The first time the warm tone appeared, it was 05:29. In Professor George's memory, Jim teased two Foxhounds on the lawn for the
second time. At 06:31, in the memory, Jim and himself were kissing in the glass house.
The third time, 07:42. Still remember, the warm color is not very obvious in the room at night. The professor received a call to inform Jim of his death, and then ran to the house of his female friend Charley in the rain, crying bitterly.
The first three times are memories.
I probably want to explain that when Jim didn't leave, the professor still lived happily, and every segment was warm and vivid, until Jim died.
The fourth hue change, 18:38. In the conversation between the professor and the teaching secretary(?), a close-up of the round red lips of the teaching secretary smiling.
The fifth time, 20:12. While chatting with his colleague Grant, the professor looked at the slender body of the male student playing tennis. The camera captured the male student’s muscles. Express that the lives of others are very colorful and happy, only the professor lives in the gloomy pain).
The sixth time at 22:40, the professor was in class, talking about Huxley. The male student Kenny had a close-up of his face for the
seventh time, which was quite special, and the scene turned black and white in the lens. In the memories that the professor fell into after taking the black and white photos of Jim in the safe, the sceneries were all black and white, echoing the black and white photos of Jim. This is the only place in the film where black and white tones are used except for the moment of death of the professor.
Eighth time, 38:21. The professor met a neighbor girl in a lo suit in the bank, and the camera was pulled from the girl's calf. At 38:42, the close-up of the professor's face turned into a warm tone. This is the first time that the facial tone of the professor has become warmer in real life. At 40:22, the professor's facial tone changed from warm to cold.
Ninth time, 41:57. The professor kisses the little Foxhound India of the driving lady in front of the convenience store.
Tenth time, 43:36. The professor chatted with the Spanish guy Carlos at the door of the convenience store. Close-up of the lips of a Spanish guy smoking.
The eleventh time, 48:14, is the professor's memory again. Think of the scene of the professor and Jim sitting on the sofa and reading.
The twelfth time, at 55:54, the professor went to the aunt's house as a guest and held up a rose in the small garden at the door to observe. Rose flower close-up.
In the aunt’s house, the colors are warmer throughout the whole process. The professor and the aunt are basically happy to get along with each other, which may also be caused by the lighting. It feels like the former. Because when the professor finally decided not to commit suicide, his inner os was: Thank you for pulling me back.
The thirteenth time, the memory kill, 69:31. Before the professor committed suicide, he recalled the scene he met with Jim in the bar.
For the fourteenth time, before his death, the professor wanted to go back to the bar where he met Jim for a drink. He met Kenny who came to him, drinking and chatting. The whole process was warm.
After swimming back to the professor's house, the color tone is also warm. I don't know if it's because of the light or the professor and Xiao Xianrou are more in line with each other, and I feel that life is a little bit lively. It feels like the latter, because in the later shots where the professor died of illness, the color tone turned cold again.
On the fifteenth time, Professor 94:07 fell ill and died, lying on the carpet next to the bed. The hue changes from warm to cold, and becomes black and white again.
The professor's drowning hallucinations always appeared three times: in the first dream / when he was in class at 21:58 / when he went home and fell asleep at 88:13.
"For Richard Buckley" appeared on the screen at the end of the film "Single Man". This is a gift from the director to his lover.
It is said that Richard Buckley once asked Tom Ford why he didn't write this line at the beginning of the film. Tom Ford replied that he didn't want his love for you to become a gimmick in the film. I believe his goal has been achieved. Leaving aside Tom Ford himself, "Single Man" is also a moving movie. In fact, after watching this film, I discovered that Tom Ford turned out to be the director of the film.
The "single man" Professor George in the film has experienced the tragedy of widowed, unable to pluck up the courage to live. His lover Jim died in a car accident, but he was unable to attend the funeral of his lover because only his family members were allowed to attend the funeral. In 1962, when homosexuals were unable to form a marriage, he could not become the other's family. He can only keep in tears when he receives a funeral call from his lover's cousin, seemingly accepting reality calmly, or walk to the scene of Jim's car accident in the snow in his dream and kiss his lover with blood on his face once.
Later, little fresh meat student Kenny asked him: Teacher, what are you afraid of?
He replied: car.
