Zen-less

Disclaimer: Anyone who feels they might be offended to read the honest, confused, irrelevant and disturbed reactions of a strange fan, please leave now. You won't like this. And you can't leave me nasty comments because registration is required, so you might as well move along.


Just when I thought my head couldn't get any more fucked up.

I've been battling a migraine for the past five days, and now I know why. It was the harbinger of abysmal, soulcrushing depression to come.

It's not like this is a complete shock. Except it is, in its way, because of all the denials. Except those denials weren't really denials, were they? They were carefully worded dodges, witty retorts and (in her case) intimidating refusals to answer bolstered by publicists crawling around on all fours during interviews. I have actually been telling myself for weeks that I would be relieved if Jake made a relationship public, because then, all the speculation would be over, Jake could go about his business and stop facing the irrelevant questions that reporters and talk show hosts had no right to ask. I thought I wanted this.

So why does it hurt?

Jake Gyllenhaal does not owe us anything, least of all any kind of insight into his private life. But for someone like me, who has staunchly defended his right to privacy and even suggested that some people were a little overeager to believe the tabloids, it's like a dirty trick. Hah! You tell people to stop speculating about me? Here's what you get: proof that those tabloids actually were right. Now I must resign myself to never doubting another bloody word I read attributed to US Weekly, People and OK.

I guess this means we should all be bracing ourselves for Brokeback 2?

Sigh.

What the hell, Jake? Don't you understand? You're far too special to be sharing yourself with another Hollywood type, no matter how respectable she may appear to be. You are supposed to be with me. Only me, forever. I'm the only one who knows how truly unique you are, who appreciates all your little quirks, who noticed the gray spot in your beard before you did, who dreams of you not because you're the most beautiful man in the world, but because you are sweet, and dorky, and funny, and warm, and sometimes a bit of a prick, and frequently can't articulate your way out of a paper bag, and more than anyone real in my life, you feel like a friend. See, I've only ever really loved my friends. I'm not one of those women who has friendships with one type of man but prefers another as a partner. I don't lust after the bad boy or the guy who treats me the worst. I might even be unique myself, because I don't know anyone else who has been alone her entire life, always the friend, never the girlfriend or lover. Never the lover. I can't be with just anyone. It has to be someone I love and trust. There have only been a few men who fit that description, and they were the best friends I ever had, but that's as far as it could go for them: friendship.

I am confused by fans I see online talking about jealousy over this, who clearly have partners in their real lives. If I had someone, I wouldn't fucking be here. Yes, Jake is talented, and I'd still enjoy his movies, but I wouldn't need him. And I do need him. He's my surrogate boyfriend, the lover I don't have, the fantasy man. That he's probably been seeing someone for months while I successfully used him in this fashion might rationally sound like a reason to relax, but I'm here to tell you it hasn't helped me.

I'm not particularly concerned with whether or not you like me. 'Cause I live to like you, and...and I can't like you any more. -- Duckie Dale (Jon Cryer), Pretty in Pink

I'm not an idiot. Just because he wasn't with someone else never meant that I had a chance, and yes, I recognize that fact. Nor do we have any guarantee that this is the last relationship he will ever have. And more than anything I want for him, I want him to be happy. My irrational reaction is my problem, not his. Why this should have any effect on my fantasies, I can't really say. It just does. Not being able to constantly escape into thoughts of being with him is a terrifying prospect to me. On my way home from work tonight, I honestly started to panic; my life is so colorless and flat and I have literally no clue what to do with myself, professionally or otherwise. Having filled every (oh, so many) hollow moment with contemplation of Jake in some form or other for so long, I can't imagine anything else suffusing me with that ebullient passion. Nothing's as easy as loving Jake.

Be nice to me

Yes, I'm going to talk about what I thought of Rendition.

