Leslie Cheung was 11 years older than me when he committed suicide. April 1,
which is my birthday.

The cabinet work of the Spruce Goose,
relentless with its evidence of mastery:        birch precision and
an obsession with cleanliness.

That stupid plane got off the ground for only 26 seconds, a triumph of
prodigiousness and profligacy. In my third favorite movie with Leslie Cheung in it
Days of Being Wild,       there’s this really maudlin, overly-poetic metaphor

The bird metaphor is kind of beautiful, though, I have to admit. And maybe
it’s even more beautiful not in English.                But what if Wong Kar-wai avoided
using the

negative—                                   he could have avoided giving so much finality that
Leslie’s portrait became sentimental.

What if he just said the bird waited forever to alight.

In my least favorite of the trilogy                            2046,                        Tony Leung,
who also plays Leslie’s lover in Happy Together,

says that Carina Lau (Lulu),

another victim to Leslie’s fuckboy fuckery,                                        compared Leslie
with a bird that could never land.

The bird metaphor                    returning 14 years later.          The immense
tardiness of the Spruce Goose.

But if Wong Kar-wai did follow my
suggestion for the metaphor,

and Tony Leung actually tells us,
She compared him to a bird
that waited forever to alight,
it wouldn’t be fitting for Lulu to play the leading lady anymore.

And that’s not what the audience wants
and needs                  . . . . always the leading lady, Tony Leung says. A cigarette plays
Perfidia in her gloved hand.

In this world there are way more Tony Leung characters
than there are Leslie Cheung characters.
You’d be taking a dishonest position if you didn’t admit there are way fewer Leslies.
It’s just that he goes around hurting a lot of Tonies. Even
when he’s only setting out to hurt himself.
There’s the famous scene in Happy

when he’s slow-dancing with Tony,         their love               becomes a sway in a forever,
and then there’s the scene in Days

when he’s dancing             to mambo        by himself in     the mirror.

Note: On April 1, 2003, Leslie Cheung died after jumping from his 24th-floor hotel room at the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong.