Bilateral Relations; Monica Carr

"I don't know how I cut my toenails."-- Kevin Costner

In deference to Masterson, what she chooses for closure, for the knowledge her characters have in intimate terms that viewers are cut off from seeing in The Cake Eaters, these live inside the absences created in the film. Examples are in the opening arc, with Melissa Leo engaging young boys in 16 millimeter home movie style, framing itself on the inside of modern post production technology, evoking, much as the classics do, a wistful longing for less complicated and more magical moments, the memory of being so excited when a father went up on the rooftop to mimic reindeer, and his eldest child lie on her pillow, so excited that Santa was coming! Wakes in the morning and finds a doll figurine in a plastic flower bulb right where she slept, in awe that St. Nicholas could do such things. This is the omniscient Leo's secret smile for the unknown holder of the video camera, the outcry of pierced innocence as Aaron Stanford and Elizabeth Ashley drag Kristen to the flea market outhouse. What is Masterson suggesting about endurance? The toll of the things our internal censors screen us from sharing fall into so many variations. The plea of a spaz in a twenty inch nylon seat, bolted as these thing are to a titanium frame she bought at a cut rate deal from a long dissolved vendor, glued to telephone receiver, chasing a morbidly obese and disgustingly repulsive nominally Catholic woman over many blocks of voice mails, a so called attendant who had at least a half dozen clients, committing fraud against the state of Pennsylvania. She never did her hours, whatever Homemaker Services was paying her at the time, 8, 9 an hour. The quad in the Quickie was likely to see this vicious viper for an hour a week, assigned 12 by Medicaid waiver regulators, and the quad was, of course, down a power chair, waiting and waiting on our single option medically rationed traumatic nightmare we call Medicaid and Medicare eligibility. This blew up into a *serious allegations* incident with Homemaker Services, who have since created a clock in system. You don't see the punishing hostile environment Monica creates for her spastic enemy, spearing each other with venom, my retraction from how her erotic needs promulgate themselves on the Puerto Rican amputee that reads almost to the letter like the regressive episode with the paralytic husband and his caretaker in Lady Chatterley's Lover, but Google images are kind. Monica Carr is 300 lbs of toxic lard, and Nelson the double amputee is that 300 lb toxic lard in a state of decomposition. His incontinence is daily. She calls him "my baby." You want a visual of that physical intimacy in the way we are to imagine Beagle catching his father humping?

Before you make assumptions about my 19 years under Riverside's tactical assault, remember the interstices none of us can ever fully engage with each other. There are gradations to duress, and Monica made her contribution which is common in this paradigm. Never showing up and criminalizing my helplessness. I cannot create I dream of Jeanie through telecommunications, and her cowardice, moral shrink wrap, would be amusing if her body did not inspire very much in the idea of revulsion. When I see a roast pig on a spit, I like a crispy skin, not too willing to contemplate sentience. 

The question remains if Masterson's attempt to be honest with the drollery of defeat overtakes her. Lacks just slightly too little of that movie magic.

Why not Gelato?

The film The Cake Eaters was probably made for various bona fides, feminist and various modes of exploitation, with Kristen Stewart's Goth fragility the modus operandi on forbidden loves that have worn smooth Bram Stoker's headstone. I did not link her from Masterson's quiet slice of life ensemble to the Twilight saga, and I am not sure why this earlier sobering vehicle had to be made. Flawed people coping with loss and absence, chronic conditions that make us lust, invest far too heavily. Running from mortality staring us in the face. Kristen certainly seems to have the genotype to be stricken with a future degenerative unraveling, but she serves Masterson's desire for eye candy over and above the honesty about the human body in its bare essentials, the calluses on our shins and elbows, the shame of obesity and diarrhea. In the notoriety of tradition, the wry British comedy of manner attempts a close scatological scene, but I am not sure how much it contributes to the nuanced wickedness of our pleasure as we engage the characters. We cannot visualize these things on a strip of film that is created with lenses capturing scenes and jump cutting, then lenses again projecting them onto a surface, not without a wince and a strong constitution. All cinematic representation is a lie in this sense, a vanity motivator to defy biology, to enforce self hatred.

I may be old enough to worry about our transformation into a digital world, but not quite old enough to say that the visual medium has had far too much impact on my self image, lacking any telegenic appeal myself. WPVI, ABC's affiliate for my region, did film me for Liberty Resources Inc when I was a fresh face, and it did nothing for me, simply an unremarkable homily face whose eyebrow ridges and grandfather's pudgy nose did no favors. Every year, the cycle of heat waves punishes me more and more, whether or not I engage my creditors, the account holders of my pithy federal debt. Horrible cramps, trots leaking, and I revive long enough to rinse liquid stool, and voila, like magic, the shower pipes for the 14's, the units where Riverside houses most of its wheelchair users, springs a leak into my ex fiance's studio, and the custodial employee who has seen me naked almost as often as Frank, the vilified ex in question, knocks on my door while I am trying to mitigate having soiled myself. These leaks are systemic; if I transfer and shower Frank's drop ceiling saturates and caves in, but we will try it your way, that I have lived in this section 202 senior living facility since I was 34 because I was exposed to systemic trauma in the other one adjacent to Temple's campus, and I am so strong that I have not snapped out yet and deliberately defaced a unit, or in this case, my unit, to get carted off in a facility that would constrain me under lock and key, and haven't quite yet resorted to attempted murder. Edward Snowden and Georgie boy are national bywords, and homosexuals neigh that I should "get help,"  a codex for not seeing that my symptoms require it. I'd love to work, to develop my thesis, to apply for jobs I will not get because my appearance screams that I've been brow beaten by indigence. Only in the United States. Mass murderers and paranoid racial profilers, and paranoid data systems analysts gain instant celebrity. If I advocated for a fascist revival Eric Holder wouldn't bat a damn eyelash. My soul is screaming to run; it wouldn't change a damn thing.