However, in 1962 in the film, the car is very beautiful. The lines are beautiful, the colors are generous, and the wax is shiny. Others are equally beautiful. The men's suits are well-fitted and neat, the shirts are white and clean, the women's makeup is charming, the clothes are gorgeous, the desk is made of fine wood, spotlessly clean, the flesh is beautiful and healthy, and the muscles are well-proportioned. Even the pistol used by Professor George to commit suicide was shining silver, like a work of art on display.
This is not the real 1962. This is 1962 in the eyes of Professor George.
Professor George is a true gentleman, with a good education, naturally elegant and calm. Suffering from such a blow, I never allow myself to lose my graceful posture. He wants to clean up his office, take out all his savings from the bank safe, put the tip left for the housekeeping aunt in an envelope and put it in a bread bag, leave the letter to his friend and prepare his own suit and suit for the funeral. The shirt collar and the pin are neatly placed on the desk, and the card is attached: please tie a Windsor knot. Then, I want to die calmly. Fearing that his blood would stain the white sheets, he took the camping sleeping bag and wrapped himself in it.
Those who shoot such a plot must have gone too elegantly.
The film director and famous Tom Ford, as a leading figure in the fashion industry, is well known by many beauty-loving ladies. Born in 1961, he created his own brand Tom Ford after successively serving as directors of Gucci and YSL.
When he was young, Tom Ford was handsome and charming, and he had lived a life of an angry horse for many years. He had both a boyfriend and a girlfriend. For him, naked appearances are not new. During his tenure at Gucci, he even came up with an advertising idea to trim the hair of women's private parts into a G shape.
Tom Ford, who met Richard Buckley, fell in love, abandoned Yingying and Yanyan, and went to follow the gentle and elegant editor-in-chief without hesitation.
Now 55 years old, he and 68-year-old Richard Buckley have lived together for 30 years since they fell in love in 1986. However, their 30 years have not been smooth sailing.
In 2014, the two registered their marriage in the United States. Tom Ford told the media: "I lost a lot of friends when I was in college, including of course those who were very close, and Richard must have gone through many difficult things with me for 27 years. Now we are finally married. This is really true. It’s great. Although I know that gay marriage is legal in the UK, we finally chose to get married in the United States.” Tom Ford and Richard Buckley waited for 30 years, spent half their lives tremblingly on the fear of death, and finally ushered in It's a day to be each other's family.
Attached is the Chinese version of the two-person love letter and the original version:
Tom Ford, designer:
When you look at him, it feels like you have known each other a long time ago. On the night we met for the first time, I seemed to know him well. He has the hottest eyes-like an Alaskan malamute. It was not a pair of blue eyes, nor was it gray. It was a beautiful color that had never been seen before—similar to dazzling silver. Those eyes are still too long to show affection, but they have already fascinated me deeply.
I still remember that the first encounter between each other was in a fashion show in New York in 1986. At that time, he was 38 years old and promising, and he was the fashion editor of the authoritative American fashion media "Women's Wear Times". He is so confident and handsome, so perfect that it seems difficult to get close. The eyes were so enthusiastic that it made the timid me restless. After the fashion show, I just ran out and ran into the street to avoid him.
Ten days later, my boss, Cathy Hardwick, sent me to the "Women's Times" company to retrieve some fashions, and I was taken by the company staff to the top floor where the models were shooting fashion. When the elevator door opened, I saw a man with extremely clear eyes. He rushed in, introduced himself as Richard Barkley, and told me that the fashion was actually downstairs, in what they called a "fashion closet." He is really cute and looks exactly like a big fool. I kept dancing, looking at me with big twinkling eyes, trying my best to look more charming in front of me. During the time when the elevator was running, I secretly made up my mind to spend my life with him. I'm a very realistic person, and I just thought, okay, there seems to be some kind of fetters that tie us together. He was talking non-stop, but with a "boom", the elevator door opened, and I thought to myself, OK, it's done. He was still calm. He is such a handsome, calm, steady and mature man, which makes me intimidate. Later, he really started chasing me, the key is not how hard he pursued. I am really happy, but it also makes me uneasy. Because I know that he is so different, the feeling is hard to describe in words, and the time with him seems to make me feel the incomparable happiness that I have never had before.
