The Cishet 1990s American Father-Son Movie, Good Omens triggered.
For those who are confused, @howmanyholesinswisscheese made a heartbreaking Good Omens post. Read it and weep.
The reblogs however degenerated into a Cishet Father-Son saga, since you maggots are all my adoptive parents. Here is a more polished version of my latest contribution to the hellsite.
[Opening credits play over highly saturated, sundrenched midwest farmland. Bob Dylan's Sara plays and the title appears as the camera slows to a halt in front of a sprawling house.]
[TITLE: Farewell, Iowa, We'll Meet Again, a Gus Van Sant film]
Art 'Greeny' Matthews, a man who does an honest day's work in the farm and is pretty darn proud of it, wanders through his house. His wife Darlene just left him (hence the opening song), and he is faced with the prospect of raising his only son, a ten year old lad Asmond 'Mond' Matthews, on his own.
Greeny takes Mond along with him as he works in the farm on holidays, riding in the tractor. Mond cries about Darlene, who didn't even leave a note, the hussy, and Greeny comforts him as much as he can. "It'll be alright, son," Greeny says on Mond's eleventh birthday, as they sit in the stable with a badly made cake on the wobbly stool. "Just you and me, eh? Not bad!"
"I hate chocolate," Mond whispers miserably, and the birthday party ends in more tears.
When Mond is thirteen, he starts to grow more closed with his emotions, just helping his dad around the farm. They're making a huge profit, and Greeny has business deals and free time, and makes an effort to bring Mond along to golf games and such. Mond is being bullied in school for being caught writing poetry, but he refuses to tell his dad why he comes home with a black eye every other week.
"I'm always here if you want to talk over a game of catch, son," Greeny tries one day. "No thanks, dad," Mond says, and wanders away into the stable. At fourteen, Greeny tries to bring him on fishing trips to discuss his feelings, as they used to do back when Darlene lived with them. Mond swallows, but shakes his head.
Finally, Mond can't keep it from him anymore, and when Greeny finds out, he goes into a rare fit of temper. "Just like your mother, boy!" he says, hand rattling his mug of ale. "A wanderer and a careless fool, that's what you'll turn out to be! There ain't no place in this world for people livin' in their heads."
Mond doesn't write poetry anymore.
As Mond grows, though, he helps out more with the farm, and they bond over hopes for future profit, and joking about golf, which they both find pretentious. "C'mon, champ, let's go play golf," Greeny says while they watch suited businessmen make their way to the house, out of place amidst the yellow-green farmland. "What's your favourite golf club?"
"That a literal club, or the thing they whack the ball with, dad?" Mond responds, and Greeny chortles. "I taught you better than that, son."
He has high hopes for Mond, he will take over the farm. Greeny is growing weary of his duties, he married late and had Mond even later.
[Montages of sunlight days ensue, intercut with shots of Mond, who always has a melancholic air about him. His mother was a dancer, and that rebellious spirit, so long dormant, is beginning to stir as he enters his twenties.]
On his twenty-first birthday, Greeny has baked him a cake, not chocolate. Mond barely sees it. His father doesn't know him. Not really. Not at all. When Greeny says he is handing over the farm to him, and starts to give him instructions about the responsibilities, Mond has had it.
He picks up the rucksack he's been storing by the umbrella stand for weeks, and shoulders it as Greeny pauses mid-lecture. "I'm sorry, dad," Mond says. "I'm going away to be my own man. This was your dream. Not mine."
Greeny is too frozen to stop him.
[Knockin' on Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan plays with another montage]
Mond travels the States, far from home and Iowa, and after a year of struggle finally publishes his first anthology of poetry. Hoping to make his dad proud, he sends a letter home asking if it imperative he return, since he's too ashamed to say he wants to. The reply is a brief but polite no from the housekeeper, saying his father wishes him well but does not require that he return. Assuming Greeny wants nothing to do with him, Mond stays away, bitter and homesick.
He is called home a few months later, and when he arrives, he is met not with Greeny, but with the housemaids and farmhands in black, and the housekeeper teary-eyed as she guides him to the back garden and a lonely gravestone. Greeny, heartbroken by his son leaving the same way Darlene his wife did all those years ago, declined in health, but he kept up the farm till the end, all ready for Mond should he want it after all, and for the head farmer if he didn't.
Mond, still carrying his book hoping to have shown his dad at last, stares in shock at the gravestone. He thinks even at the end Greeny did not know him, thought he would want the farm. Until he reads the inscription. Art 'Greeny' Matthews, friend to all, loyal husband, and most of all, proud father of a poet.
His father knew, Mond realised. His father knew what he'd been doing.
"Are ya proud, dad?" Mond whispers, dropping the book and kneeling down before the stone. "Are ya proud? It was all for you."
[The camera pulls back to show the farmland, scattered with people in black going about their work because business stops for no one, and a solitary figure by the gravestone. Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind plays as the end credits roll.]
"How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand?"
The end.
@howmanyholesinswisscheese The challenge has been issued.
39 notes
·
View notes