Tuesday, January 22, 2008

I knew I Should Have Started Stalking Heath Ledger Years Ago


Reflections on Heath Ledger's Death.

There was something about him. From the first movie of his that I ever saw -- the Brothers Grimm. Vulnerably boyish, yet manly. I liked the energy with which he inhabited his character's body. Second, in the DVDs extra sections, he was absolutely my type. Which is gorgeous, tatted up, lots of piercings, huge nose and able to string sentences together.

Then there was Brokeback Mountain. A vacant shell of a man, a tragic backstory, experiencing the ineffable. Left with the only thing he'd ever been able to give to his lover, an empty shell.

Certain people, you just identify with, you know? I looked at a couple of pictures of him, and then he was in a relationship with Michelle Williams and had a baby. "I love my girls more every day." Was that him? Anyway, fortunately they broke up. Because in my mind, that made him all the more available for me. At some point, when I had the time, I was planning to throw down everything and stake out every coffee shop within four miles of gentrified arty neighborhoods in New York.

While I was filing my taxes, arranging bunny care, changing the dryer hose, and knitting 1400 angora sweaters to fill my order sheets, Heath was diddling some models, starring in some movies and whatnot. Which only expressed the bottomless depth of his soul, trying to cope with the trite and incomprehensible wasteland of massive heart-wrenching breakup. A wasteland, by the way, that I was only too happy to spelunk (there's nothing like a man on the rebound).

According to some stalking website, "Delusional stalkers frequently have had little, if any, contact with their victims. They may have major mental illnesses like schizophrenia, manic-depression or erotomania. What they all have in common is some false belief that keeps them tied to their victims. In erotomania, the stalker’s delusional belief is that the victim loves him. This type of stalker actually believes that he is having a relationship with his victim, even though they might never have met." www. antistalking. com

Now, I've got no mental illnesses, and no belief that Heath loved me or could possibly know we were fated to be together, but I will say that I'd always intended to get around to stalking him. But it was always tomorrow. Actually, years from now (gotta get the burrow ready, gotta aerate the soil, gotta make the compost). Now that he's dead (tragically, even the words "found naked, face down in his apartment" sends the wrong kind of shivers through me), I realize something about myself more poignantly than ever: life is fleeting, each day glitters with untaken opportunities, and I am a goddamn procrastinator.