On Saturday, I made an appointment for Christmas shopping together. After several dates, we were tired of being together almost every night afterwards. It was about a few days before we said "I love you..." to each other. But now it’s different. Before going to sleep every night, every time we hang up, and at the end of every email, we will say this to each other to show our love. I think so, if I love you, I should let you know what I want. Maybe you might only say this when holding his hand or kissing, but I never stopped telling him that I love him.
That time, we both went back to our respective homes for Christmas, but when we got together again, he gave me the keys to his apartment, and hoped that I could move in with him, I immediately agreed. We have been together for less than a month. Someone has lived with him for about three or four years, but that was not a particularly serious relationship. He also resolved the matter consciously. He was only 38 years old at that time and I was 25 years old, but we were all fully prepared to settle down, fall in love, and spend our lives with each other. When I was young, I was addicted to alcohol, drugs, running parties everywhere, and had relationships with many people, so I should have enough fun. This kind of spoiled life needs to end. I had my first sexual relationship when I was 14 years old. I also had a girlfriend in high school, and she was pregnant twice during the time she was in love. In the 1970s, the flow of people was also one of the methods of contraception. At that time, in most schools, people's attitudes to the flow of people were very casual. If it is now, if I am with someone, I would definitely not do it. I think that may also be a characteristic of an era. Even on TV, sex is treated casually, let alone adolescents. When you watch old TV shows in the 1970s, people have sex almost casually, but the AIDS outbreak completely changed people's thinking.
Since a relatively early patient was diagnosed with AIDS, people began to call AIDS a unique cancer of homosexuality. In 1981, I was completely frightened by the news that my friend was suffering from AIDS. From then on, I began to pay great attention to safety measures.
That might indeed save my life, but it completely destroyed my view of sex ever since. You have begun to associate sex with death-at least I have seen it that way. Richard and I dated three times before we had a relationship. It was because my best friend was lying in the hospital and was dying of AIDS. And Richard's best friend has passed away in the hospital because of AIDS. So after the appointment, we all went to the hospital for checkups, which was what we often did during that time. But we still have a huge fear of AIDS, and it greatly affects our early sexual life. While we fell in love, we watched the death of our closest friend. If I can make a list, at least in the 1980s, half of our friends would have passed away. And it lasted until the early 90s-it didn't end.
After we lived together for three years, Richard was diagnosed with cancer and was told that it was an incurable disease at the time. We have had many sad tragedies, and we have gone through all kinds of tribulations together. In the end, we have made each other more encrypted and inseparable. These years of sharing weal and woe are all precious wealth in our lives, and ultimately make the sparks of our lives more beautiful and beautiful.
It seems to be a very interesting thing to grow old together with each other, and we all have changed. During the first days of falling in love, I have always been very quiet-in fact I am a somewhat, very, even almost pathologically shy person, although I know that no one believes it now. Because I often appear in public view, and I seem to be a workaholic. In fact, when he first started dating, Richard was a very, very social and very talkative person. He is extroverted and optimistic, while I am introverted and shy. When you see us now, you must think exactly the opposite. Now Richard often behaves very quietly, especially when he knows you very well. But if you meet him at a party, he is also very lively. In fact, I really don't like parties. I try my best not to attend. I prefer dinners with Richard or with five or six friends.
There is one thing that always makes me feel ridiculous—maybe laughter is not a particularly accurate adjective, because it is actually a very serious matter—when I get together with my friends, they are all heterosexual, and they live. It took a long time to realize that Richard and I have been living together for 24 years, and the reaction is often, "Wow, you two have stayed together for 24 years! It's amazing.....I thought that homosexual couples would not get along so long. Time..." I asked, "Why? What are you talking about?" In my circle of friends, the longest-lasting relationship is among same-sex couples. During the days when Richard and I were together, many of my heterosexual friends often got married, divorced, married and divorced... I found this prejudice, even among some of my highly educated friends. Existence, they think that the reason for homosexuals being together is more sexual demand than love between each other. This kind of prejudice still exists in today's highly developed society, which is actually a shocking thing. I feel very lucky and very eager to be the other half of anyone. Whether I love the opposite sex or the same sex, all I need is love. Richard and I may be destined to follow each other and rely on each other with love. Perhaps that is the so-called moment when you stare into your lover's eyes. You seem to have seen him through this life and have known each other for a long time. I think he is the most beautiful destination of my life.
