"Maytime": A Cautionary Tale

Last night after watching the 11:00 news, I stumbled upon the movie Maytime with Jeanette MacDonald. Her singing is decidedly mediocre, and the whoever wrote the book (was that from the original operetta, I wonder?) obviously knew nothing about opera fachs, having the heroine sing in "L'Elisir d'Amore" and "Lohengrin" in the same year!, but the story line was compelling. Ever since I was about 16, I fantasized about some kind of life for myself that roughly fell along that story line (minus the disruptive young love interest): an older charismatic mentor, fame and success (at something - maybe even just scandal), glamour, traveling and living in hotels....I can't think of one moment in my adolescence or even young adulthood when I wanted garden variety domesticity.

So I keep asking myself, how did I end up where I ended up?  In a relationship, however flawed, that is in its fourth decade, in the same apartment for almost three, and in a dull, but apparently rock-solid, industry?

I think I had lots of little tidbits of glamour and flash along the way, so I didn't notice the whole: being the star of a women's dance in my long dress in a sea of jeans (not likely to happen today - many younger Lesbians enjoy glamming up),being a baton twirler in the Pride parade, singing in an occasional amateur opera production, speaking at all kinds of twelve step meetings and topical workshops of various kinds.

Gradually these things fell away and I became just another middle aged woman in a suit (that was one or two sizes too big), working in an office as dull as ditch water, watching my partner grow less romantic, less functional, and more disagreeable with each passing year.

And then I met the Mentor.  I had always wanted a mentor - just like the one in Maytime.  Who knows?  I might very well have found such a person exciting, which would have turned the plot line   completely on its head.  (I remember having a huge crush on a  - male - friend of my mother's, her age, who had a heavy French accent and made the kind of remarks which today would be considered "sexual harassment" but which to my chubby, moonstruck 16-year-old self seemed deliciously romantic).

But no mentor ever really materialized, certainly not until I was well past my "sell by" date as far as the world of classical music was concerned and that relationship was tumultuous and short lived.

But getting back to Maytime, what surprised me was how sad it made me.  That she lived without love and grew old alone. So she advised her young friend to make a different choice.

Oh - and before that, at the concert rehearsal, I heard someone sing "You're Nobody 'til Somebody Loves You". That made me sad too.  And I realized it said "You're Nobody 'til Somebody Loves You", not "You're Nobody 'til You're Famous, Have a Brilliant Career, or Have Your Name in the Newspaper".  And yes, somebody has loved me for three and a half decades.

So this is yet again about The Road Not Taken, which I mentioned in my previous post.

So why do there have to be two roads that separate?  Why can't life be more like a balanced meal?