First, go read this interview with Jake from the Telegraph, done while he was in London. On the one hand, it has terrific elements than any good interview should: description of Jake's posture, clothing (guess which well-worn, big-necked ensemble?) and oh god, voice ("gentle with dark undercurrents"--can I cut that phrase out and put it under my pillow?), evidence that the writer has actually done some research, and questions pertinent to the reason they're both there: Rendition. On the other, it's full of extraneous stuff; recycled facts from that research I just mentioned, and a completely unnecessary probing into Jake's sexuality that proves the interviewer is one of those people who...well, he's one of those people. Plus either transatlantic flight made Jake two inches taller, or this guy just guessed it wrong. Everyone does says he seems taller than they imagined.

So, Rendition.

I wish I could rave about it, say that it was unequivocally the best movie I've seen since Zodiac, but this isn't that kind of movie. I attended a Friday night showing and left the theater somewhat unsatisfied. Thinking it was probably due to all the pent up expectation, and the vaguely arctic temperature in the theater that made it hard to focus, I decided to see it again this afternoon. Besides, I really wanted another, undistracted look at Douglas Freeman. Hey, I'm nothing if not honest.

On second viewing, I did feel more involved in the story, but not as much as I thought I should have been. Maybe that's because I wanted it to be something it couldn't: a revelation. Unlike the majority of the intended audience, I have already read enough about the policy of extraordinary rendition and its purported place in the defense of national security. Rendition didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. At least this time, I did feel moved by several scenes, and my overall impression is that this is a movie that will grow on me with each additional viewing, much like Jarhead.

What I can enthusiastically endorse is Jake's performance. My bias notwithstanding, it's a Hollywood irony that while few critics seem to know what the film's motives were, the role of Douglas Freeman struck me as typical Oscar fodder. WDW was right in that this really is Jake's movie, despite its trying to be so much more. His is the character that makes the biggest connection, who reveals multiple dimensions to the audience. All the performances were excellent, but for me no one shone like Jake with his flimsy professional facade after the bombing and barely-contained self-loathing during the events that follow. More than anything else, what I walked out of that theater feeling this afternoon was an intense pride. As with most of his movies, the box office numbers will be irrelevant; Jake Gyllenhaal has proved again that he is a phenomenal actor, and he'll have work in Hollywood for as long as he wants it.

All photos: IHJ.

Fallen

I am still feeling strangely wired, as if I'd had too much caffeine, despite my relative lack of sleep in the past 72 hours. Twice this weekend I discovered well after midnight that I had forgotten to eat anything for dinner, engrossed as I had been in my Jake activities. This is not healthy, and I'm the first to admit it. I am coming apart.

But it's not new, either. I've done it before, will do it again, no doubt. So while it's mortifying and pathetic, I recognize that it is also completely self-indulgent. I wanted to be lost in him, on whatever level, so I let it happen. Now I just have to see if I can make a go of the rest of my waking life while I try to crawl back to the surface for air.

Anyway, the good news in all this is that I did successfully get video out of my DVR, so Rendition Week will be available to those who need it from me. Not that I'm your only source, but a promise is a promise.

I don't feel comfortable talking about what caused my strung-out weekend Jake-bender, but I feel like it would be dishonest to withhold it, too. So much has swirled through my mind, I know it will continue to affect me for quite some time, possibly until the day I forget Jake Gyllenhaal (it will happen, if I live long enough, experience tells me).

Perhaps the most amazing thing is that, as if on cue, Jake has provided a strangely relevant quote to the media as part of his current Rendition promotion. Some Kentucky newspaper quotes him telling Fox News, "I don't hold it against people for wanting to know about our personal lives and reading all those magazines and what not."

Our world is in a very bad place at the moment, so I think it is only appropriate that people look to other things and have an interest in all the drama and happenings of celebrity lives, and I hope that at some point I can help the public sedate and escape what's really happening in the outside world.

Sedate is never a word I associate with my reactions to Jake, but I know he's talking about escapism, and of course that's something I can relate to, as my presence here makes obvious. The quote is probably from this interview, where Jake is asked again about extraordinary rendition, and also about working with actors and others from the varying nations that made up the cast and crew of that film.

