I've spent most of the evening talking online, and I also watched "Ladykillers", the British version, which is far superior to the new one with Tom Hanks. Mr. Hanks is, of course, an excellent actor and his character is larger and more memorable than the original's -- but what is lost in translation is a subtlety that I think is unique to British film; Americans are no good with dry wit -- everything of ours is so dramatic, so sugary-sweet and inevitably cheap. While the British version is filmed in black and white, it's the American version that delights in the grossest caricatures, the most obvious contrasts, and these extend even into the picture: it's easier to see what's happening onscreen in the new version, but the "black and white" of the original has a nuanced nonchalance, it has shades of grey.

I made the mistake of reading the Kid's blog. He's still with his new boyfriend, was arrested for driving without a license while smoking pot, quit his job. Seems like he's still too hard on himself, still has panic attacks, and lacks all sense of direction. But for all that he's surviving -- Thornton was right, he didn't need me. What especially hurts when I read his entries are his kind references to his new boy:

Im in love again, Im going to be moving out and Moving In with a boy for the first time ever. Life is good. Mike is amazing, Hes unlike anyone Ive known thus far, Treats me very well. Is A romantic guy like me too, so its great.

I have to say, if only for the much needed feeling of intellectual superiority, sic. And that's how it makes me feel. "Mike is amazing. He's unlike anyone I've known thus far; treats me very well. Is a romantic guy like me too, so it's great" -- it stings me; it's a stab at my heart. It's my fault for reading it, I know...but when he was with me, I was the beloved, I was special, and it was I who was "unlike anyone [he'd] known thus far". It really hurts me to think that he could just move on to someone else, some random guy that he met on a whim from the Internet, and already he's thinking of moving in with him and his given himself up to him completely.

I don't know if I envy him -- I think what I wish that the Kid knew was how much I really did cared about him and identified with him. I mean, I did love the time we spent together and I do miss him, but I had to decide that he wasn't for me. And I feel like I'm the one who's suffering for that decision, which isn't fair -- I broke up with him because I thought that it would be good for me. But here I am.

Just because we decide upon the best course in life, or any course at all, doesn't mean that it will be without pain. What is left of the Kid is a multifaceted memory: hugging him on a park bench while he cried; walking through the mall holding his hand and expostulating my wild theories as he scanned for potential gay-bashers; suffering panic attacks in the middle of the night while he lay in bed waiting for me to crawl into his arms, waking up the next morning and wanting any kind of stimulation, wanting out of that suffocating little room where he smoked twice an hour and chatted on AOL; hating to be with him but running after his bus to prolong our partings; feeling the pangs of regret when I hurt him, the wild exhiliration when we made up; seeing the broad green of the park near his house from the window of Bus 33, watching the lights of a titty bar wink at me from across the highway on the night I broke up with him, while I waited in the fading light for another bus, a final bus that would not, would not come. Today I was walking through that park again and I was haunted by the thought that I would see him with his boyfriend; I felt the most palpable agony at each unrevealed face and distance-hidden stranger, as if it were the shock of him watching.

Unless I send this to him, he'll probably never read it. My life will continue; I'll continue to write my turgid prose, and for other men. Still -- why I am left with these memories, this loneliness, while he has already moved past me and I am to him nothing more than a vague recollection, a dreamy face among the time-blurred crowd of ex-lovers who must now bow before the living idol of his new love?

I still have all my interests to shield me from this world and to filter out the stream of life; but I wish that I could push beyond them to connect with more people, and beyond anything else I have a keen desire to be loved with pure, unadulterated passion and to so love in turn. This desire is my downfall, and perhaps my redemption; I find its living embodiment in the character of Aschenbach, the hero of Mann's "Death in Venice". Mann has succeeded in painting, for the intellectual and self-consecrated artist, his private remorse. Where are you, my Tadziu?