stories for boys

so i watched 3 films today to beef up my morale about boy-dom so that i can get into a train of thought to crack into the ideas that i want to talk about. my theme is that boys are sensitive creatures. sensitive and care predominately about one thing; they want to love, and also, they want to be understood. The 3 films I watched were The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Almost Famous, and Runaway Train.

now this is going to be difficult because these are extremely different films with quite varied portrayals of boys, especially in the case of the third (which you may really think i’m stretching my powers on, but i hope you’ll see.) and in all fairness, this is not a sufficient place to write any sort of complex or thorough examination of my ideas or feelings. i am just trying to jump in and kick up some dirt.

in DLoAB there are two main characters; best friends who are not entirely different (probably due to poor casting or weak writing) but the idea is suggested that one boy is sensitive and in touch with his heart, while the other is a risk taker and comes from a difficult home. there really is no separation of these elements between the two boys though. they both are sensitive. they both are in touch with their own hearts. they both are risk takers. and they both come from homes where there are difficult relationships occurring around them. there are degrees though. there is magnetism that draws friends together and there are challenges that entice people to want to do exciting things with one another.

Francis likes a girl at school. Tim, the tough boy, probably likes her too but for some reason believes that Francis deserves her and encourages his pursuit of “Margie”. So here we have 3 elements; camaraderie with at least one other boy, risk taking/adventure & desire of a girl. (I didn’t really go into it yet and don’t know if I will in this essay, but the risk taking/adventure in this film is really quite satisfying to watch – it is based around heroism and also connects back to the theme of the film Kick Ass which i spoke about in my last entry. There is then, the deeper element of sensitivity, which really needs singular depth exploration on. Don’t think I’ll even start to breech that yet.

so let’s jump to Almost Famous. amazing story of an amazing life that i find a ton of things to identify with. but let’s stick to the boy, William Miller. we meet him in scene one as an 11 year old boy going to school with kids 2 years older than himself. and he thinks of himself as one of them, yet inside recognizes that there is something that is different about himself. but does not KNOW that it’s because he’s two years younger. he never knew his entire life that he’d been going to school with kids that were two years his elders because his mother lied to him. this is really sad in one way, yet pretty brilliant in another. the kid is a pipsqueak yet he has learned how to present himself maturely amongst his peers. i love this boy in a lot of ways and wish i had the wherewithal he had at age 11. in some ways i did. actually, i really did. we don’t know where William’s father is in this story except that we can guess that his mother probably drove him away (as she will eventually do to her children too).

William never shows that he feels he is missing something, and even when he develops a crush on Penny, she is never something that he feels he has to have to make himself complete. William is content from his experiences in life. Ha! funny, but i didn’t think that was where i was going with this. i thought i was going to say that he really wanted Penny, and in some ways i do think that Penny lodged herself in his heart… but William had a close relationship with a sister growing up, and did not have inordinate cravings for female attention, either physical, social, or esoteric. Penny was his equal. Sure, he loved her but he did not NEED her.

which makes me want to jump back to Francis and Margie for a moment. Francis’ desire for Margie was pure and innocent adolescent  lust. yet, it WAS innocent. Francis and Margie went to Catholic school together. Francis seemingly wanted nothing more than to experience the mystique of walking together alone with the prettiest girl at school. i can’t really talk much about this because i never experienced it. but i’m talking about before the desire to kiss even begins. when you just want to be friends with a girl because she is cute. now that stage i do remember. i had a huge crush on Jan W. all the way through 8th grade but never got to walk with her. never got to hold her hand. never got to tell her to her face that i liked her. that crush, and the shyness that i nurtured it with burned inside of me all those years and went on to lay the groundwork of my inability to ever be able to tell girls that i liked them to their faces. (oh man, this is more shit stirring than i expected to happen today from this…)

and i still have to talk about Manny, from Runaway Train. oh god… Manny is the loneliest boy in the world. i don’t know what it is that keeps him alive, keeps him from simply killing himself other than resistance to allowing any one, any thing, any power have control over him. is this being sensitive? or is this negative sensitivity. when you shut the whole world out because you can no longer stand being hurt by it, have you become hyper-sensitive? i can’t say more about him now. i need to think about him more. he is inside me though. i am riding that train with him.