You know I love Captain Kirk, right? His flavor. And his odor: like the leather seats of a candy apple red Mustang convertible, warmed by the southern California sun. It's like, you want to fuck the guy right there and mop up afterward with his gold velour Starfleet top.Except, really, I don't. I mean, yeah, I do love him. Totally.
But no, I don't find him sexy. Wait. No. Obviously, yes, he's sexy. Jim Kirk is sex. Somehow, though, the character is not, I guess the word is, erotic. To me. He never, for instance, turns up in my dreams. Or his alter-ego (ego, ego, ego) Bill Shatner either. And in real life, please, spare me.
I was thinking about this after I made the "Sweat." calendar page (post below). Much as I love Capt. Kirk, and I'm repeating that because I feel disloyal otherwise, he's all bright, smooth surface and speed. For erotic, I need some shadows and slowness, some rough places for dreams to snag.
OK, I said to my subconscious, fine. Throw out some names: Who do you fancy?And first on the screen of my consciousness there appeared Ulrich Mühe. (Honest, first.) He played Wiesler, the Stasi agent, in The Lives of Others.
Where's the eroticism in that?
Well, it's sure not bouncy Beach Boys sex. Mühe's one sex scene in Lives is a pathetic, brightly lit transaction on his couch with a kind, efficient prostitute.
On the same couch, in contrast, he reads a Brecht poem, which he has stolen from another life, and it is in the actor's power to convey transformative suffering, in stillness, that the erotic lies.
Not really Shatner/Kirk's thing.
So, I googled Ulrich Mühe.
He's dead.
I had no idea. He died in 2007, one year after The Lives of Others, from stomach cancer, at the age of fifty-four.
So startling, this reminder that the actors we see as symbols are, of course, real people. Even William Shatner will die one day, and that'll be a sad day.
But Capt. Kirk won't. He'll forever bop around the universe in all his adorable randiness and leave the low, slow work of sitting intelligently on couches to others.
Seems I find reading sexier than sex. But for all that, upon reflection, if Kirk pulled up in, say, a little red Corvette, I'd hop in.