Editor-
in- Chief Richard Buckley: After three and a half years in Paris, I moved back to New York because I accepted the position of editor-in-chief of a magazine called "Scene". On the fourth day of returning to New York, I participated in a fashion show by a young designer named David Cameron. While I was waiting for the show to start (it was held in a Loft arts district), I caught a glimpse of a man on the edge of the crowd, who was very good-looking, definitely a good-looking one. After the performance, I stayed in a chair and scribbled on my notebook until his camel coat broke into my sight. I immediately became energetic and started walking in his direction. I said, the place where we are is a Loft art district, the fastest way to leave is to take the stairs. While we were walking, I looked at him up and down from time to time, smiled at him from time to time, and he responded with a slightly reluctant smile. We stayed in this situation until we walked out of the art district. I'm sure he was eager to run away.
Time flies quickly. Ten days later, I went to the roof of a building on 12th Street to take a group photo. Art director Irving asked me if I had a boyfriend.
"No."
"Then you haven't dated recently?"
"No, I haven't been out to play much since I returned to New York."
"Why?"
"I have been out of New York for three and a half years, and now two jobs are waiting for me. Quickly adapt to the pace of work, I don't want to be delayed."
"Then you didn't meet any sweetheart?"
I told him about the person I met on the last show. Coincidentally, two minutes later, Harry ran from the studio to the top of the building and told me, "Someone came over to retrieve their company's clothing." Then I saw the person I met on the show approaching.
I whispered to Owen, "That's him."
"Who?"
"That's the one."
"Which?"
"That's it!"
"Oh he wouldn't be..."
"Yes, it's him."
I Walked over and told the young man that he could take back everything except the clothes that he was going to use later. Then I took him to the workroom downstairs in the elevator. In the elevator, I kept talking like a gossip girl, stroking his hair like a gossip girl, trying to attract him. He just stood there without saying a word. The more silent he is, the more stupid I seem to be. I scratched the clothes in the closet and started talking again, "Tomorrow night your boss will hold a party in her apartment to celebrate my return." I hope he will tell her about this. After all, she is very knowledgeable in the gay circle and will definitely invite him over.
The next night, although the party was praised, the figure of that person did not appear. After the party, I pulled his boss aside and asked, "What's your assistant's name?"
"Towa."
"No, it's not Towa, it's a pretty guy."
"Shun Mao."
"Shun Mao?"
"His real name is Tom, but I call him Shun Mao." Her husband is also called Tom Snowden. To distinguish it, she named a Tom'Baba' The other was named'Shun Mao'.
As I said, she is definitely a very understanding person, "He must be your right person. Come over for lunch on Monday, and I will help you with the line."
Sure enough, she was in the office the next morning . Called, "Tom, you come in." She told him, "Richard Barkley, the fashion editor of WWD and Scene, he wants to ask you out. This person is very important to our company. You take my card. , Why do you want to accompany him." On
Monday, it rained heavily. I came to her office and thought I would go out to eat later. I ate a sandwich with tomato soup last time in her office. Halfway through the meal, Tom got up and said that he had to go back to work. At that time, I was thinking, I am thirty-eight, and he is only twenty-five. He probably won't like my kind of weird old man anymore. I was struck out.
I went back to the office, and the phone rang about ten minutes later.
"Hello."
"Hello, I’m Tom Ford, I’m calling to ask if you have time to come out for a drink or dinner with me another day."
Without any precaution, I didn’t expect him to come to me. Thought he was very cold. "Um, I will attend a business party tomorrow and the night after tomorrow. I will be abroad on Wednesday night. I will be free in a week?" He said it was okay. Then we talked on the phone for a while, and he took the initiative to chat with me, and I thought to myself that he was actually not too cold at all. The phone was about to hang up, and I told him, "Listen, tomorrow night's party is actually optional. If I don't go, can I ask you out?" "Of course."
To be honest, I couldn't bear the excitement all day after that. In fact, there is no business party at all, no need to go abroad, nothing at all. No. At 4:23 pm on Tuesday afternoon, I called to tell him that the party had been cancelled and asked him if he was free.
