Leave it to Beaver

No matter how many rave reviews; no matter how spicy hot of a chili pepper
Jodie Foster is, I just can’t bring myself to see The Beaver.
I do however find it a perfectly fitting title for Jodie, given the world now knows her animal preference. Making her lesbian debut after years and years of agonizing and excruciating pain extending from being crammed into the dark, dingy closet,
reminds me of her role as the fearless Wonder Mom trapped in a 200 sq ft hell box,
or panic room, where she along with her diabetic daughter were without food,
water or a prayer.
I can only fantasize what a beaver could have done for her in that situation…

The silly thing is that Jodie is the lone person on the planet
who believed herself to be straight. Hello!!! Millions of gays and lesbians around the globe let out a simultaneous chorus of yawns when she announced her sexuality
and introduced the world to her very own little “Portia De Rossi.”
The closet doors finally swung open and who better to make her beaver debut with than Mel Gibson? That stellar of a dude who also just happens to be a racist,
sexist piggy, woman-hater and I’d bet my next paycheck, because it’s a small one,
a homophobe.
What are you thinking Jodie because I’m thinking middle-life crisis…
Beautiful woman on your arm, making bank with The Beaver, Ellen’s taking Oprah’s prime time spot so the waters are semi-safe for you…
You know coming out at 20 is courageous, scary and bold, but golly, Beav, coming out at 50-something is pathetically embarrassing.

Being in the closet resembles living at a trailer park in that you do everything
in your fucking power to not let the cat out of the bag. The reaction one receives when one says “I’m gay” is incredibly similar to the one when you say, “I live in a trailer park.” It ranges from crinkled noses and the disappearance of eye contact,
to a rapid change of subject.
Coming out to a stranger who asks me if I have a husband: “ No, I don’t have a husband. Actually, I’m gay.”
Response: “Oh…wow… hey, do you know if Safeway still carries Swiffer refills?”
The entire first 2 years at the park I told everyone I was “in management at
a modular home park community near Monterey.”
And the very first time I made a feeble attempt to come out,
I said I was “most likely bi-sexual, but isn’t everyone if they’d simply
allow themselves to explore all sides of their femininity and masculinity?”
Somehow wearing an armor of protective bullshit works in both situations.

Now rather than Jodie playing Mel’s loving, loyal, “till death do us part’ wife,
I’m thinking a no bullshit, sizzler of a movie, using the same title of course, might be The Beaver starring Jodie Foster and Guinevere Turner.
Now that would most certainly be worth the price of admission.
Oh, yea…heart be still!

~tpg