The Subject Wasn't Roses

 

 

It was giving up on David as an actor, refusing to watch this coming season of Californication, because it's too painful or sickening or whatever.  If you're still on the fence, or have even gone over to the darker side, I'd hope to try bringing you back over to the brighter side.  Maybe not, but some things for you to consider.  If you'd care to join me... 

 

I'm guessing a lot of the problem I'm perceiving that some are having with continuing this 'illicit' love affair with the less-than-Ideal David is that not everybody knew of the David I knew of, long before he married Tea.  I've perceived and loved him as a swinging bachelor before, pun intended (what the heck?), and I, therefore, could do it again, if I'm forced to.  That's not to say I, for one second, want to see David return to bachelorhood as a divorced man, a 'sad shell' of a man who's getting older and trying to relive his youth with wanton sex, because there's nothing I want less.  Although, you could argue ...  ;-p  Nah, not going there.  But just so you know I could.  Whole 'nother post, for a better day. 

 

Me, I love Tea, and I always loved the concept of David as the adoring husband and doting father.  It's a part he plays well.  Totally convincing.  IMHO he always is, on screen and off (like in interviews, in person, etc).  I think he's the real deal, a genuinely nice guy.  There's also no evidence that he isn't still an adoring husband and doting father or a genuinely nice guy, just one with an unfortunate problem that needs fixing, so he's working on it, is how I'm looking at it.  Happens everyday, all over the planet, to much less nice people, too.  We don't even know for sure what went wrong to land him where he is.  Nobody's business except the people directly involved.  

 

Not aiming any of this at any one person, but at the idea, in general ...but does it really matter that much to you that he not 'deceive' you, lie to you, pretend to be something he isn't?  Um ...he's an actor, it's what they do for a living.  Are we forgetting that he's an ACTOR, and not our life partner?  Why would you abandon him as an actor, refuse to watch his work, when in all truth, that's really all you should know about David, that he's a good actor, you always liked him before, enjoyed his work, so he's in it, 'yeah, I'll watch/pay to see that!' 

 

This fruitless agonizing about the 'real' David and the real pain inside him is what happens when we let ourselves get way too attached to someone we don't know and never will.  Guilty!  :waving right hand:  This is where we cross the line from good judgment, making their lives our own, loving and caring about them like family/not family.  Something bad happens, we can't be there, can't ask any questions, don't know what's going on and if David is really okay.  We can't talk to him, so we don't know how he's taking this.  It's so easy to panic, near hysteria, all because we feel so utterly helpless to do anything about it, or assuage our paranoia for the worst, we can't be there to see for ourselves, comfort him or yell at him. 

 

We get, 'I'm being treated for sex addiction, please leave my family alone.'  Hello?  It's like traveling a long way to visit a relative and having them slam the door in your face, instead of inviting you in.  Right?  It's because we're too attached to someone that in reality, we have no real connection to.  I think we're all, including me, at first blush (literal), taking this a little too personally, when it really shouldn't be personal for us to begin with.  In a perfect world, we wouldn't even know of this regrettable unpleasantness.

 

Yes, I've met him and he really does make you feel like you’re the only person in the room, it's amazing, honestly, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but it was meant to be and ultimately was a star-crossed connection, just the same, and totally one of my own making, from inception.  We fans, we're on a one-sided, but passionate journey that has no destination.  But that's always the fun of any journey, isn't it?  Getting there?  I think we do this unending celebrity adoration thing day-after-day because it never has to really end, because we can make it into anything that suits us, truth or fiction or wildest fantasy, and frankly, it helps us get through an otherwise lackluster day.  All while feeling connected to others who feel the same way, all of us, in this case, about one, particular guy. 

 

Don't you think that's remarkable?  That all of us can adore and feel drawn to this one, really hot guy, all of us with different perceptions and expectations?  I've always considered it fun and entertaining in of itself, this fandom thing.  Still, it's all in our head (and our computer), and there's little maintenance involved, for that reason; maintenance being, defending him and our fangirl status on the Internet or to our families and friends or at work occasionally, and almost never over insinuated scandalous private behavior before, until recently.  Compare that to what Tea's going through and it makes it seem a little petty to get all righteously indignant over it.  Or it does to me. 

 

I doubt anyone in my real life will ask me about David's troubles, but I've been asked basically the same sex scandal question before about a public figure, so, I already have my answer ready, if they do.  My response the first time was that I really didn't care, because I wasn't sleeping with him.  I told them I had no idea what it had to do with how he did his job, so it really wasn't a consideration for me.  I wondered why we were all talking about it, actually. 