Our first date was actually in a very simple restaurant called'Albuquerque eats' in the slum area of the east of the city. It should have been demolished by now. Tom sat there and chatted with me, "In ten years I will show my own fashion design in Paris, I want to be a millionaire, I want...I want..." I thought at the time, this guy is really naive . We talked about other things, and I realized that his heart was actually like a rabbit hole. Looking at him, I was dazzled, as if through these eyes, I could penetrate into his inner world. I found that he was a kind young man with lofty ambitions. Before I knew it, I seemed to be fascinated by him.
Having experienced many failed relationships, I am very suspicious and sensitive to many things. When I am with Tom, I am very careful to avoid repeating the same mistakes. I was injured many times and learned to keep a proper distance from others, but on New Year's Eve in 1986, we stayed in my apartment without going out. I gave him a Tiffany box with the keys to my apartment in it. He moved in the next day.
Tom is an absolutely modern version of a gentleman. We have the same attitude towards a gentleman. Both of us are the kind of people who can open the door for ladies. If you are polite, people will feel it, and they will appreciate you because you respect them. In 1989, I got throat cancer. Some people overreacted to this, and Tom chose to cut off contact with them. My best friend and a mentor passed away in 1987 and 1988, both because of AIDS. So some people arbitrarily think that I also have AIDS, and they refuse to come to see me because they feel as if they will be infected with AIDS when they come over. Tom cut off contact with these people directly, even if he encountered them on the street, he would not care.
I can't imagine life without Tom. If there is something wrong with him, how can life continue. As far as I am concerned, he has always been the young man with lofty aspirations and kindness that I met 24 years ago, the only Tom in the world, my Tom.
Tom Ford, Designer:
You can look at someone and feel like you've known him forever. The first night I ever had drinks with Richard I felt I knew everything about him. He has the wildest eyes - like an Alaskan husky. They're not blue, they're not gray, they're a color you've never seen before - they approach silver. They give away absolutely nothing, yet they are completely mesmerizing. We first encountered each other at a fashion show in New York in 1986. He was 38 at the time and the fashion editor of Women's Wear Daily. He was confident and handsome in a way that made him almost unapproachable. His stare was so intense that it completely unnerved me, and when the show was over I literally bolted out the door and down the street to avoid him. Ten days later, my employer, Cathy Hardwick, sent me to the office of Women's Wear Daily to retrieve some clothes. I was directed to the roof where they were being photographed, and as the elevator opened, there was the man with the eyes the color of water. He rushed over and introduced himself as Richard Buckley and told me that the clothes were actually downstairs and offered to take me down to what was then called'the fashion closet.' He was adorable, and he was a complete fool. He was sort of dancing around, flashing his eyes at me, and trying so hard to be charming. I decided in that elevator ride that I was going to marry him. I'm very pragmatic, and I was, like, OK, there's some kind of connection here. He ticked every box, and - boom- -by the time we got to the floor, I was like, OK, sold. He seemed so together. He was so handsome, he was so connected, he was so grown-up,so he was very intimidating. And he really chased me - not that he had to chase that hard. It excited me but it also scared me, because I knew he was different and that whatever it was I felt with him was very different from what I'd felt before.
We did our Christmas shopping together one Saturday, and we spent almost every night together after our first few dates. It was probably a few days before we were saying things like,'I think I'm in love with you.' Now, we say it to each other every night before we go to sleep, and we say it at the end of every telephone conversation, and we write it at the end of every e-mail. Every time you think, I love you, I really believe you have to say it. If you think about holding their hand or kissing them, you do it. I do it all the time.
We both went home for Christmas, and when we came back, he gave me the key to his apartment and asked if I'd move in, and I did. We'd known each other barely a month. He'd lived with someone for three or four years, but it wasn't really a serious relationship, and he was very consciously looking for that. He had come to that stage of his life at age 38, and I was at that stage at age 25, but we were both ready to settle down and fall in love and have a life with someone. I had slept with a lot of people and done my fair share of drinking and dancing and drugs. I'd had sex for the first time when I was 14 . I had a girlfriend in high school who was pregnant twice while we were together. In those days, in the '70s, abortion was considered a form of birth control, and I think in most high schools at the time,it was quite casual. I certainly wouldn't do that if I were with someone today, even as a teenager, so I think it was a part of that era, and the casualness with which sex was treated on television. When you watch an old '70s television show, everyone is just hopping into bed with everyone in a completely casual way. I think AIDS definitely changed it.
