For Your Eyes Only
It was a reunion 26 years in the making, between Bond and me. At our first meeting, I wasn’t even a teenager. I had to sneak into the theater, because I was underage, had to act and look older. I have no memory of how I did this, but it worked.
I had to ask my mother for permission to take the bus downtown to the theater, before movie megaplexes dominated the earth. Back when taking the bus was fun, when downtown was a big mysterious place, when I had to ask my mom for permission to do things.
My friend Robby was taking me, a few years older than myself and a self-proclaimed Bond aficionado. He’d seen Moonraker and was hooked. He told me about the gadgets, the bond girls, the excitement, the license to kill. Bond girls? I was beginning to have doubts.
And those doubts became horrifying realized with the opening credits. A topless Sheena Easton, after her baby took the morning train but before she invited the world into her sugar-walled vagina, was enough to daze and confuse me. But boob-baring naked lady silhouettes doing acrobatics armed with pistols was enough to make me want to leave the theater screaming. Two minutes and 38 seconds into For Your Eyes Only and I’d seen enough, wanted to leave and I hadn’t even met James Bond.
I did endure the entire movie though. It was two hours of women in bikinis and more thinly veiled tits than I’d seen in my young gay life. As well, I thought Roger Moore was creepy, reminded me of my creepy drug-addicted uncle, but with an English accent. Moore, like my uncle, was a womanizing booze-drenched nightmare and I didn’t want anything to do with either one of them.
And I didn’t. My uncle died, sight unseen, and when Pierce Brosnan was cast as Bond, I thought my mother would make just as masculine Bond as him. She could certainly drink him under the table. Did anyone else suffer through an episode of Remington Steele? Yuk. Forget it. The guy’s a pussy. The Bond movies came and went over the years with little, or no, notice by me.
I do admit to a strange fascination with Sean Connery as Bond. But I haven’t seen any of his Bond movies. I’ve flipped by them on cable, watched a few minutes, and then moved on. They don’t seem to be able to hold my attention.
But then came along Daniel Craig and I found myself headed back to see this Bond. I’d changed a lot in the past 26 years and I hoped he had too.
I was in a bit of funk this weekend. I don’t know why. A family thing out of town was cancelled, which was good, an escape, but it left me without any plans. I got funky, in a Greta Garbo, I vont to be alone, kind-of way. Daniel Craig was just the succulent crumpet I needed to spice up my Saturday. Well, not spice up, crumpets aren’t spicy, but he nicely lathered it in melted butter.
Wow. If you haven’t seen Layer Cake, you should. This is when I first met Daniel Craig. And well, as Bond, any man, gay or straight, who sees this movie is going to leave thinking, “I’ve got to get to the gym more.” He is, as referred to in the movie, a beautiful physical specimen. But that aside, the movie is good. Really good. I enjoyed it.
So, Mr. Bond, I have no intention of maintaining our detached unemotional relationship of the past any longer. I think 26 years of disinterested aloofness is plenty enough. I think it time we got to know each other better. Maybe a martini? A crumpet? Both? Now that you’re single, you decide.
