Less Wild Things
I sit here, splayed out on an eighteen-dollar couch in a nineteen-dollar apartment building, somewhat bored with life at 21. Big paper due tomorrow, and a lot of personal dissatisfaction right now. But Wild Things is on TV, and nothing seems so bad. It might be too much to say that this movie always cheers me up. Truthfully it is not good enough to have that kind of effect. Instead, Wild Things reminds me of some less wild things. It offers a little perspective.
You could say that when I first saw this movie I was discovering myself. It came out in 1998, the year I turned 12. I probably did not see it until a year later at 13 when it debuted on HBO. It had to be HBO; that much I know for sure. I also know that I was an inexperienced 13. An awkward 13.
My memory is pretty average. I only know I saw Wild Things on HBO because of one particular scene. But that scene was enough. It was the scene. The scene that every male peer of mine made his bones on. The scene that involves Denise Richards, Neve Campbell, and I think some guy in there somewhere.
When I first saw it, that scene was epic. It was the greatest thing ever. Ever. It was The Godfather, it was the Mona Lisa, it was my Rushmore. It was everything I could possibly want in this world. It seemed to last for hours. And it took days to get out of my head. The scene was an epiphany. Not the first sex scene I ever saw, but the first one that mattered.
God knows that Wild Things or not, I would have eventually realized how much I liked girls. Just like most other boys, it happened in steps for me. But girls, believe it or not, are not the subject right now. I am far too self-centered for that. The subject is me.
I just watched that scene again. And to be honest, every time I do (which I swear is not that often), it seems shorter. Pretty good, but not spectacular. Wild, but not transcendental. That said, I get another kind of pleasure from watching this movie now. I get nostalgic. Wild Things reminds me of my own innocence. An innocence that fortunately, is not completely lost. I think about the way I was then, and the way I am now, and nothing feels different. Girls, for example, I think I still know nothing about.
But regardless of my instinct, some things are different. Which is why I am capable of enjoying Wild Things on another level these days. I can enjoy it now as a fun, but awful movie redeemed by some pretty faces, a memorable sex scene, and Bill Murray.
So here I sit. Matt Dillon just tried to kill Kevin Bacon on a sailboat in the Caribbean. And I find myself more absorbed by my past than by the movie itself. The whole situation reminds me how much more there is to discover in the less wild things. And now, sunk deep into the lumpy sofa, nothing seems so bad.
*Note: Married…with Children is on right now and features a cameo appearance by Vlade Divac. More evidence that Vlade Divac is the greatest human being in the history of the NBA and Serbia.
