The Orlando Story
The Orlando Story
Many of you have heard me reference the “Orlando Story” and a few of you even know most of it. But for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about – here’ the whole story. What I’m about to tell you is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This is embarrassing but what the hell, it explains a lot and maybe it will benefit someone down the line, right?
The breakup of my marriage after seven and a half years was sudden and unexpected. It totally blindsided me. Now we can argue a couple years later that I should have seen it coming, that I am much better off or whatever, but the fact remains that I was astonished and crushed.
It was during those first couple months that the movie, “Kingdom of Heaven” came out, starring Orlando Bloom. I honestly hadn’t put much thought into Mr. Bloom before, except for a couple of jokes at his expense in some of my writings. However, there was nothing to distinguish him from many other celebrities that I made fun of – until I went to the movie.
I went to see ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ and that night, I came home and felt a sense of peace for the first time in a couple of months. So obviously, I went back again and again. Now anyone who has seen the movie knows that from a purely artistic and entertainment point of view – that movie is difficult to sit through once, much less over and over. But I didn’t care; I was drawn like a month to something comforting and familiar about Mr. Bloom.
Then one night as this strange obsession developed, I bought the Rolling Stone issue on which he was on the cover. I sat at the table eating my tv dinner and reading his article when St. Mary came home.
“What’s going on?” she asked casually.
“Nothing,” I replied not looking up. “Just having dinner with Orli here. He’s not much of a talker but when he says something – it’s pretty entertaining.”
“Ooookay.” She said.
“Then after dinner I’m going to show him my room.”
“Well, you kids try and keep the noise down.”
St. Mary disappeared leaving me to wonder if I’d actually just said all that, like some crazy 15 year old teeny bopper fan from hell.
Over the next couple weeks I bought magazines of Orlando Bloom and put them under my mattress like I was hiding porn. I snuck out to see his movie and St. Mary would ask, “Where you going?”
“To watch Kingdom of Heaven.”
“Again!” She’d ask, surprised.
I’d hang my head in shame – and go anyway. I just couldn’t put my finger on why he was suddenly so attractive to me.
Then one night as I was standing in the living room and St. Mary was sitting at the table I said, “I’m feeling down. Maybe I can go see Kingdom of Heaven one more time before it leaves the theatre.”
“I’m getting a little concerned,” she said. “I think you and Mr. Bloom have been seeing a little too much of each other lately – well, you’ve been seeing too much of him, that is.”
I laughed it off, knowing she was right…and then she said it.
“He kind of reminds me of Reggie.” She said it so off handed, so casual as though she hadn’t even thought about it before.
But for me – It was like a small nuclear explosion. I couldn’t breathe. Oh, my GOD!
I faked a chuckle that bordered on hysteria, “I don’t see the resemblance.” Oh, my GOD!!! I stumbled backward toward the basement.
“Where you going?” She wondered.
“I’ll be in my room,” I said as cheery as I could, but already the tears were flowing as I staggered down the stairs to my room where I sat on the bed rocking and sobbing.
Orlando Bloom looked like my ex-husband. SHIT!
After a good hard cry I decided I needed to prove the theory. I pulled out scrap albums and the magazines from under the bed and compared them. It was true, sort of.
The old pictures of Reggie, from when we first fell in love – the good Reggie, were strikingly similar to the images of Orlando Bloom with long dark hair and tan skin from the Kingdom of Heaven. The more recent pictures of Reggie the only resemblance I could find was perhaps the neck and eyes a little.
When I first met Reggie, he was my fencing instructor, so I knew him with a sword in his hand for several months before we started dating. The idea of Orlando with a sword probably contributed to the familiarity, as well as his character’s idealism; which Reggie had in spades when we were younger.
So there it was. I had been fixating on a celebrity who reminded me of the man I fell in love with a decade earlier. It was in the open, but the knowledge didn’t help.
I gathered the paraphernalia of Orlando Bloom that I’d been collecting and stuck it in a pile to throw away. The idea of it hanging over my bed when it had such an attachment to it now seemed creepy and nauseating.
But for days, I felt empty, that sense of grief from a relationship lost, and the displacement of my very best friend left me depressed and crying a lot. My functionality went down as well as my ability to find logic in this well of divorce pain. How could I ache to see a face that reminded me of a man who could stand in front of me and calmly proclaim he never really loved me? Why would I want that face on my wall? Why would I go watch that face on the big screen again and again? It seemed like such a masochistic thing to do – and yet, the urge was there. So I pulled the stack of magazines back out, clipped my favorite pictures and taped them on my wall. I made up my mind, no matter how stupid I looked, how girlish or crazy or whatever, I would purge myself of this problem so I could move on.
