Shop Girl

I just finished watching the DVD of the 2005 movie, Shop Girl.  The movie was produced after Steve Martin wrote the novella by the same name.  It is hard to imagine that the same "wild and crazy guy" wrote such a sensitive story.

In the movie, Ray Porter, played by Steve Martin, is an older man who goes after a younger woman - Mirabelle, played by Claire Danes.  Who wouldn't want to go out with Claire Danes?  Doesn't she have the most beautiful mouth? 

Martin's character claims that from the beginning of the relationship he is straight up with Mirabelle, telling her that he doesn't really want anything.  Of course, typically female, Mirabelle doesn't hear him say that to her.  She gives herself over to him with her whole heart.  And then she is shocked, hurt and disillusioned when she finally realizes that he doesn't love her.  Then Martin's character is surprised to learn that maybe he really did love her, but of course it is too late and Mirabelle has moved on with a man who gives himself over to her with his whole heart.
The man who wore the bunny ears, wore the arrow through his head, sang King Tut has some kind of unusual effeminate feelings deep down inside.  In the book, Shop Girl, he writes with the voice of a woman with a tone that rings true.  To this woman, anyway.  Somewhere deep inside the outer shell of insanity, there is a man who plays banjo, collects art and continues to write.  He has a new book coming out and I can't wait to read it. 

The movie Shop Girl made me cry.  I've been the woman loved by the man who didn't quite love enough.  I was the woman who gave my heart over completely believing that in the end, I would have the man.  He held himself back, tied to money and a past life that he couldn't break away from.  He is the one that haunts me.  The one that I see the back of his head and quicken my step or drive a little faster just to catch the face and see that it isn't him.  He stands at the edge of my dreams, observing even in my subconscious.  Movies, lines, words, scents, songs all bring him hurling back to me.  Victimized, I am attacked by memories that I do not invite.  I cannot push the memories away.  They wash over me, hurting me all over again.  I've heard that he is with someone else now.  A younger woman.  I imagine she thinks he hung the moon.  Or, maybe she is independent enough, hip enough, cool enough that she can handle someone who doesn't give himself over and who is still tied to his old life.  I am not that hip or cool.  Do I haunt him?  Do I appear in his dreams?  Does he imagine that he sees me only to realize that it isn't me?  I do not know.  I just know that all of what we had back then or what I thought we had back then is nothing, now.   Sometimes that is still unbelievable to me.  People reading may wonder who he was.  Some probably think it is my children's father.  It does not matter who he was.
I'm just glad that I am not the one that is with him now.