Road Markers

So isn’t it a little eerie that my first F***book “like” as Ruth R. Greig/Writer is Anne Rice/Public Figure, and on the morning of my “liking” her page, the first post I see on my newsfeed is a Happy Birthday to Michael York?

If I believe in coincidence, it’s by another name. Life is full of indicators, little signs that you’re on the right track. That’s how I feel about this FB project “coinciding” with my recent intention to make a career of my writing, which “coincided” with my return to reading the Vampire Chronicles, which put me back in touch with Anne Rice, which has “coincidentally” reminded me of how it all began with Yorkie.

Full circle? Hardly—though it seems that the components sprinkled throughout my development have reappeared at this juncture. It’s good to remember where you started. It’s good to recall the people and the moments that shaped your future. It’s good to look back and see how you got here.

Seeing Yorkie’s face on Ms. Rice’s FB page felt like a little miracle, a nod from the Universe that all is well and there’s nothing to stop my plan from succeeding. Keep it up, Ru. Keep the intention going. Plan like success is inevitable. Get yourself together and watch it unfold. Cherish the reminders, face the challenges (there will be some) and most of all stay out of your own way!

Throughout my life, I’ve had friends and family behind me, encouraging me, supporting me, telling me to get off my duff and make something of my passion. Truth is, I wasn’t ready to make it so. I lacked confidence and direction, and quite frankly, motivation. I didn’t believe that I could make a living by doing something that I love. Lots of people have done it, but not me. Nope, I’d have to stick with the day job if I wanted to pay the bills, and so I did. It’s taken me this long to build enough self-esteem to stand up and declare that I am a writer, that I’m a darned good writer, and that I deserve to be successful at it. I’ve been practicing from the age of fourteen, after all, when I fell in love with Yorkie and first read Interview with the Vampire.

How appropriate that these two vital points in my past appear now, together, as I prepare to step off the edge of the world. Coincidence? What do you think?

Michael, My Michael

He turned 73 on March 27. My first screen love. My only love, really. I’ve had brief infatuations and short term affairs over the past forty years, but he has been my one and only movie star, my enduring romance, my sentimental favourite.

Who knows why? Because I was fourteen when he played D’Artagnan. Because I was newly in pain and looking to escape. Because I loved a good story and he was the passionate if inept hero of a dandy. I wanted to write my own swashbuckler and The Four Musketeers got me started—but he’s played more than one character. He was busy in the 70s, too, playing everything from Shakespeare to science fiction, sometimes a bit of a miscast and other times a perfect fit, but always blond, handsome, and gifted with that golden syrup voice.

I could listen to him speak forever.

It was during something like the sixth or seventh viewing, in the scene where D’Artagnan finds Constance dead and sets out to avenge her, when all the requisite factors combined to awaken the giant. He was the catalyst that kicked my imagination into gear and started me writing in earnest. I wrote about heroes who looked just like him, but I started reading, too. Dumas and the Bard, and George Clayton Johnson—if his film was based on a book, I read the book as well. I saw every movie, staying up late on weekends to catch his earlier work in The Strange Affair and Something for Everyone on TV (the days before video tapes and DVDs). I went to the university for the Franco Zeffirelli double-header of The Taming of the Shrew with Romeo and Juliet. I kept a scrapbook of promo pics and articles and “seen around Hollywood” snapshots. I guess I was a little obsessed with him, with the movies, with the stories, with the fantasies of all three combining to ignite my true passion for the written word.

It was a magical time of intense contrast. Every day was a fight to get mobile, of physio treatments and medical appointments, but every day was also a revelation of new ideas, of literary discovery and expanding imagination. It was truly the best of times and the worst of times, and Michael York was in the middle of it.

I did all the stupid teenaged stuff, but four decades later, despite the aforementioned flings and affairs and rock stars notwithstanding, my heart yet leaps when I hear his voice or see his face. It’s more than the remnant of a schoolgirl crush. It is a comfy blend of respect, admiration and gratitude.

It is also—definitely—love.

Man of the Hour

Who loves ya, baby?

Not sure which hour, precisely, though my faulty memory seems to recall a teen magazine reporting that he was born around 6:30 in the morning of June 20, 1960. By the time he reads this (as if), he’ll officially be 54 years old ... and still ticking. Still hot, still inspiring, still gorgeous, still my muse, still the god of my idolatry.

He was not, however, my first. That dubious honour falls on David Cassidy when I was ten, who was succeeded four years later by Michael York, who reigned supreme until that fateful day in 1985 when Ter spied JT’s face on the cover of Star Hits magazine.

Yeah, the bass god has pretty well wrecked me. Though I dabble with other lookers, I always come back to him.

I owe him an ode, but after a crazy workweek, words have finally failed me.

Happy birthday, handsome.