A Month in the Country

I've always appreciated forgotten or dismissed things.  Misplaced items rediscovered.  Found photographs.  Sidewalk graffiti.  Dusty old books people no longer read.  Lost films.  Maybe it's the underdog in me, or the dark horse.  Or maybe it's the hidden treasure of the thing, the discovery of a treasure.  I suppose that's one reason I used to dig for bottles as a kid.

I suppose too, there is a certain sort of empathy at play here.  But empathy, like manners, is sometimes learned, or even more so, honed, through circumstance.

I never loved Karl, but he set about to show me some of the world through his eyes.  Eyes that had as much fear in them as wonder, as much knowledge as ignorance.  He was, and still is, a puzzle to me.

He married one of my professors, one in that circle who became true friends, back, a million years ago, when I was learning to be a gentleman.  I saw them separately, Karl and Shannon, and then one day Dorothy told me they were to be married.  I marvelled at the prospect of it, it seemed to me to have happened very quickly, as if the sets had been hastily changed in a play - Act II, matrimony.

Before that, he and I had some play dates.  Chummy times.  Films, books, and bed.

If you've never seen A Month in the Country I recommend it.  Karl said it was a film in which "nothing happens."  When he said that to me at the time I knew exactly what he meant.  The rural setting and the period lend a very pastoral sensibility to it.  We happened to watch it one night on one of our get-togethers. This was the high point of the VHS cassette tape, in the very late 80s.  I did lament a look-through-gauze sort of fuzziness to it, but his was also a small television, if my memory serves me correctly.

The Herculean self-denial of Colin Firth, in that gorgeous haircut and moustache, is what I remember the most about it.  I only recently re-watched it, not knowing that almost all of the quality 35mm prints of the film had vanished.  None were found for over a decade.  It took a dedicated search by the writer of the book the film is based on, J.L. Carr, to finally find a print suitable for re-release.  And only a singular second print was found in the Academy Film Archives in Los Angeles.

Karl had studied kinesiology in university and was an accredited occupational therapist.  After the film he gave me the most amazing foot massage I have ever had in my life, EVER.  Finishing up, he draped a towel over my feet to keep them warm.  That was Karl.  Little things were important.

It was late and I was tired, but somehow in straight-forward machinations that Karl was good at, presenting situations as logic pieces, we ended up naked in his single bed.  It was cramped and he was much taller than I was, but we seemed to manage.  It was the first time in my life that a man went down on me and swallowed everything I happily produced.  He was certainly more into me than I was into him, but maybe, as I said, I was just tired.  Ever accommodating, I am also an easy-going soul.

This, it seems, is also the way that I took what went on in stride.  I was not in the least bothered by it.  After all, I was not the one about to walk down the aisle.  Years before, a boss of mine told me about a boyfriend he had had and said that the relationship had ended because he was, according to Larry, a 'closet heterosexual.'  This seemed to fit as a description of Karl.  I can't remember if I stayed the night.  I think I did, but didn't linger in the morning.  He had to work.  I did not.

Seeing A Month in the Country again last May, having not seen it in three decades, brought all these memories of that period back to me.  This time, a pin-sharp stream, online.  Back then, whether that night, or the next day, I remember Karl looking at me, knowing me, or at least guessing my lack of guile, for he was very intelligent, and saying, "Don't tell Shannon about this .."  Of course, I never did.