January 24, 2002

• Harold And Maude
  
  ‘Harold and Maude’ is one of my favorite movies of all time, in exactly the same way that I thought getting a red sports car would change my sex life. The time has come to lay the old myths to rest.
  
  Please bear with me. This ‘blog might not make a lot of sense to someone who hasn’t seen ‘Harold and Maude.’ It should be noted that my reaction to the movie isn’t unique. I’ve talked to other folks who identified strongly with it.
  
  When I was 23, I was up in the middle of the night, being a depressed insomniac. There was a movie on TV, and it was about a weird young man of indeterminate age, and his romantic affair with a 79-year-old woman. I identified strongly with the kid, the Harold of the title. The resonances and parallels were eerie.
  
  I was going to see a shrink at the time, and these were the only times I felt free from whatever it was that confined me to my parents’ house. I identified my shrink with Maude, because she would say thought-provoking things, and treat me in a way that expanded my experience. We did not have an affair of any kind, but there was a certain sifu/student relationship which developed. Or perhaps I imagined it.
  
  There were the times when my parents tried to encourage me to get out more, to quit isolating myself in a world of my own making. Go to school. Go to church functions. Visit friends. “Tell me, Harold. Do you have any friends?” “No.” “None at all?” Certainly, my parents can’t be faulted for wanting to help me in these ways, but they just didn’t fit. I felt that they should fit, and couldn’t understand why they didn’t. Of course I understand now, but that’s getting ahead of the story.
  
  So I’m sitting there watching this movie, identifying with it, jazzed that someone made a movie about strange people like me. And there’s some hope. There’s a glimmer of a notion that maybe I’ll find a Maude somewhere, not necessarily to have sex with, but to help introduce me to the life I thought I could never lead. I was Harold. I wanted Maude, even if it meant I’d end up driving my car off a cliff at the end of the movie.
  
  I became interested in Cat Stevens. I wore a wool jacket when I went out sometimes, so I’d be a little overdressed. If I could have gotten a Jaguar I would have. “It’s a PRESENT!” Luckily I found some balance about it, but there was one time when I went to a coffeehouse in the middle of the night, and there was this total stranger of a young woman, and she came up to me, where I was sitting alone at a table reading a book, and she said, “I don’t know if this will mean anything to you, but you remind me of Harold from that movie ‘Harold and Maude.’ I just wanted to tell you that.” And then she left.
  
  And thinking back over the past few years, those days have been over for a long time, but only now, thinking about it consciously, can I say it:
  
  I’m not Harold any more.
  
  I have the movie on tape, of course. I can recite it. I know all the dialog and all the.. moments. Maybe I’ve reached a critical mass in terms of how many times you can watch a movie and still enjoy it, or maybe it’s true and I’m not Harold any more. Or maybe both.
  
  Maybe I’ve rerun that part of my life for the world enough times that the world wants to see something different.
  
  I still hold Maude in high regard, though, and if she comes around I’ll comingle with her sagging breasts and flabby buttocks any day. But, I became a little attached to that movie, and life has acted as a gentle reminder: Here today, gone tomorrow, so don’t get attached to things. Now, with that in mind…
  

  • 4:31 pm
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