the whale

i watched this movie

it captivated me.

afterwards i wanted more so i went on letterboxd. for some reason every review i read felt terrible

what i read was angry and reductive, which is fine but it hurt after loving something so unabashedly to have it smashed in by critics.

either way,

i finally got to one review and it said i'm just going to write something honest.

they did

they wrote about their mom is a recovering alcoholic and they wrote about their life

that review was beautiful.

---

i was once a missionary,

i went into a man's home and he scared me.

(and before you go thinking oh here comes the inspo for heretic, just be patient)

we lived in this tiny city, at the very point of nevada.

people there would talk about getting stuck there. someone described it a place with a lot of people who are down on their luck.

i adored it there. I loved every stretch of road every inch of river

the power boxes were all painted unique designs

there were these rocks called the Laughlin Labyrinths.

I LOVED THIS PLACE.

it's just not a very residential place. there's the river and all the casinos so it was mostly vacation places and a lot of visitors but the people who lived there mostly would've liked to live somewhere else.

you know how you can pick up on the spirit of the place right when you walk in.

i'm not talking about a religious spirit or something based on money or tidyness

it's how the people in that place feel, and it gets stuck in the walls like the smell of a curry dinner.

Bobbi and Larry

they were just beautiful,

their house was modest but felt immensely elegant in spirit.

and they didn't have it easy, you could feel this incredible absence of heaviness there.

i think it was love.

they gave me the most delicious apple on my birthday and when i think about that apple i cry.

their home felt holy to me. they described how much they'd worked together to improve. they explained this change from anger to peace.

and now i'm avoiding the honest thing i'm trying to say

the thing that is stuck in my head after watching the whale.

i was a missionary in a tiny down on your luck type place.

i went into a man's home.

he used to be a part of our church,

i can't remember how we met him exactly but we did.

he invited us over to see his collections, we were excited to go

(and here you may think 'ah to "save him" ' and maybe. but mostly i love meeting people and i genuinely wanted to see his collections and yes maybe i believed i was lead there, yes maybe i still do)

we got a cute newlywed couple from our church to go with us and we walked into his place.

he had incredible collections, he was a fan of starwars, marvel (but the villains which i agree with), the nightmare before christmas, etc.

I remember he showed us this art he bought where this guy takes roadkill and makes creepy spiders and creatures out of it and i thought that was about the coolest thing i'd ever seen. i've loved the villain's, scary movies and the darker side for my whole life.

as i'm writing this my memory has changed. i'm seeing it more like i did when i was there.

but when it flashes into my memory like it's been doing a lot lately

it's not this happy cool memory.

it's scary and not in a cool way

i'm sure he cleaned for us was so excited to show people these things he loved. he might've even made or shared a treat with us.

we loved it.

but in my memory.

i'm walking into his bedroom and there's a full sized harley quinn mannequin and handcuffs on the bed.

there were other things too, and i was younger, i hadn't watched how to build a sex room yet. i didn't know.

i don't know how to describe this feeling i feel

i'm scared of you reading this and thinking i'm judging him,

but i was,

and i am.

not so much for having handcuffs,

i think i judge him in the story i've told myself about what the clues all meant

and i get this wave of sadness, the dark sticky kind, the kind that is so hard to shake off, the really heavy kind.

because in the story i made up based on the few clues i'd seen

he was alone

and he craved women in all the highly sexualized ways that superhero women are portrayed and he had to pay someone to satisfy him.

i don't know if that story is true, i mostly doubt it is.

but it's played in my head for years.

stuck out

i wonder what he felt like. having us there.

we represented a church he once went to but hadn't gone to in a long time,

i hope we didn't bring up feelings of guilt or resentment. i hope he knew i thought those road kill spiders were incredible and i'm fighting off the urge right now to stop writing this and go look them up.

but i bet he felt a lot of things after we left. maybe excited and happy to have company,

maybe embarrassment.

i won't know.

but after i watched the whale, after i read the reviews that made me sad, i thought of that moment when Thomas sees what Charlie is watching, and what state he's in. i'd felt a feeling like that earlier this week when unprovoked i thought of this man's home.

i knew his life was hard, and he told us about some of the things he was dealing with. but i felt it there.

he was sad.

and i think that's why i wrote this.