

Then you know how Valet Boy feels about his almost two-year absence from the almighty blog-o-sphere and by extrapolating thusly, how Mr. Boy has felt about life in general these past several months.

As a child, it was not unusual for me to experience the occasionally bizarre sense that it was not I walking around within my own skin but an imposter, an interloper, even an alien being.  At times it would be an emotional sensation.  Other times a weird physical thing.  At its worst it was totally mental and just shy of a never-ending loop of the 1948 Olivia de Havilland classic “The Snake Pit”.

If you are unfamiliar with the plot of the film – very briefly and in very broad strokes –  A seemingly normal young woman marries a handsome account exec and within days begins exhibiting tendencies which her husband finds disturbingly bizarre……

Of course, for women in 1948 these tendencies may have been as innocent and innocuous as – say for example:  Having an opinion… Or… an orgasm.

Nevertheless, her husband turns to the psychiatric community (apologies to Tom Cruise) and poor Olivia is institutionalized.  Enter the kindly Dr. Kick and the mean, vicious, jealous and ruthless nursing staff.  The movie title derives from the communal room wherein the nut bin’s inhabitants, all exemplifying nasty bits of raging psychoses, bounce aimlessly off walls and one another in a screeching, screaming, swirling terror filled atmosphere of lonely desperate horror.

Or as I like to call it in my world – Monday.

I don’t believe in coincidence, but in an interesting twist of synchronicity:  Right after completing this post while flipping thro the On Demand movies on my TV,  I happened upon “The Snake Pit”.   Now mind you in and of itself this means little or nothing.  It would mean even less than that if just last night I hadn’t gone thro the On Demand movie line up and “The Snake Pit” was NOT listed. 

Hmmmmmm.

Olivia de Havilland was an Oscar-winning actress, whose career spanned more than 50 years.  She also appeared in another of these anguish riddled psycho flickers that again could have been a symbol of Mr. Boys complex life makeup:  “Lady in a Cage”.

This unremarkable celluloid journey concerned a woman beset by physical and emotional handicaps who also becomes beset by a gang of young home invading hoodlums led by handsome diminutive screen newcomer Jimmy Caan.

As she has difficulty climbing the stairs in her home, Olivia employs the use of a convenient home elevator.  The elevator gives her the freedom to reach her home’s upper levels instilling a comforting sense of independence.  But, in life as with all good drama – our greatest asset can easily become our greatest handicap!

After the break-in, a frantic virtually petrified Olivia uses the elevator to escape the invading horde.  Unfortunately, they cut the power to the elevator cage trapping her between levels.  What ensues are moderately entertaining, if not seemingly unrelenting, assaults to torture the trapped Ms. de Havilland.  And as she warned us, “Don’t see it alone”…

Perhaps the best word of advice would have been to just not see it at all.

Now, let me pause here in case you, my dear readers, are sensing some kind of a pattern of sexual identity disorder.  Allow me to put your minds at ease.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I probably could just as easily have utilized “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” for my references but where’s the quirk in that?  (Although, it’s half a sure bet that Ken Kesey saw “The Snake Pit” and based Nurse Ratched on a few of the harpies from the old B&W film.)

Oh, I imagine at some point decades ago there was a fleeting momentary fantasy in which I considered what my life might have been like had I been born a woman.  But, I can unhesitatingly guarantee you that after having had to appear on stage in drag a few times, I realized I would undoubtedly be one of the most unattractive women ever to walk the earth (not to take anything away from Eleanor Roosevelt) and that thought was instantly dispelled.

Please don’t write me about my insensitivity to Mrs. Roosevelt.  I admired her greatly, but let’s face it – I’m sure they were all kept very busy at the Roosevelt household restarting the clocks whenever she passed by —-

1… 2… 3.   Ah, there you got it!  Good.  Moving on then.

“What’s the point of all this, Mr. Boy?”  You may well ask.

It’s just that Valet Boy has been out of sorts of late.  Wrestling with his place in the world as it were.  Weighing the pros and cons of life’s choices.

And from personal experience I can attest that this is an exhaustive exercise in futility at best and at worst may well open doors best kept tightly bolted, shuttered and locked.

I mean the options available in this day and age can be both myriad and frightening.  Doors to a variety of sociopathic and psychiatric disorders are just waiting to be flung wide opened exposing the poor mind to extremes only the young, healthy and firm should even attempt to explore.  Otherwise, we have legions of 70 and 80 year olds rushing out for sex reassignment surgeries or even worse deciding their calling is political and finding themselves in some nightmarish American Idol scenario jockeying for Michele Bachmann Turner Overdrive’s now vacant congressional seat.

So maybe all of this angst is just Valet Boy’s reaction to reaching the age of Social Security and passing through the thorny threshold of elderhood.  As visions of Shakespeare’s  7 Ages of Man speech from “As You Like It” wash over me, I’ll simply fart and burp, take my cane and my Poligrip and quietly move off to squat in the corner as if to say to the world:

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…”

But then isn’t that what THEY want?

Don’t THEY desire that Valet Boy and YOU and EVERYONE ELSE who boldly dares draw a breath on the planet just shut up and blow away?

Well, sorry, Buster!  I’m not in the business of making THEIR life easy.  I spell MY name with a VB and that rhymes with T and that stands for Trouble and….and…_

Where the hell was I going with this?

Nevermind.  Wait ’til I find my keys and I can drive us outta here.

Is Valet Boy back with a vengeance?  I have no idea.  But at least so far he’s not been Genetically Modified.

Until next time, remember:  When you speak in the third person you’re always guaranteed an audience of at least one!

Thank you, Dear Readers, for pausing in your busy day to visit.

Oh and BTW… This eve the lightning bugs have returned to brighten our vespers.

Valet Boy