Larry David Will You Be My Fucking Soul Mate?

The Neil Diamond litmus test, which has reliably divided the population into two kinds of people, those who like Neil Diamond and those who don't, is apparently a thing of the past. The cultural divide is now being determined by attitudes toward Brokeback Mountain. I, for the record, count myself as part of the gang who like it. Not only was I not offended by the gay sex, but I liked how the movie transcended gender and became a story about what happens when you give up things that you love (although love sucks, of course!). The landscape was absorbing too, I thoroughly enjoyed spending time there.

I respect people who can tolerate hardship, be outdoors in the cold, have some grit (I like that word grit, if you haven't noticed), so it is a mystery to me why I have fallen in love with Larry David (sorry, Dalai Lama). AJ, who turned me onto Curb Your Enthusiasm (she loves the show), says Larry David's hair is awful, and he is a scrawny Jewish guy who can't let anything go, but at the moment I find all that endearing. These guys (Charlie Kaufman too) manage to weave their lives into really clever screenplays and scripts. I like them. So since I don't get HBO and I have no life, I have taken to renting seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm after work, pulling the curtains tightly closed, pouring myself a glass of wine and spending three hours nightly with Larry David while listening to the rain come down... it has been raining for three days and three nights. (Kyoto Protocol? Global warming? The Iraq War? George Bush sucks cock for money. But (deep breathing) this is partly what I am avoiding, the anxiety of the daily political nightmare, so have another glass of wine. Relax. Watch another episode.)

I tell AJ it's the glasses. He probably would be good looking without the glasses. A couple of times I caught a glimpse of him when he took them off (no, I haven't tried to freeze-frame the image, do you think I am a fucking adolescent?) and he is downright cute. Forget the penis angst, the obsessive behavior, the selfishness, childishness and compulsiveness. He's likeable. And he gets it.

Maybe I relate to his character because he realizes of the impossibility of intimacy and yet he desires it it, making him extremely heterosexually flawed. Gays, on the other hand, are like perfect 1950's heterosexuals. They obviously have grit (we now know, since Brokeback Mountain, that they can tolerate cold weather) and they are true believers in romance, marriage and finding soul mates for life. Hell, they are like the new Christians, they have joined the moral majority. They are family-oriented, neat-lawned, community-oriented and socially acceptable in every way but the one-man-one-woman deal. God, the freaking homophobes don't know a good thing when they see it. Homosexuals are the new heterosexuals!

So, even though I have been shutting myself off from the world, refusing to follow friend-wisdom ("Get out!" "Go out to dinner!" "Join a book club!"), I have been laughing a lot. And you know what? Laughter seems to be the key.