Dear Jeff Goldblum,
I remember the first time I saw your face and my heart skipped a beat. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. It was not your dewy chest in the forest of Jurassic Park. It also wasn’t watching you as a whip-smart environmentalist in Independence Day. It was The Fly. That’s right…The Fly did it for me.
Some say they can never see you the same way after you literally turned into one of the most diseased, disgusting bugs in existence. Those people are wrong. The Fly was a strange and beautiful love story paired with the crude and unsettling special effects of the ‘80s. The Fly also came out the year I was born, and I believe in serendipity. Geena Davis as Veronica Quaife was pure perfection, and you loved her.
I actually have a friend who will remain nameless who, while in college, was tripping on a considerable amount of mushrooms. Things took a turn for the worse when he began reflecting on the epic love between your Seth Brundle and Veronica. It occurred to him that he would never experience a love like that, where someone would choose (nay, be willing) to accept a life as a human-insect hybrid. I believe this was a turning point for this young man, and your acting abilities as a fly gifted him with a sensitivity and the motivation to find a love that pure. You touch lives.
It was all downhill for me from there. Now armed with the expectation that boys should want to become gross, dying bugs for me, it would set me up for a lifetime of disappointment. Some boys won’t even return texts for like hours. Sometimes a whole day. No one is that busy! No one would ever quite measure up. I wondered why other boys lacked your class, your panache, your suave aesthetic, and aloof gait.
Enter Earth Girls Are Easy. You and Geena Davis again, a smoldering combo if there ever was one. I wouldn’t kick either of you out of bed, as my grandma used to say. Just stop it, with your spaceships and expansive chest under a casual Hawaiian shirt. Poor Jim Carrey never stood a chance.
During the prime of my teenage years, when I should have been lusting after Ryan Phillippe, there you popped up in Igby Goes Down as the philandering cougar slayer who takes in Kieran Culkin in his Catcher in the Rye-esque coming of age story. You used and abused poor junky Amanda Peet, yet there I was, all “I’ll be your slutty city mistress! I’ll never ask you to leave your dementia-laden wife!”
I have heard stories about you over the years, mostly because people know of my very deep love for you. A dinner party in LA where a friend would be playing jazz piano and BAM! -- that friend was you. Rumor has it you were eye-fucking every lady in the room, but probably with respect? I imagine so. That languid, cat-like stare of yours. Those bedroom eyes, that sloping easy smile.
You pop up everywhere, you devil. Literally as I write this, you are in the corner of IMDB holding a flip phone advertising some movie called Mortdecai. You are next to a mustachioed Johnny Depp. You follow me wherever I go, and I like it. I’ll be casually watching Portlandia and there you are, suave and smug covered in beets. A juror beside Amy Schumer. A horny dad on The League.
Why do you tease me so in commercial form as well, telling me about PayPal like a charming but slightly out of touch older stranger I met at a happy hour? I know about PayPal, Jeff! Why am I still watching this!? Why am I second-guessing whether or not I have a PayPal account? I do! It’s 2015!
My celebrity crushes have always been a bit off the beaten path. Shia LaBeouf, Marc Maron, but we won’t discuss other men right now. You’re the only one that really matters anyway. I love your ascot, by the way. You are wearing an ascot, aren’t you?
You’ve taught me to appreciate casual elegance. To look for a deadpan sexiness and the perfect balance between humor and intellect. I can’t see what the future holds for us, JGold, but I know it’s bright. I guess I just want to thank you. Thanks for being you. I have Snapchat, in case you were wondering. I’ll probably have to show you how to use it, but I would be more than happy to do so. :winky face emoji:
xo,
Your Veronica Quaife