Plan A: Shame myself out of wanting to see a man that resembled, even in the slightest way, someone who had ripped my heart out.
So I did the best thing I could think to cause me shame, I went to the movie store and bought a 6 foot cardboard cut-out of Orlando Bloom dressed as Legolas, from ‘Lord of the Rings’.
That night, as I stood in line to pay for my merchandise I proudly held my cardboard reminder and walked chin-up to the register where no shortage of weird looks were cast my way. I walked from there to the theatre where I was supposed to meet St. Mary for ‘Batman Begins’. I got there early so I stood in line and bought two tickets for the show.
The looks on people’s faces were priceless. Ranging from disgust to pity to humor. As I paid for my two tickets, presumably for myself and my cardboard date, one girl looked at me with such forlorn eyes full of compassion for my ridiculous state. I almost started crying.
Another girl said just at the edge of my hearing, “That’s so pathetic.” I wanted to turn to her and say, “You don’t know the half of it, sister.”
St. Mary arrived to find me in the lobby. God bless this woman, but she picked up my direction and fell right into step playing along. “Oh, Mr. Bloom. I’ve heard so much about you. It’s nice to finally meet the man Athena talks so much about.”
We sat on the side, where Orlando could have his own seat. At first we got some amused glances but they soon turned to irritation the theatre filled up.
During the movie St. Mary offered Orlando popcorn, and when the lights let up she leaned over, “I hate to break it to you, Athena, but he was feeling me up the whole time.”
And so the road was fixed. I thought, “If this can’t stop the runaway train, I’m screwed.” I decided to play it to death, until I couldn’t stand the sight of him, until his very presence evoked no more response – or until someone locked me up in a looney bin, whichever come first.
That night when we got home from the movie, I propped him up in the kitchen and ran to the bathroom, when I returned I heard St. Mary’s voice, “So, I’ve never had a celebrity in my house before.” I listened transfixed as she giggled lightly, “So, don’t look at the mess, okay?”
I rounded the corner and knew, just how incredibly lucky I was to end up with St. Mary when my life fell apart. Not only did she not judge my weird fixation and the unconventional way I was going about trying to fix it – she dove in head first to help.
The basement room where I was living, had just enough clearance to stand him up, and although I worried that I’d wake in the night and see a figure in my room and freak out – it turned out that it was actually very comforting. I woke sweating from a dream one night and saw his calm silhouette by the night light and smiled, falling back into a heavy sleep.
The next two months were spent with my paper man, he went to Karaoke, running errands, standing around in my room holding my bra’s, apartment hunting and riding shotgun while I drove around town. I even wondered if I dared the HOV lane with a cardboard cut out – but decided it wasn’t worth the traffic violation to try.
At Gee’s 3rd birthday party the house filled up with mothers and children and I stood in the kitchen with the party platter when I heard St. Mary tell one of the mothers, “Oh, Athena is living in the basement. She’s a friend from my writing group, she’s great. But her boyfriend is really lazy. All he does is sit around and stare at things. You might have heard of him, his name is Orlando Bloom. He’s an actor in some kind of movie about Pirates.”
The breath left my lungs in a sound half between a ‘whoosh’ and a ‘holy shit!’ I couldn’t believe she just more or less told the mothers of her son’s play group that there was a lunatic in her basement. Now they would never let their children come over!
“Hey, Athena! She wants to meet Orli.” St. Mary yelled to me before turning to the mother who was looking skeptical and said, “Really. He’s here right now.”
A sudden chorus of female voices from the living room became a wave of excited chatter. “We’d like to meet him too.”
“I love Pirates of the Caribbean.”
“I loved Lord of the Rings.”
My face was flaming as I walked past them all to the basement. I couldn’t believe I was going to do it. But one foot in front of the other my hands shook as I walked down the stairs – bubbly anticipation and giggles from the ladies in the house following like a cannon ball. I could almost see them smoothing their hair and checking their teeth.
If shame was the object of the game – then it was fucking working.
When I reappeared with Orli, the room fell absolutely silent.
The kind of silent that permeates your pores with sweat because you know that the moment the silence is broken – things could go very very bad.
Trust St. Mary to shatter such silence with a gleeful, “Orli, what have you been doing hiding in the basement all this time. We have guests!”
I thought I might die.
Just fall over dead, landing on my paper lover and go straight to hell. Do not pass go, just fucking go to hell.
