Look, a movie with Armie Hammer! – my poor incorrupt pre-CMBYN self said, as I sat down to watch a movie on a cold January night that started like any other. I’ll just sit there with popcorn, I thought, ogling his statuesque physique and cornflower blue eyes for two hours, before forgetting instantly that I watched a movie at all, finish my wine and go to bed. Right?
Here comes Armie Hammer! Wearing tiny shorts! Gooood! Very good indeed! Fine specimen. Perfect to the point of blandness, I thought. For God’s sake, man, have a tiny scar somewhere, a slight crook in your nose, big earlobes or something. Pah, I am a freak, aren’t I? I see a perfect man and I put him into the “worthy of admiration from afar but instantly UNfuckable” category. This left me with two options: to abandon this movie altogether or to admire the beautiful Italian countryside. Look, they have selected a scraggly teen as an object of Armie’s desire – like that’s going to work, hah.
Fast forward through one unscripted lip lick, some red shorts sniffing, shoulder moves, foot touching, drunk kisses, peach fucking, shirt pulling and crying in front of the fire, and I sat wide-eyed, shocked to the core and stammering.
Whhho is this kid? God, whhhy?! Is this real? I felt EVERY fragment of emotion and the performance had such a synaesthetic impact on my whole being – I could feel the salty-sweet taste of the desecrated peach and his tears, I had a tactile awareness of his protruding erection at the tip of my fingers and an olfactory sense of the way his hair and t-shirt smelled of herbal shampoo, grass stains and sexual arousal.
I started researching extensively, willing to understand HOW and WHY can someone have such a profound effect on my almost cynical, seen-it-all attitude. I found a fine article by Angelina Chapin who has some excellent points about Timmy’s appeal that I am going to paraphrase for convenience: Women of today have had enough of age-old masculine models and stern machos who ultimately break our hearts. Timmy seems to be such a safe object of desire with his awkwardness, puppy eyes and sweet personality – it is like he says: “take me home and love me, I won’t hurt you, ever”. The fact that he seems unaware of his powers adds to this appeal. Good explanations, I thought, but there is more. And it is related to something very intimate, located deeply inside of us.
Timmy is an incredibly sexual being, but his allure is not immediately obvious – he really grabs you with his talent but gets under your skin forever when you discover how instinctive, natural and intelligent he is. He does not need to be anything other than himself to be extremely attractive. In an image-obsessed Hollywood, he doesn’t hide behind tattoos and muscles and wears his bushy eyebrows and a very European sparse moustache with pride.
I wrote somewhere that what really strikes me is the gripping combination of awkwardness, tenderness, sensuality and vulnerability. He is an open book because every emotion he conveys is heartfelt, but I can’t work out how he does this, which adds to his mysteriousness. He is distant in his otherworldly, elvish skinniness, but at the same time, he seems so approachable, human and precious - you look at him and you see your fears, your memories, your insecurities and hidden powers. You see someone you want to be or someone you wish you could have been. Timmy is an allusion of our ultimate love affair with the person we admire and love most in this world, even in the dark hours of self-loathing – ourselves.
It is as if he is a parallel version of our younger selves (perhaps a better one!), but with a hint of old wisdom, nostalgia and passion. Conflicting therefore irresistible! He provokes us, frightens us, amazes us, touches our inner selves and keeps us under his spell. You want to admire him, know him, cherish him, maybe even BE him. At the same time you know that if you get any close you will be so startled and beguiled by this ethereal beauty that you will want to claim, tarnish, devour or wreck him just to make him more human.
I will come back to this later when I have the time!
I don’t care what anyone says, being intelligent is so fucking attractive. Like yes, tell me random facts I didn’t know. I’ll think it’s the cutest thing ever.
