Bogie
Bogie, you rugged hunk of man lust. Not exactly handsome but someone we almost all want. Your upper lip never moves–too cool by half. An injury, I understand, but it became a trademark. You always have the best lines. You whip them out like sharp grasses for Kate. They’re softer, a little more gin soaked—or was that just age—for Lauren. They’re filled with longing and probably even love for Ingrid. Your voice as smooth as gravel binding with tar and hitting the pavement like Archer’s crumpled body. The acrid smell of corruption and strained situations leads right to a seedy bar.
You play against the funny bad men and look, well, only a little bad, still able to laugh at the greed that runs the world and catches you up into one more fruitless episode. You melt in the eyes of a beauty, but you stay so cool on the outside—the M&M of love. It’s just your judgment and cigarette lighter that goes bananas face to face with that pretty, witty but slightly needy dame, isn’t it?
How do you know to keep your hands off the little fly Ugarte? “Help me Rick….Help me…” Who could have resisted his sweaty little whine? No, never muss a hair on your head.
You all seeing, most knowing and never hardly caught man. You treat a lady a little rough. But then your ladies have some rough business going on. Man, I fell for you. How were we ever going to get the smell of all those damned cigarettes out of your mouth for the big kiss?
You’d never have noticed me, or any of the other ‘70s college girls. None of the movie stars we fell for would have. We were silly, anti-everything, not exactly for anything. We purposely uglified in our difficult-to-ruin youth. We shlepped around in shapeless dresses and jeans, earth shoes, sacks on our shoulders and unwashed un-styled hair. We wore our shoulder pads first for jokes, then for power, but never for fabulous line and class. No you’d never be tempted by such uncivilized whiners. But still we found you so romantic. We’d just have to love you from afar, Bogie: a few decades away. We knew we’d never find a guy with such good lines on his lips.
At least when we were watching, we knew it wasn’t real, didn’t we? Our cocktails weren’t even cocktails back then—boxed white wine and well-rolled joints—let alone peppered with wit. That’s what kept you so special, even as you slowed and dulled in Black and White with more impossible amounts of smoke and booze. You played out unplanned lives caught up in the real tears and throws of the world: tempest-tossed lives where only the moment really did mattered. At least we’ll always have Paris.