 

I didn't really look at it as the milestone of privacy invasion that it was, back then.  But I think it's where this need to know everyone's sexcapades started.  Talk about Pandora's Box!  Sad day, indeed, this new nothing-is-sacred mentality gone wild to the point of hurting people and ruining lives, over a basic and very private function of humanity; sex, how we got here in the first place.  We can make it into a personal betrayal if we want, but I, personally, think that's for the woman married to him to define and deal with, not me.  For the first time since she married David, I don't envy Tea, regardless of what David's done.

 

Same thing as before here, this invasion of privacy, only this one felt even more personal.  I didn't want it to and still don't, but that was my initial reaction to the news.  Like a brick/slap to the face.  In all truth, David hasn't done a thing to us directly.  The ugly fallout and publicity affects us directly because we're fans, but whatever he did, he didn't do to us, he didn't hurt or humiliate or endanger us (woe is me *g*) and beyond who he is to us in public and as an actor, isn't rightfully our concern.  Ever stop to think maybe that's why we 'lied' to us on occasion?  People ask questions that are so none of their business, invasive, personal things no thinking human being should be asked in a public forum. 

 

David always answered quickly and wittily, his comments filled with irony and humor and diversionary wording, sometimes words I never heard or saw before, but it was left to us to look up the words we didn't know (always the teacher, ain't he?), interpret and over-analyze it, and assume it was true.  And we did.  I did.  Could be, making something up was his way of avoiding invasive questions that hit too close to home for him, hiding chinks in the public armor he couldn't face, things that are truly nobody's business anyway. 

 

Personally, I've always been delighted with the guy I saw, visually or in print, and plan to be, way into the future.  Loved him a lot, and I still do.  Maybe even more.  This David I've loved so much for so long may not be the real David, but it's My David.  The real one belongs to somebody else, so I'll take what I can get and be grateful and make the best of what I'm allowed of him.   Not much room for looking a gift-babe in the mouth, in my corner of the world.

 

Point is, he's still David, to me, still the same guy I 'met' in a bar over pretzels and a Lowenbrau on my tiny little kitchen TV screen, long, long time ago.  I 'knew' him when we was a promising young actor and very sexual and sensitive and single young man.  I know him now as an older, seasoned actor and comedian, a husband and father who's struggling with a personal crisis, and all I can do is wish him and his loved ones well, hope for the best, because in a perfect world, that's how it's supposed to be.  I don't care what David's done, repetitive cheating, excessive porn, both and more, and I don't care to know. 

 

We're spoiled on the information age, our "four-figure wank machines" and have a sense of entitlement to any and all information, just because it exists.  And if it doesn't, we make it up.  While that may, technically, be true; that we have a 'right' to know everything about everybody, in order to judge their worthiness, in utilizing that right as a weapon, we lose our right to be human, to have human frailties and privacy to deal with them.  We're held to impossible standards of goodness and purity that no one, short of a guy like Jesus was purported to be, could hope to achieve.  And while we're at it, 'What would Jesus do?' 

 

Trust me, I've lived a lot of years, and this was not always the case in public life.  One only has to know history to realize we're cutting off noses to spite everyone's faces with our newfound bounty of information, and I totally don't get why, when we're all thusly, if not equally, flawed in different ways.  Anybody remember the Golden Rule, or is it just me?  Not that I want to live my life completely naïve of all evil, but this isn't evil.  This isn't a threat to our health or our environment or our lifestyle or our bank accounts or our country.  It's a personal demon and should never have been made public.  Twenty, thirty years ago, it wouldn't have been.  There used to be a line in the sand between public and private.  I wish there could be again. 

 

But the tomcat's out of the bag, so to speak, and we all have to face this troubling anomaly in our own way, dole out consequences to the offender as we see fit, I suppose.  I respect that notion.  For me, though, if he was really family, I wouldn't abandon him for love or money, no matter what he'd done.  I think that's what family was meant to be; people in your life, perhaps the only people in your life who love you in spite of everything, like a dog, unconditional love; people who think you're worth saving, no matter how low you go. 

 

Being of my virtual reality family doesn't seem any different.  I wouldn't abandon him for love or money, especially when I don't even know what he's done and never will, with any certainty.  I love him in spite of everything, like a dog, unconditional love.  ;-p  I think he's worth saving, no matter how low he's gone.  If I had to say why, I couldn't in a billion words or less, but it's just how it is, for me.  I know enough to think so and not nearly enough to think so, so I just think so.  I have the arguable advantage of having that option, because he doesn't belong to me. 

