My Life with Blondie
Cervena Barva Press
by Jiri Klobouk
reviewed by Mick
Mykola Dementiuk
Hey, drop
everything Blondie is coming to town! That’s how Jiri Klobouk, author of My
Date with Blondie, begins his comic/tragic novel about Harley Davidson, who has
a thirty-three year love-infatuation with Blondie, singer/movie star and lover
of his dreams, or so he thinks. Even though they’ve never met Harley now has
the chance to finally come face to face with his idol, and he imagines settling down
with her for the rest of their lives. But does Harley really stand a chance?
And how much of this fantasy is real?
Harley Davidson,
yes, that’s his name, is a man in his fifties who has had this infatuation since
his teens. Since his early days in Vienna when he first saw her picture in a movie
magazine, holding onto the memory through war torn Vietnam, on to Germany where
he got married (for the second time), into Portugal where Blondie lived her
young years, and now eking out his life but always with the dream and vision of
Blondie. Oh boy is he eager and ready for her! Even Harley’s current long time
girlfriend Amanda, so he tells us, is just as eager to meet her. Still, Harley
claims Amanda is upset because she lost her kitten Tiger and not because Blondie
is so close nearby. Well, maybe…
Harley is able to
get his old job back at the Royal Arms Hotel, which he calls an old four story
flop house but which Blondie is sure to visit, and in between Harley is faced
with the daily problems of working in the hotel with his supervisors and fellow
employees, who seem to have stepped out of a loony bin.
McCarthy, owner
of the hotel, comes back from Brazil
and has the handyman Melvin, who cares for the hotel, build a Brazilian rain
forest in the owner’s fourth floor room. Besides the gay hotel person Jacques
and the chambermaid Ella the entire staff is there. And how they run the hotel,
what a farce!
Going back in time
Harley was eighteen in Vienna when he
got married to Ilona, an older girl whose parents had been tortured and killed
by the Hungarians. Harley doesn’t care for her since he already is dreaming and
waiting to meet Blondie, who he is certain he will get married to but instead
he agrees with her offer of a proposal. They get married, or as another
character says, Harley has a screw loose from the Vietnam War. And an old war
buddy also asks, “(I)t could be a sign of some kind of mental disorder. Have
you ever thought about that?”
Harley was
conceived on a Harley Davidson motorcycle as his parents went tearing around Europe
at the time when the Jews were being butchered by the Nazis. And Harley finds
out from an old librarian his parents were bank robbers desperate to get away
from the Nazis. Harley’s life is just as messed up and confused as is the
stigma he lives under, being in love with that vague chimera he has never met,
Blondie.
Still, he gets
married to Ilona but after five years he separates from her and marries Helga
in Frankfurt, Germany,
a singer who is also a little nymphet escorted by her Canadian parents. But
after they have a kid Harley leaves her but she quickly gets married to another
man.
For years Harley
and his now-girlfriend Amanda have been seeing a psychiatrist, and Harley has
high hopes for some kind of cure, but after falling in ‘love’ with Amanda it’s
clear that she is as whacky as he is, apparently a bit of a nutcase, as one
character says about him. Still they make a perfect couple except that he’s in
love with the mystical Blondie, his stigma from the past.
This is a
sad/funny, moving novel. You can’t help but think about the guys you see
wandering around town, living out their lives in menial jobs, with menial
relationships, that is if they have any, and just existing from day to day.
Well, I suppose they do have someone to love, for better or for worse. But where
is their Blondie? Is she the one that away? I hope Harley finds her in his lunacy,
and with a little something thrown in just to make life a tiny bit interesting,
much like in the spit and vomit of this beautiful, fantastic happy novel. Hip
hip hooray! Here’s to Harley, dream on!
http://dementiuk.weebly.com
-various e-books
Lambda Literary Awards Winner 2013/Gay Erotica,
2009/Bisexual Fiction
1 comment:
Golly, Mick, it sounds like a Dementiuk novel. I'll have to check this one out.
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