Celluloid Love Life

Here is the story of my love and hate. The story of my right hand, left hand. The story of good and evil. But just a touch of evil. H-A-T-E. It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-O-V-E. You see these fingers dear hearts? These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man-- the right hand, friends, the hand of love.
But before the preacher or Felini or Billy Wilder taught me this, I was alone.
Loneliness had followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There was no escape.
I was God's lonely man. In a lonely place.
That is until I met her.
She thought I was common. How right she was. Common as dirt. She showed me a snapshot of the place with them columns and I pulled her down and she loved it.
And I loved her.
I loved her since the first moment I saw her. I guess maybe I've even loved her before I saw her.
I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.
She moved, just like Jell-O on springs. She must've had some sort of built in motor. She couldn't help it.She was drawn that way.
I told her that she didn't have to act with me. She didn't have to say anything and she didn't have to do anything. Oh maybe, just whistle. I think she knew how to whistle.
But she took my idols and smashed them. And since I thought love meant never to say you're sorry, I was O.K with it.
Then she was gone. And I had nothing.
Luke says, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
But not this time. It was just a real failure to communicate.
She coulda made me feel real. With her, I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been someone. If only I coulda gone that distance. And if that love bell rang, and I was still standin', I woulda known for the first time in my life that I wasn't just another bum. But I fell, like Robert Ryan was supposed to in the Set Up.
I asked...
Couldn't she love me, just the way I am?
And then, If I did what she told me, would she love me?
No, it was just the stuff dreams are made of.
It seems like when I get to loving someone, they ain't around long.
But I tried one last time, to make her an offer she couldn't refuse, because I don't believe in surrenders.
But it was over. The credits were rolling.

So, the days went on and on... they didn't end. I didn't die.
Why should I die for her anyway? In the end I'd wind up dying alone on some dusty street. For what? For love? It would be all for nothin. Afterall, dyin aint much of a livin'.
I found a solution.
All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I didn't believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, I believed that one should just become a person like other people.
So, I began to enjoy waking up in the morning not knowing where I was gunna go or who I was gunna meet. I thought life really was a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gunna get.
I guess, it was only after I lost everything that I was free to do anything.
I figured it was better to live for something than to die for nothing. Die for love.
During that time,I remembered my father. I felt his stength. Men, like my father cannot die. They were with me- real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever. And if I listened real close, I could hear them whisper their legacy to me. Carpe Diem, seize the day, make my life extraordinary. How green was my valley then, for those few weeks.

Then, I remembered her. The one that got away.
She came back. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walked into mine.
Just when I thought I was out, she pulled me back in.
She was tearing me apart, because I wanted the fairy tale. And I thought once more, mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?
But no, it wasn't. I once swore I loved her. But now I figured a man's only good for one oath at a time, and I took my oath to badness.
I fooled myself into thinking that there was no meaning to goodness if there wasn't a little badness to overcome.
That morning, I was not yet evil and I saw my last sunrise. I was Michael with a broken jaw or heart in the restaurant bathroom. Gun in hand. I remember it completely, and yet I can't recall any sunrise before it. I watched its whole magnificence for the last time as if it were the first. And then I said fairwell to sunlight, and set out to become what I became.
I resolved to become the horror, the horror.
God played it for her, so he cold play it for me. If she could stand it, I could. Play it!
Nobody puts me in a corner.
I would exterminate them all. Even my own slug slithering along the straight razor.
It smelled like victory. And someday the war would end.
And what would she do?
Frankly, my dear, I didn't give a damn, cuz Charlie don't surf! And neither did she.
I wasn't going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I was going to take a stand. I was mad as hell, and I wasn't going to take it anymore.
I decided to be around in the dark. I'd be everywhere. Wherever, she could look, wherever she caused a fight, I'd be there. Where ever she broke a heart, I'd be there. I'd be there in the way that all her guys yell when they're mad. I'd be there.
Yes, I went crazy.
We all go a little mad sometimes.
After all, insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.
Isn't that right mom?
Just what a matriarch wanted.
Made it, Ma! Top of the world!
I spit because I knew a boy's best friend is never his mother.
I was crazy. I went all out.
If I'd been a ranch, they would've named me Bar Nothing.
They asked me what I was rebelling against and I replied, "What have you got?"
James Dean almost to the end.
I tried telling myself that you can go further in this world with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.
I told myself that chivalry was not only dead, but it was decomposed.
I told lady love that I wouldn't give her two cents for all her fancy rules. And that there's a name for you ladies, but it isn't used in high society- outside of a kennel.
But I couldn't keep up the grand illusion for long. This rancher was a dying Gable in the Misfits.
After all, what do you call assassins who accuse assassins? As I was accusing her.

I awakened, a new creation of Caligari. It's alive! It's alive!
It wasn't the airplanes. it was beauty killed the beast.
And now the beast was resurrected for the second time. And the last temptation directed toward my paper thin Cagney self, was weathered with the hearty nobility of my Jimmy Stuart truth. A new man was built. And if you build me, she will come. Or not. That'll be the day.
The point was not caring.
I'm not much on rear window ethics, but I learned that nobility is not a birthright. It is defined by ones actions.
And though I'm no good at being noble, it doesn't take much to see that the problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
What do amount to Rushmores during the climax of our tfilms are these four questions. Four questions of value in life. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love.
So heres looking at you kid.
Round up the usual suspects and remember, there's always tomorrow.
And tomorrow the right hand of love will triumph, while today will just be a serious of bad takes.
And now, I look back and wonder. Would I do it all over again?
Fuckin hell I would.