One of the very first people to be diagnosed with what was then called gay cancer, in 1981, was a friend of mine. It completely flipped me out, and from then on, I was extremely safe. It probably saved my life, but it damaged the way I think about sex forever. You just associated sex with death'or at least I did. Richard and I had three dates before we had sex, because my best friend was in the hospital, dying from AIDS, and Richard's best friend was in the hospital, dying of AIDS. So we would have a date, and then he would go to the hospital, and I would go to the hospital; consequently, that was very much on our minds. There was still enormous fear, and that affected our early sexual relationship tremendously, as well as just watching very close friends die at the same time we were falling in love. If we made a list,I would say that half of our friends from the early '80s are no longer with us. It continued into the early '90s - it just didn't stop.
Three years after we started living together, Richard was diagnosed with cancer and at the time was told that it was most likely going to be fatal. We've had a fair amount of personal family tragedy, and things happen that do, ultimately, bring you closer, because they're things you go through together and they make your history richer.
Getting older together has been interesting because we've both changed. I was very quiet at the beginning of our relationship - I'm actually a very, extremely, almost pathologically shy person, which no one believes today, because I have also mastered a work/public facade that takes an enormous amount of energy to project. And Richard, when we first got together, was very, very social and very talkative. Richard is an extrovert, and I'm an introvert, but meeting us today you would think the opposite. Richard, now, often, can be quite quiet, especially if he knows you well. But if you get Richard at a party, he's extremely animated. I actually hate parties, and I try not to go. I prefer dinner one-on-one or with four or six people.
One of the things that always amuses me - amuses isn't even the right word, because it doesn't amuse me - but often, I'm at dinner parties with very close friends, straight, and they realize that Richard and I have been together 24 years, and the response is often,'Wow, you guys have been together 24 years! That's so amazing. I don't think of gay men being together that long.' And I'm, like, ' Why? What are you talking about?' Some of the longest relationships I know of are same-sex couples. A lot of my straight friends have married and divorced and married and divorced in the time Richard and I have been together. I think that preconception, from even very educated liberal friends, that being gay is possibly more sex-based than emotionally based, is surprising and shocking in today's world. I'm someone who likes being part of a couple and always wanted that and always sought that, and it would probably be true for me whether I was gay or straight. Richard and I are bound together, and I think that's what that recognition is when you look someone in the eyes and you feel like you've known them forever. It is a kind of coming home.
Richard Buckley, Writer:
After three and a half years in Paris, I moved back to New York to be the editor of a new Fairchild magazine called Scene. On my fourth day back in town, I attended the show of a young designer called David Cameron. As I was waiting for the show to begin (it was held in a loft), I noticed a guy standing in the crowd off to the side and thought, Cute. Definitely cute. When the show was over, I sat in my seat, fiddling with my pens and my notebook, until I saw his camel coat out of the corner of my eye. I hopped up and started to walk out with him. Like I said, we were in a loft, and the quickest way out was by the stairs. As we walked, I would look over at him from time to time and smile. He'd give me a weak smile back. This went on until we hit the street, when I swear he sprinted away from me.
Fast-forward 10 days, and I am up on the roof of the Fairchild building on 12th Street doing a hideous shoot for WWD when Owen, the art director, asked if I had a boyfriend.'No.
'
'Are you seeing anyone? '
'No. I haven't even been out since I've been back.'
'Why is that?'
'I've been away for three and a half years, I have two jobs, and I've got to get back into the work rhythm of New York. I don't want any distractions.'
'Hasn't there been someone you've thought of asking out?'
At that point, I told him about this guy I'd seen at David Cameron's fashion show and how he'd disappeared. Literally two minutes later, Harry, from the photo lab, came up on the roof and said,'There's some guy here from Cathy Hardwick to pick up clothes.' It was then that the guy from the fashion show stepped onto the roof.
I turned to Owen and said,'That's him.'
'Who?'
'That's him.'
'Him who? '
'Him!'
'You mean -'
'Yes.'
