So...I've been away so long I forgot my damned password! ....then realised that my email address I used back in the day was slightly different too and panicked (feeling like Jack and Ennis locked out of the damned motel room
). Ten minutes of head scratching, though, and fortunately my old password came back to me, and hell yeah, I'm glad to be back!!!
There was a time when I was a full-time resident here, and had some truly wonderful times with wonderful friends here, and a fabulous weekend in Brussels in 2008 for The Dark Knight with a group of fantastic Brokies.
Almost 20 years later and my memory's got more holes than Swiss cheese, and their names escape me...Kelda, I remember, and I seem to remember a Christine and Jude too?
So what's happened in the meantime? Real life, work and health mostly got in the way. I've had a load more medical issues, surgeries, and started my second degree (then in my final year decided to switch to another degree so ended up with two more years to do!). The degree (part-time) has kept me pretty much busy all the time these last five years. I never forgot Brokeback though. It kinda slipped into the background, though never left me. My friend Jane, who I first saw Brokeback with sadly died three years ago, and she was the only one who even half understood my Brokeback obsession. It's the only film that's ever affected me in such a way, but I remember coming out of the cinema afterwards, and I completely lost the strength in my legs and Jane, who was 5ft nothing, had to pin me up against the wall to stop me crashing to the floor while someone went and got a chair for me.
Over the years though, it's funny how just the littlest things would remind me of Brokeback, and I'd still find myself using Brokieisms when I least expected it. What brought me back was a couple of weeks ago someone commenting that the most recent heatwave we've had was the warmest week of the year. As this year's academic year had just finished and I had no reading or coursework to do I'd finally got back into picking up writing the novel I started when I was 18 (I'm 53 now), as my main characters who disappear from my head for long spells at a time sometimes, had suddenly reappeared, so I was re-reading where I'd got up last time I'd had a spell of writing, and while I was re-reading where I'd got to, it suddenly struck me that my main characters, Finn and Kerry, are very much like Jack and Ennis in temperament, even though when I first started writing about them it was over 10 years before I'd ever heard of Brokeback, and that, plus a work colleague's mention of "warmest week of the year", prompted me to pick up Brokeback again....and was totally lost again!! When I'd finished crying, distraught that I needed more of Jack and Ennis, to my delight I found that I'd still got haunted-by-BBM's 'Missing Motel Moments', 'Pine Creek' and 'Warmest Week of the Year' on my Kindle. After a solid 5 days of reading them whenever I got the chance (it's so long since I read them, it was like reading them for the first time again!) I was back almost 20 years ago thinking about nothing but Brokeback and unable to concentrate on anything else, again distraught that I needed to read more of Jack and Ennis, and then found I'd also still got MadLori's 'Human Interest' and 'Two Crows Joy' on my Kindle. I'm half way through Human Interest now (at least I've still got Two Crows Joy to go), but then suddenly last night remembered Bettermost, and praying that it was still here and not deserted with tumbleweeds rolling down the streets, typed Bettermost into Google...
...and oh, how good it feels to be back amongst people who get it!!!! I still don't understand how one short story and two characters who have never existed in real life can have such an effect on me, how I can grieve for two people I never knew, and what draws me back to Brokeback eventually, always, even 20 years later, but I'm so glad to be back! I always used to describe Bettermost to people as the best English lesson ever, where rather than having to debate some book you never really wanted to read anyway, you can debate everything about the story, characters, and everything you love about Brokeback endlessly with friends who totally understand it! And I'm so pleased to be back!
So yes, I know it's as corny as hell, but I'm gonna say it anyway....Brokeback got me good!
BlissC (Rachel)