One woman near the window started chuckling. Chuckling! And the sheer absurdity started a round about case of the full blown hysteria.
“I just don’t know what she sees in him, he’s such a terrible conversationalist.” St. Mary said through laughter. And once the ball started rolling everyone started taking turns.
“He’s so one dimensional.” One woman added.
“He’s such a flat personality.”
“I couldn’t have a man standing around all the time.”
Ba-dum –Ba!
And the party got started all over again. Once the shock wore off, the real story about why I had an Orlando Bloom cut out started to circulate and a few woman came up to hug me and whisper, “Hang in there hun, it gets easier with time.”
Through the rest of the afternoon I struggled with a sense of the surreal, the comical and a massive dose of grief.
I handed out cupcakes and scooped ice cream to children that were not mine. I’d never wanted kids but the sudden awareness that I would never have children with the man I’d loved for a decade – sent me into the house to cry in the bathroom. When I emerged I walked into the kitchen where I saw someone had smeared chocolate frosting all over Orlando’s mouth. I froze torn between the need to be angry and the need to laugh.
St. Mary shouted from the entrance as she came in, “Who ate the last cupcake?” She stopped in mock horror, “Damnit Orli! I told you to save one for me!”
That did it. I began laugh/crying and whatever emotional turbulence I had, hit a catch button and popped loose.
Orlando was kind enough to pose for pictures, his frame was perfect for taping a goodie bag and a bunch of helium balloons so the pictures were festive and ridiculous.
That night as I closed my eyes I saw him in the corner, my pink bra hanging off the quiver of his costume and I wondered… is it that he reminds me of the good Reggie before age and bitterness took over? It is that Orlando generally plays characters that are a certain archetype that I’m attracted to and Reggie had that archetype?
With honesty I had to admit that the resemblance was there, but further honesty required that I take a deeper look at my patterns.
I’ve always had an attraction to the warrior-poet archetype. It’s a long running pattern. Reggie lacked the poetry, but he had the warrior archetype. I couldn’t ignore that it was very probable that the reason I was attracted to him at all had a lot to do with that. I also couldn’t dismiss that the characters that Orlando chose to play, were arch-typically in that groove. It didn’t mean that Mr. Bloom is that archetype, just his characters, and it also didn’t mean I was doomed to forever be attracted to such an archetype.
The entire debacle brought to light that I hadn’t given up. I’m still a romantic at heart despite the anguish of a lost relationship. I’m still able to laugh at myself, make jokes that are funny because they are so wrong on so many levels.
My friends embraced my unusual therapy and soon I received invites to movies, picnics and even a night out on the town, with an “Oh, and bring your boyfriend. What’s his name again? Oh, yeah right, Orli. The strong silent type.”
Eventually, the plan did work. I wasn’t shamed out of it so much as finally getting tired of him hanging around all the time. Always there, never any space and I started to feel smothered. Over time he was moved from corner to corner until finally I just folded him up and put him in storage.
About that same time I noticed, I didn’t think of Reggie anymore. In fact around the same time I stumbled across an old friend who asked, “How’s Reggie?” and I stared at her for a moment, baffled and asked, “Reggie who?”
It took a good long look at her surprised face before it clicked and I went, “Oh Reggie! Oh, that Reggie. Right. I have no idea how he is – we got divorced.”
I walked away from the encounter amazed and pleased and ready to think about closing that chapter of my life and moving on. I thought about sending Mr. Bloom a thank you note. Sort of an appreciation for the bizarre use and manipulation of his merchandise and personal image.
But I opted out for obvious reasons. Who’s gonna want a “Thank you for being my object of obsession so I could get over my divorce? By the way I think your movies are swell, and oh yeah, you’re also a great actor. Squee.”
Not very flattering, and mucho-creepy.
So instead, I offer this learning experience to the ether of the interwideweb, and place my internal thanks and gratitude with the bank of the Universe. Mr. Bloom, I hereby owe you a major favor, cash it in if ever you need to.
That’s the best I can do.
For all my friends who keep asking me, “What ever happened to that Oli guy you were seeing? You know, the one who dressed funny and had a tendency to stare out into space?”
You’ll all be pleased to know he’s somewhere in storage. I couldn’t make myself get rid of him entirely, it just seemed too ungrateful. For the last year as I repeated this story, I felt no shame but totally thought I was weird, until I went into a friend’s basement and came face to face with a cardboard cutout of Princess Leia. I turned to him and said, “I have Legolas, we should set up a play date.”
