La Traviata Love Letters
You'd be surprised how many times I've been made sit through "Pretty Woman.". Women think it's romantic. I think it's silly, and the ending is rushed. The only character I liked was Barney, the hotel manager. Helping broken people find their potential without any hope of reciprocation is the closest thing to true love I can imagine.
In the film, Edward takes Vivian to the opera to see if she will kiss him. The opera is La Traviata. In La Traviata, Violetta is a prostitute and Alfredo is a young nobleman. The characters of Edward and Vivian are loosely based on Violetta and Alfredo, but with a happy ending. Sorry if I spoiled the movie for you.
In Jackson, we had the Mississippi Opera, which was the spiritual fruit of Mrs. Chisholm prominading Leontyne Price around Jackson thirty years before. I had season tickets in the loges because Dick Wilson said those were the best seats acoustically.
Normally, I would take my grandmother or a zaftig running mate. Not everyone was willing to sit through an opera. Sometimes, I took the most sophisticated creature I knew. It was an act of unmatched bravery.
I was twenty and she was nineteen. The opera was La Traviata with a tenor from Mississippi, but living in New York. My companion was studying to be the only thing I ever wanted to be, but never dared tell anyone, even her. She was considerably better at it than me.
She was sunlight and cool water on a clear lake in the summer, music I didn't know the words to, and the smell of muscadines as they ripen on the vine. I was a brute.
She wore an ivory gauze dress that floated like gossamer. I wore a dark blue suit and beefy cotton Oxford shirt. Men's clothes tend to be unimaginative.
The lights went down, and the overture began. I could see her hand resting on her knee. I'd studied that hand for a thousand years. I knew it like my childhood home, including the creeks and woods beyond. She had two tiny moles between her thumb and forefinger. Vampire bites.
I don't do well with raw, unfiltered beauty. My instinct is to whisk them away to the ramparts and scream for Sanctuary! Sanctuary! She was the dew-dappled heart of a rose. I was Quasimodo, Cyrano, and Kong, trying to hide my ugliness in the dark.
She watched the opera. I watched her hand. I could touch it if I were brave enough, and not a million miles away. Alfredo sings to Violetta as she dies. Love doesn't save her. She doesn't save him. "Pretty Woman" is a lie.
In "The Once and Future King," White makes a significant change to the Arthurian legend. Lancelot, the perfect knight, is ugly and broken. Love doesn't save him either.
Like Cyrano, I've written letters of love for other men to deliver. Like Cyrano, we got away with it. I think it's easier to fool a beautiful woman when you're beautiful too.
I often think of Cyrano. Broken and dying, he visits Roxanne one last time. Reading her true love’s last letter, she realizes she's been lied to. "I have only loved one man in my life, and now, I've lost him twice!"
King Kong was made of rubber and metal, but capable of great emotion. Licking the blood coming out of his chest, he realizes he is dying. He reaches down for the tiny thing, the only beauty he's ever known in two savage worlds.
What will I have when my last moment comes? I will have my white plume and my letters.
I hope there is no heaven. Heaven isn't a place for ugly things. I hope whatever I was dissipates into the universe like dust motes in the sunshine.
