FLICK CHAP
MY TWI-WIFE
By Jason Johnson
November 27, 2009
In the 15 years that I’ve known my wife, she’s never been a fan of anything.
My wife says she’s not crazy like other Twilight fans. But that’s what they would say too.
While I tend to be enthusiastic about even the stupidest things – balls of yarn, bubble wrap, strips of tinfoil – the missus is not so easily impressed.
She’s a centred person. She’s a content person. She’s never felt the urge to disappear into some fictional , fantastical world.
She’s never needed to boost her mood or bolster her self-image with the help of some soothing pop culture elixir.
She’s never had the desire to live vicariously through larger-than-life heroes.
She’s always been practical. No-nonsense. Down-to-earth. A rock.
But along came Twilight.
And suddenly, my infinitely commonsensical wife was a junkie for vampire lurve.
For me, for someone who is a fan of so many things, who has more or less cobbled together his own religion out of bits and pieces of books and movies and songs, it was a wonderful thing to see.
After we watched the movie together for the first time, she commented on its ‘strong undercurrent of emotion’.
This is the same woman who shrugged when I asked her what she thought of The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers. And Spider-Man 2. And Speed Racer.
Speed Racer!
Now, suddenly, she was waxing poetic.
That same week she bought the Twilight novel and read it within one night.
I bought her the rest of the books soon after, and she ploughed through them within a few days. She got her sister to read the books. Her cousin. A colleague.
I knew things were getting really serious when she changed her computer wallpaper to a picture of Twilight hero Edward Cullen – she’d been using pictures of our sons for years.
Poor kids. But never mind. They’ll get over it.
I’ve always had the strong belief that being a fan is good for people. It doesn’t matter so much what one is a fan of, just so long as one is a fan.
People who like oil paintings or wine are called connoisseurs, but really, they’re just fans.
Being a fan is about giving one’s self over to a love of something. It’s a pure love in that it never asks for anything in return.
I ask nothing of Blade Runner other than it allow me to watch it.
I ask nothing of DC comics other than to allow me to read them.
Of course, I dearly wish that I could ask something of Namie Amuro – that my fan love could be somehow reciprocated – but I know that realistically this isn’t going to happen, so…
Uh, yes, about my wife. My Twi-Wife.
She likes to say that she’s not crazy like other Twilight fans. There are other women out there who like it waaaaaay more than she does.
Thing is, that’s the same thing all the other Twilight fans say, including my colleague Jeanmarie, who claims that she can’t be called a Twi-Mum because she liked Twilight before her baby was born, so it doesn’t count.
Jeanmarie, that just doesn’t make any sense.
I recently bought my wife a picture book on the making of the Twilight sequel New Moon.
I don’t mind that she keeps the book on her night table, and that every night before I go to bed I see Robert Pattinson’s face on the cover staring back at me.
Though I’m well aware that Pattinson is a million times better-looking than I am, I still hope that, on my best days, she sees in me at least a little of what she sees in him.
The NewPaper