 

So do I embark on a never-ending chase for things I don't even want to know, nor should know, or do I use my powers of selective ignorance as bliss, let it pass and move past it?  Hey, take it from me, someone with lots of experience, coming and going, forgiveness is divine.  Try it!  You'll like it!  :-D  Seriously, it doesn't eat away at your heart and soul the way the opposite does.  Much more healthy and I highly recommend it.  Throw in a little compromise now and then, little sacrificial lamb of dignity, and you got game.  For the record, I've been married for 28 years and it's a recipe that works.   

 

Regardless of David's secrets (and who doesn't have at least one of those?), he's still the same guy to me, the guy I always knew was there; the dark, Moody and brooding, lonely guy looking for perfection in himself and in others and in love, but never quite getting there.  Like a lot of us, I would think.  I thought he was happy, he wanted us to think he was happy, and I wanted him to be happy, so I believed it.  It's a roadblock, this problem he has, but I hope he won't let it ruin his family life or his career, because I sure don't intend to let the latter happen. 

 

I love his work and always have.  Love just looking at him, listening to him talk.  He's magical.  Just because I happened to fall for the guy behind the mask, which turned out to be a mask over still another guy with secrets, doesn't mean I can't still love his work or him and his secrets.  I love a good mystery, and David's always been a really fun one, to me.  He's never failed to surprise me, always something new and unexpected to love about him.  Only, they were always good surprises before. 

 

This is different, sure, an ugliness I'd rather not know about David, but fairly easy to overlook for me.  An unnecessary scandal involving sex and all it appears to reveal about our closer-to-ideal-before guy isn't the atrocity for me that it is to some.  In fact, it sort of fits David, if you 'know' him the way I have, the many phases of Duchovny, more so than drugs or alcohol would have.  And yeah, from my view, "It's all good," all the layers and tiny and not so tiny bits of him I got to know as my David.  

 

But even good goes bad, makes mistakes, so he's a little less perfect than I thought.  Biggie for him and his wife and family, certainly, but no biggie from my perspective.  I just want him and everyone involved to be okay.   

 

Look at it this way; it isn't the sex (or whatever) scandal that ruins an actor's career.  It's the fans who abandon them that ruin their career.  No one watches their movies or TV shows, no one will hire them.  Is this really what any of you would want for David, over a sex problem?  David?!  Mr. Sex that we all knew and loved and drooled over a few days ago?  Isn't that really for his wife to decide? 

 

Suppose David voluntarily decides he can no longer face the public and its potential ridicule, that he can no longer work in film, because of all its many addiction triggers.  This season of Californication could end up as his last work on film.  Would you want to live the rest of your life knowing you missed it, refused to support it, and possibly by doing so, contributed to his decision to quit?  His show flops this season, and that could be the final straw for David. 

 

I mean, I can speculate, too, and if some of the things people are saying about David's fragility to ridicule and humiliation and failure hold true (and does anybody else at least half-expect him to come out of this with his mind and humor in tact, all steely and ballsy-er than before, or is it just me?), we might not see David for a long, long time, unless we visit the usual suspect paparazzi sites.  They're gonna have a field day, first time he's sighted somewhere, if they find out where he really is.  I think it's cool the reports vary, by the way.  I guess sloppy reporting can have its advantages, after all.    

 

Fact remains, it's the strength of their own will, that of their loved ones, and some help from their fan base that will bring most any actor back to his feet after a public fall, and if you care about David as a creative force, or as a fellow, flawed human being at all, would like to see him on screen in the future, my advice would be that you put aside the hurt you're feeling and help him to his feet, as I dearly hope his beautiful wife and family will, and like Showtime already has.  GO, Showtime, by the way!  His career is the only tangible thing we have in our control, as mere fans.  I suggest we make the best of this first truly painful experience the tabloid press has handed us, and move on to loving David for what he is to our reality, rather than what we want him to be in our minds.     

 

Much as it hurts, he's not ours, gang.  But his career is.  If the thrill is gone, it's gone, and again, I respect that.  Makes me sad, but to each his own.  Me, I'm still game for making it happen, against all odds or otherwise.  Anybody with me?  I know those of you who are, but I just hope some of you falling by the wayside of humiliation will reconsider. 

 

But that's just me.  Carry on and keep the faith ...in David.  It's really all we have at our ready disposal in these disquieting times, after all.  My best to his entire family, of course, but I insist on giving Mr. Duchovny the credit he deserves for making it this far without major incident, for trying to right a wrong and move forward beyond it.  That's my hope for him, that he succeeds.  ;-)   Go, David!

 

 

Peace and a happy heart,

mim