I went over and told the young man I could give him all the clothes except for the dress we were going to photograph, most likely, for a cover. I took him down in the elevator to the WWD floor. The whole time down in the elevator I was babbling on like a schoolgirl. It is at this point, when telling this story, that I like to put my hands up to my head and wiggle my fingers like eyelashes. I was shamelessly flirting with this boy. He, meanwhile, said nothing, and the quieter he was, the sillier I became. As I was bagging the clothes up in the fashion closet, I told him,'Tomorrow night, Cathy is giving me a'welcome back to New York' dinner at her apartment .'I was hoping he'd mention it to her, and Cathy, who is no dummy in the gay department, would invite him to the dinner.
The next night, the dinner was wonderful, but the young man wasn't there. After dinner I took Cathy aside and asked,'Who is your assistant?'
'Tova.'
'No, not Tova, a really cute guy.'
'Tender.'
'Tender?'
'His real name is Tom, but I call him Tender.' At the time, Cathy was married to a man called Tom Snowden. She said she had to distinguish between her two Tom turkeys, so one was Tough (her husband) and the other (Ford) was Tender.
Like I said, there was never any moss growing on Cathy, and she immediately said,'He's perfect for you. Come for lunch on Monday. I'll arrange the whole thing.'
Apparently, when she came in the next morning, Cathy yelled,'Tender, get in here!' She told him,'Richard Buckley, the fashion editor of Women's Wear Daily and editor of Scene, wants to go out with you. He's very important. We need him. You take my credit card and go anywhere he wants to go.'
On Monday, it was pouring rain, and I arrived at the Cathy Hardwick offices thinking we would be going out to a restaurant. No. We had tomato soup and bologna sandwiches in her office. Halfway through lunch, Tom got up and said he needed to get back to work. At this point I'm thinking, I'm 38 and he's 25. He's not into geezers. Three strikes, you're out.
I had been back in my office about 10 minutes when the phone rang.'Hello
.'
'This is Tom Ford from Cathy Hardwick. I was calling to see if I could ask you out for a drink or dinner some evening.'
I was totally thrown off guard, because I was starting to think he was a stuck-up little prick , so I said,'Well, tonight and tomorrow night I have business dinners. Wednesday evening I leave for the country and Thanksgiving weekend. What about a week from Wednesday?' He said that was fine. Then we stayed on the phone for a few minutes and he actually started talking to me, and I thought, He's not stuck-up at all. Finally I said,'Look, the dinner tomorrow night is tentative. If it is canceled, can I call you at the last minute? 'He said,'Sure.'
Well, that was an adrenaline-charged 24 hours for me, because I had no business dinners, no Thanksgiving in the country. Nothing. Nada. At 4:23 Tuesday afternoon I called him, said dinner had fallen through, and asked if he was still free.
For our first date, we went to this really sleazy cheapo restaurant on the Upper East Side called Albuquerque Eats - I don't think it exists anymore. Tom sat there chit-chatting:'And in 10 years I'm going to be showing my own collection in Paris, and I'm going to be a millionaire, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do that.' And I kept thinking, This guy is really na've. But as we talked about other things, it was almost like seeing down a rabbit hole. I felt like I was looking at his eyes, and it was just spinning around and taking me down inside him. I could see he was a good man with a big heart. It wasn't a physical thing as much as it was a psychic wave.
I'd been through a lot of relationships and was very suspicious of a lot of things, but with Tom I was careful not to repeat the mistakes I'd made with other guys. I'd been burned many times and had learned to keep people at arms' length. And on New Year's Eve 1986, we didn't go out. We stayed at my little apartment on Saint Mark's Place. I gave him a little Tiffany box, and inside was a key to my apartment. He moved in the next day.
Tom's the perfect modern gentleman. We're both old-fashioned that way. We both stand for ladies at the table and open doors for people. If you have good manners, people notice. And they appreciate it. You're showing respect for them. When I got throat cancer in '89, there were people who Tom cut out of our lives because of the way they responded. My best friend and one of my mentors had died - one in '87 or '88 and one later that year - both from AIDS, and there were a lot of people who just assumed that I had AIDS, and there were some people who wouldn't come visit me because they were sure they would catch it. And Tom just cut them out - wouldn't even speak to them if he ran into them on the street.
I couldn't imagine being without Tom now. I couldn't imagine what I'd be like if something happened to him. There's only one Tom for me. He is still that man who I met 24 years ago, who has a good heart.
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