FAN MAIL I NEVER SENT
 

by Tom Fillion

 

I’m having a teenage crush again on the most beautiful woman in the world. Olivia Hussey. It started fifty years ago. I still have it. The home fires are still burning for her. Fifty years ago she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Hands down. She has never aged for me. She remains that same symbol of pure beauty and innocence in my ravaged heart of teenage angst.  Doesn’t that sweet nostalgic pain of rattled emotions ever go away?  

 

I’m neither a Capulet nor a Montague.  I’m neither a Shark nor a Jet. I am sixty five years old with teenage palpitations.  I’ve never written a fan letter to a movie star. Only pussies and douche bags did that.  I wanted to send one to her after seeing her in Romeo and Juliet, but I never did. It was at a multiplex in Springfield, Virginia. I went with my cousin. I encouraged him to write her a fan letter for both of us. I adored her like millions of others after I saw her in Franco Zeffirelli’s iconic adaption  of Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Through the miracle of modern technology  I follow her on Twitter.  I send her comments on her Twitter posts.  She is an animal rights activist, probably a vegan, and a definite He’s Not My President, Resistance, anti-Trump advocate.  Through her tweets I have seen humans’ cruelty to animals. I never knew there were dog- meat festivals on the Korean peninsula.    

Our relationship started with my 140 character or less response to her likes, dislikes, and retweets.  Within the day, I received NOTICES on my Twitter page.  In each notice was a picture of my beloved Olivia and a heart.  My own heart responded with the memory of first seeing her and Leonard Whiting as the tragic, ill-fated couple of fair Verona on the wide screen movie theater in Springfield, Virginia.

She posted more tweets, likes, dislikes, retweets, and pictures of herself from Romeo and Juliet and said it was a Happy Memory.   It was for me too.  I told her in a tweet that very few of us achieve such beauty, innocence, and perfection in this life.  It was my teenage heart speaking to her.  I waited anxiously throughout the day for a NOTICE.  She rewarded my patience with another heart!

So far she hadn’t graced me with 140 characters, typed with fingers that had touched Hollywood royalty over the last half century.   Nothing came but Notices and hearts.  I began to suspect that I was a foolish teenager again and wasn’t speaking to Olivia at all but to a publicity underling or worse yet, a bot that chirped with hollow hearts and imoges of thumbs up and hands in prayer.

“Do you know what you meant to all us 65 year old teenagers?”  I tweeted.

I got another notice and a heart from that. 

I awoke in the night with a panic attack.  All my tweets were going to a Twitter age dead letter file that some programmer rigged up to trigger a heart or a thumbs up.

I was crushed.  I was living in the blithers-sphere.

The next day I had to find out for sure if I was communicating with a bot or one of the most beautiful women in the world.  I strip-mined the internet for information about her.  She had married three times.  She had been in many movies.  I was freeze framed on Romeo and Juliet though.  There was no mention of an autobiography in everything I read.  

“Have you written a memoir? When does it come out?”

“Yes.  It comes out in 2018,” she replied.

It came with the hearts and thumbs up but more importantly it convinced me that I wasn’t communicating with the most beautiful bot in the world, but with one of the most beautiful women in the last half century. 

I was doing it far away from the RED CARPET of Hollywood too! What an amazing age we live in! How sweet of her to respond to me!

I knew of her distaste for the Bungler-in-Chief in the White House.   

“You should send an autographed copy to the President,” I typed.

I thought she would get a laugh out of that. I waited for the NOTICE and a heart.  Maybe she would throw in a thumbs-up and a couple praying hands.  The President really did need to try prayer because everything else didn’t seem to working for him and his deconstruction administration .

“I would never give that man anything. EVER!”

Shit! I pissed her off.  I’ll never hear from her again.  No notices or hearts!  And I didn’t.  No matter what I said there were no more hearts or thumbs up.   That destroyed me.  I was like a crushed teenager.  My heart ached.

A few days later she posted a picture of her with Honor Blackmon from ‘The Cat and The Canary.’  Honor was one of the first James Bond ‘girls.’  She was ‘Pussy Galore’ in “Goldfinger.”

“Two Babes!!” I tweeted.

 Later that day, I received my heart’s desire from Olivia.  I got a notice and a heart that she liked it!

I had a follow up reply to her.

“Keep the Douche-Bag-In Chief away from Honor.  He likes to grab a woman’s galore!”

I haven’t heard back from Olivia on that, but I’m used to unrequited teenage love at my age.

At the end of Romeo and Juliet, the Prince declared that the Capulets and the Montagues were “all punish-ED.”  In 50 years I still remember his pronunciation with the accent on the third syllable.  William Shakespeare would be so proud of the production and agree whole-heartedly with the Prince.  But I would disagree in a sense.   In Zeffirelli’s production of Romeo and Juliet, we were all blessed with the truth and beauty and the closest to perfection many of us will ever achieve, and above all, as her consummate and adoring fan, we are blessed with OLIVIA!