Autism Acceptance Week 2023: Everybody Wants To Be A Cat.

 

Revisting this post for Autism Acceptance Week, about how sometimes our Autistic brains may have all the knowledge in the universe but at the same time know absolutely nothing because - bizarrely - it's one of the most popular things I've ever posted.

I like to think that's because it's one of the most profound and honest things I've ever written but to be honest it's probably because it's so arse-numbingly cringey.

You decide.

Enjoy.

 

 

 

The 28th October is a really special day for me.

You see it's the date that THE greatest book ever written was published (way back in 1958) so naturally I spend the day harping on about it to anyone who'll listen.

The book is Breakfast At Tiffany's if you're wondering.

I don't think there has ever been another author (outside Terrance Dicks who basically taught me to read) that's had such a profound effect on me as Truman Capote, from the moment I first read In Cold Blood I was hooked - finally a voice I understood and - more importantly - believed in and quickly devoured everything and anything I could find by or about him.

Yup, even Murder By Death on big, bulky VHS.

You could say I'm a wee bit of a fan.*

 

Scarily, looking back I realise that it was this book that first introduced me to such life-shaping ideas as dating, relationships and, gulp, girls.

I was instantly smitten with Ms Holly Golightly and my teen, hormone raddled, Autistic brain decided that she was the perfect girl, so I spent the next few years (more like a decade) trying to find the perfect embodiment of Capote's heroine.

You see up until that point girls didn't really register on my radar as anything else other than folk I spoke to and the thought of being attracted to one was utterly terrifying.

And I can thank Nastassja Kinski for that.

In particular her portrayal of Irena Gallier in Paul Schrader's 1982 remake of Cat People.

But why? I hear you cry.

Well type but you get the idea.

 

If you look up perfection in the dictionary you get this photo. Fact.

To explain this frankly bizarre - and fairly embarrassing - turn of events we have to go back in time to me as a small boy.

A small boy utterly obsessed with horror movies.

Seriously my first memory is from around 2 years old and it's not of my parents, it's of sneaking out of my cot, crawling into the living room and watching the 1931 Frankenstein from behind a chair.

Which I think says more about me than anything else really.

Anyway my obsession as you can tell started young, and helped along by my granddad my love of horror - and especially the Universal classics of the 30s and 40s was cemented.

And so I began to soak up other companies movies from the time as well as immersing myself in whatever literature about the genre I could find because you can never have too much information about your favourite thing.

Reading about these classics (usually in a book by Alan Frank or Leslie Halliwell who it seemed had the monopoly of horror works in the 70s) I came across a little RKO chiller called Cat People directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Simone Simon that told the story of Irena Dubrovna, a newly-married Serbian fashion illustrator who becomes obsessed with the idea that she'll metamorphose into panther if she sits on the sofa and holds hands with her husband or something.

This bit of the plot was unimportant because I'd read it was a classic that had to be seen so that was enough for me.

I mean I could tell you the storyline, the running time and the cast list but as far as I was concerned it was actually just about a woman turning into a big cat and it was a classic because I'd been told it was.

And being a big horror fan meant learning and repeating these things. 

Many - many - years later during one of our drunken chats Rho pointed out to me that the whole point of the first film is that it's an exploration of sexuality, sexual awakening and identity and I had to admit that I didn't actually realise that at the time but who can blame me? 

It was called 'Cat People' not 'Nervous Lady Becomes a Cat At The Thought of Kissing a Man'.

I'll come back to this later.

No, nothing at all vaguely sexual here.

Jump forward to 1982 where, as a very serious 12 year old film fan I was getting rather excited about the amount of top quality movies getting released that year.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, John Carpenter's The Thing, Blade Runner,
Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Conan The Barbarian, The Sword and The Sorcerer and The Dark Crystal were just some of the delights I had to not only look forward to (hopefully) seeing but also to read up and learn more about.

Blade Runner and The Thing were a given as I already knew EVERYTHING about these being the directors biggest fan (be kind) but the one I was most excited about was Cat People.

I mean come on - it's director, Paul Schrader had written Taxi Driver (which I hadn't seen but had read how important a film it was), it was written by Alan Ormsby (whose film Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things was a cult classic, obviously I hadn't seen it but I had seen some photos from it and read how it was a low budget gem whatever that meant) plus David Bowie was singing the theme tune (obviously I knew who he was because as a child I was constantly singing Space Oddity at every given opportunity but I'd recently become obsessed with him due to his hair during The Serious Moonlight Tour rather than because of his music), Malcolm McDowell was in it (and who didn't love him as Alex Delarge in A Clockwork Orange? I did, or I would of if I'd seen it) as was Nastassja Kinski who I knew from the final Hammer film To The Devil A Daughter which I admit I'd not really been that interested in as everyone in the photos seemed a bit too grumpy and all wearing plaid sports jackets which was enough to put anyone off.

Oh yes and I read that it featured nudity so I thought better of it.

I mean come on, what 12 year old boy watches horror movies for naked ladies?

Not me I can tell you.

Sigh.

 

So anyway, in no way being able to pass for 18 I had to find another way to see the movie, which is where our local video shop and it's ability to source screeners from across the pond came in, so it was on one fateful Saturday evening when my parents had gone out for the night - and left my sister at my grandparents - that I settled down to watch what would possibly be THE greatest and scariest horror remake ever.

An hour and 58 minutes later I was left shocked and shaking.

They'd taken a film about a lady that turned into a cat and made it about sex!

How very dare they.

I was expecting long lingering looks, stilted dialogue, scary shadows and a cat transformation not Malcolm McDowell trying to kiss his sister, full frontal nudity, a lady getting eaten by a leopard whilst just wearing her pants and talk of jumping thru' hoops.

But scarily I wasn't expecting that the boy-haired, librarian like, needy and nervous Nastassja Kinski would cause a huge hormonal explosion that by the films climax would mean that for the first time ever I was aware of thoughts that weren't altogether PG rated or in any way related to movies.

Horror or otherwise.

Yes, I'm (very) embarrassed to admit it but I discovered girls via this film.

And as much as the feeling it gave me in my tummy was nice the thought that if I ever met a (real) girl I liked and tried to kiss her the very fact that there was a good chance she'd turn into a huge black cat and rip my throat out absolutely bloody terrified me.

So I did what any 12 year old boy in that situation would do.

I ordered a Cat People poster and hung it above my bed so I could stare at it every night before I slept.

Partly in the hope that it would make the fear of girls go away but mainly because I reckoned if I wished hard enough Nastassja Kinski would step out of the poster and be my girlfriend.

Don't even think about taking the mickey.

You see - as I explained here - when your autistic brain realises a thing that memory/definition of it becomes the default setting.

So I equated girls I found attractive with slightly accented librarian types with dark secrets that may at some point attempt to eat me if upset.**

And this isn't a metaphor, it's genuinely what I thought.

As you can probably guess, the rest of my teens were interesting to say the least.

So in the words of Simon Bates, Thanks for listening and enjoy the film.

...And yes, almost 40 years later I still own a Cat People t-shirt....

 

...And am maybe still a wee bit obsessed.

 

*Cassidy's middle name is Capote. So there.

**Bizarrely I actually ended up marrying a Scottish accented librarian but to be fair she hasn't tried to eat me.

Yet.