His disarmingly benevolent attitude toward the public fascination with celebrity, and celebrity gossip, was neither predictable nor revelatory, though it was characteristic of his philosophical nature. Unfortunately, it also has triggered my protective instincts; I fear that every sleazy creep in the world will consider it an approbation, even an invitation to further probe, invade, stalk. I hope that beefy bald guy Jake tows around has at least one equally intimidating coworker. He's too fucking nice, and I'm so afraid for his safety and his privacy that I'm feeling invasive.

Babble, blather, I tend to run on when I have something on my mind that I don't necessarily feel good revealing. True confession time has come, and while most of the (30 or so) people who will ever read this may shrug or even laugh at the drama of my words, I think one or two will grok this.

I've made no secret of my opinion about fan fiction, and my own ambivalence when against my better judgment I found myself authoring some. Even less appealing than fanfic to me was the morally questionable subset known as RPS. I know in my rational mind that anyone reading these stories is aware it's fantasy, but the use of real people as characters seems abusive somehow.

How then do I explain my random decision last Friday, while bored out of my skull here at work, to seek out and indulge in the one thing I told myself I never would, the most salacious and egregious of fan manifestations? I don't. I can't. I've once again proved myself the queen of irony, my contradictions alive and well. I can tell you that I both regret it, and don't. I read the story that over the past year several friends had recommended to me, despite my protests, as the best. I read it, and I re-read it, and then I went and I found a sequel, and I read that, too. Then, hating myself already, depressed, and completely consumed, instead of moving on to find some distraction, I went and read another.

What the hell happened?

I can tell you it had nothing to do with the plots, which were fantastical, presumptive, and unoriginal--no offense to those authors, I don't mean their writing was bad. It was excellent, or I wouldn't be in this mess. Just that the tale they spun was not one in which I had any emotional investment. So why did I keep reading? And why do I feel raw?

In one word, Jake.

The growing realization that someone else's mental Jake was so completely identical to my own, so vivid, every conversation and action (apart from the plotline) ringing true despite the very fact that this was fiction, knocked all the wind out of me. Not just my Jake, anymore. This was evidence that the myth in my head is a bit more than that. I have spent hours digesting and analyzing this discovery. I can discuss the logical aspects, that we have all formed our image of him from the same sources, all that is publicly available, that I already knew this in large part from my interaction with the fandom. For whatever reason, that has not mitigated the impact of this weekend's reading. Holy shit, I tell myself, is it possible? Can anyone be this...everything that he is? The first author's Jake was funny, a tad immature at times, intelligent, but most of all, direct, and warm. I couldn't get enough. Later, as I tried to recover, I decided to read the comments on her journal by her readers, wanting to see how many other people had been sucker-punched by her Jake. I was perplexed to see only one or two comments that even remotely suggested the impact I had felt. What I did find, though, was her own revelation of her favorite story as a reader, and I'll be goddamned if I didn't go off immediately to find that one, too. Pathetic.

Both the first story and the last one shared a common point of view that certainly contributed to my vulnerability here; namely, that of the other person, the one completely enamored with Jake and feeling hopeless about it. This too was devastatingly authentic; perhaps my reaction is based in insane jealousy, the knowledge that someone else--no, fuck it, almost everyone else--has this longing, here translated into a story where it is embodied in another who would actually have access to Jake. The descriptions of that person's perceptions and responses to him, words I could have written or spoken, given the opportunity.

That's it, but that's enough. It makes no sense, that any of these things should be as an epiphany to me, but making sense is often overrated. I know these were stories, written by someone who no more knows the real Jake than I do. But he was so much my Jake, addictive, I could not stop. What have I done?

Before anyone asks, no, I do not plan to continue reading RPS, or fanfic. I remember having said that there would be no going back, and I do fear its draw, but this has got to stop. I lost an entire weekend, minus a few family hours (in which Jake was with me all the way), to indulgence, and I can't maintain my basic functions this way. It's unhealthy, it's disgusting, it's ridiculous, but most of all, it's too easy.

Fortunately, we shall have more real Jake in the immediate future, which I think will go a long way to bringing me back to health. Watching him be all those things I know he is, witty, charming, thoughtful--it's going to hurt in the way it always does, but it will be real, and if nothing else, I may feel cleansed.


Photo: IHJ.