Mystery Whiteboy

I don't usually watch House MD. It's not that I don't like the program. It's just that Heroes is shown at the same time and... well... Heroes is about superheroes. House MD is about a crotchety old guy. If I want to look at bitter old men, I'll open my eyes when I'm commuting to work.

Heroes has it all: flying, invisibility, poor role models, cheerleaders and the inevitable destruction of New York. It's like being a Knicks fan, just in 60 minute increments.

What House does have going for it is Robert Sean Leonard. Now before you think that I have gone all Alan Jones/Ted Haggard on you, let me explain. You see, I owe Robert Sean Leonard my life.

He doesn't know this, of course, but it's true. He didn't stop me from being hit by the trans-Siberian in 1995 or help me get into rehab during my crack cocaine phase in 1987. Lord knows I needed him, but he wasn't there. But you know what? It's okay. Because I'm about as good at holding grudges as Ali Ismail Abbas. [Seventh circle, coming right up.]

I owe Robert Sean Leonard my life because of Dead Poets Society. DPS (acronym, folks) is a wonderful film for impressionable young literary minds. It certainly helped galvanise my love of prose. As a youngster, it made me see lit as legitimate and cool. And I don't mean cool like Milhouse, I mean cool like Whitman and Neruda.

At 13, I read a great deal, but always in secret. See, when I was 13, reading was for homos. So I became a closet case. I read under the covers with a torch, in the toilet with the door locked, in a makeshift cubby at the park. I loved reading, I just didn't want anyone to know about it. The upside was a hobby unhindered. The downside was that my mother thought I had become a chronic masturbator. She would prove to be right, just three years too early.

I can't recall when I actually first saw DSP, but I do recall that it made me stand up on my desk, proclaim "O Captain, my Captain" and masturbate gayly in public. I mean this, of course, in a metaphorical sense.

DPS isn't without faults. I concede that it is single-handedly responsible for ensuring that every high school speech has the groaner 'carpe diem' locked and loaded, but that's okay. Because it gave you, dear reader, this blog. And in that celestial game of pong, that makes us 1:1.

But that's not why I owe Robert Sean Leonard my life.

My wife happens to be from one of the more homogeneous cultures on God's grey earth. And I'm not fucking around when I say homogeneous. We're talking about the people who invented an impenetrable ship named the Geobukseon and pride themselves in having a pure 5000 year old lineage. Coreans are the freemasons of Asia. No one on the outside knows how to join. I'm sure they even have a secret handshake and wear strange undergarments. [Move on.]

With that as a context, let's go back. Back to the autumn of 2000, where I met an amazing girl from an impenetrable pure blood line. Let's look at the operative word a little more closely:

im·pen·e·tra·ble (ĭm-pĕn'ĭ-trə-bəl). adj.
1. Impossible to penetrate or enter.

Understand that my wife isn't your garden variety stone head. She's good quality. When I first met the lass, I knew that the odds of my successfully courting her were obviously not good, even for a man of my considerable penetrative skills.

As you are no doubt aware from the extensive Wikipedia page on my personal history, I managed to secure my fair lady with nary a finger waved in resistance. For reasons I could never quite explain - until now.

Whilst watching Heroes the other night, I channel surfed over to House MD. Whereupon the missus caught sight of Dr James Wilson (aka Robert Sean Leonard).

"Ohmo, I love him" she sighed.

I asked her why.

She then relayed a tale of a naive young girl who watched a movie named Dead Poets Society. She told me she fell in love with the character Neil Perry (Leonard) because he was so intelligent, fair-skinned and sensitive. She explained there was one scene where she actually gasped at his beauty. She said she never forgot how that movie made her feel.

I sat there for a moment. Usually I'd be a little pissed hearing her talk about some other guy so glowingly. Hell, if I'd made similar remarks to her about Jessica Alba, I'd be shitting into a bag for the rest of my life.

But I was fine. Instead, it dawned on me that I'd solved a riddle. I could actually pinpoint the precise moment that the universe shifted in my favour. If she had never seen Leonard in DPS, she may never have glanced at this curious whiteboy that was now her husband. In all likelihood she would have ended up with some Samsung salaryman named Bum Suk and never travelled to my distant shore.

I explained my little epiphany to her. She told me I was stupid. She paused for a moment and then asked if Bum Suk was rich.

And then she smiled, like she does.

So, here's to you, Robert.

I owe you.