(HAHA - I actually signed for a gold membership for the privilege of posting this completely shit entry because the servers are currently closed to non-goldies. I was going to do it anyway, once my account on open-book expired, but oh, I am nothing, nothing if not obsessive.)

(I wrote this entry on paper last Friday, and wasn't really sure if I'd transport it to this public realm until tonight -- it seems silly, perhaps it is, it's at any rate too reminiscent of my high school entertainment-obsessed self to take entirely seriously. But three things: one, the obsession has certainly not waned, in fact tonight I spent yet another night in its cinematic thrall; two, it has been a while since I've returned to this topic, a diary staple of mine; three, it's 1am and I have no desire to go to sleep just yet. So forgive me this regression, these thoughts bug me still.)

(And I'm not editing for sentence badness; I was all worked up when I wrote it. I prefer to keep it that way, although I find it quite tiresome to re-read. It occurs to me a lot of what I wrote influenced my more well-thought-out last entry, which I link if only to retain some shred of pride in my work as a diarist.)

I have recently, very suddenly, and most fervently fallen in love with Katharine Hepburn.

I have in six days devoured six of her films -- obsessively, I begin working my way down her filmography.

Today I read 300 pages of her autobiography. But I skipped to the end. I was looking for answers. I had to know -- Spencer Tracy.

How could a woman, so alive, so fiercely independent and free and all her own -- how could this same woman, for 27 years, put up with a cheating many times over married man, perhaps some shade of abusive and definitely belittling, this misogynist, tortured presence, this person who for all her steadfast devotion never revealed how he felt about her?

"It seems to me I discovered what 'I love you' really means. It means I put you and your interests and your comforts ahead of my own... because I love you."

"LOVE has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get -- only with what you are expecting to give -- which is everything."

So yes, love ought to be unselfish. About giving freely. But -- love is not being willing to give everything, and receive nothing! No, no. What of equality, what of give-and-take, of mutual anything? God, I suppose you can love like that, but doesn't it kill something in you? Something fundamental? Doesn't it break you?

"If you are very lucky, you may be loved back. That is delicious but it does not necessarily happen."

Certainly -- and really, how rare must it be for the person you love to naturally love you back, and all in the same proportions? Very rare indeed. But I still think, if that's the case, don't bother with it. It's not what you ought to be looking for. Move on. Is that immature of me?

"He didn't like this or that. I changed this and that. They might be qualities which I personally valued. It did not matter. I changed them. Food -- we ate what he liked. We lived a life which he liked."

And this is where it all really just turns my stomach. To change your very self, your essence, for another person, for love?

The thing of it is, Katharine Hepburn does not seem to me the sort to yield for anything or anyone, she was so fearlessly herself. By all other indications, she was a strong feminist. So how to justify this?

Yes, I'll admit that I am, as she calls herself, a "me me me person." But that's not selfishness. I can't imagine not putting myself first. Loving and sacrificing yes, but not at that cost -- I am only for me.

I understand everything she felt about not wanting to marry [again], not wanting children of her own. This commitment to freedom, of being solely responsible for one's self.

How could she then forsake all that to, literally, sit adoringly at a man's feet? To all but give up her career to be a nursemaid?

Am I misunderstanding something? You can't change yourself for love -- otherwise you become something other than what you were when you began loving, and something less worthy of being loved -- or, less harshly, something you can't really know why it is loved, because it is plastic, packaged, not at all you.

And finally, disturbingly:

"I have no idea how Spence felt about me. I can only say I think that if he hadn't liked me he wouldn't have hung around."

Maybe she was a stronger woman than I can envision myself being. Maybe she loved more deeply than I can believe in.

But I know I could never give 27 years of my life to a relationship in which my partner could laugh with me but never really talk to me, could accept my love without even a suggestion of gratitude, and never, never once, make sure I knew just how he felt about me.

I have never loved and I have never been loved, not in this romantic sense. I have wanted, I have been attracted, I have been pursued. But even in any such example I could point to, I never once really thought there was even a good possibility of truly loving, or being loved by, that person.

"Usually we use the world love when we really mean like. I think that very few people ever mean love."

I remember the outrage I felt when Chad first suggested our parents didn't really love us. They provided for us, they took us to softball practice, they guided us through -- but could they really know us? could they really love us?

Most parents care for their children. And vice versa. But love? You're supposed to love your family. But do we?

