Monday, February 26, 2018

Suicide Blonde Was The Color Of Her Hair


We lived for years in an apartment. 

When we moved to our own house, somedays, after classes, mom used to go to therapy with one of my brothers. My brother had some troubles with his cruel classmates, as he had a severe dermatitis and everyone was joking about his appearance. 

He's younger than me and he's always been a strong boy, but then he needed to understand kids were stupid. Girls were his only friends and boys thought he was a fragile kid and were jealous about him.  

The therapist's office was at the other extreme of the city, and mom and he spent all the afternoon away from home. 

Dad was at his job –he's a chemist and then he worked at a company located at the boundaries of the city– and later he picked them up at the therapist's office and the three of them arrived home late at night.

In that occasions, my smaller brother and I stayed at home.
Even when this visit to the therapist's office occurred twice per month and it lasted just a few hours, it was an important issue to me. I felt I was an adult taking care of his smaller brother. 

Although I was in Junior high school –I was a teenager– and I just thought about women and music, I considered my parents trusted me and I didn't want to deceive them. 


My smaller brother was at kindergarden. 
As the kids of his age, he was a playful boy. I was a typical eleven-year old-teenager and I hadn't enough patience to play with him. I no longer liked toys neither jumping and running nor play 'seek and hide'. 

To deal with my smaller brother's energy and playfulness I had to turn on the TV, give him a bunch of candys, and leave him there watching cartoons, but he got bored so soon. 

All I wanted was to be alone –dunno remember what exactly I used to do to enjoy myself, but, maybe, I used to listen music or something like that–, so, when he got bored, I started to ask him what he would liked to do. 

He had a strange bound to a Goofy's movie. Didn't understand why he enjoyed to watch the same movie once and again –psychologists argue that it reinforces knowledge at early stages of life–, but I pleased him. 

We had a couple of TVs, one in the kitchen and another in the living room, but just one Betamax. I put the movie in the VCR and I left him there, in the living room, watching the adventures of Goofy.   


Eventually, in one of those days of therapy, I discovered that my dad had some Playboy magazines. From that day, each time mom brought my brother to his therapy and then my smaller brother and I were left alone at home, all I wanted to do was take a look at those magazines. 

As soon as mom left the house, I asked to my smaller brother if he wanted to watch the Goofy's movie again. Fortunately, he agreed always and then I put the movie in the VCR.

At some point of those therapy days, while I was looking for the Goofy's movie, I found a movie I hadn't ever seen amongst the personal collection of my dad.

Immediately, I got excited and freezed. It was called Basic Instinct. Still don't know how he got it. We were in the autumn of 1992 and I guess the movie was still on cinemas, but he had a personal copy. I'd heard about Basic Instinct. It was difficult to ignored all the fuzz around it. Supposedly it was an intense thriller with explicit sex. Supposedly it had been censored in some countries. 

News said it was an acclaimed Paul Verhoeven's movie, entirely filmed in 1991, with Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas as the leading roles. 

De Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9055138

I thought it was, essentially, as a sex movie. Eventually, I knew I was so wrong.

Catherine Tramell was a stone-cold writer and she was dating Johnny Boz, a retired rockstar. The movie begins when the police finds Boz dead. 

Nick Curran was a detective and he had to find out who had murdered the retired rockstar. He and one of his colleagues found that all the beloved ones and the recent lovers of Catherine Tramell had died in mysterious ways.

As the investigation moves on, Nick Curran gets attracted to Catherine Trammell.
She was a successful, smart, enigmatic and beautiful blonde. 
He suspected that she was involved in the death of Boz, but started to having sex with her.
He became a sex-addict and he lost the objectivity of the criminal case.  


When I found out Basic Instinct in the movies' collection of my dad, I convinced my smaller brother that Goofy's movie was boring and predictable, and made up a false story about the relationship between cartoons and intelligence so that he would be interested in cartoons and I could use the only VCR we had in the living room.

He believed me. I guess he trusted his older brother and that he never thought that I was a jerk-off. 

I turned on the TV in the kitchen and left him there watching silly cartoons. Then I ran to the living room and put Paul Verhoeven's movie in the VCR

I was very excited and shaky, feeling that my heart was about to explode. I sat in the floor of the living room, a few millimeters away from the television and the VCR, to remain hidden from my brother's eyesight in case he walked away from the kitchen and then I could turn off the television immediately.

It was the excitement of the movie and the excitement of the situation. 
It was an extreme situation. I didn't want to be discovered by my brother watching an adult film and I also couldn't miss the opportunity to see an adult film. 



The first scene was violent and impressive. 
It was a blurry image in movement, reflected in a mirror.
There were soft and  murmuring sounds, which made me think of a couple having sex. 
It was so cryptic and poetic, attractive and ambiguous. 

When, apparently, both of them were about to have an orgasm, the blonde woman on top of her lover took out an ice pick and stabbed him, nailing him fiercely everywhere. 

The retired rockstar had his hands tied to a bar on the bed, so he just yelled desperately, bled profusely and died. 

There was something about Sharon Stone that I couldn't get rid of for weeks. 

I got obsessed about his beauty and ferocity.

Each time I had the opportunity to watch the film, when my smaller brother and I were left alone at home, I just watched one or two scenes. 
It would have been awkward to watch the entire movie, from the beginning to the end, and it would also have increased the risk of being discovered by my brother. Didn't want to deceive my parents, nor wanted to be responsible of exerting a deleterious influence on an innocent mind. 

In fact, I just watched the entire movie a few years ago.
I would sell out my soul for a month to experience Sharon Stone's world.   

Suicide Blonde - INXS

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