And so I agree. Love is rare and elusive and we throw the word around far too casually.

But what did Chad drill into us? I thought I'd never forget, something like "Love is the spontaneous creation of new information between self and other." There has to be that mutuality of exchange. If you want to see love as a verb -- and shouldn't you? -- it's got to be some kind of equal, simultaneous experience.

No, that's it:

"The simultaneous experience of self and other." Maybe.

Anyway -- I agree, few people really achieve that sort of meaningful understanding. Most people say "I love" and mean "I like" or "I care about."

But can you love alone? Can love exist in a vacuum? I'm not sure it can.

"You may think you've waited a long time. But let's face it, so did I. I was 33."

I was actually surprised by that line. 33. In the midst of such a rich life, with such a long life ahead. 33 doesn't seem late at all. It seems to me, if anything, early.

I don't expect to understand what I think love is for a long time. Much longer yet to find it. Oh, I may find it sooner than I think, but what good will it do me if I can't recognize it?

Maybe it is the state of mind I'm in. I am this 21-year-old girl, ready to just throw myself at the world, happy either to fall gracefully or shatter to pieces.

The truth is, I admire the hell out of Katharine Hepburn, and in some ways I feel a sort of kinship with her. All the same fearlessness, and the terror nevertheless, and the passion, and the self-centeredness, and the wonder at being alive.

So it's no surprise then I guess to read of her relationships with men like Leland Hayward and feel more sympathetic toward that. Maybe it wasn't love, but it was young and joyous and mutual and equal.

"He was lighthearted. He enjoyed living - eating - loving. We laughed. We did what we wanted to do when we wanted to do it. I played tennis and golfed with other people. He didn't like to do either. He enjoyed his agency business. Life was fun and easy. I was happy. I had a beau. I had a career. Leland wanted to marry me, but I really did not want to marry."

Maybe it's just that what I want now is not love, not really. Just something nice, easy, fun. That sounds like what I want, and how I imagine it ending, too.

Because I can never envision myself as "someone's girl." I can't give myself up. In the way that I guess she was "Spence's girl." And love is, I mean it seems it should be, giving part of yourself to another person. Maybe I don't want that at all.

Perhaps, yes, perhaps she did love more deeply than I can understand. To say "I wish it were this way or that, of course I'd prefer he say 'I love you too,' but it is what it is, I love whom I love."

Perhaps that takes more strength, more selflessness, than I have.

I do love myself more than any other person. Self or other? I choose self. If I have to become an other to have an other, I will choose self and remain by my self.

"Simultaneous experience of self and other" -- perhaps that is the pinnacle, but is that the only way? There's that, and if you can't have that you love sacrificially or you hold tight your independence.

In any event, aren't all relationships unequal? Even if you tell someone you love them, and they say they love you, don't you have to take it on faith? There is no scale, no conversion chart or measuring system. You love, you're loved, you try to make the most.

Certainly, I have been loved (and here I go throwing that word around) more than I loved.

I have been loved and never adequately expressed my feelings in return.

I have been pursued and I have wondered how heartless I can be.

I have wanted friendships, I have wanted kisses, I have mistakenly felt connections.

I have idolized people who think nothing of me.

It happens every day. We could call these the tragedies of our lives, if we wanted to be dull about it.

The closest I have ever come to loving, and loving equally, and loving "healthily" is Lani and Josh. We have great fun, we have great talks, we are very affectionate and when we tell each other how we feel I know we are all speaking about the same thing.

That is all I know, and it is enough for now. If they are the closest I ever get to loving, I am lucky. If I find love at 33, I'll be happy. If I become involved in a Lelandesque romance, I'll have fun with it.

But Katharine Hepburn, I still don't understand. I'm almost positive it's not for me. But she would say she was lucky, she was happy, she had fun. And in the end, that's got to count for something.

Honey, now if I'm honest, I still don't know what love is.
David Gray

(Since writing this I have watched three Hepburn/Tracy movies, and I enjoyed them, but they're tainted for me by this warped reality I think I'm privvy to. His character's anti-feminist "practical" jabs in Adam's Rib disgust me. Her powerful, polyglot character's comeuppance in Woman of the Year (which she all but wrote, disturbingly enough) makes me want to scream. The movies are good, she holds her own, they're fine. But he always commands top billing and I much prefer Cary Grant.)